Trying Out Diablo IV

 I didn't grow up playing Diablo or Diablo II - as a kid, I was pretty averse to any grim, ultra-violent games, and for certain my parents were (I remember when I was twelve having to persuade my mom that the then-upcoming The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time wasn't too violent despite the fact that the player character wields a sword). So, my experience with the franchise began with Diablo III, born out of the good will that Blizzard had earned with me after playing World of Warcraft for a few years at that point.

However, despite Blizzard starting out as a Mac OS game developer, the release of Overwatch and eventually Diablo IV on PCs only left me out in the cold.

I had barely cared to finish Diablo III's campaign initially, but the game underwent some serious refinements with its Reaper of Souls expansion.

I actually played quite a lot of that - I got characters of every class a full class set and had a build where I could mow down waves upon waves of demons at the highest Torment difficulties.

Here's the thing: Diablo, and honestly a lot of Blizzard games (WoW included) are built to be perpetual treadmills - ever higher power and ever higher challenge.

And as I make my way through Diablo IV, I'm confronted with the fact that such things aren't quite as appealing to me as they once were.

I like the aesthetic of the game - while I don't want to wallow in it for every game I play, there's something compelling about the extreme-dark fantasy of the world of Sanctuary. Indeed, Diablo IV's opening sets a tone in a way that few games do: the first town you come across, while worrying about freezing to death in the wilderness (not that this is a danger mechanically,) sends you on a pretty standard sort of quest to go fight some monsters in a nearby dungeon. In lieu of gold as a reward, however, they give you dinner and party with you, only for it to be revealed that they've drugged you, apparently seeking to sacrifice you to Lilith, the game's demonic big bad (also, I believe this breaks from the tradition of it always turning out to be the titular Diablo as the game's final boss).

I also really like the take the game has on its various character classes - I've primarily played a necromancer, but I also started a Druid (which wasn't an option in D3).

But I think that the combat is just not really doing it for me. Diablo combat is all about fighting absurd numbers of monsters, where enemy density becomes a positive thing because of the chain-reaction way that a lot of character abilities work.

It is, perhaps, the polar opposite of Dark Souls-style combat, in which each attack and dodge is something that you have to carefully consider in the moment. I don't mean to say there's zero thought that you have to put into what you do in Diablo, but I find that even without a bunch of legendary items and on high difficulty settings, the most important thing is to make sure you're using everything at your disposal as frequently as possible.

To be clear: this is a matter of taste, not of quality. But I do think that the purpose of a game like Diablo is to get a kind of zen calm in clearing out waves upon waves of enemies.

But for me, the enemies themselves kind of blur together into an undifferentiated mass.

The story is grim as ever - even the angelic church that would seem to protect the world from the demons is a deeply repressive and unforgiving one - at one point, a friendly NPC who admittedly screwed up big time by taking a bribe to let someone get in somewhere they shouldn't have is forced to wear a suit of "Penitent Armor," which is one part mech suit and one part Iron Maiden, so he dies after coming to our aid. That's just one example.

One thing that's maybe a little disappointing is that the story doesn't really follow up on the revelations of Diablo III. 50 years have passed, but the only real direct reference to that is that Lorath, the young Horadrim apprentice who befriends us in Reaper of Souls, is now a bitter old man with tons of regrets (though he does seem to serve as our primary ally through the game - and is voiced by Ralph Ineson, whose voice is always fun to hear). But the implications of the Nephalem reawakening their god-like power seems to have been just kind of tossed to the side, at least for now (I'm I think in Act IV - I'm in Kejistan).

Actually, one thing that's funny is that the Butcher, who was the Act One boss in Diablo III, has been returned to his old role from previous games of being a randomly-spawning nightmare boss that just zeroes in on your character (even if you're a poor Necromancer whose skeletons and golem are supposed to tank for you) and murders you. Having gotten used to the Butcher as an easy kill on my super-powered D3 characters, this is a brutal wake-up call.

Anyway, I feel weird complaining about the game because it's just being what Diablo has always been. And yet, there's a part of me that might better enjoy playing through this story in just a different game system.

Dan's (First Draft) Revised Necromancer

 In the previous post, I did a kind of loose brainstorm of how I'd like the Wizard's Necromancer subclass to be redesigned. The design turns the subclass into a pet subclass like the Beast Master Ranger or Battle Smith Artificer.

The primary idea here is that, in order to fulfill the Necromancer class fantasy of having a real army of undead minions rather than a single powerful monster, but also to avoid bogging down combat by forcing the player to move tons of creatures on the battlefield, we take advantage of the already-existing Swarm "technology" that has been part of 5E since the beginning.

The subclass is built around its pet, the Undead Horde, which is a Large (and later Huge) Swarm of Medium Undead.

Before I get into all of its features, I'll toss out a few problems I think it might have.

First, I think nearly all the features are related to the pet. This isn't as much of a problem as, say, building a subclass around a single concentration spell, but it does mean that if you are put in a position where you lose the pet and can't revive it, you might be sort of without a subclass until your next long rest.

The next is that the Horde's purpose is very damage-focused. On one hand, Wizards are generally built more around powerful utility than necessarily damage output. On the other, next to maybe Evocation, Necromancy feels like a thematically appropriate school to focus on damage.

Third, while part of the intent of this redesign was to put a greater emphasis on the "raising undead minions" part of Necromancy than I feel the 2014 or recent UA versions have done, but one might argue that this design too greatly shifts things away from the "manipulating life energy" element (though I think the level 10 feature hits that pretty hard).

(EDIT): Fourth, I realized that there's some cheese in the way that you can use Draw Essence to take a ton of Temp HP out of the Horde, but rather than forcing you to deal some serious necrotic damage to the horde to revive it, you could just expend a 1st level spell slot to get it up from 0 to full HP. We'd either need to limit this in some other way, or make it more costly to get the Horde back if it drops to 0. (Also, in a very strict RAW reading of the Undead Horde feature, we can't actually revive it with all its HP because the Swarm feature only lets it regain HP via Necrotic Absorption).

Anyway, enough preamble: let's get to my design. Again, this is a first draft and has not undergone any playtesting, but take a look:

Necromancer Wizard

Necromancers apply their arcane knowledge to the cosmic forces of life and death. Drawing spirits from the other side of the veil of death, Necromancers practice their magic with the protection of a horde of undead minions.

While many see Necromancers as wicked and menacing, not all Necromancers are evil, and touch these dark forces for myriad reasons.

Level 3: Necromancy Savant

Choose two Wizard spells from the Necromancy school, each of which must be no higher than level 2, and add them to your spellbook for free.

In addition, whenever you gain access to a new level of spell slots in this class, you can add one Wizard spell from the Necromancy school to your spellbook for free. The chosen spell must be of a level for which you have spell slots.

Level 3: Undead Horde

You magically call forth a horde of undead minions, which uses the Undead Horde statblock (see below). The horde is a swarm of undead creatures under your command, which can be skeletal, spectral, decaying corpses, or any other kind of undead creature. Whatever type of undead they are, they use the same game statistics.

The horde is Friendly to you and your allies and obeys your commands. It vanishes if you die.

The Horde in Combat. In combat, the horde acts during your turn. It can move and use its Reaction on its own, but the only action it takes is the Dodge action unless you take a bonus action to command it to take an action in its stat block or some other action. If you have the Incapacitated condition, the horde acts on its own and isn’t limited to the Dodge action.

Restoring or Replacing the Horde. If the horde has died within the last hour, you can take a Magic action to touch it and expend a spell slot. The horde returns to life after 1 minute with all its Hit Points restored.

Whenever you finish a Long Rest, you can summon a different horde, which appears in an unoccupied space within 5 feet of you. You choose its appearance. If you already have a horde from this feature, the old one vanishes when the new one appears.

UNDEAD HORDE

Large Swarm of Medium Undead, Neutral

AC 12 plus your Intelligence modifier

HP 5 plus six times your Wizard level (the horde has a number of Hit Dice [d10s] equal to your Wizard level)

Speed: 30 feet.

STR: 14 (+2/+2)

DEX 10 (+0/+0)

CON 15 (+2/+2)

INT 6 (-2/-2)

WIS 8 (-1/-1)

CHA 5 (-3/-3)

Resistances: Necrotic

Immunities: Poison, Exhaustion, Poisoned

Senses: Darkvision 60 ft., Passive Perception 9

Languages: Understands the languages its master knows but can’t speak.

Traits:

Master’s Bond. Add your Proficiency Bonus to any ability check or saving throw the horde makes.

Swarm. The swarm can occupy another creature’s space and vice versa, and the swarm can move through any opening large enough for a Medium creature. The swarm can’t regain Hit Points or gain Temporary Hit Points, except via the Necrotic Absorption feature.

Actions:

Claw of the Grave. Melee Attack Roll: Bonus equals your spell attack modifier, reach 5 ft. Hit: 2d4+2 plus your Intelligence modifier Bludgeoning, Piercing, or Slashing damage (your choice when you summon the swarm).

Level 6: Necrotic Surge

You have developed a way to channel deathly power into your undead horde’s strikes. You gain the following benefits:

Spirit Strikes: When the horde hits with an attack roll and deals damage, it can deal your choice of Force damage or its normal damage type.

Mortal Infusion: When the horde hits with an attack roll, you can expend a spell slot to empower its attack with necrotic energy. Roll a number of d8s equal to the level of the spell slot that was expended. The attack deals additional Necrotic damage equal to the total rolled.

Level 10: Draw Essence

Your mastery over your horde has allowed you to draw upon its animating essence in order to bolster yourself. As an action, you can deal Force damage equal to three times your Wizard level to your Undead Horde. This damage cannot be reduced or prevented in any way. You then gain that many Temporary Hit Points.

Level 10: Necrotic Absorption

Your connection to the power of necromancy has granted you greater resilience in the face of its power. You have resistance to Necrotic damage, and your Undead Horde now has immunity to Necrotic damage.

If a spell you have cast using a spell slot would deal Necrotic damage to your Undead Horde, the Horde instead gains Hit Points equal to the damage it would have taken.

Level 14: Army of the Dead

Your undead forces have grown in number and in power. Your Undead Horde grows to Huge size (it can still pass through a space large enough for a Medium creature).

Additionally, when you command your Undead Horde to take the Claw of the Grave action, the swarm can use it twice.

Diablo-izing the D&D Necromancer

 While a late addition to Diablo III, that series' Necromancer class has now established itself as one of the staples, appearing in II, III, and IV. A fully separate class from Wizards or Sorcerers, in the lore of Diablo, Necromancers are priests of Rathma, the first of the Nephalem (the offspring of angels and demons, whose descendants became humanity) and are committed to maintaining cosmic balance.

That lore is very cool, and the Necromancer fits well with the series' grimdark aesthetic. But I think one of the things that the class does really well is really make you feel the class fantasy - you are (nearly) always followed by a group of undead minions that automatically fight for you, and you use corpses left behind by monsters as a resource.

The fast-paced action-RPG (heavy on the action) gameplay of Diablo is very different from that of D&D, but I do think that one of the challenges that D&D has always had vis a vis the Necromancer is how to let you live out that fantasy of summoning an army of undead.

In D&D's 2024 update, one of the major efforts WotC made was to reduce the ability for players to flood the battlefield with several new creatures. Animate Dead, however, remained more or less unchanged (though buffed slightly because Skeletons are a little deadlier than they used to be).

The recent UA for Arcane subclasses (ironically not in the "horror subclass" one) gave us another look at the Necromancer, but amongst its changes was swapping out Animate Dead as the spell granted by Undead Thralls at level 6 for Summon Undead. I fully expected this to happen - the Summon spells, originally published in Tasha's, are designed to make summoning creatures less disruptive by giving you one big creature instead of several small ones.

However, one of the critiques that the revamp to the Necromancer got was that it felt unfocused and poor at enabling the (sub)class fantasy, in large part because it seemed just as focused on granting temporary hit points as it did summoning up undead minions.

In fairness, this was intended to be a non-disruptive update to the 2014 version.

But I think we can do better.

And I think the answer is obvious: the Necromancer should be a pet subclass.

There's some precedence for this, of course. The Beast Master and Drakewarden Rangers are built around fighting alongside a pet, and the Battle Smith Artificer is as well. There's also the upcoming Purple Dragon Knight revamp (which, dear lord thank you, because the SCAG version of that made me, like, angry with how crappy it was,) which now has you fight alongside a... purple dragon (which, yes, is a departure from the lore, but screw it).

While "Necromancy" has historically sometimes meant just "dark" or "evil" magic, the iconic fantasy image is, well, kind of the Diablo version - a slightly-emaciated, pale person who is followed around by skeletons, zombies, or spectral ghosts that serve them.

D&D Necromancers have historically raised the undead only through temporary spells - actually, Animate Dead and Create Undead technically raise the undead indefinitely, but you lose control over them if you don't cast the spell again.

But I think if we're going to be a true Necromancer, perhaps we shouldn't be so limited. I think a true master of Necromancy should be able to hold onto some minions.

So: to begin with, let's get the obvious out of the way:

The primary feature Necromancers should get at level 3 is some kind of pet in the vein of a Beast Master's (the updated version). That means a stat block that scales as we level up (in Wizard,) and probably has a single attack that uses our spell attack modifier as its attack modifier. You'd be able to re-summon it for free on a long rest, and maybe expend a spell slot of any level as an action (or a minute) to get it back if it dies.

Players could customize their minion's appearance - make it skeletal, make it spectral, make it a zombie, whatever brings you joy.

Now, you might be pointing out that the Reanimator Artificer is already doing something like this - though I'll also note that WotC has not been shy about sharing concepts between classes before, like the Drakewarden and Purple Dragon Knight, or the Rune Knight Fighter and Giant Barbarian.

But it's also fine, because I'm going to propose something very unorthodox. And I will say, this might be a deal-breaker. But bear with me (I'll also note that this shares a lot of ideas with what MCDM has proposed for their Summoner class).

In this version of the Necromancer, you get a number of minions equal to the tier of play. That means 1 minion at levels 3 and 4, 2 at levels 5-10, 3 at levels 11-16, and 4 at levels 17-20.

But won't that gum up initiative? No. Because no matter how many minions you have, they only have one action between them, and one pool of HP.

The minions have something like "linked essence," which means that they act as one, and they draw on the same pool of unlife energy to keep them animate. Where this might get tricky is Conditions - if one is subjected to a condition, they're all affected.

The damage will probably scale up as each minion is added. I envision it being like 1d6 plus your Intelligence modifier (or maybe a flat 3) at level 4, and then just adding a d6 each time there's a new minion (but the modifier remains flat).

I'll confess, as I think about this, there are some logistical issues that arise: among them being how they're all attacking a target if only some of them are within melee range. Also, while the action is simple, you could still get bogged down in positioning and movement, which can sometimes be the most time-consuming part of a player's turn.

So, let's make a radical shift mid-proposal:

D&D actually already has a mechanic for representing a large group of creatures that act as one: Swarms.

Truthfully, this actually solves a lot of our issues while still maintaining the iconic image. It's just a single stat block, with just one action and just one position on the map.

And I think we can have a lot of fun with how it works that plays on the themes of being a swarm.

First off, let's take a look at the existing pet classes' minions, specifically the Beast Master and the Battle Smith. Both use the PC's spell attack modifier as their attack modifier, so we'll stick with that idea.

The Beast Master has three options for pets, which do different damage. Beast of the Land hits for 1d8+2+the Ranger's Wisdom. The Sea Beast hits for 1d6+2+Wis, and the Air Beast does 1d4+3+wis. So, basically 6.5+Wis or 5.5+Wis. Notably, also, the Beast Master eventually lets the pet attack twice on a single bonus action activation. Also, these attacks can impose conditions as well.

The Battle Smith's Steel Defender does 1d8+PB damage, which means that it scales a little, but certainly doesn't do so as much as the Beast Master's pet (lacking the extra attack upgrade).

I'm inclined to believe that the Necromancer, who will have plenty of power as a Wizard, can probably stand to have a less powerful-hitting minion. The exact damage would be determined by playtesting, of course, but I'd propose something like 2d4+Int (the multiple dice because it's multiple creatures). 

Next question: do we want to give the Necromancer multiple options for the kind of minions they get? I'm inclined, actually, to say no, given that there are other spells they can use to summon undead minions. This subclass feature should play a specific role, and that role is to protect the Necromancer and attack their foes.

Now: what makes our swarm of minions special?

First off, let's talk size: I think a Large Swarm of Medium and Small Undead is how it should be described. But because it's a swarm, we'll say that it can pass through any space large enough for a medium creature without issue.

Oh, and here's a fun thing: our 14th level feature should let us make it a Huge swarm of Medium and Small Undead.

That's partially an aesthetic thing, but I think we can also lean into the size of the swarm being a benefit:

Being a Swarm, it can occupy the same space as other creatures. And I think we would say that either the Necromancer, or even just any friendly creature who is entirely inside the swarm will get some benefits - perhaps just half cover.

Now, one downside is that the Swarm trait found on creatures also always says that the swarm cannot regain hit points or get temporary hit points. But this feels like something the Necromancer should get around. And we all know how: When a creature is reduced to 0 HP within 30 feet of the swarm, the swarm regains some amount of HP, ignoring its Swarm trait. Let's put a pin in this: we might just alter the Swarm trait on this one for our purposes.

The swarm of minions (perhaps called your "Undead Horde") would be upgraded as you got new subclass features. Let me toss out a few ideas:

At level 6, the first thing I'd say is that our Undead Horde, which was previously doing probably Bludgeoning damage, can now instead deal Necrotic damage. But... hm, that's all well and good, but certainly not enough to feel like a full level's feature. The Horde already has immunity to poison, surely, but maybe we give it immunity to necrotic damage as well, and likely the Necromancer gets resistance to it.

This might be too powerful, but it feels thematic: the Horde gets advantage on attacks against creatures whose space it occupies. Or maybe it's not powerful enough, given that the Horde isn't actually hitting that hard.

Another proposal: When the Horde hits with its Claws of the Dead attack (what I might call its primary attack,) the Necromancer can expend a spell slot to suffuse its strikes with magic power. The necromancer rolls a number of d6s equal to the level of the expended spell slot, and the Horde deals additional necrotic damage equal to the amount rolled. (Again, might need to adjust the damage here - it's clearly less than Divine Smite, but we're also not Paladins).

Ok, that might actually be enough for a 6th level feature.

For a level 10 feature, I think something a little defensive would be helpful: perhaps it's here that we do something along the lines of Grim Harvest, but perhaps a little more powerful given that we have to wait longer to get it.

I'd initially wanted to do something like allowing you to absorb health from any fallen foe, but you run into the Bag of Rats problem. So here's the alternative:

As an action, you can siphon animating energy from your Undead Horde. The Horde takes 30 Force damage. This damage cannot be reduced or prevented in any way. You then gain 30 temporary hit points.

That's the first half, but here's the second half:

If the Undead Horde would take necrotic damage from a spell you cast using a spell slot of 1st level or higher, it instead regains hit points equal to half the necrotic damage it would have taken.

And that feels like plenty for level 10 - it's defensive and thematic.

Now, the capstone:

At level 14, I think it's here that our Horde becomes Huge sized. But what else? Well, perhaps we boost its AC. I think we perhaps made it hit too weakly early on, but maybe it's at this level that we let the thing get two attacks, or we can boost the damage when we infuse it with spell slots.

    So, this is all a big mess because it's my own brainstorm. Does the subclass encourage casting Necromancy spells enough? And is that a problem? I might work on a more formal set of features now that I've got the brainstorm done.

Sacred Weapon vs Vow of Enmity

 Of the four Paladin subclasses in the new Player's Handbook, the two that appeal to me the most are two of the most "basic" ones - Oath of Devotion and Oath of Vengeance. While I was tempted by the Oath of the Watchers in Tasha's, I've generally not been all that impressed by the subclasses that came out in the various supplements (Oath of Glory might be my least favorite, and I was kind of disappointed to see it in the PHB instead of something off-beat like Oath of Conquest).

Paladins get a lot of amazing features as base class features, so I think, honestly, that any Paladin can be quite good. But both of these subclasses grant you a Channel Divinity option that aids in your ability to hit targets.

In 2014, these two features had very different action-economy costs. Vengeance's Vow of Enmity cost a bonus action to activate, which allowed you to pretty easily use it on your first turn and then unload on your target. And Smites didn't take any action, so you could come right out the gate with a smite on two attacks made at advantage.

Sacred Weapon, however, was a bit frustrating - it took your full action to activate, meaning that even though you were now more likely to hit, you'd spent a turn just gearing up. If you could get this off before a fight, it was quite good, but with only a single minute duration, you really needed to be quick on the draw and have a generous DM.

Now, however, the action economy of both features works the same - neither takes any action, and can just be activated when you take the Attack action (which is when you'd want it anyway). Let's get specific on how they work:

Sacred Weapon allows you, when you take the Attack action, to expend a use of Channel Divinity to supercharge the weapon you're holding with positive energy. While charged this way, you can add your Charisma modifier to attack rolls made with the weapon, and if you want, the weapon can deal Radiant damage instead of its normal damage. The weapon also glows, shedding bright light for 20 feet and dim light another 20. And you can end this effect early whenever you want (it also ends if you aren't holding the weapon anymore).

Vow of Enmity allows you, when you take the Attack action, to expend a use of Channel Divinity to utter a vow of enmity against a creature you can see within 30 feet, which lasts for 1 minute. While under the effects of the vow, you get advantage on attacks against that creature. If the creature drops to 0 HP while under the vow, you can transfer the vow to another target within 30 feet.

So, before we get into the math, let's make a few observations: The first is that Sacred Weapon lasts ten times as long as Vow of Enmity, and while ten minutes isn't a lot of time, it's possible that you could get use of it through multiple combat encounters - though probably only occasionally unless you're in true old-school dungeon-crawl mode. Another consideration that favors Sacred Weapon is that the effect is on your weapon, and so it will remain there for the full duration regardless of how many enemies are nearby. One point away from it is that if there is an enemy that can disarm you, the effect can end early.

But let's talk about the damage potential of each.

General wisdom for 5.5e is that it's far easier to get advantage on attacks than it used to be, which might devalue Vow of Enmity a little.

However, if we look at this in a relative vacuum, we should figure out the extent to which this will increase our damage.

Generally, my assumption for most Strength-based characters is that if they want to deal the most damage, they're going to do a Great Weapon Master build, favoring a Greatsword, and possibly switching to a Glaive if they pair it with Polearm Master, because these weapons have the Graze property. Admittedly, we're looking at features that make us miss less often, which devalues Graze, but I still think it's nigh-unbeatable for damage potential among weapon masteries (though Vex and Nick are also strong contenders).

I'm going to run this simulation at level 8. Granted, Paladins get a serious damage boost at level 11, but 8 is where my current longest-played character is at, and also feels like a good level for "meat and potatoes" D&D.

We'll assume Point Buy and a background that has allowed us to start with a 17 in Strength and 16 in Charisma. At level 4, we've taken Great Weapon Master, and at 8, I think we probably have taken Mage Slayer - meaning we're at 19 Strength, and thus a +4 to Strength and +3 to Charisma.

Now, what AC are we dealing with? While Channel Divinity is not that hard to get back, I'm going to assume a slightly tougher foe. And surely there are few better foes for a Paladin than a Death Knight. Now, a Death Knight proper is a bit high-CR for a level 8 party - they can work as a boss at the end of tier 2 for 10th level characters, but this might be a bit much. Luckily, we've got a lower-powered Death Knight in the Aspirant, which could be a scary but ultimately manageable powerful foe. And both have an AC of 20.

Generally, I've done a lot of my calculations here of late assuming only mundane weapons. I do think that by level 8 I'd hope your DM would have given you a +1 weapon at least. I'm not entirely sure how this would change the math. Still, it's easier to just assume mundane and move on from there.

Now, here's another complication: a Paladin, especially fighting an undead or fiend target, is probably going to burn their bonus action on a Divine Smite if they land a critical hit. Thus, we might actually ignore the Hew element of Great Weapon Master (they still might use the Hew attack when downing a lesser foe).

Initially, we'll ignore Divine Smite. This is likely to favor Vow of Enmity, as it increases our chance to crit, so only if Sacred Weapon does better will we take it into consideration.

Baseline, our Paladin has a +7 to hit. Sacred Weapon will boost this to +10. Thus, the Vengeance Paladin (before accounting for advantage) has a 40% chance to hit. The Devotion Paladin has a 55% chance to hit.

Damage on a hit is 2d6+7 (getting an extra 3 from Great Weapon Master), for an average of 14

Crit bonus damage is 2d6, or 7.

Thanks to Graze, we also do 4 damage on a miss. What this actually means is that we can subtract the 4 from the hit damage and just add a raw 4 to the average we get in the end. Thus, we can ignore misses when calculating the chances and just treat hits like 2d6+3, or 10.

We'll start with Devotion.

10x55%, or 5.5, plus 7x5%, or .35, gives us 5.85. We then add in that 4 damage we get 100% of the time, giving us 9.85. Double that and we get 19.7

Now Vengeance.

Thanks to advantage, our hit and crit chances are a little different. With a 40% chance to hit on any given die, that gives us a 64% chance to hit (and already, our question might be answered, with caveats). We also have a 9.75% to crit.

Thus, we take that same 10x64%, giving us 6.4, plus 7x9.75%, or .6825, for a total of 7.0825. We then add in that 4 from Strength, giving us 11.0825, and double it to 22.165 for our two attacks.

Rather than continue, it becomes pretty clear that Vengeance has the edge, and will further expand that edge thanks to more opportunities to crit-smite or get off Hew attacks.

And yet...

This is all under the assumption that the Paladin cannot get advantage in some other way. If an ally gets off Faerie Fire, or the foe can be repeatedly knocked prone, Vow of Enmity loses its value, while Sacred Weapon will continue to increase your hit chance in all scenarios.

The... Oh, Crap, I Guess the Title I Was Intending Would be a Spoiler. Um... Stuff About Clair Obscur: Expedition 33

 I've been living with Expedition 33 in my head since its release a couple months ago. It was one of those experiences where you find yourself experiencing a work of art and think: "this will be discussed for years and years to come."

It was huge enough to actually distract me from appreciating the game I'd played immediately prior, Lies of P, which was less revolutionary but still an excellent game.

It's actually kind of fascinating: Lies of P takes the Souls-like genre of action RPGs and infuses it with a more personal, emotional sense of stakes. I love FromSoft games (see like a third of the posts on this blog) but I do find that my engagement with them is far more cerebral than emotional, my analysis more an exercise in parsing what story it is we're receiving than necessarily processing my emotional response to them.

Lies of P has its own cryptic lore, but also delves down into the themes of what it means to be human with a story filled with tragedy, grief, and regret.

But dear lord, I don't know that I've ever felt more emotionally gut-punched by a game than Expedition 33. There were moments in Alan Wake II that might have matched it, but its biggest such moment was subverted with a twist. Expedition 33's twists are the twist of a knife. There are profound philosophical questions raised by the story, but I think that this game encourages you to engage with them on a deeply emotional level.

While it's a turn-based RPG - a genre whose fading from prominence over the last 25 years or so has been a strange thing as someone who remembers an era when that's what an RPG was - Expedition 33 does have some elements that resemble Souls-likes games - its resetting of most monsters when resting, its regenerating items (rather than having you stock up on consumables,) and its challenging dodge and parry mechanics (which, to be fair, are at least as old as Super Mario RPG, though the fact that these fully avoid damage makes it feel more like the high-stakes dodging of a Dark Souls game).

What I'm sort of curious about, though, is to what extent there is an underlying hidden plot behind the main story.

In fairness, I don't know of any other games that get quite as conspiracy-board-complex with their hidden backstories as those from FromSoft. I actually think that the Remedy Universe (currently just Control and Alan Wake II, and retroactively the first Alan Wake) gets close. I've even seen some interesting videos suggesting there's a lot of hidden story within the Zelda games.

But the explicit story of Expedition 33 is already so grand and truly original that it almost feels like it would be kind of redundant to seed so much of a subtly implied one.

And yet, there's clearly something there.

Ok, that's plenty of preamble. Let's get into spoiler territory.

Screw It: Let's Build a Beast Master

 The Beast Master was perhaps the most-maligned subclass in the 2014 PHB. I don't think it was ever the least powerful one (Way of Four Elements might have had that dubious honor - which is why it's so fun that the new Elements Monk might be the best Monk subclass in the book) but the main problem was that it struggled to fulfill the Beast Master class fantasy... sort of. Actually, honestly, it did what it said it would, but given that your pet couldn't scale up, and there wasn't a really clear way to keep them from permanently dying, it just sort of landed as a disappointment. It was also put on display very publicly through the character of Vex'halia on Critical Role, and Laura Bailey's (Vex's player) frustrations (not to mention the mockery that Vex's pet Trinket got from fellow player Sam Riegel) really cemented this sense that the Beast Master was busted in 5th Edition.

We got a big revision of the subclass in Tasha's Cauldron of Everything, along with several changes to the Ranger itself, and of course, in 2024, we got much of these revisions codified as the primary version of the class and subclass.

All that being said, while some struggling classes from 2014 got big glow-ups in 2024 (the Monk in particular,) many have expressed dismay that the Ranger was left behind, not getting the power and support it needed.

That being said, I also think that 2024 D&D is more balanced than 2014 was, and thus, I wonder how we might build a Beast Master to be a fairly effective combatant, and if it's even that hard to do.

Way before we even get started on making the many crucial choices in our build, though, we need to consider the following:

A Beast Master's companion uses the Ranger's spell attack bonus to determine its own attack bonus. This incentivizes the Ranger to consider pursuing Wisdom rather than Dexterity (or Strength, though I'd generally advise against making a Strength Ranger, as you get spread out across too many ability scores).

But how can we go hard on Wisdom when we're still reliant on our weapons for a significant portion of our damage?

As I see it, there are a couple possibilities, and both involve getting some Druid cantrips. The good news is that this an option we can pursue even without worrying about Feats. At level 2, when we pick a fighting style, we can get the Ranger-exclusive option of Druidic Warrior. Now, you could grab something like Starry Wisp, and just cast the spell from range. But damage cantrips don't really keep up with weapons, unless you're talking about an Agonizing Blast-enhanced Eldritch Blast (and even that falls slightly behind when you compare it with magic weapons).

Here, another option that presents itself is Shillelagh. This cantrip allows you to fight with a weapon (as long as it's a club or a quarterstaff) using your spellcasting ability. The new version actually has some scaling, by enhancing the weapon's weapon die at each tier, starting at a d8, then d10 at level 5, d12 at level 11, and 2d6 at level 17. Unlike a Druid who uses this, we effectively get a little more scaling because of Extra Attack at level 5.

The downside, however, of Shillelagh, is that it takes our bonus action. Rangers already like to use bonus actions on Hunter's Mark, but we're also going to need it to command our pet. Thus, unless we can pre-cast both spells before the fight gets going, we're either going to need to wait until turn 3 to attack with our pet, or we're going to have to ignore one of these bonuses.

My instinct is that, unless we're expecting a very long fight, we want to get our pet into the mix right away, and that means that we're probably going to be better off just using a Dexterity build and deal with the fact that our pet's attack chance is lower.

Even our softest-hitting pets, the Beast of the Sky (though their average damage is the same as a Beast of the Sea, except on crits) deals 1d4+6, our 8.5 damage on a hit, which is for sure significant at level 4, and is better even than our Hunter's Mark damage when we get Extra Attack.

Indeed, if we assume all hits (which to be fair does favor the pet,) it'll take three hits on a marked target to make up for the lost attack on turn 1.

I'm thus also inclined that the wasted bonus action on turn 1 with a Shillelagh build might also not be worth it, again except in the case of longer fights (though Shillelagh has the advantage of not being concentration and also not requiring reapplication if the target dies).

Thus, let's instead assume our build is going to be a bit more traditional - pushing Dex to the limit before working any further on Wisdom.

We then should figure out what kind of weapon we want to use.

Classically, the Ranger uses a... ranged weapon. And yet, there's also a grand tradition of dual-wielding (like with Drizz't Do'urden). If we're focused on Dexterity, it won't make sense to use a big two-handed melee weapon, so I'd say the route we're taking allows for two primary options: dual-wielding or fighting with a ranged weapon.

Now, I mentioned how we're going to need to be careful in our choice of feats. On almost any other character (including most Rangers,) I'd recommend picking up the Dual Wielder feat, because it effectively gives us a second off-hand attack as long as we're taking advantage of the Nick property. However, a Beast Master always (unless things have gone very wrong) has a bonus action to take by commanding their beast. And thus, this feat won't be very good for us.

But that doesn't rule out dual-wielding as a configuration: Nick actually enables us to do so. We can wield a Shortsword and Scimitar in combination. We can even pick up the two-weapon fighting style.

The alternative is fairly simple: we grab a ranged weapon and the archery fighting style, and we're golden. Here's the twist, though: we probably want to take the Shortbow instead of the Longbow. While the Shortbow has a shorter range and lower weapon die, it also has the Vex property, which actually means that over time, it winds up dealing more damage than the longbow because we hit and crit more often. The double-twist, though, is that technically, a Longbow can benefit from Great Weapon Master - while not a strength-based weapon, it does have the Heavy Property, and thus you can get that PB bonus to its damage with your attacks. The downside, though, is that you're taking a point of Strength on a character who is built for Dexterity, and while some Rangers might push both Strength and Dexterity in equal measures while ignoring Wisdom, we can't really do that because of our Beasts.

Again, I don't really have the math done out, but my instinct is that the melee build will do better damage - though it of course carries a risk, which is that being in melee means taking more attacks.

I will also say that dual-wielding further incentivizes actually getting Hunter's Mark up there. At level 5, we're effectively making three attacks with our attack action, and so we reach those three required to make up for the lack of a beast strike that much faster.

So, let's imagine a scenario:

My longest-played character is currently level 8, so that's the range I'm generally thinking about for combat examples. So, we'll assume we're level 8, and we're fighting a monster with an AC of, say, 17.

At this level, we've got two general feats. We'll say we took Mage Slayer at level 4 (knowing that Dual Wielder wouldn't help us that much) and then, perhaps, because we know we want to get working on our Wisdom, we've just taken an ASI to pop Dex to 20 here. We have two-weapon fighting as our fighting style feat, and we're using a Beast of the Land to maximize damage.

Now, let's be generous and say that we got off Hunter's Mark before the fight broke out. Our Beast of the Land will have their turn to charge toward the target and get a bonus d6 of damage on a hit.

Here's how I imagine our sequence goes:

We start by running to the target. We then use a bonus action to command the beast to do the same, as well as attack it and then use its bonus action to give us the Help action, so we get advantage on our first attack. The beast has an attack bonus of only +6 (compared with our +8). Thus, it has a 50% chance to hit our AC 17 target.

Pet hit damage: 1d8+1d6+5, or 13 average

Pet crit bonus: 8 average

So, 13x50%, or 6.5, plus 8x5%, or .4, gives us the pet's average damage of 6.9 (nice).

Now, once the pet's done their movement, action, and bonus action, it's our turn. Here, Vex makes the math a little hairy, but I'll do my best:

Our hit chance is 60%, but with advantage from the help action, it means that actually we've got an 84% chance to hit, and a 9.75% to crit.

Hit damage (remember that we said we pre-cast Hunter's Mark) is 2d6+5, or 12

Crit bonus is 7

So, on our first attack, we're looking at 12x84%, or 10.08, plus 7x9.75%, or .6825, meaning our average damage on this first attack is 10.7625.

This is where it gets nasty:

Because of Vex, if we did hit on the first attack, we have advantage on the second attack, but if we still missed with that 16% miss chance, we won't have advantage. So, we now need to know what our average damage would be if we didn't have advantage. This isn't too hard to get: 60% hit chance and 5% crit chance, so we're talking 13x60%, or 7.8, plus 7x5%, or .35, so the average there is 8.15.

Then, we go back to how likely our previous attack was to hit and apply these as coefficients before summing them: we had an 84% chance to get advantage on this attack, so 10.7625x84%, or 9.0405, and a 16% chance to have not had advantage, so 8.15x16%, or 1.304, which gives us an average damage on this attack of 10.3445.

Finally, we have our off-hand scimitar attack. Jesus, here we go: the first attack had guaranteed advantage from the Help action. The second attack's advantage was conditional on the first attack landing with advantage. Now, we're looking at a further-split timeline where we're more likely to get advantage if the previous attack hit, which itself was more likely to happen if the first attack hit.

So: let's break it down:

84% of the time, the first attack hits. In this scenario, the second attack has an 84% chance to hit.

16% of the time, the first attack misses. In this scenario, the second attack has a 60% chance to hit.

Thus, the second attack's chance to hit overall becomes 84%x84% plus 60%x16%. That's 70.56% plus 9.6%, for a total hit chance of 80.16%.

Now, the second attack hitting tells us how likely it is for our scimitar off-hand attack gets advantage.

Thanks to the two-weapon fighting style, the damage is actually the same on a hit or a crit, so we're just applying the same damage we got for advantage and disadvantage, just in a new ratio.

Once again, attacking with advantage gives us average damage of 10.7625, while lacking advantage gives us 8.15. With an 80.16% chance to have advantage, we're looking at 10.7625x80.16%, or 8.6722, and then an 19.84% chance to not have advantage, so we look at 8.15x19.84%, giving us 1.61696, totaling on average 10.28916 for this final attack.

So, let's sum it all up:

Beast Strike: 6.9

First Shortsword Attack: 10.7625

Second Shortsword Attack: 10.3445

Third Shortsword Attack: 10.28916

Total damage on round 1 with pre-cast Hunter's Mark: 38.29616.

That is, honestly, very respectable damage. But this is also a very best-case-scenario. If we can't pre-cast Hunter's Mark, for example, we need to choose between doing so or having our pet's turn, the latter of which is also how we get advantage on that first attack.

Still, I'd guess we're not dropping far below 30 average damage if we have to make that decision. As a point of comparison, let's figure out what a comparable Champion Fighter with a Greatsword would be doing. Our Champion has GWM and we'll say, like, Mage Slayer and Heavy Armor Master to fill out their Strength. With a +5 to Strength, we're looking at a +8 to hit. Thanks to Graze, every attack is going to do our 5 Strength damage, so we can just add that at the end. As a champion, we have a 10% crit chance. So, again, 60% hit chance.

Hit damage (ignoring Strength for now) is 2d6+3, or 10 average

Crit bonus: 2d6, or 7

So, 10x60% is 6, and then 7x10% is .7, so we're doing 6.7 average damage, but then add the 5 that comes even if we miss, and we get 11.7 damage per attack. Two attacks gives us 23.4.

Now, if either of these crit, we get a bonus action attack that lacks the +3 PB to damage. With two attacks and a 10% crit chance, the chance that either crits is 19%, so we figure out the average damage for our Hew attack and then multiply it by that.

Once again, Graze means a guaranteed 5, so we can add that to the average at the end.

Hit damage: 2d6

Crit bonus: 2d6

I think we can actually just combine the 60% chance to hit and the 10% chance to crit, so 7x70% is 4.9, then 4.9x19% is .931, meaning our total average damage here is actually just 24.331 - significantly lower than the Beast Master was doing.

Now, sure, a Fighter has a few more options like Action Surge, but this is honestly kind of eye-opening.

I'd be tempted to run the Beast Master through less ideal scenarios, but Vex is pretty tough to calculate as someone who was never that much of a math guy.

Building an Encounter for a Death Knight

 Death Knights are, conceptually, among my favorite D&D monsters. While the Lich is arguably the more iconic ultimate undead bad guy, the Death Knight speaks to my love for a heavily-armored character - whether good or bad.

Of course, the most iconic Death Knight in pop culture isn't strictly undead: while Star Wars is more science fantasy than strict science fiction (though those lines are blurrier than you might think,) what it doesn't really have is the codified tropes of the fantasy genre (tropes that arguably got a lot stricter with the introduction of games like D&D). Still, all that being said, I think you'd be hard-pressed to find a more fitting Death Knight than Darth Vader - he's a powerful magical warrior who betrayed his moral philosophy in pursuit of power, and is now a scarred and broken echo of the vibrant man he once was, and to top it all off, he wears a facemask that is designed to look like a skull.

(I'll concede here that the Ringwraiths of Lord of the Rings might be a more direct and pretty spot-on example of Death Knights, but none has the personality that Darth Vader projects.)

Anyway, I've written about Death Knights before (probably several times before,) so we won't rehash all of that. Instead, I wanted to talk very specifically about encounter-building.

One of the great corrections that the 2025 Monster Manual made to the Death Knight was to make it a legendary creature. Shockingly, the 2014 version was not, and even if the official art depicted the iconic Lord Soth (D&D's most iconic Death Knight,) it could potentially be dealt with by a single unfortunate saving throw.

2025 not only gives us a legendary version of the CR 17 prime Death Knight, but it also gives us a less-powerful (but still quite powerful) CR 11 Death Knight Aspirant, which is actually low enough to serve as an elite minion at high levels.

The stat blocks are very similar, and so, while it would make some thematic sense that an Aspirant could be part of a Death Knight encounter, I'd actually advise against it. Instead, an Aspirant could serve as the focal point (or even sole foe) of a lower-level, non-climactic encounter, but using them with a true Death Knight would likely make things feel a bit redundant.

Let's consider what the Death Knight (the full version and the aspirant) bring to the table:

Both are primarily melee combatants, with three Dread Blade attacks and a fairly high AC that is more or less justified by the equipment they wear - plate armor and perhaps a shield. Granted, their Dread Blade does 2d6 slashing with some necrotic on top, so it's up to you whether this is some souped-up Longsword with a Shield or if they're wielding a Greatsword and are wearing +2 Plate. None is included as "equipment," meaning the party can only loot what you allow them to off of them, so it doesn't really matter (you could justify this by suggesting that the weapon's power is due to their unholy strength, and the armor might not be salvageable because it's intertwined with their undead physiology.

That said, +2 plate is not a totally unreasonable piece of loot to find on a CR 17 monster.

But let's get back to encounter design.

Aside from their melee attacks, both Death Knights have a recharge ability: Hellfire Orb.

Now, this is an important thing to note. Hellfire Orb hits for a gigantic amount of damage. The lesser, Apsirant's version of it, does 42 damage in a fireball-sized sphere.

For this reason, I'd caution against using multiple Death Knights, even the non-legendary Aspirants, because several monsters likely at the same initiative all tossing these on turn one might be more of a nova than you actually want your monsters to put out (I learned this lesson very early on when I had a level 7 or so party fighting a bunch of black shadow dragon wyrmlings, and realized that breath weapons are not really designed to go off like 6 at a time).

One option to mitigate this potential damage burst is to simply start their fight with the ability requiring a recharge - they can still use it on turn one if they roll a 5 or 6, but otherwise there should be some staggering.

Still, here's another reason to limit how many you use: Death Knights, even Aspirants, should be rare.

This is one of the challenges in D&D, especially at high levels. High-level players can handle really serious threats. But never forget that a Commoner represents a normal person - you, reading this, in a D&D world, would probably have around 4 HP. And that means that even a lowly skeletal soldier should feel like an absolutely deadly threat to most people, even if the heroes of our story can shrug off a shortbow arrow with little worry.

By this logic, then, a single Death Knight Aspirant could lay waste to the entire garrison of a fairly powerful nobleman. The only hope that a group of Guards and Veteran Infantry have against one is numbers, and the Hellfire Orb really punishes them for trying to overwhelm the Death Knight by hiring lots of guards.

In a fantasy world where people are aware of such threats, though, perhaps a more powerful person, like a king, would have more elite warriors who could actually stand against a monster such as this (the players being the optimal example).

A Death Knight on their own is a menace. But they're also not built to be fought on their own.

Marshal Undead, found in both stat blocks, projects a 60-foot emanation that grants advantage on attack rolls and saving throws to all other undead of the death knight's choice. A 60-foot emanation is enormous. Roll20's standard map size (and I think pretty close to my Chessex vinyl mat I use for in-person games) is 25x25 squares. If each square is 5 feet, that's a width of 125 feet, which means that a Death Knight in the center of this map covers essentially the entire map with it (ok, I suppose that the corners might not get as much coverage).

The next question, though, is how many monsters you feel comfortable running.

Because the lower of monster CRs is 11, a 5-player party is not really likely to face one of these until level 7 at the earliest. By level 7, the number of rank-and-file skeletons you need to equal a single player in terms of encounter budget for a low-difficulty encounter is 15.

Here's the thing about fights with tons of low-level monsters: they can be fun, but they can also be interminable. Practically speaking, they can also serve as just a yes-or-no "fireball check." If you have 30 skeletons firing their shortbows from a castle courtyard, a single Fireball will probably take out any it can hit, which could be a big portion of them, meaning a Sorcerer or Wizard (or Light Cleric) could handle the problem very quick. If not, though, like if your party's damage dealers are martial classes, even if you had enough damage to kill a skeleton on every attack, your level 7 or 8 Fighter, Barbarian, Paladin, or whatever, is still going to be able to take down at most, like, 1/15th of them each round.

To be clear: narratively, the idea of a Death Knight leading an entire platoon of skeletal warriors makes total sense, and gives you a really cool image. But you're either going to spend minutes setting them all up on the board only for the Sorcerer to delete them with a fireball, or you're going to have your tense encounter devolve into an utter slog.

The good news is that we have far more options for minions than CR 1/4 Skeletons.

Even just within the Skeleton category, we have things like Minotaur Skeletons, which are CR 2, and thus can account for 9 times the xp budget of a standard skeletal minion (the stat block is also probably very easy to re-skin).

Likewise, the new Flaming Skeleton not only gives us an even tougher skeleton to work with, but they're even immune to fire, which might push players to have to take them on individually (which will be less tedious because you won't have as many of them thanks to their higher CR/XP value).

More or less any undead monsters could serve as minions for a Death Knight, though I tend to think, on an aesthetic level, that corporeal undead, and especially of the skeletal variety, seem the most appropriate.

The Death Knight does have some ranged capabilities, but they're either limited in use or require a recharge. Thus, I think minions capable of ranged attacks make a lot of sense. The Marshal Undead aura is large enough that they can still benefit from it even if the Death Knight enters the melee, but a mix is probably appropriate, perhaps with some tougher bruisers helping the Death Knight hold the line and protect the ranged monsters.

Mobility is a consideration as well: the Death Knight, being a Knight, is often depicted riding a steed (again, we can look to the Nazgul from Lord of the Rings, first with their iconic black horses and then on their fel beasts, the best stat block for which I think is probably the Gloomstalker from Explorer's Guide to Wildemount - not to be confused with the Ranger subclass).

The skeletal horse is the obvious choice here for a mount. But there's a slight problem: a Warhorse Skeleton has only 22 HP and vulnerability to bludgeoning damage. By the time you're fighting a Death Knight, the party's Monk could come in and pulverize such a mount in just a couple attacks, which would then presumably send our menacing monster prone on the ground amidst the shards of their steed.

It's kind of the same problem we find with using standard skeletons - the CR imbalance creates and inappropriately weak monster for our encounter.

So, let's consider some upgrades. The most obvious one, to me, is a Nightmare. With 68 HP, players will need to really commit to take one of these down. Furthermore, Nightmares can fly, which could allow the Death Knight to stay in the fight longer (perhaps even remaining airborne and just waiting to use their Hellfire Orbs when they come off cooldown - this reminds me a lot of the Headless Horseman tossing flaming pumpkins in World of Warcraft's annual "Hallow's End" event. Yes, there's a separate stat block for a Dullahan, but they're very closely related monsters).

A Nightmare is built to be a mount, with a teleport option that takes its rider and also a conferred fire resistance (the Nightmare is fully immune).

If we want to get super-epic, a Dracolich could work as a Death Knight's mount, but we do run into the problem of having multiple legendary monsters in a single fight. Dracoliches are primary villains in their own right.

All that being said, a Death Knight on foot is not unthinkable. This works especially well if the encounter involves the Death Knight attacking some bastion of safety - an allied noble's castle, or a temple of some sort. Fundamentally, a Death Knight is only as large as the person they were in life (meaning they can even be Small sized, if they had been a Halfling or Gnome, for instance).

Now, mindless undead minions like the aforementioned skeletons (again, I'd favor Minotaur and Flaming varieties) work fine, but Death Knights are also among the intelligent undead. While their state of undeath might cause them to pursue their goals in a compulsive manner, they're of reasonable intelligence and can speak.

And thus, you could also imagine that their minions might not be so dumb either. Wights work quite well here - already a kind of intelligent undead warrior. Revenants are also a possibility, though I think that the lore here is a bit distinct - you could re-skin a revenant, of course.

All right: we've figured out some ways to make the encounter a challenge. The stat block does a lot of that already, and some of our minion choices, like a Nightmare mount and Flaming Skeletons, undermine the most obvious go-to strategies for taking down the Death Knight's squadron.

How, then, can we add things that give the players an edge?

Given the militaristic nature of this undead foe, I think that our ideal encounter with a Death Knight is a defensive one - something like a siege. Without a flying mount like a Nightmare, the Death Knight is gong to be somewhat limited in their mobility. Giving the players an opportunity to hold the Death Knight at bay for a round or two could be very good (though only if the encounter is tuned pretty unforgivingly - if the party has the power to take the Death Knight down before it gets into melee with anyone, that's going to feel anticlimactic).

Amble opportunities to take cover would be great, especially if they can stay out of line of sight of some of the Flaming Skeletons. Also, that Hellfire Orb is going to hurt quite a lot even if people succeed on their saving throws (unless they have Evasion,) so I would say give the party plenty of opportunities to take advantage of cover and be more likely to succeed on their saves.

Turn Undead will certainly have the potential to undermine the difficulty of the encounter, but that's ok: sometimes, as a DM, you want to, as one of my players put it, "Shoot the Monk," and play directly into their strengths. Marshal Undead will give your minions a greater chance to succeed against the feature, but if the Cleric manages to separate out some of the minions, it'll make them feel like this is exactly what a Cleric is built to do.

One of the fun things about a Death Knight is that they might not be so obviously undead. Chances are, especially for the legendary version, you'll want to build them up as an important NPC. Indeed, a Death Knight could be the big bad of an entire campaign (albeit probably one that doesn't go too far beyond tier 2).

You can imagine, though, that given that they're encased in full armor, they might be mistaken for a rogue knight. Some "black knight" who has been terrorizing the land. Even better, the Death Knight might even show up initially not as a villain, but presenting themselves as some neutral or even friendly party. The game is given up quite immediately if the party uses something like Detect Evil and Good or Divine Sense, and while a Lich under some kind of illusion might use a spell like Nystul's Magic Aura to fool such detection, a Death Knight's paladin suite of abilities is unlikely to have access to that, so unless they're working with a Lich or some other powerful wizard, they're probably not going to be able to prevent such detection - so just be wary that if the players are remotely suspicious, this ruse might not last.

That said, you can still get a lot of drama out of this: say the party is in the court of our allied nobleman, and something about this knight (maybe the fact that they never take off their helmet) tips the party off that something's fishy. The Paladin might be fully aware of the Death Knight's undead nature, but convincing their ally that this is the case is another story. Perhaps this knight has served the nobleman for decades, and so the nobleman assumes that no one who has given such faithful service could truly be evil (the Death Knight, of course, thinks nothing of serving for decades to get what they want). On top of that, the Death Knight is fairly charismatic, and might be able to persuade the ally that there's some reasonable explanation - even framing their undeath as a curse that they have long sought to cure, rather than a reflection of their own corruption (you're also free to make a non-evil Death Knight under such a curse).

However, the truly dangerous part of this scenario is what happens when that accusation lands. In any story of intrigue, the protagonists need to be very careful about when and how they reveal the secrets they've discovered. If your level 4 party has just proven themselves to the local earl by defeating the local coven of Green Hags, only to meet this loyal knight of the duke's, they don't want to give a death knight a reason to kill them, because it's very likely the death knight would succeed in doing so.

Let's talk spells:

Both Death Knights have access to a couple of spells. The Legendary version gets some others that they can use as legendary actions.

Each has Phantom Steed - this actually works out pretty well, because while it's very easy to take a Phantom Steed out, dong so won't send the Death Knight prone, so it can be a tactical decision to spare a couple of attacks to reduce their speed effectively from 100 to 30. If you don't want to add the XP of a Nightmare to an encounter, this is a good option to let them at least start off on a mount (while they can cast Phantom Steed at will, it does have a minute casting time).

True Death Knights also have Command at will, but I'd recommend primarily using this as part of the associated legendary action - Command is a great 1st level spell, but you don't want to spend your entire turn casting a 1st level spell.

Destructive Wave can be pretty powerful, dealing an average of 35 damage on a failed save or 17 on a success. Now, the Death Knight's melee attacks land for an average of 25 damage per hit, and they get three attacks, meaning that you're going to do far more damage to a single target with the Dread Blade. Even with two targets to hit, you're going to probably do more damage with the Dread Blade, so try to A: save this for when you can hit three players or more. Then, consider the following: 35 damage when the party's all fully rested and at full health is scary but not going to take anyone down. 35 damage well into a battle, when the Cleric just ran it to get the Fighter up with a 2nd level cure wounds is a lot scarier.

Hellfire Orb is there to get the party on their back foot - blasting for a massive 70 damage, you can take them from full health to bloodied. But it's also got no friendly-fire protection, so this is going to be an ability that the Death Knight uses on turn one, before their minions have closed in on the party. Destructive Wave only does half as much damage, but it doesn't hit the Death Knight's allies, so they can use it even in a dense melee.

Finally, Dispel Magic is some cool utility, but you want to be really sure that it's worth it to spend an entire turn casting this spell. If the party has somehow trapped the Death Knight in a Magic Circle or the like, this might be the move. But I wouldn't use this on something like an Aura of Vitality - the Death Knight might be able to take the character concentrating on that spell down instead. This spell can be used outside of combat to dramatic effect, such as my dispelling a Hallow spell keeping them and their minions out of some place (note that as a 5th level spell, the Death Knight only has a 50% chance on succeeding on their Charisma check to dispel Hallow).

As a final note, don't be afraid to throw a Death Knight at a party early and often. Like the Lich, Vampire, and Mummy Lord (and basically all fiends,) there's a codified "get out of jail free card," at least for the legendary variety, where a Death Knight can always come back as long as they haven't atoned for their evil. The Aspirant, admittedly, does not have this in their stat block, but you could easily make an exception if you want recurring villains.

The Death Knight could thus be a recurring threat, and the encounters with them could evolve even while using the same stat block. Perhaps the first time the party encounters them, they're a solo monster. But as they climb in level, the Death Knight's encounters become more challenging (or rather, remain level-appropriate) by having them accompanied by more minions and more powerful minions.

The Math on Chunky Crits

 This ever happen to you?

You're in a tough D&D fight, you need to take down some nasty monster. Your DM has been talking about how they're not just bloodied, but looking real rough (which I usually say when a monster gets down to, like, less than 20 HP and I'm running for my tier 4 party,) and then, miraculously, you roll a critical hit on your attack. This is it, you're going to defeat the monster, you're going to give your Paladin the turn they need to run over and pop the Cleric up with a few points of Lay on Hands.

And then, you roll 4d10 on your Fire Bolt and do... Like, six damage.

Yeah, it can happen. It's unlikely, of course, but if you roll two 2s and two 1s, even though your average damage for a tier 2 Fire Bolt crit is like 22 damage, if you're SOL and roll like garbage, you might do less than you might have done with a good roll for a regular hit in tier 1.

The homebrew solution that some people use, then, is what I've heard referred to by a few different names, but the one I like is a Chunky Crit. Here, rather than doubling the dice, you take the maximum result for that roll and add it to a regular roll.

So, our Wizard in that above scenario would, rather than rolling 4d10, instead roll 2d10+20.

The average damage here is, unsurprisingly, much higher - 4d10 has an average result of 22, while 2d10+20 is an average result of 31, an upgrade of around 41%.

The real benefit here is that a critical hit will always thus do more damage than a regular hit. Even if you roll minimum damage, it'll be respectable damage no matter what.

But it does also skew things a little.

First, let's just consider how it will affect the value of critical hits.

A non-subclasses Fighter with a... let's say Maul so we don't have to think about Graze, and, say a +3 to hit (reasonable for levels 1-3) will do 2d6+3 damage on a hit, or an average of 10. Normally, crits will deal an extra 2d6 (average of 7) damage.

So, if we're fighting Goblin Warriors with an AC of 15 (that must have gone up from 2014) and a +5 to hit, we're hitting 55% of the time and critting 5% of the time. Thus:

Hits: 10x55%, or 5.5

Crits: 7x5%, or .35

And so our average damage per attack is 5.85

If we use the Chunky Crits, the percentage chances are the same, but now our crit damage is much higher - 2d6+3 does a maximum of 15 damage, so we're adding 5 on top of our previous 7 to our crit bonus damage for a total of 12 over our normal hit damage.

Thus, rather than adding .35, we're now adding .6.

And so, our average damage is now 6.1.

Is that huge? Perhaps not. It's only 0.25 more damage per attack, or a jump of like 4%.

Where I think this gets complicated, though, is how it doesn't scale the same with everyone. This is, to be fair, true for the official critical hit rules as well.

But consider the following: A 5th level Rogue with +4 to Dex and a mundane shortbow critting with a Sneak Attack will deal 8d6+4 piercing damage, which comes out to an average of 32 damage.

With a Chunky Crit, they'll instead deal 4d6+28, which comes out to an average of 42, jumping by about 31%.

A similar Barbarian who is lucky enough to crit twice with their Greataxe deals 2d12+6 on a crit, an average of 19, and doubled to 38. With two chunky crits, we're looking instead at 1d12+18, or 24.5, doubling it to 49.

It's still, of course, and improvement, but it's not as big of a boost to a Barbarian as it is to a Rogue (it winds up being about 29% - actually closer than I had expected) because the Barbarian is getting a smaller fraction of their damage out of their dice. (I do think this is an argument that Rogues probably needed a damage buff).

Now, I don't raise these issues to argue that this is a bad house rule. Players will most likely love it, but I also think that it has to go both ways - monsters will become deadlier with this, especially big scary boss monsters that roll a lot of dice.

It will also skew things slightly in favor of crit-fishing builds. Champion Fighters will get a bit more powerful with their expanded crit range (though my sense has always been that Champions do respectable damage, and their only sin is that they're boring).

It does really increase the odds that a stray crit from a low-level monster can kill a low-level character. Technically, this doesn't expand anyone's maximum crit damage, but it skews things to make crits higher. Thus, a Zombie, who crits for an average of 8 damage with the normal rules, will instead crit for an average of 10.5, making it far more likely to knock out most 1st level characters with d8 hit dice (i.e., the majority of classes).

Forge of the Artificer Delayed

 Well, this is frustrating but also maybe the right call?

WotC just announced that Eberron: Forge of the Artificer, which was previously slated to come out next month, will now be delayed to December. The reason: the copies that were printed already have warped covers, evidently not spotted initially because they only showed their warping after they had been taken out of their packaging.

Sadly, this requires a full reprint of the books, which will be a length process. The book is now slated for a release on December 9th.

Now, as someone who just pre-ordered the digital version (I know pre-ordering a digital book is kind of silly, but it was on impulse) with the intent of picking up the physical copy at my FLGS (I'm willing to go physical-only on adventures, but for books with lots of character options, I want it on D&D Beyond,) unfortunately we're no exception here: The digital release will also be delayed (I think largely to prevent people who'd normally get a physical copy from skipping it so they can get the digital version far earlier, and thus preserve what has to be a tenuous and complex relationship with brick-and-mortar stores).

As such, non-subscribers can get their digital copy on the 9th as well. Hero-tier subscribers will get it a week early on December 2nd, and Master-tier subscribers get it a week before that on November 25th.

I've got to say, it's a real bummer - I'm hoping that I'll be playing in a new Eberron campaign soon, and while Artificer is my third choice for class for said campaign (I'm not committing to one until I find out what other people want to play as - but Monk and Fighter are my 1 and 2) I do want to play a Warforged character, and was looking forward to the (admittedly minor) FotA update.

I will say, the willingness to take what has to be a big loss in order to avoid selling customers a defective product is admirable, as frustrating as it is to have to wait longer for this release.

Here's the D&D Beyond article.

At War with the Mystics: Demiurges, Mysticism, and the Humanist Hero

 I was thinking about the power of music in FromSoft games.

While I never hit that point myself (getting stuck on Ornstein and Smough and thus only getting about halfway through the game,) one of the most famous shocks in gaming music history is the melancholy "plin plin plon" of Gwyn's battle music in the original Dark Souls. Here, a Zeus-like patriarchal deity, most powerful of all the Lords, is confronted not to the tune of an epic, soaring orchestra, but a tragic piano piece that tells the players more than any other cue that the Gwyn we face is a hollow shell of the god he once was - he has given his very soul to the Fire, and tragically, this was not enough to keep his Age of Fire going forever. Gwyn, misguided and guilty of many crimes with the noble goal of perpetuating his golden age, is set up to be someone we can hate, the oppressor and tyrant whom we can take down, but when we finally meet him, he's a figure of pity, and his defeat at our hands is more of a mercy than the vanquishing of a villain.

There's a trope common to a lot of games that come from Japan - also very prevalent in Final Fantasy - where the final boss of a game is celestial, angelic, deific in aesthetic. In FF, consider our confrontations with Kefka, Sephiroth, and most recently Ultima in FFXVI. Both Kefka and Sephiroth are mortals who have attained some kind of divinity, and now sport angelic wings (or just a single one in the latter's case) and are fought in a sky where sunlight is only kept from blinding us by fluffy clouds limned in gold.

Elden Ring, having its extensive Shadow of the Erdtree DLC, effectively has two final bosses (much as Dark Souls and Bloodborne did, and DSIII kind of had three thanks to having two DLCs, though the latter can only be accessed after finishing the former). Elden Ring's two "final bosses," though, are both not only aesthetically coded along these deific lines, but the victory-toast the game gives you when either boss is defeated is "God Slain."

In traditional mythological terms, the villains defeated and/or slain by heroes are monstrous - it is the gods themselves who, in Greek and Norse myth, defeat the monsters. Zeus reestablishes himself as the rightful king of the gods by burying Typhon, the ultimate monster, under Mount Etna. The Norse gods, being a bit more metal (and a bit more death-culty, to be frank) are destined to fall in battle against monstrous foes - Odin rides into the maw of Fenrir, Thor slays Jormungandr but dies to the world-serpent's final poisoned breath, and Heimdall and Loki fall to one another in battle, the latter having transgressed beyond mischief and into true chaos.

In Abrahamic tradition, Satan/Lucifer plays the role of the ultimate evil (especially in Christianity and Islam - Judaism believes in more of a monopolar cosmos) and his fall from grace comes with a monstrous transformation. Among the most powerful icons in Christianity is the archangel Michael casting Lucifer down from heaven, Michael a paragon of human-like beauty (albeit with immaculate white bird's wings) and Lucifer growing grotesque and monstrous in shape.

There is a whole other post to be written about the way that foreign deities were incorporated as demons in Abrahamic demonology, and how that's clearly paralleled in Elden Ring's literal demonization of the hornsent into the omens, but while traditional fantasy tends to buy into this dichotomy of the angelic/celestial as good and grotesque/infernal as evil, our heroes rarely find themselves in opposition to the light/heavenly-affiliated forces.

And yet, there is something deep in the tradition that suggests a degree of skepticism: Lucifer literally means light-bringer, and he's often given the epithet Morning Star (I believe that Lucifer is sometimes directly translated as that). For all the aesthetics of light being good, there's always been, baked into that, a certain skepticism.

I'll come out and say this: I don't really think I can give a comprehensive definition of Gnosticism. It's a religious/spiritual belief system that is sort of parallel to Christian thought but also in some cases incorporated into it. Gnosticism seeks "gnosis," or knowledge.

Gnosticism, as I understand it, is a diverse and complex set of beliefs, and I once again want to just place this caveat that I'm someone who has just browsed some wikipedia articles about it, so take everything with the message "this is more complex than I'm going to be able to phrase it here."

However, among the most fascinating ideas within Gnosticism is the notion of a Demiurge.

The demiurge is a being who created the physical world, but this act was not the true creation of the cosmos. Instead, it was at best misguided and at worst, an sin against the true creator. Here, the Manichean notion of dualism - of the pure, holy existence of the soul and the profane, imperfect existence of the body - means that as conscious beings, we're trapped in the physical world, and that only through spiritual purification can we escape and live as the luminous, eternal beings unbounded by the profane world and experience true life.

This is such a fascinating idea, and it's one that also underlies a lot of ideological territory I, personally, find repugnant. Like, for example, I remember seeing a bumper sticker that said "Forget global warming, worry about earthly burning," which I understood to mean that we should ignore the dangers of climate change and focus only on religious devotion - something I consider more of an ideological cover for irresponsibility and capitulation to a capitalist drive to extract resources heedless of the damage it does to the ecosystem we rely upon to survive.

And yet, there is something compelling to the idea that this physical world we know is not the be-all and end-all, that even if we've lived a life of pain and misery, a better world awaits us on the other side of the veil of death.

Life is, after all, imperfect. Growing up, we struggle for freedom, unaware of what support we might lack, and our prime years of our physical peaks end far earlier than seems fair, only for us to decline and endure new, lasting pains. There are many things we can do to mitigate this, and spirituality is one of the most popular practices to do so. For the moments of joy we experience in life, it seems cruel and unfair that we might not simply extend those moments indefinitely.

The symbol of the Ying-Yang is sometimes depicted with a white circle in the black half and a black circle in the white half, making it almost look like two fish intertwined with one another. And I think that reflects, to some extent, an ambiguity of which impulse we are following.

The conflict between good and evil as a foundational idea in human psychology and culture, but it's also a difficult one to pin down - for example, on a political level, the very people who I consider to be our society's villains and enemies to the rightful order of the world, will often use "evil" to describe their opponents - their opponents being the proponents of something more closely approximating my beliefs of how our society should work.

But I think there's another kind of meta-conflict here that gets complicated when we put it through the filter of Gnosticism.

The deific antagonists of these games are often, or at least sometimes, not so much evil for the sake of evil as they are committed to an apocalyptic ideology. And I want to just quickly clarify that while modern parlance takes "apocalyptic" to mean "world-ending," the literal meaning is "revelation." Calypso was a Greek goddess of secrets, and so "apocalypse" was the revelation of that hidden truth. (Which is why the Christian book about the end of the world, likely actually written as an allegorical piece of political commentary about Emperor Nero, is the Book of Revelations).

Both Gwyn and Marika wind up turning benign or perhaps neutral forces into monstrous dangers out of a fear of their power - the Dark is sealed away by Gwyn and becomes this monstrous Abyss. Marika seals away the Outer Gods, and each goes from something natural and orderly, like Rot's protective verdigris and preservation as seen in Rauh into the Annihilation-like chaos of Caelid. Miquella's goal of perfect peace and compassion creates paranoid zealots like Leda who cannot tolerate anything but a lockstep hive-mind.

While I don't know if the Dark Souls games ever give a real origin to Gwyn's doubts, Elden Ring's demiurge allegory is more explicit - we find that the beings who orchestrate the succession of divinities are themselves receiving their marching orders from a being that has lost her connection to the Greater Will. The role of demiurge in Elden Ring's cosmos could arguably be played by Marika or Metyr, or even the Elden Beast, but in each case (Elden Beast maybe get back to me on that,) the instructions are garbled, and the intended order is broken.

Indeed, to the adherents of the Flame of Frenzy, even the Greater Will might, itself, be a false demiurge - the broken, split-off remnant of the true god, the One Great, whose error in leaving this state of singular wholeness was an mistake whose only remedy is the re-merging of all things into a singular state once again (as horrific as that might be).

However, I think that figures like Marika and Miquella might actually fit another trope:

Mysticism, broadly speaking, is spiritual practice that seeks to attain some higher state of being. In some readings, it's the attempt to achieve godhood. The practice of Alchemy, which ultimately gave rise to modern science, was one such practice, which sought to achieve spiritual aims through understanding the physical matter of the universe and how to manipulate it.

Modern, secular science, was kind of born out of the abandonment of this mystical aspect - seeking to understand physical law without any prejudicial notions about the moral or metaphysical implications.

Gnosticism is, arguably, a mystical practice - the belief that one could escape the false world of the demiurge through spiritual purification is itself that kind of ascension.

And yet, I think that mystics make for excellent villains in fantasy stories. Elden Ring is awash with alchemical imagery (consider how important the various metals are, especially gold, silver, quicksilver, and copper - the "red gold" of the crucible) and I think it's implied that the manner in which Marika ascended to godhood, as well as the steps that Miquella is taking to do the same, are some profound working of an alchemical Magnum Opus (Marika herself has become a Rebis, a being of female and male aspects, the white queen and the red(-haired) king).

In another stand-out of the Souls-like genre, Lies of P, while doing a very unique take on the story of Pinnochio, makes its primary villains Alchemists, a group of people who want to transcend humanity to become god-like immortals, and have used ancient, powerful magic to distill human memory and consciousness into physical material they can use as fuel for their ascension.

And I think this is all, strangely, in keeping with the Mystical practice - even as mystics try to attain secret, esoteric knowledge to ascend, there's an implied danger - that if you follow the wrong path, you'll wind up more like the demiurge. Even with the best intentions, you might wind up creating greater suffering and greater evil if you fail to get it right.

I'm reminded, actually, of the story of Sauron in the Lord of the Rings. While his predecessor, the first Dark Lord Morgoth, was basically just someone who sought to usurp god and ruin creation in favor of whatever he wanted to do, Sauron genuinely repented his affiliation with Morgoth, but it was in this repentance that he found his second fall - Morgoth's corruption had left the world irrevocably damaged and tainted, and Sauron wanted to fix it. But his project to fix it ultimately led him to convince himself that he needed to become an absolute tyrant so that others couldn't interfere with his plans, and when people wouldn't just stand aside, his frustration turned into cruelty and, you know, basically the Dark Lord we all know from the story.

But, even if by the point he's showing up as Annatar, the Gift-Giver, and distributing rings of power, he's probably become pretty cynical and deceitful, he's still got this angelic visage that he uses to appear as a benign heavenly messenger, and perhaps he does, still, genuinely, believe that that's his true form.

What, then, is the remedy? What is the opposing force to these demiurges?

Well, ironically, it's the anti-mystic. It's the humanist.

Now, the way my dad describes it, my sister and I were raised as secular humanists. He's both an atheist and a scientist, raised in an irreligious but culturally Jewish family (there are distant cousins on that side who are quite orthodox, but my dad and grandparents were not believers. My mom was a kind of agnostic cultural Catholic, and while she had big problems with the Church (especially after the sex abuse scandals) she never fully renounced a belief that there might be some truth to the supernatural, spiritual message.

Humanist has often been conflated with atheism, often by humanists themselves, but I think my stance is a little more agnostic (Carl Sagan, a famous humanist, also considered himself an agnostic, but I think leaned farther toward the atheist end of that spectrum).

But what I think is that the philosophical stance of humanism is not as concerned with determining whether there is some supernatural element to the universe or whether god exists, as much as it is the stance that those questions, however compelling, don't need to be the basis for moral and ethical philosophy. It is a belief (as I see it) that the answer to what is moral and right is not some esoteric mystery to be coded in secret symbols, but is something that we humans are equipped to understand on a basic level: that the simple act of treating others with respect and empathy is a better guide to living a moral life than some thousands-of-years-old book of mythology.

Ironically, opponents of humanism might view it as an arrogant position, usurping the wisdom of the divine with the beliefs of mere mortals, but I think one of the core values of humanism is humility - the readiness to adjust one's view when new ideas are presented to you.

Humanism also embraces this humility with a fundamental, underlying belief that the classic social hierarchies are man-made, and should not be viewed as inherent. A person's poverty is not necessarily a sign of divine disfavor, but might simply be the product of one's circumstances.

Humanism also focuses in on the real and tangible - rather than seeking to ascend past one's nature through some kind of mystical ascension, the humanist instead tries to embrace the experience of being human and embrace it with all of its imperfections.

And there's an irony - part of why I mentioned the Ying-Yang earlier - because on one level, you could see humanism as the very opposite of Gnosticism. Here, humanism embraces the world as it is, the flawed world of the demiurge, and dismisses the fabled spiritual world beyond as either a fantasy or at least an irrelevancy.

But it's also possible that this is the very spiritual enlightenment that such mystical practices seek to find.

Among the two most popular religious traditions in the world, Christianity and Buddhism, espouse the abandonment of desires for worldly gains - Buddha was a prince who experimented with asceticism, but found that a middle path was the true route to enlightenment. Jesus sought to model a moral way of living, but did so by fraternizing with lepers, thieves and prostitutes, showing them empathy and kindness when the society as a whole saw them as impure and wicked.

My humanist reading on these spiritual traditions is that both model an embrace of humanism - and essentially that the dogged obsession with spiritual purification is itself an obstacle toward true spiritual growth.

Boy, we got really deep on philosophy. What does this have to do with video games?

Well, these games present us with grand, sweeping, epic narratives of those who would remake and reshape the world, and it places us frail mortals, as mortal combatants against gods. We are humans - flawed, corrupted, profane, magnificent.

The games tend to give us multiple endings, and at least FromSoft's games tend to make the morality of these endings very ambiguous. Is it better to Link the Fire, and extend Gwyn's age into a third, likely diminished phase, or is it better to see the rise of the Dark? Shall we restore the Elden Ring and Marika's reign, and if so, adjust the order to better fit the world in some way? Or shall we see some new age of stars, with as-yet-unknown wonders and terrors to come?

The thing is, I don't know that the ending is the point. I think that whatever new reality results from our actions, it's more important that we deal with the reality as it is.

If this feels unsatisfying, that the conclusion is simply "well, whatever happens happens," then yeah, that's the frustration of having this kind of worldview. But that very frustration is also part of the human experience. It's one of the imperfections that makes us who we are. Our heroes are not just about preserving a static status quo, but neither are we going to go along with anyone with a plan to change things up. We will take all things on their own terms.

First Look at Dragon Delves

 The first adventure book and first D&D book to come out after the 2024 core rulebook revamp, Dragon Delves is an anthology of adventures - ten of them that each revolve around a dragon of the ten classic varieties.

I've now read the first two adventures, and it's certainly a bit of a departure from the adventures of previous books.

While D&D adventures always take longer than you might expect, I genuinely think that these could truly be completed in only a session or two, which is kind of refreshing.

The format of the adventure presentation is also a little different: while you still get room-by-room descriptions keyed to dungeon maps, each adventure starts off with a quick summary of major plot points, the stat blocks involved (the book contains no new stat blocks - it only uses the ones from the 2025 Monster Manual,) and a list of important NPCs.

I think the intent here is to present the important information so that a DM can leap into running these adventures with little prep.

Naturally, low-level D&D can churn through a fair amount of combat quickly (though players are also going to need rests between fights more often,) so I'll be curious to see how the pacing goes with the higher-level adventures.

The first adventure, Death at Sunset, can span levels 1 and 2 (though you can just skip ahead to the second half pretty easily,) where the party investigates an ailing grove of redwood trees that mark the site where a powerful green dragon fell. With the forest once again succumbing to poisonous corruption and villagers going missing, it seems that some related threat is rising.

Ultimately, the "dungeons" here are essentially large rooms, first the grove of redwoods and second the cavern beneath the grove. While dungeon-crawl enthusiasts might find that underwhelming, it's actually far closer to the kind of "one session" environments I tend to design and run. Even if these areas do have multiple encounters within them, the physical space is very compact.

Granted, this means it might become difficult to justify holding monsters in other "rooms" from joining the fray given that they might only be 30 feet away, but in all but one case, the monsters aren't really allies (and in that case, DMs are instructed to have the nearby monsters jump into the fight.

The second adventure, Baker's Doesn't, is similarly a quick quest - the party finds a candy shop burning down, and this leads them to investigate a cottage made of candy deep in the woods that is the lair of an evil green hag (a male hag, demonstrating how they've updated previously female-only monsters).

The cottage is a bit more of a true mini-dungeon than the green dragon's cavern, but I also think that you could get through this pretty quickly, depending on your players.

I'll be curious as I read on as to how the higher-level adventures feel. The last one is for 12th level characters, and as one ascends in levels, the complexity of the game grows. Still, so far it seems like the pacing of the book's adventures means you won't be stuck on any for more than a few sessions (the first two each claim to be doable in two sessions).

Funnily enough, we don't have any announcement of a grand adventure book in the vein of Storm King's Thunder or Rime of the Frostmaiden among any of the announced publications. I wonder if they're planning to skew more toward shorter modules. I love a grand adventure book, but at the same time, I've only once ever made it all the way through one (though fingers crossed we get through Wild Beyond the Witchlight - we're a ways into Yon at this point).

Mainly, I feel that the adventures as presented so far are closer to the kind of thing I prepare for my own campaigns, and I actually feel very confident I could run these adventures with ease.

If my impressions change with the other adventures, I'll probably make another post. But still, I think this is worth picking up if only to see a different style of adventure than what we've gotten in 5E prior to this.

Forge of the Artificer Species Updates

 Eberron: Forge of the Artificer is the next sourcebook coming out of WotC, and updates the Eberron setting for the 2024 rules. Much like its 5.0E predecessor, Eberron: Rising from the Last War, we've got the Artificer class and several Eberron-originated species.

Returning from RftLW are the four species from that book, the Changeling, Kalashtar, Shifter, and Warforged. Additionally, the new Khoravar species is being added.

As I understand it, the Khoravar are essentially half-elves, but while the 2024 rules encouraged players to merely pick any species and flavor it with whatever kind of mixed ancestry they wanted (no longer limited to human/elf and human/orc ancestries, you can be a half-Halfling/half-Satyr, though there's no mechanical definition as you just pick one or the other's traits).

D&D Beyond put up a post describing how these species traits have changed, which I'll go through and offer my analysis.

Changeling:

Already revised in the (relatively) recent Mordenkainen Presents: Monsters of the Multiverse, Changelings had their creature type updated to Fey in that book, as well as a few tweaks here and there. The change in FotA will simply give them advantage on charisma checks while shape-shifted. This is the sort of thing I could see a lot of DMs doing anyway, but it's probably helpful to players to see it codified within the rules.

Kalashtar:

Kalashtar, the dual-beings of human fused with a dream-entity, was one of the two RftLW species not to make it into Monsters of the Multiverse. Here, we see more extensive changes, the most notable being that the Kalashtar are now considered Aberrations (a change we're likely to see if we get a reprint of the Githyanki and Githzerai). Aside from the occasional abjuration spell, Aberrations have not typically had too many broad "rule trends" regarding the creature type, so I don't see this being any real problem for them, and is flavorfully appropriate.

Furthermore, Kalashtars' Mind Link now allows telepathy with multiple creatures and doesn't require sight. Finally, you get a free, swappable skill proficiency (switchable on a long rest).

Khoravar:

This new species (I believe established in Eberron's 3rd edition debut) are somewhat similar to the 2014 Half Elf. You get 60ft darkvision, Fey Ancestry, and you get Fey Gift, which gives you the Friends cantrip, which can be swapped out for any Cleric, Druid, or Wizard cantrip on a long rest (I assume you can choose the spellcasting ability).

One odd feature is Lethargy Resilience, which lets you turn a failed save against the Unconscious condition into a success, with a 1d4 Long rest cooldown. Given how few monsters directly impose this condition through sleep, what I'm curious to see is how this interacts with Death Saves. I think it probably won't, given that saving doesn't end the Unconscious condition, but that then makes this feature very weak, and I wonder why there would be this potential multi-day recovery before using it again.

Finally, they get Skill Versatility, which gives you a skill or tool proficiency that can be swapped out on a long rest.

Mechanically, I must say, I don't know that this is in any way preferable to just a standard 2024 Elf, though it's close. Unless Lethargy Resilience works on being knocked out at 0 HP, I think you'll need to be super into the flavor of this to choose it.

Shifter:

Like the Changeling, this is likely to be pretty much unchanged from the Monsters of the Multiverse version. The one change appears to be the ability to choose Medium or Small as your size.

Warforged:

Much as I suspected, Warforged now have the Construct creature type. This has precedence with the Autognome, but let's also point out the ways that such a creature type shouldn't be as much of a problem as it was in the 2014 rules. While most healing spells in 2014 have specific carve-outs to not work on Undead and Constructs, these restrictions were lifted in the 2024 version. Thus, if you're going to play this updated Warforged, be sure that everyone at your table is using the 2024 version of spells like Cure Wounds, Healing Word, Revivify, etc.

Some of the traits for the Warforged have been shuffled around. Constructed Resilience now gives you advantage on saving throws to end the Poisoned condition (not sure if that means it doesn't work on avoiding it in the first place?)

Integrated Protection no longer forces you to take an hour to don armor, which is great (presumably, thus, it just gives you the AC bonus).

Sentry's Rest specifies that you don't need to sleep and can't be put to sleep magically (again, this makes me feel like the Khoravar's Lethargy Resilience is underpowered).

And then Tireless is now phrased as "you don't gain exhaustion levels from dehydration, malnutrition, or suffocation," which is effectively the same as saying you don't need to drink, eat, or breathe.

    Anyway, given that I may be starting an Eberron game soon (fingers crossed - the logistics of getting a D&D campaign off the ground is always crazy) I'm really eager to make a Warforged character, and this should be pretty exciting (though the armor change is unlikely to be relevant as I primarily want ot play a Monk).