Forgive Me My Weakness: War Within Early Access

 So, because tomorrow (the actual launch of the expansion) marks my second day of being on new-uncle duty with my sister's baby, on top of the fact that my roommate accidentally got the Epic Edition and had access to early access, I caved and shelled out the 40 bucks to get to play a bit before I would be spending most of my days for the next month or so cleaning bottles and changing diapers.

I don't feel great about this - while they've been good about locking certain level-cap content behind the actual release tomorrow, this leans a little closer to pay-to-win than I'm comfortable with. Any time you see a service divided into different classes, the cheap option starts to get worse in quality (dear lord, have you been to Disneyland lately?) So yeah, that's me, I'm part of the problem.

I got my main to 80 in less than 24 hours.

Yeah, the main story campaign is pretty quick - I actually got through it around level 77, with minimal side quests. There's a marked transformation in how a zone's quests fit into the story since the early days of WoW - back then, you tended not to have much of a reason to return to an old zone - particularly in Vanilla, before they had heroic dungeons and so there really, truly, was never a reason to go back to a place like Desolace once you were high-enough level not to do Maraudon anymore. But I think basically until... Legion? Maybe BFA? you still got a real sense of closure when you finished the main quests in a zone. Here, I'd argue there's more of a sense of the story quests being a beginning, rather than a culmination.

There are, to be clear, a crapton of side-quests I didn't do, and my plan with my alts is to basically do everything I can in one of the four zones on the first four alts.

My main is a Protection Paladin - frustratingly, I sold his best two-handed weapon so I haven't been able to check out Ret at max level - but I'm planning on probably leveling my Frost (sometimes Blood) DK next, then some order of my Night Elf Havoc Demon Hunter, my Undead Subtlety Rogue - who starred in a recent post about Draw Steel - and my Tauren Enhancement Shaman.

I figure I'll give impressions of the various zones and which alt I intend to take through there.

Spoilers Ahead!

Building a Fury in Draw Steel

 The Fury is essentially Draw Steel's analogue to the Barbarian - a warrior fueled by rage (yes, Rage is their heroic resource, so WoW Warrior players will feel very much at home) who is there to smash things on the front lines. More than any other class, this is a melee-focused character.

Now, I've been toying with a Barbarian concept for D&D for a while now. It's actually partially inspired by Alan Wake II, and specifically a moment in which that game's central villain (sort of) is revealed at the game's... we'll say Plot Point 2, rather than Climax (which is for sure the Dark Ocean Summoning sequence). While our character is going to be a good guy, the image in my head is that when, at least in D&D terms, he goes into a Rage, a dark persona takes over - a being of shadow that essentially makes it look as if someone has scribbled black crayon or pen over the image of him, with only a rough-drawn white mouth and eyes scrawled over his image. (I imagine in the "film" of the campaign, this would be a deliberately incongruous, "non-diagetic" effect, like someone had manually defaced the film reel itself.)

Outside of one subclass, Furies don't really have a "rage mode," though they gain certain benefits as their rage rises.

As I see it, our character is a simple and largely innocent person who has been swept into some kind of plane of shadow (I don't know if Draw Steel will have something equivalent to the Shadowfell, but we could say instead that he's been in the Abyssal Wastes, which are pretty close to D&D's Abyss). Being trapped in that nightmare realm, it was all he could do to try to just barely cling to his mind, and whether this dark persona, "The Smiling Man" emerged as a defense mechanism or is, in fact, some kind of monstrous (perhaps fiendish) passenger that possesses him when things get violent, we're basically looking at someone who is going to fight in a raw and brutal manner.

    Ancestry

I often feel like an Orc Fury is too cliche. Given that we're going for someone who would not obviously be a Fury, I think we'll go fully in the opposite direction: the beauty and grace of a High Elf.

As a high elf, we'll get two features. The first is High Elf Glamor. We get an edge of Presence tests that use Flirt or Persuade skills. (Not sure if this then requires us to have these skills, but I'd assume any check where it would apply, we'll get it.)

We also get Otherworldly Grace, giving us an edge of resistance rolls and any tests that use skills we have from the lore skill group.

    Culture

I feel like I so often default to Urban, as that's kind of my baseline for "normal." But perhaps we'll grab Secluded - perhaps our Fury was initially a novice monk or perhaps a worked on the grounds of some prominent wizard's tower out in the mountains (this could also explain his strength). Indeed, perhaps it was this wizard's experiments that got them trapped in the Abyssal Wastes. So, Secluded will give us a skill from either the interpersonal or lore skills.

Living in an unconventional settlement, I think there's arguments for any of the three Organizations. But if we're in some arcane research institute, we'll go with Bureaucratic, which gives us an Intrigue or Lore skill.

Ok, now we're going to take a big swing (and tie it, perhaps, a little closer to our Alan Wake inspirations) and grab the Creative upbringing. Let's say that the mage we were working for wasn't employing us for labor, but was instead studying the effects of works of art as a means of planar travel (man, we're just making this mage into Emil Hartman, aren't we?) Growing up, we showed a talent for storytelling, and were something of a bard or skald, chronicling legends and myths, or inventing fiction. This gives us the Music or Perform skill, or a skill from the crafting group.

    Career

Yeah, weirdly we're going with Performer (I did also long ago have the idea of a D&D Entertainer Barbarian who would be like a circus performer known as "The Strongest Dwarf in the World," but this goes a very different direction).

This will give us either the Music or Performance skill, plus two skills from the interpersonal skill group.

We also gain 2 renown, which is used in Negotiations.

Finally, we get a Title: Dazzler, which gives us an edge on tests made to influence a creature that has seen us perform a song, dance, or theatrical performance (I'd lobby the Director to allow readings of his prose) for one hour.

    Class

We're a Fury. This starts us off with a hefty 21 Stamina (which I think is the highest of any class) and 15 recoveries (each healing for 7).

Stat-wise, we start with 2s in Might and Agility. I think it makes the most sense for us to take a 1 in both Presence and Reason, but a -1 in Intuition - the low Intuition emphasizes our "lost and confused" vibes that we're probably exhibiting most of the time, but we want a decent Presence for our performances and we're probably pretty knowledgeable having worked as part of this experimental program.

Skill-wise, we get Nature, plus any two skills from exploration or intrigue. So let's pick our skills now:

Intimidate (from Secluded Environment,) Rumors (from Bureaucratic,) then I think we're going to probably grab Music from Creative upbringing, and then Performance, Lie, and Flirt from our Performer career. Finally, our class is granting us Nature, plus... hey, let's lean into being the strong guy and grab Lift and Climb.

Phew.

Now, we need to pick a subclass. I think the Reaver might fit us best.

Our Heroic Resource is Rage. When combat begins, we get an amount of Rage equal to our victories, , and at the start of each round, we gain 1d3 Rage. Rage disappears outside of combat.

Furies have a feature called Growing Rage, which gives us various benefits based on the amount of Rage we start each of our turns with, which will be based on our subclass (we'll cover that in a moment).

We also get Mighty Leaps, which allow us to succeed on any Might test to jump. Fun! We can still roll if we want to get a reward result.

As a Reaver, we get Primordial Cunning. If we would push a target with forced movement, we can slide them instead (meaning we can move them in any horizontal direction instead of just away from us). Our Primordial Cunning grows as we gain more rage (the Growing Rage feature).

At 2 Rage, we gain an edge on Agility tests and resistance rolls (meaning, I think, as a high elf, we'll get a double edge on resistance rolls, which is awesome) and, once per turn, when we slide a target or move adjacent to a target during a shift (a movement that doesn't provoke opp attacks) we can deal weapon damage to the target equal to our agility score.

At 4 Rage, once per turn when we slide a target or move adjacent to a target during a shift, we can deal weapon damage equal to twice our ability score.

At 6 Rage, we have a double edge on Agility tests and resistance rolls (the latter admittedly being less exciting to us... though can we still get a double edge this way if we have a bane?)

Being a Reaver, we get Uncanny Dodge as a Triggered Action. If we're targeted by a damaging area of effect, we can use this to shift 2 squares (remember that this might let us do some damage from the previous feature,) and if we get outside of the effect's area, we ignore it. Otherwise, we take half damage. We can spend 1 Rage to share this effect with an adjacent ally - a pretty powerful defensive and protective ability.

Now, we pick a signature ability.

Here, because we get some benefits from pushing foes, Brutal Slam seems like a really good choice. This does 3, 8, or 12 damage and pushes 1, 2, or 4 squares to a single target in reach. And being a Reaver, we instead slide them that distance and do that extra damage if we've got some rage stored up. Really can't argue with that. (Admittedly, Impaling Strike also feels like an on-brand choice, but we'll take the synergy).

We then pick a 3-Rage ability, and I'm sorry but Your Entrails Are Your Extrails! is so silly and over-the-top that we've got to take it. This hits one target for 6, 9, or 14 damage, and on tiers 2 and 3 causes bleeding on the target until a nonminion creature adjacent to them uses and action to staunch the wound. While bleeding the target takes 4 extra damage at the start of each of our turns.

Finally, we grab our 5-Rage ability. Primordial Shockwave is very tempting, given that it pushes many enemies. Alternatively, though, Dying Blow is a wonderfully edgy option. I think given the extra damage we can add to Primordial Shockwave, though, makes it the winner here - this hits all enemies in a 5x1 line within 1 square of us (so basically coming out of us) for 4, 5, or 8 damage and pushes them 2, 4, or 6 squares, pushing each target one at a time, starting with the closest to us. Again, our ability to slide instead of pushing makes it very easy for us to use this to really rearrange the battlefield and also add potentially 2 or 4 more damage to this depending on how much Rage we start with. In our best-case scenario, that lets us do 60 damage with this attack.

    Kit

Here, I think I want to go Pugilist - I don't see this as a guy who has some axe he's taken back from the Abyssal Wastes, only deep trauma and this dark presence. So, this will give us +6 Stamina (taking us to 27, so our recoveries heal us for 9) and +2 to speed (I think the default is 5?) Then, our Stability increases by 1, and we get +1 bonuses to all three tiers of melee weapon damage (which appears to apply to every one of our abilities).

Our Kit Signature ability is Let's Dance, which is a melee attack that deals 4, 9, or 13 damage, and on tiers 2 and 3, we can slide the target 1 or 2 squares, respectively. We can also shift into any square our target leaves after we slide them. (And again, this should work well with our Growing Rage Reaver feature).

    Now, as a caveat, I think you could make the argument that this character might fit better as a Stormwight rather than a Reaver - the Stormwight has a transformation element right there in the core of the subclass with their Stormwight Kits. These are more nature-and-animal-themed than what I'm going for, but could potentially be reskinned. It would also probably cause me to make a lot of different choices for abilities. I'd be totally down for building a werewolf-like Vuken Stormwight character, but I think we're ok sticking with Reaver for this build.

Having now done a build for each of these classes, I'm encouraged by the fact that I think I could have a lot of fun playing at level l. One of D&D's issues is that the numbers have to be so low at level 1 in order to give characters room to grow. Having only two spell slots at level 1, or three at level 2, really means you don't feel like much of a spellcaster until you get to level 3.

The price, of course, is complexity. All of these classes have about equal complexity (the Conduit might be a little higher just because they have essentially two subclasses). And it's a little closer to a somewhat higher-level character in D&D - which is good news for those who feel a little hamstrung playing D&D at low levels, but I wonder if it's not very friendly to newbies to the genre.

In terms of pure cool factor, I'm really happiest with the Shadow - I'd definitely want to play the build I came up with in the first of these posts.

I will say that having a digital toolset - a kind of Draw Steel equivalent of D&D Beyond - would be very appealing. With heroic resources, recoveries, and stamina to track constantly (you're going to be taking damage basically every round) digitizing the bookkeeping would be very helpful (and not great for my ADHD friends who find computerized tools like these too distracting).

What I have not done, of course, is run any encounters with the monsters. It looks like the folks at MCDM have gotten feedback that running them is a little over-complex for Directors, so we'll see how that evolves. I do think that not having a strict initiative order is something that... could be cool but might also become a real hassle for those not meticulously keeping track of which round everyone's on.

Again, I think this could all be really freaking cool, but I'll need to see it in action (I know there are some actual plays, but I'm a bit spoiled by watching mostly actual plays with actors and comedians who really make watching compelling, and I haven't seen much of that so far.)

Early Access Begins, for Like 40 Dollars

 My best friend, who also plays WoW, accidentally bought the Epic Edition of the War Within, and so was able to start the expansion about 48 minutes ago. I, a mere plebeian who got the standard edition, will have to wait until Monday. This might be a little complicated, as I'll also be in an AirBnB in New York, where I'm going to spend a month helping my sister and my brother in law with my newborn nephew (the AirBnB is so that I will be an adult who gets a full night's sleep).

On top of that, my dad will be staying with me for a week, so for the first time in a long time, I probably won't be able to go hardcore into leveling my main from the jump.

It's giving me flashbacks to 2007, when I could't find a copy of Burning Crusade at the Greenwich Village game stores. Granted, at the time I didn't have any characters at level 60, so the only thing I'd have been able to do at the time that required the expansion was to create my first Draenei and Blood Elf characters.

Unfortunately, as much affection as I have for a game like WoW, I do think it operates partially on FOMO - you feel pressured to keep up in leveling and gearing so that you don't miss the window to experience certain bits of content. I still haven't seen the inside of Sepulcher of the First Ones, and it's not like I could easily jump in a queue to run it now on LFR mode. (I don't know what the testers have reported, but I really appreciated the easier difficulty of Aberrus and Amirdrassil on LFR, though I know some heroic raiders felt they burned through the content too quickly because the difficulty was too low across the board).

Especially as someone who mains a tank, there's a lot of extra pressure to get as well-geared as you can as quickly as you can, because when a DPS player shows up who vastly outgears you, you can start having threat problems. Indeed, it's tough when you primarily tank LFR and someone shows up with even just Normal raid gear as your co-tank, and you suddenly have to start desperately fighting for threat on a boss because they're just going whole-hog and stealing the boss' attention back even when their debuff hasn't fallen off. (PSA to tanks: remember that it's your responsibility not to pull threat if you're not supposed to have it!)

I'm hoping that, especially with Follower Dungeons being a thing, it should be a little easier to get one's foot in the door gearing-wise at max level. Granted, generally speaking heroic dungeons have been a pretty quick step to graduate into as of recent expansions. I'm also very curious to see how rewarding Delves are.

Anyway, we'll see the degree to which I can play in NYC (I mean, the city should be fine - it's where I first started playing the game in college).

D&D Direct 2024 Speculations

 The build-up to the new Core Rulebooks has been a years-long process. I believe they were announced in a D&D Direct event in 2022, and with the new PHB coming in less than a month (and obviously already being out in the wild,) there has been a question: what comes next?

The safe bet is that the general cadence of D&D releases is going to be similar to what it has been - usually a big adventure and some kind of adventure anthology, with maybe a campaign setting and a supplement in the vein of Bigby's Glory of the Giants.

I'm sure they'll keep publishing adventures - this is the most "consumable" content that WotC can put out, so they're incentivized to keep publishing them and DMs at least are incentivized to keep buying them (even if, if you're like me, you have only ever used them for inspiration, rather than actually running them).

But what kind of adventures might we see?

As I understand it, many of 5th Editions earlier adventures were kind of reboots of classic modules from the early days of the game. Curse of Strahd was obviously the updated version of the original Ravenloft module, but also Princes of the Apocalypse was kind of a new take on the Temple of Elemental Evil. I think Strom King's Thunder was kind of a take on Against the Giants, and Tomb of Annihilation made an actual adventure out of Tomb of Horrors.

There are, of course, 5 decades of content to pull from (well, we might exclude the fifth of those decades as that was also 5th Edition) but I also think we're going to be seeing more original stuff, with the anthologies letting us touch on the older adventures like we got with Infinite Staircase.

The big shift, I think, is that we're probably not going to be as focused on the Forgotten Realms. The campaign setting presented in the new DMG is Greyhawk, and while I don't know that we're just going to exclusively have adventures set there, I imagine we might see adventures in a number of different settings. D&D wants to push the idea of the Multiverse (though on a personal level, I think that thanks largely to Marvel, the notion of a "Multiverse" is now more associated with alternate versions of the same settings and characters, whereas I think D&D is trying to push for the idea of multiple worlds and planes - a concept I find far more interesting) and that might mean that we're going to have adventures set in Greyhawk, Eberron, and if we're lucky, possibly Ravenloft, Spelljammer, and Planescape (we do, after all, have a Ravenloft adventure already, and it's one of the most popular adventures WotC has published).

Next, let's move on to rules books.

To me, the most important books to add to your collection after you have the Core Rulebooks are the rules-expansion books, Xanathar's Guide to Everything and Tasha's Cauldron of Everything. While not strictly necessary (and surely we'll have a period where players might gravitate toward the PHB options for their characters given that it's the newest thing).

There is some speculation on how D&D moving forward will address the addition of new classes. In the 10 years of 5E, only a single new class was added to the game (though thanks to its free presence on D&D Beyond, Matt Mercer's Blood Hunter is almost a semi-canonical class as well, but not one that I've ever seen at my tables outside of my own playing one for a one-shot).

The Artificer is recent enough that there aren't really many books that could have expanded upon it by adding new subclasses or infusions, but at least so far in 5E, the rule has basically been that any book outside of the core rulebooks must be entirely usable with only the core rulebooks. Thus, if an adventure uses monsters previously published in Volo's or Mordenkainen's, they need to reprint those monsters in the adventure rather than telling DMs to refer to a book they might not have.

The problem is that if we apply this principle to Artificers, it means that any time they want to add something to the class, they need to basically reprint the entire class again. We saw this in Tasha's, where the class, originally introduced in Eberron: Rising From the Last War, was reprinted and had the Armorer subclass added.

Here's my proposal:

I would like to see a rules-expansion book that inaugurates the return of "Advanced Dungeons & Dragons." Books in the vein of Xanathar's Guide to Everything or Tasha's Cauldron of Everything would then be, essentially, the Advanced Core Rulebooks (basically, the three books from the rules expansion box set, which also included Monsters of the Multiverse).

Then, you'd essentially have the "Basic D&D" releases, which might be primarily adventure books, and would stick with the idea that the only thing you need to use them are the three core rulebooks. Then, you would have an "Advanced D&D" line that would require the Advanced Core books. New Advanced Core books could come out when a new class got added to the mix, but maybe campaign settings that might want to have an Artificer subclass (or a whatever subclass) would simply be Advanced - you don't need to have the Dark Sun campaign setting book to use other AD&D products, but you'll want The Tinkerer's Workshop of Everything book in order to have the revised Artificer to use with Dark Sun's Waste Scrapper subclass.

Now, they could also just quietly not call attention to this idea - have a new book full of subclasses that just happens to have a section on Artificers, with maybe a little box text that lets readers know where they can find the base class. Actually, this is almost certainly a better approach to it than this whole separate product line thing.

Next, let's talk campaign settings.

I think the box-set approach used with Spelljammer and Planescape was a bust. As a customer, I resented the fact that I was paying more for what amounted to fewer pages of content, and in the case of Spelljammer, a particularly thinly-sketched campaign setting that wasted pages upon pages on ship deck plans.

While the Planescape set did it better - I particularly liked getting a write-up of each of the Gate Towns in the Outlands (the original box set from 2E didn't actually cover all of them) - I think that the setting was ill-served by the format. If you read the 2nd Edition stuff (which was an entire product line with adventures and further lore documents - the Planes of Law, Planes of Conflict, and Planes of Chaos ones being very cool) there's an immense amount of really cool stuff here that I'd love to see with a modern coat of paint. But I think even within 5th Edition, earlier setting books like those for Eberron and Ravnica really gave people more meat to chew on.

I still think that the gold standard for campaign setting books is Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft, which really felt like it thoughtfully took its time not only to give you a sense of each of its featured Domains of Dread, but even suggested how an adventure in each location could feel and function differently.

I don't like to take a cynical perspective on things, but I wonder if the box sets were pushed by the corporate side of things, which wanted to produce smaller products that looked bigger so they could justify charging more money for them.

And when I get a campaign setting book, I don't want a full-length adventure. These are books for DMs who like creating their own stories, so the older format of just having a quick level-1 one-shot adventure is all you need. Planescape, for example, felt like it was putting a lot of details into its location descriptions purely to set up things for the adventure, whereas I really want a more general overview with hooks that I can be the one to figure out how to use in a fun way.

We'll see, of course - it's just a shame to me that two settings that were more off-beat and weird (and thus, in my mind, more interesting) got this kind of half-baked presentation.

However, if there's one thing I really want to see it's a truly new setting - every 5th Edition campaign setting book with one exception was something that was already established as either a D&D property or something else already established by Wizards of the Coast (the latter being Ravnica, Theros, and Strixhaven).

The sole exception here was Explorer's Guide to Wildemount, a collaboration with Critical Role (prior to the creation of Darrington Press) that, in all honesty, might actually be a more effective campaign setting book than any other in the edition (I think I just like Ravenloft more because I'm the fantasy fan who is ready to move on from classic medieval fantasy).

Now, on WotC's end, they had very little work to do, creatively, because the setting had been established already by Matt Mercer and his collaborators, and he already had the setting in a place where he had been running Critical Role's second campaign on that continent, and the world was already established in their first campaign (there was also already a 3rd party campaign guide for Tal'dorei, which they'd essentially reboot and revamp with their Tal'dorei Campaign Setting Reborn, one of Darrington Press' first releases).

5E has introduced some new locations - the Radiant Citadel has a lot of potential going forward to be a fantastic adventure hub with interesting lore - but I'd be really curious to see what they might come up with as a truly new and unique setting. Eberron is now about 20 years old, but it really brought a new look, feel, and aesthetic to the game (I haven't actually played a game set there, but I'd be very happy to do so). Surely the game could use another infusion of originality.

Last, speculation-wise, I'm sure we're also going to get a lot of announcements of tie-in stuff I couldn't give the least shit about, but are important for shareholders to know about.

Anyway, I suspect that the announcement will probably just lay out the next year or two of releases - probably with greater specificity for the stuff coming in 2025 and then maybe just title announcements for books coming out in 2026.

Building a Conduit in Draw Steel

 The Conduit is Draw Steel's divine spellcaster class, pretty analogous to the Cleric. The name, of course, presents the class as a means by which divine magic is wrought upon the world.

I'll confess that while I often like playing Paladins (the yet-to-be-released Censor being Draw Steel's equivalent. How is it that I only now realized this game has my initials? Though having a Hungarian name I typically write my initials as DSz, because that's the convention there when you have a compound consonant) I'm generally not really into playing priest-like classes. I've never been drawn much to playing a healer, but let's see how the Conduit feels.

As usual, I try to find outside-the-box backstories. We've already done a kind of Shamanistic wise man with our Elementalist. I think we're going to lean into the idea that this character was decidedly not raised to be a priest or cleric of some sort. I really like the idea of divine spellcasters being a sort of prophet of their gods, and that role is not really chosen by the individual.

I like my divinity mysterious. And I also think that one of the world-design cliches that a lot of fantasy creators fall into is letting antipathy toward organized religion bleed over into antipathy toward the gods themselves. For certain it's a valid path, but in my mind, it seems more likely that if a god of good virtues has an oppressive church dedicated to them, an interesting story would be to see the god send a prophet to disrupt that, overthrow that church, and either establish a reconstructed one or perhaps alter fundamentally the nature of worship in that world.

Thus, it might actually be because our hero was not a member of the church/temple/religious organization for that deity that they were chosen to channel the power.

    Ancestry

One of the original ancestries to Draw Steel is the Memonek, a people made of what we, on our plane, would consider inorganic materials. Memoneks are from Axiom, the plane of utmost law. In our case, we're probably sent to reform a church that has taken its mission of law and order to the point where they've actually become repressive - righteousness so zealous that it metes out disproportionate, retributive punishment and fears impurities to the point that innocents are killed on the mere suspicion of evil. Our Conduit was chosen because their cerebral nature prevents zeal from clouding their judgment.

Our Ancestry features are the following:

Lightweight gives us a weight of 3 and a speed of 7 (one lower speed than humans, but two extra squares of movement). Our stability decreases by 2, which means it might be negative and thus we get pushed even farther when we're force-moved. (We'll be the pinball Conduit!)

We also get Keeper of Order - when a creature adjacent to us makes a Power Roll, we can remove an edge or a bane from the roll as a free triggered action once per round.

    Culture

Now, conceptually, where is our Conduit from? I imagine they maybe aren't personally from Axiom - they've been in the mortal world for a few generations. But I suspect that they're from a very orderly, buttoned-down, and probably dull but safe background. I think maybe they were some kind of accountant or scribe. Maybe they weren't even aware of the abuses being committed by the church, and it was only through some rude interruption of their daily routine that they were first awakened to this truth. Maybe they were doing accounts as some kind of contractor for an Inquisition-like atrocity, only slowly recognizing their own complicity. Upon realizing the evil being committed, they had a divine revelation (or perhaps struck out against one of the oppressors with unexpected divine magic).

With a decidedly white-collar role, we're going to choose the Urban environment, which gives us one skill from either Interpersonal or Intrigue groups.

Our Organization is most certainly Bureaucratic. This gives us either an Intrigue or Lore skill.

Finally, our Upbringing was probably Academic, giving us one Lore skill.

    Career

Now, weirdly enough, this heroic fantasy game doesn't have an obvious career for "desk jockey," so our best option is probably Sage - which I realize we used with our Elementalist, but I think this is really our best option.

We get two Lore skills (which we'll have plenty of).

We get another language, and then 100 Project points.

Finally, we get Expert Sage, which allows us to roll twice if we make a test as part of a research or crafting project that uses one of our Lore skills.

    Class

Obviously, we're going with Conduit.

As a Conduit, we get 2s in both Intuition and Presence. Being fairly lore-heavy, we might want to take a 1 in Reason and then we'll dump Might and Agility to 0. In fact, if we wanted to really play up their nebbishness, we could even take -1s to both of those and thus get a 2 in Reason. But I'm sort of allergic to having multiple negative characteristics, so we'll stick with the original plan.

We have 18 Stamina, and 8 recoveries (each healing for 6). We'll check this again when we pick a Kit.

We also get two skills from the Lore or Interpersonal groups. So, now we should choose our skills.

We'll pick up Religion and Culture from the Sage career. We'll grab Conceal Object from Urban. We'll then grab Eavesdrop from Bureaucratic (they've gotten good at keeping an ear out for rumors at the office) and History from Academic. Finally, we pick up Lead and Empathize as a direct result of the influence of our god, who wants us to be able to speak to the people and show them a new way.

Now, here's the really weird thing for Conduits: we actually kind of pick two subclasses, creating a kind of menu from which to draw features. While there are canonical deities to Draw Steel's primary setting, we'll be using one of the deities I created for my D&D setting, Doros - a god of light, the sun, and just leadership (often more narrowly interpreted as a god of kings, but actually more likely to bless a robust and free liberal democracy). Doros would probably have the Sun, Life, Protection, and Love domains in this system. Our Conduit picks two of these domains to focus on - we'll say that, given the nature is to reform a corrupt church, we'll have them take Protection and Life.

Our Heroic Resource is Piety. Like all such resources, we gain Piety equal to our Victories at the start of combat. Each round, we gain 2 Piety. We also have the Prayer ability, a maneuver, to potentially get more. (Notably, we don't seem to lose any Piety between fights - we'll see how possible it is to stockpile insane amounts of this).

Prayer is a maneuver we get. We make an Intuition Power roll. On a tier 1 result, we just get 1d6 damage and the bleeding condition until the end of turn. On tier 2, we get 1 Piety. On tier 3, we get 2 piety and also get to choose a Domain effect (which we'll get into.

Notably, the first time during an encounter we use Prayer, we have a double-edge on it (so no chance to take damage - I don't think Draw Steel has critical failures). The second time, we just have an edge. The third time, we take a bane, and the fourth and subsequent times we use it, we get a double bane (though here I think a crit overcomes that).

Now, let's look at our Domain effects. With Protection and Life, the possible effects are thus:

Life: We, or an ally within 10 squares, can spend 2 recoveries and end any effects on them that have a duration of EoT or are ended by a resistance roll. Alternatively, we or an ally within 10 squares gains 20 temporary Stamina (I'm not totally clear on whether they get the healing from these spent recoveries or if it just ends the effects - hopefully the former).

Protection: An ally of our choice within 10 squares gains damage immunity equal to our Intuition score (currently 2) plus our level (currently 1) until the end of our next turn. Depending on how much they're getting hit, this could potentially prevent a ton of damage (and definitely scales up pretty nicely).

Next, we pick a 1st level Domain Feature. Let's pick up Alertness Ward, the Protection benefit. This gives us an each ally within 2 squares of us an edge of tests that use the Alertness feature. We also gain an Exploration skill, which we'll say is Drive, just for fun.

We then get Healing Grace. This is a maneuver with a range of 5 (has the Magic and Ranged tags, so we'll see if our kit affects it) and can target ourselves or an ally. At base, this allows the target to spend a recovery. We can also spend any amount of Piety, and for each spent, we can add one of the following enhancements:

We can target an additional ally within range, we can end one effect on the target with a duration of EoT or that is ended with a resistance roll, a prone target can stand up, or the target can spend an additional recovery.

As a note, one thing I find interesting here is that the healing is still limited by recoveries - outside of combat, there's no reason for you to use these given that a character can just take their Catch Breath action. We're essentially just speeding up the process so that people can do other things.

We also get Pious Force. This is a ranged magic attack action, targeting one creature or object, with a range of 5, and deals 2, 6, or 9 damage.

We next pick out a Triggered Action. We're really focused on defending the innocent, so we'll grab Divine Disruption, the more defensive option. This magic, ranged triggered action (range of 5) targets an enemy when they make an attack (we can use this after we see their result). We put a bane on the attack, and on top of that, we reduce the damage by an amount equal to our Intuition. If we spend 1 Piety, the attack gets a double bane, and the damage to one creature is reduced by twice our Intuition. (A Remasch Demon's Abyssal Strike does 4 damage on a tier 1 attack, so there's a good chance we're fully negating the damage with this).

Next, we pick our Signature Ability.

I've got to say I think I love the flavor of Lightfall, which deals a little damage to all enemies within a 3-cube, but also lets us teleport each ally in the area and ourselves (if we're in the area) to another unoccupied space within the area. It's a somewhat tight space, but it lets you really rearrange things as a signature ability. We're not here for damage - we're here to help set up our allies.

Next, we get our 3-Piety ability.

Well, let's bring the punishment - Punishing Smite has a range of 5 and hits a creature or object for 6, 8, or 13 holy damage. On tier 2, it knocks the target prone, and on tier 3, they can't stand up until EoT. Hey, we've got to punish the hypocrites!

Then, we'll grab our 5-Piety ability.

Well, we've got our wrath. Now let's bring the protection. We'll grab Armor of the Faithful, which can hit 3 allies within 5 squares and give them 10, 15, or 20 temporary stamina (which does, sadly, fade at the end of the encounter). Note that we can't target ourselves with this, but we can put a big absorb shield on potentially the rest of the party.

    Kit

Well, we're going with a Caster Kit, obviously, because everything else we do is magic. I think the only one that really fits our flavor is the Ward Weaver.

This gives us a Stamina bonus of 6, raising our Stamina to 24 (and thus our recoveries heal for 8). We also get a Stability bonus of 1... which, hilariously, brings our Stability up to... a -1. Oh well!

We gain a signature ability called Energy Siphon, which has a range of 8 (better than most of what we can do) and hits a single creature for 2, 6, or 9 psychic damage, but also gives us damage immunity 1, 3, or 5 until the end of our next turn.

Our Kit Ward is Repulsive Ward. When we or an ally within 2 squares of us takes damage from another creature's melee ability, we can push that creature a number of squares equal to our highest characteristic (so 2 for now).

    So, there we have it. Primarily we're going to be preventing damage by giving temp Stamina or reducing damage with Divine Disruption, and we can do a bit of battlefield management with Lightfall.

So, that just leaves the Fury to build. I have to say, doing this has really helped me get a sense of what this game is going to look like. I've still got to figure out exactly how monsters look (especially Minions and Captains) but I really hope to run a playtest at some point.

The Bladelock Dip (and Some Fun Fiddly Stuff with Valor Bards and True Strike)

 It's funny - the subclass for Warlock I've actually played the most is one that I... sort of don't like.

The Hexblade came in with Xanathar's Guide to Everything, and it kind of broke the class. Hexblades come with a couple key abilities: they get what will now be referred to as Medium Armor Training, along with proficiency in Martial Weapons. They also get the Hex Warrior trait, which allows them to designate a weapon (and will automatically apply this to any Pact Weapon with Pact of the Blade) that lacks the two-handed property (again, Pact of the Blade gets around this) to be able to use Charisma rather than Strength or Dexterity when making attack and damage rolls with it.

Pact of the Blade was always part of the Warlock kit, but if you wanted to go with a Bladelock prior to this subclass, you needed to basically decide whether you were going to allow a lower Charisma in order to boost the stat for your weapon, or to kind of just have your pact weapon as a weird back-up option in case you couldn't use Eldritch Blast.

The Hexblade solved one of the big problems with this - you could continue progressing your spellcasting ability while also progressing your weapon ability.

The problem, then, that I had with it, was that it suddenly became the only rational subclass choice if you wanted to go Pact of the Blade. If you wanted to be a weapon-wielding Warlock, you were basically handicapping yourself to go with any other option.

In particular, what then bugged me further was that the flavor of the Hexblade is... weird.

See, in playtesting, there was actually a Warlock Patron that was just straight-up the Raven Queen. Mechanically, it was quite different, but it shared a connection to the Shadowfell that the Hexblade ostensibly also has.

Sentient weapons (and sentient magic items in general) are an established thing across 5E, but the way I've often seen Hexblades played tends to treat the name of the subclass not as the description of the character's patron, but of the Warlock themselves - that you are a Hexblade, which could easily be a name to describe someone who uses dark magic to supplement their martial capabilities.

The new Pact of the Blade liberates us from this subclass. I'm sure people will still take it - it is, after all, still pretty strong. Indeed, I think the oft-overlooked benefit of the Hexblade is its Medium Armor and Shield proficiency. My Hexblade Warlock was actually not a weapon-user - he focused primarily on Eldritch Blast. But with Medium Armor and a Shield, with a mere 14 in Dexterity he was able to have an AC of 19 by the end of our campaign. If it hadn't been for his subclass, he'd be sitting at an AC of 14.

Frankly, I think that the Moderately Armored feat (which will be a general feat, not an origin feat) might be very appealing to any light-armor-wearing spellcaster. While I think Wizards and Sorcerers might find a two-feat investment too much to get a decent AC, Warlocks, Druids, and Bards could be pretty happy starting themselves off with a Dex of 13 and then picking up this feat (which I believe can also boost your Dexterity by a point) to significantly improve their survivability (ironically, Moon Druids might not care very much, because I think their enhanced Wild Shape lets them take an AC of 13+Wisdom if it's better than the animal form, which will essentially give them roughly the equivalent of a heavy-armor-wearing character who doesn't use a shield).

Still, the exciting point about the new Pact of the Blade is that any subclass can pick it up. Personally, I think the idea of a melee-based Archfey Warlock could be really cool, taking advantage of their many free Misty Steps to teleport around the battlefield. Now, really any Warlock who wants to focus on weapon use can start doing so at level 1.

Here's the thing: with Warlocks (and all classes) only getting their subclasses at level 3, the "Hexblade dip" is now a much more significant commitment. But it's also basically pointless, because you still only need one level of Warlock to get the new Pact of the Blade.

And that makes multiclassing pretty simple.

In fairness, this isn't really much different from how it was when Hexblades were introduced - you'll still grab a single level of Warlock and all of a sudden be able to use Charisma for attack and damage rolls.

As before, Paladins and Bards are the most likely to be attracted to this. Paladins, of course, are a true martial class, but Charisma is also very powerful for them, especially when they get Aura of Protection. While a typical Paladin is unlikely to max out their Charisma, taking this single dip will make it easier to leave Strength behind and just stack up Charisma.

Valor Bards, of course, will be particularly well-suited to this.

Now, some caveats:

The Heavy weapon property has been changed to stop discriminating against small species. Rather than getting disadvantage if you're Small, you now need a 13 in Strength for Heavy Melee weapons or a 13 in Dexterity for Heavy Ranged weapons. That is fantastic for your Halfling Barbarian who wanted to wield a Greataxe. But it does mean there's a minimum investment for Bladelocks (and Battle Smith Artificers, for that matter) to get to use these weapons.

I believe you need a separate invocation to use a ranged weapon as your pact weapon, though frankly if I was going to use a ranged weapon as a Warlock, I'd probably just... not and use Eldritch Blast. But this will mean that if you want to use a Maul or a Glaive or the like, you'll need a minimum of 13 Strength.

For Paladins, technically the minimum requirement for multiclassing is a 13 in both Strength and Charisma (and applies both to the new class you want to add and the original class) so you should be covered. I might actually continue to invest a little more in Strength, though - Splint and Plate armor slows you down if you have less than 15 Strength. If you would be sticking just with Chain Mail, I think you might be better off simply investing in Dex to use medium armor, which eventually would let you bump up to Half Plate, which, with 14 or more in Dex, gives you better AC than Chain Mail.

For Valor Bards, it's true that Heavy Weapons are going to be quite good with the new Great Weapon Master (which, again, shocking though it may seem, is actually better than the old version in most cases). Without this dip, we'd most likely be focusing on Dexterity and likely fighting with finesse weapons (or ranged weapons - while Starry Wisp gives Bards and Druids a decent ranged attack cantrip, it probably won't be able to keep up with weapons the way EB does - though we do also get this if we pick up 1 level of Warlock, but probably not with the bells and whistles that help it scale unless we take at least a second level).

Taking Great Weapon Master does boost heavy ranged weapons like Longbows and Heavy Crossbows (and Muskets? Can't recall if they're heavy, but they probably should be) but it also gives us a +1 to Strength only, meaning that at best we're rounding off an odd Strength score. It's still very impactful if we want to focus on weapons.

Now, the downside with a Valor Bard is that if you want to dual-wield, only one weapon gets to be your Pact Weapon. Looking at the playtest 7 wording (I'm not an influencer - I'm getting my PHB no sooner than you are) it seems you could theoretically bond with a magical ranged weapon. Naturally, if we're going for a bit more survival, sword-and-board is a tried-and-true style, and then we only have to worry about the one weapon. In this case, we probably don't care about the requirements for Heavy, as we'll be using in most cases some kind of d8 weapon (or d10 if we want to use it two-handed - a pretty good choice for grapple-heavy builds, but we're probably not that given that we're not maxing out Strength).

Let's see if we can hack this, though, using True Strike.

The new True Strike is kind of a mini-Pact of the Blade cantrip, allowing us to attack with a weapon using our spellcasting ability for both attacks and damage (not an option - if we cast the spell we have to use it) and we can do either radiant or the weapon's normal damage, plus at 5, 11, and 17, we get to add d6s of radiant damage to it.

Ok: to be honest, I don't think this will work (future Dan here: actually it will!), but let's try it anyway: What we want to do is use True Strike to allow us to overcome a second weapon not getting the Pact of the Blade benefit. We'll assume we've got a Shortsword and Scimitar, so we've got Nick in there.

As a Valor Bard, at level 6 and higher, we get Extra Attack, and we get to weave a cantrip to replace one of our attacks when we take the Attack Action. (The type of action is important here).

The Light property says that if we attack with a light weapon as part of the attack action, we can make an attack as a bonus action with a different light weapon (and with nick it becomes part of the attack action).

So: putting it together: we want to cast True Strike with our non-Pact weapon and then attack twice with our pact weapon. Can we do this?

Here's the thing: the light property doesn't require us to define one weapon as our "main hand" weapon and one as our "off-hand." Indeed, you've always been able to attack with two non-light weapons held in each hand - you just wouldn't get the extra bonus light attack.

So, here's what we do:

For our first attack, we cast True Strike using our mundane (or at least non-Pact) weapon. Because we have now attacked with this weapon, we can make our bonus Light attack with our Pact weapon.

However, our second regular attack is not done with the mundane weapon, but instead with our pact weapon. There's nothing in the Light property that says we cannot have made any attacks with that weapon before - it only specifies we have to have first made an attack with a different light weapon.

Third, we attack with our pact weapon again as our Light weapon bonus attack - remember, our casting of True Strike allowed this to happen, because it was an attack (the wording of True Strike includes "you make one attack with the weapon") and it was part of the Attack Action (normally any use of True Strike would be a Magic Action, but Valor Bards, Eldritch Knights, and Bladesinger Wizards all can cast cantrips with the Attack Action).

Thus, even though one of these weapons isn't meant to be used with Charisma, we found a way!

We can then boost up this damage with the Bard's extensive spellcasting capabilities (I've seen a lot about Conjure Minor Elementals being a huge boost to multiattacking characters).

    So, all in all, I think we'll have plenty of Warlock dips for years to come. I still think that players should really try straight-classing Warlocks more often, and if you want to play a Martial Bladelock, there are invocations that will allow you to keep pace nearly with a Fighter (on top of your powerful spells) but will also require a significant investment in the class.

In an odd sense, I almost feel like the two levels of Patron-less Warlock (though I would also say that picking your subclass need not be the beginning of a relationship with a patron) can open up the flavor as someone who delves into particularly esoteric and occult knowledge. I kind of love the notion of a Paladin who has gotten deep into the weeds about esoteric alchemy and mysticism, and maybe never formalizes a pact with any otherwordly entity, but walks in strange circles and might be the subject of whispered rumors despite their prestigious and righteous role. A Bard stumbling onto eldritch knowledge feels pretty easy to justify - hell, maybe you're a master of stage combat who came across a tattered script for a play called The King in Yellow.

Is Dual-Wielding the New Default for Paladins?

 I think the first time I ever heard of a paladin was when visiting a friend's house, where he was playing Quest for Glory, a somewhat more RPG-like variation on Sierra's King's Quest-style adventure games. The Paladin could be unlocked in one of the earlier games, and you could carry over a save file between games to unlock it in subsequent games (the only one I actually played myself, Quest for Glory V, allowed you to simply pick the class at character creation).

Probably what really cemented my image of what a Paladin should be, though, was World of Warcraft. My very first WoW character was a Paladin, and after I re-created him on the actual server my college roommate was on (back when servers were a pretty hard limit on what other players you could interact with) he became my main (other than a brief time where my Undead Rogue was the first to get to 70 during BC).

And notably, in WoW, Paladins either fight with a big two-handed weapon or with a weapon and a shield.

5E reinforced this idea because the Fighting Styles that Paladins gained access to included Great Weapon Fighter and Protection, but not Two Weapon Fighitng. You could dual-wield, but the game was steering you away from this.

Now, I still think it's pretty effective to use this fighting style with the 2014 rules - you won't get to add that (likely +5) bonus to your off-hand attacks, which hurts, but getting Improved Divine Smite at level 11 is a pretty strong incentive to maximize the number of attacks you're making each turn.

But in 2024, I think a couple of changes are going to really make you consider dual-wielding on a Paladin. It might be the best option.

Let's talk about the factors at play:

First off, Paladins will be able to get the Two Weapon Fighting Style Feat, as all fighting styles are available to them (I think - I can't remember if Divine Warrior and Druidic Warrior made it in for Paladins and Rangers, respectively). In terms of damage gained per turn, Two Weapon Fighting is probably the best once you have your Strength (or whatever ability you're using for attacks) maxed out, as it'll give you 5 more damage compared with 4 from Dueling if you're level 5 or higher, or the rather pathetic bonus you get from Great Weapon Fighting.

(As an aside, apparently GWF is even worse now - rather than letting you reroll 1s and 2s on your damage dice, you simply count them as 3s. In other words, a d6 goes from having an average of 4 and 1/6th to 4, meaning at absolute best, it's increasing damage of a Maul or Greatsword by 1 damage per attack.)

Second, we have the Nick property from Weapon Mastery. This frees up our bonus action when we're wielding two light weapons and one of them has Nick. Given the change to Divine Smite, we'll want to keep that free (though I also think we're going to see Paladins using their spell slots for other things more often now).

Third, we have the new Dual Wielder feat. On its surface, this feat looked like it was taking a nerf - for one thing, it required that your first attack was with a light weapon, while the old one let you dual-wield longswords or other non-light weapons. However, what's notable here is that the bonus action attack granted by the new version of this feat is an entirely separate entity within the action economy from the attack granted by the light property - meaning that now that we've freed up our bonus action, we can make both that ordinary light weapon off-hand attack as part of our action and then use our bonus action to make another attack.

Lastly (maybe - honestly there are probably other factors at play) we have the newly redesigned Divine Favor, which (to the shock and horror of Rangers) no longer takes concentration.

    Putting this all together, by level 5, if we're wielding, say, a Shortsword in our main hand and a Scimitar in our off-hand, and we have the dual-wielder feat and the two weapon fighting feat (which we get for free at level 2 as before) we're going to first cast Divine Favor to add 1d4 radiant damage to each hit. Now, we attack twice with our Shortsword, hitting for 1d6+1d4+4 (we'll assume we started with a 17 in Strength and used the Dual Wielder feat to bump that to 18) or 10 damage total, then attack a second time (with advantage thanks to Vex) for another 10. Then, we make our off-hand attack from Light, still part of our action, for another 1d6+1d4+4, or another 10. That's 30 damage this turn.

Next turn, we do the same 30 damage but then also make a bonus action attack for 6 (unfortunately, we don't get to apply the Two Weapon Fighting bonus to the Dual Wielder attack). So, 36 damage per round (if we always hit). Now, if we need a burst of damage, we can Divine Smite, which will sacrifice 1d6+1d4 to get 2d8 - clearly more damage, but not by a ton - the difference between 6 and 9 (though it goes up to 13.5 if we're hitting an undead or fiend target, and obviously we might take advantage of a crit).

    To put this into perspective, let's look at how a similarly-built Paladin focusing on a big two-handed weapon would do. We'll keep it simple and go for a Maul, and rather than Dual Wielder, we're taking Great Weapon Master, which in most cases is actually a better feat than its previous iteration, despite the fears that it was a nerf.

Again, we'll cast Divine Favor, adding a d4 on top of our 2d6+4. Great Weapon Master will be adding our Proficiency Bonus to damage with our Heavy Weapons, so at this level we're throwing a 3 on top of all of that, giving us damage equal to 2d6+1d4+7, which comes out to 16.5 damage per hit (again, we're simplifying and ignoring crits).

Thus, on our first turn, our GWM is ahead, dealing 33 damage per round.

On turn two, though, we're just doing the same thing, meaning our dual-wielder is making up for their earlier deficit. In two rounds, GWM is doing 66 damage, but that's actually exactly what our Dual Wielder will have made it to on round two as well. By round 3, the Dual Wielder is ahead.

Now: another factor we haven't really touched on are the Vex and Topple/Graze Masteries.

The math here gets complex enough that it might not really be solvable in a generic situation - Topple could grant advantage on attacks by knocking foes prone, but we need to know their chance to resist the effect. Vex is going to not only make subsequent attacks more likely to hit, but also increase the chance of a critical hit. (Topple can also do this, but is less reliable than Vex in terms of granting advantage). Graze, of course, allows for guaranteed damage, but won't benefit from Divine Favor.

Now, I do think that Divine Favor is going to be an absolute staple for Paladins moving forward - it's only slightly less damage than Hex or Hunter's Mark, but without a need for concentration, it's going to be very reliable. I will say that in terms of raw damage, you will need a fight to last a decently long time to let it outperform a Divine Smite. For a 1st level spell slot and a bonus action, Divine Smite deals a guaranteed 2d8 damage, or 9 on average. We're going to need to hit four times on average for the spell slot we spend on Divine Favor to deal more than that (4d4 being an average of 10). That's actually easier accomplished with a dual-wielding build, where you can potentially get three of those attacks in on the first turn.

At level 11, Dual Wielding gets a significant boost from Radiant Strikes, the new name for Improved Divine Smite (a name change I'm very happy about, as Improved Divine Smite, ironically, didn't actually interact in any way with Divine Smite).

We might not actually have a +5 to Strength yet, as we're probably more likely to be taking general feats instead of ASIs (which, I guess, technically are also a general feat now) and I think it's highly possible we'll be taking some more powerful spell than Divine Favor, but let's say we're trying to conserve our higher-level spell slots.

If we haven't bumped our Strength all the way to 20 (and our DM is being mean and hasn't given us a +X weapon) the damage here simply increases by 1d8 for each attack.

Thus, our Dual Wielder, who was initially doing 30 damage on the first turn and 36 on subsequent turns, can add 3d8 to that first turn (13.5) and 4d8 to later ones (18). So, we'll be looking at 43.5 and then 54.

Our GWM is getting a bump from the feat, adding 1 damage to each attack, plus 1d8, so basically 5.5 more damage with each hit, for a total boost to their damage of 11 over a turn. Thus, each of our turns will be 44. In other words, even needing a turn to set up, dual-wielders are only .5 damage behind our GWM character (which is essentially negligible) and once things get going, they're doing over 10 damage more per turn than their GWM friends.

Now, once again, we have to keep in mind the caveat that our dual-wielding character is going to be using their bonus action each turn on the second off-hand attack. Thus, our GWM might be smiting more often or using other abilities. If our dual-wielder needs to skip a bonus action attack to go Lay on Hands an ally, they'll be dropping 1d6+1d4+1d8 damage, or 10.5. And our GWM character might find a way to add in some more damage - if they take Polearm Master as well, their main attack damage drops a little (replacing their 2d6 with 1d10, or a drop of about 1.5 damage per hit) but gaining their own bonus action attack (which will deal 2d4+1d8+4, or 13.5... no, wait, this is still an attack with a heavy weapon, so that's 1d4+4, plus 1d4 for Divine Favor, plus 4 for GWM, plus 1d8 for radiant strikes, so we get 16.5).

Actually, let's consider the GWM/PAM build's damage output, as it might beat our dual-wielder.

At level 11, we've gone with feats at levels 4 and 8, meaning we're not getting to 20 Strength until at least 12 (our Dual Wielder only relies on a single feat here, but we might imagine they've taken some other feat). We're maybe taking a Lance (assuming this works with Polearm Master, but we're not really worrying about advantage gained by topple here, so it could be a Glaive, Halberd, or Pike as well) so we've got a d10 weapon die. Thus, our first turn we're bonus action casting Divine Favor, then attacking twice and hitting for 1d10+1d4+1d8+4+4, so that's 20.5 overall damage on average, doubled to 41 on our first turn.

Second turn, we're adding in our pommel attack, which gives us 1d4+1d4+1d8+4+4, or 17.5 additional damage, for a total of 58.5.

And, just to re-do the math, let's now assume our dual-wielder just took the ASI feat at level 8, so they do have their Strength at 20. First turn, they cast Divine Favor, and make two shortsword attacks and one scimitar attack that each do 1d6+1d4+1d8+5, or 15.5 damage per hit, or 46.5 damage on turn 1.

Second turn, they get to throw in their Dual Wielder attack, which adds 1d6+1d4+1d8, or 10.5, for a total of 57 damage.

Interestingly, it looks like the tables turn by this point - our Dual-Wielder is less punished by their set-up round, but our GWM now deals more damage in the long run. In two rounds, DWs are doing 103.5 damage, and GWMs are doing 99.5. In other words, GWMs are behind by 4 damage, but their post-first-round damage is 1.5 damage more, meaning it will take them 3 more rounds to overtake our Dual-Wielders, which is a pretty long time given the length of most D&D combat encounters.

Again, other factors will come into play - GWM scales in a way that Dual Wielder doesn't, really - even if you account for a Dual-Wielder getting magic weapons with a +X bonus, our GWM needs only to get a +X Lance or whatever to get this bonus on all their hits. Meanwhile, GWM's feat damage bonus will go up by 1 at level 13, and again at level 17.

For the hell of it, let's look at 20th level paladins. At this stage, we're probably got a +6 to Strength thanks to Epic Boons, and we'll throw in +3 weapons just for fun. But for some reason (again, maybe we're conserving higher-level spell slots) we're still using Divine Favor (and hey, it's non-concentration, so why the hell not?)

Our Dual-Wielder is using a +3 Shortsword and a +3 Scimitar. Turn one, we're attacking for 1d6+1d4+1d8+9 three times, dealing 19.5 damage on each hit, or a total of 58.5 damage. Turn two, we're adding in our second off-hand attack for 1d6+1d4+1d8+3, or 13.5, so turn two damage is 72 damage.

Our GWM is using a +3 Lance, so turn one we're looking at 1d10+1d4+1d8+15, or 27.5 damage per hit, for 55 damage on our first turn. Second turn, we add our pommel strike which does 2d4+1d8+15, or 24.5, boosting our damage per round to 79.5.

Again, our dual-wielder has the edge on the first turn, and after two turns, we're looking at 130.5 for the DWs and 134.5 for our GWMs.

And, honestly, that's pretty darn close. This is before we factor in any advantage we might have from Vex or Topple (though this becomes less relevant if we're Vengeance, as we'll be getting advantage anyway with Vow of Enmity, which no longer requires any action to activate or even to move to other targets).

Either of these builds is going to be really nasty, I think. I will say that I expected dual-wielding to really overtake the old standard Great Weapon build. This makes some strong assumptions about taking both GWM and PAM, which will cut into your ability to boost things like your Charisma - the Dual Wield build is somewhat less feat-dependent (I think our GWM falls off significantly if they don't take both of these feats).

One more caveat: we've been using Divine Favor at all levels here. Surely, Paladins will consider using other spells as well, which might require more ramp-up time, and if they're based on adding damage when you hit (like Spirit Shroud) the Dual Wielder might start to inch a little forward.

I also think it's important that players consider not always thinking of things in terms of hitting a target dummy. One thing I'm excited about with the change to Divine Smite is that, now that the other Smite spells work in the same way (still taking a bonus action, but activating immediately when you land a hit - or crit) will encourage Paladins to think less about maximizing their own damage and instead doing more to control the battlefield. Blinding the target with a Blinding Smite might do less damage than a Divine Smite, but it could also make the foe less dangerous and give your party members a much easier time hitting them. Paladins have always had a lot of utility, but I think that the de-emphasis on Divine Smite might encourage players to explore what they can do beyond melting foes.

Still, there's a lot in the new systems that will make for a very strong dual-wielding paladin in a way that the 2014 rules didn't really support, even if it still worked. On an aesthetic level, I might still favor the GWM (also, you're less reliant on getting multiple powerful magic weapons,) but I can really picture a zealous fanatic of a paladin fighting with light weapons being a real vibe.

What Kind of Stories Can We Tell with the 2024 D&D Core Rulebooks?

 Part of the reason why I think the many heroic fantasy RPGs are going to struggle to build as big of an audience as D&D is that, on a fundamental level, these games are about telling stories. To be sure, there are players who prefer the crunchier, optimization-focused elements of the game. But these games are all trying to give players the same broad possibility: to immerse yourself in a story of fantastical adventure, and to identify with and embody a character invented for such a story.

D&D has a big advantage in that the game is practically synonymous with the medium of tabletop RPGs. Only when they significantly rocked the boat with 4th Edition did another game start to rival it as the most popular fantasy RPG - but Pathfinder was hit with the 5E broadside, and while there are certainly people playing it, I think the number of people playing D&D is likely to remain higher than all the players of Tales of the Valiant, Draw Steel, Pathfinder, and Daggerheart combined.

There's a bit of inertia here, of course. Learning these games takes a long time, and while some players (generally the more fiddly, optimizer kinds) will enjoy learning a new system, for those who just want the game to serve as a tool to allow for them to get together with friends and improvise fantasy adventures, it's easiest to stick with the rules you know.

While we had to cancel my latest Ravnica game because so many people were going to have to miss it, I talked with the two players who were able to come about the prospect of converting characters to the new system. One of these players has been playing with me for a good six years now, but expressed some surprise, or at least a minority opinion, that she was not terribly excited about converting her character to the new version - she didn't want to have to re-learn how her character worked.

And while I'm confident that people will have a reasonably easy time figuring the changes out, her character - a Sorcerer - will be functioning a bit differently. And of course, there will also be things like Origin Feats and the like that will probably only be buffs in most cases, but it did strike me that, as someone who spends a lot of time poring over all the changes coming with the new PHB, I might be inclined to minimize the changes, which do add up.

What I think will simultaneously be helpful but also possible disappointing is that the kind of story we can tell won't really be that different. Now, perhaps that's all well and good - D&D is celebrating its 50th year, and it should be able to work when running a scary dungeon designed in the 1980s.

I think I've made little secret on this blog about how I really like genre-bending fantasy. This blog began as a World of Warcraft-specific one, and one of the things that always endeared me to that setting was the way in which technology was always incorporated into it. I started playing a few months before its first expansion, The Burning Crusade, came out, and in that, we went to a shattered remnant of a planet that contained, among other things, futuristic technology. The massive demonic army that served as the ultimate big bad for much of the game's early years was not just demonic, but also employed technology out of some far-future science fiction story. Knights in shining armor fight robots, and the dwarf hunters use muskets by default.

I think that on a certain level, D&D's d20 system is a really broadly-applicable one. Dimension 20, for example, has really shown off the versatility of the system, between its vaguely John Hughes-style teen comedy-meets-fantasy adventure with Fantasy High, to its real-world set Urban Fantasy of the Unsleeping City, and then Regency Romance in the Feywild of A Court of Fey and Flowers to an almost Sandman-like fairy-tale-horror with Neverafter, the system can do a lot of things.

But I'll also note that in pretty much all of these, there's a lot of work that the DM has to do to make it all functional.

Personally, I've been somewhat passively on the lookout for a TTRPG that matches the tone and aesthetics of Remedy's Alan Wake and Control games (which are admittedly somewhat different in feel, but both draw a lot from, among other sources, Stephen King). Essentially, after finishing Alan Wake II, I found myself wishing I could play a game like that - but there sort of aren't any, the price you pay for being that original.

Elements of those stories do work their way into my D&D campaigns - part of the upcoming House Dimir chapter of the Ravnica game is going to see Duskmantle in a state not entire dissimilar to the Oldest House under the Hiss invasion in Control.

I guess what I'm curious about in this post is how the stories we tell using the 2024 revisions will really differ from those we tell with the 2014 rules.

And to be clear, I'm guessing they won't be all that different.

Still, I think there can be subtle changes that might lead to different kinds of stories. For example, Draw Steel is being built from the ground up to try to encourage players to push on and continue adventuring, with player power increasing the longer they keep adventuring without taking rests, rather than D&D's attrition-style resource management (I do think there will be a little of that in Draw Steel, given how Recoveries are limited, but everything else is pushing players to keep going).

In a sense, I'm not really expecting the rules themselves to change things that much - except perhaps in very subtle ways.

One change that I'm eager to play with is how Exhaustion has been redesigned. In the new system, each point of Exhaustion reduces the result of any d20 test (the new collective name for attack rolls, ability checks, and saving throws) by 2. Each point also reduces your speed by 5 feet. This is still pretty bad, but notably you're still going to be somewhat functional.

The 2014 version of Exhaustion is so punishing that I think most players would choose to essentially skip days of adventuring if it was required to clear their exhaustion levels. Naturally, a DM can force their hand by having unavoidable threats that can't be delayed, but the old version was just so nasty that that felt kind of unfair to the players.

If we find Exhaustion can be a more commonly used mechanic, I could actually see this allowing a new kind of story-telling. I'd love to see, for example, monsters that impose Exhaustion with various abilities (never more than one level at a time, of course, and probably making them limited-per-day or recharge abilities) to create a kind of desperate survival situation. Indeed, I feel like a kind of zombie-like undead that imposes this with their bites would be a really cool thing to use in a Ravenloft-like horror scenario.

I actually think Weapon Mastery, along with various changes to the Monk, might also really change the dynamics of combat in a way that could really change the kinds of stories being told when fighting monsters. With masteries like Push and Topple, I feel as a DM I'm going to want to put more hazards on battle maps to really encourage using the environment as part of the fight. This might give us some more dynamic, swashbuckling encounters.

Outside of combat, though, I don't really know that anything huge is shifting. I had hoped for a robust crafting system, but at least so far, it doesn't seem like what has been presented is all too different from what we had before. While I'm a little skeptical about Draw Steel's Negotiation system - which I worry might feel overdesigned - I still appreciate that they're trying to give players something to feel they can master that isn't just fighting monsters. MCDM is clearly trying to create those epic moments in fantasy novels in which the heroes must plead their case - like Merry and Pippin at the Entmoot. The question is whether you can make as compelling of a gameplay system that focuses on that kind of thing.

Ultimately, it's in the players and the DMs' hands as to what kind of stories we choose to tell. I'm eager to see what comes of this.

Building a Tactician in Draw Steel

 In this third post about coming up with a Draw Steel character, we're going to look at the Tactician. This class is probably the closest analogue for the Fighter class in D&D... sort of. In a lot of ways, it takes the flavor of the Battle Master Fighter, particularly things like Commander's Strike, and builds the class around being not just a soldier on the field, but the coordinator for the rest of the party. In an odd sense, there's almost a flavor of being a support class like a Bard, but aesthetically very different.

Conceptually, I like to try to go off the beaten path. In my D&D homebrew setting, one of the most elite miltiary forces is the Miliz - a primarily Halfling force originally founded as a farmer's militia in the gothic moors of Vodaskia, but which was so well-coordinated and battle-hardened that they became a celebrated special forces unit for the Lupinian Empire.

Draw Steel doesn't have Halflings, but its diminutive folk that play a similar role are the Polders, who, like your typical Halflings, tend to live amongst humans and have interconnected cultures and ways of life.

I think our Tactician is not a veteran of any traditional army, but was likely a farmer called up to defend her village from roving bands of goblinoids (maybe just goblins - I don't know if Draw Steel intends to have the same three primary goblinoid types from D&D). Between sowing seeds, feeding chickens, and selling excess wheat at the market, she's had to keep her sword sharp due to the increasingly bold and organized attacks.

And, it turns out that she's developing a knack for battlefield command - when her fellow farmers are terrified at the approaching raiders, she's the one who forms them into lines, warding off charges by goblins on warg-back with a barricade of pitchforks.

    Ancestry

We've decided to go with Polder, so we'll be picking up two ancestry features. The first is Polder Geist - our hero is faster when she's not seen by anyone, getting 3 extra squares of movement if she starts her turn unseen. (We'll have to see if this plays well with any Tactician abilities).

Second, we get Sceanwian (not sure how that's pronounced. I took a semester of Irish language in college, but this could be from Welsh or Scottish and I have no idea). As a maneuver, she can flatten herself into a shadow against a wall or floor she's touching, becoming hidden from anyone she's got cover or concealment from or isn't observing her. Attacks against her and tests made to find her take a bane, but she can't move or take actions or maneuvers except to exit the form. Abilities that target more than 1 square affect her only if it explicitly affects the surface she's flattened against. And she can exit it as a maneuver.

So, both of these features involve hiding, though I notice that you can't really use one with the other, as Sceanwian prevents movement. Naturally, this feature would make a lot of sense for a Shadow, but a bit of sneakiness is probably useful for anyone. We'll see if we can make use of it in combat.

    Culture

Our Environment is pretty obvious: it's Rural. This will give us a Crafting or a Lore skill.

Our Organization is likely Communal (though it could be Anarchic - honestly I think we just need more options here, as there are only 3 at the moment). This will give us either a Crafting or an Interpersonal skill.

Our Upbringing is probably Labor, as our girl is a farmer. This gets her either Blacksmithing, Handle Animals, or one skill form the Exploration group.

    Career

There's a bit of overlap here - we're taking Laborer. This will grant her the Endurance skill, along with two skills from Blacksmithing or the Exploration group (I feel like we've got to take Blacksmithing?)

We'll also get one bonus language (which I'm not covering in these builds) and 50 Project Points, which again, I think is essentially a head start on some crafting project.

Finally, we get a Title: Team Backbone, which allows her to, when making a "Montage Test," both assist another character's test and also make her own.

    Class

Now, onto our class!

The Tactician begins with 21 Stamina and has 15 Recoveries (each healing for 7 at this level).

We start off with a Might and Reason of 2. I think we're going to be somewhat well-rounded, and so we'll take our 1 in Presence (we are a commander, after all) and 0s to Agility and Intuition.

We're going to get the Lead skill, along with any two skills from a big group. So let's pick them now, along with the ones we got from our Culture and Career.

We'll take Nature (from Environment,) Read Person (from Organization - a good commander keeps a finger on the pulse of her troops), and Handle Animals (from Labor). We then get Endurance and Blacksmithing from Laborer.  Finally, we'll get Lead, Alertness, and Monsters from our class.

Next, we need to pick our subclass - our Tactical Doctrine. While my initial concept here was more of a shouting battlefield commander, I think that we might lean into more guerrilla tactics, which the Polders would, I think, be more likely to employ. Thus, we're going to go with the Insurgent (Asymmetric Warfare) subclass.

Our Heroic Resource is Focus. Like all classes, we get an amount of this equal to our Victories at the start of the encounter, but we then get 2 at the start of each turn, and if an ally gets a tier 3 result on a target we have Marked, we also gain 1 focus. (All focus disappears at the end of combat).

Mark is a maneuver we can use at a 10-square range (as this isn't an attack, I don't think there's any downside to using it on a target in melee range). The target is marked by us until the start of our next turn. When we our an ally attack a marked target, they get an edge on the power rolls and also deal extra damage equal to our Reason Score. We can spend 1 focus to mark a second target.

    So, we're probably going to be using the maneuver constantly. We're also probably going to want to take a consistent spot in each round of combat, as we want to maximize the number of allies' turns where they can make use of this.

We also gain Seize the Opening, a ranged Action with a range of 10 in which we target an ally. The target makes a signature attack as a free triggered action (meaning they can still use their triggered action and I believe any other number of free triggered actions) and the target takes extra damage equal to your Reason score. If you spend 5 focus, you can target two allies instead of one, though you won't earn any focus when using this ability in this way.

    And that's pretty interesting - there's a good chance that we're going to be doing more damage by commanding our friends to attack rather than attacking ourselves.

With our Insurgent subclass, we get the Covert Operations feature. Allies that are working according to our plans or in our presence get an edge on tests with any skill in the intrigue group (amazing given that we don't actually have any of those skills!) We can also use the Lead skill to assist on any test made with a skill from the Intrigue group (ah, there we go) and, at Diretor's discretion, we and our allies can use skills from the intrigue skill group to attempt research or reconnaissance during a negotiation outside of that negotiation (a system I'll confess I haven't gotten into yet).

We also get an Insurgent triggered action. This is Flank Them Now! At a range of self or 10, if a non-target ally is about to make an attack, our target can shift up to 2 squares before that attack resolves, and after the attack resolves, both the original attacker and the target can shift up to 2 squares (reminder: "shifting" is movement that doesn't provoke opportunity attacks). If we spend 1 focus, the attack also does an extra d6 of damage.

Next, we get Field Arsenal, which allows us to pick up a second martial kit (we're probably taking a martial kit as our primary choice as well). If two kits have the same benefit, we take the better of the two (but that means we'll probably err on having kits that help different things). And we get both kits' signature actions. So, we'll cover this when we cover kits.

We get both of our Signature attacks from our kits, so we skip ahead to our 3-focus and 5-focus abilities, of which we get 1 each.

For our 3-focus ability, I'm going to go with Inspiring Strike, which allows us to deal some damage (in either melee or a range of 5) and then allow a nearby ally to spend a Recovery (tier 2 adds range to this healing capability and tier 3 also grants an edge to us and the healed ally on their next attack this encounter).

For our 5-focus ability, thematically I'm a bit torn between Now! and This is What We Planned For, both of which seem like a good case of our character springing a trap on the enemy. The former allows all allies within 5 squares of us to make a free strike, while the latter allows every ally within 10 squares to immediately take their turn in any order after ours, and we treat enemies as surprised.

    Technically, the latter doesn't add a ton of damage, but it can create a huge burst that might really change the course of battle. I like it, so let's go with it.

    Kits

So, we get two kits. The Guisarmier feels like the right first choice, as polearms are a classic weapon for farmer militias. We'll then take Sniper as our second one, as your people will be a lot safer if you can take out the biggest threats from far away.

From the Guisarmier, we get a +6 bonus to Stamina (bringing us to 27, and our recoveries are healing for 9 now) and +1 to Stability. Our melee weapon damage (which will be primarily with this thing's signature ability) are +2s across the board. We also get a reach bonus of +1. Our signature ability is Forward Thrust, Backward Smash, which lets us target 2 creatures or objects, dealing modest damage to both.

From Sniper, we get a +1 Speed bonus. We also get a +4 bonus to ranged weapon damage on a tier 3 result. Our ranged weapon distance bonus is 10. And we get Mobility - if an enemy ends their turn adjacent to us, we can shift up to 2 squares as a free triggered action. Our signature ability is Patient Shot, which deals pretty decent damage at a range of 15 (including our bonus) and, if we don't take a move action on the turn we use the attack, we gain an edge on it.

    So, overall, I think we've got a character who will be able to lead from the rear, calling the shots and occasionally shooting their bow as well. Even though we can withstand a fair amount of punishment, we're going to be holding our foes off at range, which should let us move about and command as necessary.

Building an Elementalist in Draw Steel

 In my previous post about character building, I used an existing World of Warcraft character, my Undead Rogue, Darsino. Thanks to the existence of both the Revenant ancestry and the mystical aspect of the game's Rogue analogue, the Shadow, Darsino's shadowy teleportation (being Subtlety in WoW) translated surprisingly well into this system.

It seems like it will be a bit harder to directly translate other characters with the rules we have so far, so I'm going to try starting from scratch in this case.

Elementalists are the closest to your Wizard/Sorcerer analogue, with an encouragement to focus on particular damage types. To step back toward WoW, I also feel like they could fit pretty well as the equivalent of Shamans, though probably more toward the ranged-caster Elemental Shaman rather than the melee-with-magic Enhancement.

We're looking at a Reason-focused class, but just as I'd encourage D&D players to be creative about how knowledge is kept and passed down (a "library" could take many forms) I also don't think we need to necessarily go for the classic cloistered bookworm.

In fact, I think we're going to err instead on the side of someone a little closer to that WoW Shaman archetype - someone in tune with the elements on a spiritual level, probably preferring to live far from civilization. We're also probably not going to go with the Green subclass, which errs more toward the Druidic, life-based elementalism. Here, we're instead going to go for the primal, primordial elements.

Air might be the ideal element to focus on, as I imagine it will have the power of storms and lightning (when I watched Avatar the Last Airbender a few years ago, it always struck me as wrong that the Firebenders got to use lightning, as this feels like it's a key tool for air-based elemental powers. But I guess it helped make the Firebenders seem more threatening). But unfortunately, we don't yet have rules for that subclass. So, instead, we're going to go to the ultimate base element that all other things rest upon - Earth.

In my mind, our Elementalist is a nomad or hermit - possibly connected to a community as a kind of remote source of wisdom. Earth, of course, is everywhere, but when I think of places that really emphasize earth as an element, I think mostly of deserts - the kind of desert in the American Southwest that has massive stone buttes and mesas revealed by ancient long-dried bodies of water. That hot, dry, brown or orange stone would be the basis of their powers.

    Ancestry

While there are some features for the Hakaan that are intriguing for a seer or wise-man, we don't really have the lore to fully understand their nature. Thus, I'm drawn to either Humans or Orcs. Human because humans in Draw Steel actually have a distinct ability to sense supernatural things around them. Orcs, because... well, deserts and living rough in the wilderness and honestly just that Warcraft shaman feel.

Let's go Human.

As a human, we get Detect the Supernatural, allowing us to sense the location of a supernatural object, an Undead or Construct or extraplanar creature within 5 squares of us. We also get Resist the Supernatural, which gives us 2 immunity to Magic and Psionic, going up by 1 each level (I assume this covers all abilities with those tags). Finally, we get two extra Recoveries, on top of the 10 we get from our class.

    Culture

We've already sketched out what our Culture is, in vague terms - we're that odd but respected guy who lives on the outskirts of our community while also serving an important role. It's probably not really a spiritual leadership position, but maybe we've got some revered position like "Earthcaller," called upon to defend the community and perhaps read the elements and signs from nature to advise the community on mundane things like when to harvest crops or what weather to prepare for.

For Environment, we'll probably say Wilderness, as we live by what the desert provides us, and the pride of our culture is the ability to survive and thrive in this harsh environment. We'll be able to pick up a skill from either the Crafting or Exploration list.

For Organization, Communal seems the best option - this is someone who lives amongst a people who must share their burdens and their resources to survive. We'll thus get a Crafting or Interpersonal skill.

For Upbringing, the option isn't terribly obvious - as a community protector, we could go with the Martial upbringing, but I think even if it leans a little cliche for our Wizard-like class, Academic probably works better, as a source of knowledge for the community. This gets us a Lore skill.

    Career

And here, we've got to go with Sage. I suppose we could build a backstory that really emphasized the role of a mentor - something like a singular position passed down in this community, which could fit the Mage's Apprentice. But I think we're going to skew for an older character who is already this community's Sage.

This gives us two Lore skills (getting us up to three, and surely more with our class) and an additional language (a step I'm skipping for these for now until I know more about Draw Steel's assumed setting and cultures). We get 100 Project Points (which I believe can be used for crafting - essentially I believe this is a head start on such efforts) and a Title: Expert Sage, which allows us to roll twice on any test as part of a research or crafting project with a skill we have from the lore skill group (nice that we're getting a lot of lore skills).

    Class

So, we're an Elementalist. At our baseline, we get a Reason and Intuition both of 2, and then we can choose how to distribute our other attributes. I think, given our earthen emphasis, we could stand to take a penalty to our Agility (in a system without an armor class, Agility is less crucial than D&D's Dexterity). Thus, I think we'll take a 1 in Strength and Presence, giving us:

Strength 1, Agility -1, Reason 2, Intuition 2, Presence 1

We start off with 15 Stamina, and we have 12 Recoveries (two of which come from being human) which each heal us for 5 stamina.

We will gain the Magic skill, and can choose any three skills from the Crafting or Lore lists. As before, let's pick our skills now:

Magic (we get this automatically,) Nature and Monsters (which we'll gain from the Sage career,) and then I think we'll leave behind lore skills. Correction: we get one more from Academic. Let's pick up Culture, as we're probably a keeper of traditions and such. Next, we'll pick up Mechanics as our Crafting skill (from our Communal organization - maybe we help maintain windmills or water pumps for our community). We'll take Endurance as an Exploration skill (from our Wilderness background) because that seems very important in a resource-sparse environment.

Now, back to class features.

Our Heroic Resource is Essence. We get 2 Essence at the start of each of our turns, but outside of combat, we sort of "idle" at an amount of Essence equal to our Victories, and it only takes one minute for essence expended out of combat to reset to this value. If we want to maintain a persistent effect (a feature we'll touch on) outside of combat, we can simply lower that "idle" level for each essence being spent on persistent effects.

We gain Hurl Element as a ranged free attack, which has a range of 5 squares and can deal a modest (2, 6, or 9) amount of damage, the type of whih we choose when we use it, able to deal acid, cold, corruption, fire, lightning, poison, or sonic damage.

Next, we gain Persistent Magic, which allows certain abilities to continue to be in effect until combat ends (and as mentioned above, we can maintain them outside of combat if we have victories to pay their Persistent Value).

If we take damage, we need to make a Reason Power Roll to maintain the effects - on a tier 1, we lose any we have up. On tier 2, if we only have one ability active, it simply remains active. If we have multiple abilities, we lose one of them. On a tier 3, we retain all of our persistent effects.

We then get Practical Magic, a Maneuver that can allow us to do a few things: we can use the Knockback Manuever using Reason instead of Might, within a distance of our Hurl Element feature. Alternatively, we can choose a creature within our Hurl Magic range and deal damage to them equal to our Reason score (again, this is a Manuever, so we can potentially get some extra damage in on top of our Hurl Element or other abilities). The damage can be the same types as Hurl Element. Finally, the third use of this is that we can teleport a number of squares equal to our Reason score.

Next, we get our Earth subclass feature, which is Manipulate Earth.

For 2 Essence and an action, we can, within our melee reach, create one of three effects:

We can touch a square of mundane dirt, stone, or metal and create a 5 wall (in other words, I believe, a wall that is made of five contiguous squares, one of which needs to be the targeted space). Alternatively, we can touch a structure of mundane dirt, metal, or stone that takes up at least 2 squares, and we can open a 1-square opening in that structure. Finally, we can touch a doorway or other opening in a structure of those materials, the opening being no larger than 1 square, and we can seal it up with the same material.

We can also use this ability without spending Essence if we spend a full uninterrupted minute using the ability while we're within reach. (So, basically it's free outside of combat, and won't require 2 victories).

We also get an Earth-subclass Triggered Action. This is Earthen Force, which we can use on ourselves or an ally within 5 squares. When the target makes a melee attack, we can add damage to that attack equal to 3 times our Reason score (so, 6 at this level). If we spend 1 Essence, we can add extra damage equal to 4 times our Reason score instead and also push the target a number of squares equal to our Reason score.

Essentially, this triggered action is going to let us super-power an ally's melee attack. While we'll see if we wind up taking anything melee-focused, we probably want to use this on our melee friends instead.

Now, we pick our Signature Ability.

Among our options, the only Earth-based one is Debris, which is pretty cool. Within 5 squares, we can hit a 3 cube (in other words, a 3x3 square on the map) and all enemies (it won't hit allies) each take some minor damage (just 2, 3, or 4) and the area becomes difficult terrain for our enemies. Naturally, this won't be all that great against a single target, but it might really help us control our enemies movement and do a good job against swarming foes. I really picture this as rock shards shooting up out of the ground, and then becoming a bunch of heavy stones to trudge through.

We'll also get a 3-Essence ability and a 5-Essence ability (the class chart actually says we get a 1-Essence ability, but I don't see any). While I'm really tempted to keep sticking with the Earth abilities, let's be a little more experimental here. Stare into the Abyss is a persistent AoE damage option, while Burn! is a persistent single-target option. I think given that our Signature is already an AoE, we'll get something we can focus-fire with, so we'll pick up Burn! This has a range of 5, and does 6/8/13 damage. It has a Persistent Value of 1, so we can easily maintain this while still building our Essence on each turn - as long as the target is still in range while this persists, we can roll for damage at the start of each of our turns.

Now, for our 5-Essence ability, we've gotta go back to our Earth theme because Open the Earth is pretty freaking awesome. Within 5 squares, we open up four holes with 2-square openings that are 6 squares deep on any mundane surface. (We can also place them next to each other to make one big 4-square hole). For each creature standing above a hole that is small enough to fall into it. Tier 1, the target can shift up to 1 square from the edge of the hole to the nearest unoccupied space of their choice (I wonder if boxing them in can prevent them from getting out of the way?) At tier 2, they fall into the hole (I don't recall the rules for falling damage). Tier 3, they fall into the hole and cannot reduce the height of the fall. We can maintain this as a persistent effect, opening up a new hole at the start of each turn (PV 1). As far as I can tell, the holes simply remain there after you cast this spell, regardless of whether you keep it persisting.

    Kit

I think the Kit that makes the most sense here is probably Nature Calling, as it really gives a sense of being this Earthspeaker role. We get a Stability bonus of 1 (so we get knocked back less by monsters) and our Magic Distance bonus is +7 (meaning most of our abilities go up to 12 squares).

Our Kit signature ability is Lightning Spark, which has a range of 12 (again, I assume this incorporates the bonus distance) and lets us shoot a spark of lighting at a foe or object, making a Power+Reason roll. Tier 1 we do a modest 2 lightning damage. Tier 2, we deal 6 damage and also put a bane on the target's next power roll. Tier 3, the target takes 9 damage and gets a double bane on their next power roll.

Our Kit Ward - a passive feature that we get as long as we're alive and wearing the kit - is Spirit Ward. This gives us an Edge on resistance rolls. Additionally, when an enemy damages us with a melee ability, we deal psychic damage to them equal to our highest characteristic (likely Reason, and thus 2). The flavor here is that we're surrounding by protective animal spirits, which feels like it really ties into the shaman vibes we've got here.

    Breaking it Down:

I think our Elementalist is going to be very good at crowd-control, even if they're not really as focused on damage output. Between Manipulate Earth and Open the Earth, we can really build and demolish parts of the battlefield to keep our enemies separated from one another and divide and conquer.

Building these characters, I wonder very much how leveling up is going to feel. I know we'll start seeing features that spend more of our Heroic Resources, but I'm curious to see how many non-choice features we get at each level. Presumably there is going to be some way to generate resources faster, because if we're at the start of an adventure at level 5 and we're facing monsters with, say, 5 times as much Stamina, it'll take a long time for us to build up the requisite resources to take them down, unless resources start to build faster at higher levels, or even our cheap abilities start to deal more damage.

Once again, I think the complexity here is more in the building than in the playing - the real difference from D&D is that there's really no distinction in complexity between martial and caster classes. Casters will thus probably feel far more constrained while martial characters will feel liberated in their options.