FotA Dragonmark Backgrounds and Feats: In Depth Look: Houses Medani, Orien, Phiarlan, Sivis, Tharashk, Thuranni, and Vadalis

 Continuing with our look at the various Dragonmarked Houses, we're seeing what kind of characters and builds we might go for with each collection.

As a reminder, each House "heir" background comes with a corresponding Dragonmark feat (which functions as your Origin feat) and then can take the "Greater" upgrade to that feat as a general feat, as well as Potent Dragonmark.

Each Dragonmark feat comes with a d4 bonus to certain skills, which I'm calling Dragonmark Skills.

They also give you a spell or two or three that you can cast once for free per day (along the lines of a species ability) as well as with your own spell slots if you have them. I'm calling these Dragonmark Spells.

Then, each Dragonmark (except the Aberrant Mark) comes with a list of spells that are added to your class spell list (if you have one). The list is called Spells of the Mark (not to be confused with the Dragonmark spells, which are separate).

Once again, the Potent Dragonmark will change your Spells of the Mark to instead be always prepared, and also grants you a single spell slot that can be used only to cast the spells on that list. The spell slot is of a level equal to half your character level (rounded up) to a maximum of 5th, and recharges on a Short or Long rest (a bit like a Warlock pact slot).

We're organizing this by Dragonmarked House, and starting from the corresponding backgrounds. While you might be able to get these Marks via other backgrounds (like pre-2024 ones) the most unambiguously rules-compliant version is to take the corresponding background.

House Medani

    House Medani Heir:

Ability Scores: Dexterity, Intelligence, Wisdom

Skills: Insight, Investigation

Tools: Disguise Kit

    Mark of Detection:

Dragonmark Skills: Intelligence (Investigation) and Wisdom (Insight)

Dragonmark Spells: Detect Magic, Detect Poison and Disease, See Invisibility (requires character level 3).

Spells of the Mark:

1st: Detect Evil and Good, Identify

2nd: Detect Thoughts, Find Traps

3rd: Clairvoyance, Nondetection

4th: Arcane Eye, Divination

5th: Legend Lore

    Greater Mark of Detection

Ability Score: Any

Dragonmark Skill: Standard d6 upgrade

Miscellaneous: When you cast See Invisibility with this feat, you can choose another creature you can see within 30 feet. That creature gains the benefits of the spell as well for its duration.

    This would all thematically fit a detective-like character for sure, though of course there's also the Inquisitive background for that. I think that the ability scores could suit a Monk, Ranger, or many types of Rogue (Arcane Trickster, for example, who will like both the Dex and Int).

    The spells will not help at all in combat, except in cases where you're facing invisible foes, but they could be quite helpful in various mystery-like challenges, looking for clues, infiltrating seedy bars, etc. I really think this is very campaign-dependent. There are some pretty solid spells here, though Find Traps remains the most laughably terrible spell.

House Orien

    House Orien Heir

(Hey, is the "train house" called that because of the Orient Express?)

Ability Score: Dexterity, Constitution, Intelligence

Skills: Acrobatics, Athletics

Tools: Cartographer's Tools

    Mark of Passage:

Dragonmark Skills: Strength (Athletics) and Dexterity (Acrobatics)

Dragonmark Spell: Misty Step

Miscellaneous: Your speed increases by 5 feet.

Spells of the Mark:

1st: Expeditious Retreat, Jump

2nd: Find Steed, Pass without Trace

3rd: Blink, Phantom Steed

4th: Dimension Door, Freedom of Movement

5th: Teleportation Circle

    Greater Mark of Passage:

Ability Score: Any

Dragonmark Skills: Standard d6 upgrade

Miscellaneous: When you cast Misty Step with this feat to cast the spell without a spell slot, you can choose up to two willing creatures you can see within 30 feet of yourself. Those creatures can take a reaction to teleport up to 30 feet to an unoccupied space they can see.

    I'm a real sucker for mobility in D&D, and so I think that this has a really fantastic set of spells (Misty Step is one I like to take on basically any character who can get it). The ability scores here are good for basically any Int- or Dex-based character. While the three-person Misty Step is only once a day, it could really save your bacon if a bunch of people need to get out of a bad situation fast.

    Somehow, this feels like the "fighting on top of a train" Dragonmark, which is appropriate as House Orien runs the Lightning Trains. Notably, full casters (which is probably just Wizards, given the ability scores) will be able to get a more powerful, flying mount from Find Steed far earlier than a Paladin. And Pass without Trace is a really great spell that can make it far, far more likely the party succeed on their group stealth checks. Pretty solid all around, though no real damage-enhancements here.

    Classes like Artificers who don't naturally get Misty Step are going to really like having it (though I think Cartographers do get it).

House Phiarlan

    House Phiarlan Heir

Ability Scores: Dexterity, Wisdom, Charisma

Skills: Deception, Stealth

Tool: Disguise Kit

    Mark of Shadow:

Dragonmark Skills: Dexterity (Stealth) and Charisma (Performance)

Dragonmark Spells: Minor Illusion, Invisibility (requires character level 3)

Spells of the Mark:

1st: Disguise Self, Silent Image

2nd: Darkness, Pass without Trace

3rd: Clairvoyance, Major Image

4th: Greater Invisibility, Hallucinatory Terrain

5th: Mislead

    Greater Mark of Shadow:

Ability Score: Any

Dragonmark Skills: Standard d6 upgrade

Miscellaneous: When you cast Invisibility without a spell slot using the Dragonmark, you can cast it at 3rd level (which allows you to affect two creatures).

    This clearly works well for intrigue-focused characters. The ability scores to me seem best for Monks, Bards, and Rangers - also potentially Dex-based Paladins. And the Dexterity can be a bit of a consolation prize for Charisma-based casters who would prefer Constitution.

    The real key here is that the skills and spells all really make you slippery in a kind of "urban intrigue" scenario. I do find that the fact that you get Performance instead of Deception pushes this a bit more into Bard territory - work with your DM to determine what counts for each skill (I like Performance as a way to blend in with a crowd - not literally sneaking, but just walking with purpose as if you belong there).

    The various illusion spells, including Pass without Trace, can have some application outside of intrigue, so I think that there's a fair amount of utility here even if you aren't staking out the alleyways of Sharn.

House Sivis

    House Sivis Heir

Ability Scores: Intelligence, Wisdom, Charisma

Skills: History, Perception

Tools: Calligrapher's Supplies

    Mark of Scribing:

Dragonmark Skills: Intelligence (History) or any check using Calligrapher's Supplies

Dragonmark Spells: Message, Comprehend Languages, Magic Mouth (requires character level 3)

Spells of the Mark:

1st: Command, Illusory Script

2nd: Animal Messenger, Silence

3rd: Sending, Tongues

4th: Arcane Eye, Confusion

5th: Dream

    Hoo boy, the ability scores on this are rough, because it's very rare outside of weird multiclass builds to want two particularly good mental ability scores. In theory, any caster can make some use of this, but they'll be getting a bit that boosts something less important to them.

    I also think that the other bonuses here are a bit underwhelming. I mean, Sending can be great if you're in a fight against enemy spellcasters (though given that spellcaster stat blocks tend to have some non-spell magical attack, I don't know that it will truly shut them down unless the DM rules that it does).

    This is all thematic, for sure, but I think if you're looking for power, you might consider looking elsewhere.

House Tharashk

    House Tharashk Heir

Ability Scores: Constitution, Intelligence, Wisdom

Skills: Perception, Survival

Tools: One kind of Gaming set of your choice

    Mark of Finding:

Dragonmark Skills: Wisdom (Perception or Survival)

Dragonmark Spells: Hunter's Mark, Locate Object (requires character level 3)

Spells of the Mark:

1st: Faerie Fire, Longstrider

2nd: Locate Animals or Plants, Mind Spike

3rd: Clairvoyance, Speak with Plants

4th: Divination, Locate Creature

5th: Commune with Nature

    Greater Mark of Finding:

Ability Score: Any

Dragonmark Skills: Standard d6 upgrade

Miscellaneous: When you use the Dragonmark to cast Hunter's Mark without a spell slot, the range is doubled and you can modify it so that the target can't benefit from the invisible condition for the duration.

    This can make an implacable bounty-hunter character. The ability scores seem great for a Wizard, Druid, or Artificer, though I think a Ranger who picks up Shillelagh with the Druidic Warrior fighting style might fit this the very best, though of course there's some redundancy there.

    While Hunter's Mark falls off in power at higher levels, it's very solid early on, and it's very nice for a non-caster. Unfortunately, with no boost to Dex or Strength, you're probably playing a caster of some sort when you pick this.

House Thuranni

    House Thuranni Heir:

Ability Scores: Dexterity, Intelligence, Charisma

Skills: Performance, Stealth

Tools: Your choice of musical instrument

    Mark of Shadow

    Mark of Shadow:

Dragonmark Skills: Dexterity (Stealth) and Charisma (Performance)

Dragonmark Spells: Minor Illusion, Invisibility (requires character level 3)

Spells of the Mark:

1st: Disguise Self, Silent Image

2nd: Darkness, Pass without Trace

3rd: Clairvoyance, Major Image

4th: Greater Invisibility, Hallucinatory Terrain

5th: Mislead

    Greater Mark of Shadow:

Ability Score: Any

Dragonmark Skills: Standard d6 upgrade

Miscellaneous: When you cast Invisibility without a spell slot using the Dragonmark, you can cast it at 3rd level (which allows you to affect two creatures).

    No, you're not experiencing deja vu - House Phiarlan and House Thuranni both get the Mark of Shadow. I honestly think I need to read closer as to what the actual differences are between the houses in the lore. But basically, you're getting Performance in place of Deception and an instrument in place of a disguise kit. And finally, you're swapping Wisdom for Intelligence.

    I honestly think that that makes this a slightly tougher fit - you aren't going to be as happy going Monk or Ranger with this, but there are fewer Dex/Int archetypes that would prefer this (an Arcane Trickster is the one that comes to mind). Both will fit Bards fairly well, especially Valor/Dance/Swords Bards who genuinely want both high Charisma and Dex.

House Vadalis

    House Vadalis Heir:

Ability Scores: Constitution, Wisdom, Charisma

Skills: Animal Handling, Nature

Tools: Herbalism Kit

    Mark of Handling:

Dragonmark Skills: Intelligence (Nature) and Wisdom (Animal Handling)

Dragonmark Spells: Animal Handling, Speak with Animals

Miscellaneous: When you reach character level 3, you can target Monstrosities with Animal Friendship and Speak with Animals if the creature's Intelligence is 3 or lower.

Spells of the Mark:

1st: Command, Find Familiar

2nd: Beast Sense, Calm Emotions

3rd: Beacon of Hope, Conjure Animals

4th: Aura of Life, Dominate Beast

5th: Awaken

    Greater Mark of Handling

Ability Score: Any

Dragonmark Skills: Standard d6 upgrade

Miscellaneous: When you're mounted, immediately after you hit a target within 5 feet of your mount with an attack, your mount can take a reaction to move up to its speed or take the attack action (your choice)

Also, as a magic action, you can try to exert command over a Beast or Monstrosity you can see within 30 feet. The target must make a Wisdom saving throw with a DC based on your Wisdom modifier, and is Frightened until the start of your next turn on a failure. You can do this PB times per long rest.

    Given that Beasts only go up to CR 8 or so, getting to use those spells on a Monstrosity is actually a really big upgrade, which can be a lot tougher and also just are something you'll face far more of in a campaign, though do bear in mind that intelligence maximum.

    The ability bonuses of the background certainly point you a bit more toward a Wisdom or Charisma-based spellcaster, though again I think this is a very solid match for a Ranger using Shillelagh via Druidic Warrior, and the Greater version of the Mark clearly favors Wisdom.

    People often forget that "Animal Handling" is not strictly "beast handling," and so as a DM I would allow this skill to interact with many kinds of low-intelligence creatures, especially monstrosities, which can often be very beast-like in nature.

Reflecting on Dragonmarks:

Generally speaking, I think I was more inspired by the power of the first batch of these Dragonmarked Houses. I don't think any meet the "hacking for insane damage" combo that is House Lyrandar with the Mark of Storm and Potent Dragonmark. But that might be too high a bar to set.

The fact of the matter is that these can all bring quite a bit to your character - the Dragonmark spells are already along the lines of species-based spellcasting, and then you've got the Spells of the Mark, which are similar to the Ravnica backgrounds (but also with a way to get them even better via Potent Dragonmark).

The Greater Marks are, if anything, I think generally the weakest options here. I think Potent Dragonmark is probably going to be a better choice in most situations, though if you want to lean very hard into your House identity, you can take them all.

I think it'll be quite tempting to take one of these Dragonmarked House backgrounds if you do an Eberron campaign - they feel like a pretty juicy bit of power compared to other origin feat options. I will say that, much like species that get spells, it's a little less juicy on a character who doesn't get spells. I like that Potent Dragonmark gives you a way to play around in that space, and I really appreciate that the spell slot recharges on a short rest, giving you reasonably reliable use of them without being able to use them in every fight.

I also feel like the raw power of these backgrounds also presents a certain dramatic story: even as the houses vie with one another for power, one can also imagine how the common folks (who just went through a horrifying war that profited the Dragonmarked Houses) might grow to resent them. While I'm less impressed by the mechanical power of the Aberrant Dragonmark, I also kind of love the way that it upsets the implied narrative that these Houses are likely to believe - that their marks are some kind of cosmic sign that they and their kin are somehow superior to the rest of Eberron's people.

FotA Dragonmark Backgrounds and Feats: In Depth Look: Aberrant Mark, and Houses Cannith, Deneith, Ghallanda, Jorasco, Kundarak, and Lyrandar

 Eberron: Forge of the Artificer has redesigned the Dragonmarks to function as feats, rather than variant or sub-race options. Each of the Dragonmarked houses comes with a background, but in theory, with a DM's permission, you could pick one of these up with a different background as well (as I've said before, while I'm mostly very positive on the 2024 changes, the intertwining of ability score bonuses and backgrounds was, I think, a step backward for the game. I don't mind the origin feats being tied to backgrounds as much, but having two majorly impactful player-power choices both tied in this way feels bad, and also I think backgrounds with less useful feats, like Savage Attacker, kind of push players away from those backgrounds).

Anyway, I wasn't terribly impressed with the origin feats found in Heroes of Faerun (overall I think that that book is not as impressive to me as this one) the feats in Forge of the Artificer have some real heft to them.

I did a brief overview of them in an earlier post, but I thought I'd take the time to go in-depth on them, talking both about the feats and the backgrounds that grant them, and see how they could play into a particular character build.

I'm going to also group these a little differently: each Dragonmark feat starts off with an origin feat and then has a potential secondary feat that has it has a prerequisite, which empowers that dragonmark further.

Rather than do a big list of origin feats all in a row and then a separate post (or, let's be honest, group of posts) looking at what you can follow it up with, I think the more useful thing here would be to look at the whole Dragonmark progression as a whole.

    Dragonmark General Stuff:

The Dragonmarks share a lot of similar elements, so we'll use a shorthand:

Spells of the Mark work a bit like the 2014 Warlock's Expanded Spell Lists. These add certain spells to your class spell list, assuming you have one.

Dragonmarks also tend to come with some spells that work more like Species spells - they're always prepared, you get one free cast of them, and then you can spend spell slots on them to cast them again. We'll call them Dragonmark Spells (so remember that Dragonmark Spells work differently from Spells of the Mark).

Each Dragonmark also gives you a bonus when making certain skill checks equal to a d4. We'll refer to these as Dragonmark skills (they don't have that actual nomenclature in the feats, but that seems like a decent shorthand for them.

Finally, there are some miscellaneous bonuses.

    Greater Dragonmark Stuff:

Each Greater Dragonmark is a General feat, which will, as general feats do, grant an ability score bonus.

They will also all generally improve the bonus to your Dragonmark Skills from a d4 to a d6.

Then, they will tend to enhance some element of the Dragonmark, often altering the way one of the Dragonmark Spells work.

And finally, they might have some other miscellaneous bonus or effect.

But before we do any of that, we need to talk about Potent Dragonmark:

    Potent Dragonmark

This is a general feat whose prerequisite is simply that you have any Dragonmark feat (and of course are level 4+, when you can start getting general feats).

First, you get a +1 bump to the spellcasting ability of your Dragonmark.

Second, the spells on the Spells of the Mark list you get from your Dragonmark are always prepared for you.

Third, you get a single extra spell slot equal to half your level (rounded up) to a maximum of 5th level, which you can expend only on the spells from your Spells of the Mark list, but you get this back on a Short or Long rest.

    Potent Dragonmark is, I think, a pretty strong contender for any class that uses Dragonmarks, but it's probably strongest for non-casters. I made a hypothetical Monk character who uses this with Mark of the Storm to be able to cast Conjure Minor Elementals and thus unleash terrifying damage with Flurry of Blows. But it's probably worth considering even for pure casters depending on the power of your Spells of the Mark list.

We'll leave the Epic Boon, Boon of Siberys, for later, as it doesn't really tie into the existing Dragonmarks.

Now, without further ado, let's go into Dragonmarks, starting with the background that grants them.

Aberrant Mark

    Aberrant Heir:

Ability Scores: Strength, Constitution, Charisma

Skills: History, Intimidation

Tools: Disguise Kit

    Aberrant Dragonmark:

Ok, actually, we have to start with the weird one because of alphabetical order.

In place of Dragonmark skills, you get to add a d4 to a failed Constitution saving throw, but you can only do this once per long rest.

Dragonmark Spells: You pick your choice of a Sorcerer cantrip and a 1st level Sorcerer spell. You use Constitution for your spellcasting ability.

Miscellaneous: When you cast the 1st level spell from this feat, you can expend one Hit Die and roll it. If you roll an even number, you gain Temp HP equal to the number rolled, and if you roll an odd number, one creature other than you within 30 feet of you takes Force damage equal to the roll (if no creatures are in range, you do take that damage).

    Greater Aberrant Mark:

Your Constitution goes up by 1.

Your bonus to a failed Con save goes up to 1d6, and you now can do it once per Short or Long Rest.

Miscellaneous: When you cast a cantrip (any, it seems) you can roll one or two of your unexpended Hit Dice and both gain Temp HP equal to the number you rolled plus your Constitution modifier and one creature within 30 feet of you other than yourself takes Force damage equal to the number rolled. (The dice are then expended). You can do this PB times per long rest.

    This, I think, is a fairly broad and open possibility for a character. But you're ultimately getting just a 1st level spell and a cantrip. Hit Dice are easier to get back these days (you get all of them, not just half on a long rest) and that damage might add up in early levels, but even a Barbarian (who isn't often casting cantrips in battle) getting 2d12 extra damage on a cantrip (to be fair, it cannot miss) feels a bit weak. The real benefit here, I think, is that truly any character could pick up the related background.

    Strength and Constitution to me play well into a Barbarian, Fighter, or Paladin, and Charisma could apply to a lot of classes that do have spellcasting. Sadly, Sorcerers don't get Find Familiar, which would be excellent. Given how limited your use will be if you don't have your own spell slots, something like Charm Person or Silent Image, which could be used quite effectively outside of combat, might be best. If you do have spell slots, I think Shield would be a great choice on any character who can't normally get it (though its value is lower if you can truly only cast it once a day).

House Cannith/Mark of Making

    House Cannith Heir:

Ability Scores: Strength, Dexterity, Intelligence

Skills: Investigation, Sleight of Hand

Tools: Your choice of one set of Artisan's Tools

    Mark of Making

Dragonmark Skills: Intelligence (Arcana) or any check with Artisan's Tools

Dragonmark Spells: Mending, Magic Weapon

Spells of the Mark:

1st: Identify, Tenser's Floating Disk

2nd: Continual Flame, Spiritual Weapon

3rd: Conjure Barrage, Elemental Weapon

4th: Fabricate, Stone Shape

5th: Creation

    Greater Mark of Making:

Ability Score: Any

Dragonmark Skills: Standard d6 upgrade

Miscellaneous: When you use your free casting of Magic Weapon, you now cast it at 3rd level.

    So, the flavor of House Cannith would make them obvious for an Artificer character, but you run into two slight issues: first, while Intelligence is an ability you can boost with this, you probably want the other to be Constitution. That said, Dexterity is also good for them, allowing you to round out a 13 to a 14 to get the full benefit of Medium armor (less exciting for an Armorer). The other is that Artificers already get Mending for free, but that might be fine. I think the real winner in terms of Spells of the Mark is Conjure Barrage, which has become a fantastic spell in the 2024 revamp - slightly less damage than Fireball but a larger area and, most importantly, it only hits enemies. Again, if you go Battle Smith, this will be redundant.

    Magic Weapon is actually pretty good - it only takes a bonus action to cast, and when upcast to 3rd level, you essentially get a +2 weapon for an hour. But it's only really good if you don't already have a magic weapon, so it's pretty campaign/DM dependent. Taking Potent Dragonmark will let you cast Elemental Weapon eventually at 5th level, which gives it a +2 effect and increases its bonus damage, but that spell is both an action to cast and requires concentration, which I think probably makes it worse than Magic Weapon overall.

    For pure casters, I think that the ability score restriction on the background makes this really only work for Wizards (and maybe Psions if they ever come out,) who already can get a lot of these spells. I think you could make an argument for Paladins and maybe Eldritch Knight Fighters and Arcane Trickster Rogues, all of whom might like to get Conjure Barrage (Rangers can already get it, of course).

House Deneith/Mark of Sentinel

    House Deneith Heir:

Ability Scores: Strength, Constitution, Wisdom

Skills: Insight, Perception

Tools: One kind of gaming set.

    Mark of Sentinel:

Dragonmark Skills: Wisdom (Insight or Perception)

Dragonmark Spell: Shield

Miscellaneous: When a creature you can see within 5 feet of you is hit with an attack roll, you can use a reaction to swap places with that creature and you are hit with the attack instead. You can do this PB time per long rest.

Spells of the Mark:

1st: Compelled Duel, Shield of Faith

2nd: Warding Bond, Zone of Truth

3rd: Counterspell, Protection from Energy

4th: Death Ward, Guardian of Faith

5th: Bigby's Hand

    Greater Mark of Sentinel:

Ability Score: Any

Dragonmark Skills: Standard d6

Miscellaneous: When you use the reaction from the previous feat, you can also make an attack with a weapon or unarmed strike as part of the same reaction.

    With Constitution in the mix, this will give good scores to basically any Strength- or Wisdom-focused character, meaning it'll work for Barbarians, Fighters, Paladins, maybe some Rangers (though I recommend even melee rangers stick to Dex) as well as Clerics and Druids. However, the in-built reaction is clearly there to assist a tank-like character. Notably, it's not like "if the attack still beats your AC, you take the hit" but just that it now hits you, regardless of how low your friend's AC might have been, meaning that this doesn't let you prevent the hit, and thus something with built-in damage reduction like a Barbarian might prefer this over a high-AC Fighter. I actually think it works pretty well for a Moon Druid.

    Of course, Shield is an incredible spell. It's less great when you can only cast it once a day, so this element is going to be better on a half- or full caster. Even if the Spells of the Mark are less exciting for a Paladin until they can cast 3rd level spells, a Paladin with Shield is really great (there might be some awkwardness if your DM is a stickler about being able to cast spells with somatic components while wielding weapons in both hands - this isn't going to be a Paladin spell, so you can't just use the holy symbol on your shield as the focus for it).

    While clearly very tank-coded, it's also not a terrible way to go for a front-line healer. A Cleric with Shield might decide they can take a hit for a friend and then put out a Mass Healing Word to heal everyone up after spreading the damage out.

House Ghallanda/Mark of Hospitality

    House Ghallanda Heir:

Ability Scores: Dexterity, Wisdom, Charisma

Skills: Insight, Persuasion

Tools: Cook's Utensils

    Mark of Hospitality:

Dragonmark Skills: Charisma (Persuasion) or any check using Brewer's Supplies or Cook's Utensils

Dragonmark Spells: Purify Food and Drink, Unseen Servant, Calm Emotions (character level 3)

Spells of the Mark:

1st: Goodberry, Sleep

2nd: Aid, Enhance Ability

3rd: Create Food and Water, Leomund's Tiny Hut

4th: Aura of Purity, Mordenkainen's Private Sanctum

5th: Hallow

    Greater Mark of Hospitality:

Ability Score: Any

Dragonmark Skill: Standard d6 improvement

Miscellaneous: When you cast Purify Food and Drink, you can alter it once per long rest to cause it to grant each creature of your choice within 30 feet Temp HP equal to PB+the spellcasting ability you chose with the first feat, and also reduce each affected creature's exhaustion level by 1.

    A decent number of characters will like these ability score increases - Monks and Rangers can use both the Dex and Wisdom, while basically any Charisma casters (except the Paladin) will be happy to get Dex on top of Cha (actually, Noble Genie Paladins going for the unarmored version will like this as well).

    Most of the granted spells will not be great in a fight, though Sleep and Aid can be good. The Greater Mark reducing exhaustion can be a really big bonus if your campaign threatens this condition frequently, but the temp HP is going to cap out at 11 by tier 4, which might be a little underwhelming.

    A party face who wants a little insurance on their charming capabilities might go for this, and I think there's a lot of really good thematic stuff here. More than anything, I think this is an option for campaigns where hospitality is in demand - a lot of these spells could be useful when traveling across wilderness, and Leomund's Tiny Hut is a great way to get a safe long rest.

House Jorasco/Mark of Healing

    House Jorasco Heir:

Ability Scores: Dexterity, Constitution, Wisdom

Skills: Medicine, Stealth

Tools: Herbalism Kit

    Mark of Healing:

Dragonmark Skills: Wisdom (Medicine) or any check using an Herbalism Kit

Dragonmark Spells: Cure Wounds, Lesser Restoration (at character level 3)

Spells of the Mark:

1st: False Life, Healing Word

2nd: Arcane Vigor, Prayer of Healing

3rd: Aura of Vitality, Mass Healing Word

4th: Aura of Life, Aura of Purity

5th: Greater Restoration

    Greater Mark of Healing:

Ability Score: Any

Dragonmark Skils: Standard d6 upgrade

Miscellaneous: You now get PB free Cure Wounds castings per Long Rest, up from 1, and you can treat a roll of 1 or 2 on the d8s for the spell as 3s.

    So, there's an obvious theme here, but also a problem: I think the most attractive element of this Dragonmark is that you could turn a non-healing full caster into a very capable healer... except that the background boosts Wisdom and no other standard spellcasting abilities. Clerics and Druids are already quite capable at healing, though I could maybe see taking this on a Druid as I think there are one or two spells that they don't get access to, like Prayer of Healing.

    Having Dex and Con there also work quite well for Rangers, Monks, Rogues, and dex-focused Fighters and Paladins. The Greater Mark giving you multiple Cure Wounds per day is actually situationally better than the Potent Mark's one big spell slot, and I could imagine a Monk who wants some healing capability (maybe to supplement Warrior of Mercy features, or to make up for going with a different subclass) going this way. The actual boost to healing is turning a d8's 4.5 average into 4.875, which I don't think is that notable (these "treat the lower rolls as better" features are generally pretty underwhelming, and I think are worse the larger the die is).

    For Clerics and Druids who were going the classic healing archetype route anyway, you're not getting a ton that you don't already have, though perhaps the extra free Cure Wounds will be nice?

House Kundarak/Mark of Warding

    House Kundarak Heir:

Ability Scores: Strength, Constitution, Intelligence

Skills: Arcana, Investigation

Tools: Thieves' Tools

    Mark of Warding:

Dragonmark Skills: Intelligence (Investigation) and any check using Thieves' Tools

Dragonmark Spells: Alarm, Mage Armor, Arcane Lock (at character level 3)

Spells of the Mark:

1st: Armor of Agathys, Sanctuary

2nd: Knock, Nystul's Magic Aura

3rd: Glyph of Warding, Magic Circle

4th: Leomund's Secret Chest, Mordenkainen's Faithful Hound

5th: Antilife Shell

    Greater Mark of Warding:

Ability Score: Any

Dragonmark Skill: Standard d6 upgrade

Miscellaneous: When a creature makes an attack roll against you or a creature within 30 feet of yourself, you can use a reaction to impose disadvantage on the roll PB times per long rest.

    The ability scores here work well for Barbarians, Fighters, Paladins, as well as Wizards and Artificers. The main spell I think that has interesting combat implications is Armor of Agathys, which I think got a lot better by becoming a Bonus Action in 2024. When paired with the Potent Mark feat, you'll eventually get a 5th level spell slot to cast it (which is as high as a Warlock is going to cast it anyway). With its hour-long, concentration free duration, even a Barbarian can make good use of it (in fact, thanks to the damage reduction from rage, you'll probably get twice as much use out of it). So, a Barbarian who is giving back 25 cold damage every time they get hit (and maybe refreshing the Temp HP with the World Tree's Vitality of the Tree feature) is going to be pretty nasty.

    I'm somewhat skeptical that the Greater Mark is worth it. It's kind of like a ranged version of the Protection fighting style with limited uses (though I guess it can protect you as well). Actually, the use here might be more for a ranged caster who doesn't actually get attacked that often to try to make those rare occasions less likely to hit.

    I wills ay that Knock and Thieves' Tools proficiency have a bit of redundancy, though you could maybe use the spell if you're struggling with the lockpicking. There's a part of this that feels like a substitute for having a Rogue in the party.

House Lyrandar/Mark of Storm

    House Lyrandar Heir:

Ability Scores: Strength, Dexterity, Charisma

Skills: Acrobatics, Nature

Tools: Navigator's Tools

    Mark of Storm:

Dragonmark Skills: Dexterity (Acrobatics) and any check made with Navigator's Tools

Dragonmark Spells: Thunderclap, Gust of Wind (at character level 3)

Miscellaneous: You have resistance to Lightning damage.

Spells of the Mark:

1st: Feather Fall, Fog Cloud

2nd: Levitate, Shatter

3rd: Sleet Storm, Wind Wall

4th: Conjure Minor Elementals, Control Water

5th: Conjure Elemental

    Greater Mark of Storm:

Ability Score: Any

Dragonmark Skill: Standard d6 upgrade

Miscellaneous: When you use your feat to cast Gust of Wind, you also gain a fly speed of 60 feet for the duration.

    I've touched on this before: Pairing this with Potent Dragonmark and getting Conjure Minor Elementals on a character who can make a lot of attacks is going to give you a once-per-short-rest nova of insane damage. (Fighters and Monks I think will both do best for this combo, as you can use Action Surge or Flurry of Blows to attack the same turn you cast the spell, and these are already the classes who can make the most attacks in a turn.)

    The ability score bonuses, unfortunately, will saddle any character with something they probably don't need - except possibly a Paladin who wants a good Strength and a good Charisma. No other classes really need any two of these ability scores to be that high, or at least wouldn't prefer Constitution over whatever secondary, +1 they're taking. Warlocks, Sorcerers, and Bards might like the Dex for a bit of AC, but I'd guess they're usually going to prefer Con over Dex to shore up their HP rather than their AC.

    But I do think that the aforementioned way to get CME (and even upcast it to 5th level by the time you're level 10) functionality is going to make this a very popular route to take. The fly speed from Gust of Wind is actually pretty notable, though the duration means it's still nowhere as good as the Fly spell. But this is one where Potent Dragonmark is for sure the more powerful option (which, honestly, I think it often is).

All right! With 6 out of 13 of the Dragonmarked Houses taken care of as well as the Aberrant Mark, I think we can close out this first post here. Notably, there are also three non-Dragonmark backgrounds, the Archaeologist and the Inquisitive, which are probably less Eberron-specific (and I think are either reprints or close approximations of earlier backgrounds in Tomb of Annhilation and Van Richten's, respectively) and I don't think warrant such in-depth analysis. The House Agent is more setting-specific, but also doesn't involve the special feats, so I'm going to leave it out.

Miquella's Innocent and Heartless Ambition

 In J. M. Barrie's Peter and Wendy, the 1911 novelization of his play, Peter Pan, at the end of the story, an adult Wendy explains to her daughter that she can no longer fly, because she is no longer "gay and innocent and heartless," as she was when she was a child. (Obviously, "gay" here is meant in its older meaning, which was just kind of bright and joyful, though I'll leave it to others more qualified than I am to bring a queer perspective on the whole story).

This summation of childhood is rather striking: we tend to idealize childhood, before we were burdened with the responsibilities of adulthood, the effects of aging on our bodies, and the boundless possibilities that a life just at its outset hold.

But in doing so, we also forget some of the lessons that we've learned along with sorrows and regrets: that maturation is not only about losing that carefree innocence, but also learning the way in which our actions affect others. There's something of a solipsistic aspect of childhood, where adults, and even fellow children, don't necessarily feel like real people, but are instead simply those who might do things for or with us that we enjoy: they can provide comfort, feed us, protect us, entertain us.

This is natural: a child is so incapable of doing these things on their own, and even less capable of providing those things for others, that to burden a child with these sorts of responsibilities robs them of a period of crucial development.

In Elden Ring, Miquella is cursed with eternal youth. It's quite the ironic curse: among the most prevalent fantasies is the ability to return to a state of youth. People really went searching for the Fountain of Youth based on the legend of its existence. While his sister Malenia is cursed with rot, her body ever-deteriorating in a state of body horror that has robbed her of her eyes, an arm, and one full leg and one lower leg, Miquella is... fine, he just never matures into adolesence.

But I think this youth also affects something else: his capacity to understand nuance.

There's an interesting debate regarding whether Miquella is actually a good guy in Shadow of the Erdtree or not. I think that really depends on your sense of whether morality is measured purely by intent or if you must also consider the means.

I think there's a strong implication that Miquella is a force that guides us throughout Elden Ring, not just through the DLC. We know he was the previous rider of Torrent, and without our slaying of Radahn and Mohg, the necromantic ritual to put Radahn's soul into Mohg's body wouldn't be able to take place.

Then, it's a further question of interpretation to see whether he meant for us to simply serve him when he reached Enir-Elim, or if he actually intended for us to stop him. The latter feels hard to justify: he even calls upon us to abandon our claim to lordship and embrace his age of compassion when he emerges from the Divine Gate.

There's a big question I have regarding his divestment in the Land of Shadows: he sheds many of the things that make him himself: first parts of his corporeal body, but then aspects of his personality, along with his great rune and his feminine self, St. Trina.

There's a lot of Jungian psychology at play within this story (as well as alchemical symbolism - Jung was fascinated with alchemy as a metaphor for human psychology) and the clearest idea here would be that St. Trina was Miquella's "anima," or the feminine aspect of his personality.

But while it appears that Marika may have achieved her godhood by integrating her animus (the masculine aspect of a feminine mind - I don't know if Jung had any ideas of how a non-binary mind worked) into herself as Radagon, Miquella undergoes a paradoxical process of stripping out parts of himself on the road to apotheosis.

Though the Miquella who emerges from the Divine Gate actually does look slightly more mature - more like a teen than a pre-pubesecent child (though we get precious few glimpses of Miquella in his previous form) I wonder if his journey across the land of shadow is actually to try to lean in as hard as he can to his curse, to undo anything that grew him beyond the innocence of childhood.

Is it, then, that Miquella's attempt at an Age of Compassion is truly a return to childlike innocence?

Consider Radahn as his chosen consort. Radahn was a mighty sorcerer - surely it required great might to freeze the flow of fate and the movement of the stars - but there's a bit of informed ability in the way he's described. Radahn seems, in some ways, to be among the most childlike demigods. He mastered gravity magic to allow his poor, old, nearly-dead horse to continue to serve as his steed, even as he grew to giant-like proportions, because he could not entertain the idea of parting with the horse he loved (it's truly the most endearing part of his character). We're told that Radahn is the greatest general in the Lands Between, and he has the loyal Redmane knights serving him.

But other than the stars (an act that I think is more sorcery than warcraft,) who does Radahn ever beat? He comes to a theoretical stalemate with Malenia, but surely that's a pretty big loss for him (both his body and Caelid are wrecked by her rot) and when we see art of the Shattering War, it appears that Morgott kicks his ass.

Is Radahn actually just good at playing the warrior? I mean, sure, the boss fight against him and Miquella at the end of the DLC is probably the toughest FromSoft boss I've faced (well, there are Dark Souls and Dark Souls III bosses I never got past, so put an asterisk there) but notably he's using Mohg's body. Mohg, the son of Godfrey.

But I think there's another element to Miquella that really keys into this Peter Pan quote:

If you are grabbed twice during the fight against Miquella and Radahn, and don't use his broken Great Rune to clear the status effect of the first grab, you get a non-standard alternative to "You Died," which is "Heart Stolen."

Now, obviously, that's a common metaphor used to describe becoming enamored of someone - that your significant other or your child has "stolen your heart," but I also think that this could also imply what his mission is: to steal everyone's hearts to restore them to a state of innocence and heartlessness. Where everyone is a child once again.

It's just that "being a child" can mean both free and imaginative, but also hopelessly self-centered and immature.

Miquella uses people. He used Mohg. He tried but failed to use Godwyn. He used Radahn. He wanted to use us. And the thing is, it's not even that this was done maliciously: I think that his curse of youth just makes it impossible for him to understand that this is wrong.

Sir Ansbach is probably the most popular NPC in Shadow of the Erdtree, and he represents basically the opposite of all of this (I've also seen him compared with Gideon the All-Knowing, but that element isn't what I'm here to talk about). Ansbach is someone who seems to be a very old man, with the regret and pains of a past that has also taught him great wisdom. He understands the value of honor and honesty. He shares the truth with those who deserve to have it, but then also respects that people will make decisions for themselves.

Some have questioned whether he's actually a good guy, though I think it's telling that he was the leader of the "Pureblood" knights, and that the current servants of Mohg are the Cessblood. While "pureblood" is a real red flag for me when people use it regarding, like, racial ancestry, I don't think that is the context we're meant to take it in in this case.

Instead, I think we're meant to understand that Ansbach served Mohg a long, long, long time ago. We don't really know what Mohg was like before Miquella began to influence him, and while I always got the sense that Mohg and Morgott represented opposite impulses toward their mother (Morgott seeking to prove himself the true and loyal son despite his Omen status, and Mohg rebelling against a mother who tried to dump him in a hellish pit) I do wonder if Mohg's earlier dreams of his Mohgwyn Dynasty were not as murderous. The presence of Ansbach, who is the very ideal of an honorable knight, who demonstrates real courage in confessing his terror at what you face, but never turning away from it, suggests that Mohg at one point must have had some true virtue to gain the loyalty of such a lieutenant.

What Ansbach represents is the mature ability to tolerate differences, to give respect and honor even to one's adversaries. When summoned into the final fight, he greets Radahn with true respect, but also states clearly his purpose in fighting: that the theft and exploitation of Mohg's body is a dishonor.

Ansbach has heart - the very organ that pumps the blood that is the symbol of Mohg's regime.

And yes, there's an irony here: Miquella claims that he is ushering in an age of compassion. But how can one have compassion without heart?

    As a final note:

While a different game from a different studio, though one in the same game genre, Lies of P has an interesting view on all of this. Alchemy is explicitly a big part of that game's story, and the pursuit of immortality is a huge element of it.

In the backstory, the Alchemists of Krat made contact with an ancient, pre-human being and asked to be granted immortality. The being didn't really understand what they meant by that, and so gifted humanity the petrification disease as a way to turn themselves into everlasting crystalline beings.

In your journeys through the game, you encounter an NPC called Giangio, who seems like he must be a young apprentice among the Alchemists. At the end of the game, though, Giangio departs the city and there's a cutscene implying that he's looking for other immortals or special individuals (with Dorothy from Wizard of Oz strongly implied to be his next) for some grander project. He leaves a signed letter with the initials P.P.

Now, the general consensus is that this is for Phillipus Paracelsus, a real 16th-century alchemist credited as the "father of toxicology." In the game's world, Paracelsus is one of the most prominent members of the Alchemists, and his youthful appearance is probably the result of his own work.

But my initial guess was that P.P. stood for something else: Peter Pan.

Both Pinnochio and Peter Pan emerged as characters in the late 19th century (L. Frank Baum technically gets into the 19th century just barely under the wire with the 1900 publication of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz) and Peter Pan, of course, is an immortal because of the way that Neverland prevents him from ever aging (unless you consider Hook cannon).

Now, in no way am I suggesting that there's any continuity between Lies of P and Elden Ring. But I think both are Souls-like games that (might) touch on the dark side of childhood innocence.

(Theoretical) Advice for Playing Draw Steel's Summoner

 The Summoner, Draw Steel's first new MCDM-released class following the core rules, is presented as a "Master" class. While initially intended to be part of the core rules, the class design struggled to make it all work until the game developed its version of Minions, which came after the classes had largely been finished. (The upcoming Beastheart similarly needed them to have figure out how Retainers would work).

Players are encouraged not to start with the Summoner if it's their first time playing Draw Steel. And I think, sure, yeah, that's probably wise.

But...

But I kind of want to play a Summoner, despite never having played Draw Steel before.

Now, unlike D&D, which is a game that most of my friends are pretty familiar with (I've met many of them by playing D&D) and a handful have tried their hand at DMing (my best friend, who was one of my original players, now does it professionally as part of an after-school program for kids, and for sure has more hours under his belt. He also has an actual play stream that I make maps for!) But I haven't even had an opportunity to run Draw Steel, so I expect that if I ever get a chance to play it, it'll be a while (though maybe I just need to get over my internet shyness and find a game via the MCDM Discord).

Anyway, it's understandable that the class could daunt new players, and for the other folks at the table, it could be frustrating if a player dilly-dallies during their turn.

There are, however, a few design decisions that I think will make it a fair bit quicker. The primary one is that, with some exceptions, most minions don't have any roll to make when they attack. They only have free strikes, and so you can just... do the damage. If I have three Phase Ghouls out, they're going to be doing 3 damage each, so I know that 9 damage is going out there into the world.

However, another really helpful bit of the Summoner document is on page 58, where there's a whole section on Summoner advice. In particular, I find the Summoner's Flow section could really streamline peoples' turns:

While you can do things in many different orders, this suggests that by default, you should take your turn in the following order:

• First, collect your resources. You'll get your two Essence at the start of your turn (or 3 later on, I think) and then you'll place your free signature minions (assuming you even do get them - if you have both of your squads using heroic minions, you won't be getting your free ones).
• Next, you should summon any minions you want to on your turn. I believe that this is always going to use your "Call Forth" main action, which feels like the bread-and-butter of Summoner actions (though if you have what you need on the board or really need to do a heroic ability, you might skip this).
• Third step, now that all the minions are out on the board, you can move them all. This, I suspect, will take the longest time to resolve, as you might have yourself and up to 8 (or even 12) minions. Remember that free strikes can be ranged, so unless you really need your minions to get some benefit from a melee attack (which some minions will want) your positioning doesn't have to be all that precise. 
• Finally, once all your minions are in position, have them do what they were planning to do, whether that's a maneuver or a main action. If you haven't used your action yet and have been saving it, you can do it now and then end your turn.

I think this 4-step methodology will really make your turns go faster. Draw Steel of course by default has players take their turns in whatever order the party wants, so if you need some time to figure out what you're going to do, you can let a teammate go first (though note that the battlefield might change if you do so, so you will need to revise your plan as you go - be sure to pay attention to what's happening on other turns).

Now, I think the next challenge is bookkeeping.

The Summoner comes with a Minion Tracking Sheet, which gives you a separate row for Squad A and Squad B. Each squad is going to share a stamina pool, like the Director's minions, and each squad only gets one type of minion, so you should do the following:

So, combat begins, and you decide to fill Squad A with your Skeleton minions (a classic!) When the whole fight starts, two of them pop up. So, you can write 2 and then another 2 (the Stamina for a skeleton minion). At the start of your turn, you get three more for free, so assuming you choose to summon all three (and why wouldn't you?) you'll put them on the map and write three more instances of 2 in Squad A. Now, when they take damage, you'll subtract from the first instance of 2 until it's reduced to zero, and then remove the skeleton that took the damage. Then, continue on with any remaining damage.

One way that you might make this easier, actually, at least with low-stamina minions, is to make tally marks or dots instead of numerals. Simply arrange these tallies in a grid, with columns representing individual minions. Now, you can just work your way down each column from left to right, erasing one tally or dot at a time equal to the damage taken, and each column that is cleared represents a minion getting slain.

There's also a space on the Minion Tracking Sheet to write down the statistics of each minion type. One way that you could make it potentially easier to track is to make these into little cards - each minion has a pretty compact stat block. While you'll eventually have six kinds of minions (not counting champions) to choose from, you're never going to have more than two kinds of minion out at a time, so you can easily just keep the inactive minion types in your "deck" and pull out the cards for the minions you're actually using.

If you're making these cards or just writing the stat blocks onto your sheet, consider also filling in the actual potencies on their abilities. If your Necromancer has Husk minions, at level 1 their Rotting Strike figure will affect targets with Might less than 0 (unless they team up to raise the potency) and their corruption and poison immunity will be 2. Then, when you hit new echelons and your stats go up, update these to the new values.

One thing you might also consider is just writing an M for melee or R for ranged next to the minion's name if they are more effective at one or the other. While you're certainly become familiar with your minions as you play, early on having a quick reminder that Husks do an extra effect when they make melee free strikes and not ranged ones, and knowing that Shriekers have an extended range on their free strikes. And if you have a minion that doesn't really do anything different in melee or at range, like the Skeleton, you can just leave that space blank.

Also, while minions easily come and go, many of them (especially Elementals) will leave some effect on the battlefield when they die.

The document already advices using flat token for minions so they don't disrupt line of sight of the battlefield for the players, but the other benefit is that if the tokens are two-sided, you can flip them over when they die and leave behind an area effect. Skeletons (yeah, we're sticking with Undead signature minions until we need another category for an example) leave behind Bonetrops when they die, so if you can get a token that indicates an animate skeleton on one side and a bunch of sharp bones on the other, you can just flip it over when it dies to show where the caltrop-like remains are.

This won't work for everything - some elemental minions will leave behind a larger affected patch than their own size (like the Flow of Magma) so you'll either want to have separate tokens for those, or access to whatever wet-erase markers the DM is using for the map. But for those minions who just leave behind something occupying their own space, a flippable token is great.

It might be hubristic, but I honestly think with these methods, I actually think I might be able to efficiently play a Summoner, despite not yet having actually played Draw Steel.

Housing Early Access Starts Today

 Well, it's been over twenty years, but when servers come up today (assuming they do, of course,) World of Warcraft will finally have true, official player housing.

This is a feature found in some other MMOs. But while players have been clamoring for this as a feature for basically the entire lifespan of WoW, I'm actually really happy that it's now that we're getting it.

WoW's developers adopted a pretty significant philosophical shift in the wake of Shadowlands, which started to manifest in that expansion's final patch but really has been the defining north star of design through Dragonflight and The War Within, which is basically: listen to the players and give them the stuff they want, not the stuff you think is best for them.

WoW first experimented with a housing-like system in Warlords of Draenor (which I still consider the worst expansion - Shadowlands had its flaws but its gameplay wasn't broken like BFA's and I loved the idea of going to these truly alien planes of existence, if only the Jailer had been a better bad guy). In Warlords, we were given Garrisons, which when first announced at Blizzcon in 2013 were presented not precisely as "Player Housing" but as "WoW's Take on Player Housing."

The problem was this "WoW's take" aspect: the developers decided that in order to make Housing an interesting system, it needed to tie into the power progression of the game, and that it should be a system that felt impactful to interact with.

The result, though, was a solution in search of a problem. Professions became infuriatingly time-gated, because they built each profession in Warlords around each recipe requiring a special crafted reagent that you could only make so many of per day in order to make the presence of profession facilities in your Garrison appealing - while you could only make like, three of that special gem that everything needed on your Jewelcrafter, if you had the Jewelcrafting station in your garrison, you'd be able to get, like, six a day.

Whoopee.

Notably, the folks at Blizzard were surprised when Transmog became such a huge success in the last patch of Cataclysm, because they assumed people didn't care too much about how their characters looked, because that didn't have in impact on player power.

This felt like a similar misunderstanding. And given how players had gotten into Transmog through the end of Cataclysm and through Mists, one might have been able to figure out that cosmetic customization was, in fact, quite a popular thing.

But with the Garrisons, they basically all looked the same - the Horde one being a kind of "New Orgrimmar" and the Alliance one being a kind of "New Stormwind" in architectural style. And while certain profession buildings could bring a little more varied aesthetic, it wasn't much, and it wasn't your choice.

In the Legion-through-Shadowlands era, secondary power progression systems were introduced, starting with artifact weapons. But I think that a lot of the gameplay systems in those expansions, like Torghast or the Island Expeditions, were presented as these fun new game modes - but they weren't alternatives, they were additive. In Shadowlands, not only did you need to progress your Covenant's renown to empower your character, but you also had to grind Torghast to get the legendary items you wanted. And you were expected to do both of these things.

I think the transformation of the Great Vault did a lot to really demonstrate a new philosophy, which reached a new level of inclusiveness in War Within. The philosophy is no longer "you need to do all of these things to progress" and now "you can do all of these things to progress."

I've actually done very little raiding in War Within - I haven't finished the Liberation of Undermine (which I honestly feel bad about because I freaking love everything about Undermine as a location) and I haven't even set foot in the K'aeresh raid aside from the story-mode version of Dimensius.

It's not that I don't like raiding, but I really enjoy the ability to play solo, doing my Delves. And even after all this time, I find myself doing delve scenarios that I haven't seen before (I did an Expedition 9 where you had to slice up tentacles with a buzzsaw and collect the meat, which I had never seen before - and I also got the Infinite Delver achievement for doing 1000 delves, so...).

The point of all this, though, is that I think WoW is now working to meet players where they're at, and my sense of their approach to housing is that it's truly what it always should have been: a big opportunity for individual expression through cosmetic customization, with no gameplay punishment for failing to engage with it.

I suspect I'll have some fun building out my house, and I think I'll also probably enjoy collecting new decor to add to it. Like my mounts and my titles, I'll have far more decor than I will ever probably use, but it'll still be fun to grab new stuff as it's added.

I'm also eager to see how much stuff I'll just find I already have when the servers go live today. I've been playing since before Achievements were even a thing in WoW, so I'm sure that I have a lot of the achievements that grant decor. Some will be pretty obvious, like having completed Blackrock Foundry or the Well of Eternity dungeon. (I'm pretty sure that I did the old Zul'Gurub before it was replaced with the dungeon in 3.1, but I don't recall if I ever did Zul'Aman before that.)

Anyway, I've heard great things about the housing system, but I actually don't yet really know what it will be like, mechanically. I'm eager to find out.

How Much Damage Would We Do With a Level 11 Battle Smith

 Spell-Storing Item got a lot better with the update to Artificers. Now capable of storing 3rd-level spells, they have become a great vessel to repeatedly unleash a big, powerful damage spell. The one problem with that is that the Artificer spell list now contains not a single non-cantrip spell that does damage. The good news, though, is that subclass spells do add back in some damage-dealing options. The bad news, if you wanted to play an Alchemist or Cartographer, is that your options aren't great for 3rd level spells (Cartographers do have a damage spell, but it's one that lasts a whole combat and constantly asks you to use your action, which makes the ten-a-day benefit less exciting).

But while the Armorer is my favorite and I have a sentimental attachment to the Artillerist because of my player in the Ravnica game, I think the general consensus is that the Battle Smith is the highest-damage-potential of the Artificer subclasses. Its 3rd level damage spell, is also very good (though the other two have great, nay, classic ones as well, with Fireball and Lightning Bolt). Conjure Barrage got a big glow-up in 2024, now dealing 5d8 Force damage in a 60-foot cone, and also, crucially, only hitting your enemies. So you can now blast this into a group of friendlies with spell-sclupting/careful spell baked into the spell itself.

5d8 is an average of 22.5, which is less than Fireball or Lightning Bolt, but the 60-foot cone is pretty enormous, and the friendly fire protection I think makes up for, maybe more than makes up for, the loss of 5.5 damage in comparison (oh, and Force is the most reliable damage type in the game).

Now, there's a hack here that may or may not have been intended, but I think we can logically justify it:

The spell Homunculus Servant creates a tiny flying robot buddy that can attack foes with a somewhat weak little blast at a 30-foot range. Like Find Familiar or Find Steed, once summoned, the homunculus will stick around indefinitely. It also doesn't require any action on your part to command, so it won't interfere with your Steel Defender. Its attack is fine - kind of just free extra damage. But it's also a creature, and a creature can potentially use an item.

Now, you could argue that with a 4 in Strength and Tiny size, maybe this thing can't carry the item we imbue with Conjure Barrage. But 4 Strength means the ability to carry 60 pounds (while being larger than medium increases your carrying capacity, I don't believe that being smaller reduces it. But we could still halve and then halve it again and we would be ok). You can store a spell in an item that is either a simple or martial weapon, or something you could use as a spellcasting focus. A Dart weighs just 1/4 of a pound, meaning that this is absolutely light enough for a Homunculus to carry. Even if the capacity is 15 pounds because of size (though obviously Small creatures don't have a penalty, given that Halflings and Gnomes exist) only the Pike and Heavy Crossbow outweigh that among all weapons in the PHB.

Thus, ten times a day, we're going to be getting Conjure Barrage more or less for free. On a fairly arduous adventuring day, you might have four fights, and if they each last 3 rounds (which would be very arduous indeed) you still be able to use this all but two rounds the entire day.

The other really big benefit for Battle Smiths is that, because they are the only class (well, actually technically not, as Artillerists have a somewhat narrow option here) that fights with weapons that can interact with the various powerful damage-enhancing feats.

So, let's make some assumptions:

Using Point Buy, we're going to have our Intelligence at 17 at level 1, and probably spread other stats to ensure we have a 14 Dex, 13 Strength (for a feat) and decent Con (we might need to go with 14).

We're going to be fighting with a Greatsword or Maul. Because we're doing a straight-class build here, weapon mastery is going to be hard to come by, so the Maul is fairly interchangeable with the Greatsword at least for now.

We'll take Great Weapon Master at level 4. While the boost to Strength is kind of useless for us here (there's a world where I build a Strength-based Battle Smith, but I think there are so many benefits to high Intelligence that I think it's likely preferable, even if that's not strictly true for the raw damage output) we're going to get the best martial damage-boost feat in the game, which I believe will make up for delaying capping our Intelligence.

At 8, we'll take War Caster to get our Int to 18 and to help maintain concentration on the various spells that might require that.

By level 10, we can make ourselves a +2 weapon.

So:

If we assume a kind of meat-and-potatoes turn, just striking foes with our melee attacks, our Steel Defender, and letting our Homunculus blast them with Conjure Barrage, how much DPR are we looking at?

First off, let's figure out how many foes we're fighting and what their stats are.

At level 11, an easy encounter has a budget of 1,900 xp per player. On a non-boss fight, having a number of enemies equal to the party members is pretty reasonable, so 1,900 xp would be something like an Umber Hulk (CR 5 is 1,800 xp). Let's say we're a party of five players, so we have 5 Umber Hulks we're facing. These guys have an AC of 18, and their Dex save bonus is just +1.

Our attack bonus at this level for our +2 Maul is +10 (4 from Int, 4 from PB, and 2 from the weapon) and just +8 for our Steel Defender. So, we have a 65% hit chance, and our Steel Defender has a 55% hit chance. Our spell save DC is 16. The chance for an Umber Hulk to dodge Conjure Barrage is thus 30%.

Maul damage:

Our hits are going to land for 2d6+10 (4 from Int, 4 from PB via Great Weapon Master, and 2 from the weapon) or 17. Our bonus crit damage is 7 - however, we might also do some extra stuff on a smite like Arcane Jolt and/or Shining Smite. If we save these only for smites, there's a good chance we won't run out of either option. To keep things simple, though, I'm going to only use Arcane Jolt and assume that we have some other concentration spell up like Heroism that we wouldn't want to drop for Shining Smit. Thus, our crit damage is actually 14, as it's now 6d6 (2d6 from the weapon, and the doubled arcane jolt doing 4d6) or 21.

Actually, hold on, we should do Arcane Jolt separately, as it can only happen once per turn. So just 7.

So, per attack we have 17x65%, or 11.05, plus 7x5%, or .35, giving us 11.4 damage per attack, and with two attacks, 22.8.

Arcane Jolt:

We're going to save this only for crits, as we only have four uses per day. With two attacks, each turn we have a 9.75% chance to land a crit on one or the other (much like we would if we had advantage). The damage here would be 4d6, or 14, so that's an extra 1.365.

Ah, but we can also use this with the Steel Defender, so we actually have three chances to crit. With three attacks, the chance for one to be a crit is roughly 14% (It's technically 14.2625, but perhaps we don't have to be so granular). So, 14x14% is basically 2 (1.99675, I couldn't resist).

Steel Defender:

The Steel Defender deals 1d8+6 on a hit (2 from itself, 4 from our Int) or 10.5 on average, with an extra 4.5 on a crit. As we established, they have a 55% chance to hit.

10.5x55% is 5.775, and 4.5x5% is .225, for a total of 6 precisely (well, that lined up well)

Summing it Up So Far:

Before we get to the Conjure Barrage, let's figure out what our single-target damage is, just by summing up the 22.8 from our maul, the 2 from our Arcane Jolt, and the 6 from our Steel Defender, giving us 30.8

Conjure Barrage:

Thanks to the IFF built into this spell, and its wide cone, I think that it's pretty reasonable against a group of 5 foes to be able to hit 4 of them each time. It very much depends on the battlefield. Another factor to consider is that even if it won't hit your allies, they still might be providing half cover to the Umber Hulks (and the Hulks might provide cover to them too. Now, you might fix this by having your Homunculus fly way up high and shoot down, which could hit a 30-foot radius circle on the ground, though its speed might make it take a while to get into this position.

Let's just treat it like half of the Hulks have half-cover. So two hulks are going to have a 30% chance to save, and two are going to have a 40% chance to save (they still take half on a success). On a failure, a creature takes 22.5 damage, and on a success, they take 11.25.

Uncovered Hulks:

22.5x70% is 15.75, and 11.25x30% is 3.375, so 19.125 each turn. Between two hulks, that's 38.25

Covered Hulks:

22.5x60% is 13.5, and 11.25x40% is 4.5, so 18 each turn. Between the two covered hulks, that's 36 damage.

So, all together, Conjure Barrage is dealing 74.25.

All Together:

That means that we can deal 105.05 damage per turn. Against just one Hulk, assuming it's not covered, we're doing 49.925 damage.

    I will say that we did pick some targets with poor Dex saves, but they also have high ACs. These numbers will shift to reflect that, and other factors, like narrow hallways and full cover, and even just fewer targets can really reduce the power of Conjure Barrage (though even with a single target, we got about 2/3s of our single target damage from it).

    The Battle Smith really does come out ahead here, I think, because while an Armorer can pretty easily avoid hitting allies, they might struggle to get more targets into the area of a lightning bolt (though the Homunculus can be all about positioning to maximize that chance). The Artillerist has the opposite problem - it's often very easy to get lots of targets in a Fireball, but much harder to avoid friendly fire.

I'm not sure that around 50 damage per round actually makes this a top-tier damage build (a Bladesinger with Conjure Minor Elementals upcast to 6th level is probably going to beat it, but I'm not going to do that math right now) but I think what makes this really impressive is that it's kind of "default." You're not blowing any super precious resources, and beyond casting Homunculus Servant and putting the spell in the item, you don't need much to prepare it. This is, truly, something you'll be able to do all the time.

While you could eventually run out of uses of the spell-storing item, your fights are going to go faster if you can blast a big AoE spell every single turn. In other words, the power of the spell-storing item might actually help it conserve its own charges.

Now, the Homunculus can get killed. But it's also a ritual spell, and I think it's not a terrible idea to keep it prepared so that if you have an hour of calm and quiet, you can get it back. The gem to cast it is not consumed, so it's pretty trivial to get the homunculus back.

And best of all, this all feels like the Artificer doing something that will wow the rest of the party, something that no other class can really do.

Armor Piercer: A Homebrew Feat

 I've made monsters, I've made subclasses, and I've made spells. But I've never tried my hand at a feat.

I was writing recently about how modern and futuristic firearms struggle to keep up with the magic weapons that they are said to be equivalent to in the DMG. While the ability to have a +2 or +3 bonus to hit and damage certainly has some impact, the main difference, I think, is that certain ranged weapons have feats that can significantly boost their damage output. These feats, though, only really affect a small number of ranged weapons: Crossbow Expert is required to use Extra Attack with any crossbow-type weapon, but it also allows you to truly dual-wield Hand Crossbows and also effectively get the Two Weapon Fighting style with them. Great Weapon Master, while primarily designed for melee weapons, will also give a big boost to two specific ranged weapons, the Heavy Crossbow and the Longbow.

But no firearms benefit from either of these feats. Aside from the Piercer feat (which does boost their damage somewhat, but I'd guess far less) there's really not much you can do as far as feats are concerned to give you a good bump in damage. As a result, other than the Antimatter Rifle (which does insane damage, feat or no,) no Firearms outpace the Hand or Heavy Crossbow that is powered up with these feats and magic enhancement.

Can we fix that with a new feat?

Well, let's start on the conceptual level:

The rise of firearms, historically, was largely due to the way that they could pierce heavy armor. This was also true of other ranged weapons, like crossbows and longbows (the longbow, if it were historically accurate, ought to require a strength minimum because an actual medieval longbow had a 100-pound draw weight - pulling it back to fire was like lifting a 100-pound weight, so archers were insanely jacked.) But firearms gave you such an effect with all the power of the shot coming from the chemical reaction, no real muscle strength required.

Indeed, a lot of weapons from that era were designed to pierce armor. Before this technological development, the nobility and royalty did get into fights on the battlefield, because a full set of plate armor made you nearly invincible - like wearing shields all over your body. But a longbow, crossbow, musket ball, or the spike on a halberd or war hammer or on a morning star could get through that armor and actually injure or kill you. The plate couldn't be too thick or you wouldn't be able to move because it was so heavy, and it did fine against most blades, because those are relying on the sharpness and slashing action, which doesn't work very well against even a thin piece of steel.

Now, how should we represent piercing armor in D&D?

My first instinct was to do something like treat a target's AC as lower if it was relying on armor - like maybe something along the lines of "when you attack a creature, treat its AC as 10 + the creature's Dexterity if this value is lower than its regular AC." And honestly, I don't hate that design: it would make it very effective against monsters wearing actual armor, like a Death Knight, or against creatures with natural shells or plates like a Chuul.

It's also quite variable in effectiveness, and forces your DM to make a calculation with every monster you attack, which could be tedious.

Instead, I think we take some existing technology: the Graze mastery.

Indeed, I actually thought this with a different scenario in mind: while in real life a shotgun's blast is a much tighter grouping than we see in video games, the principle is the same: you shoot out a spread of, er, shot, covering a wider area and thus having a better chance of hitting your target. And Graze could very easily represent winging a foe, with only some of the blast actually hitting them.

But this can also, I think, represent a bullet or spike hitting a foe's armor, which absorbs part of the impact, but still piercing through to deal some damage.

Graze, as a mastery, is only found on the Greatsword and the Glaive, both heavy melee weapons that deal slashing damage. Graze is also, probably, the best weapon mastery for damage output.

I'd initially intended this feat to only benefit firearms, but I think you could make a solid argument that it can work with any of the weapons that were designed to pierce armor. And so, I think I'm going to let it apply to any martial weapon that can deal piercing or bludgeoning damage. They should be martial weapons: I don't think a Dagger or a Club ought to benefit from this. But the following weapons would gain this benefit if we used the aforementioned parameters:

Flail, Lance, Maul, Morningstar, Pike, Rapier, Shortsword, Trident, Warhammer, War Pick, Blowgun, Hand Crossbow, Heavy Crossbow, Longbow, Musket, Pistol, Semiautomatic Pistol, Automatic Rifle, Revolver, Shotgun, Hunting Rifle.

I think you could argue that we ought to include the Halberd, and that the Rapier, Shortsword, Blowgun, and Hand Crossbow don't quite fit this.

But I think I'd prefer to use these broader identifiers to ensure that modern firearms were being included in a player-facing option.

The feat also does involve weapon masteries, which not every class gets (including Artificers, which I find frustrating). I think we might thus make it a prerequisite:

    Armor Piercer:

General Feat (Prerequisite: Level 4+, The Weapon Mastery feature or the Weapon Master feat, proficiency with a martial weapon)

You gain the following benefits.

Ability Score Increase: Increase your Strength or Dexterity score by 1, to a maximum of 20.

Mastery Switch: When you attack with a martial weapon that deals piercing or bludgeoning damage whose mastery you can use, you can replace that property with the Graze mastery for that attack.

    The structure of this feat simply replicates a more limited version of the Fighter's Tactical Master feature. I think this would probably wind up being decent, but how much does the feat actually add, damage-wise, for our weapons? See, if used on a Maul, for example, all this does is let us treat the Maul like a Greatsword, which feels probably too thin as a feat on its own.

If we revisit the post looking at modern and advanced firearms (as you notice, this doesn't do anything for futuristic guns) we saw that all the modern firearms were lagging behind +2 versions of the Hand and Heavy Crossbows that had enabling feats.

Before we add any damage to the feat, let's see how they do now. I was going to just use our old values, but the AC of 15 was so marginal that I worry it might have been a kind of skewed result.

Instead, we'll look at an AC of 20, but with the same assumptions: A Fighter with 20 Dexterity and the Archery fighting style. Using a pair of +2 Hand Crossbows with Crossbow Expert to get three attacks, using a +2 Heavy Crossbow with Crossbow Expert (just to use extra attack) and Great Weapon Master, and now using our mk. 1 Armor Piercer feat.

I acknowledge that by raising the AC, I'm making Graze more valuable, but let's just try it.

    +2 Hand Crossbows:

Given we're doing fewer calculations, let's see if we can account for Vex.

We deal 1d6+7 damage on a hit, and an extra 1d6 on a crit (so 10.5 and 3.5)

We have a +13 to hit. Without advantage, we've got a 70% chance to hit.

10.5x70%, or 7.35, plus .175, so 7.525 on an attack without advantage.

If we have advantage, the chances become 91% chance to hit, and 9.75% chance to crit.

So, 10.5x91%, or 9.555, plus 3.5x9.75%, or .34125, so 9.89625 damage on an attack with advantage.

First attack (assuming no external advantage) is 7.525.

Second attack has a 70% chance to have advantage and a 30% chance to be made straight, so 7.525x70% is 5.2675 and 30%x9.89625 is 2.968875, so our average damage on the second attack is 8.236375 (and yeah, we can probably round off to the nearest tenth of a damage point, but hey, precision!)

So, how likely are we to have advantage on the third attack? It depends on whether we hit on the second attack. And the likelihood of that is dependent on whether we hit on the first attack. We have the following scenarios that grant advantage:

First attack hits, second attack hits. 70% (first attack) x 91% (second attack) for 63.7% of the time.

First attack misses, but second attack hits: 30% (first attack) x 70% (second attack) for 21% of the time.

Add these together and that's 84.7% of the time that we get advantage on the third attack.

So! (dear lord):

Third Attack: 9.89625x84.7% is 8.38 (ish, we can just round) plus 7.525x15.3%, or 1.15, so our third attack is going to do 9.53

Giving us a total damage of 25.29! (I promise no more Vex for this post).

    +2 Heavy Crossbow

Same 70% hit chance. 1d10+11 on a hit, or 16.5, and 5.5 extra on a crit.

16.5x70% is 11.55, plus 5.5x5% is .275, so our total per attack is 11.825. With two attacks, that's 23.65.

    Shotgun:

I'm picking the shotgun one of three modern firearms that have the same and medium damage potential. This math will work just as well for Revolvers and Automatic Rifles (though ignoring Burst Fire). Note that the Semiautomatic Pistol gets Vex, but we're mainly trying to see if this feat will let these weapons keep up.

Because Graze lets us add our damage modifier on a miss, we can actually just ignore it and add it at the end (there's a 100% chance that we get to deal that much damage, and it doesn't increase on a crit).

We only have a +11 to hit, so we're going to have a 70% hit chance. Because we can just look at the damage of the dice, we can actually just fold the 5% crit chance into the same amount. These are 2d8 weapons, so they deal 9 damage on average.

9x75% is 6.75. We add back in that guaranteed 5 to give us 11.75 damage per attack, doubled to get 23.5, which is now very nearly caught up with the Heavy Crossbow.

The Hunting Rifle does 2d10, so 11 damage on average. 11x75% is 8.25, and adding in the 5 we get 13.25, or 26.5 with the two attacks.

    So, that's interesting: I do think this feat manages to kind of solve the problem, giving modern firearms parity with equivalent magic items.

That being said, it feels weird, to say the least, that the damage boost is simply coming from swapping out for a different mastery.

To be sure, some of the weapons included here are also going to benefit a lot from Graze - Graze only natively comes on heavy, two-handed weapons, so getting it on a one-handed weapon like a War Pick (a weapon absolutely designed in the real world to pierce armor) is going to be a big deal. I actually think, proportionately, it'll be a bigger deal than it would be for a firearm with a large die pool, because more of your damage with a weapon like this is going to come from your modifier.

Arguably, the weapon that best benefits from this is a Blowgun, where all but 1 point of its damage comes from your Dexterity, so Graze is nearly like saying "you cannot miss."

But when you could just as easily trade out your Maul for a Greatsword or your Pike or Lance for a Glaive, does this feat feel kind of underwhelming? It does. Is that a problem? Maybe? I mean, there are plenty of feats that are going to feel more impressive on some weapons more than others. Much as Great Weapon Master does technically benefit non-heavy weapons but obviously does better with heavy weapons.

And yet... I don't know, it feels thin.

The benefit of the current design is that it will work even in a campaign that doesn't have modern firearms. That said, while Graze is certainly a better mastery than just about any other except perhaps Vex and Nick, this feat does force you to give up those other masteries to use it, at least in the moment.

So perhaps there's a narrower, more specific feat we could apply.

I do still find the Graze mastery, or at least its equivalent functionality, to be a pretty elegant way to reflect the armor-piercing capabilities of gunpowder weapons. Perhaps, then, we could roll this into other benefits.

Let's give it a shot, so to speak:

    Deadeye

General Feat (requires level 4+, Dexterity 13+)

Ability Score Improvement: Your Dexterity score increases by 1, to a maximum of 20

Deadly Shots: When you make an attack roll with a Pistol, Musket, or any ranged weapon with the Reload property, and you miss, you can deal an amount of the weapon's damage type equal to the ability modifier with which you used to the attack to the target.

Quick Reload: You ignore the Loading property of Pistols and Muskets, and you can reload a ranged weapon with the reload property using your object interaction oncer per turn.

    Yeah, I kind of like this. It doesn't require you to give anything away, meaning you'll still have your given mastery.