Lies of P

 Thanks to a sale on the Playstation store, I decided to pick up the bizarre Pinnochio-meets-Bloodborne game, Lies of P, which came out a year or two ago (who knows what time is anymore?) I've now played through a bit of it, though I feel I must still be in the early chapters.

The game takes place in the fictional city of Krat, which became a beacon of advancement and industry with the introduction of "puppets," which are kind of late-19th-century automatons, invented by Gepetto. However, something went deeply wrong - the puppets have gone into a "Frenzy," slaughtering the people they were built to serve.

You play as what I believe is an older model of puppet who looks like he can pass for human, and seems to have some greater degree of free will. The game's story is unfolding gradually, but the overall setting is one of a kind of belle epoch France, with all the beauty of that era juxtaposed against the violence and horror of this robocalypse.

It's an interesting choice to take this particular story and adapt it in such a dark way, but I do think that the motifs of Pinnochio - the very notion of a puppet that yearns to be a real person - is clearly fertile ground.

Lies of P is a Souls-like in a few senses: you have a resource, Ergo, which acts similarly to Souls/Blood Echoes/Runes as seen in From Soft's games, as both your XP and your currency with which to buy things. You drop Ergo when you die, and must retrieve it so that it isn't lost forever.

One thing I really appreciate is that when you die to a boss, the Ergo is dropped outside the arena - so you aren't essentially obligated to keep going in there until you beat the boss if you want a chance to recover it.

Your weapons function in an interesting way - you can swap out different blades for different damage types, while the hilt will determine the stat scaling. The game also seems to encourage parrying and blocking more than dodging (either that or I'm just doing it wrong!) with a mechanic a bit reminiscent of Bloodborne's rally system allowing you to regain HP lost when you block for a short window. Perfect-blocking will prevent you from losing any HP, and some special attacks can only be blocked this way.

Currently, I'm on the second official boss - the Scrapped Watchman - which, I'll be honest, is the first fight that really feels like I'm hitting a wall. I've pushed him into his second phase several times, but I think I might need to adjust my strategy (probably dodging more rather than trying to block everything).

On this tenth anniversary of Bloodborne, it's fun to start playing another kind of gothic Souls-like. That being said, there's enough distinction from FromSoft's formula that I find myself needing to retrain certain mental muscles (luckily the button layout is more or less the same).

Big Errata/Patch for D&D 2024

 Wizards of the Coast released a sizable Errata for the 2024 Core Rulebooks. In this digital age, where I mainly use my D&D Beyond copies of those books, this will come in automatically, but it's worth noting how things are changing.

For those obsessives who really pay attention to the nitty-gritty, the least surprising change was a nerf to Conjure Minor Elementals. The spell is still very powerful (I think a Valor/Swords Bard or Bladesinger Wizard is going to make the best use of it) but its scaling was toned down (though not as much as I've seen some suggest it should be).

Let's take a look at things. For changes that are purely or almost purely wording, I'll skip them. You can look at the full list here.

A lot of these changes are fairly minor - Goliaths getting advantage on ability checks rather than saving throws to escape being grappled (good, given that you don't do saving throws to escape grapples).

More impactful, some spells have been straight-up nerfed - typically in their spell-level scaling.

Of course, the spell everyone identified as being the primary candidate for this is Conjure Minor Elementals. This 4th level Conjuration spell was radically transformed in 2024, now acting as a buff to your attack damage. The spell still adds 2d8 of elemental damage (the usual suspects of things like acid, cold, fire, lightning, etc.) when you hit a creature with an attack while that creature is within your 10 foot emanation, but now when you upcast it, the damage only increases by 1d8, rather than 2d8 for each level. That still means that you can get this up to 7d8 on every attack if you cast it at 9th level, meaning it'll still likely be a mainstay for Valor Bards and Bladesinger Wizards (it's not bad for Eldritch Knights, or Bladelocks of any stripe, but won't scale up the same way).

Other spells that scaled with two dice per spell level are also getting nerfed: Conjure Elemental, Conjure Fey.

Some of these changes, again, are likely clarifications, though they could be seen as nerfs, like Giant Insect gaining HP based on spell level above 4 rather than just raw spell level (which would seem to lose them 40 HP).

The Monster Manual actually got several changes, and these straight-up appear to be for balance in many cases, though there are some common-sense ones (like a Carrion Crawler's Paralyzing Tentacles calling for a Con save instead of a Dex save).

Most of the changes to monsters I'm seeing are actually making them tougher, with higher ACs or attack bonuses.

    Again, I'm just touching on some of the broad and big changes.

As someone who has been playing WoW for nearly 20 years, I'm no stranger to patch notes. But I imagine if you're in the emphatically non-digital world of physical books and paper character sheets, I wonder how you'll receive these. This is a pretty big chunk of errata, and while there's precedent for big things like this, it's clear that this isn't all just "oops, we had a typo here." Some of this was really balance adjustment.

I'm kind of fine with it, but I can imagine being philosophically unhappy with it.

The digital, online world where games can be rebalanced whenever the people controlling the game want to do so is one that creates certain vulnerabilities. I like to retain my physical books (the only one I have digital-only is the Book of Many Things, just because it was so profoundly cheaper than getting the giant set with the actual cards) and feel some comfort in the sense that if Wizards of the Coast vanished or were taken over by some far-right asshole who wants to purge the existence of anything "woke" like queer and/or non-white people just fucking existing from the game, I'd have what I have to continue using without the fear of things being swept away.

But I'm also someone who feels very comfortable using digital tools - being able to keep open multiple tabs on the three or four monsters I'm using in a fight while DM'ing or having a digital character sheet is all really convenient. I like these digital tools. And I hope that they continue to be useful.

Building Conrad

 It's a weird time as a D&D fan. With only a few exceptions, I've been a big fan of the 50th-anniversary revamp to the D&D rules (again, I foresee some future book doing with Background what Tasha's did with Races - namely de-coupling specific ability score bonuses from them). But between all the ways that WotC and its parent company Hasbro has repeatedly made your classic "greedy corporate" decisions that have really hurt good will toward the game, and also the recently-announced departures of both Chris Perkins and Jeremy Crawford, and then a bunch of backlash against the "5.5" edition (which was inevitable,) it's all just a bit foggy.

When I first cracked open the Player's Handbook in 2015, the class that most inspired in me the desire to play a character (it wouldn't be until 2018 that I actually got to play a PC) was the Warlock. I just felt that the inherent story behind the premise of the class was really exciting.

And it was the Great Old One patron whose flavor spoke to me the most. Naturally the most "obvious" default subclass for a Warlock is probably the Fiend, with its faustian bargains and such, somehow the class has always felt most fitting for a Great Old One, bargaining not necessarily with something malevolent but just truly alien.

Way back when, I wrote a character backstory for Conrad Nightfire, a young duke's son who was given a book on his sixteenth birthday that, in reading it, put his mind in contact with an alien entity known as the Shattering Tower. The madness that this inflicted upon Conrad led to a tragic accident that killed his father, but even as he rightfully should have assumed the role of Duke, he was sent off to a remote sanitarium. Initially benefitting from both the doctor who treated him and a friend he made at the asylum, things turned when his old doctor went missing and a new, cruel doctor took his place, imposing torturous "treatments" on the patients. This ultimately came to a point in which the Shattering Tower reached out to Conrad through his lobotomized friend (if indeed that's what happened - I'd leave a lot of the specifics up to the DM) and granted him his magical powers to escape the asylum.

Conrad suffers a lot of lost time, finding himself in places without knowing how he got there, and is on a quest to discover what all of this means, while fearing returning home to face the role he played in his father's death, not to mention the responsibilities he has now that he is the rightful duke.

So:

What we have, generally, is the following details: Conrad is a human, with the Noble background, and he's a Warlock with the Great Old One patron.

Part of his backstory involves his inheriting of the old journal that his friend, Old Delgado, from the asylum had been secretly keeping and hiding from the doctors. The journal (which I picture as one of those composition notebooks with the black-and-white static-like pattern on the front, though really whatever is the more period/genre-appropriate version) would be the basis of his Pact of the Tome.

I see him being a "Blastlock," and not going Pact of the Blade. The latter is, admittedly, something I think would be a lot of fun to play at some point (though I think it's hard to straight-class as a Bladelock, if only because a single Fighter or Paladin level solves a ton of their problems).

Naturally, as a Warlock, you aren't going to have the giant box of tools that a Wizard has. So, the primary job in combat, for old Conrad here is going to be to blast away with Eldritch Blast. That's honestly true for most Warlocks, but I guess the question becomes how we want to build things out.

As a Charisma-based character as well as someone with the potential for a lot of social connections (though at least to start off with, a refusal to invoke said connections,) I think we'd want to play as something of a "face" character. This could impact some of the Eldritch Invocations we pick up, along with some of the Feats we take.

If we wanted to go full combat-mode, the obvious thing would be to start off taking Agonizing Blast and Repelling Blast (both of which require level 2, but we could easily get Tome at 1 and then these two. Spell Sniper would also probably be an obvious feat to pick up.

But let's go level-by-level.

Currently, I'm mostly concerned with building to the level my most-played character is at, and my Wizard just hit level 8, so we're going to be there. So, let's just break this down level-by-level.

I think the hope here is to be capable in combat (as that's a factor in nearly every D&D game) but also try to be capable in social interactions as well.

Level 1:

With the Noble background, we can boost our choice of Charisma, Strength, or Intelligence. I think if I were going Bladelock and, for example, trying to hit the minimum 13 for Great Weapon Master, I'd give my +1 to Strength, but as our guy is really going to be more of a magic-focused warlock, I'm thinking we take +2 to Charisma and +1 to Intelligence.

If we're just assuming Point Buy, I'd get that 15 in Charisma, meaning with our background it's 17 to start off, and we'd get to 18 (+4) with a General Feat at level 4.

Now, given that Warlocks only get light armor and aren't a dex-based class, we're kind of going to have terrible AC no matter what we do. I think the goal will be to just stay away from attackers as best we can (party composition could be a major factor here - my Wizard almost never gets hit with melee attacks simply because we have two paladins and a fighter all there to tank for me). So, Con is more important to me than Dex, though I want both to be high.

If we wind up getting something akin to the Standard Array, we're probably talking 15 Charisma, 14 Con, 13 Dex (which could leave us open for Moderately Armored at some point,) 12 Intelligence, 10 Wisdom, and 8 Strength. I suppose we could dip down that Int to 11 (as it will go up to 12 with our Noble stuff) and then maybe get Dex to 14 (I think we can do that?)

Now, as a human, we also get an additional Origin Feat and an additional Skill proficiency. We're also getting Skilled for our Noble background. Magic Initiate of various kinds could be good here - we're already going to have a ton of cantrips, but we're going to be very flexible in which cantrips we can pick up anyway. It might be good to go MI: Wizard, and thus pick up the Shield spell. Thus, in the hopefully-rare cases where we do get attacked, we can potentially pop that AC up to something respectable.

As for cantrips, we're already getting Eldritch Blast and probably Prestidigitation from Pact Magic, then Pact of the Tome will get us several others. Let's say from our feat we'll get True Strike (giving us a good melee option before we get Spell Sniper) and Mage Hand, then Tome could give us Mending, Minor Illusion, and, oh, Spare the Dying I guess? (Message we don't really need because we can use our Awakened Mind at level 3). Then, for ritual spells, I guess we can pick up Find Familiar (we won't get a cool Chain-pact option, but it's still pretty cool) and Identify or Detect Magic (ritual spells are a little rough for a warlock during the levels where they want to concentrate on Hex).

Skill-wise, we're getting History and Persuasion from our background, but also three more from Skilled (as well as, I guess, potentially some tool proficiencies - but given that tools work in tandem with skills, I'm going to focus on those instead). Perception is always good to have. Insight would also be good for social situations. And then, I think Athletics could help balance out our terrible Strength (as a skill that is often called for). As a Warlock, I feel like Arcana and Intimidation (I could also imagine going Deception here - which might be a better choice if we want to really lean into things like the Actor feat and Mask of Many Faces) would be good options here, and perhaps with our Human bonus skill, maybe we grab Stealth. That's 8 skill proficiencies!

For our initial spells, Hex is actually plenty good at early levels, and I like Armor of Agathys as a way to weaponize our crap AC.

At level 2, we get Magical Cunning, (not to mention a second spell slot,) which will make us capable of casting spells a bit more frequently. We also learn a third spell. Charm Person, interestingly, is not concentration, but tons of creatures that were once humanoid are no longer. Still, on a more social-focused campaign, it probably would come up a fair amount - and when we get our Psychic Spells next level, we can even do this without alerting anyone to our casting of it.

We also get two more eldritch invocations, allowing us to pick up Agonizing Blast and Repelling Blast Agonizing Blast is, I think, the really mandatory one (and one I'd be tempted to take even on Bladelocks) but Repelling is also quite good, and lets us really lean into the "magic martial" identity of the Warlock.

At level 3, we get our Great Old One subclass. This includes learning Detect Thoughts, Dissonant Whispers, Phantasmal Force, and Tasha's Hideous Laughter (and our two spell slots level up). We can use Awakened Mind to create a two-way telepathic link with a creature within 30 feet of us. Psychic spells allows us to turn the damage of our spells to Psychic damage (which will not likely come up with our main damage spell, Eldritch Blast, as Force is usually better than Psychic) but more excitingly, we can cast Illusion and Enchantment spells without Verbal or Somatic components (still will need material components - though we have a few patron spells that don't require those). We also learn another spell, with 2nd level options now available. It's hard for me to not take Misty Step on any character I can, and while it won't scale in level, I think I'll still grab it.

At 4, we have our first feat. And this one's a real big choice: Warcaster is a really good feat for Warlocks, who really don't want to drop concentration on the spell they spent one of their precious spell slots on. Spell Sniper allows us to use Eldritch Blast in any combat situation. And then, the Actor feat is going to make us better at lying when disguised. I like this social-focused build idea, but I think I'd expect to have combat a bit more consistently. The truth is that we could eventually pick up all of these (and there's a good chance we would) but I'm going to focus on being more combat-capable to start with. And I think that, without a Con save proficiency, Warcaster will be probably the best call. (We could also combo True Strike with Dissonant Whispers!)

And, once again, another spell. Now, we need not pick a natively 2nd-level spell. Unlike a Wizard, who saves serious money (and most time, though my Scribe wizard copies things so quickly that he doesn't need downtime to copy spells) by picking the highest-level spells they can on level-up, a Warlock does fine by picking a well-scaling low-level spell. Cloud of Daggers (which is 2nd level) could play fairly well with our Repelling Blast invocation. I also like Suggestion.

Ah, right, we also get another cantrip. Minor Illusion, I guess!

At level 5, we're getting 3rd level spells, including Clairvoyance and Hunger of Hadar. We also get two more Eldritch Invocations. We can start building toward our social infiltrator stuff by picking up Mask of Many Faces. Then, especially now that we have Hunger of Hadar, Devil's Sight will help make up for our weak human eyes and allow us to see all the tentacle-weirdness that assaults our foes when we cast that spell (though, on an aesthetic level, I think of Conrad's patron as being less slimy tentacle stuff and more dusty white stone and giant geometric shapes in the hazy distance).

For our new spell at this level, Tongues could help us play the team diplomat. Fear is also very good and strong. Bit of a judgment call based on what kind of campaign we've had so far.

At 6, we get Clairvoyant Combatant. This allows us to weaponize our Awakened Mind, though this also requires us to get within 30 feet of a foe, when we usually want to stay farther away. That said, if we start 45 feet from them and just dip in and out, we can maintain a safe distance while using this.

And we have another spell. Dispel Magic is probably a solid option. Remove Curse might also be good, depending on how frequently we see people getting cursed.

At 7, we get 4th level spells, which means Confusion and Summon Aberration. The latter is going to probably be the main thing we use in combat, though we'll need a 400g material component for it. For our level-up spell, Banishment can be clutch.

We also get another Eldritch Invocation. We've honestly got a lot of the ones that make our build work. I'd certainly consider dipping into some of the old-rules ones (Grasp of Hadar with Repelling Blast can be very fun - while we don't get Spike Growth, if we have a druid pal we can do some nasty cheese-grating). Tomb of Levistus can be a literal lifesaver. If we want to stick to 2024 options, Gift of the Depths would be very nice in a campaign with significant underwater portions, though it's certainly situational - arguably Master of Myriad forms is the better choice, as we can give ourselves that Aquatic Adaptation, but also potentially get a way to disguise ourselves that will isn't illusion. Otherworldly Leap is also potentially good given how much better the Jump spell is now. And, we could, of course, pick one of the other Pact Boon invocations - while we already have Find Familiar, we could now get an exotic one (given his pursuit of arcane secrets, I think a Sphinx of Wonder feels like the right familiar for our character). I'd hope that my DM would allow me to swap out the Pact of the Tome Find Familiar if I did this one.

Finally, at 8, we get another feat, and another spell.

We could, of course, just push our Charisma to 20 at this point - this would make room in tier 3 to pick up things like Moderately Armored. Alternatively, though, if we're willing to wait until level 12 to max out our Charisma, we could pick up one of the feats we left behind at level 4. By this point, hopefully we have a good sense of the balance of social versus combat encounters we have in this campaign (I do find, as a DM, that I have a bit of a harder time making a social encounter feel like something with truly variable outcomes. Partially is that I have campaigns planned out perhaps too well.) In a more social campaign, I think Actor could be very good here. Otherwise, I'm probably taking Spell Sniper, though unless I really don't think Actor will help in the long run, I'll probably take it at level 12.

Now, for our spell at this level: Charm Monster is worth considering, given that as you get into higher levels, you're facing fewer and fewer humanoids. We could dip back to Mirror Image to give us a little more survivability, though I think its lack of scaling makes me question whether preventing 3 hits is worth one of our spell slots - ideally we're not even in a position to be getting attacked (the new Mirror Image is incredible on a heavily-armored Eldritch Knight). Fly is also good utility (hitting two targets at this level) and Dispel Magic is broadly useful.

    So, how do we think Conrad will do?

As I see it, the standard operating procedure by this level will rely a lot on Summon Aberration as our concentration spell (the nuances and vagaries of Create Thrall can wait for another 6 levels). While Hex will stay up for a good chunk of the day, Summon Aberration is going to be very good damage for an hour as long as we can keep our guy alive.

Given the changes to the 2025 Monster Manual, the Slaad option for this spell is actually quite a bit better than it was - there are still monsters with resistance to slashing damage, but with the removal of the idea of "magic" damage, I think there are very, very few that have full immunity (I think the Ochre Jelly?) so our Slaad buddy could be quite effective. The Beholderkin does have the benefit of being ranged, though, as well as flying, which means it's very easy to keep them out of the fray (as long as the monsters are largely melee-limited, which is less common these days). One reason I think the Slaad looks very good right now is that they have health regeneration - as long as they survive combat, you can more or less assume that they're back at full health by the time another fight breaks out. They regen 5 HP per turn, so that's just 48 seconds to go from 1 HP to their (4th level casting) max of 40. The Slaad also does do more damage than the other two.

The Mind Flayer (which was the Star Spawn in Tasha's) is a bit more fragile in that regard, and does the same damage as the Beholderkin, but in melee. But it also has its Whispering Aura, which can potentially do a bunch of AoE damage. There are some downsides here, though: the Mind Flayer will damage allies (it doesn't hurt us, but we're going to be staying the hell away from the bad guys) and the Aura is a save for none. Now, it is our saving throw DC, which by this level, with a 19 Charisma, we're talking a DC of 15. If this works have the time, it's effectively 3.5 extra damage multiplied by how many monsters it can get near (the aura is 5 feet, so they have to be right up against it).

Of course, we can determine the options situationally. The Slaad could be very nice against a regenerating monster (which there are fewer of with the changes to Vampires). Probably best to assume Beholderkin as a default, though.

So, our first round of combat (or, if possible, before - because our Summoned Aberration does last an hour. In fact, it'd probably be reasonable to cast it before we start a short rest if we can) we spend an action to summon the Aberration. If we're near our target, we can also try a Clairvoyant Combatant to get inside the most prominent enemy's head (we're probably built to focus down the biggest threat).

The Beholderkin then makes two attacks for 1d8+7, or 11.5 on average, meaning two hits should average 23 damage.

Then, on subsequent turns, we join the Beholderkin with Eldritch Blasts, making two that deal 1d10+4, or 9.5, meaning 19 average damage.

That's 42 damage per round (obviously, this is before we account for hit chance).

Ok, let's assume we're fighting something with a, say, 17 AC (not unreasonable for a tough bad guy at level 8).

We have only a +7 to hit at this level (assuming we haven't gotten a Rod of the Pact Keeper or similar item). So, we need to roll a 10 or higher to hit, giving us a 55% hit chance. Our Aberration has the same attack bonus, which keeps this simple.

Beholderkin:

11.5x55%, or 6.325, plus 4.5x5%, or .225, so 6.55 damage per attack, meaning 13.1 damage per round.

Eldritch Blast:

9.5x55%, or 5.225, plus 5.5x5%, or .275, so 5.5 average damage per attack, and thus 11 damage per round.

Meaning we're pulling 24.1 damage per round.

It's not amazing damage, but it'll do better with enemies at lower ACs, and we're also bringing a fair amount of utility, with our giant catalogue of cantrips and also our various other Warlock spells.

Revisiting Super Mario RPG

 The very first RPG I ever played was Super Mario RPG: The Legend of the Seven Stars. Yes, that rather bulky title is usually shrunk down to "Mario RPG," but it was my first entrypoint into a genre that I am quite fond of - and in the last decade, branched out into the original tabletop version of the genre.

Made by Squaresoft at a time when Square was primarily making games for Nintendo (it would shift to Sony with Final Fantasy VII,) Mario RPG feels in a lot of ways like "baby's first Final Fantasy," which is fine because I was only 11 when I played it. Leveling and gaining skills is simple, and there are a lot of ways the game becomes fairly forgiving - like sometimes giving you back "freebies" when you use an item or letting you block attacks and reduce their damage significantly (though this requires careful timing).

The Switch remake for the game is mostly extremely faithful, upgrading the graphics (I believe the original's 3D models were effectively just pre-rendered sprites, while this of course can render things in-game). There are a couple new features - you build up a gauge as you string more and more timed hits (and blocks, etc.) together, which both creates a passive buff to everyone in the party (different characters getting different buffs) and filling up to 100% to allow you to unleash a big triple-attack that changes depending on who's in the party (because Mario always has to be one of your 3 active party members, there are six of these big group-attacks, which have a flashy pre-rendered animation when they go off.

However, what's delightful about this game is the way that, because it's so faithful a remake, you get some of that really weird 1990s video game aesthetic, both with bizarre creature designs that never made it into other Mario games (because this was Squaresoft doing Mario, rather than Nintendo doing Squaresoft) as well as some of the weirdness of the 45-degree isometric perspective - which does make platforming a pain, but hits me right in the nostalgia.

Of course, being 38 (pretty soon 39) and with a lot more RPGs under my belt, the challenge level is near the floor. Indeed, I think very much in that early video game era, there are some aspects that are trivial - like most combat - and then some aspects that are near-impossible (I never got the 30 jumps in a row challenge back in the day).

Nintendo's next foray into Mario-themed RPGs was Paper Mario on the N64, which became its own sub-series. I don't have anything against those games but I'm a little sad that this Nintendo/Square collaboration didn't spawn its own follow-ups.

Given how big a part of my life D&D has become, I have to give credit to this game for introducing me to the RPG genre (even if it would be 18 years between my playing this the first time and getting into D&D). So, yeah, it's been a fun trip down memory lane.

Switch 2 Release Date, With Games I'm Excited About

 I've had every Nintendo home console since the Super Nintendo, so it's more a matter of when rather than if I get a Switch 2. However, looking at the line-up of games that is coming, I'm thinking it's probably going to be sooner rather than later.

The console launches on June 5th (a few days before my birthday) and looks to largely try to repeat the successful formula of the original Switch's mobile/home console hybrid approach.

Of course, any console is only as good as its game library, so what do we have to look forward to? There are a lot of games coming out - many are ports and remasters, of course, and as someone who has a PS5 as well, in a lot of cases I already have them: it's awesome that Nintendo-exclusive players will be able to play Final Fantasy VII Remake (evidently not yet Rebirth, though I imagine that's down the pipeline) and Elden Ring (which at this point is probably the game I've put more hours in than any game other than World of Warcraft,) but here are the games I'm eager to get my hands on:

Donkey Kong: Bananza (get it? Bonanza and Banana?) looks to be a 3D platformer with a whole lot of destructible environments - we see DK smashing through the earth, digging tunnels and finding gems and gold. Interestingly, DK's visual design has been changed from the version we've been familiar with since Donkey Kong Country, with a look that seems more in line with the even older design from those old Donkey Kong arcade cabinets (that I actually think I've never seen in person).

Mario Kart World is a brand-new Mario Kart game (which I don't think we've gotten since Mario Kart 8, which released originally on the Wii U). There seems to be some sense that the tracks will be a lot more open.

The Duskbloods is the game that most surprised me, which is a FromSoft game led by Hidetaka Miyazaki, which seems to be a vampiric, gothic-themed game in a setting that looks a lot like Yharnam from Bloodborne if the city had undergone the Industrial Revolution, complete with trains and steampunk jetpacks. Given that Bloodborne is a Sony exclusive, this might more or less be the unofficial Bloodborne sequel we've all been wanting for a decade, so I'm hyped as hell. (This one doesn't come out until 2026).

Naturally, we also have Metroid Prime 4: Beyond, which is another one of these games we've been waiting for for a long, long time.

So, cool stuff. I hope that the Switch 2 is as good as the Switch has been, and may it have a vast and high-quality library!

Shadow Dragons!

 Of the canonical D&D settings, Planescape is probably the one that I am most drawn to, conceptually. But it's in hard competition with Ravenloft. Both of these were introduced in the early days of the game, both (I think) formally introduced as full settings in 2nd Edition, in the late 80s and early 90s. Ravenloft was initially it's own kind of thing (actually, it might have been part of the Ethereal Plane,) but as of 5th Edition, it was made into a kind of demiplane or cluster of demiplanes that were in the Shadowfell.

The Shadowfell is actually quite new to D&D, only introduced officially in 4th Edition (there was a "Plane of Shadow" before then, to be fair). While the majority of Shadowfell stuff we've gotten in 5E, we don't tend to see a lot of the "greater Shadowfell," which is a more direct mirror of the Prime Material Plane.

And it's this plane that I think might be my favorite of them.

Yes, since a kid, when my favorite holiday was Halloween, I've always enjoyed a kind of spooky, gothic aesthetic (I did grow up in a creaky Victorian house,) and that kind of "Dark World" has always felt like a great place for adventures. What is heroism but being the light within a world of darkness, after all?

No monster is more synonymous with the fantasy genre than the Dragon, and it's right there in the name of the game, so it's fitting that there's a variant on dragons that has been touched by the Shadowfell.

My homebrew setting has a fairly well-fleshed-out Shadowfell and Feywild version, and the most memorable adventure of my original campaign was a journey across a region of the Shadowfell called Red Scar Plains. In it, the party needed to face off against a psychotic Fire Giant who ruled over the realm of Red Scar Plains (the region where the party was trapped). Their ally, a silver dragon named Sirkazan (or Sirk for short) had been captured by the giant, and was being kept there to allow shadow energy to gradually corrupt him (when they escaped, getting Sirk cured allowed me to come up with one of the coolest, grossest ideas I've had - they met a Nagpa who offered to cure Sirk if she were allowed to consume the shadow essence within him, which involved her cutting open his veins and pulling it out like strings of oil congealing into something like plastic, while the party fended off a band of rampaging orcs intent on attacking the Nagpa's lair).

Anyway, while Sirk avoided becoming a Shadow Dragon thanks to the party's rescue, the second-in-command of Red Scar Plains, and direct servant of the demigod emperor of the larger "Dire Kingdom" of which the Plains were just one territory, was an Adult Black Shadow Dragon named Kormod. The intent was never to let them actually fight Kormod, but they schemed with his daughter after killing off some of his younger wyrmling offspring to spring Sirk.

Shadow Dragons in 2014 were designed as a template - you would take a normal Chromatic or Metallic Dragon and change some of their features.

In 2025, Shadow Dragons now have two dedicated stat blocks.

The upside is that they're ready to use from the word go. The downside is that there's not any official guidance on homebrewing more powerful ones. The Juvenile Shadow Dragon stat block is Medium sized, and CR 4. That's on par with Red Dragon Wyrmlings, which are the toughest of the wrymlings.

The full-grown Shadow Dragon is either Large or Huge, but its hit dice are d12s, so it seems more "by default" Huge, and thus on par with Adult Dragons. At CR 13, it's actually on par with an Adult White Dragon, which is the least powerful of the Chromatic ones. Basically, if a Shadow Dragon is "Young," (Large-sized) it's more powerful than any other kind, but if it's an Adult (Huge-sized) it's near the bottom of the hierarchy - at least in terms of CR.

The truly terrifying thing about both Shadow Dragons is that their breath weapon will auto-kill a creature it reduces to 0 hit points - no death saves, just full-on dead and on top of that, spawns a Shadow to fight you.

Now, at the level when you're fighting a Shadow Dragon (level 9 probably at the earliest for a group of 4) a Shadow is going to be scary but not that scary, and easily killed very quickly. However, because you could potentially face off against a Juvenile as early as level 3 (a High difficulty encounter for 4 level 3 players would have a max of 1,200, and CR 4 is worth 1,100,) before you have access to things like Revivify, and when a Shadow is still quite a menace, these can be truly nasty encounters.

I'll admit I'd have liked to see a Dracolich and Shadow Dragon that rivals or even exceeds the most powerful of normal dragons, but admittedly, in both cases they're kind of curses.

A Shadow Dragon doesn't have the inherent magic that most adult-and-older dragons in the Monster Manual do. However, they are kind of the Rogues of dragons, able to hide as a bonus action while in dim light and darkness. Notably, a Shadow Dragon's lair (which only the adult version would get) actually reduces the effect of any magic that would shed bright light to dim light, so within their lair they should always have the opportunity to hide. Now, to be clear: the Shadow Stealth bonus action does not actually confer anything like cover or invisibility, so they will still need to do something like Disengage and get behind obscurement if they're not in total darkness. However, it does have Blindsense, so having magical darkness fill the Shadow Dragon's lair could be very helpful to them.

Generally speaking, I think the tactics with a Dragon are usually to stay at range, using the breath weapon when it recharges and then getting either out of range or behind cover. A Shadow Dragon is probably hiding on turns they can't use the breath weapon.

Now, how would we use one of these in a story?

If your campaigns are really locked to the Prime Material Plane, a Shadow Dragon could be in a place where there's some bleed from the Shadowfell, or, as the Monster Manual suggests, they could be in the Underdark (which tends to be, you know, dark thanks to the fact that it's underground).

Notably, this isn't a natural thing: Shadow Dragons are changed and corrupted by the shadow. So, a Shadow Dragon could have started off as a perfectly benevolent being.

Generally, when I think about the influence of the Shadowfell, I think it's a kind of deadening of emotions. The kind of ennui, depression, and the obsessiveness that comes more from feeling a compulsion to do something rather than genuine excitement about it. Dragons, of course, hoard things, but a Shadow Dragon might be consumed with a kind of hopeless, joyless type of hoarding, and perhaps what they actually hoard are the souls of the dead, trapped as Shadows like themselves.

In a sense, a Shadow Dragon is a pitiable creature, but no less dangerous for this fact.

While the Shadowfell isn't exclusively Ravenloft, and Ravenloft isn't exclusively Gothic Horror, I think you could play on those Gothic tropes, particularly Poe-style characters who behave in gruesome ways because of a kind of deadened sense of empathy - the two of his stories that stick the most with me are The Casque of Amontillado and The Tell-Tale Heart. In both stories, the narrator confesses to murdering someone on a kind of whim - in the former, there's an almost dismissive mention of a perceived insult, and in the latter, it's basically because the narrator is weirded out by his victim's blind, whitened eye.

A Shadow Dragon, I think, could represent a kind of faded majesty. While officially in the rules, only Metallic Dragons can polymorph themselves to look like humanoids, I 100% extend this ability to all dragons (at least those of adult age and older, though I think even a Wyrmling could do it if it fits the story). And I think a Shadow Dragon could present themselves as a regal lord, but one who has probably fallen into a brooding depression. Perhaps their lair - maybe a great castle - has fallen into ruin.

This character could present themselves initially as a friend, but turn more sinister over time. Admittedly, you could more or less use the same RP playbook as a classic vampire.

The other option is that the players hear about some great and powerful dragon, only to discover that their realm has fallen to darkness and despair. Now, the few remaining people living nearby speak of armies of shadows drifting across the land, and a greater shadow that blots out the moon with its wings.

A Juvenile Shadow Dragon could be a menace to a community that turns out to be more intelligent than initially believed. Signs of their activity could be hard to identify - a patch of grass in the woods that very suddenly rotted, or lurking shadow monsters growing in number of late.

Building an encounter with one of these, I'd very much design a map with lots of places to hide. It's always kind of difficult to build verticality into a battle map, especially if you don't have 3D stuff to use for it (I'd love to have Dimension 20's set-building team, but I do not believe I have the budget for it!), but flying monsters are always going to feel like more of a threat if they can, you know, fly.

In my mind, I'm imagining the ruined hall of some grand manor house - a massive staircase leading up to a landing on the second floor, with wide hallways leading off on both the first and second floors. The Shadow Dragon could then use the floor of the second floor/ceiling of the first floor as a way to hide and forcing mostly ground-bound characters to have to chase them.

Now, death from their Shadow Breath does automatically happen if you reduce a character to 0 HP, even if it's a successful save. At the levels where you're fighting the adult version, I'd hope you have at least one character that can Revivify (at level 9, even half-casters can,) but throwing a Juvenile one of these at a tier 1 party is going to be rough. Make sure that your players are bought-in for truly deadly monsters, and if not, make sure that there's some way for them to resurrect characters such as friendly NPCs or remote holy shrines or the like.

Rebuilding Jax: Comparing Sword-and-Board to GWM in my One Particular Instance of an Eldritch Knight

Before my Triton Wizard overtook him, my longest-played D&D character was an Eldritch Knight Fighter. The campaign sadly fell apart when one of our players had to step away (for happy reasons, though: he became a dad!) and our DM had built much of the plot to hinge on his character.

It's a character I really loved to play, and even though I know I really ought to try some new subclasses and concepts, the changes to Fighters and Eldritch Knights, and even Dragonborn, in the 2024 rules have all made me really eager to play an updated version of the character.

But how much of an update?

My default character in an RPG is a heavily-armored character with access to spellcasting. While this often means playing something like a Paladin, the Eldritch Knight gets about as close as one can to my ideal "Battlemage" archetype as I've seen in any game.

My character, Jax (which I didn't realize was an actual name at the time, and figured it was a cool and draconic-sounding fantasy name) was built kind of around the following concept: having the highest AC possible. Our one-shot adventure that turned into a campaign saw us finding a +1 Shield that Jax received, so on top of his Defensive fighting style and eventually getting his hands on some Adamantine Plate, he ultimately had an AC of 22, which could be pushed to 27 with the Shield spell, which was the main thing he cast with his spell slots.

Now, I've done some math on what a heavy-armor-wearer's AC does for damage reduction compared with what you can get with the lower AC of a Barbarian but who gets the damage reduction from raging, and generally it's actually not nearly as good as the damage resistance. I might run such simulations on the assumption that the Fighter also has the Shield spell and see what it looks like, because basically I was almost never actually hit unless I was crit (which gave me, in retrospect, a sense that I was cursed with getting crit more frequently. Might have just been confirmation bias).

Still, at a very basic level, using a shield is a sacrifice of damage for a martial character. I wasn't dual-wielding or using a big two-handed weapon. The question, though, is how much of a sacrifice it was.

See, I've suspected that if I were to return to this character, I might change the way that I had built him to be lighter on defense and heavier on offense. Even without any shield or the defensive fighting style (though given how crap Great Weapon Fighting is, I might still take defensive,) Plate armor plus the Shield spell means pushing your AC to 23, which is pretty good. And, of course, if our damage is significantly higher, we might embrace the penalty to our un-hittableness because enemies that are dead can't hit us anyway.

So, I wanted to go reconstruct Jax's build a bit in both ways, and see how much more powerful a GWM build would be.

Jax was 12 level when the campaign sputtered to an end, meaning he had three attacks per Attack action. The buff to War Magic (allowing us to replace an attack with one of our cantrips rather than letting us make a single bonus action attack after we cast a cantrip) might actually wind up smoothing out some of our damage differences a little.

We will also be continuing to use Booming Blade and Green-Flame Blade, because there's no really decent replacement for them in the 2024 rules (I'm honestly a little bummed they didn't make them it into the new PHB, as they're so ideal for this subclass).

Now, let's talk about the basics:

Jax is a Blue Dragonborn. His species means that he will get a Breath Weapon he can use PB times per day - in his case 4. The Breath Weapon can replace one of his attacks (kind of perfect for a Fighter, who has so many) and does 3d10 lightning damage to any creature in a 30-foot line or a 15-foot cone (he now gets to choose, and boy will it be nice to have the cone option). The DC is going to be based on his Con, but this is a save-for-half feature, so it's guaranteed damage.

He has the Sage background, which is actually a problem if we're using the new Sage, because this fails to boost his Strength in any way. Ideally, we'd be able to use the old version of the background and just pick up the Magic Initiate: Wizard feat to go with it. Jax had actually not rolled any stat above a 14, but used his Dragonborn ability bonuses to get that to 16 at level 1, and just pumped up Strength and Con with ASIs until he took Tough at level 12.

Given the way General Feats work now, I'd probably do things a bit differently. If we just went to Point Buy, I'd probably go for a 15 in Strength and get +2 to that from the Background, and then shoot for at least a 14 in Con. I had overestimated the need for a good Intelligence modifier when I first built him, so he actually started off with a +2 to Int and only a +1 to Con. At the very least I'd flip that, though I also always intended to find him a Headband of Intellect (in years of playing, he never had any attunement magic items).

Thanks to how many feats he can get as he levels up, if I could start him off with a 17 Strength, I'd probably then just pick up a General feat at 4, 6, 8, and 12, three of which would be Strength-based ones, and the other being War Caster (Booming Blade as an Opportunity Attack feels really nasty, but it also solves the issue of having to drop your weapon if you need to cast Shield - something that the GWM build is not as worried about because they only need both hands on their weapon when they're attacking with it).

For cantrips, we're obviously using Green-Flame Blade and Booming Blade - the former just when we have a secondary target to hit and the latter in all other situations.

Now, weapon choice of course depends on whether we're going for the Sword-and-Board build or GWM. In terms of aesthetic, I love a Battlemage with a Maul, and perhaps because it's so optimal, I'd almost hope that my DM wouldn't give me a magic Greatsword. But in terms of figuring out the actual damage potential, it's pretty clear that Graze is just by far the most powerful damage mastery for any Great Weapon, so we're going to assume we have that.

For our sword-and-board build, it's a more open question. We basically want to ensure we're using a one-handed d8 weapon, which means picking between Battleaxes, Flails, Longswords, Morningstars, Rapiers, Tridents, Warhammers, and War Picks. Just as a special note, Tridents are actually kind of ideal for an Eldritch Knight because they're the only d8 weapon with the Thrown property (can we get to d10 if we throw it two-handed?) and thanks to Weapon Bond, we can get it back with a bonus action after throwing it - it's fitting that the official Eldritch Knight art depicts one with a Trident). What this really comes down to is the Topple, Sap, Vex, and Push masteries. However, because we by this level have Tactical Master, effectively every weapon we use already has the Push, Sap, and Slow masteries. Thus, we're sort of leaving some options on the table if we don't pick up one that has either Topple or Vex. So, we'll want to grab a Battleaxe, Rapier, or Trident.

I imagine that in terms of damage potential, the Rapier, which has Vex, is almost certainly the right choice. Topple can potentially also give us advantage on attacks, but requires a creature to fail a Con save. So, perhaps this is ignoring a significant bit of damage potential, but I'm going to say we're going with a Trident for this build and furthermore, we're actually going to ignore the Topple Mastery, making an assumption that the monsters we're fighting at level 12 have beefy Con (though boy does the Trident having the Thrown property and also Topple make it feel awesome for downing flying enemies). I'm tempted to, in the interest of fairness, ignore Graze when calculating the damage potential of a GWM build. Actually, given how Graze is in most instances more powerful than Topple, we're for sure going to do that.

Phew, almost there.

Feats!

Naturally, our GWM build is going to start off at level 4 picking up Great Weapon Master. While there are some redundancies, Polearm Master is a good pairing with this (swapping out a Greatsword for a Glaive) but I think I'm going to turn it down, instead getting Mage Slayer (on both builds,) which is so dang good (between that and the new Indomitable, Jax's mind is going to be hard to mess with). Both will also pick up War Caster (while the GWM build will already have a free hand for spellcasting, the advantage on Concentration saves and especially the cast-a-spell-as-an-opportunity-attack features are very nice). That leaves one more feat for GWM and two more for S&B, which will need to be a Strength feat in order to get our Strength to 20.

Now, of course, we could pick up Polearm Master for our GWM build. And it would probably be plenty good, even if the Pole Strike aspect of it would be slightly diluted by our several attacks. Here, though, I might just make an aesthetic decision and say we want to be using a Buster Sword-sized Greatsword. Now, Sentinel is an obvious choice here, but we have the following downside - our Warcaster opportunity attacks will not work as well when doing our Booming Blade trick. That being said, the language of War Caster means that we aren't technically making an Opportunity attack, so Booming Blade would't actually reduce their speed to 0. Then again, we really want to keep our Reactions open for Shield. It's a tough call.

I think in part for consistency's sake, we're going to go with a defensive feat (that still boosts Strength) in the form of Heavy Armor Master. Now, in those rare cases where we do get hit, we can reduce incoming bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing damage by 4 (and I think this goes up to 5 at the next level). It's not going to be Barbarian-level damage reduction, and of course doesn't help with other damage types, but melee attacks still mostly do these types of damage (and even if it's a mix of, say, piercing and poison, that 4 still subtracts from the overall total).

This leaves what the final feat for our S&B build is using. Shield Master is certainly tempting - it's a little unclear to me whether you get to use your Reaction before or after knowing if you would succeed on your saving throw with Interposing Shield (as written it looks like before, which means we couldn't use, like, Absorb Elements if we got hit by a Fireball and got a 5 on our saving throw) but it does seem to interact well with Indomitable. And honestly, at this point there aren't a ton of feats left to choose from. So, yeah, we'll go with that.

So, to recap, we're going with War Caster, Mage Slayer, Heavy Armor Master, and then either Shield Master or Great Weapon Master (not necessarily in that order, but we're starting off at level 12, so we can have all four).

In terms of spells, I'm going to keep this simple for the sake of my sanity: we're using Booming Blade in single-target situations, and our spell slots are being reserved for Shield, Absorb Elements, or Misty Step.

Ok, finally, let's get those damage calculations!

Because we're essentially ignoring weapon masteries, I think we don't really need to worry about hit chance. We will still generally have a 5% crit chance, which will activate GWM's Hew attack. Again, between our Trident and Shield Master for the S&B build, we can probably actually knock enemies prone frequently, but I'm going to just have to ignore this again for the sake of sanity.

So, we're basically comparing damage on hits, which makes this a lot easier.

S&B:

Starting off with the build closest to our original one, we've got a +5 to Strength and +4 PB. While I had a +1 weapon in the original campaign, assuming some kind of big reset, I'll just act as if it's all mundane equipment.

Thus, our Trident hits are going to be 1d8+5. Booming Blade at this level adds 2d8 Thunder damage on the initial hit and an additional 3d8 if they move, but we'll assume we're both planting our feet.

Thus, on our turn, as the Attack Action, we are doing one attack for 3d8+5 (18.5 damage). Now, regarding our Breath Weapon, we will probably only use this when we can catch multiple targets in it - 3d10 is 16.5 average damage, which is quite good, but it's limited to 4 per day. If we want to go all out, we'll use this every turn, and this will of course dilute the distinction between the builds a bit. But let's assume some conservatism and say that on a single target, we're just sticking to our regular attacks.

Thus, our S&B build is going to hit with 3d8+5 + 1d8+5 + 1d8+5, or ultimately 5d8+15, which comes out to 37.5 damage. Again, this is assuming all hits, so we shouldn't look at this and think it's some really impressive DPR.

GWM:

Our GWM build is going to hit for 2d6+2d8+9 on our Booming Blade attack, and then 2d6+9 on the second and third hits, or a total of 6d6+2d8+27, which comes to 57 damage. If any of our three attacks as part of our Attack action crit, we get another Hew attack as a bonus action. With three attacks, we've got a roughly 14% chance to get a crit on our turn, which only deals 2d6+5 (we don't get to add our PB to this damage). 14%x12 is 1.68, so our 57 goes up to 58.68.

In other words, we're only doing about 64% of our damage with Sword & Board as we would be with GWM.

Now, the GWM build is built far more for raw damage. The many Topples we could do with our S&B build could potentially be very useful in some fights, and I think that the higher our AC, the more impactful even higher AC can be. A 23 AC is impressive, but perhaps not quite as much as a 27 that I was able to pull with my old build, where a creature that had a +7 or lower to attack needed to crit me.

Still, I think I'd be inclined to move more toward this damage-output focus, which would speed up combat. Also, we haven't talked about how awesome Graze is for a Fighter with Tactical Mastery - as a weapon mastery that only actually does something if we miss, this means we can always pick Sap, Push, or Slow when we do connect without sacrificing anything.

Ah, it'd be fun to play that character again.

Can We Build an Unarmed Barbarian?

 Among the changes in the 2024 PHB, one that was kind of interesting was the change to allow Barbarians to get their Rage bonus on Unarmed Strikes as well as Weapon Attacks. Now, this could be a help in a situation where the Barbarian is unarmed, like if their weapon is hit with a Heat Metal spell or stolen or something.

The real question is this: can we actually build a Barbarian that actually does decent damage with unarmed strikes?

Obviously, the Monk is the unarmed strike master, built entirely around them. And while I generally abhor multiclassing, it can sometimes be a last resort to make a build work (I think a Bladelock, for example, gets so much benefit from taking a level of Fighter that it's kind of hard not to).

Let me explain why I'd be looking at this conceptually:

I have a premise for a character that's kind of the first real Barbarian character I've actually felt excited to play. Loosely inspired by the Alan Wake games (particularly II,) he's a horror novelist who finds himself trapped in the Shadowfell for over a decade, desperately trying to stay alive in an ongoing nightmare. Whether it's an actual outside presence or just a persona he comes up with to help him survive (and people with D.I.D. often develop these other personae as a response to trauma,) the character manifests an alter-ego known as Mr. Teeth, who takes over when he goes into a Rage. The idea would be that at early levels, Mr. Teeth would just be a change in posture, expression, and tone of voice, but eventually he'd manifest as a kind of shadow over the character, the appearance of which I'd describe as looking like if someone had gone into the film stock and colored over him with a black marker in each frame - despite the fact that this would be in "reality" as he and the people around him knew it.

Now, if I ever play this character, I'll probably wind up just giving him weapons, because the class is clearly built for that. But I wanted to know if I could make something that at least worked decently.

Thematically, the subclass I'd wind up taking is Berserker, which, despite being kind of the "vanilla" Barbarian, has a few features that feel very appropriate. Berserkers are a more offense-focused subclass thanks to the new version of Frenzy. Mindless Rage feels particularly appropriate, as Mr. Teeth kind of manifested to help the character endure the terrors of the Shadowfell. And even the capstone, Intimidating Presence, is kind of perfect because he's become a scarier monster than the ones that terrorized him.

Why do we want unarmed strikes? Well, it's primarily an aesthetic thing. Most monsters don't really need weapons because they have claws and teeth and such. It would also mean that, when not raging, the character can look like they're just some normal guy.

I'd probably also have the character be Human. While I'm just waiting for the other shoe to drop and for us to get the equivalent of Tasha's "customize your species" equivalent for backgrounds, being Human will allow us to grab any Origin Feat we want, which is nice.

Now, let's talk about Unarmed Strikes.

By default, we do 1 plus our Strength modifier (and also our Rage bonus) with an Unarmed Strike. This "d1" damage die is going to lower our damage by a lot - if we start off with a +3 to Strength, comparing this even with a Dagger is a difference between 6 damage when raging and 7.5. Compared with a Greatsword, we're looking at 6 versus 12, which is fully half as much damage before we even get into the fact that we're losing the Graze mastery, which is so good.

So, it's an uphill battle, and one that I doubt we're going to actually be able to win. But let's give it the old college try!

The Tavern Brawler feat is pretty good for unarmed strikes. It upgrades them to a d4 (meaning we're now at least doing as much damage as we would with a dagger, light hammer, sickle, or club) and allows us to reroll that damage die if we roll a 1. Thus, the typical 2.5 damage from a d4 becomes a 2.875. Eh, that's... better I guess? We also get proficiency with improvised weapons and can, once per turn, push a target 5 feet from us when we hit them as part of the attack action.

Ok, so this is definitely better - doing 7.875 damage on our hits rather than 6.

Still, we're pretty far behind.

Broadly speaking, Barbarians (and most melee builds) divide into what I'd call three broad categories: Sword-and-Board, Dual-wielding, and Great Weapons. The latter of these does also include polearm builds. Sword-and-Board can be very good, but sacrifices damage in the name of survivability. We're not really going for that so much, so we want instead to focus on damage output.

Now, our unarmed strikes are not going to be competitive with a great weapon's damage. But they do start to approach the damage of a dual-wielder's weapons. However, we run into the following problem: dual-wielders are built around just that - dual-wielding. Their attacks deal less damage, but they get to make more of them.

I'd love to build a "pugilist" feat that allows you to effectively dual-wield your own fists - one of the ironies of D&D's design is that someone wielding Light weapons can effectively attack faster with them than with their own empty fists.

In a lot of ways, the Monk's bonus action attack kind of corrects for this. And here, we do really need to start considering whether a dip into Monk is going to solve a ton of our problems.

Being a Monk will be a bit challenging, though, given that both Dex and Wisdom are considered their Primary Abilities, so you'll need at least a 13 in both. Going Point Buy or Standard Array will mean you're pretty spread-out, and you'll need to be somewhat lucky with rolled stats to get this. That said, talk with your DM and see if they will waive this for you.

Let's take a look at the Monk's Martial Arts feature.

We get two major benefits here: the first is that you get a d6 hit die for your Unarmed Strikes (and Monk weapons). This brings your punches (or kicks, headbutts, bites, etc.) in line with the damage of a Shortsword or Handaxe.

The next big benefit is that we get to make an Unarmed Strike as a bonus action. Because this doesn't involve the Light property, that attack gets the full benefit of our Strength and Rage.

While Monks can use Dexterity in place of Strength for unarmed strikes and monk weapons, it doesn't say you have to.

Now, I will say that if you eventually take this build all the way to level 20, you might sadly miss out on the amazing capstones for each class. But given how few campaigns actually go that far, it might not actually be that bad. The more bitter pill is that you'll be delaying Extra Attack, which is rough.

Still, just one Monk level now gives us a bonus action attack (which, to be fair, won't come up until round two, after we've Raged).

In terms of which class we start off with, I think Barbarian's probably wise, giving us Con save proficiency. Then, maybe just at level 2 we pick up our Monk level and then stick to Barbarian for the foreseeable future.

Now, as much as I enjoy the introduction of Weapon Masteries, it makes calculating damage a lot harder (depending on the mastery). Given that a dual-wielder is likely using a Handaxe or Shortsword, both of which use Vex, I kind of dread calculating it. But we could compare this with a Greatsword-wielding Graze build.

We'll take a look at this at level 4, allowing our unarmed Barbarian to become a Berserker, while our Greatsword character is going to be picking up Great Weapon Master.

Again, the assumption here is that the GWM build is going to be doing more damage. But it's a question of how far ahead they are:

Ok: Assumptions:

This is still tier 1, so the AC of our target is probably not super high - maybe a 15.

We need to account for the ramp-up time here (which to be fair would be true for a dual-wielder who has the Dual Wielder feat as well - though the Nick mastery is nicer to Barbarians than how things used to be). Thus, we'll take the damage over a course of three rounds. Again, this is going to favor our GWM build because they'll be at full speed from the get-go.

We'll assume that we started with a 17 in Strength (though given the lack of feats to really support this, we might have gone only 16 on our unarmed Barbarian, both to help us get our Dex, Wis, and Con to decent levels and because we're probably just going to be taking ASIs) and so our GWM now has a +4 while our unarmed guy only has a +3 to Strength.

So, let's try it out!

GWM:

With +4 to Strength, we're looking at a +6 to hit. Against an AC of 15, that means we're hitting on a 9 or higher, meaning we have a 60% hit chance. GWM is also going to add our PB to the damage when we hit.

Our damage on a hit is 2d6+8, or 15 on average.

With Graze, we also deal some damage on a hit, so that's 4 on those misses.

Finally, our crits, 5% of the time, give us an extra 2d6 (or 7) damage.

Thus, we have: 15x60%, or 9, plus 4x40%, or 1.6, plus 7x5%, or .35, giving us a total damage per attack (and thus per turn because this is tier 1) of 10.95 damage.

Over three turns, this becomes 32.85

Unarmed:

We only have a +3 Strength, which means our attack bonus is +5, so we're going to hit on a roll of 10 or higher, or 55% of the time.

Our hit damage is 1d6+5, or 8.5. And a crit adds 3.5 damage. Now, that said, if we took the Tavern Brawler feat, this is actually false: instead, our d6s are going to do an average of 3.917 (ish, it's actually .9166666, etc.) So, our hits are 8.917 and our crits add 3.917.

Thus: we get 8.917x55%, or 4.934 (ish) plus 3.917x5%, or .196(ish) for a total damage of 5.13.

However, after the first turn (when we're using our Bonus Action to Rage) we will get to do this twice per turn. In other words, over three rounds, when the GWM gets three such attacks, we're effectively getting 5 attacks.

Thus, over three turns, our Unarmed Build does 25.65 damage.

So, we're doing about 80% of what the GWM character is doing.

Sadly, I think that the math does not favor us as we get to higher levels - GWM scales remarkably well, and when they get Extra Attack, our solitary Unarmed Strike bonus attack is a bit deprecated in value in comparison.

A dual-wield build will likely fare better, thanks in large part to Weapon Mastery (with the Dual-Wielder Feat, we can get four attacks in per turn after the first once we have Extra Attack) though because Barbarians don't get Fighting Style feats for free, you'll be losing out on your Light weapon attack's damage as well.

Essentially, I think this build can work in the broadest sense, and I don't think people are obligated to play optimally, but I think that if I ever play this character, he's probably going to have some kind of big weapon to fight with.

Using the Doppelganger

 When I've thought about the possibility of running a campaign set in Ravenloft, I've honestly kind of struggled to come up with my own original Domains, even with the guidance given in Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft. The issue there is that I think my mind starts with the aesthetics of a domain, and the guidance (probably correctly) starts instead with thematic concerns. For example, I like the aesthetic of a sea-soaked harbor town out of a Lovecraft story (perhaps without the underlying racism) and think some cosmic horror elements would work really well in such a setting, but in a way, I'm sort of putting the cart before the horse. Domains of Dread are built around Darklords, and are reflections of them.

I did have some vague ideas for a domain-hopping Ravenloft campaign/adventure, which started with a particular motif: the Doppelganger.

Doppelgangers are fitting tropes for Gothic Horror, which are all about the potential for evil and monstrousness lurking within the human mind. While not monstrous in the same physical way as a vampire or werewolf, a Doppelganger raises questions about one's own identity and what other paths we might take. It can also veer into a kind of Cosmic Horror - one of the core elements of our own identities is that we are unique individuals. But if we were faced with our exact double, might we begin to question just how unique we really are?

As a trope, the Doppelganger almost certainly predates the German word we use for it, but in English parlance, rather than the specific D&D monster, a Doppelganger is just someone's double (I think the German word literally means "double-walker"). Naturally, given how many human beings there are, and the fact that we're all actually very similar genetically, it's natural that some people coincidentally happen to look like one another.

But we're also deeply keyed into distinguishing between human faces. Even, say, a pair of brothers that look very much alike will be trivial to distinguish for those who are familiar with them.

I think there's probably some kind of weird wire-crossing when we encounter someone who looks similar enough to someone else that we genuinely mistake them for the person. It's an uncanny moment, especially when we start to realize that it's not the person we thought it was, and all of the distinctions in their appearance are taken not as what they are - which is just the normal distinguishing features - and more something being just kind of wrong.

Humans are social animals, and social bonds rely on familiarity and trust. When I come home and see my roommates, their familiar appearance is a reassurance that I know who they are, and can expect that their behavior will continue to be safe and friendly to me.

And that's what makes Doppelgangers, the monsters, so potentially unsettling.

Here's the thing: D&D is a game built originally around delving into dark and dangerous dungeons, where you might find a bunch of zombies or a golem or a demon in some room.

I don't think you should ever waste Doppelgangers as dungeon fodder. Statistically, they don't really do much interesting in combat.

Instead, we need to build the use of these creatures from the ground up to make a reveal particularly interesting.

As we said before, social bonds rely on familiarity and trust. The Doppelganger monster is built to simulate that. Naturally, its most notable feature is that it's a shape-shifter, but it goes farther than that: it can also cast Detect Thoughts without any spell components (meaning that you won't know they're casting a spell unless you're reading their thoughts - or perhaps using something like Detect Magic while observing them). Even if they push deeper into your minds and you realize you're being read, the lack of spell components means that you might not know that it's actually them doing it.

The function, of course, of this Detect Thoughts ability (or Read Thoughts, which is the ability that lets them cast the spell this way) is that they can potentially fool someone even if they use common-sense techniques to foil an imposter: the old "get them to reminisce about something in the past that never happened" trick won't work if they can tell that you're thinking about the fact that it's a false story.

Now, Doppelgangers are not inherently evil, and are given the Neutral alignment in the new MM (which also serves as the "any alignment" tag). Still, it's very easy to imagine them as terrifying monsters. They are not humanoids, but monstrosities (interestingly, the "playable version," the Changeling, is now considered Fey) and while that doesn't rule them out being relatable characters (Thri-kreen, who are now consistently classified as monstrosities, are also a playable species) it also gives you, as DM, license to make them deeply strange and alien. Indeed, their natural appearance as illustrated in the 2025 Monster Manual is very much "alien," as in the sort of "Greys" trope, lacking even a nose and mouth, so that they look like they could come out of a flying saucer and pull an Invasion of the Body Snatchers kind of plot.

I do think that the kind of campaign you'd want to use this in would be one that involves familiarity. A lot of the campaigns I've played in have been a bit more about traversing a wide world, moving on from location to location without really returning anywhere. A campaign of this sort can still use Doppelgangers, but I think if you really want to get your bang for your buck, a campaign in which the party forms relationships with recurring NPCs who can then be replaced by them is going to probably be more effective.

Doppelgangers have proficiency in Insight and expertise in Deception, and with their Read Thoughts, they can generally pick up enough of their impersonation target's overall vibe to make a convincing double. But at only CR 3, that means those bonuses are not going to fool every player character who doesn't have expertise in Insight.

And here, I think, largely giving advice to myself, I should point out that a Doppelganger's discovery is the fun moment for these monsters. When their deceptions are found out, that's when the shit hits the fan, and we get an exciting encounter - even a combat encounter, in which the Doppelanger is likely to try to just get away and hide. If they're there specifically to kill a PC, they'll do whatever they can to avoid detection until the character can be isolated.

In terms of balancing such an encounter, I'd say you want it to feel harrowing - it should be a bit too difficult for a single character to take on a Doppelganger (otherwise why would they be the one sent to take you down?) The character would have to get back to their party to feel safe, and that's when you either have the Doppelganger slink off into the crowds and let them go - leaving them a constant paranoid threat for the party - or, if you want to fully pop off, you have a whole bunch of Doppelgangers working together to spring on the party at the same time.

I do think, though, that the entire monster is built around the dawning realization that the person you're talking to is not the person you think they are. The most flagrant way you could do this is by having a character discover the real person's dead body, but another likely scenario based on game mechanics is just if the PC succeeds on their saving throw against Detect Thoughts. Even if, as we said, there's no obvious indication that the Doppelganger cast the spell, your player is going to be on the lookout once they're asked to make a Wisdom saving throw (though remember that if the Doppelganger doesn't delve deep and only gets surface details - a distinction that isn't super-clearly defined - there's no saving throw to make).

I would say, as a DM, to couch the language about the saving throw in a way that doesn't make it to obvious - "you get this strange spike of paranoia, feeling as if someone is watching you."

It is tough, of course, to avoid metagaming when you fail a saving throw against something like this or like Scrying, so you might also want a clever Doppelganger to set themselves up in a situation where there is plausible deniability - maybe they probe someone's thoughts when the target is speaking with someone else, making the PC suspect the person they're currently talking to and not the random bar patron ten feet away.

Still, again, remember that these monsters become fun when the jig is up - and really savor that moment. You want to go through different steps - first, the general sense of offness, then describe the disguised Doppelganger's previous methods of seeming likable and trustworthy now laid bare as a malevolent artifice, the too-broad smile, the unblinking eye contact. It's that moment where now the PC knows something that the Doppelganger doesn't - which is that they know they're a Doppelganger (or at least know that they're not who they say they are.) And now, the tension becomes whether the PC can play it as if they don't yet know, and if the Doppelganger clocks that they've been made.

What will they do? Will they try to kill the PC to maintain their ruse? Will they dart and hide to take on a new identity so they can continue whatever plot they were in the middle of?

Even when the monster is defeated, the very existence of such a creature should leave players with a lingering sense of paranoia. Ideally, long after you're done using them as monsters (and with only a single CR 3 stat block, you're probably not going to be using them throughout a campaign - I'd have loved to get a CR 7 or 8 "Doppelganger Assassin" stat block) the party will feel a bit uneasy with everyone they meet.

Stats for the Darklords

 As it periodically does, my mind drifts back to Ravenloft, D&D's horror-themed setting. It's one of, if not the most unique setting for the game (the only other I can think that competes is Planescape). The setting is also built with a kind of inherent object in mind - how do you escape your current domain? While it's truly the DM's call whether you can escape the setting as a whole, as escaping one domain might just deposit you in another, there's actually a pretty solid mechanical hook here: each domain is ruled over by a Darklord, and by will alone, that individual can close off the borders of the domain, preventing anyone from escaping.

Thus, a confrontation with a domain's Darklord is the most obvious objective - if you kill them, you have a brief window to escape before they come back. Now, you need not kill them to accomplish this - Darklords are evil, but they aren't inevitably antagonistic. A Darklord might agree to open the borders of their domain if the party does something for them, and depending on the campaign or adventure, the borders might not be closed in the first place.

Darklords are, classically, powerful monsters of some sort - the most famous, of course, is Strahd von Zarovich, who is canonically the first vampire in the D&D multiverse, and also the first Darklord within the Mists. There's also Azalin the Lich, whose current status is a little mysterious (though Van Richten's has some pretty clear clues hiding in plain sight as to where he's at now).

But not all of them are such powerful beings. In fact, a fair number of them are downright weak. Van Richten's presents its Darklords as having statistics "similar to" various stat blocks in the monster manual, except in the rare cases where the monster is in Van Richten's itself (which, to my memory, might only be Harkon Lukas, who is a Loup-Garou, which is an extra-powerful werewolf - Loup-Garou is actually just the French name for werewolf).

That presents us with an interesting challenge as DMs. Some Darklords are particularly low-CR, like Ivan Dilisnya, who is a Noble - a CR 1/8 creature that would be cannon fodder even for a 1st level character.

Now, in terms of realism, this kind of makes sense, actually - these stat blocks are meant to represent real people, and as Brennan Lee Mulligan so eloquently stated in Fantasy High Sophomore Year, it turns out that for most people, if you stab them with a sword, they die. Adventurers are notable both for their ability to slay dangerous monsters and also their ability to endure the attacks of such creatures.

Now, each of these is technically a suggestion of a stat block, rather than giving you a specific one. The stat blocks for Srahd in both Curse of Strahd and Vecna: Eve of Ruin are not quite the same as the Monster Manual's Vampire stats, but Van Richten's presents this as the most obvious one to use (and given that Strahd is D&D's quintessential vampire, we can largely treat that one as a totally appropriate stat block for him - especially the 2024 one).

2024's Monster Manual also gave us many more high-level humanoid NPC stat blocks - while Ivana Boritsi, the co-Darklord of Borca with Ivan, uses a Spy stat block, we could imagine using a Spy Master (or Assassin, frankly) stat block instead.

But I do think we need to really consider how to play these characters if they are just those low-CR stat blocks.

First off, if we're expecting to largely have social rather than combat encounters with them, their HP isn't much of a concern. And while they might have poor, say, Insight or Perception bonuses, this might actually just mean the players have the ability to talk around them or more easily pickpocket them.

In other words, don't exclusively build adventures around Darklords that require them to be all that challenging. It's all right for the players to get one over on them. Because the one thing Darklords will never run out of is time - their domains always revert to the way they were, and the Darklords have time for vengeance.

Social encounters are, of course, also something that DMs have a lot of leeway to interpret and run as they will. If players choose a particular tack that isn't logical, no Persuasion or Deception or Intimidation check is going to force the Darklord to act the way that they want.

Now, what about keeping the party trapped? If you want to ensure that there is a challenge in getting out of a Domain, but the players understand that killing a Darklord allows for this, what might you do?

Well, the first is that Ravenloft works on nightmare logic - did you really kill the Darklord? And did their death actually cause the Mists to open? One of the classic tropes of horror movies (especially slashers) is when the villain seems to be dead, but isn't.

Another thing to do is just to make it hard to get to the Darklord. Viktra Mordenheim, the sort of Frankenstein equivalent, is of course famous for her creation of Flesh Golems. Yes, a CR 1 Spy is not too tough for any party, but you surround her with an army of constructs (maybe re-skinning other types of golems as Flesh golems) and now you've got a real challenge.

Finally, if you really want to build to a big boss fight, there's always the possibility of a transformation. It might be that if you slay the Darklord in their default form, like Mother Lorinda, who is a Green Hag, maybe she comes back as something far, far deadlier (the Arch-Hag from the new Monster Manual would be a profoundly terrifying jump in power). Naturally, some Darklords are already quite scary, legendary monsters in their own right - Strahd being a Vampire (I could also see him being a Vampire Umbral Lord) and Anktepot as a Mummy Lord.

One thing to seriously consider is whether the player characters actually know who the Darklord is. Meta-knowledge here can be a bit of a problem, and even just general knowledge of how Ravenloft as a setting works, so a player might be able to tell that if the people of a Domain are always seemingly talking about this one individual, there's a good chance that they're the Darklord. That said, there can be red herrings - Lamordia (which is probably my favorite domain - I guess I'm just that into the whole steampunk aesthetic, even if I don't think I could name you an actual piece of media that is within that genre that I really care that much about) has as its Darklord the aforementioned Viktra Mordenheim, but the domain's legal ruler is Baron Aubrecker, a sometime rival, sometime collaborator with Mordenheim.

Indeed, Kartakas is a domain in which the anonymity of the Darklord, Harkon Lukas, is actually central to his torment - an artist and performer who is perpetually washed up, only able to shepherd others toward fame and fortune. Lukas is kind of an ideal Darklord to seem friendly and kind at first, but the lurking wolf within eventually makes itself known.

The Shadowfell, and especially Ravenloft, is very much about stagnation, which means that merely killing a Darklord isn't going to ever end their reign of terror. They always come back, and the world and the minds of its people conspire to paint over any inconsistencies.

Notably, Barovia plays the entire setting of Curse of Strahd and the location of one of the chapters in Vecna: Eve of Ruin, but there are full-on continuity errors - or, not errors, but intentional inconsistencies. In Curse of Strahd, the default level 1-3 intro adventure in The Death House (which is sort of a domain-within-a-domain in the village of Barovia) has you meet the ghosts of children named Rose and Thorn. When you arrive at the Death House in Eve of Ruin, Rose and Thorn are living children. That's very much intentional.

One reason to not take these suggested stat blocks so literally is that the Darklords themselves are probably inconsistent. For Jacqueline Renier, the Darklord of Richemulot (a domain that goes through cycles of plague that go from people dying of illness to maddened fever-dreams - possibly inspired by Werner Herzog's 1970s remake of Nosferatu) the obvious stat block for her is a wererat, it's all really about whatever stat block feels appropriate in the moment.

There are a number of cool monsters in Van Richten's that aren't explicitly used as any Darklord, but could be a form that they take at one time or another (I love the Relentless Killers, who are meant to embody 1980s slasher villains like Jason Vorhees or Michael Myers). Like Dracula in Francis Ford Coppola's version, even the quintessential vampire could take on many different forms (they do call him "The Devil Strahd," and so maybe he takes on the form of a Pit Lord at some point!)

The Spectacular World of Smites

 The 2024 Paladin got a lot of changes, and it's the one class that I think you could argue got nerfed by the update to the PHB (the Ranger might have not been buffed as much as we wanted it to be, but I still think it's more powerful than before).

Two things, I think, could be counted as nerfs.

The first is less important - Divine Sense becoming a use of Channel Divinity, rather than its own resource, means that it will be competing with things like Oath of Enmity or Sacred Weapon (both of which got nice buffs).

But I think the change that is going to get most people to seriously hesitate on updating to the 2024 version of the class is that to Divine Smite.

No longer merely a class feature, Divine Smite is a spell that A: has components (including Verbal, so you can't cast it while silenced) and B: takes a bonus action to cast. While the bonus action still happens after you hit a target, thus ensuring that the damage is never wasted, and that you can hold off until you land a critical hit, it does cause a couple other issues: you can't cast it multiple times per turn, or if you hit a target as a reaction such as via an opportunity attack. It'll also shut down other bonus actions, such a the new Lay on Hands, and will prevent you from casting other leveled spells (though given that you probably need to use your action to attack, it was unlikely you'd be able to do that anyway). Also, Barbarian/Paladin multiclass builds are probably dead, because you can no longer Divine Smite while Raging.

That being said, I think I understand the design intent here - Paladins have, through most of 5E, treated spell slots as little more than "Smite Slots," and while that works pretty well, there's a whole world of spellcasting that Paladin players tend to ignore because of this.

However, there's another compensation we get here: all the other "Smite" spells now work the same way.

While previously, something like Thunderous Smite or Searing Smite required you to cast it as a bonus action and then hope you got a hit in before you lost concentration on it or the enemies all died, now no smite will be "wasted" because you only choose to smite after you hit.

Now, some still involve various saving throws for their additional effects, so you can still get a suboptimal result from a Smite, but the damage itself will be there.

Let's look at the various Smite Spells, of which the PHB has eight.

Divine Smite:

Our classic, we actually get one free casting of this per day, which, interestingly, also means that because we're not spending a spell slot to cast it, we can cast another spell along with it - though given that we have to attack with a weapon or unarmed strike, I don't know that there are a lot of other leveled spells we could mix with it. Divine Smite, of course, is particularly good against Undead and Fiends, but given that its sole purpose is damage, it's the baseline against which we'll compare the other smites. At 1st level, this deals 2d8 radiant damage, and then 1d8 for every spell slot beyond 1st (there's no longer any restriction on spell level, so in theory if we multiclassed as, say, a Sorcerer, we could potentially cast a 9th level Divine Smite one day (in fact, a Paladin6/Sorcerer14 would just barely hit 9th level spells at level 20). There's an extra d8 against fiends and undead, which will for sure change the math. Just so we have it for the record, against most foes, it's an average of 9 damage at 1st level, then 13.5 at 2nd, 18 at 3rd, 22.5 at 4th, and 27 at 5th level.

Searing Smite:

Searing Smite is actually also a damage-focused smite, and you might be surprised that it actually might outdo Divine Smite once you start upcasting it. At 1st level, it deals 1d6 fire damage when it hits, but then the target burns until they succeed on a Con save. They take the burning damage before they make this saving throw, so they're guaranteed to burn at least once. At 1st level, of course, this is only 7 damage. But the scaling of this spell increases both the initial damage and the burn. On average, you'll not do more damage with that initial burst than Divine Smite, but even if they succeed on their first save, they start taking more damage once you upcast the spell, and of course if they fail their save, they keep taking damage. When a foe succeeds on the first saving throw, our 1st level damage is 7, our 2nd level is 14, our 3rd level is 21, at 4th level we're at 28, and at 5th level we're looking at 35, all with the potential to do more if they fail those saves. It is fire damage, to be fair, which is resisted far more often, but it's still quite good, and the damage is coming in at the start of their turns, so while a boss might get some more legendary actions in there, for most enemies it won't matter that the damage isn't instant. The one place this becomes somewhat less advantageous is on a critical hit - the periodic damage won't be affected, so a Divine Smite might wind up doing more damage from a crit.

Thunderous Smite:

This one's a little more straightforward. It does 2d6 thunder damage when you hit with it, which is slightly less damage than Divine Smite, though Thunder is a damage type very few things resist. The target then gets a Strength save, and on a failure, they're both knocked back 10 feet and knocked prone. The ability to save against this of course reduces the effect's value, but given that you're only paying 2 average damage to have a chance at that means this is going to be worth it quite often. And there's no size restriction on this. Damage scaling here adds 1d6 for each spell level above 1st, so in terms of damage, you're going to be falling behind Divine Smite, but again, not by a ton.

Wrathful Smite:

Damage-wise, this is the weakest of the 1st level Smites, doing only 1d6 Psychic damage. The target then makes a Wisdom save or becomes frightened of you for 1 minute, though it can repeat the save at the end of its turns to end the effect. It also scales up by 1d6 for each spell level beyond 1, but this is a smite you really are using more for the fear than the damage (though psychic is also not resisted by lots of monsters). Frightened is a pretty useful debuff, especially to help protect yourself and your allies. And, like Searing Smite, there's no concentration here, so you could potentially get a lot out of this if you tag a foe early on in a fight.

Shining Smite:

A 2nd-level smite, in terms of damage we need to compare it to Divine Smite's 13.5 average damage when at 2nd level. Shining Smite is significantly less, doing only 2d6 (comparable to a 1st level Thunderous or Searing Smite). However, the smite applies a debuff to the target, causing it to glow and be unable to go invisible, and giving attacks on it disadvantage. This spell, unlike all previous ones, is a concentration spell. The advantage is the biggest reason to pack this, but if you're a Vengeance Paladin with Oath of Enmity, that might not be as appealing. Probably a niche thing - take it if you're expecting to fight sneaky or invisible enemies. The advantage is great, of course, but we can get something like that with Thunderous Smite in most cases.

Blinding Smie:

Our natively-3rd-level Smite, Blinding Smite does 3d8 when our Divine Smite is doing 4d8, scaling at the same rate. So, what do we get for our d8 of damage? Well, our target must make a Con save or become Blinded for a minute, getting to repeat the saving throw on the end of each of its turns. Blinded is a pretty fantastic condition, but a lot of foes will save out of this, as there are very few monsters that don't at least have some positive modifier to Con saves (and there are monsters with Blindsight). That said, if we do blind them, we're getting part of the effects of both Shining and Wrathful Smite, imposing disadvantage on their attacks and giving us and our friends advantage on attacks against them. Once again, this doesn't require concentration, so if you can get it off early on in a fight, with luck this can be a huge gamechanger.

Staggering Smite:

Our 4th level Smite (meaning we're well into tier 3 at this stage,) Staggering Smite's effect isn't quite as long-lasting as others, but if the target fails a Wisdom save, they are Stunned until the end of our next turn. Robbing a creature of its turn, more or less (though remember that stunned creatures can now move!) is a pretty big deal, and targeting Wisdom instead of Con (like a Monk's Stunning Strike) is going to be slightly more reliable. The damage here isn't nothing, but it's way behind our more damage-oriented options, dealing 4d6 (14 average) compared with our Divine Smite's 22.5 at this level.

Banishing Smite:

The sole 5th level smite, this one's a bit different. Dealing 5d10 Force damage, that's an average of 27.5, which means that this just flat-out out-damages Divine Smite on average, except against a Fiend or Undead. Searing Smite will do more at this level, but this is also a spell that can potentially take a major enemy out of the fight for a minute. While it can't permanently banish a creature like the Banishment spell, taking one of the big bruisers out of a fight can be very good. Now, there's a catch - the target has to be below 50 HP (after taking the damage of the attack and the smite) and also gets a Charisma saving throw to resist it. Now, luckily, a lot of creatures have crap Charisma, though most of those are big brutes with a lot of hit points. In other words, this is not a spell you start the fight off with. The trick here is that you're going to ideally hit someone for whom a weapon attack and this Banishing Smite puts them just under 50. 50 damage isn't nothing, but it's starting to be pretty marginal by the time we're talking tier 4 damage (a GWM Paladin at this level is probably hitting for 2d6+11 with each hit). However, if we consider the banishing effect to be just gravy on top of the damage, this is a pretty nasty spell to throw down, and on a crit, when it's doing 10d10 (or 55 average damage,) it's probably going to be worth doing anyway (and also more likely to put them in banishing range with that amount of damage).

    So, what's the conclusion to take here?

I suppose the proper internet way of doing things is to rank them.

Divine Smite is moot because we get this prepared automatically regardless of subclass. This is going to be our go-to option for critical strikes at least until we're level 17, and is also going to be our best damage option against Undead and Fiends until we've got 4th level spells (and even still using it when facing fire-resistant or -immune foes, which is actually most fiends and certainly incorporeal undead). Almost never bad, this gets an A.

Searing Smite should be a serious consideration for damage, especially once we hit tier 2 and half second-level spells. Against creatures that take full fire damage, and when we aren't critting, this is going to actually have our highest damage potential even if our foes cannot fail a Con save. If they do fail one (and depending on how many rounds they last,) we can get even better returns on it. It is still only damage, though. Even if the target dies before it takes its burn damage, the extra damage of a Divine Smite would have been just as wasted, so this also gets an A.

Thunderous Smite does nearly as much damage as these other two, but with an added bit of utility. Strength saves vary widely between monsters, so if you can hit a more spellcaster-style enemy with this one, it's likely to be effective. If you have a Push mastery weapon as well, you might be able to really knock an enemy far back. In an arena with hazards and high precipices, this is going to be insanely good, but even in a "flat field" battlefield, this is quite strong. Damn, I guess we get another A.

Wrathful Smite is, situationally, a spell that could save your bacon. If it frightens the target, that's awesome, and can help keep you and your allies safe. The damage, though, does fall behind significantly, and I think that makes this a more situational spell, so I'm giving it a B.

Shining Smite, again, is very situational, but I think that we're talking about a situation that is far rarer than needing to move things around the battlefield. The advantage is nice, but there are so many ways to get advantage against a target now (such as knocking them prone with Thunderous Smite or just the Topple mastery). I was going to rate this a C, though the fact that there's no save against it is actually pretty good. That said, it's also Concentration, so there is a way for them to break out of it, so yeah, we'll take this down to a C again.

Blinding Smite is pretty strong - essentially a "downcast" Divine Smite, but with the potential to put a pretty strong debuff on the target is not bad (especially good against a spellcaster with spells that require them to see their targets). What keeps this form being A-ranked is that it's a Con save to avoid being blinded, which means there's a strong chance that the foe will save against it. But the relatively low damage cost compared to Divine Smite and the high reward if it does go off brings it to a solid B, even B+.

Staggering Smite has you pay a fairly high cost in damage, and its effect is short-lived. On the other hand, more or less stealing a turn from a foe is a big deal - this is going to almost certainly force bosses to burn a legendary resistance if they fail. And targeting a Wisdom save is more reliable than targeting a Con save, though I would put that as one of the more commonly-high saving throws. It's a real gamble, as you're never going to have a ton of spell slots to cast something like this. I'll admit here that I'm doubting by own ranking ability, but I think we're looking at a B.

Banishing Smite should be your choice of smite over Divine Smite even if you're only going for damage, with the only possible exceptions of A: you're fighting undead or fiends or B: you need your concentration for some other spell. Even if you don't get the whole banishing effect here, it's just more damage than your Divine Smite, and so outside of those situations, 100% you should cast this if you crit unless you're very sure that the target is going to die to normal weapon damage anyway (or if you think a lower-level Divine or Searing Smite will be enough to take them down). The banishment can just be icing on top of the cake if you happen to get them under 50. So, that's A-tier.

One of the frustrating things about the new rulebooks is that it's just not that often I get to play new characters. I really want to rebuild my characters from campaigns past (apart from struggling to hit 20 Strength thanks to the ability scores associated with the Sage background, my Dragonborn Eldritch Knight Fighter would be downright beastly with all the changes) and I really want to try all sorts of new builds (top priority is an Elements Monk, which I never thought I'd even remotely consider given how crap the old version of that subclass was - but if I read things right, an Elements Monk can potentially grapple a target and hold them far enough away that the target can't actually strike back against them).

One of my favorite characters I played was an Aasimar Vengeance Paladin in Curse of Strahd, built around Great Weapon Master (and rocking the +2 Greatsword I got off of the leader of the revenants in the ruined castle of Argynvostholt). While that seems like a campaign that is very unlikely to ever pick up again, I still really like the idea of playing that character again (originally conceived as a man, I gender-flipped them for the campaign, but might play "Atrus" once again instead of "Atria" if I have the opportunity. Also, damn to I love Ravenloft as a setting).