Player Housing Coming in Midnight

 Well, it only took them 22 years... er, will have taken them.

While the details are basically nothing beyond "yes, we're doing this," Blizzard released a little animated trailer yesterday announcing that yes, our characters would finally have a place to kick up their feet and call home.

Given how this is something players have been asking for throughout basically the entire existence of WoW, it's a pretty exciting moment. The question is: how will it be implemented?

While I've played it for nearly its entire lifespan (starting a few months before Burning Crusade came out, so while I played in vanilla, I never had at level 60 characters before the level cap went up to 70... at least until Shadowlands) I haven't played really any other MMOs beyond WoW. Frankly, while I have a real nostalgic bond with WoW, I don't know that I love the structure of an MMO, the way that it (intentionally or not) uses FOMO and a kind of "keeping up with the Joneses" impulse to keep you playing. But the point I mean to make here is simply that I don't have a great sense of how other MMOs implement player housing, so I'm sort of looking at this from a blank-slate perspective.

In Warlords of Draenor, the garrisons were initially (if I recall correctly) pitched as WoW's version of player housing. However, their implementation, so central to that expansion, had a number of huge problems that honestly left Warlords as what I would call WoW's worst expansion (that coupled with the fact that Blizzard was still trying to do one-year expansion cycles, which would never have been a good idea, and seemed an idea that would only please shareholders, not players).

Garrisons, thus, I think, are good examples of how not to do player housing:

First of all, most importantly: Player housing should be totally divorced from any aspect of player power.

In Warlords, Garrisons were a perfect example of "solutions in search of a problem." Not only did the mission table reward gear that was just as good as any piece you might get out of the raid difficulty you were playing (and even if you weren't doing LFR, I think you could still get that level of gear from it,) but in particular, Garrisons kind of ruined professions in Warlords. In order to make Garrisons relevant, one of the major things they had was professional buildings, which then needed to have a function - and that function wound up being creating time-gated professional materials that every recipe needed a bunch of.

The focus on garrison design was the make sure that it was a relevant game mechanic for the expansion. But this focus A: meant that the expansion felt like it was played primarily inside the garrison. and B: it meant that only later in the expansion did they add any really superficial cosmetic customizations for it.

Housing, should, I think, be entirely a cosmetic, just-for-fun reward (yes, the entire game is just-for-fun, but you know what I mean). In many ways, I think it should be an in-game reflection on your accomplishments and achievements. The trailer, for example, shows Onyxia's head mounted on the character's wall. I think having various trophies and awards on display for big accomplishments would be a great thing for this.

Furthermore, it has to be customizable. Garrisons in Warlords only came in one style, depending on your faction. The Alliance one had the white stone and crenelated walls of Stormwind, while the Horde one had the spiky iron and red roofs of Orgrimmar. For my human Paladin, that was fine, but it didn't really match the aesthetic of my Undead Rogue, for example.

Midnight will mark a return to old territories - we don't know the exact scope of the expansion. It's supposed to be in Quel'thalas, but whether a new landmass rises up around that area or if it will dip down into the rest of Lordaeron remains to be seen.

I would hope, though, that player housing is available in many of the "home" regions. Naturally, it would make sense for my Paladin to have a place in Elwynn Forest, but it'd also be cool if I could have my Draenei Death Knight be able to return to Azuremyst Isles (I'll understand if he can't settle back on Argus).

While I'd really push for player housing to really focus on the cosmetic, I do think some conveniences could potentially be earned - maybe a bank and a mailbox, profession tables. Still, I think one important thing should be that players will need to leave their house and go to the capital city of the expansion to really do the kind of daily activities you'll be doing as part of regular gameplay.

I do think it should be very easy to get to and from your housing - likely have a portal in capital cities, and possibly a "personal hearthstone" to return there from anywhere.

Naturally, we're not going to be getting much in the way of detail until summer of next year, but it's very exciting to think how they're going to implement this.

Diving into the Bug Ruins of Hollow Knight

 I briefly played Hollow Knight at my sister's place a couple years ago, using my now-brother-in-law's console. The game, I think, is not one you can get a great feel for in a half-hour session when you feel very conscious of the fact that you're a guest in someone's house.

I had apparently gotten the game long ago for free from Playstation Plus, knowing its reputation as one of the great indie games of the past ten years.

Anyway, I've now put significant time into it.

Any comparisons you'd be tempted to make to the Metroid series, particularly Super Metroid, would, I think, be pretty apt. You arrive at a desolate village with a well that leads down into a series of caverns, but the caverns branch out to make an enormous, labyrinthine world.

Unlike Super Metroid, or its recent successor, Metroid Dread, Hollow Knight does have some more modern gameplay ideas, including a fast-travel system (notably one that still requires you to trek to your nearest fast-travel location, so it's not like you can just nope out of a scenario if you get lost). There is also a Souls-like element with Geo, the currency you collect around the world, usually getting a handful from each enemy you defeat. Dying, among other things, causes you to drop your Geo, and you have one opportunity to regain it before it's lost and you have to start your collection from scratch.

Like in Soulslike games, this incentivizes spending that cash as soon as you can, though it can be frustrating when you have just shy of the amount you need to unlock, say, an elevator, and then die while collecting more of it. The amount dropped by foes does seem to go up as you get into more difficult areas, but it's a real pressure.

Power progression is de-emphasized even from Metroid levels. Playing for several hours, I've only gotten one health upgrade and only the first fragment of a Soul upgrade (we'll get to what that means). I did get my sword - sorry, not sword, nail, because we're a little bug-person - upgraded, which I actually wasn't sure was going to happen. With rare exceptions, every enemy's attacks only deal one "mask" of damage (the units that your health is measured in) and only recently have I started encountering non-boss/mini-boss monsters that take more than three or four hits to take down (which then got reduced to around that number thanks to my weapon upgrade).

Hitting enemies will build a resource called Soul. The primary use for this, as I see it, is to heal yourself. A full soul meter will have enough to recover three of your masks, of which you start off with 5. Thus, you're going to need to take the fight to your enemies to heal yourself, which of course puts you at risk of losing more health. Healing requires you to concentrate on pouring soul into it, and if you're interrupted, the soul you've spent is still expended even if you didn't get to heal.

This is easier to manage when fighting regular enemies in the world, but against aggressive bosses, it seems like the intent is for you to just get better at dodging their attacks.

Dying causes you to leave a ghostly apparition in the room where you bit it, and you'll need to fight this ghost to get your Geo back. The ghost can hurt you, so it's technically possible for you to die to your own ghost.

In addition to dropping your Geo, though, you also have a fractured soul vessel, meaning you can only store up to about 2/3 of the Soul you can normally. This also means that if you just give up and leave your ghost somewhere, you're going to be fighting at reduced strength (though I suppose if you die again and permanently lose all that geo, your ghost will relocate to the new spot, which might be less of a pain to get to).

The game is hard, requiring some really precise platforming, sometimes forcing you to execute complex maneuvers like striking some bouncy fungus to get some air, dashing to a wall and hopping between spikes. The bosses can be very tough, too. And the runs back can... to be frank, get a little tedious.

One thing I really appreciated in Elden Ring was that, unlike basically all the Soulsborne games before it, most bosses had either a Site of Grace (bonfire) right before the boss room or at least had a Stake of Merika nearby that would let you respawn nearby (though in the latter case, not access the various things you could do at a Site of Grace). It meant, essentially, that once you had gotten to the boss, the game was only really concerned with whether you could handle the boss, and not the big run-up to the boss. It also saved time.

I honestly think a big reason I gave up on Dark Souls was that the run back to Ornstein and Smough was just so tedious. I knew I could fight the things in there, but probably not without losing a precious Estus Flask charge or two. I was nervous enough about the boss itself that I'd make mistakes running to them, and that just made it harder for me to actually beat them.

There's a little of that here - some bosses are buried deep in dangerous territory - I didn't realize the Mantis Elders were something I could come back to later, so I spent a long time running back through their village (where I had opened a bunch of shortcuts, but it was still a lot, especially because I had to stop and fight my ghost there) and showing up for what I can only assume is a super-tough fight with like one or two health, and getting almost instantly destroyed.

I know that this frustration is just part of the difficulty, but it is something I'm struggling with.

Now, art-wise, the game is really interesting. It's both creepy and cute - the fact that all the characters are some kind of bug-person is a nice unifying aesthetic, and the music and art style are both charming. It also means that when they want to get creepy with it, it can get real freaking creepy (I've stumbled into a waterway area - where I am struggling to even find the map - with worm-creatures that split into two separate creatures when you kill them, each attacking in different ways. It's nasty.

While not quite Dark Souls level of bleak, the world of the game does seem pretty bleak, with the caverns leading toward a ruined civilization - one that claims to be the only civilization that ever existed.

This game does not hold your hand when it comes to lore, but I suspect that there's some interesting stuff there if you take the time to synthesize it all. For one thing, I only just found a monument to the Hollow Knight, after thinking that that was my character all this time (or maybe they both are?)

I Can't Stop Thinking About Alan Wake 2

 For basically a year, after I finished the game the first time around in about two days, I've been sitting around going "man, I'd love to play a game like Alan Wake II." But that's the catch: what game is like Alan Wake II?

The whole thing, the whole reason for this obsession, is that it's really unlike anything I've ever experienced in a game before.

Last year was my induction into the Cult of the Remedy, playing first Control, then Alan Wake Remastered, that a few months before the release of Alan Wake II, one of the longest-anticipated sequels in video game history.

However, unlike most games that are stuck in development hell for over a decade, AW2 wound up being a masterpiece - a game that, upon finishing, I went into my apartment's front room and told my best friend/roommate that this game was the most artistically ambitious game I've ever played.

Was it perfect? Hell no. I struggled on the Cynthia Weaver fight because some bug kept locking me out of doing anything (something I think later patches fixed - the fight's also just plain hard). Alan Wake II is messy, but messy in a way that feels entirely because the game is striving so hard to do something so unique, and in most ways, it nails it.

I've written before that I like the action-gameplay of Control better. I cannot wait until Control 2 comes out, though I know that it won't actually start full development until next year.

I would love to go back and re-play Control, but I keep getting cold feet every time I get the prompt on Chapter Select or New Game that warns that doing so will erase all of my saved progress.

Really, Remedy? Really? You couldn't give us a couple different save files? You couldn't give us a New Game Plus mode? You really need me to just throw away the fact that I beat Mold-1, Hartman, all of those mini-bosses and side-quests, if I want to just experience the game again?

Even if I do bite the bullet and start a new game, I realize that nothing will compare to the feeling of entering the Oldest House for the first time. The profound mystery, my first time seeing Ahti, the nervous laughter I shared with said roommate as I facetiously repeated "oh yeah, everything looks totally fine here," while encountering monitors with "lockdown in progress."

But as much as I adored playing Control, and will still hop into my endgame save file and just look for Hiss to fight for the fun of it, it's very clear to me that Alan Wake II saw a quantum leap (not a break - I never played that one) in narrative ambitions.

I mean, when I sat in Poet's Cinema and realized that Yöton Yö was beginning to play, and then realized that it was a 20 minute arthouse horror movie just... there, for me to watch if I wanted. Holy shit.

The live-action, FMV experiments in older Remedy games, from Alan Wake 1's writer's room videos and Night Springs episodes, to the probably-too-far "TV-show in a game" concept of Quantum Break, to then, the more restrained Darling videos, Hotline calls, and occasional glimpses of Courtney Hope in live action when the Hiss try to take Jesse over, it's something they've been trying to refine.

Alan Wake II feels like it utterly nails the use of live-action. It's... it's just incredible.

This game has lodged itself in my brain - the three main chapters for each of its player characters feel as iconic as Brinstar, Maridia, Norfair, the Wrecked Ship, and Tourian do (those are the regions of Planet Zebes in Super Metroid, for those unfamiliar).

One of my favorite relaxation activities is watching video essays on YouTube - about lots of things, but particularly games, especially for people who have really interesting takes on them. While Jacob Gellar has not yet come out (at least on YouTube) with an Alan Wake-dedicated video (given his focus on indie games, this might be just on the other side of the mainstream line for him, though I believe it was his top game of 2023) I've also, in my searching for excuses to just think more about the game, become a big fan of Monty Zander's 5-hour long "Beyond the Lake" critique.

I've watched it 3 times. I don't think that it'll be the last time I watch it either.

To give you an idea of how amazing this game is, it inspired this Scottish YouTuber to make a 5-hour-long critique that, just like the game that inspired it, is a transmedia experience with poetry, original music, and a fucking interpretive dance routine.

The game is an incredible work, and one that really has interesting things to say - about depression, about memory loss (Zander makes a compelling argument that the game is, in part, about dementia), about the art and the value of collaboration, this last point being driven home by how the public-facing "auteur" Sam Lake, Remedy's creative director, made a game that emphasized how much he needs other artists around him to create games. It's honestly a beautiful idea, especially in an era of egocentrism and growing isolation.

And it's thorny - our title character's moral standing is left up for you to interpret: is he just trying to survive and not at fault for the bad things that happen because of his story, or is he using the people he writes about? Likewise, is the character revealed in the post-credits sequence to have been guiding him all along a secret guardian angel or a manipulating gaslighter?

I think you could make the argument that the game engages in some Mystery-Box storytelling trickery that has grown extremely sour in the past 20 years. I'm willing to give the game the benefit of the doubt because I don't know that it's really making any promises about revealing anything.

I have been following the stories about the game's profitability - I think it may have just broken even, after about a year, which I'm sure is not what AAA-studios want, but if this at least means that the game is now officially profitable, I hope that it will also mean that Remedy can continue putting out works of art like this.

The game's year-later DLC, the Lake House, is intriguing in its own way, a sort of micro-story (that is also apparently accessible from the main game, though I have to imagine it would be a very weird, pacing-wise, as I think it basically comes right before the Dark Ocean Summoning climax. Also, while I did beat the final boss of the DLC, I went back and replayed it and just couldn't seem to repeat that (not sure if it reset the difficulty to Standard, come to think of it).

But the Lake House honestly mostly just whetted my appetite for what comes next.

I know FBC Firebreak is coming out I think next year (trying not to think about what else happens next year) but while it does seem to be a PvE-focused game that will tell a story, I'm not sure how likely it is that I, as someone who doesn't really do online games other than WoW (grandfathered in from playing it for like 18 years now) and Magic the Gathering Arena (a game with next to zero actual non-game interaction with other players) I'm...

Look, we'll see as details emerge.

It's tough, though: I do have a friend who introduced me to Control, but he also doesn't do horror games, and so while I think he's seen a Let's Play of Alan Wake II, I don't know that he'll be as into such obsessive discussions as I really want to have.

So, I'm basically shouting this into the void of the blogosphere. This game has lodged itself in my consciousness. I feel lucky that it exists.

But it's all we're going to get for a while. So, I started playing Hollow Knight. I might write about that in a bit.

Martials and Monster Design

 In 5E D&D, there is no such thing as "magic damage." However, for the last ten years, a lot of monsters have been designed in such a way that weapon-based adventurers must use magical weapons in order to overcome the resistance or even immunities some creatures have from the three "physical" damage types, i.e., bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing damage.

What this created was a sort of unspoken moment of progression: a martial character, getting their first +1 weapon, is essentially initiated into the ranks of people who can actually do something about truly supernatural monsters.

It's always been a funny restriction, given that a level 1 spell caster straight out of character creation can damage, say, a Flesh Golem just fine (though I wouldn't send a level 1 character against a CR 5 monster). Given how much power spellcasters have, it feels like an extra "screw you" to martial characters.

Now, we don't have the full Monster Manual yet, but we've got almost all the pieces of the 2024 version of the game.

Notably, Monks and Moon Druids have features that let them turn their melee attacks into a rarely-resisted damage type. Monks can deal Force damage with their attacks at level 6, while Moon Druids' attacks in Wild Shape can start dealing Radiant damage.

Neither feature mentions "your attacks count as magical for the purpose of overcoming resistances and immunities," because that, as a concept, is going away.

The monsters we've now see that have the old "physical resistances" are mixed. The Stone Golem has no damage resistances at all, and immunity only to poison and psychic (the standard construct immunities). Whereas previously they couldn't be hurt by any physical weapon except one that was magical or made of adamantine (I'd like to know how many characters in the last ten years of D&D had an adamantine weapon before they got a magical one. Aren't adamantine weapons already magical because of the adamantine?) now, any dingus with a club can chip away at them.

However, Fire Elementals go the other way: they have resistance to Bludgeoning, Piercing, and Slashing damage - full stop. You could be attacking them with Blackrazor and at least the slashing damage would be halved.

Anticipating this change, I had wondered if they were going to make some blanket thing about magic weapons dealing Force damage now, similar to the Monk's empowered strikes. But no: it seems that there is no such alteration.

So, where does that leave us?

I suspect that when we get the full Monster Manual, we're going to see far fewer creatures with these resistances, and very, very few with immunities. The Imp, for example, in 2014, had non-magical weapon resistances, but still has the classic devil fire immunity and cold resistance. I imagine this might extend all the way up to things like Pit Fiends and Balors.

In other words, I suspect that the creatures that do have these resistances will be exceptional - a rare case in which you martial characters might want to take evasive action while the spellcasters handle things. The Fire Elemental's new cold vulnerability reinforces this idea (I hope we see more vulnerabilities).

Scions of Elemental Evil Teases Some Updated Monster Manual Stat Blocks

 Recently, a new adventure became available for free on D&D Beyond - Scions of Elemental Evil, which is a relatively short adventure taking players into the fabled Temple of Elemental Evil, along with some pre-made stat blocks of the kids from the D&D cartoon from back in the 80s (who seem to be among the most favored "example adventurers" in recent things) along with an extra Cleric character.

I suspect you can play this with original characters, of course, but it's clearly meant as an intro to the new system, and each 4th-level pre-made character comes with their signature item, like Diana's Quarterstaff of the Acrobat.

But, for those of us who make almost all of our own adventures (genuinely, in 9 years of playing D&D, I think I've run one short published adventure) what we really care about is what the monsters look like - because we have several monsters in the adventure that are definitely from the Monster Manual, and they're definitely the updated, 2024 versions of those stat blocks.

The full list of stat blocks is as follows:

Berserker

Cultist

Cultist Fanatic

Fire Elemental

Gray Ooze

Incubus (big asterisks we'll get into here)

Knight

Ogre

Pirate

Pirate Captain

Stone Golem

Succubus

Tough Boss

Now, obviously a few of those are brand-new - the Pirates and the Tough Boss (as I understand it, "Toughs" are going to be a family of humanoid NPCs like "Pirates" and the Boss is one of those.

But let's talk about the updated ones. I'm not going to go into fine detail here, comparing ACs and HPs and all that, but instead focus on what I think are the key changes.

Berserker: The major change here is that Berserkers get advantage on their Greataxe attacks if the target doesn't have all of its hit points. As with most humanoid NPCs (or some undead creatures,) it lists the gear they're carrying, so you know what players can loot off of them other than gold (though I feel like you're within your rights to say that looted armor might need to be repaired).

Cultist: Small detail, but their weapon (a Sickle - I think it used to be a dagger) also deals 1 point of necrotic damage (though when looted it's a normal weapon, so I think this is part of their cult power).

Cultist Fanatic: These have a "pact blade" that deals a d6 of extra necrotic damage (on top of 1d8+2 slashing). They still have some spellcasting, but your standard practice for pure damage is going to be attacking with the pact blade and using a bonus action for Spiritual Weapon. (Again, it's not that they're not casting spells, but they've really made a clear direction for the DM to run them).

Fire Elemental: This one got a fair number of big changes. First off, they have an aura that will not only deal fire damage (just from being near them, not only if they're attacked or otherwise touched) but it will also cause the burning condition, which their attacks also cause (I believe this does either 1d4 or 1d6 fire damage at the start of a creature's turn, and can be put out as an action). Notably, the Fire Elemental is resistant to Bludgeoning, Piercing, and Slashing damage - full stop.

    What's interesting about this is that I had thought, perhaps, that magic weapons like a +1 Mace or the like would change to potentially do Force damage or otherwise get around this kind of thing.  Not so! Now, if you attack a Fire Elemental with a +2 Longsword, that damage is getting halved no matter what you do!

    However, Fire Elementals now have vulnerability to Cold damage. That's kind of huge, but also very fitting for an elemental. Earth Elementals even in 2014 had vulnerability to Thunder damage, and I wonder if each of our CR 5 friends will have an appropriate vulnerability. Vulnerabilities are one of those things I think most people would like to see more of in D&D (except on boss monsters you really want to be able to last a few rounds) so players can feel like they've got a special way to deal with them.

Gray Ooze: The Gray Ooze has resistances to Acid, Cold, and Fire damage (I don't remember if they had that before,) but also their armor-destroying attacks now make it clear that someone can use Tinker's Tools and the Utilize action to repair it (with a DC 15 tinker's tools dexterity check).

Incubus: Big thing: the Incubus and Succubus now have different stat blocks. But they're still the same creature - when they finish a long rest, a Succubus can transform into an Incubus, and vice versa. (As a cisgender man, I'm going to leave it to the trans community to comment on whether they like this or not, but I also think you could easily imagine that these are just two different modes of a fiendish entity, and that in your game Incubi are not automatically masculine-presenting and Succubi are not automatically feminine-presenting. Mechanically, though, it's pretty interesting). The two versions of the creature have different abilities - the Incubus's Nightmare Touch can curse a target to prevent them from taking short rests. The curse lasts 24 hours, but if you want to ruin a Monk, Fighter, or Warlock's day (also possibly Druid's), this'll do it. Also, they have a bonus action that can potentially knock out (nonlethally) a target. Basically, these are looking pretty darn mean, and could be a real challenge against a tier 1 group.

Knight: Knights do some radiant damage with their attacks now. A good way to keep their damage appropriate to their CR without having to give them a crapton of attacks.

Ogre: Nothing stands out to me as particularly different here, except that it specifies that they have 3 Javelins in their gear (not sure the old version had a javelin attack, actually - like their greatclub, the damage dice are doubled).

Pirate: So, this one is new. I think the old MM told you to just use Bandits for Pirates. This one has more flavor. They have daggers to attack with, but they can replace one of their two attacks with a charm effect called enthralling panache. At CR 1, this is probably only going to start feeling like a minion-sized threat in late tier 1 or in tier 2.

Pirate Captain: Also new, this builds on the themes of the Pirate. Their weapons have doubled damage dice and their Rapier has a kind of pseudo-vex (though it wears off on the end of their turn - which is honestly a godsend for DMs who should not have to track that). They also carry a pistol! As a bonus action, they can attempt to charm someone with Captain's Charm, and they also get a Riposte ability, which I will probably never remember to use!

Stone Golem: Ok, another big, headliner monster. Notably: no immunity to bludgeoning, piercing, or slashing damage, or resistance. Mundane weapons work fine on them. They're only immune to Poison and Psychic damage (sorry Soulknives and anyone who has ever tried to make a Poison-damage character of any sort). They "Slow" ability now just casts the Slow spell. They also have a ranged Force Bolt attack, and their Slam is a mix of bludgeoning and force.

Succubus: As discussed above, the Succubus can become an Incubus after a long rest. They can cast an 8th level Dominate Person (so it lasts 8 hours) at will, and as part of their multiattack. Their Draining Kiss (which can replace one of their attacks) can target a charmed creature and on a failure or a successful save against the ability (it's a Con save,) the damage they take from this reduces their max HP (a successful save halves it).

    Basically, I think these Fiends are going to be pretty nasty. They don't have an enormous health pool, but they really have some abilities that really push the party to retreat and take a long rest.

Tough Boss: I don't know exactly what the defining trait of Toughs will be, but these have Pack Tactics and their Warhammer effectively has the Push property. They seem better-armored than Thugs (they wear Chain Mail).

So, overall, I think it looks like they really made an effort here to go through each stat block and punch it up significantly. The 2014 PHB I think took some shortcuts, and left us with a lot of monsters that didn't really have much going on. The Ancient Green Dragon we saw before felt a lot more distinct than its 2014 version, which was not too different from all the other ancient dragons. I'm eager to see what the various giants are like, which all felt like they really needed more to distinguish them.

DMG 2024 First Impressions, and What I'm Sad to See Missing, and Getting into the Weeds on Encounter Building Math

 The Dungeon Master's Guide is now available on D&D Beyond at least for Master Tier subscribers (I upgraded to share the new PHB with my Ravnica campaign players).

The DMG was an important resource in 2014, but always felt more like a reference book than something that you'd really need to bring with you to your sessions. Does the 2024 version change this?

Short answer: No. But that's not a bad thing.

As many have already said, the new DMG is structured far better than the 2014 one.

The 2014 DMG begins with how to build a campaign setting. As someone who loves creating fictional worlds, and for whom that is honestly a big fraction of my desire to DM, this felt tailored especially to me.

But the crazy thing about that book was that it didn't really, you know, teach you how to DM a game of D&D. That's not really fair, but it didn't start by sitting you down and explaining how your role would work and what kind of effort you would want to put in.

2024 fixes that. It starts off, right off the bat, walking you through, step-by-step, what you'll need to do as a DM. It even addresses some of the above-table social issues you might encounter, including - blessedly - an explicit rejection of the tired justification players have for toxic behavior: "it's what my character would do."

Now, am I going to be returning to this book over and over as I play?

As I see it, the core things a DM needs the DMG for is encounter-building guidance, treasure/magic items lists, and homebrew guidance.

Here is the thing I am sad to report: I've been waiting nine years for a new "quick monster stats" table that allows monsters to have an AC of more than 19. It's insane to me that they allow this to continue all the way up to CR 30 in the 2014 DMG. So, one of the first things I looked for was an updated table.

There is none. Not even just the old table.

Instead, there is guidance on how to alter existing stat blocks, but nothing (unless I somehow overlooked it) about building your own monsters from scratch, which, frankly, is one of my favorite things to do as a DM.

Indeed, much of the content of the DMG is pretty much the same. A handful of brand-new magic items were added (the special items used by the characters from the '80s cartoon show) and a few items from Xanathar's and Tasha's were also inducted into the DMG, including a lot of common magic items. Also, Monks rejoice once again - the Wraps of Unarmed Mastery are fully in the core rulebooks now, so you will be able to keep up in gear-progression with your fellow martials.

The encounter-building system is far less overcautious than it was in 2014. My very first encounter I ever ran was just two kobolds and a non-hostile octopus, and my three-player party killed both kobolds before they could act - because the math in the DMG said that I couldn't do anymore. In this one, a moderate encounter for three level 1 players would have enough XP for 9 kobolds (or a thug and five kobolds, which is probably the array I'd use if I were doing that campaign now).

To compare, and to check my math from nine years ago, the 2014 guide gave a x1.5 multiplier to the XP each monster counted for with only two monsters in the encounter, and a x2 multiplier for 3-6 monsters. Which is freaking insane. Thus, at two kobolds, we're talking 50 xp a piece. In the 2014 guide, for a moderate encounter, each player brings 50 xp to the budget, so for our three, our budget is only 150. Then, because we have two kobolds, we are already at that budget with just the two of them.

So, to recap: first off, the XP budget for each party member is just plain higher than it was. But also, by removing the "Encounter Multipliers" part of the system, we're no longer pushed for individual big, high-CR monsters (which, in my experience, almost never make for a satisfying encounter) and can instead spread the fight out amongst a larger group of weaker monsters (which, especially at lower levels, makes for much more interesting fights).

Now:

How does this compare with other encounter-building systems? Xanathar's Guide to Everything and MCDM's Flee, Mortals! both have systems that I've used for my encounters.

Let's see how each of them would approach a planned encounter I have for probably the next session of my current campaign (depending on how much roleplay goes down).

I usually have six players active, and tend to adjust encounters if players can't make it or if some of our other players find they can play. They're all level 17 (they also are utterly decked in powerful magic items, but I tend to just let them be powerful and don't account for those in most cases - they've earned it).

Let's skip the 2014 system because it's kind of crap.

I used Flee, Mortals! to build the encounter as I have it now, which uses three Athar Nulls (CR 5) and 9 Transcendent Order Instincts (CR 3).

Flee Mortals gives us a CR budget per party member based on level and difficulty. This is meant to be an easy encounter (in fact, the people are actually innocent civilians being puppetted remotely by an Ilithid hivemind, so part of the challenge, potentially, is recognizing they're not actually enemies). So, from FM!, we get a CR budget of 7 per player. 7x6 is 42, meaning if we put three Nulls in there (so we're at 15) we have 27 "CR" left, which we can use to "buy" 9 Instincts.

The Xanathar's system is essentially a series of ratios of how many of a certain CR creature is appropriate for a character of each level. This worked far better than the 2014 DMG version, but I do think it could get you to make encounters with far more low-CR monsters than you potentially should be using. By this system, the ratio of 17th-level character to CR 3 creature is 1:4, meaning we can have 4 Instincts for every player in the party. The ratio for CR 5 is 1:2.

Thus, by this system, if we want to preserve the rough ratio of creatures, we're likely talking 4 Nulls and 16 Instincts - clearly a much tougher fight than the FM version (notably, Xanathar's didn't have any "difficulty sliders." But FM only adds 1/2 a CR to the "Standard" CR budget-per-player, meaning we'd only be adding 3 to our CR budget, so just a single extra Instinct to change it from an Easy to Standard encounter - arguably, this shows a flaw in FM's system, where the distinction between difficulties isn't as wide as it maybe should be).

So, let's try the new system:

In the 2024 DMG, we're back to using XP budgets rather than CR budgets, but the amounts have increased. For a "low" difficulty encounter, each 17th level character should be adding 4500 xp to our pool. So, our total budget for the encounter is 27,000.

Nulls (and all CR 5 creatures) are worth 1,800 xp. Instincts (and all CR 3 creatures) are worth 700. So, our FM-derived group has a total XP of 11700. Significantly less than what the new DMG calls for. For our Xanathar's-derived group, we're talking 18400 - still less than what this calls for. Holy crap.

At this point, because these CR 3 Instincts don't feel like they'll be all that effective against my superheroic-powered characters, I'm curious to see what it would look like if we upgraded them from Instincts to Transcendent Order Conduits, which are CR 8 (3,900 XP). We might flip the ratio as well, given that the Conduits are tougher than the Nulls. So, we bump the Nulls up to, say, 5 on the board. That's 9000xp, leaving us 18,000 left. We could then have 4 Conduits (15,600,) which leaves us 2,400 xp in our budget. I'd be willing to tip this a little beyond a low-difficulty fight by adding two Nulls to the mix, which means adding 3,600 xp to this, for a total encounter of 7 Nulls and 4 Condutis (so 11 adversaries, which feels reasonable for a 6-player party) and going slightly over budget at 28200 xp.

So, this is interesting: at least in this case, the new DMG seems to have the meanest encounter-building math I've seen in 5E. Player characters are for sure becoming more powerful with the new PHB, but I'm also curious to see if the monsters are also becoming significantly more powerful, and whether this will all make the game a lot more deadly.

In terms of ease of use, CR-based systems are certainly easier. But because CR and XP don't scale directly with one another, it'll always be an interesting question as to which is a better reflection of actual difficulty. The Xanathar's system was skewed because simply going for a monster that was one CR lower (meaning likely just slightly lower hit chance, if even any difference, and barely any difference in damage done) would suddenly allow you to bring, say, two of them instead of one.

So, honestly, XP-based encounter building is probably better - it will just mean math with bigger numbers.

I'm eager to test this out - I don't want to utterly bludgeon the party (and I might make some adjustments to the homebrewed boss monster at the end of that day of adventuring to make it not quite as brutally mean, in case the party is seriously drained by the time they can fight it) but I do want to make them fear me... er, I mean, the monsters within the story.

Control 2's Symbol: An Airlock?

 I had a dog named Becky when I was nine years old. Barely a year after we got her, she ran out of the house and into the street and was hit by a car. She got out through the basement door, which my dad had left open because he was doing some work down there. He hadn't expected her to be able to get into the basement, because the interior door to the stairs down there, in the kitchen, was typically closed. It was no one's fault.

Looking back, I wish we had done a better job disciplining her. She was still pretty young, not yet two years old. Losing her, especially given that I'd lost my first cat Choco, also to a car, when I was three, actually left us too traumatized to get any other pets when I was growing up. Only after I moved in with my current roommates did I live with another pet, a cat, and since then we adopted two stray kittens who were born outside of our building (both of whom are quite big adults now).

Anyway, when we had Becky, we were usually very careful with her and had a system to prevent exactly the sort of thing that ultimately happened to her. In my childhood home, where my Dad still lives after my Mom died, both the front and back doors have what we call "mud rooms," with an inner door leading into the house and and outer door that goes outside. If we weren't taking Becky with us (such as when my sister and I were going off to school) we'd make sure that we sealed the "airlock" by getting into the mud room and closing the inner door, ensuring that Becky was still inside, before we'd open the outer door.

But this is about Control 2.

Spoilers for Control, as well as Alan Wake II (mostly the Lake House expansion)

The Lake House's Implications for Control 2

 I just beat the second and final DLC for Alan Wake II (sadly I found I needed to downgrade to the lowest difficulty on the final boss - I don't mind scrounging for resources between fights, but I'm terrible at doing it during a fight). The Lake House takes place within the eponymous FBC facility that was built to monitor Cauldron Lake after the 2010 AWE in Bright Falls (aka the events of the first Alan Wake game).

Naturally, given the presence of the FBC, there are some big ties into Control, and some things that portend what we might be dealing with in the next Control game (not counting FBC Firebreak).

Let's talk about all of that past the spoiler cut:

Stepping into the Lake House

 I'm deliberately pacing myself because I don't know when I'll next be able to experience a new bit of Remedy atmosphere. 

Spoilers for The Lake House, and I guess Alan Wake 1, II, and Control while we're at it.

What Firebreak Might Mean for Control 2

 Today, Remedy hit us with not only a second trailer for The Lake House DLC for Alan Wake II (a "launch trailer" despite the fact that it comes out on Tuesday) as well as the trailer for their squad-based cooperative first-person shooter, FBC Firebreak.

I... I don't know if I'll actually be playing it, because I don't have a ton of patience for multiplayer games (yes, I realize this blog started off as a World of Warcraft-exclusive one, but that's kind of the exception that proves the rule).

However, what we have gathered from the trailer has some interesting implications.

The game seems to put you in the shoes of a new FBC unit called Firebreak, which appears to be tasked with clearing out the Hiss from the Oldest House.

Control, notably, doesn't end with the Hiss fully stamped out. While the original source of the crisis is cut off now that the Slide Projector has been turned off, the Hiss is insidious and infectious - all the passive Hiss agents floating above most areas in the game are still amplifying the signal, potentially infecting anyone not wearing an HRA, or who aren't Jesse.

This, of course, allows the game to live on past all the actual missions to let you max out your skills and tie up any side quests. It's how I was able to continually just wander around looking for Hiss to fight and experience the supremely satisfying action the game has (though I'd have preferred a NG+, or even just a second save file so I could play the thing from the start again without losing my existing file. Seriously, this is 2024 and consoles have big hard drives. We shouldn't have to worry about limited save files in this day and age).

However, the very premise of Firebreak, I think, tells us something pretty concrete about Control 2: We're going to get out of the Oldest House and we're going to be fighting something other than the Hiss.

Jesse is a superhero at this point, but given the Hiss capacity to infect new hosts (and possibly even resurrect itself) it's clear that she just can't be in enough places at once to actually sterilize the Oldest House on her own.

But, if we're getting a whole game dedicated to that task, I think that leaves Control 2 in a position to move past it.

And I think that's really fitting: Alan Wake's two games are both primarily focused on taking down the Taken, because they're both dealing with the insidious Dark Presence. Indeed, half of Alan Wake II has us facing the Fadeouts/Shadows, which are related but separate.

But the whole idea of Control is that the Hiss might be one of the most dangerous phenomena the FBC has had to deal with, but it's far from the only one. Even in the original game, we get The Mold - a fully separate infection bleeding into the Oldest House through a different Threshold.

The sites we see in the Firebreak trailer are familiar - the region in Executive where the Post-It Note altered item seems to have started actually killing people, or the Black Rock Quarry. Certainly, this saves Remedy some time and effort on conceptualizing parts of the Oldest House, but I wonder if this is also a way for us to get one last good luck at the setting before Jesse goes elsewhere to investigate what is happening beyond.

Sure, the concept art we've seen appears to be just outside of the Oldest House, but honestly, I'd be pretty happy simply for the opportunity to step outdoors (though I'd love to go to Ordinary).

The Hiss worked very well as the primary antagonists for the first game, but I think Control promises way more, and I hope Firebreak gives us the chance to move past them.

Slaying a God and The Future of Elden Ring

 I finally sat down to defeat Promised Consort Radahn, after the boss was nerfed in a patch I think a few weeks ago. I hadn't played any Elden Ring since returning from my month of helping take care of my newborn nephew, and so there was something a little strange about coming back in and finally taking down this final final boss of Elden Ring.

Elden Ring is currently, and I suspect will continue to be, among my favorite video games ever made. It feels like a kind of apotheosis of the formula FromSoft has been working on since Demon's Souls back in 2009. The lore feels open-ended in a way that Dark Souls never did to me, and the gameplay feels like the perfect blend of punishing and challenging Soulsborne combat and the lifeline of always having some other place to go if you're hitting a wall.

Shadow of the Erdtree is the most enormous DLC I've ever seen, unless you count something like a World of Warcraft expansion. I'm pretty sure that The Land of Shadows dwarfs all previous Soulsborne games in terms of the size of its map and I think the number of bosses you can fight.

My experience on my first playthrough of the DLC was surprise at the seeming ease - my Strength/Faith dual-wielding greatsword build managed to one-shot most of its bosses, and other than Messmer and Radahn, I think no other boss took more than two attempts.

Taking characters with other builds in, on the other hand, I've found that I must have either had some beginner's luck, or that build was just super-powerful (it's also the one that I beat Radahn with today, after having tried to switch over to the Euporia - I imagine that with Miquella riding his back he's probably highly resistant to Holy damage, so the fire from Blasphemous Blade might have been more effective).

Despite being so impressed during my first playthrough of the DLC (though I'm sore at the fact that I accidentally killed one of the Forager Brood and thus screwed up a minor quest line) I don't know that I've felt the same immediate urge to run through the whole thing on other characters. I did take a number of them in and have gotten a few bosses into the DLC (indeed, my original Intelligence character at this stage I think has already taken down Metyr).

But I guess there's something also a little sad about getting to the end of it all.

I don't know if From intends to ever make a sequel to Elden Ring. The world has such enormous potential, sure, but I also got the impression from Dark Souls III that they might kind of dislike the very notion of sequels - they can, and I expect will, continue to make games of this general structure. But I also think they might prefer creating worlds with totally new history and characters.

Would an Elden Ring sequel take the Dark Souls route and place us in some far-flung future of the Lands Between that has cycled through a number of other gods? Even within this first game, there's a sense of an enormous amount of history (Tarnished Archaeologist, one of several YouTube channels focused on From games that I watch, identifies the various historical "strata" of its world, which is fascinating if you can handle the dry, academic tone it takes - which, as the son of a college professor, and who grew up watching a bunch of PBS documentaries, I'm fine with).

As with any of these games, we're left with some ambiguity: we get the "God Slain" post-boss toast, which we get after defeating the Elden Beast (not, I think, after defeating Malenia, despite her having theoretically achieved apotheosis in the middle of our fight). So, is Miquella actually fully gone?

He's a fascinating character - it seems that before he "divested himself" of everything that he carried with him, he might have genuinely been a good person. But I think the real damning act was shedding his St. Trina persona... or body co-habitant (man do I go back and forth on whether Marika and Radagon were originally separate people. Miquella and Trina certainly are by the time we get to the Land of Shadow, but did Trina "bud" off of him, or was she a lover grafted onto him that he later cut out?) Regardless, when you're a god of kindness and compassion, maybe removing your own love - whether that be in the sense of "the object of my love" or, as I take it, "my capacity for love" is... you know, not a great call?

And yet, perhaps there's some inevitability to all of this. Maybe this was, in fact, necessary for him to achieve godhood. And maybe apotheosis was the ultimate solution he felt he had no other choice but to pursue.

I'm reminded of Dune, in which, as we follow the story of Paul Atreides, reluctantly but still following through on becoming a messianic religious figure while he conquers the known universe, every step along the way, he seems convinced that it's the only possible path for him to take that doesn't lead to the extinction of the human race. But is it? Or is that the opinion of a megalomaniac that lusts for power.

Certainly in this day and age, we're living in an era in which giant egos wield immense power. And especially people who see themselves as iconoclasts and rebels despite the fact that they're among the richest, most powerful people in the world already, undertake grand projects to remake the world, claiming that they are shaking the foundations of society in order to save it.

Was Miquella ever really a good guy? Or was his "kindness" always just a strategy to achieve power?

Considering the state of Ephael, and the state of Castle Sol, does he just abandon the plans that don't work out? Does Kind Miquella still actually give a shit about bringing Godwyn back from his state of soulless undeath? Does he still give a shit about curing Malenia's Scarlet Rot? Maybe he thinks that once he is a god he will be able to fix all these problems that frustrated him as an Empyrean.

I guess we'll never know, though. He tells us, as a "would-be lord of a bygone age" (not sure if that's the exact quote, but it's the gist) to stand aside for his glorious future.

But I'm ushering in the Age of Stars, baby. Ranni and I are actually bringing about real change. A thousand-year voyage into fear, doubt, and loneliness. It ain't going to be easy, but it's going to be real.

The Arathi and the Legacy of Lothar

 For nearly twenty years of World of Warcraft, the lands of humanity within its setting have seemed fairly defined.

As we learned in Wrath of the Lich King, humans, in a process similar to Dwarves and Gnomes, began as Titanforged constructs, created (probably) by the Titans upon their arrival at Azeroth as part of the vast army of beings meant to defeat and contain the Old Gods and bring down the Black Empire. According to Chronicle, elaborating on an idea introduced in Wrath, the Curse of Flesh was essentially introduced to the creation forges in Ulduar that led to these constructs gradually mutating into fleshy beings - Earthen became Dwarves, Mechagnomes became Gnomes, and the Vrykul turned into... non-metallic Vrykul.

Weirdly, the process for humans in particular seemed to be a two-step one, as not only were there flesh-cursed Vrykul, but at some point later on, the Vrykul started having stunted, small children. King Ymiron, who ruled over the Vrykul of Northrend, wished to have these children culled, but there was an exodus of Vrykul following Keeper Tyr, fleeing the madness and corruption of Keeper Loken, and this was an opportunity for those with human children to save their offspring, ultimately settling in what would come to be called Tirisfal Glades - named as such because it was where Tyr fell to a C'thraxxi monster of the Black Empire.

The human tribes there eventually unified in order to survive against the aggressions of the Amani Trolls to the north, ultimately forming the Arathi Empire, centered in the Arathi Highlands, and spreading across much of the Lordaeron subcontinent. Eventually, that Empire would fall, with seven human kingdoms splitting form one another - Lordaeron, Gilneas, Alterac, Dalaran, Kul Tiras, Stromgarde (this one being the remaining vestige in the Empire's old heartlands) and Stormwind, far to the south.

This leaves us with an interesting question:

What the absolute hell is this Arathi Empire that has sent its expedition to Hallowfall?

It's not that humans have never been seen elsewhere - the Wastewander Bandits in Tanaris and Uldum seem to have been established in Kalimdor possibly before the Third War.

But there's very little indication of where the "Arathi" we encounter in Khaz Algar are actually from.

What there is an implication of, though, is that they might be bad news.

While the Arathi that we encounter in Hallowfall are generally friendly, there are a few little red flags that pop up here and there.

I'll admit, as someone who is very skeptical of organized religion (I have no problem with people having religious beliefs, mind you, but the institutions of religion are prone to corruption and can have a coercive influence on their societies) the zeal of the Arathi makes me a little nervous.

But while I get the impression that anyone in the Empire is expected to be a devout worshipper of the Light, I actually think that there might be more of a racial angle here (not to say that religious zealotry and racism never go hand-in-hand). In the level-cap optional sidequests in Hallowfall, where Faerin Lothar teaches you and Anduin an Arathi board game, she expresses surprise that Anduin is friends with a dragon. Anduin says he'd like to come visit her empire some day, and she says that she's not sure that all the diverse races of the Alliance (and I guess Horde) would be welcome there.

To be sure, the Arathi appear to have a lot of half-elves among them, and many, including Faerin, have signs of some elvish ancestry. But this might be the exception that proves the rule - high elves were considered an acceptable part of the largely human society, to the exclusion of all else, which, honestly, kind of describes the era of the original Arathi Empire, when the only other peoples they were typically interacting with were Trolls (I don't know when humans first made contact with dwarves and gnomes).

We also get another line during the other level-cap side quest there, when you go to have dinner at General Steelstrike's daughter's house. Among the many memories and accolades they display, there's one commendation for Steelstrike's part in putting down an uprising somewhere in the empire.

Now, sure, uprising could be a number of things - our fight against the Defias in Vanilla could be seen as an uprising (though that story is also somewhat nuanced - Van Cleef's methods were questionable, but his grievances were pretty freaking legitimate). So I'm not saying that this necessarily means it was a brutal crackdown on a group of benevolent freedom fights.

But... it kind of seems like it probably was.

Let's also just consider the terminology we're using: it's the Arathi Empire, and it's led by an Emperor.

There's an odd nuance to the connotation of the word "Emperor" in the English language. We tend to like Kings and Queens more than we like Emperors. Emperor, I think, harkens back to the era of Rome, which, in the middle ages, when modern nation states like England were taking form, was looked back on as a period of corruption and depravity - a pre-Christian world that fell because of its moral failings. Emperors, thus, are seen as tyrants, while Kings (and Queens) are seen as righteous, benevolent rulers. Even during the height of the British Empire (which, to be fair, was called an Empire,) the sovereign of said Empire was referred to as King (or Queen - for some reason the UK's ruling queens tend to have very long reigns, though after QE2 we're probably not going to see one for a very long time). It's not as if the British Empire was actually benevolent - talk to anyone in about a quarter of the world whose country is still recovering from British colonialism (the US being a weird case because the dominant culture is one descended from the colonists rather than the indigenous people) and the British were every bit the evil empire you might imagine. But in terms of self-image, it painted itself in this preferable form.

Oddly, there's an exception to this when it comes to East Asia. What we've translated as Emperor in those places tends to be actually seen more the way that European kings are. Hence why Shaohao of Pandaria, whose culture is clearly inspired by China's, can be a fully benevolent Emperor while this Arathi one is almost certainly going to be a villain.

Now, let's talk about Faerin.

Faerin Lothar has alluded to her family - she stowed away on the Hallowfall expedition as a child, in part because she felt that her family didn't think much of her. But what her family actually does remains unknown.

But that name, though.

Anduin Lothar was the great hero of Stormwind, the original leader of the Alliance forces. He was also a surrogate father to Varian Wrynn after King Llane was assassinated. Anduin Lothar was, essentially, supposed to be the absolute most awesome human who ever lived, and whose death at the hands of Orgrim Doomhammer actually rallied the Alliance to rout the Horde at the end of the Second War.

What's interesting, though, is that Lothar is said to have been the last descendent of the original Arathi kings. Also, if the movie is to be considered canon, he was literally Varian's uncle on his mother's side, meaning that Anduin Wrynn is also descended from the Arathi Kings.

All indications seemed to show that Anduin Lothar was the last of his line - he didn't have any children himself. But now, suddenly, we've got a new Lothar.

A name associated with the Arathi Kings. And a woman with that name who is from the mysterious Arathi Empire.

I think Faerin Lothar is the heir to the Imperial Throne of the Arathi Empire. I think she's a princess. And I think her dad (or I guess mom - things aren't necessarily patriarchal) is the Emperor.

This is super long-term story foreshadowing, as I suspect we won't be going to the Arathi Empire until the whole Worldsoul Saga is wrapped up (meaning I'm going to be in my mid-40s) but let me slap this prediction down here so that in 6 years or whatever I can point to it:

I think we're going to go to the Arathi Empire (possibly on that continent hinted at during Dragonflight). We're going to discover the Empire is a brutal regime, despite having very good people living under it and even serving the empire.

And we're going to have to depose the Emperor and put Faerin on the throne.

Pistols and Muskets are in the PHB, But Who Can Really Use Them?

 Perhaps thanks to the iconic original World of Warcraft cinematic, which begins with a Dwarf Hunter and his pet bear, carrying a big old blunderbuss, I've always liked having firearms in my heroic fantasy settings, despite being a pretty anti-gun person in the real world. I was happy, then to see the 2024 PHB include the "renaissance-era" firearms that had appeared in the 2014 Dungeon Master's Guide. These weapons are the most balanced against others, using a single damage die as opposed to two for the modern guns and three (or six) for the futuristic ones. While they have higher dice than the classic crossbows and bows, there are some limiting factors on them, probably the most notable being their very short normal range - pistols have a 30 foot normal range and muskets are just a little better with 40. They also have the loading property.

Both pistols and muskets are considered martial weapons, which also places some limitations on who is likely to use them. You can, of course, still attack with a weapon you don't have proficiency in, but losing that PB to your attack roll can be a big problem, and wipes out the damage benefit from the higher die almost certainly.

Among the classes that tend to have martial weapon proficiency, most of them also have the extra attack feature. That's a good thing, but this runs into conflict with the Loading property, which allows you to make only one attack with such a weapon per action, bonus action, or reaction (the latter being less likely than doing so as your action, but still possible), regardless of how many attacks you'd normally be able to make.

And given how Extra Attack is a core feature to help martial classes do their full damage potential, this is really damning.

Now, Crossbows also have the loading property, but for that we have the Crossbow Expert feat, which allows you to ignore that property among other things.

If we are, as I will be at my table, allowing players to use old character options that weren't reprinted, our problems kind of end here, as you can pick up the Gunner feat from Tasha's Cauldron of Everything, which, among other things, lets us ignore the loading property for firearms.

But, if we're at a table where only the options in the new PHB (and subsequent books) are allowed, we run into a big problem: the classes most likely to be able to use a Firearm will be better-off if they take a different kind of ranged weapon. Two Longbow attacks for 1d8+3 are better than a single Musket attack for 1d12+3 (15 overall versus 9.5).

So, what we need is a character who can use martial weapons, but only gets one weapon attack with their attack action.

And here, I think the answer is, perhaps unexpectedly: Clerics and Druids.

Clerics and Druids have a lot of parallels in their design. Each has a choice they can make at 1st level that allows them to gain a higher tier of armor training (medium to heavy for clerics and light to medium for druids) as well as martial weapon proficiency.

Rather than getting anything like Extra Attack, though, they can get Blessed Strikes or Primal Strikes, respectively, which adds 1d8 (and later 2d8) of magical damage when they hit with weapon attacks.

A Cleric with a Musket at level 7 with a +3 to Dexterity (admittedly a little high, +2 might be more to be expected) would deal 1d12+1d8+3 damage on a hit, for an average of 14 damage, compared to using something like Toll the Dead, which could do 2d12 damage. Granted, if they went the Potent Spellcasting route, it would be doing 2d12+4, perhaps, which does beat the musket for 15 damage.

The Druid is in a similar situation, though I don't think they have any d12 cantrips.

In an ideal situation, though, if you can pick up Magic Initiate: Wizard and take True Strike, it'll keep better pace with your spells. If using True Strike with a Musket as a Protector Cleric or Warden Druid, then you're looking at 1d12+1d8+1d6+4 on a hit (and using, effectively, your spell attack modifier) or 18.5 average damage, compared to 2d8+4, or 13, from a Starry Wisp if you're going the Potent Spellcasting route instead.

Strangely, there's no feat in the 2024 PHB that allows you to gain weapon proficiencies, so Rogues, who might be the most obvious firearms users, are shut out.

Once again, a ton of these issues get solved if we allow pre-2024 content. The Artificer's Repeating Shot infusion removes the Loading property (and effectively removes the ammunition property) and would thus be great for them if they're a Battle Smith or could make them work perfectly for other martial characters. Again, the Gunner feat also fixes this.

But, if we're strictly only using new options, your best bet is going to be either a preacher or a hippie with a gun.

Approaching Alan Wake II's Anniversary and Anticipating The Lake House

 Some time this month, we'll be getting Alan Wake II's second DLC, The Lake House, which will ultimately put the capstone on what we get out of the game.

It's funny, playing games with such replayability or merely a huge demand on your time, like World of Warcraft or Elden Ring, I still find that this game I spent maybe a total of 40 hours in to be one of my favorite gaming experiences.

I just love the utter insanity of the story it tells, the strange meta-narratives, the deep mysteries (which I'll admit might largely be mystery boxes with nothing inside) and the audacity of its creation (I mean, there's literally a 20-minute art film you might just miss if you walk out of the movie theater too eagerly).

The game was compelling, but not in the way that makes me necessarily want to play through it again and again. A big part of what makes a game replayable, I think, is how you can try to do things differently. But the story to Alan Wake II is singular (well, double, given the Final Draft). And ultimately, that's fine - because even if I'm not booting the game up every chance I get, it nevertheless swirls around in my brain constantly.

Halloween is my favorite holiday, and every October, I sort of feel an anxious desire to make sure that I honor the spookiness in some way - which can be a challenge as I'm an utter lightweight when it comes to horror movies (one of these days I'm going to watch past the first episode of Midnight Mass, I swear).

I'm really eager to play the new DLC, though I'm also trying to temper my expectations. Night Springs was fun, but boy did I go through it quickly, I think finishing the whole thing in an afternoon and the next morning, with big breaks in between episodes.

At the very least I assume the Lake House will be just one story with one protagonist (though who that will be remains to be seen,) which might make it feel more substantial.

But I guess especially after the absurdly enormous Shadow of the Erdtree (still haven't attempted Radahn following the nerfs) I need to recall that this isn't going to be as substantial as a whole other game. (Seriously, Shadow of the Erdtree would be, on its own, probably the biggest FromSoft game ever if it weren't for the existing main game of Elden Ring).

I am eager, however, to see what kind of tantalizing mysteries are introduced here - generally, the expectation is that just as Control's AWE expansion teased Alan Wake II, the Lake House will probably tease Control 2.

Then I'm curious just to see if the gameplay is shaken up in any serious way - Night Springs gave you more resources than you could ever spend, turning the Survival Horror game into more of an action shooter (or some approximation thereof). The trailer for the Lake House sure looks more horror-oriented, but we'll see.

Anyway, I'm just happy to get into this.

Dual Wielding vs Great Weapon Master for Fighters (and maybe Barbarians and Revisiting Paladins)

 The Nick weapon mastery property is a bit of a game changer, and a big part of that changed game is that it will allow you to stack off-hand hits with the extra attack granted by the Dual Wielder feat.

Since the 2024 PHB has come out, I've been champing at the bit to try out a few new character builds - among others, I've made multiple versions of my old dragonborn Eldritch Knight, and while I'd love to be able to customize my ability score bonuses from the Sage background (I'll take Intelligence, but I really need a +2 for my Strength, unless I want to go back and do a crazy Shillelagh build, but then I'd need to take the Guide background, which doesn't boost Intelligence either, so... Essentially, until we get customizable backgrounds or just giving origin feats of the player's choice with old backgrounds, you're going to be a little stuck except perhaps if you play a human) for now I might just pick up a similar old background like the Cloistered Scholar so I can have my freedom of boosts.

Anyway, while dual-wielding has become a lot better, the Great Weapon Master feat has also become a lot better. While the boost to damage is lower (it's now your PB, rather than a flat 10) the massive upside here is that you no longer take a -5 penalty to your hit. Now, as long as the attack is part of the attack action (and this is something I got wrong with my earlier look at it when talking paladins) you just get to add your proficiency bonus to the damage.

And, according to some hypothetical ranges of AC, in basically all cases except against targets with extraordinarily low ACs like Zombies or Gelatinous Cubes, the fact that you're not taking a penalty to your hits makes you ultimately deal more damage (and you hit more often, which frankly just feels better).

The question, though, that I had, was how it compares to dual wielding.

For a Fighter, my initial guess is that it'll do better. The reason for this is that, while classes like Barbarians and Paladins (and Rogues, but they're not likely to be wielding heavy weapons unless they somehow get proficiency in longbows or heavy crossbows) tend to add damage to their attacks, while Fighters tend to get more damage simply by doing more attacks.

In other words, bonuses like Rage and Radiant Strikes really benefit a lot from getting additional attacks, while Fighters' level 11 feature is an additional attack. And again at level 20 (though essentially we can say that the number of attacks per attack action a Fighter has for the most levels is 3).

So, here's what we're looking at:

Dual Wielders - using two light weapons (presumably d6 weapons if we're not pulling Shillelagh shenanigans) we get effectively five attacks per turn by level 11, unless we need our bonus action for something. Three primary attacks with our attack action, and then we get our Nick attack with a scimitar (I think that's the only d6 light weapon with Nick?) still as part of the action, and then finally our dual wielder feat attack with our bonus action. If we take the Two Weapon Fighting Style feat, we're adding Strength (or potentially Dexterity, as Scimitars and Shortswords are also finesse weapons) to the Nick attack, but not to the attack granted by Dual Wielder.

Now, the math gets way more complicated thanks to the Shortsword's (or Handaxe's) Vex property. There are a lot of ways to get advantage on attacks, so I'm tempted to be lazy here and just ignore it and go for potential damage rather than looking at hits and crits.

If we assume a +5 to Strength by level 11 (which might not be such a safe assumption given all the half-feats - still, we could start off with a 17 in Strength, boost it to 18 with Dual Wielder and then grab two other feats that boost Strength at levels 6 and 8 - the only reason I'd feel skeptical is if we wanted to get War Caster on an Eldritch Knight) we're looking at 4 attacks that hit for 1d6+5 (we're also not assuming we get any magic weapons) and then one more attack that deals 1d6 flat.

This brings the potential damage to 5d6+20, or about 37.5 damage per turn.

With Great Weapon Master, again, we're only relying on a single feat here, and can have the same Strength progression. Aesthetically, I love the Maul, but I also think that the Greatsword's Graze mastery could be really, really good (always be damaging). Still, the math starts to get a bit hairy, and I'm lazy. So we'll talk just potential damage. You could also take a Greataxe of course, but I think this might be more appealing to a Paladin or Barbarian, because I think you do get to add bonus damage to the cleave attack, the only thing you're not adding being your Strength. Of course, it's also a bit situational.

The math here is relatively simple: our Maul or Greatsword hits for 2d6+5 (our Strength)+4(our proficiency bonus at this level). So, 2d6+9, or an average of 16 damage per hit. With three attacks, that's 48 damage.

I think my instinct was right.

I really think you can't ignore the power of adding your proficiency bonus to your damage - something that is fully multiplied thanks to your third attack.

Essentially, if Dual Wielding and Great Weapon Master are balanced against each other assuming you have two attacks per action (which is true for Paladins, Barbarians, Rangers, and Monks - as well as Fighters at levels 5-10) our third attack upsets this balance. (Indeed, if we rewind to level 10, we're essentially subtracting 1d6+5 from the dual wielder, for a total of 29 damage, versus subtracting a full 16 from the GWM, for a total of 32 - still better, but closer.)

Getting magic weapons can shift things toward the Dual Wielder - it becomes another one of these bonuses multiplied by the extra attacks. But assuming that if the dual-wielder gets a pair of +1 weapons, we should also assume the GWM gets a +1 weapon as well, meaning that we're just adding the bonus a number of times equal to the difference in number of attacks to see the difference in damage potential - which is two. Even with +3 weapons, the Dual Wielder's total is only going up by 6 compared to the Great Weapon Master, when the GWM was already 10.5 damage ahead.

Now:

How does layering Polearm Master on top of that look?

What we gain from Polearm Master is a bonus action attack that deals 1d4+5. Unfortunately, and unlike my post about paladins, because this is a bonus action, you don't get to add that proficiency bonus to this damage, so it really does sit at 1d4+5 (though if you have a +1 polearm, it should confer this bonus to both the regular attacks and the Pole Strike.

And, you know, we get reach if we're using a Lance, Glaive, Halberd, or Pike. (And thankfully Lances now only get the good part of their special properties).

What we give up is a bit of damage from downgrading from 2d6 to 1d10.

Our level 11 Fighter who took Polearm Master as one of those feats at level 6 or 8 and who is fighting with any of those 1d10 polearms will be doing 1d10+5, then an additional 4 for GWM, so 1d10+9 for each of these hits, or 14.5, which then comes to 43.5, and then slap on that 1d4+5 (which averages to 7.5) and we're looking at 51 damage.

So it definitely looks worth it to downgrade our damage dice for that additional attack, though again, it costs a bonus action - the pure GWM will only have to worry about using their bonus action for their Hew attack, leaving their bonus action free on many if not most turns. That said, it's only 3 points ahead of not getting that attack at all.

And I think it should be obvious that GWM is still contributing more damage here than PAM - to look at what this would be if you only had Polearm Master, just subtract 12 from the PAM's total damage potential, putting it closer to the Dual Wielding set-up.

Also, as a minor note: GWM is the only version of these for which Action Surge is truly multiplicative - Dual Wielder and Polearm Master both use a bonus action, which doesn't get replicated by action surge.

So, my recommendation if you want to really push your damage as a Fighter is to go with Great Weapon Master as soon as you can pick it up, and then possibly Polearm Master if you want to push things further (nicely, these can both boost Strength).

Ok, now let's look at Barbarians.

Barbarians don't really get a clear damage boost feature at level 11 like Paladins and Fighters do (Brutal Strikes does come online at 9, but it's fairly weapon-agnostic given that you can only use it once a turn and its damage dice don't care what you're swinging).

The big, key thing here is that they will get a +3 bonus to damage thanks to their Rage (and I think Barbarians are very unlikely to run out of Rages now).

Here, my instincts are pointing toward Dual Wielding probably being the way to go. A Handaxe or Shortsword in one hand and a Scimitar in the other will let us take advantage of Nick. That said, we don't actually get Fighting Styles, meaning outside of going to old sources for Fighting Initiate or the like, we're going to have to lose that 5 on our off-hand attacks. We will still get our +3 Rage damage bonus, though.

So, with the Dual Wielder feat, we're going to be making two fully-functional attacks with our action, each dealing 1d6+5+3, or 11.5. Then, our Nick attack will do 1d6+3, or 6.5.

Now, here we do hit a bit of a jam - we can't make the Dual Wielder attack on our first turn, because we need our bonus action to rage. We're only 1d6+3 damage on that turn, but depending on how long combat goes, it might not be totally fair for us to assume that we'll get plenty of turns after that with our full complement of attacks.

On the other hand, Rage now lasts 10 minutes, and if we're in a combat-to-combat situation, we might still be raging from a previous encounter (or from Rage-stealthing to sneak up on these fools).

So, screw it, we'll assume you're already raging.

Thus, it becomes pretty simple - two attacks that deal 1d6+8 and two that deal 1d6+3. So, 4d6+22, which comes to 36 average damage.

With GWM, we're looking at just two attacks that are hitting for 2d6 (or 1d12, in which case we'd have to dock it a single damage point over the two attacks) +8. That's 15 damage per hit, for a total average of 30. Actually at this point quite a bit behind our dual-wielder (doing 5/6 of its damage).

Now, if we use Polearm Master alone, we're looking at two hits for 1d10+8, or 13.5, doubled to 27, and then our Pole Strike is hitting for 1d4+8, or 10.5, putting us at 37.5.

Fascinating! So, in this case, the Barbarian's best damage comes with Polearm Master.

If we're worried about going into combat without raging, we'll need to subtract the bonus action attacks from the DW and PAM builds on the first turn, pushing their first turn (and only that, most likely) down to 29.5 and 27, respectively.

Now, I suspect that a combined PAM and GWM build will be our best by a long shot.

Here, we're looking at two attacks for now 1d10+12 (5 from Strength, 3 from Rage, 4 from GWM) each for 17.5, combined to make 35 damage (only one behind our dual-wielder when they're already raging) and then getting to add that same 10.5 once we're raging as a bonus action, for a total of 45.5.

My Bugbear World Tree Barbarian with the insane reach on his attacks is looking better and better.

Again, there are nuances here that I'm 100% breezing past. The constant advantage granted by Vex (and once you get to level 13, you're basically always going to have advantage between Vex and Studied Attacks) might really make a difference. On the other hand, Graze from Greatswords and Glaives might actually wind up adding more damage (especially against foes with high ACs).

Given the lack of nuance here, I think we can actually use the Barbarian as a model for the Paladin - instead of a rage bonus we're adding our 1d8 Radiant Strike damage - which on average is actually better than the Barbarian's bonus. Paladins can also take a Fighting Style, and while Great Weapon Fighting is actually pretty much useless (2d6 goes from an average of 7 to an average of 8 - worse than when it just you re-roll 1s and 2s, which got you an already-pitiful 8.33) the Two-Weapon Fighting Style feat actually adds a decently hefty chunk of damage - basically 5 at this level.

So, if we're adding 1.5 to each attack (as 1d8 is 4.5 on average and that's 1.5 higher than the flat rage bonus of 3 - and we're not even touching on the fact that it can crit) and also adding 5 to the Nick attack (the Dual Wielder attack doesn't benefit from this fighting style) we're essentially getting 6 extra damage from Radiant Strikes and 5 from the TWF feat, so the Paladin's dual-wielder damage is 47 (before we get into potential additional boosts like the excellent Divine Favor - which we might genuinely have to consider if DW still comes up short of GWM).

In the case of our pure GWM character, we're just adding that 1.5 to two attacks, so we're only really looking at 3 more than the Barbarian, so 33.

A pure PAM build will add 1.5 three times, or 4.5, which puts us at 42.

Finally, a combined PAM and GWM build will give us 1.5 three times, but is otherwise the same as the Barbarian, so we get 49.5. Ah-ha! We've finally outpaced the dual-wielder.

But, what about if we add Divine Favor?

This just adds 1d4 per attack. Our dual-wielder is only making one more attack per turn than our GWM/PAM, so the difference just comes to 2.5.

And wouldn't you freaking know it? That's precisely the difference between our Dual Wilder and our GWM/PAM before accounting for Divine Favor (because both are reliant on a bonus action for their full damage, they'll both be held back slightly on the first turn - the dualwielder loses 1d6+1d8 damage on turn 1 compared to the GWMPAM (or "Gwimpam") losing 1d4+1d8+5, meaning dual-wielders have a slight edge here.

    So, what's my takeaway here?

Well, first we've got to acknowledge again that some masteries might really make a huge difference while others might not - Cleave is awesome if there are two enemies next to one another, but does nothing if there aren't. Vex could be enormous, but if you're, say, a Vengeance Paladin, you might have advantage already thanks to Vow of Enmity.

There are also other, non-damage things to consider. Reach weapons have the very helpful advantage of not forcing you to get into melee with foes with a normal melee range. If you're persnickity about things like somatic components, using a single two-handed weapon might be better than dual-wielding, as one of your hands will be free when you're not in the middle of attacking (though the new rules on drawing and stowing weapons might make this less of an issue).

And then there's which weapons you actually find. In the Curse of Strahd game I played in a few years ago, I'd been intending to go Polearm Master with my Paladin at first, but then we got a +2 Greatsword and I was the only one who could reasonably use it, so instead I took Great Weapon Master at level 8 (very shortly before the campaign kind of fell apart).

As a DM, I'd generally try to ensure that if someone took a feat for a particular weapon type, I'd try to ensure that there were such weapons to acquire (I'm really hoping we get more non-sword magic weapons, because it feels like 90% of the magic weapons in the 2014 DMG are swords). But if someone is running a published adventure strictly by the book, it might be easier to take some of these feats than others.

Ok, How Much Can We Pull With Conjure Minor Elementals?

 The "Conjure" spells from the Player's Handbook were mostly changed to be more table-friendly. Now, if you want to put another creature on the battlefield to fight alongside you, you're mostly going to be using the updated versions of the "Summon" spells from Tasha's (which did get a few minor tweaks). The Conjure spells, which used to send players digging through the Monster Manual (or, for those who knew the overpowered options, might have you summon a bunch of Pixies who could then polymorph the party into T-Rexes).

It's certainly an open question of whether these are nerfs or buffs. The Gruul Storm Sorcerer in my Ravnica game decided not to convert to the new system in large part because it would lose him the ability to summon a number of creatures he's used as mounts (I think Summon Dragon is, unlike Summon Draconic Spirit, not actually available to Sorcerers).

But the spell causing a big controversy is Conjure Minor Elementals - a spell that appears to be so powerful that there are some who assume it will get errata to reduce its power.

Here's how it works:

As an action, you conjure a kind of swarm of elemental spirits that swirl around you in a 15-foot emanation. The emanation is difficult terrain for your enemies, but the biggest deal here is that when you hit with an attack against an enemy within that emanation, you deal an extra 2d8 damage (of various elemental damage types, your choice). And I think it lasts a minute.

This is, I think, at base level relatively fair, but where it blows up is in its scaling: the spell is 4th level, but every level above 4, you add 2d8 to the damage.

Meaning that, upcast to only 6th level (which is, fair enough, a very limited spell slot) you're looking at 6d8 extra damage on every hit.

It's insanely powerful, but if we assume that it doesn't get banned by many tables, what is the build that can best take advantage of it?

As I see it, there are two ways we can push its damage up - more attacks and upcasting.

Now, Eldritch Knight Fighters can take this spell at level 17, when they get their 4th level spells. Their scaling here, though, only gets one more attack in at level 20, meaning on a straight-class build, we're getting a potential extra 8d8 per turn. We could, of course, Action Surge to double that, getting us 16d8 on a subsequent turn (though I think I'd be more tempted to action surge on the turn I cast it to make use of the damage immediately and also minimize the chance I drop concentration on it before I get some benefit from it.

The Fighter does also get another advantage here: if we have a dual-wield build (which I will say I like less for a Fighter than a Paladin, Ranger, or Paladin because the additional attacks Fighters get benefit more from something like Great Weapon Master) with the Dual Wielder feat and an off-hand weapon with Nick (the latter being, in my mind, basically a prerequisite for the former) we could make 5 attacks with our action and a 6th with our bonus action at level 20. Thus, that 2d8 becomes 12d8 (or 54 on average). If we were going GWM instead, we'd be getting only 8d8, but also 24 additional damage, for an average of 60.

But let's think of other possibilities.

Again, part of the spell's power is its upcasting. Pure EKs will never have the spell slots to cast it at higher levels.

The next obvious option would be the Valor Bard. As a martial subclass for a pure caster class, they'll get a bit of the best of both worlds.

In the Bard's case, we'll assume they are leaning heavily into the martial side of things, and will have picked up the Weapon Master feat along with the Dual Wielder feat to allow them to fight with something like a Shortsword and Scimitar, and make two attacks with the Shortsword and one with the Scimitar with an action, and then a second hit with the Scimitar as a bonus action.

That means four attacks per turn, but we'll absolutely need to make it through a turn concentrating on the spell before we can do it (with the exception, I guess, of opportunity attacks or other reaction attacks).

So, after at turn of set-up, we can potentially get four attacks for a total of 8d8 damage out of the spell when cast at its base level (which Bards will get way earlier... but not at level 7, but rather at level 10, when we get Magical Secrets, as this isn't inherently a Bard spell).

So, this falls behind the EK, but we're also at a way lower level. But what about upcasting?

Essentially, this just becomes a progression every two levels - 8d8 becomes 16d8 if we cast it with a 5th level slot, then 24d8 with a 6th level slot - by the time we're in tier 4, with a 9th level slot, we're looking at 12d8 per hit, giving us 48d8, or 216 damage in a single turn.

And here, the question of upcasting versus getting more attacks obviously favors upcasting.

Now, lest you think I've forgotten them, we should also mention the Bladesinger Wizard, who seems like a potential option in all of this. Bladesinger will of course get this earlier than the Bard, and contrary to my assumptions, it does not appear that there is any restriction on dual-wielding (though you could run into some issues regarding having a hand free for somatic or material components, but I think War Caster is likely to be part of your build here.)

But what about multiclassing?

Fighters' Extra Attack feature doesn't become any better than other classes' until level 11, which means our spell progression will still be rather slow. An EK adds a third of their Fighter level rounded down to their total spellcaster level, meaning if we put 11 levels into the class, we are getting only 3 caster levels (we could do one extra level and pick up an additional feat and get 4 caster levels out of it).

Still, if we multiclassed with a Bladesinger (we could also do so with a Valor Bard, but it might be beneficial for all our spells to work with the same stat) by level 20, we could have either Fighter 11/Wizard 9 (giving us a total of 12 caster levels, allowing for 6th level spells) or Fighter 12/Wizard 8 (which also gives us 12 caster levels - we won't be able to cast 5th level Wizard spells, but if we're really just focusing on upcasting this, we should be ok - this will also leave us with 6 feats compared with 5).

So, at level 20, we'd be able to get three attacks in and cast the spell at 6th level. With Nick and Dual-Wielder (both pretty easy to get thanks to our Fighter levels) we're talking really 5 attacks in a turn (and it can even be the turn we cast the spell thanks to Action Surge). At 6th level that's 6d8 per attack and thus we're looking at 30d8 potential damage from the spell (135 damage).

Thus, I think it's still technically better to go with a pure caster all the way, but I will say that there's a benefit to this multiclass build: because our first level is Fighter, we have Con save proficiency. And we're picking up War Caster anyway to be able to cast spells while holding our weapons. Losing concentration on this spell would be pretty devastating, so it might be worth taking the hit to your damage.

That said, if we are really talking about maximizing damage, it does seem that going pure caster is better than getting more attacks from a Fighter - at least in terms of maximizing the damage of this spell.

2024 Update Test Drive Impressions

 Tonight, after being away for a month, I was able to get three of my regular D&D players, with the intention of testing out updated builds for their existing 17th-level characters.

We had an Artillerist Artificer, an Ancestral Guardian Barbarian, and a Storm Sorcerer.

Ultimately, it was really only the Barbarian who changed much - the Artificer, of course, didn't get an update in the new rules, and my Sorcerer player decided he didn't really want to convert the character, so stuck with his existing version.

To have a little extra fun, I sent them against the previewed update of the Ancient Green Dragon.

These are characters who, over a 4+ year campaign, have acquired a lot of powerful magic items - the Artificer, who has both the equivalent of a Tome of Clear Thought and an Ioun Stone of Mastery, and, thanks to Spell Sniper and Elemental Adept now giving a point of Intelligence each (or other mental stats, but obviously for this character it was Int) freed up a spot for Skill Expert, which they then put into Arcana, giving them a +20.

In other words, three characters was plenty against this CR 22 monster.

The dragon was fun to play - though it might have been nice to have some means of escaping once surrounded and flanked - they burned their penultimate turn just disengaging and running, but couldn't outrun the Barbarian (who has a modified Sword of Zariel, essentially).

The real highlight, of course, was the Barbarian and his use of Brutal Strikes, which turned out to be really effective - at a +14 to hit with his attacks, losing the advantage from Reckless Attack wasn't too bad (I also ruled that other sources of advantage still worked, which seems fair, but also meant that once he was flanking, my dragon was in a tough spot).

The downside, I think, is that converting a high-level character means a lot of catch-up. We spent about half the session just building the Artificer and Barbarian in D&D Beyond (neither player had been using it before).

And there can be a lot to keep track of, between weapon mastery effects like Sap and the various debuffs from Brutal Strikes - though I imagine as we become more familiar with these, it'll go smoother.

Ultimately, what I really want to do is start a campaign from level 1 with these new rules, but I felt and feel it is important to let players get their hands on the new stuff and try it out.

I'm a little sad that the Sorcerer is not sold on the new version of various spells - he cited Conjure Animals and Counterspell as big sore points (personally, I hate the old Counterspell and actually proposed something nearly identical to the new version, but if we get more monsters like the Ancient Green Dragon who can both cast a spell and do other things on their turn, I'm actually less worried about the old version). It would have been nice to see how things like Innate Sorcery might have affected the fight.

Of course, this is only some of my players.

My rule will be that no one is forced to convert, which does mean I'll have to deal with multiple versions of certain spells and features, but it doesn't seem fair to force anyone into playing a character that's not the same as the one they had before (I've already had to deal with the Volo's and Monsters of the Multiverse versions of the Goblin, and it hasn't been too much of a problem).

I'm very eager to try out the new rules as a player, too. For now that's likely to mean just converting existing characters, but damn if I don't want to play the new version of the Monk.

Also, boss monsters, especially at high levels, aren't ever going to feel like the kind of threat they should be without a dungeon leading up to them full of resource-draining challenges. I'll take the fact that I bloodied the Barbarian as a win.

Finally Doing My Shadowlands Raid Roundup

 BFA and Shadowlands were both periods in WoW where I was just not doing much in the way of raiding, even on LFR. The tuning of LFR's difficulty has always been a kind of question: how much to they actually want players to struggle, and how much of it should be essentially the "normal dungeon" level, where the most basic kind of competence is all that is required to succeed?

Personally, I think LFR in particular should be smooth and easy. And I think they kind of nailed the right difficulty in Aberrus and Amirdrassil - it wasn't that you'd never wipe, but it was only if your raid truly ignored the mechanics of a fight.

Anyway, I think that it was just a tad more difficult in BFA, and on top of that I was getting pretty burnt out, hating Azerite Armor, etc.

I wound up only doing enough of the Battle of Dazar'alor to finish the Horde side of the story campaign (which meant basically just running the final wing on my Shaman) and then didn't even set foot in the Eternal Palace. I did come back for Ny'alotha, but for whatever reason never got around to the final wing.

(I'll note that I haven't been doing Nerub'ar Palace as much on LFR, though in this case it's largely because I, frankly, outgear it thanks to Delves.)

Anyway, Shadowlands was an expansion I was more into than BFA, and I did all of Castle Nathria on a couple characters. But it was shortly into Sanctum of Domination that the whole scandal at Blizzard broke, and I found myself less motivated to play while I reckoned with that. So I wound up only doing the first wing of Sanctum and then, like the Eternal Palace, didn't set foot in Zereth Mortis - though this latter was odd, as I did come back for that patch. I think I just felt anxious about stepping into LFR.

The general rule is that you can pretty easily solo raids that are two expansions ago. In the end-of-expansion doldrums of Dragonflight, I finally went back and got through the BFA raids I'd missed (I still think the first part of Ny'alotha really nails the "cyclopean architecture" of cosmic horror). But just today, I finally did what I could of the Shadowlands raids.

There are a couple hiccups in Sanctum of Domination. First, there's a pull before the Eye of the Jailer fight where you need to draw some guys from the opposite side of a big spell effect that knocks you back. Earlier, when I tried to solo either Heroic or Normal on my DK, I was able to use his Venthyr Door of Shadows to cross the gap, but my paladin main had no way to do so.

Luckily, though, I had already done that wing when it was current, and I was doing it all on LFR (which is also convenient for giving you places to pause) so I just skipped ahead. Unfortunately, I then had an issue on Kel'thuzad, who requires you to go into his phylactery to defeat him, but if the main room is empty he despawns. So, I just had to leave him undefeated.

I know this is like three or four years out of date, but boy the Sylvanas fight is bonkers.

Sepulcher of the First Ones I really feel a lot of regret about not doing when it was current. The aesthetic of Zereth Mortis is genuinely unlike anything I've ever seen in WoW. I don't know what it is about it, but I feel like there's a kind of slick, 1960's vibe to it, whether it's the colors or the simple geometry.

Lorewise, of course, the "First Ones" really complicates and convolutes what we know before (muddying the waters by giving us even more ancient and powerful beings than the Titans who also have an oddly technological expression).

I'm really curious to see if and how they'll manage to sort out the cosmic stuff - personally, I love fantasy that gets weird and otherworldly, but I suspect they're going to get more mileage out of the nuances and complications of "hey, you know how earlier the Light and the Titans were generally seen as the ultimate forces of good? The truth might be more complicated" than this whole idea of... kind of meta-Titans.

For instance, it feels like Dragonflight and War Within are both really emphasizing a reckoning with whether the Titans were really all that benevolent in what they did to Azeroth - the Dragons coming to realize that their roles were kind of forced upon them, and the Earthen beginning to realize that the rigidity of their Titan edicts is just not suited to the dynamics of the world they live in.

Mechanically, of course, I can only kind of guess at how these fights would work - I liked the Fate-Scribe one in Sanctum where you had to align a bunch of code wheels. And I had heard about the one in Sepulcher that you have to chase across a huge map, which I somehow expected to be faster movement and a lot of starting and stopping, rather than the continual thing it was (also, I got it down about halfway down its path - on a tank spec).

I think it's a shame that Shadowlands really suffered from a combination of Covid, Blizzard's big scandal, and perhaps a bit of convolution to its story (which might have been the fault of one of the prominent people at Blizzard whose actions were among the most atrocious).

I sure hope that the people working at that company are doing better now - the scandal has kind of receded into the background, especially given the success (at least as I perceive it) of Dragonflight and what looks like it will be a well-received follow-up (have we ever had two expansions people almost universally liked in a row? Maybe Burning Crusade and Wrath? Though I don't know if BC has aged as well in peoples' minds - of course, it's early to judge War Within, but it's definitely got a strong first patch).

Basically, the concept of Shadowlands - a peek into another realm of existence, and giving the forces of death equal footing with other cosmic forces like the Void and the Fel - was something I was very into, and there's a ton of stuff to really recommend that expansion, but I don't think anyone could argue it wasn't flawed in many ways.

But it's cool to go back and visit, and to see things I missed back then.