Dungeon Dudes Content On D&D Beyond

 D&D Beyond's sale to Wizards of the Coast a few years ago seemed like it would be a mixed blessing.

On one hand, the possibility of uniting the physical and digital purchase of books was raised - in practice we've really seen this instead as bundles that are, admittedly, at a discounted price, but not the hope of "buy the book, get the digital version free" that some of would have loved to see.

But it also signaled a direction that some have warned about, which would be the narrowing of D&D into only its official releases. D&D Beyond initially had only a little non-WotC-produced content thanks to the inclusion of Matt Mercer's Blood Hunter class, but that seemed like a bit of a one-off.

Last year (earlier this year? What is time?) the company surprised everyone by announcing that Tal'dorei Campaign Setting Reborn, which is published by Darrington Press, Critical Role's publishing wing, would be added to the service as well.

This was a big deal, but I think I, and I imagine a lot of other D&D players, assumed that this was kind of a special, privileged thing for Critical Role in particular because of its profound success and role in evangelizing D&D - many credit it, along with Stranger Things, with the vast popularity of 5th Edition. (For me it was Penny Arcade's Acquisitions Incorporated games at PAX that got me curious - and it was my players in my first campaign that turned me on to Critical Role.)

But now they're putting the Dungeon Dudes' stuff up there.

The Dungeon Dudes I primarily know for their YouTube channel, where Monty Martin and Kelly McLaughlin talk various D&D topics, and generally have a fun and affable vibe. But they also publish D&D books, and their adventure, Dungeons of Drakkenheim, is getting published on D&D Beyond.

The potential here is huge.

See, I think that because D&D Beyond is such a useful tool, it's very popular to use - I don't even have a physical character sheet for the Wizard I'm currently playing. And I've seen in the various silly memes about D&D on social media that the inclusion of the Blood Hunter on the service has sort of allowed it to slip in as almost a core class (not quite as ubiquitous, but it's part of the conversation.)

I genuinely believe that by including something on D&D Beyond, Wizards of the Coast is signaling to the vast player base - not all of whom are constantly watching obscure YouTube channels, browsing the DM's Guild, or hanging out in game stores - that "this here is real D&D stuff."

It's easy to imagine a world where the money people at Hasbro insist that D&D Beyond only push WotC-created content to ensure a full vertical integration and shut out independent creators as publishers.

But despite the recognizability of D&D as a brand, the game really thrives on being a broad community with lots of contributors. This game is just better when more people are tinkering with it, more people are contributing to it. And there's no way to monopolize it without cutting off the game's own air supply.

Now, do I trust Hasbro to fully open the gates and let D&D thrive? Maybe not.

In an ideal world, whatever company owns D&D would see it as something of a position of stewardship - something to safeguard and provide as a public good in the same way that broadcast networks used to provide news services (to see how that broke down, watch the movie Network, one of the greatest satires of all time).

This is actually something of a step in that direction.

Compatibility Check: Drunken Master Monk 2024

 One of the big messages WotC is pushing with the 2024 Core Rulebooks is that they'll be backwards compatible. While many of the PHB subclasses are getting updates in the new PHB, in theory any of the Wizard or Cleric subclasses from 2014 and any of the other subclasses in Xanathar's Guide to Everything, Tasha's Cauldron of Everything, and other sourcebooks from the past nine years should also work alongside the new versions of the core classes (in theory you should even be able to use the old Way of Shadow with the new Monk or the new Warrior of the Hand with the 2014 Monk... though I wouldn't recommend either).

With a lot of excitement over the Playtest 8 (really 9, but they're not counting Bastions and Cantrips in the numbering) giving us a Monk that, dare we say, might actually finally be caught up with the other classes in terms of power, I thought I'd revisit one of my earliest D&D characters - the Wood Elf Drunken Master Monk, Kaz Kariko.

The Way of the Drunken Master is one of the subclasses out of Xanathar's, and admittedly, it's not considered a very powerful one. But flavor-wise, Drunken Boxing is a really cool style of martial arts that, admittedly, might only exist in Kung Fu movies or as a performative style, rather than being a historically effective fighting style.

Still, the concept of it is really cool - through unpredictable movements that draw inspiration from someone who is stumbling drunk, you become difficult to read and extremely slippery.

Playtest 8 gives us the second version of the Monk in the current round of testing, which has done a lot to enhance various aspects of the class, such as making some mobility features free, allowing us to deflect all attacks rather than just ranged ones, and broadly giving us more ways to regain Discipline Points - the new name for Ki Points.

We do, here, come across the first thing we'll technically need some kind of update document to clarify, because old subclasses will refer to Ki Points and the new class does not have any of those. But that's a pretty minor quibble.

So, let's go through the Drunken Master subclass features and determine if they work with the new version of the Monk, if they create some redundancies, and whether they've gotten any better or worse thanks to the newer design.

3rd level:

Drunken Masters get two features at level 3. The first is some bonus proficiencies - in the Performance skill and in Brewer's Supplies. While I try to make tool proficiencies worthwhile when I run my games, they are admittedly sometimes ignored. Performance, likewise, is pretty rarely made use of, so this whole half of the level is kind of "ribbon" features.

Drunken Technique is a bit more substantial. When you use Flurry of Blows, you also gain the benefit of the Disengage action and your walking speed increases by 10 feet.

    Disengaging is now pretty easy as a Monk, given that the new Patient Defense allows us to Disengage as a Bonus Action for free (and we can spend a DP to get it along with a dash and doubled jump distance with Step of the Wind). That said, getting it along with both a movement speed bonus and a Flurry of Blows does still help a lot with hit-and-run tactics. There's nothing here that is incompatible or redundant with the new Monk, and arguably this gets a little buff with level 10 giving us a third Flurry of Blows attack.

    Now, I think you could still argue that this would need a bit of a buff to make it a full level's worth of features, but our main focus here is just seeing if the new Monk breaks this subclass.

6th level:

Our one 6th level feature is Tipsy Sway, but this is actually two features wrapped up together.

Leap to Your Feet allows you to spend 5 feet of movement, rather than half your speed, to stand up from Prone.

    The only real downside to this feature is that getting knocked prone is not super common (not super rare either, to be fair). But yeah, this seems to function fine with the new Monk, and will save you a lot of feet of movement.

Redirect Attack lets you use a reaction when a creature misses you with a melee attack roll and spend a Ki Point (or DP) to cause that attack to hit a different creature of your choice (not the attacker) that you can see within 5 feet of you.

    There is definitely some overlap here with the new Deflect Attack, but they're triggered in entirely different circumstances. And because of that, while both eat your reaction, there's actually some decent synergy here - if a monster hits you, you can Deflect the attack, and if they miss, you can redirect it. Deflect Attack is arguably more important to use, though, as it's a big part of your defensive capabilities, while this is actually more of an offensive ability.

    The key to this feature is that you can create an auto-hit of friendly fire between foes. That's really powerful when you have hard-hitting monsters, but hard-hitting monsters are also the kind you want to have Deflect Attack ready for. So, while this isn't a true redundancy, I think Deflect Attack becomes a more important use of your reaction - this becomes great if you know that the monster is making its last attack and misses, but unless they've missed you on all of their attacks, you've probably used Deflect Attack already instead.

11th level:

Drunkard's Luck allows you to make d20 test that you would otherwise have disadvantage on as a straight roll if you spend 2 DP.

    There's nothing about this feature that gets broken. The only problem with it is that it really, really sucks. Two Ki Points/DP only to cancel disadvantage (not gain advantage) is entirely too expensive, and I'd argue that it's too expensive at one. But again, this is not broken by the new system. It's just already brokenly bad.

17th level:

Intoxicated Frenzy is the Drunken Master's 17th level feature, which improves your Flurry of Blows in the following way: when you use Flurry of Blows, you can take three additional attacks (on top of the normal two, for a total of five) as long as each Flurry of Blows attack targets a different creature.

    So, the first question to ask is: do we keep the number of additional attacks the same or the total the same? Because the current Monk gets three attacks as part of a Flurry of Blows at level 10 and higher. But this feature explicitly says three additional attacks for a total of five. This is very shaky rules-parsing, but I would favor the "three additional attacks" because the clarification that it's a total of five is in parentheses (I assume this reminder is to ensure people didn't think that it would simply be three Flurry of Blows attacks total).

    However, even if we take the generous (and I think more correct) interpretation, there's still a bit of a dilution of this power. If our Flurry of Blows is two attacks and we can get five, that's 150% more attacks (not counting our Attack action). If it's three attacks and we get six, that's only a 100% increase.

    The rider that these must be against separate targets, as well, has always been a real weight on this as a capstone subclass feature, because it goes against most of the common wisdom of how melee classes work - you're really rewarded in D&D for focusing down individual monsters, and spreading your damage like this could help against very weak foes, but it might be more valuable in a round to land three attacks on one target rather than one attack on six targets.

So, in summation:

The only feature here that is truly broken in the sense that it's not clear how it even works anymore is Intoxicated Frenzy, but I'd say that the appeal of Tipsy Sway has also taken a beating here.

Personally, I'd love to see an overhaul of this subclass because I adore its flavor (while it's probably the closest after the Open Hand/Warrior of the Hand to portraying a traditional martial artist, I find the overall vibe of this so much more fun - if Open Hand is Bruce Lee, this is Jackie Chan - who starred in the Drunken Master movies, so... not subtle.)

Anyway, as much as WotC tries to say there will be no conversion documents required to use the 2024 Core Rulebooks, it's clear that there will be little subtle things that could require a new clarification.

The bigger question, of course, is whether they'll revisit these existing subclasses to revise them and bring them in line power-wise with the newer design. And I'm of two minds on this: on one hand, I'd love to get a badass Drunken Master that is powerful and cool. On the other hand, I don't want to see the next ten years simply rehashing and revising all the existing things from the last nine at the expense of new concepts and ideas.

Is the Monk Fixed?

 I watched through the two-part analysis video made by D4 and Treantmonk's Temple (part one is on D4's channel and part two is on Treantmonk's) and perhaps because they gave their reactions after a bit of analysis, the mood was positively celebratory regarding the Monk.

Playtest 8 has brought a whole slew of changes that are, in total, a pretty huge buff to the Monk, which is a class that is generally considered pretty underpowered in the current game.

So, let's talk about the reasons that Monks suffered and see how this new update has addressed these concerns. For the record, I'm very positive on the changes that have come forth, and I think at worst there could be one or two tweaks here or there to really get the class running on all cylinders, but it's also possible that we're simply at a stage where the class is in good shape.

Survivability:

I think there tends to be a big focus on Ki/Discipline Points in the discussion of the Monk, but in all honesty, I think that the Monk's "running on empty" capabilities are still pretty good - especially with the introduction of "Wraps of Unarmed Prowess" with the Book of Many Things (which will probably get reprinted in the DMG) giving Monks the unarmed equivalent of a +X weapon. You basically have three attacks per round at level 5 and higher, with the equivalent of the two-weapon fighting style.

Where I think Monks have really seemed underpowered is in their defensive capabilities. Unarmored Defense can get you good AC but only if you roll very well or get to high levels. And, as a note, while the Monk capstone instantly nets you 4 additional AC, we have to consider the vast majority of Monks who are not level 20. And in that case, you're probably going to have to get to pretty high level just to get up to an AC of 18 - which is rough for an obligate melee class.

That hasn't changed. However, two things have made survival easier.

The first is that a lot of your mobility options are now free. Patient Defense now allows you to disengage as a bonus action with DP cost. Combined with your faster movement speed, this will better enable hit-and-run tactics, sacrificing the extra damage from your bonus action attacks (whether your free one or your Flurry of Blows).

I think the bigger deal is that Deflect Missiles has become Deflect Attacks. I was in a long-running campaign in which my best friend was playing a Tabaxi Monk. And I think in like two and a half years playing that, getting up to level 12 (with XP leveling) he used Deflect Missiles maybe one time. Granted, he's argued that the reason for this is simply that our DM didn't like using humanoid monsters that would shoot arrows or crossbow bolts at us, and preferred weird creatures that didn't have ranged weapon attacks, and that a normal Monk will get more use out of it.

But regardless, being able to use this on melee attacks will, I think, be a game-changer. While ranged attacks might be more or less frequent depending on the table, there's basically no game of D&D that doesn't involve a lot of monsters hitting things with claws, tentacles, fangs, swords, or pseudopods.

The downside here is that it takes a reaction, so you're going to prefer monsters that hit with one big attack rather than a bunch of small ones. But the total damage reduction is pretty big: 1d10 + your Dexterity + your Monk level. At level 3, when you get this, this will probably be about 1d10+6, or an average of 11.5, which is probably going to fully negate most attacks you take by level-appropriate monsters.

If we look at this at level 20, and assume we've maxed out our Dexterity to the special cap of 26, we're talking about 1d10+20+8, so 33.5 on average - which is maybe not fully mitigating the Tarrasque's attacks, but is still a hefty chunk of damage prevented.

Now, granted, we have some action economy concerns. For example, if we're fighting on a cliff, we might prefer to take the hit so that if the monster knocks us off said cliff we still have our reaction for Feather Fall. Also, we're going to be unable to take opportunity attacks if we use this. But this is still going to add up to a ton of mitigated damage (and in that way sort of extra health) over the career of our Monk.

Also notable here is that at level 13, we can deflect attacks that are pure magic damage. And in this case, we can even use it on attacks that deal Force damage. A lot of high-level monsters like Archdevils and Demon Lords have had their weapon damage changed to Force, reflecting the removal of the idea of "magical versus nonmagical bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing" damage. But this is actually a big nerf to Barbarians' survival, as they're going to be taking full damage from these boss monsters. The Monk, however, probably having reached 13th level by the time they're fighting these sorts of things, is going to have their full defensive capability still usable.

So, does this change make up for a lower AC (until max level - level 20 Monk's going to be insane) and the lower HP?

Well, hit dice do add up, but a d8 is only ultimately one less HP per level, or two less at 1st level. I will say that it's harder for a Monk to invest in Con because of their dependence on both Dexterity and Wisdom, so you might be a little further behind, but I think Deflect Attacks, if used consistently, could maybe make up for it (on top of movement abilities letting you more safely get away from monsters).

Discipline Points:

So, another big concern with the Monk has been the way that they seem built to spend far more Ki Points than they actually have. The new version in playtest 8 has done a few things to reduce costs here.

Ok, so if we're looking at Step of the Wind, the 2014 version lets you Dash or Disengage if you spend a ki as a bonus action. Looking at the new version, in a certain way, you can now essentially do either of these for free, because Patient Defense's free mode is to Disengage. It's not quite Cunning Action, but it's close.

The doubled-up versions of each feature when spending a DP are great, but it's the free versions here that are both very welcome. Monks already have a high movement speed, and now any time they aren't engaged in melee, they'll naturally just Dash. I'm now thinking of my friend's Tabaxi Monk, who could, for a round, and for free, with Feline Agility, run 300 feet in a round.

I will say that we'll need to see how the existing subclasses are going to interact with DP. As it stands, I don't think we have any fewer things to spend DP on, but in a lot of cases, the things we get are better. This is especially true at level 10, when our Flurry of Blows becomes three attacks and our Patient Defense and Step of the Wind get empowered (in the latter case, we become the ultimate squishy-rescuer, as we can grab a friend even if they're grappled and run them far away from any monsters).

While the newly free functionality of Patient Defense and Step of the Wind are going to be a big deal, we've also got two new ways to get DP back.

At level 2, we can get all of our DP back at the roll of initiative, but only once per long rest. I can imagine this being one of those features that you'll often not use in a day, saving it for a tough fight, but it's there.

Then, later, at level 15, we will always start every fight with at least 4 DP. 4 isn't a huge amount, to be sure, as we can probably use multiple points on our first turn, but it gives you something if you're running on fumes.

I still think we're going to be motivated to spend a lot of DP, which means we'll probably be running low frequently - but Uncanny Metabolism should help us feel a little more liberal with our use (especially as we might use it for the heal anyway).

Perhaps the better thing here is that we'll be getting more bang for our DP buck. Stunning Strike will do something to the target now regardless of whether they succeed or fail on their save, and Flurry of Blows gets a great upgrade at level 10. In a roundabout way, this could help us conserve DP - if one Flurry of Blows is enough to finish off a foe, we won't be spending another DP on our subsequent turn.

Damage:

I actually think that Monk damage was pretty decent before, simply due to the fact that you can hit so many times. But we've gotten a bit of a boost to that. With Flurry of Blows hitting three times once you hit level 10, you're basically making five attacks per turn, and even if those are only hitting for 1d8+5 (though thanks to the Wraps of Unarmed Mastery, they could be a bit higher) you're talking about a potential 5d8+25, or 47.5 damage. If we compare that to a level 10 Fighter using a Maul and Great Weapon Master, they're doing 2d6+15 twice, or 44 damage with a lower chance to hit. (Though granted, it might be more fair to compare this with a level 11 Fighter, who would be getting three such attacks).

While I think the change to the Martial Arts die is not an enormous thing, one thing to consider is that if we can get our hands on Weapon Mastery with a feat, we could pick up two daggers, which by tier 4 would be hitting as hard as Greataxes, and we could get another attack in there thanks to the Nick property. If we also get our hands on the Two Weapon Fighting Style, when we did a flurry of blows we'd be making six attacks that could all be doing 1d10+5 (granted, with two feats we might be slowing our Dexterity progress).

    So, yeah, I think the Monk is looking pretty good. I'd like to see this in action, of course. I think it's possible that despite these improvements there might be an impression of falling short, in part because of existing perceptions but also just because the Monk goes about being a martial class in a different way. Players, remember to use that Deflect Attacks liberally, and DMs, be generous with your +1 Wraps of Unarmed Mastery!

Playtest 8: Spells

 Ok, we've gone through the three classes in Playtest 8, but here we're going to touch on what are really the truly big changes, and I think these will be a bit surprising.

The spells being tested mostly fall into two categories: "Conjure" spells and healing spells.

Healing spells are a little simpler: they've generally been buffed. Anyone who has played a Cleric or other healing class will know that these spells can sometimes feel really pointless - you cast Cure Wounds on an ally and heal them for 7 HP, only for them to get hit for 14 HP the next turn. Indeed, I think a lot of damage mitigation features and abilities tend to be more valuable in-combat that actual healing in a lot of cases, but the buffs here are meant to make healing in the fray a little more attractive.

Cure Wounds:

This spell has just gotten a huge buff: the base, 1st level version now restores 2d8 plus your spellcasting ability modifier, rather than 1d8, and each level above 1st adds an additional 2d8. While this doesn't technically double the spell's healing, it comes close, especially as it is upcast. A 3rd level Cure Wounds cast when you have a +4 to your spellcasitng ability will do an average of 31 points of healing, compared to its current 17.5.

    I actually think buffing healing spells could, in a roundabout way, actually empower non-spellcasters further. If health is regained at a higher rate (and at a cost of spell slots,) the sustainability of classes that don't rely on spell slots will effectively be more attractive.

Healing Word:

Like Cure Wounds, the dice here have doubled, with the base 1st level version granting 2d4 + spellcasting ability modifier, and each upcast level adding 2d4.

Mass Cure Wounds:

The base healing of this has been increased to 5d8 plus your spellcasting ability modifier.

    Notably the scaling of this spell has not gone up, only gaining 1d8 per spell level (though you could argue the total healing is up to 6d8 per spell level, given that you're healing so many targets). Still, overall a buff, even if only by 2d8 (or 12d8 using that logic).

Mass Healing Word:

Mass Healing Word now has a base of 2d4 plus spellcasting ability modifier, meaning that at 3rd level it is truly like casting a Healing Word on up to 6 creatures. Like Mass Cure Wounds its scaling is just a single die per spell level.

Power Word Fortify:

This is brand-new 7th level spell with a 60 foot range available to Bards and Clerics. The spell provides up to 120 temporary hit points, divided evenly between up to 6 targets. So, you could either put a massive amount of Temp HP on a single target, or potentially get 20 for each of a party of 6.

    Notably you have to divide this evenly, so if you have a big disparity in how likely members of your party are to take damage, you might consider leaving out the more elusive members to boost the Temp HP of the party members who tend to get hit a lot. 120 Temp HP is nothing to sneeze at, though of course it won't stack with other sources.

I think the really important changes here are to the two 1st level spells. Cure Wounds in particular I think is often not worth the action to cast it because the healing potential is usually not as useful as the damage you could potentially deal to a foe with that action. This is a buff to be sure, and makes it perhaps more viable, if not perfectly so, to spend that action and spell slot on the heal.

Now, let's look at the Conjure Spells.

Notably, the 2024 PHB is going to be adding the "Summon" spells from Tasha's Cauldron of Everything. These spells are very popular and straightforward, and will be largely taking the place of spells that "put more bodies on the battlefield."

So, what of the "Conjure" spells from the PHB?

They're here, but they're all radically different, and conjure persistent spell effects that take the form of conjured spirits. Let's go down the line.

Conjure Animals:

You create a Large swarm of spectral animals in an unoccupied space you can see within range (60 feet). The swarm lasts for the duration (10 minutes with concentration). When a creature hostile to you enters a space within 10 feet of the swarm for the first time on their turn or starts its turn there, you can make a melee spell attack against the creature. On a hit, the target takes radiant damage equal to 2d10 plus your spellcasting ability modifier.

You have advantage on Strength saving throws while within 10 feet of the swarm, and when you move on your turn, you can move the swarm up to 30 feet to an unoccupied space you can see.

When upcast, you add 1d10 to the damage for each slot above 3rd.

    So, one thing I'm a little unclear of is whether the swarm occupies its space, or if you can pass through it. Still, it's a magical object with no HP, so the only way to get rid of it is to dispel it or knock out your concentration. Notably its damage does not require any action on your part.

Conjure Celestial:

You summon a protective presence of a Celestial spirit, which manifests as a pillar of divine light that shines in a 10-foot-radius, 40-foot-high cylinder centered on a point within range. Bright Light fills the cylinder, and when you move on your turn, you can move it 30 feet.

When a creature enters the Cylinder for the first time on a turn or starts its turn there, you can cause one of two effects: If they aren't undead or a construct, they can regain HP equal to 4d12 plus your spellcasting modifier - though this can only happen once per creature per casting of the spell. Alternatively, the creature must make a Dex save or take 8d12 Radiant damage on a failure or half as much on a success.

    This one is a little less ambiguous, with potential for a lot of damage (and you can always just move the conjured spirit over a target) and some decent healing, and perhaps most importantly, it does both.

Conjure Elemental:

This creates a 10-foot cube composed of air, fire, earth, or water (you choose when you cast it). If a creature that is hostile to you moves within 5 feet of the spirit, you can make a melee spell attack against it, dealing 8d8 damage on a hit - bludgeoning for Earth, cold for Water, fire for Fire, and lightning for Air. If the target is Large or smaller, it also gets pulled into the cube and is restrained. While restrained, at the start of its turn, the creature must make a Strength save, taking 4d8 of the same damage type on a failure or freeing itself on a success. The spirit can only restrain one target at a time.

    Here's an oddity: if the creature succeeds on a saving throw to escape the restraint, they'll presumably need to Move to leave the area of the spell. And then, because they Move within 5 feet of the spirit (inside it is within 5 feet) the spirit should get another attack on the target, and if it hits, the target is restrained again. So, this might be overpowered, as it could pretty easily lock down a foe, even if they succeed on their saving throws.

Conjure Fey:

You summon the awesome presence of a Medium Fey spirit in an unoccupied space within range. When the spirit appears, you can make one melee spell attack against a creature within 5 feet of the spirit, dealing 3d12 plus your spell modifier of psychic damage on a hit. If hit, the target must make a Wisdom save or be frightened until the start of your next turn. As a bonus action, you can teleport the spirit up to 30 feet and repeat the attack against a creature within 5 feet.

    So, is this better than Summon Fey? At 6th level (which is the level of this spell) Summon Fey does 1d6+9+1d6 (mostly piercing damage) three times, or 48 average damage on all hits. This deals likely 24.5 damage. However, this spirit cannot be attacked or otherwise destroyed. It's a trade-off, which is probably for the best.

Conjure Minor Elementals:

You summon elemental spirits that flit around you for the duration. Until the spell ends, any attack you make deals an extra 2d8 damage when you hit a creature within 15 feet of you (you choose between bludgeoning, cold, fire, or lightning damage each time you deal this extra damage). Additionally, the ground around you for 15 feet is difficult terrain for your enemies.

When upcast, the damage goes up by 2d8 per level beyond 4 and the radius of the difficult terrain extends by 5 feet per slot above 4.

    So, this is going to be less appealing to ranged spellcasters, but I think we should also point out that, as a Wizard spell, Eldritch Knights who have 4th level spells (so tier 4) will be able to use this. I do think this will be more appealing for a Moon Druid than most Wizards, especially if they use a form that has several different attacks (between Primal Strikes, Lunar Strikes, and this, you might be rolling a whole lot of dice every time you hit).

Conjure Woodland Beings:

If memory serves, this is the one that was absurdly overpowered as you could conjure like 8 Pixies that could then all cast Polymorph to turn the party into a bunch of T-Rexes.

The new version is actually similar to Spirit Guardians. For the duration, spirits flit about you within a 10-foot radius, and when they enter that space or start their turn there, they make a Wisdom saving throw or take 5d8 Force damage or half as much on a success (the same damage as a 5th level Spirit Guardians, though with the ever-reliable Force). Additionally, while this is up, you can Disengage as a bonus action.

    While it doesn't have the absurdly powerful interaction the old one had, Spirit Guardians is a popular spell, and this is pretty similar in terms of power - and the Disengage functionality gives you the chance to run it through a crowd of foes.

    So, overall these Conjure Spells are definitely not going to be anything like the older versions of them, but each of them seems to have its use and appeal. More importantly, they aren't going to be an utter pain in the ass at the table, and I'm very much in favor of that.

Finally, we have a couple of miscellaneous spells:

Fount of Moonlight:

This is a new 4th level spell for Bards and Druids. It has a range of self and lasts 10 minutes with concentration.

Light wreathes your body, emitting bright light out to 20 feet and dim light a further 20. Until the spell ends, you have resistance to Radiant damage and your melee attacks deal an extra 2d6 Radiant damage on a hit.

Additionally, immediately after you take damage from a creature you can see within 60 feet of you, you can use a reaction to force the target to make a Con save, and on a failure the creatuer is blinded until the end of your next turn.

    This is one of the Circle Spells for Circle of the Moon, and really shows how the Moon Druid can stack up a lot of extra damage on its attacks, once again really showing there had better be some good Beasts with multiattack. This could also be pretty good on a Valor Bard. This does take an action to cast, though, so you'll want to pre-cast the spell before combat if you can, as it might take a few turns for it to make up for a lost action on the first round of combat.

Starry Wisp:

This is a brand-new cantrip for Bards and Druids. It has a 60-foot range. You launch a mote of light at a creature or object in range, and make a ranged spell attack. On a hit, the target takes 1d8 radiant damage and until the end of your next turn, it emits dim light in a 10-foot radius and can't benefit from going invisible. As with most damage cantrips, this gains a damage die at each new tier of play.

    This is fine - a decent, not terribly flashy (well, I guess literally flashy) damage cantrip that should fit very well with a Circle of Stars Druid (and can be cast by Moon Druids in Wild Shape). Given that Druids and Bards have both had pretty underwhelming ranged cantrip options, this is very welcome. Notably, like Fire Bolt, this can target objects, which you might be surprised to realize is not powerful with most damage cantrips.

And there we have it: with the three classes and these spells, that's the meat of Playtest 8.

My overall impressions are positive. I'm not entirely sure if the Monk changes are enough, but I also realize that I've been down on the Monk so long that it might be that nothing short of actually seeing one do well in play will be enough to be convinced it's fixed. But I like Brutal Strikes for Barbarians, and I think that other stuff in the test is mostly pretty good.

This might be the last playtest we get focused on classes. I believe there were 10 playtests planned (not counting the Bastions and Cantrips one,) meaning we're really getting down to the endgame on this UA process. With the books coming out next year, I imagine they'll need to wrap up this process pretty soon if we're going to get the new books in the latter half of next year.

Playtest 8: Druids

 The most recent Druid playtest was, I think, pretty well received, though I'll once again throw my two cents in there as someone who liked the idea of Wild Shape templates rather than using existing stat blocks. This playtest version addresses some of my concerns about those stat blocks, with most of the changes here focused on getting Wild Shape right and tweaking Circle of the Moon.

Rather than going level-by-level, we're going to really zero in on Wild Shape and how it's changing in this test, as most of the class is the same as the previous playtest, I believe.

As in the last playtest, you have a limited number of "Known Forms," from which to choose your Wild Shapes. The number of forms you know is equal to 2 plus half your Druid level (rounded up) - so when you get this feature at level 2, you'll be able to learn 3 different animal forms, and at level 19, you'll cap out at 12. You can swap out a known form on a long rest. The forms must be from the Player's Handbook.

    This is a big boost to Known Forms from the previous playtest - in Playtest 6, you started with 3 forms, but only went up to 4 at 4th level and 5 at 8th level. So, greater flexibility here. However, there's a subtle nerf here as well: you're limited to forms that are in the PHB. Granted, I could imagine that in the future, if we get another Tasha's or Xanathar's-like book we might see "additional Druid forms" added, but this will put a limit on what you can grab. Indeed, with Beast Master Rangers now using standard templates, and changes to Conjure spells (which we'll get to in a later post,) the only real reason for these stat blocks will be for Wild Shape, so I'll be curious to see how they're curated.

Wild Shape no longer allows you to preserve Species (formerly Racial) features, so, for example, a Fairy Druid who turns into a Wolf cannot fly. That said, you retain skill proficiencies, so I would think skills granted by your Species would still be retained (which makes sense).

Any Druid who uses Wild Shape gains Temp HP equal to your Druid level.

    This is nice in that it allows any Druid to get some defensive benefit from using Wild Shape. We'll see how Circle of the Moon gains other benefits.

    Overall, I think the curated list here could be enough to keep Wild Shape functioning effectively, but we'll need to see what that looks like.

Now, naturally the subclass to test here is Circle of the Moon. This has seen enough of an overhaul compared to the 2014 version that I'm going to go feature-by-feature.

3rd level:

Circle Spells:

Moon Druids now get additional spells prepared at all times. But on top of that, rather than broadly "Abjuration" spells, it's just these spells that a Moon Druid can cast in beast form. The spells are:

Cantrip: Starry Wisp (which we'll touch on in the "Spells" post, but is a new ranged damage cantrip)

1st level: Cure Wounds (which got buffed)

2nd level: Moonbeam

3rd level: Vampiric Touch

4th level: Fount of Moonlight (another new spell that's a little like Spirt Shroud)

5th level: Dawn

    So, there's a theme here (even if Dawn might be better flavored as "Moonrise"). Jeremy Crawford pointed out that really only Wizards tend to care about a spell's school, so for ease of use and to get the intended functionality, they're going to just make it this curated list of spells that you can cast while shifted.

Circle Forms:

The real headlining feature, this gives you access to more powerful beast forms and also improves survivability in a number of ways:

First off, as before, the max CR for your beast forms is your Druid level divided by 3 (rounded down,) so starting at CR 1 when you get this subclass at level 3 and then capping at CR 6 when you get to 18th level.

Next, your AC in Wild Shape is equal to 13 plus your Wisdom modifier.

    This one's huge. Beast stat blocks usually have really low AC - often 11 or 12. The fix in the previous playtest was to have a Moon Druid take the Warden Primal Order at level 1 and then swap in their AC for the Beast's, but this will open up your Primal Order option along with giving you likely better AC (hitting 18 with relative ease - just as good as someone in full plate).

Finally, the Temp HP you gain when you Wild Shape is equal to three times your Druid level (presumably replacing the ones you get as part of the main class feature because Temp HP doesn't stack).

    While not the enormous boatload of HP you get with the 2014 Druid, this is at least still giving you a nice and beefy amount of HP on top of your animal form (and remember that losing this does not shift you out of that form).

    Overall, the only concern I have about Circle Forms is that I worry the attack bonuses on these creatures won't keep up with other melee classes. We'll see if items built for Monks to improve unarmed strikes might also enhance the attacks a Druid makes.

6th level:

Improved Circle Forms:

You get two benefits in Wild Shape:

Lunar Radiance allows you to replace the normal damage of your attacks in Wild Shape with radiant damage (your choice, so if you come across something resistant or immune to radiant damage but not bludgeoning, piercing, or slashing, you can revert). Increased Toughness lets you get to add your Wisdom modifier to any Con saves.

    The latter half of this is actually quite good - it makes it far easier to maintain concentration on spells while in beast form, which is something you're encouraged to be doing.

10th level:

Moonlight Step allows you, as a bonus action, to teleport 30 feet to an unoccupied space you can see and gain advantage on your next attack roll before the end of the turn. You get to do this for free a number of times equal to your Wisdom modifier per long rest, but you can also expend a 2nd level spell slot to restore uses of it (no action require to spend the spell slot).

    Misty Step is one of the most universally useful spell in the game, and so this gives you a bunch of free uses of a similar effect with a bonus, and then lets you spend the same level spell slot to use it. So... yeah, this is great.

14th level:

Lunar Form does two things:

Improved Lunar Radiance adds 1d10 radiant damage when you hit a target with an attack in Wild Shape form (this is on top of the potential 1d8 and later 2d8 of Primal Strike, though that is only once per turn).

Shared Moonlight lets you teleport one willing creature within 10 feet of you when you use Moonlight Step.

    Nothing super complicated here, but both of these are surely welcome bonuses.

    The thing about this is that the real proof in the pudding is going to be what kind of stat blocks we see. For example, Improved Lunar Radiance is going to be much more effective if we can get a Wild Shape form with lots of attacks - but as it stands, the only CR 6 Beast in the 2014 Monster Manual is the Mammoth, who gets only a single attack per action, which makes a bonus like Improved Lunar Radiance pretty lackluster. But if we go down to the highest CR beast that does have multiple attacks, the Giant Crocodile, the bonus to hit is only +8, which seems kind of low for a level 15 or higher Druid (the creature is CR 5).

    If we get cleaner, more consistently powerful Beasts, I'll have fewer concerns, but this is why I really liked the idea of using creature templates. These stat blocks are meant to be used by DMs.

Playtest 8: Barbarians

 Ok, backing up and doing the rest of this UA in order, we have the Barbarian!

The Barbarian was probably not as desperate for improvements as the Monk, but it still had a few "pain points," and this version introduces some new ideas that I think will be very welcome.

Before we get into the level-to-level features, the big change here is that Brutal Critical has been replaced with Brutal Strikes. Taking some inspiration from Cunning Strikes, this now gives you alternative options when using Reckless Attack, allowing you to forgo Advantage in favor of various effects. We'll get into that later.

1st level:

One huge welcome thing here is that you now regain one use of Rage when you finish a short rest. There's nothing about having to have fully expended your normal uses or even that you be at any maximum threshold - you will simply get a Rage back if you have any expended.

    This is fantastic, both giving the Barbarian a reason to like short rests and also just letting them use their main feature a little more liberally. Combined with changes made in the previous playtest, such as maintaining it with a bonus action and having the maximum duration last 10 minutes means I think we can see Barbarians making more use of this core feature.

7th level:

I don't remember if this showed up in the last playtest, but Instinctive Pounce, which allows you to move up to have your movement speed as part of the bonus action to Rage, is very welcome - greater mobility is very nice for a class that is basically obligated to be in melee.

    Though, as a note (I realize I'm being sloppy with what gets indented here) as long as a weapon attack is Strength-based, you can add your Rage bonus to it, so Barbarians will be a little better at range than previously (naturally the Path of the Giant has a huge bonus there, but they already got this with their subclass).

9th level:

Ok, let's get into the headliner here:

Brutal Strikes becomes available when you use Reckless Attack. Reckless Attack triggers when you take your first attack on your turn, and persists until your next turn. With Brutal Strikes, you can forgo the advantage gained by Reckless Attack on the next attack you make to add 1d10 additional damage (of the weapon's type) along with one of the following options:

Forceful Blow pushes the target 15 feet away from you and then lets you move up to half your speed toward the target without provoking opportunity attacks.

Hamstring Blow reduces the target's movement speed by 15 feet until the start of your next turn.

    So, as Jeremy Crawford pointed out, these stack with Masteries. So if you have a Slow weapon and also do Hamstring Blow, you could really nearly lock them down. It does seem you only get to do this on one of your attacks, meaning a second attack or any bonus action or reaction attacks will simply use the Reckless Attack's advantage - but this is a great thing to use if you already have a source of advantage or if you're confident enough that the AC is low enough for you to reliably hit.

    Brutal Critical was fun when it went off, and as Crawford explained, was generally meant to encourage you to attack Recklessly, but it's still unreliable enough to threaten not having much of an impact. Here, the damage bonus is pretty good but the utility is even better, giving you more tactical options.

13th level:

The first of two Brutal Strike improvements adds new options when you use the aforementioned Brutal Strikes feature.

Staggering Blow gives the target Disadvantage on the next saving throw it makes, and it can't make Opportunity attacks until the start of your next turn.

Sundering Blow gives the next attack roll made by another creature against the target (before the start of your next turn) a bonus equal to your Rage Damage.

    So, these are both good "plays well with others" features. Depending on your initiative order, a Staggering Blow could set up your Wizard to Disintegrate a target, or otherwise just help some really clutch spell or effect go off. Sundering Blow, meanwhile, will of course make it more likely that an ally will hit them, which is nice. Interesting that it doesn't just grant advantage.

15th level:

Persistent Rage now allows you to, once per long rest, regain all expended uses of Rage when you roll initiative.

It also, as before, allows you to maintain Rage the full 10 minutes, but now this can only be interrupted by knocking you unconscious - you will still be Raging if incapacitated.

    Both great stuff. Again, Barbarians will still need to manage Rage as a resource, but this will ensure that they're only going to run out at high levels if they're really careless with them. And it makes it less likely the thing will be wasted if there's a stun effect or the like.

17th level:

Here we get the other improvement to Brutal Strikes. First, the damage bonus goes up to 2d10. Next, you can now choose two Brutal Strikes options when you hit - for example, you could knock a target back by 15 feet and then reduce their movement by 15 feet, which honestly starts getting nuts when you have a Push or Slow weapon mastery.

20th level:

Primal Champion of course now increases the maximum for the scores to 26, to make room for the fact that normal ASIs can put a score to 22 if you take it at level 19.

    So, I suspect that Brutal Strikes' damage bonus is going to account for a higher overall damage improvement than Brutal Critical ever did, because it will come up so much more frequently, and that should help the Barbarian keep up with other melee classes a bit (I don't think it's quite as much as a Fighter's third attack, but Barbarians already had other bonuses). Some good changes here overall.

We also got the second version of the Path of the World Tree, a brand-new subclass coming in the 2024 PHB. Here, we get a revision of it. This subclass was already pretty popular, so I think we can likely expect it to look similar. Because this is so new, I'm going to fully put down all the features here and also make note of what has changed and my thoughts on those changes.

3rd level:

Vitality of the Tree gives you two features:

Vitality Surge gives you Temporary Hit Points equal to your Barbarian level when you enter a Rage.

Life-Giving Force allows you, at the start of each of your turns when your Rage is active, to choose another creatuer within 10 feet of yourself to gain Temp HP, the amount determined by rolling a number of d6s equal to your Rage Damage. These Temp HP disappear when your Rage ends if there were any left.

    The previous version of this did not give you Temporary HP, so this change makes the subclass a little tankier. Overall, this is going to be a pretty powerful way for the World Tree Barbarian to act as a "shield tank," preventing damage to allies through Temp HP.

6th level:

Branches of the Tree: while Raging, whenever a creature starts its turn within 30 feet of you, you can use your Reaction to summon spectral branches of the World Tree around it. The target makes a Strength saving throw (DC based on your Strength modifier) and on a failure is teleported to an unoccupied space (that is on a surface or liquid that can support them) within 5 feet of you or in the nearest space you can see. Their speed is then reduced to 0 until the end of the current turn.

    So, the two main changes here are that this happens at the start of their turn. The speed reduction, I imagine, is because the previous version happening at the end of their turn meant they couldn't run away from you anyway. But this will overall just work a lot better at locking down foes. And if you position yourself right, you can prevent a foe from even reaching your squishier party members.

10th level:

Battering Roots increases the reach of weapons with the Heavy or Versatile property by 10 feet on your turn. If you hit with this weapon, you can activate the Push or Topple mastery in addition to any other Mastery the weapon is using.

    The nerf here is that only certain kinds of weapons get this bonus, and only on your turn. That said, unless you're planning on dual-wielding, you're probably using a Longsword/Maul/Battleaxe/War Pick (though I guess this rules out Morning Stars) if not a Heavy weapon anyway. But the reach increase being limited to your turn does also do a little to preserve the Giant Barbarian's reach supremacy (it occurred to me the other night that, because the Giant gets a size larger, their reach is effectively extended another 5 feet). However, what's pretty powerful here is that you can potentially Cleave and Push at the same time (I assume the Push will only work on the direct target.)

14th level:

Travel Along the Tree allows you to, when you activate your Rage and as a bonus action while its active, teleport up to 60 feet to an unoccupied space you can see. In addition, once per Rage, you can teleport up to six willing creatures within 10 feet of you along with you up to 500 feet, each teleporting to an unoccupied psace within 10 feet of your destination.

    So, sadly no more flavorful long-distance teleportation to other planes and the like, but this is likely to find far more use. You're going to be able to bamf around the battlefield more than an Archfey Warlock, and you'll also get a full-party Dimension Door (though you need to be able to see the destination). While the latter half of this feature could be absolutely clutch, saving you from some terrible situation, the first part is also going to be really great - the ultimate mobility Barbarian.

I think the Path of the World Tree was likely to be popular in its previous iteration, and while there is a nerf amongst these changes, I still think we're looking at a very good subclass that's extremely potent in protecting its allies and gaining mastery of the battlefield.

    So, overall the Playtest 8 Barbarian is, I think, looking pretty good. For whatever complaints I've made about this process, I do think that the 2024 versions of almost every class are going to be genuinely better than the 2014 ones, and I really like what I've seen with this version of the Barbarian.

Playtest 8: Monks

 I'm doing this out of order because this was the class I most wanted to look at, and which received the most changes.

The Monk is a class that I really love, conceptually, but one that has always had a ton of asterisks preventing it from living up to its full potential. And while there's one big change that they have not made, the class itself has received in this playtest a bevy of improvements that... I think could possibly add up to a fixed class?

The change that has not been made is that Monks still have a d8 hit die, instead of going up to a d10. I still don't understand the rationale behind putting these masters of physical conditioning at the same base HP as a Warlock, but lest we get too disheartened, let's move on to the real good changes coming.

Actually, one bit of bad news first as well: Monks are not getting Weapon Mastery. I... I think this is just kind of mean. Yes, Monks are supposed to focus instead on unarmed strikes, but if basically every other class that thinks to pick up a weapon gets this cool new feature, I don't think Monks should have it taken away. I honestly suspect the main culprit here is Nick, so that Monks don't get a base of four attacks per turn after level 5. But let's move on.

As a note, we're going to go level-by-level, but I'm only going to touch on features that have changed. I'm not going to mention Unarmored Movement, for example, because it works the same as before.

1st level:

First off, Monk Weapons are back. Monks are now proficient with any simple weapon and any martial weapons with the Light property, and all of these count as Monk Weapons, meaning you can attack with them using Dexterity, and also they'll scale up with your Martial Arts die (which, as we should recall from the last playtest, has all been shifting up, starting now with a d6 and going up to a d12). So, a Monk's Shortsword at high levels will hit as hard as a Greataxe.

Next, a subtle change: you can now just make an unarmed strike as a bonus action, regardless of what else you did on your turn. This is a nice quality-of-life improvement that gives the Monk a bit of flexibility, but while welcome, I don't think it'll be earth-shatteirng.

Perhaps a bigger deal is that Monks can now use Dexterity to determine the DCs of Grapples and Shoves. This is, I think, very cool - it always seemed that Monks should be able to do these effectively, and this change supports that.

2nd level:

Now, let's get into the revisions around Discipline Points. I will be using "DP" to refer to this and will just trust our readers not to giggle like a thirteen-year-old every time I use it (I make no promises not to do this myself).

Flurry of Blows is unchanged except that, like your free Martial Arts bonus attack, you no longer need to take the Attack action to use it.

Patient Defense now has two modes: for free, you can Disengage as a bonus action, no DP required. If you spend 1 DP, you both Disengage and Dodge.

Step of the Wind also has two modes: for free, you can Dash as a bonus action, no DP required. If you spend a DP, you also gain the benefits of the Disengage action and on top of that your jump distance is doubled.

    So, this is a good start. Being able to freely Dash or Disengage as a bonus action now lets Monks catch up with Rogues. It will still, I think, reinforce the idea that Monks are running into and out of melee rather than holding their ground, which I don't love, but at least it's going to be more sustainable. You will also still need to use up that bonus action to do these things, meaning your damage is going to take a hit. But we'll see how some other things will make that less painful.

Uncanny Metabolism is another feature that lets you, once per long rest, regain all your DP when you roll initiative. You also roll your Martial Arts die and add your Monk level and regain that much HP.

    So, that's actually pretty good: if you've expended a ton of resources but then the big boss shows up, this is when you want to blow this ability.

3rd level:

Deflect Attacks works as Deflect Missiles did in the previous playtest, except that it now works on melee attacks as well. If you reduce damage of a melee attack to 0, you can spend one DP to target a creature within 5 feet of you (including, potentially, the one who attacked) and deal damage to them (two rolls of your Martial Arts die plus your Dex modifier) with a dex save for half.

    This is actually what I was hoping for as a Monk damage mitigation ability. While there's more of a comparison to Uncanny Dodge here than Rage, this could potentially seriously reduce a Monk's incoming damage. It's limited to Bludgeoning, Piercing, or Slashing damage, but like the ranged version, this becomes all damage at level 13. 1d10 plus your Monk level at that stage is 17.5, and that's free every round with a reaction. Deflect Missiles was always a really cool ability Monks never got to use, but now it's going to be a major part of Monk survival moving forward.

5th level:

Stunning Strike will now deal extra damage if the target succeeds on the save. If the target succeeds on its save, you deal extra Force damage equal to a roll of your Martial Arts die plus your Wisdom modifier.

    This is odd - it takes some of the pain of a successful save away, but also weirdly creates rare scenarios in which you might prefer a target succeeds on its save. Stunning is a super-powerful effect, to be sure, but this could potentially kill off an enemy. Indeed, if you fight something that's immune to the Stunned condition, you've now created a scenario in which you always want them to succeed on this save, and thus get essentially a Hands of Harm bonus damage effect.

10th level:

We now get some improvements to existing features in an umbrella feature called Heightened Discipline.

Flurry of Blows now gives you three Unarmed Strikes up from two. Patient Defense will now grant you Temp HP equal to two rolls of your Martial Arts die when you spend the DP. Step of the Wind, when you spend the DP, will now let you choose a willing creature who is Large or Smaller and within 5 feet of you, and you move the creature with you until the end of the turn (not provoking Opportunity Attacks).

    So, on pure damage numbers, the additional Flurry of Blows attack is pretty sweet. The other features here are nice bonuses, and let you be a lot more helpful to your allies. The Flurry of Blows boost is nice, though as it's still limited by resources, it's not quite the equivalent of the Paladin's extra d8 of radiant damage or the Fighter's third attack, but this does come a level earlier.

Also, Self-Restoration lets you end the Charmed, Frightened, or Poisoned effect on yourself and the end of your turn, no action required.

    This actually resolves a weird hiccup in the rules - if you have Dominate Person affecting you, your action is being controlled by the spellcaster, so how would you use the action to remove the Charm? Perhaps some clarification here could also add that you can use this even if a Charm effect would normally prevent you from doing so, but this is probably fine.

13th level:

Not new to this playtest, but Deflect Energy upgrades your Deflect Attacks to work on attacks that deal any damage type. This is actually very important given all the powerful Demon Lords and such whose weapons deal Force damage since Monsters of the Multiverse came out - meaning a Monk can potentially take less damage from them than a Barbarian.

15th level:

Perfect Discipline now sets your DP to 4 if you have 3 or fewer when you roll initiative, and no longer requires you to be totally out of DP.

    I hope this will be replicated in other features of this sort: You're now no longer punished for leaving a drop of gas in the tank. Fantastic change.

20th level:

Body and Mind is a new capstone that mirrors the Barbarian's: your Dexterity and Wisdom scores both increase by 4, and your maximum for each becomes 26 (understanding that at level 19, the ASI feat can now put something up to 22).

    This is actually incredible, and better for Monks than the equivalent for Barbarians is for them, because this means not only that their main attack modifier goes up by 2, but their AC jumps up 4 points! If you used Point Buy and started with 16s in Dex, Con, and Wis, spending all feats on ASIs to get your Dex to 22 and Wis to 20 at level 19, this will put you at 26 and 24, giving you +8 Dexterity +7 Wisdom and an AC (without any magic items) of 25. That's pretty cool! Of course, as a captstone feature it's unlikely to see play very often, but this feels like a very welcome capstone.

Now, the Warrior of the Open Hand also got some changes here, so let's take a look.

3rd level:

Open Hand technique's Addle option no longer allows for a saving throw. The addition of one in the last playtest was a bad idea, so it's good to see it gone here. Push also moves the target 15 feet away.

6th level:

Wholeness of Body no longer costs DP, but instead has a limited number of uses per Long Rest equal to your Wisdom modifier (minimum of 1).

    Very welcome. DP is a little easier to get back now, but I'm hoping that we will see more subclass features use alternate resources and let DP be used mainly with the options in the base class.

11th level:

Fleet Step now lets you get Step of the Wind when you use any other bonus action (and I assume you can choose either mode).

    So, this means that you can take the Dash Action along with something like a normal bonus action martial arts attack - we might need a little clarification on order here - if I need to dash to get to a monster, can I take the Unarmed Strike bonus action but use the movement of Step of the Wind to get to the target before I need to make the attack? I'd guess not, but it's a little ambiguous.

17th level:

With Quivering Palm, rather than taking a full action to end the vibrations and deal the Force damage, you can now simply replace one of your attacks during the Attack action. However, the ability now costs 4 DP and deals 10d12 Force damage.

    So, I'll be honest, the Open Hand Monk has never really appealed to me when there are weirder versions available, so I don't have much to say about this subclass.

But overall, the question I think we'll have to consider is whether all of these changes ultimately wind up fixing the issues the Monk has. Certainly Deflect Attacks will be a more reliable thing to use than Deflect Missiles, and the functionality we've gained with Patient Defense and Step of the Wind is very welcome. I'm curious to see the new magic items that will enhance unarmed strikes, because I think we're finally adding up to a place where the Monk can put out some serious damage.

The big question is how they're doing defensively. I really wish we'd seen them getting a d10 (or even d12) hit die. While they can get an absurdly high AC at level 20, I think they're still likely to be lagging a bit behind in the early levels. Will Deflect Attacks and the free version of Patient Defense be enough to keep them alive?

This is all very clearly a step in the right direction, but I think I'd have to playtest it to see if it actually gets us where we need to go.

The Spellcaster/Martial Divide: A Loose, Theoretical Analysis

 One of the bits of received wisdom in D&D is that spellcasters are basically always more powerful than martial classes. But first, a definition of terms:

We're referring here to Spellcasters as full casters, which are Bards, Clerics, Druids, Sorcerers, and Wizards. Warlocks are kind of a special case here. There are, of course, also half casters in the Artificer, Paladin, and Ranger, and third-casters in the Eldritch Knight Fighter and Arcane Trickster Rogue. The only classes that truly cannot be any kind of spellcaster are the Barbarian and Monk.

When we talk about "Martial" classes, we're referring to classes whose primary role in combat is to make weapon attacks (including unarmed strikes in the case of a Monk). With the exception of the Rogue, all of these are classes that get the Extra Attack feature. We're going to exclude for our purposes here full-caster classes that can "go martial" via the Bladesinger, College of Valor, or College of Swords subclasses because they don't give up very much to get empowered this way. Once again, Warlocks become a weird asterisk in all of this.

Let's then talk about how the trade-off works in theory:

Spellcasters are limited by spell slots. They can pull off some very powerful effects, but only a finite number of times per day. The general balance that should be struck, thus, is that a Spellcaster needs to play conservatively and weigh their options, because in a day with four separate combat encounters, if they blow all their leveled spells early on, they're going to be running on fumes in potentially higher-stakes situations.

Martial classes, in theory, are more reliable in this way - your Extra Attack doesn't require any additional resources, and so even if you've used up absolutely everything else, you can still reliably put out more damage thanks to having harder-hitting martial weapons, a focus on that weapon damage, and multiple attacks.

    Let's investigate this. See, I suspect that this actually remains somewhat true in tier 1 and to an extent in tier 2.

Let's imagine I'm one of the Strength-focused melee classes, going with a Barbarian, Fighter, or Paladin. We're looking at a resource-free scenario here (ignoring things like Rage, Action Surge, or Divine Smites, because we're trying compare sustainable damage here). In tier 1, we're probably spending most of the time with a +3 to our main stat. We only have one attack this level.

One of these classes wielding a Maul is going to do 2d6+3 damage on a hit, once per turn if they hit. That's 10 damage.

Meanwhile, a spellcaster who is conserving spell slots or out of them is going to likely be casting a cantrip (we'll ignore the actually viable new version of True Strike introduced in the latest UA playtest). The highest-damage cantrips in the game are Poison Spray and the far-more popular Toll the Dead, both of which have d12 damage dice (the latter only if the target is below max health, but that's most of the time in combat). So, on a failed save, each of these deals 6.5 average damage. Clearly we're doing more with our Martials.

The math here more or less just doubles when we hit level 5, with a slight advantage to martials given that their damage modifier goes up.

Now, things do fall apart a little when we get to tier 3 - though I'll note that Fighters and Paladins both get a compensation for this. Rangers don't really scale up their damage outside of their (limited) spellcasting ability, and Barbarians scale more in the number of Rages they can use per day while the damage bonus goes up only modestly. Rogues have the smoothest scaling here, getting a new Sneak Attack die every odd level.

If our caster doesn't get some extra damage, such as from a Cleric's Potent Cantrip, that Toll the Dead has gone up to 3d12, or about 18.5 average damage. A Ranger with a Longbow is, by tier 3, likely doing two attacks that each deal 1d8+5 (maybe +6 or +7 if they have a magic weapon). If we're generous and assume they have a +2 weapon, we'll say they are dealing 11.5 per hit, or 23 damage per round. It's ahead of the Toll the Dead spellcaster, but only by 4.5 damage.

The thing is, yes, spell slots are limited, but how much fighting are you doing in a day? If every day is a slog with eight full combats, then sure, I could see you hitting a point where some casters are going to avoid using spell slots if they can.

But we should also consider just how powerful a spell slot can be.

It might be unfair to look at Fireball specifically, because it's an intentionally overpowered spell (though I'd worry that WotC would get burned to the ground if they nerfed it in 2024). So let's instead take a look at Shatter - a 2nd level spell that I don't think anyone would consider too powerful.

Shatter deals 3d8 thunder damage to creatures in a 10-foot radius sphere, or half as much on a successful Constitution save. So, that's an average of 13.5 damage.

If we hit two targets with this spell, and both fail their saves, we're dealing an average of 27 damage in a single action. We can do this at level 3.

If a Rogue gets sneak attack on an enemy with a shortbow at level 3, they're going to deal 3d6+3 (assuming a +3 Dexterity in tier 1) damage, or 13.5. So, they'll need two turns to match this single spell slot. Ok, that seems reasonable - the spell slot is a limited resource.

But let's go to higher levels. At level 9, our caster uses Cone of Cold, which can potentially hit a lot of targets for 8d8 cold damage, or an average of 36 damage. With a 60-foot cone, we're probably not bothering casting this unless we can hit three or more targets, so we're looking at 108 total damage dealt in a single action.

If we have a Monk with a +1 Quarterstaff at the same level (and assume we've maxed out Dex at this point), they're going to make two attacks that each deal 1d8+6 (naturally we're going to two-hand our staff) or 10.5 for each, then an unarmed strike for 1d6+5 (8.5) so we get 21 from the staff and then go up to 29.5 with the bonus action strike. Thus, to equal the damage of that one action, we're going to need a fourth turn. (Yes, the Monk can burn Ki for Flurry of Blows to reduce that to three turns, but the whole point here is that Martials are supposed to be more effective when not burning resources.)

Again, this is kind of how it's supposed to go.

But I think there's a limiting factor that comes into play before spell slots. And that's HP.

In my experience, while spell slots are certainly considered, there's also the universal consideration of HP to contend with - going into a fight at less than half health is usually not a great idea, because things can go bad very fast when a party member goes to 0 hit points. While I think low-level D&D is going to see people getting knocked out all the time, for high-level D&D, you sort of never want to hit that point.

And Martials are not really much more durable than spellcasters.

Ok, so obviously if you're playing a Fighter or Paladin you can deck yourself in heavy armor and get a very high AC - my Eldritch Knight had an AC of 22 and could cast Shield (though, again, limited resource, albeit one I almost never ran out of). But there are plenty of sources of damage that don't involve an attack roll. Furthermore, it's not actually super hard to get a spellcaster a high armor class. Medium armor is pretty easy to get on Clerics, Druids, Artificers, and some Warlocks. With that, and a modest 14 in Dexterity, you're only missing out on the benefits of heavy armor once there's enough gold to purchase Plate, and then only by 1 point of AC. AC is definitely a good thing to have - in the Ravnica game I run, I only have I think two characters with an AC lower than 18, and so even when I have pretty beefy monsters with +8s and +9s to hit, they're only getting them about half the time.

But what about HP?

Well, hit dice determine the HP you get as you level up. But two of the "martial" classes have d8 hit dice, which is no better than a Cleric, Druid, Bard, or Warlock. And indeed, with the Monk requiring heavy investment in both Dexterity and Wisdom, I think you're likely to have higher Constitution on those spellcasting classes.

So, essentially, I think that the scenario in which a martial class is supposed to shine - which is basically when the party is sucking fumes - is usually when the party wants to rest anyway because everyone's HP is low. Or it's one in which you're fighting a ton of trivial fights and the casters have somehow been baited into blowing all their limited spell slots.

So, how do we fix this?

Well, the first option is one I'll come out and say I do not endorse: get rid of cantrips. Earlier editions of the game forced wizards and their ilk to carry a light crossbow around and shoot things if they wanted to conserve spell slots. Nowadays, though, you can use some pretty powerful spells with extra beneficial effects - such as Ray of Frost slowing down targets. Weapon Mastery, coming in 2024, will at least give weapons similar bonus effects. But I think you might see martials as more powerful if spellcasters literally had no other option if they wanted to do magic than spend a resource. But, like, I don't want this. I don't want wizards and sorcerers to have to fire a light crossbow or whack someone with a quarterstaff, unless it's using the new and shockingly actually good True Strike cantrip from playtest 8.

The next option would be to super-charge martial class' single-target damage. A lot of the scenarios in which a spellcaster starts doing absurd amounts of damage are when they have a lot of targets. There are spells like Disintegrate, which deals an average of 75 damage to a single target, but that's a high-level spell with a chance to deal nothing if the target saves, and at tier 3, 75 damage is high but not unthinkable for a martial class (a Fighter with a +1 Greatsword is doing 2d6+7 at this level, and has three attacks, so 39 damage on average if all hit, so an action surge could get you to that same level). Alternatively, as a kind of "2.b" we could expand the AoE capabilities of martial classes, giving them lots of options to hit multiple monsters at a time and catch up in that manner.

The third option, though, I think could be controversial but would also potentially give martials a clear edge: give them way more HP.

See, if you're a martial class - especially with a melee build - all that sustainability is also working against you, because monsters will hit you. On my Wizard, I'm able to do basically everything I need to do while more than a monster's movement away from them, so it's rare that I actually take damage. But even if a Paladin's AC means they're only getting hit once every three attacks (compared to a Wizard getting hit two out of three times) that advantage goes away when you're getting attacked well over twice as often.

So if you really wanted to make martials feel sustainable, you could give them enough HP that the damage required to knock a Cleric out wouldn't even be enough to get a Fighter down to half their maximum.

This would either require a big nerf to hit dice for casters - maybe putting wizards and sorcerers at a d4 and the others at a d6 - or, more likely, just changing the way that HP is calculated.

This is probably not the right solution either, though: giving different characters wildly different amounts of HP has implications for things like healing - a heal that lands for 20 is going to feel enormous for a character with a max HP of 32 and like very little for someone with a max of 160.

So, going back to the drawing board, we should maybe just address the power of martial classes.

And I think here we also need to consider the following problem:

Spells are useful for more than just damage. A Wizard can toss a Fireball, for sure, but they can also give someone a 60-foot flying speed. And that versatility is something that martial classes really lack. A Barbarian or a Fighter is really only going to prove the power of their class in combat. And if that's the case, they really have to be better in combat than those more versatile classes. Or, they need to have a true, broad suite of out-of-combat abilities.

In a sense, then, I think the focus of D&D's balance is on combat, and particularly in damage-dealing potential. But when you have spells that can be super-useful outside of combat, as well as powerful crowd-control spells like Hypnotic Pattern that can basically trivialize large groups of foes, and then powerful area-effect spells that can deal more damage than a martial class can do in several turns, it does feel like something has got to shift.

Morte's Planar Parade - Planescape Review with Caveat

 So, the big caveat here is that I haven't actually used any of the monsters out of this book yet. Granted, I haven't run a Planescape campaign (though I did have a little side quest interlude, but that was before the box set came out) nor have I run Turn of Fortune's Wheel, so all of these impressions are coming from a kind of theoretical side of things.

The monsters presented in Morte's Planar Parade, which is the Planescape: Adventures in the Multiverse monster book, come in what I'd call three broad categories: there are "outsiders" native to various outer planes, with an emphasis on avoiding the categories plentifully found in previous 5E books (no devils, no demons, and only a couple Yugoloths, one of which is an individual legendary character). The next category is NPCs that belong to the various Sigil factions, typically giving us one or two for each faction. The last is the broadly weird stuff that may not be tied to particular outer plane (there is one being that's from the Shadowfell, an inner plane) along with stuff you'll encounter only in Sigil or just generally in weird locations.

Of note, these stat blocks skew toward higher CRs, with the median being around 7 or 8. While I would encourage DMs to run a Planescape game at any level, even level 1, you'll have lots of stuff to use when you get into those higher levels with these creatures.

Let's start with the planar beings:

We get three kinds of Demodands from Carceri, the hideous jailers of the prison plane. We also get a number of Guardinals, the animal-like celestials of Elysium, and some Archons (two of three of which are also animal-like) of Mount Celestia. There's also the Baernaloth, a CR 17 legendary yugoloth from Hades, which I think could play a strong role as a major villain, but could also be a great enigma to throw at your party. The Rilmani give us celestials native to the Outlands themselves, and as a note, Celestial as a creature type seems to more broadly refer to outer-planar or just otherworldly beings that don't have an obvious other type. We saw a bit of that in the errata for Spelljammer, such as when the Mercane were made into Celestials, but I think this is actually a smart choice so that we can actually find more opportunities to fight them (granted in Planescape the nuances of good and evil get complicated enough that fighting off an angel is not unlikely).

Of interest to me is that we also get our second Inevitable, after the Marut was introduced I believe first in Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes. The Kolyarut shares the Marut's ability to automatically hit with its attacks. It's not quite as deadly, but still very powerful.

If you ever felt that the Modrons from the Monster Manual were cool, but you hit a point where you felt that your players were just too powerful for them, good news: there are a ton of new big, high-CR modrons, capping at the most powerful being a Hexton Modron (for these, the number is more like a rank, so the lower the number the more powerful,) which is a CR 13 non-legendary creature (well, sort of, it has legendary resistance - and actually four of them) that is huge in size.

Also, if you felt Githzerai were left out when we got some new Githyanki stat blocks in Spelljammer, here we get a trio of new, powerful Githzerai. The surprising thing is that the Githzerai are listed as aberrations, which... they sure aren't in the Monster Manual, Monsters of the Mulitverse, or as a playable race.

There's nothing here below CR 1 other than a couple of CR 0 creatures, so you'll want to look elsewhere for most of your tier 1 monsters. But this is Planescape, where literally anything is fair game.

The faction members go from CR 3 to CR 12, and can be of any alignment (though you can probably imagine that, for example, most Fraternity of Order members are likely to be Lawful). Like in Monsters of the Multiverse, the spellcasting NPC statblocks are streamlined to make them easy to run. As a particular note, Doomguard NPCs can essentially disintegrate anyone they kill (though they have to kill them, not just knock them down to 0 HP) so be wary of the potential for permadeath if you want to go hard with these guys.

Among the "miscellaneous," we have of course some staples of Sigil, including the Dabus - silent servants of the Lady of Pain who telekinetically maintain the city and speak in floating speech-bubbles with their messages worked out as rebuses.

Another fun note here is that Cranium Rat Squeakers, which are explicitly not connected to Mind Flayers, gain the ability to cast Sending at will when in a swarm, and that this fact has been used by the inhabitants of Sigil to, in my interpretation, use Cranium Rats as cell phones.

I think of particular note here is the Ancient Time Dragon. We're given the four normal age groups for Time Dragons - wyrmling, young, adult, and ancient - but the Ancient Time Dragon has the only ability I'm aware of in 5E that can truly enable time travel. Time Gate allows the dragon to create a 20-foot radius portal that will lead to a precise location of the dragon's choice on any plane of existence up to 8,000 years in the past or future.

Now, my hubris has made me want to run a time-travel campaign at some point, and WotC just said I can, so there!

    It can be difficult to really assess how good this is as a group of monsters, having not run any of them. A stat block is of course just one piece of a larger puzzle, and while I haven't clocked any glaring problems (like how the hell does a Mummy Lord have a CR of 15 with less than 100 HP and vulnerability to fire?) that sort of thing is easy to miss (I'm not sure I ever noticed that a Mummy Lord had fire vulnerability, on top of a +0 to Dex saves, meaning that a single Fireball is probably going to put them below half health).

But I will say that, conceptually, this feels like some good stuff to work with. I really appreciate the effort to expand on beings from Outer Planes that aren't The Nine Hells or the Abyss.

That being said, I'd also be very open to a larger monster book that continues to look to these more obscure planes. For example, I think the only Acheron-specific stat block in 5E is the Cadaver Collector. It was definitely cool to get some Upper-Planar stat blocks.

There are some odd inclusions here, and I think that in some cases we're sort of looking at creatures that had to be included because they popped up in Turn of Fortune's Wheel, such as the Vargouille Reflection, which is cool and all, but if this were purely a Planescape monster book, I'd be happy to just use the one from Volo's/Monsters of the Multiverse and have some more plane-specific creature here.

I've not made it a secret that I'm not really a fan of the new format for campaign settings that Spelljammer and Planescape have introduced. While I think the Planescape set has delivered on what it is meant to in a way that Spelljammer didn't, I still far prefer the way that the previous campaign setting books worked as jumping-off points to inspire DMs to come up with their own stories.

There's a certain economy of detail here - Sigil and the Outlands gives us a few interesting sites and NPCs for each gate town, and wouldn't you know it, on the adventure hook tables each entry ties directly to those elements.

Matt Colville, a person who, it must be said, does have an incentive to point out the flaws in the way WotC is doing D&D given that he runs a company that is working on a game that could become a competitor (though I'll give him the benefit of the doubt and assume his perspectives are motivated more to just generally improve the hobby,) has talked about how the move in a lot of today's increasingly corporate world, there's a strong urge to create narrowly-defined experiences, to really "own" one's brands. Part of that would be an impulse to make D&D players play through published adventures rather than campaigns devised by DMs and players. He argues this is less about profitability than simply maintaining control.

And I have to say, my impulse has always been to create my own campaigns. In Ravnica, Eberron, Theros, and Ravenloft, the "adventures" are quick introductory things that typically end with the players hitting level 3. Wildemount does this as well, but gives you four of them, one for each of the four major regions of Wildemount. I think the purpose of these adventures was to give you a feel for the kind of stories that the setting is meant to serve - Eberron has a noir-ish investigation into powerful families in Sharn before going full pulp-adventure, Ravenloft gives you a prototypical haunted house.

By contrast, Light of Xaryxis and Turn of Fortune's Wheel take up a much bigger chunk of their products' total word count, and furthermore kind of bend the rest of the product to serve the adventure.

And, cynically, you could argue that the intent is to get people to "use up" these settings and move on to the next one by having them play through the adventure.

Notably, as well, we didn't get a Dragonlance setting books, but Shadow of the Dragon Queen kind of came at this from the other side, giving us a fair amount of "setting" as background for the adventure, but not enough to satisfy people who wanted to make their own campaigns.

Just as a note, these more critical notes are not really directed as Morte's Planar Parade. In terms of new monsters, this might not hit Ravnica levels, but it's got more than appeared in Eberron. And even though we usually get a number of cool monster stat blocks in a setting book, they aren't dedicated to that purpose like Volo's or Mordenkainen's were. (And Monsters of the Multiverse, while mostly revisions of those books, has a total of 261 stat blocks, dwarfed only by the Monster Manual's 450).

Wing Two Open with Amirdrassil's Accelerated Raid Schedule

 Typically, when a new raid comes out, it's another week before it opens on Mythic, and it's then that we get the first LFR wing. This week, when we'd normally expect to just be starting LFR, we've already got two of what I imagine will be four wings unlocked (there are four bosses left, including Fyrrak, so I'll assume we get a wing with the remaining pre-Fyrrak bosses and then fight our big fire dragon). (Actually, checking WoWHead, apparently all the remaining wings will be two-boss deals, with Fyrrak and Tindral Sageswift teaming up in the last one).

The new wing is relatively short, with the big Fire Snake Volrocoss and Larodar, whom we saw in the pre-10.2 Druids of the Flame quest with Shandris Feathermoon.

I've now run this on my Paladin (tank) and Death Knight, Demon Hunter, and Mage (Frost, Havoc, and Frost, respectively).

Volrocoss is a turret boss - the enormous serpent hangs out in a pool of lava while we fight on the donut-shaped platform around him. There's a lot of "don't stand in the fire" stuff, and for tanks, like Larodar, there's a cast that you will taunt in the middle of. The snake will sometimes slam its tail down on the platform, which is literally foreshadowed by a shadow of it on the platform, giving you time to get out of the way. The other big element here is that two people will get a big fire swirl on them, and you'll want to have as much of the raid (ideally all of it) stack up in two even groups to soak this. The soft enrage timer here is that the platform will get covered in lava. I think the big soak-circles might simply target a location rather than a player, and if that's the case, they go in opposite directions around the circle, so the raid will want to divide evenly with one going clockwise and the other counterclockwise.

Larodar is actually fairly complex, and will be particularly taxing on your healers. The boss himself, a corrupted Keeper of the Grove, will periodically charge the current tank, dealing less damage the farther he has to charge, so when he starts casting his charge attack, the other tank should taunt while the previous tank runs away (it's even fine to do this into the blackened lava patches). Larodar will also summon a trio of treants who need to be DPS'd down, but when they're at 0, they become friendly, and healers will want to get them right back up to full, as I believe that they help with the next part: a fire-corrupted seed or root will appear that DPS also needs to take down to zero, but after doing that, the healers need to get it up in order to create a protective shield for a raid-wiping channeled fire burst that Larodar does when he hits 100 energy.

Larodar has a brief transition phase when he gets to low health, pulling people to him and pulsing damage, so players will want to run away from him as I think he'll kill anyone underneath him (on LFR it might not be as intensely punishing). After this, the tanks will get a different tank-swap mechanic, which is a frontal cone that reduces the healing received by anyone hit by it (ideally only the current tank) but then allows them to leech HP from nearby allies. There will also be various fire-balls falling to the ground that individual players should soak.

And with that, we're 5/9 of the bosses in the raid. Assuming I don't suddenly get super-sick of LFR very soon, this will actually mark the first time since Legion that I've fully completed all the raids of an expansion (I still haven't set foot in Sepulcher of the First Ones, which is a shame because it looked pretty cool - I was just very burned out. I've managed to solo some of the BFA raids that I missed, but it seems that both Dazar'alor and Eternal Palace have some fights that will just kill you if you're alone. I should try again, though, as I think I did those early in the expansion and I have much, much better gear now.)