COE33 Story and Theories

 I realize I incorrectly abbreviated the game's title initially, so here's a fix.

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 has one of those high-concept premises that immediately invites the player to question what, exactly, is actually happening.

To explain:

Decades ago, the world (and it does seem like it was probably our world) was shattered in some kind of supernatural transformation. The people of Lumiere, which appears to be a shattered, surreal version of Paris, have a view across the sea (yes, despite seeming to be Paris, which is quite far in-land) of a profoundly huge monolith upon which an entity known as the Paintress paints a number each year, ticking down. When this occurs, everyone that age and older evaporates into red petals. As the number ticks down, the people of Lumiere know they have only limited time before humanity is wiped out.

Each year, people who have one year before their "gommage," (French for "erasure") can volunteer for expeditions across the sea to try to stop the Paintress and save humanity.

Our heroes are members of Expedition 33, the 67th of these expeditions (they also mention that, ironically, while 99-33 have been in descending order, Expedition Zero was what they called the first one. Surely not important, right?)

The expeditions take them out of the city of Lumiere, and into the beautiful-yet-deadly realms beyond.

Let's get spoilery. I'm just starting Act Two of the game. Spoilers ahead: you have been warned.

CLE33's Combat System

 I'm only a few hours into Clair Obscure: Expedition 33 (which I'll henceforth abbreviate because who has the time?), a game that I don't think I'd even heard of a week ago, and boy howdy, this is one of the most exciting new titles I've played in a long time (no offense to Lies of P, which I did enjoy a lot).

I'm still figuring out some of the game's systems - I have a number of items that "can be consumed to..." do things like upgrade weapons or permanently learn various "pictos" skills, and either I missed some tutorial or there isn't one or maybe it comes surprisingly late.

But I'm getting a feel for the combat, and... just... this feels like an amazing evolution.

Like a Final Fantasy game, the heroes and monsters all line up facing one another, and take turns based on their agility.

Each character can use a basic attack that is free, and relatively low-interaction, but will build an Action Point. Ideally, you're doing that infrequently, and we'll get into why shortly.

Each character can also free-aim a ranged attack. This costs an AP but doesn't actually cost your turn - you can burn through your AP if you have sufficient targets to hit. Some flying enemies can frequently dodge your normal attacks, so it's not a terrible idea to use this to take them down, but the real benefit is that many enemies have weak points that can explode, dealing them and sometimes their allies a ton of damage.

Now, you can build up AP with basic attacks, but the other way you can gain them is by dodging or parrying incoming attacks.

This becomes a big part of the game - you can fully avoid taking damage from, I think (or at least so far) every attack monsters throw at you. But doing so also means you can use your cool abilities as well. Figuring out the timing and tells of enemies seems a big part of the game - not entirely unlike learning to dodge or parry in a Souls-like.

However, there are also many layers on top of this in terms of strategy:

Each character has their own unique skills, but these can interact with each other in interesting ways: Gustave, for example, can hit a target and put a mark on them, which then Maielle can use to do insanely high damage with one of her abilities. Likewise, there are elemental status effects, like burning, which some abilities key off of in fun ways.

Most skills have some kind of quick-time-event associated with them, and there's a narrower window to get a perfect effect, which seems to increase the effectiveness of the attack or other ability you use.

One of the most thrilling things is that some enemies have jump attacks: these can't be dodged or parried conventionally, but if you see the little icon that pops up when the jump attack comes at you, you can hit the jump button (X on a PlayStation) to have the entire party leap over whatever shockwave is coming at you, and then have all three party members strike back with a counterattack.

Enemies sometimes attack in multi-hit combos. It seems that if you successfully parry all of these in a row, you get a counterattack (if there's only one hit in the combo, I think you still get the counter for the one necessary parry). Enemies will delay their attacks sometimes, so you need to figure out the rhythm.

Currently, I'm kind of flailing around with what skills I'm equipping to each character, and I'm hoping that the items that allow you to re-spec your character won't be too hard to come by as I find a way to refine my builds.

Still, I've got to say, there are tons of ways that the folks who made this game are breathing life into the turn-based RPG that has me super-eager to play more.

Also, this isn't what the post is about, but it's also a freaking gorgeous game. I think I mentioned this in the previous post, but I'm in a kind of underwater-except-for-the-water-part region, with beautiful shades of blue and green and purple.

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33

 Shortly after beating Lies of P, I started a new game with a cumbersome title, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33.

Set within a world enduring an ongoing doom - the "gommage" (French for "erasure") of anyone above a certain age. Within the city of Lumière, which appears to be a fantastical and magical-cataclysm-beset Paris (complete with warped Eiffel Tower and shattered Arc de Triomphe,) our central protagonist, Gustave, prepares to be with his ex-girlfriend Sophie as she awaits her gommage, having become old enough to be taken by a being known as "The Paintress."

This heart-wrenching opening sees Gustave doing his best to be there for a woman he clearly loves, and must watch as she and hundreds if not thousands of others evaporate into what looks like rose petals.

Gustave has volunteered for Expedition 33, the latest in a number of annual expeditions to sail out and slay the Paintress, with those who only have a year left to live trying to make that last year count for something (I'm given to understand that each year, the age limit goes down, so in theory two years' worth of people would be lost each time).

Gustave and the other expeditioners head to the continent (Lumiere is somewhere in the middle of an ocean, apparently transported there after the cataclysm that befell the world). Things immediately go to shit when an old man (and remember, no one is older than 33 in this world, or at least that's what we thought) attacks and kills most of the expedition.

Gustave awakens lost in the forest on this strange continent, and must find other survivors to continue his mission.

Now, let's talk gameplay:

Bringing joy to my heart, this is a turn-based RPG, where engaging with monsters (so far only the weird constructs called Nevrons, which come in many varieties) takes you to a separate battle screen, and you can take your time figuring out your next strategic move.

That said, it's not pure menu-navigation-based combat. Most attacks (other than your basic ones that just generate resources to spend on skills) have various timed "quick-time-events" that allow you to maximize their damage. Likewise, when foes attack you, you have a chance to dodge or parry them. Dodging gives you a wider window, but parrying with the right timing can allow for counter-attacks that can be quite effective.

It's honestly not entirely unlike Super Mario RPG, and learning to read monsters' tells and getting the timing right can make fights significantly easier.

There are definitely systems here I haven't totally figured out - I've gotten a number of resources to, for example, upgrade weapons, but I don't quite know how to use them yet. This is either something that hasn't yet been tutorialized or just something I've overlooked and will need to figure it out.

At this point in the game, I have two party members. Gustave fights with a sword and a pistol, and builds up an "overcharge" meter that he can then use certain abilities to unleash really big attacks with. Lune is your classic elementalist mage, and builds up elemental "stains," which can be consumed by spells of other elements, encouraging some kind of rotation of magic (something I certainly haven't gotten the hang of just yet).

The game is really gorgeous - I'm currently in an area that feels like the ocean, with colorful corral and sea life flying through the air.

And truly, if you're an old-school RPG fan, you might enjoy that this game actually seems to have a big overworld map, where you will encounter monsters sometimes, but that also breaks the regions of the game into discrete bits. My best friend is currently working his way through some of the PS1-era Final Fantasy games (he beat FFVIII around the time I beat Lies of P, and is now starting FFIX) and there's a nice bit of continuity there.

Anyway, despite the bleakness of the stakes in this story, it's really pretty and has a unique aesthetic. I'm eager to sink many more hours into it.

Rise of P

 Well, I beat Lies of P.

As my first non-FromSoft Souls-like, it was really interesting to see what others do with the genre. Obviously, the Dark Souls games and Elden Ring share a lot of DNA, and even some re-used assets. With its over-the-top mechanical weapons and "city in chaos" elements, Lies of P obviously feels a little more closely tied to Bloodborne, though its narrative is a bit more explicit than FromSoft tends to get - aided in part by having a fixed protagonist (though still a mute one, in the grand tradition).

I worked to get the "best" ending for the game (and thus I think maybe the only way to fight the true final boss) which does sort of make me feel a little less inclined to actually go into New Game Plus (I've also just gotten a new game - Clair Obscur Expedition 33, which also happens to be set in a kind of belle epoch world - I played the first couple minutes, barely past the initial combat tutorial, and then figured I should give myself more time to digest this game before getting swept up in a new one).

The final boss of the game was a bit of an extra challenge for me, given that I've been leaning on the crutch of specter summoning for I think every single major boss, but one cannot summon them for this final boss (one can for the "base level" final boss). This last boss really forces you to get a lot of perfect-parries, which is very tough, though obviously gets easier as you learn its patterns.

Let's get into the spoiler territories:

Lies of P: Humanity and Lying

 I think there's a reason why the Pinocchio story is such a common one that artists and storytellers come back to. The crux of it is about an artificial being that yearns to be human - and that journey, that quest, is one that forces us as both artists and as audience to consider what it actually means to be human.

One of the central ideas in Lies of P, and visible right there in the name, is the idea that a human is capable of lying. The "puppet" we play as has the capacity to tell lies. Of course, in the original story (and the Disney cartoon that I imagine is most peoples' more direct reference,) Pinocchio is punished for lying by seeing his nose grow longer. Pinocchio is a boy, exposed to a world that demands moral behavior while enticing him to all manner of vice and sin, and lying is the most cardinal of all those sins, it would seem - the sin that can cover up all other misdeeds.

Lies of P leans into the classic science-fiction trope of what it means to create sentient, artificial people. In many such narratives, robotic minds are incapable of nuance and abstraction, and have to act in some preordained pattern. Truth, as in the statement of fact, is something that flows logically, and would thus seem easier for an artificial mind (in theory) to do (of course, in our current age of generative AI, we've seen that machines are fully capable of making stuff up that has nothing to do with the truth - and yet, the messiness of its output may in fact be one of the reasons people are so convinced that we've truly, or are truly on the cusp of, creating genuine artificial intelligence - whatever that means).

Over the course of the game, largely through sidequests, Pinocchio has the opportunity to help various survivors in Krat in various ways, and often prompts some kind of question from them. Most of the time, the question is either a painful truth or a comforting lie.

Krat is in utter chaos, and death is coming for most of the people we seem to encounter. And so, while you are capable of lying or telling the truth, often the lie is the kinder thing.

And this actually has an in-game effect.

When you make these decisions, if you choose the more human option (which seems to mostly be the lie) you get a message: "your springs are reacting", and later, as your humanity rises, "the ergo whispers," "you feel warm," and finally, "your heart is pounding." These changes will affect the endings you can get (I haven't beaten the game yet, but I think I've got like two major bosses left) and over time, you'll eventually see a long nose grow out of a painting of Gepetto's flesh-and-blood dead son, who happens to look identical to Pinocchio. The nose eventually, if you attain a high enough level of humanity (and I was worried I'd missed out on it, as I made some non-humanity-raising choices, but I did just get it) becomes The Golden Lie, a weapon.

I'm reminded a bit of the story of Neverafter, a season of Dimesnsion 20, the actual-play TTRPG show on Dropout. Neverafter was, like Lies of P, a horror take on fairy tales, with each of the players playing as a classic fairy tale character. In the case of Pinocchio, the backstory involved the arrival of a terrible, monstrous individual in Pinocchio and Gepetto's community, who went to all the children and asked them where their fathers were, and when she found out, the fathers each dropped dead. Pinocchio lied to protect his father, but in doing so, was reverted back to his wooden, puppet form.

Children's stories are often light on nuance, because complex ideas are hard for kids to understand. Truthfulness is a virtue in most cases, but there are times when the ethical and the moral are not aligned. Consider the meme/notion that goes around on social media: that if you see someone shoplifting baby formula, no you didn't. Yes, stealing is generally wrong, but if someone is pushed to the point where they need to steal to feed a helpless infant, the moral thing is to allow them to get away with it - if anything, as a corrective to the society we have in which anyone would be in such a position.

Hard and fast rules are easier for a child's mind to understand, but the deeper implications - the deeper reasons we have those rules - are the reasons we have them.

Coming back to the idea of artificial life, we imagine that a man-made mind would be childlike and simple, and thus, we equate the ability to understand complexity, nuance, seeming self-contradiction, as a sign of humanity.

All the while, of course, there is the question of whether things are actually just nuanced or if someone is claiming complexity to justify misdeeds. We are, after all, good at lying to ourselves, and telling us that actions we take are for some greater good. And yet, we can't give into pure cynicism, either. Finding the right moral path forward is a lifelong journey for all humans, but that journey, rather than some perfected state of enlightenment, might be the truest version of humanity.

I'm convinced I'm very near the end of the game. The final "dungeon" is massive, and if I'm honest, a bit lacking in the charm and detail of the earlier parts of the game. Where we have been in a kind of nightmare-steampunk-Paris up until this point, the last area feels like a big ancient stone temple, with less of a clear sense of how each area is used by the people who inhabited it.

In terms of difficulty, I think the rate at which I'm making it through means it must be easier than most of the FromSoft games I'd compare it to, though of course, I have to account for the fact that when I first played through Bloodborne or Dark Souls, I was not nearly as good at these games. While I burned through a lot of Star Fragments on Laxasia, for the most part, after trying to solo bosses without a Specter to help, summoning one in made quick work of them. It's a big enough difference that they make me feel a bit guilty for using them as compared to, say, the summons in Elden Ring. But still - it's a game mechanic and I will make use of any edge I need to beat the game.

I did something perhaps unwise - I've been hearing great things about Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, and saw it was relatively cheap (50 bucks) on the PS Store, so I bought it. Unfortunately, that makes me feel a little impatient to finish Lies of P. I do think I'm going to make myself do so, lest I never get around to it.

The Weapon System of Lies of P

 It took me getting I think most of the way through the game (given that I've come around to fight a souped-up and more horrifying version of the first boss, like Iudex Gundyr from DSIII, but a mandatory fight) to wrap my head around how Lies of P's weapons work:

First off, boss weapons (as well as one I got for getting some "Premium Edition" version of the game) are an exception here: these are single-piece weapons that just are what they are.

But, the vast majority of the weapons you find in the game come in two parts - a "blade" and a handle.

The blades are the things you'll upgrade with various moonstones - starting with Hidden Moonstones, then Crescent, then Half, and finally, as a capstone, a Full Moonstone.

Handles, however, can be swapped between different weapons as you like. Each blade comes with a handle, but you are under no obligation to keep them attached to one another.

The handles don't need to be upgraded, but the handle essentially gives you the weapon's move-set. If you want a spear-like weapon that you can thrust repeatedly, you might get a handle from one of the spear-like weapons, but you can put a big ol' wrench head, an electric circular saw, or what-have-you on it.

The handles will also have stat-scaling, and can be altered to skew more toward one stat or another with various cranks you find in the game. For example, I have played most of the game with the Booster Glaive (both blade and handle) and used a crank to increase its scaling with Technique (though at this level I seem to sometime get equal if not better damage increases by bumping up my Motivity).

The other element at play here is your Fable Arts. As you fight, you'll gradually build up these blue bars under your stamina bar, I think starting with a maximum of 3, though upgrading your P-Organ with Quartz will eventually allow you to get more. I believe each blade and each handle comes with its own unique Fable Arts, which spend 1-3 of these charges for a powerful attack.

Again, it took me a while to actually figure this all out - upgrade materials are also not profoundly plentiful, so I haven't actually done a ton of experimenting (I've unlocked the ability to purchase unlimited Hidden and Crescent Moonstones - I'm hoping I can do so with Halves to get other blades up to +9).

Still, it does seem like I ought to try out some of the other handles with my now +10 booster glaive blade.

Further Impressions of Lies of P

 I've now gotten a pretty decent chunk of the way into Lies of P, the Souls-like belle-epoch Pinnochio game that came out a couple years ago.

This is the first time I've played a souls-like game that didn't come out of the studio that created the genre, FromSoft. My "pedigree" so to speak in that genre is having played Dark Souls, Bloodborne, Dark Souls III, and certainly more than any other of those games, Elden Ring, the latter of which is something of a departure in its open world, but is fundamentally the same game (indeed, you could say that they're all "open world" games, but that the non-Elden-Ring ones are just much narrower in physical scope).

Lies of P doesn't hide its debts to FromSoft's works - the game mechanics are very similar, and its dark "city in chaos" setting of Krat is certainly reminiscent of Bloodborne's Yharnam. Aesthetically, while Yharnam leans into an archly gothic feel (more late 18th century than 19th century - feeling like it's more "first industrial revolution" than the larger one we associate with the 19th) Krat feels like you're meant to imagine that this is something akin to Paris in 1900.

On a cosmetic level, I must say that I think this game looks better than what FromSoft tends to put out - don't get me wrong, the design of FromSoft's visuals is fantastic, and the degree of care and precision they put into making every detail meaningful is really mind-blowing. But there's a smoothness and cleanness to the graphics in this game that you don't tend to get in the somewhat rougher FromSoft games.

The game seems to be most similar to Bloodborne, not only in its aesthetic, but also in its gameplay. Your options for how you want to equip yourself are somewhat limited - as far as I can tell, there's no build you can make where you're casting spells. Much like Bloodborne, it seems that the three primary paths for your character are to go for Motivity, Technique, and Advance, which kind of feel like Strength, Skill, and Arcane from the antecedent. You can build a hybrid character, especially mixing Motivity and Technique (as there are some weapons that scale decently with both).

Where this similarity creates a kind of negative muscle memory is how health can be regained in combat. In Bloodborne, after you take damage, you have a brief window in which you can regain that HP by hitting enemies, as long as you don't take more damage. There's a very similar idea here in Lies of P, but in this case, it's when you block an attack that you get this opportunity to earn back the HP.

Because blocking is such a common way to deal with incoming damage, my mind sometimes thinks I'm playing Dark Souls or Elden Ring and thinks that I didn't take damage because I blocked attacks. There is a mechanic where, if you block right as the attack connects, you won't take any damage, and furthermore, this can damage enemies' weapons, eventually breaking them (and I assume making them deal less damage).

The weapons have an interesting mechanic to them, though I'll confess that I kind of just looked up what people recommended for a new player and have been sticking with the Booster Glaive since picking it up (which has served me now for I think more of the game than I played before I could get it). But: here's the thing: most weapons come in two pieces, a "blade" and a handle. Upgrades go to the blade, which could be anything from a rapier blade to a police baton to a giant wrench, but you can swap out the handles, and these handles actually determine the stat scaling of the weapon. I believe that this means that you should have broad access to the many different weapons, with their different damage types, regardless of you build.

But there are a lot of mechanics that I haven't entirely wrapped my head around - while the game actually tutorializes more than most FromSoft games, there are a lot of things to keep track of: for example, you can adjust the stat values on your handles. I... I really don't know if this is just to tweak their scaling or if it's an expected upgrade you should be getting for your weapon.

In terms of world design, the game is certainly more linear than others in the genre I've played - major bosses' arenas have a back door that leads into the next area. And while this isn't unheard of in FromSoft's games (thinking of, for example, Father Gascoigne) it does mean that it's pretty obvious where to go next, and the areas of the game feel quite clearly-delineated and distinct. Vagnini's factory feels very different from the grand cathedral that you go to after it, which in turn feels very different from the Malum District slums that follow.

And you know what? It's not the worst thing in the world. Especially after playing over a hundred hours of Elden Ring (if only that,) having a little more clarity isn't so bad. Back when I was a kid, games were divided into discrete levels!

Anyway, I'm currently I think about to fight a boss in a big opera house (I had unlocked the shortcut to the boss room only to realize that there was what looked like a trap but was actually a path down to more stuff in the building) and, looking at online guides, I think this puts me roughly near the halfway point of the game.

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!