Devourer Tuning in Recent Hotfix

 I've got to say, the Midnight pre-launch event is pretty underwhelming - just a few world quests and spawning rares in Twilight Highlands (there was some announcement that it would be "across Azeroth," but I don't think they're showing up anywhere else. As such, the pre-patch has largely been about tinkering with the various class changes, and the biggest change of those is the existence of the third Demon Hunter spec, Devourer.

I've made multiple posts about the spec and its issues, mainly that it's surprisingly difficult to actually get off Collapsing Star, the headliner spell that requires a lot of build-up to get to. Something you'd expect to do every Void Metamorphosis multiple times (given that there are talents that trigger off multiple casts in a single Meta,) it's pretty common to be unable to even get one cast of it off - you need to have a bit of luck, honestly, for there to be enough soul fragments for you to gather up 30 before your window runs out.

Now, I will say that I have, on occasion, been able to get two off in a single go, though that's very, very rare. Generally, I have to go against the talent build guidance I've found online in order to do so - rather than Soul Glutton, which lets you go into the metamorphosis at 35 soul fragments rather than 50, but which speeds up the fury loss while in Metamorphosis, I take the one that just buffs you with Haste for each fragment you pick up. Naturally, this means you're entering the metamorphosis less often, but you won't have to fight the time limit as hard to get off at least one Collapsing star.

Evidently, the final Devourer Apex Talent allows you to cast a free Collapsing Star right when you get into Void Metamorphosis, which not only gets you that free cast, but also gives you another spell that delays your Fury degradation (a key, I think, to buying yourself the time to gather another 30). I'd hope as well that other Apex Talents might increase the rate of fragment generation, but none of those are available here during the pre-patch.

However, Blizzard sent out a hotfix last night (around the time they seemed to be hit with a DDOS attack that shut down both my Alliance and Horde servers) that made a few changes. The changes do, I think, increase your soul fragment generation overall, though weirdly there's also a nerf - basically, Consume is going to create more fragments, while I think other abilities are going to generate fewer.

In practice, I haven't noticed a huge change - partially I think I'm just getting better at timing my abilities, so I'm getting off more Collapsing Stars. But I still think this is not tuned well for anything other than max level.

And sure, we spend most of our time in WoW at max level, so by the time I get a Demon Hunter to 90 (more likely my old Night Elf one, who will be sticking primarily to Havoc, but I figure I'll keep around some Intellect gear for when I want to futz with Devourer) I can check in again and see if the spec feels good.

Damage-wise, I do think that hotfixes worked out ok - naturally, my Void Elf has been getting better gear, which helps. But while balancing damage is certainly important in a game like this, I do think the spec needs to feel good to play too, and too often with Devourer I feel like I'm failing to do what the spec is meant to be doing.

Crows and Dungeon-Crawling

 MCDM successfully launched its heroic fantasy RPG, Draw Steel, which, yes, I'm still trying to get a group of players together for (though I'm up to three and will play with four! Scheduling is the next challenge,) and made news when lead designer James Introcaso moved from continuing to develop Draw Steel to the company's next original RPG: Crows.

Draw Steel, famously (though maybe not as famously as their "everything hits" philosophy,) eschews monetary rewards - you have a wealth value, but it's not meant to be the primary motivator, and you're assumed to be able to afford an inn, replace equipment, etc., with "treasure" being limited to magic items that can give you a significant boost.

The idea that Matt Colville presented when pitching Draw Steel was that there was a lot of vestigial stuff in D&D from when it was first designed to be a survival-horror dungeon crawler, but that over the past half-century, the game has come to, well, mean a lot of things to a lot of people, but broadly, the way most players approach it is to tell stories of heroic figures saving the world. Colville felt that a lot of the game's continued reliance on tracking inventory and such weighs down the goal of game meant to make you feel more like epic heroes, and so they pushed to cut that out from Draw Steel.

Crows goes the opposite direction.

Crows will work a little like Draw Steel in the sense that its central mechanic is the Power Roll - rolling 2d10, adding the appropriate statistic (though these are boiled down to just three - Strength, Agility, and Mind) and checking to see if your result is 11 or lower, 12-16, or 17+. A lot of it is different though.

The intent here is for a world that's post-apocalyptic (though I think still in a medieval fantasy sense), gritty, and desperate. You're scrounging for whatever wealth you can find in dangerous old ruins, and so the way in which you earn experience is the value of the stuff you pull up out of there. Fighting monsters might be necessary, but if you can avoid them, it's probably for the best, as you don't get anything for killing them, and they can certainly kill you - part of the design philosophy is that the monsters aren't scaled to the players. (As a side note, I hear a lot of DMs talking about building campaigns like this, which usually implies it's going to be deadlier and with fewer guard rails, but I would say that if you're going to do that, you need to also make it go the other way - if the world doesn't limit its difficulty for low-level players, then it also should not rise to meet high-level ones).

Unlike Draw Steel, Crows will be all about inventory management, and will involve such trade-offs as wearing lighter armor so that you can carry more stuff with you. Equipment can get damaged and broken, and your character's abilities are more about what kind of stuff you can use than what you can do on your own - a spellcaster character, for example, might be able to make use of magic spellbooks found in these ruins, but they won't have magic that they can just use innately.

It'll be interesting to see how this turns out: I think the intent of this sort of game, a bit like Blades in the Dark (and its variants) is for shorter-term stories, unlike the long and epic campaigns you get with D&D or Draw Steel.

Player Agency, Combat Pacing, and Monster Design

 I ran a fight over the past two sessions in my long-running Ravnica campaign (though they had actually planeswalked to Arcavios). They were undergoing five challenges, one from each of the Strixhaven colleges, to earn the right to the shard of the Golgothian Sylex that Urza had left with the elder dragons who created the university (they need the Sylex to destroy a Phyrexian artifact that would allow them to travel across the planes and invade everywhere at once - I came up with this plot before the whole March of the Machines plot in Magic's canon lore emerged).

Anyway, the Silverquill Challenge, the last of the five, required them to race various Silverquill students to a persuade a group of Malleable Minds (Black Puddings slightly altered) that they should be given the shard, while the students (Noble Prodigies) and a trio of Archpriests and two Arcanoloths moved to intercept and stop them.

The party is level 18, and as this was the only fight they were going to have on the day (actually, that's not technically true, but there's a surprise coming their way) I balanced it as a high-difficulty encounter. At level 18, that generally means either some insanely powerful monsters or a lot of quite-powerful monsters.

So, that was why I picked the Archpriests and Arcanoloths, which are not legendary, but probably designed to be the big headliner of their respective encounters.

Here was the problem:

Arcanoloths have a really cool and flavorful ability to trap players in their Soul Tome. If they hit with their Banishing Claw attack, a target has to make a Charisma saving throw (DC 17) or they get sucked into the tome, incapacitated. They can repeat the save on each of their turns, but if they fail three times before doing so, they are stuck in the book until the book or the Arcanoloth are killed.

In addition to that, Archpriests have a recharge ability (4-6, so 50% chance to be able to use it each turn) that deals a bunch of radiant damage in an emanation around them and stuns creatures who fail their Wisdom save.

These creatures combined to mean that in the quite-long encounter (I think it might have actually gotten to ten rounds, or possibly eight or nine) the party's Artificer missed about half of their turns.

Now, sure, the encounter did conspire to make this a little tougher: the party was spread out, so other characters who might have been able to blast the book apart (there are special mechanics to do just that, but you need to do a full 35 damage in a single turn, something one of the Sorcerers eventually did with a Disintegrate).

But it got me thinking:

D&D combat is slow, especially when you get to higher levels. Monsters are more complex, as are player abilities and the breadth of their options.

In a game where each round of combat takes five minutes, losing a turn is frustrating but not that bad. In a game where a round could take forty minutes, it becomes a real problem.

Now, I think that perhaps just the fact that a round takes so long is probably a problem in and of itself. The tactical challenge and complexity, of course, is part of what makes the game fun, but it does make things go pretty slowly (I also have a six-player party, five of whom are spellcasters, which also means I generally need more monsters as well to meet them as a challenge).

There are a lot of arguments about how D&D breaks down at higher levels, and I actually think that it works out ok, it's just that things take a very long time. Even low-difficulty encounters that you'd want to pepper in over the course of a day feel pretty epic just because if they don't, they won't actually challenge the players and drain their resources.

While I love the cool powers I get at higher levels as a player, and you can bet that I'm champing at the bit to get 6th level spells on my Wizard (we're level 9 right now) I also think that there's truth to the idea that 5E works most smoothly at tier 2, and a big part of that is that your options are a bit more limited.

I mean, on a purely physical level, you need to count the values on all the dice you roll. When you are fighting monsters with 200 HP instead of 100 HP, you need to physically count twice as much damage before they fall. Even if your characters are doing twice as much damage in a turn, that act means it will be slower.

And again, slower combat means those loss-of-control moments feel that much more painful.

I'm slowly, gradually getting together a group of players to try out Draw Steel, and I get the sense that both of these issues were in mind when they designed that game. Initially, it's totally bizarre to me that abilities in that deal flat amounts of damage (there are some exceptions,) and that from level 1 to level 10, you really just do the same power roll (you're just more likely to get a better result as you level up).

I also know that MCDM, starting in Flee, Mortals! but also carrying over to their Draw Steel Monsters book, has pretty much removed any and all mechanics that would take away a player's agency: even going to zero hit points (er, stamina) doesn't prevent you from acting! Sure, you really risk getting yourself killed if you don't act very carefully while dying, and being dead is the condition where your turns are skipped, but I'm really curious to see how the game feels at higher levels.

Still, for the time being, I'm going to be looking more carefully at the monsters I use, and possibly replace various stunning or otherwise incapacitating abilities with something that works a little differently and gives players recourse.

General Thoughts on 12.0 Spec Changes

 I won't be able to touch on every single change here, as I'm giving my basic vibes. Since the Midnight pre-patch launched for WoW, I've mostly been leveling up my new Void Elf Demon Hunter (and finding the Devourer spec to be... basically broken - something I understand will get better with some Apex Talents coming in the next few levels, but probably needs a fix at some core design level) but I've also been hopping on my many alts (see the name of the blog) to get a sense of how the class changes have affected them. Again, I don't play every single spec (I have basically no healers) and some I've just barely touched.

I'll go class-by-class, and within those, touch on the specs I've looked at.

Paladin:

    Protection: At first glance, there are some cooldowns that have been pruned and one big change I actually like a lot, which is that Hammer of Wrath is now just a transformed Judgment, which makes my bars a bit less awkward. We lose Eye of Tyr, which was always kind of an odd semi-cooldown, and now if we're going Templar (and we are) we use Divine Toll to activate it. But for the most part, this plays similarly (though I miss having Weak Auras just to give myself a big visual cue when I'd gotten 3 Holy Power. This applies to Combo Points for Rogues as well).

    I don't feel like this is going to change the way the spec feels all that much, so I'm kind of neutral on all of this.

Death Knight:

    Blood: The big change here is that the "burn Bone Shield charges to get Dancing Rune Weapon back faster" playstyle is no more - indeed, Bone Storm and Tombstone are both gone, so DRW is on just a normal cooldown. Interestingly, Consumption is way more interesting now, working as an empowered spell that can consume varying amounts of your Blood Plague and give you a damage-reduction bonus based on its empowerment.

    Frost: I ran a Delve mostly as this - Frost got, I think, a revamp mid-War Within, so some stuff, like making Remorseless Winter a passive, were already in place. There's an interesting new talent at the bottom of the tree called Frostbane, which causes your Frost Strike to sometimes get transformed into a big meteor-style strike in front of you.

    Unholy: Honestly, lots of big changes that I don't yet fully understand, but you can now summon ghouls on demand, which seems to replace Apocalypse (it's a recharge ability) and Festering Wounds are gone, with new abilities that give you more undead dudes to keep you doing your Festering Strike and Scourge Strike.

Rogue:

    Subtlety: Holy crap. Subtlety has been profoundly simplified. First off, no more Rupture - the only ongoing buff from a finishing move you need to worry about is Slice and Dice, and at least the way I'm talented, you refresh it with every Eviscerate, so once it's going, you're basically good unless you have like, more than a minute of downtime. The bigger deal, though, is that you're no longer building up damage in over a Shadow Dance to buff up Secret Technique as much as possible. Instead, you can just blow that the moment that you have full combo points and drop into Shadow Dance. There is something like the old mechanic, where you'll do some shadow damage for each unique ability you used during Shadow Dance, but these don't buff the abilities you're using - it's an independent source of damage - so the order no longer matters. There are also just fewer buttons to push now - Symbols of Death and Flagellation are both gone, meaning basically you just have Backstab, Eviscerate, Slice and Dice, Secret Technique, Shadow Dance, and of course Shuriken Storm and Black Powder as your AoE Backstab/Eviscerate alternatives.

    While I appreciated how satisfying it was to pull off the gigantic Secret Technique blasts, I did find my hands juggling my keyboard and mouse in awkward ways to do so. Right now, it feels very simple and easy, but we'll see if we miss the complexity.

Shaman:

    Enhancement: Another spec that has gotten seriously simplified (another where I struggled to find a spot for all their abilities on my bars). Lava Burst is out, as is Primordial Wave. You actually still have a fair number of things to press, but it all seems a little more forgiving. You'll only be spending Maelstrom Weapon charges on Lightning Bolt and Chain Lightning, and it seems that Doom Winds now replicates the Ascendance thing of speeding up Storm Strike's cooldown and having it consume your Maelstrom Weapon charges to shoot lightning at your foe. I've been playing Totemic, but I imagine that this also makes Stormbringer simpler, not having to juggle Lava Burst along with this.

    This, honestly, I think, feels a little more like what the spec is supposed to feel like. There are still some things to monitor and look out for, but it feels manageable.

Demon Hunter:

    Havoc: Honestly, very similar to how it was before. Havoc has always been one of the simpler specs, so they didn't really need to pull much out of it.

    Devourer: Well, see the previous two posts.

Mage:

    Frost: We've gone a couple expansions, I think, without major changes to Frost (maybe not since Legion, actually, which launched a decade ago this year. Dear lord) and I've largely had an attitude of "not broke, don't fix." But they have now made quite a lot of changes - the biggest is that everything is built around applying a "Freezing" debuff to your target, which you can then consume with Ice Lance to shatter. Weirdly, spells that used to benefit a lot from shattering, like Glacial Spike, now apply Freezing rather than consuming it. I need to get a sense of how much I need to weave in Ice Lances, especially because Fingers of Frost seems to prevent it from consuming stacks, so presumably we do want to consume them outside of that proc. Also, Icy Veins is gone, with Ray of Frost now your main cooldown (and kind of your only major cooldown outside of Time Warp). Also, Glacial Spike now replaces Frost Bolt rather than being its own button.

    I think it largely plays the same - the big thing is that you'll, I believe, be weaving in Ice Lances constantly to eat up Freezing stacks. I know that Comet Swarm can also shatter the stacks, so you'll sometimes be using them in other ways.

Warlock:

    Demonology: Actually a fair number of changes, even if you're going to look pretty similar in the end. One big thing is that Soul Siphon and Implosion are now mutually exclusive - different ways to use up your Wild Imps. Summon Dreadstalkers is now always instant and always free, and your Demonic Tyrant now checks how many demons you have out to improve its damage (I don't know if this snapshots or just acts dynamically). Actually, Implosion now has a cooldown, so it's less about figuring out how many Imps to sacrifice than just doing so when you've got the ability (it also only sacrifices I think a set number per cast). You can also summon an Imp or Felhound as a long-lasting temporary summon that then lends you its activated ability - so with the Felhound you finally get an interrupt.

    There are other changes here, but I think to a large extent it's mainly just less fiddly. You don't have Grimoire: Felguard or an actively summoned Vilefiend (though you can still talent to get the latter) but the Doomguard and Felhound/Imp options kind of replace those. It'll take some adjustments, but even if there are a lot of changes, the core of the spec remains the same.

Warrior:

    Arms: There are some changes here, like getting rid of Dragon Roar (which did feel a bit redundant with all the other cooldowns we might use). Execute also now seems usable at any health percentage - I'll admit this is one that I haven't really looked under the hood at so much.

Priest:

    Shadow: Huge aesthetic changes, as they're really doubling down on the cosmic aspects of the void. Devouring Plague, which made sense when Shadow kind of applied to any "dark" magic, is now Shadow Word Madness, but works similarly. Shadow Crash is now Tentacle Slam, with a whole new visual. And Dark Ascension is gone, so everyone will be using Void Eruption/Void Form, which I'm honestly good with.

    To me, the biggest thing is that there's a talent that vastly improves the damage of Shadow Word Pain, which is fine except that it's mutually exclusive with the one that causes any instance of Vampiric Touch to apply the DOT. That means managing SWP more important to a rotation that I feel long ago moved away from "DoT management" as its primary focus. The Old God theme is still there, with the Idol of "insert Old God here" talents at the bottom, but, for example, I have a talent that sometimes pops out a void entity to attack my target (I think it's some variant of Shadowfiend).

Hunter/Monk/Druid/Evoker:

    To be honest, I haven't really given much thought to the way that these classes have changed.

Naturally, the big caveat to this is that we won't really get to see how these play until we're level 90, with the hero talents filled in and the Apex Talents acquired. I know that Devourer is basically broken until we get get the latter, and I could imagine that these might entail big changes to how each spec feels.

Devourer Still Not Quite Working at 80, And How I'd Redesign It

 The problem with class design focusing on max level is that you have to level a class first.

Let me just put my biggest issue front and center, touched on in my previous post:

The promise of Devourer Demon Hunters is that you're going to gobble up a bunch of void/soul fragments like Hungry Hungry Hippos and, once you have enough, you're going to throw a giant ball of void energy (Collapsing Star - which I think I was erroneously calling Collapsing Void in the previous post). It's the cosmic black-hole spec, right?

Looking at Icy Veins, their single-target raid boss talent build doesn't even take that ability. Again, this is for the pre-patch, where we're missing some pieces, like the Apex Talents.

But I think that there are a number of issues with Devourer's design. I truly would not be shocked if we got a major overhaul as early as the 12.0.5 patch, unless those Apex Talents completely smooth over the rotation.

I think at the core of it is this: you need to build up to do anything cool with Devourer.

Let me compare this to another fairly build-up heavy spec, Demonology. Demonology of course also got its own simplification and redesign, such as making your Dreadstalkers never cost Soul Shards nor have a cast time, but even if we rewind back to before the Midnight pre-patch, let me tell you what I would do as an opener (which I think was at least close to optimized):

Starting with 3 soul shards, I'd summon my Dreadstalkers (down to 2) then summon my Vilefiend (down to zero) then Shadow Bolt four times to get my Grimoire: Felguard and a 3-shard Hand of Gul'dan out, and then I'd summon my Demonic Tyrant, which would then extend the duration of all those demons (7 total, not counting the tyrant themselves) by 15 seconds and give me my really powerful burst of damage at the start of the fight. All of this takes, I'd guess, around 10 seconds or less, and by this point I've cast my big, showstopper spells.

The problem is that for me to get to the showstopper on Devourer, I have to generate so many soul fragments just to get into the state where I can cast Collapsing Star, and then it's this insane race once I am (something that I'm going to generously say I can do in 30 seconds if I'm lucky in a sustained, single-target fight where there's no downtime) to build all the way up to the 30 I need to cast Collapsing Star before the accelerating Fury decay pulls me out of that state. Void Metamorphosis lasts, I think, maybe 10 seconds, and I can maybe push that to 15 if I'm timing my Void Beams, Voidblades, and such well. If it takes me 30 seconds to get 50 soul fragments, I'm getting to around 25 fragments in metamorphosis, which you'll note is not enough for a single Collapsing Star.

There are talents that expect you to get multiple Collapsing Stars off in a single metamorphosis. Surely, they jest.

So, here is what I'd propose:

First, a less extreme redesign:

Make Void Metamorphosis last a set duration. Your challenge is now to generate as many soul fragments as you can in that time as possible. Fury can still be used on Void Beam to generate more fragments (and do damage) but works as normal. Cut the cost of Collapsing Star to, like, 10 fragments, and nerf its damage if necessary to make that work.

Now, a more radical redesign:

Decouple Void Metamorphosis entirely from soul fragments. Just make it a normal cooldown like Metamorphosis is for Havoc and Vengeance. The ability can enhance your damage and alter abilities like it does for Havoc, and maybe have it increase soul fragment generation. Then, the only thing you spend soul fragments on becomes Collapsing Star, which you can cast in and out of Metamorphosis form and is its own separate button.

I think that either of these changes (though I'd prefer the latter) would make the spec far, far more satisfying to play. Collapsing Star looks cool as hell. Indeed, the spec's visuals are fantastic. I just wish that it wasn't so damned frustrating to play.

Devourer Doesn't Seem to Work While Leveling

 Oh boy.

I've been putting in a lot of hours on my new Void Elf Demon Hunter. I've basically quested through the main campaign of each of the four main Dragonflight zones and gotten her up to 56.

Conceptually, there are cool ideas here. The problem is tuning and pacing.

Here is how, as I understand it, your Devourer is supposed to work:

You cast Consume as your primary filler. This generates Fury, does damage, and spawns a little void-y soul fragment. You can cast it while moving, and you're meant to, I think, be moving around to grab the fragments as you go (this is not a gameplay style I love, but it's a valid choice). Walking over a soul fragment heals you (though for an incredibly tiny amount - just 1% of your max HP) and also grants you some Fury and fills a bar under your Fury bar. You can also pop out soul fragments on any other damage you do, but you get one guaranteed from Consume.

Reap is an ability with a fairly short cooldown that does a bit of instantaneous damage and sucks up to four fragments near you.

Voidblade has you charge at the target and strike them, generating a fairly big amount of Fury as you strike them with damage.

Your first goal is to build up to 100 Fury, which you then unleash with a Void Ray - basically Devourer's equivalent of Eye Beam. This carves off a bunch of soul fragments, and with some talents, it resets your Reap cooldown and I believe has it suck in all nearby fragments, not just four.

Now, once you hit 50 fragments (you'll get this talent early, but you need Metamorphosis for it to work. I don't even know why this is a talent given that I think this is the only version of Metamorphosis you get,) you will be able to hit Void Metamorphosis.

This (I believe) sets you to 100 Fury and will enhanced the damage of your other abilities (Consume becomes Devour) and notably resets your soul fragments to zero. Your Fury will begin to drain, and drains faster the longer you're transformed, until you hit 0 and pop out. While channeling Void Ray or casting Collapsing Void, the fury drain is paused.

If you get to 30 fragments after transforming, you'll be able to cast Collapsing Void, essentially tossing a black hole at the target.

The goal, basically, is to try to get Void Metamorphosis to last as long as possible and to gather as many soul fragments as you can while it's going to shoot out as many Collapsing Voids as possible.

I have cast, in 56 levels of playing this spec, I think three or four Collapsing Voids.

It's rough. Basically, if you aren't gathering fragments and managing your Fury perfectly, your metamorphosis ends before you get to cast the spell. I've had several instances where I got 29 fragments right as the thing ended, but more often than not I'm under 20 before this happens.

It just feels like the tuning is off - and I'm not talking about damage (though I think I'm struggling - the NPCs in follower dungeons often out-damage me) but rather the pacing of the spec.

I think the Fury drain is far, far too punishing, and also, I think that Fury generation is too slow, and that we need to massively cut the number of soul fragments you need to gather. (Or we need a radical redesign of the spec, which I honestly could see happening early on in Midnight if the high-level talents don't fix and smooth this all out).

Unless I'm doing something terribly wrong here (and it's a new spec, so I could be - though given how they've redesigned old specs to be more approachable, I'm shocked at how complex the rotation is on this one) this feels just broken.

I feel like - and this should be true by like level 15, or 20 at least - that played reasonably, you should be able to get at least two Collapsing Voids off per metamorphosis. It certainly shouldn't be a struggle to get a single one off (there is apparently a talent later on that lets you do it immediately after using metamorphosis, but that's not going to be available until we can go past the current level 80 cap).

There's an interesting idea at work here: there aren't any long cooldowns in the spec. Metamorphosis could theoretically be used very frequently if you could somehow suck in tons of soul fragments, and likewise, Void Ray can be used as long as you have 100 or more Fury (except in Metamorphosis, when it doesn't cost Fury but instead does have a cooldown).

But it's just so frustrating to me that you can barely ever do the really cool thing the spec is supposed to do, and instead are juggling just like four abilities (Consume, Void Blade, Reap, and Void Ray) for the vain hope of being able to pull it off next time.

It does feel like the spec is built for the endgame, which, sure, is where most of gameplay in WoW takes place, but the leveling has been a slog.

Also, given that it's an Intellect class, it has become shockingly apparent how few one-handed intellect swords, axes, fist weapons, and warglaives there actually are in old content.

Aesthetically, the spec is cool as hell. But I think they need to really get in there and do some serious fixes, because right now it just feels like it is not working. My main DH is going to stick to Havoc (which he was probably going to anyway).

What Might an Elden Ring Sequel Be About?

 I'll concede immediately that the premise of the title of this post is flawed. Arguably, Elden Ring has a sequel, with Nightreign.

While I've been doing my best to follow the lore of Nightreign as best as I can, I have a certain allergy to live-service style games - I play WoW, which is kind of the exception that proves the rule, as I don't want to get sucked into the weaponized FOMO that such models of gaming use to keep you stuck with them (WoW got its hooks into me twenty years ago, when such models were far rarer).

Still, I'm also given to understand that Nightreign is sort of apocryphal - imagining an alternate timeline for the Lands Between. The lore that it explores - again, as I understand it - is less about fleshing out more about Elden Ring's lore, but more about exploring the individual characters' stories within that lore.

Naturally, this is all up for debate - the nature of FromSoft lore tends to be that any aspect of the lore is open to interpretation, to the extent that sometimes I wonder if they put references to lore that intentionally contradicts itself: for instance, I wonder if the Nox and the Shamans are both off-shoots of the Numen, or if Marika's past as a shaman is actually inconsistent with her being a Numen.

I think one could potentially read Nightreign as what would happen with Ranni's Rain of Stars ending, which has apparently been the most popular ending people have gone for when playing Elden Ring (the fact that it's the one with the most involved quest chain does help it feel like the "truest" ending). But maybe not.

Let me make this clear: Elden Ring's lore is my favorite FromSoft has given us. I like it better than the lore of Dark Souls and Demon Souls, and even though I adore Bloodborne, I think I like Elden Ring's lore better.

Now, that might be in part because I got on at the ground floor with Elden Ring, playing it only a month or so after it came out (the only reason I delayed was because I thought I could only buy either the PS4 or PS5 version, and hoped to upgrade my console, but then realized I could get it for both as a single purchase). I never beat Dark Souls, getting stuck on Ornstein and Smough (I got much farther in DSIII, only leaving Midir, Gael, and Soul of Cinder - the latter out of fear that it'd lock me into NG+ if I beat it).

But having played Dark Souls III, I wonder if there's a message there about sequels. DSIII is a game I read as an allegory for franchises and sequels losing their potency over time. The world has constantly been refreshed and rebooted as countless Lords of Cinder have reignited the First Flame, and you can feel the entire world straining under the ashes of an Age of Fire prolonged far, far beyond its intended period. Even the first game shows a world struggling with stagnation due to Gwyn's linking of the fire, but while that game perhaps leaves open some interpretation that following in his footsteps might at least grant the world some good times once again, the final game truly makes the linking of the flame feel futile.

Both Dark Souls and Elden Ring are about the dangers of stagnation, of trying to keep a good thing going past its time. That being said, I don't know that Elden Ring is as primarily concerned with stagnation as a natural inevitability.

The truth is that there's so little we know for certain about how Marika's age turned sour. Shadow of the Erdtree suggests that the seeds of its downfall were there from the beginning, the madness of Metyr and her Two Fingers setting things on a catastrophic course, and the cycle of hatred and violence and revenge making freedom-fighters into tyrants.

Still, my reading is that the most important event in the timeline that is never addressed directly is when the Erdtree burns down the first time. That might surprise you if you hadn't heard this argument before, but basically, Leyndell is already filled with ash when we get there, and the tree we see looks more like a ghostly spirit than a physical organism made of wood. There are references to Marika distributing the Erdtree's sap as a blessing in some earlier age of abundance, but with the tree in its incorporeal state, its tangible, direct benefits have literally dried up, making the world's devotion to Marika an article of faith alone.

I suspect this is also what precipitates Godfrey's exile and his replacement by Radagon, which would neatly tie the two Elden Lords to their respective eras.

If we assume that the player is a completionist, finishing both the base game and the DLC and defeating every boss, we can probably check off most of the key figures of Elden Ring's pantheon. Miquella is dead. Radahn is dead twice over. Mohg is dead. Morgott is dead. The last of the Fire Giants is dead. Placidusax is dead.

But who is still alive?

Well, Ranni, at least in her doll body, is still alive. Even if we don't go for the Age of Stars ending, I don't believe there's any way to kill her.

Marika might still be alive. If you get either of the two special endings, the Lord of Frenzied Flame or the Age of Stars, she seems to pass away (more peacefully in the latter). But if you use any of the Mending Rune endings, or the Age of Fracture, Marika is presumably still a god and still the vessel of the Elden Ring, though likely bereft of agency similarly to how she is when we find her.

Interestingly, though, I wonder if, even if Marika persists, if Radagon is dead. His body becomes the sword wielded by the Elden Beast, and we don't see it change back. But his body is Marika's body, so... It's not clear.

Rykard is dead... probably. Arguably, he was dead before the game started when he fed himself to the God-Devouring Serpent, but that allowed him to become a part of it, and a rather dominant part of it. We see Lady Tannith eating what remains of him in an act that I imagine is meant to allow him to live on within her. As Rykard says, "a serpent never dies," which is actually a weird thing to say because serpents for sure die in the real world. But the God-Devouring Serpent is, I'd guess, linked to the idea of an Ouroboros, the snake devouring itself that symbolically represents eternity. I suspect that Rykard's dominance of the serpent's will might be over, the the serpent itself is probably still around in some form (I wouldn't be shocked if Tannith transformed after consuming it. We can kill her for some special loot while she's doing this, and fight off her Crucible Knight bodyguard, but I'm not as convinced that that event would be treated as canonical).

Malenia is also an interesting story: the hardest "superboss" in the base game (I haven't gone back to fight her again, but boy after fighting Consort Radahn, I suspect she'd feel easier,) there also seems to be some implication that she's not truly dead, with the Aeonian bloom she leaves behind perhaps giving her a path to rebirth. (How literal should we take it that her second phase calls her the Goddess of Rot? We don't get a "God Slain" victory toast when she falls, but is that because we haven't actually killed the goddess?)

Melina is also in an interestingly ambiguous position. Ironically, despite the state of the world in it, the Lord of Frenzied Flame ending quite emphatically portrays Melina as alive, because she's on her way to put you down. (Is she the Gloam-Eyed Queen? Possibly, but I had some other theories about how she got that indigo eye). However, if we don't have the Frenzied Flame, she uses herself as kindling to burn the Erdtree, seemingly perishing in this conflagration.

(I've never tried this, but if we want to be cheeky, I think we can have her burn herself to burn the Erdree and then get the Flame of Frenzy, which I believe removes the stinger on the end of the Lord of Frenzied Flame ending.)

Still, I'm not even convinced that Melina is actually dead even if she does burn herself. Again, there's strong evidence that the Erdtree burned once before, when it was still a physical tree that granted tangible sap. I think it's very possible that Melina already performed this role once, which might be why she's so emphatic about not worrying ourselves about the role she has to play. The Flame of Ruin that she is kindling is not the spirit-burning Frenzied Flame, after all, so maybe she's literally fine (though we never see her again after she kindles the flame). Sure, if she were around, she ought to still be around to threaten the Lord of Frenzied Flame, so... Hm.

(If we're considering a full clear canon, we might imagine that the Tarnished does save her by using the Frenzied Flame but then uses Miquella's Needle to cleanse themself, leaving her pissed off that they did something so dangerous but without the need to slay them.)

Rellana's alive - a character that I think we are truly unable to kill, even though we fight her in a boss fight. While she's in a sadly pathetic state of mind, one wonders if Radagon's defeat might break her out of her funk, and if Ranni has truly ascended to godhood, I could imagine one of the first items on her agenda would be to restore her mother to her former state of glory (though we should also probably expect Ranni to be a distant and non-interventionist deity).

Friendly NPCs that survive the game are somewhat few in number. Kenneth Haight and Nepehli Loux are still around, now presiding over Limgrave (along with Gatekeeper Gostoc). Jarbairn is still there in Jarburg with the surviving Warrior Jars. Boc the Seamster survives if you convince him not to undergo a rebirth ritual. Selen is... kinda sorta alive if you complete her quest and side with her, though if you go against her, I believe Witch-Hunter Jerren survives as well. Other than a whole bunch of merchants, though, that... uh, that might be everyone. (Oh! Sage Gowry as well, whatever the hell he is.)

Of course, listing the surviving NPCs is hardly going to tell us whether you could make a sequel. If there was one, it might be ages later, and the NPCs that we know might be long dead, even just of age (assuming that the end of Marika's age means that that happens now).

The question is what threads could be picked up.

Godwyn feels like a huge dangling thread. Many assumed the DLC was going to focus on him (though had it done so, I feel that there would be an equal if not greater contingent wondering what was going on with Miquella). While his horrifyingly distorted body is kind of just a stationary object, it is his soul that is said to be dead, while his body yet lives.

What... uh, what does that mean? Is that what it means to "live in death?" Is soulless life what the Deathroot is and spreads?

Perhaps I'm conflating the works of George R. R. Martin too much, but I feel like Godwyn plays a similar role to Rhaegar from A Song of Ice and Fire. Rhaegar comes off as the most ideally heroic would-be protagonist of the series, only he died like fifteen years before the books start. Like Rhaegar, Godwyn seemed to be an honorable man, turning the dragons from enemies into allies, and was seemingly universally beloved. His diplomacy with the dragons and his horrific assassination with the curse that spread from it, but also his apparent offspring and lineage, mean that Godwyn touches a ton of the lore for a posthumous character.

It always seemed he ought to have some greater presence in the lore, and that he deserved some time in the spotlight.

Of course, the other figure utterly shrouded in mystery is the Gloam-Eyed Queen, only ever mentioned in item descriptions and never mentioned (to my knowledge) by NPCs. The GEQ is the ultimate "center of the conspiracy corkboard" figure (I believe Gwyn's banished son held a similar place until we fought him as the Nameless King in DSIII - kind of the Malenia of that game). Said to have been "defeated" but not explicitly slain, From's got the narrative elbow room to have her show up if they want.

Another figure who remains mysterious but I think gets far less discussion is Renna, the Snow Witch who mentored Ranni, and whose appearance the doll is based on. Given the structure of her name, it would not be unlikely to find that Renna was a Carian, perhaps the mother of Rellana and Rennala and thus Ranni's grandmother. Or, perhaps, given that her tower is one of the Three Sisters, perhaps she is Ranni's aunt, and sister to Rellana and Rennala.

Hell, she could be the Gloam-Eyed Queen.

The truth is that an Elden Ring sequel could introduce a lot of its own new lore. We have seen some interesting new ideas brought forth in Nightreign, especially with the Forsaken Hollows DLC giving us the Balancers and the Dreglord. Again, I don't know how seriously to take Nightreign's canonicity, especially when it brings in figures like the Nameless King and Artorias from Dark Souls (I'm given to understand these are more like world bosses, rather than actual Lords of Night).

The mass and breadth of Elden Ring lore is fitting given how huge the game's world is. At the same time, though, I wonder if the creators at FromSoft might be burned out on it, having had to come up with so much stuff for it.

Only Dark Souls ever got direct sequels (again, not counting Nightreign) of From's souls-like games, and like I said before, I think that the third entry is itself an argument against sequels. But I'd still be really excited to see what they did with a revisit to the Lands Between (or Yharnam/wherever a Bloodborne II would take place).

Adventure Pitch: The Worst Bar in the Multiverse

 I've long had this idea brewing in my head, and I've finally (started) to put it to (digital) paper.

The Planescape setting makes the planes, usually only tangentially relating to the plots of ordinary campaign set in the Prime Material Plane, into detailed and fleshed-out locations in their own right.

The oddness of this is that while a normal campaign might have a villain's plan be to open a portal to a nightmarish realm of terrifying demons, ushering in an apocalyptic invasion of evil monsters, Planescape portrays The Abyss as, well, yeah, bad, but also a place with towns and inns and mortal people who just kind of, you know, live there.

Philosophically, Planescape campaigns are encouraged to be, well, more philosophical. While you certainly can fight things in them, the objectives are more up for the players to debate. Even in a cosmos built on the axes of good/evil and law/chaos, the Planescape factions present arguments that muddy the water, where a faction like the Bleak Cabal, who see existence as a curse and are found in large numbers in the lower planes, are actually very generous and kind, while the Fated have greater presences in the Upper Planes despite being basically Randian Objectivists (you'd think they'd be found in Gehenna, the plane most associated with greed). The tension between goodness and respect for others' agency is brought up by the Sect (like a Faction but no official role in the governance of Sigil) called the Order of Planes-Militant, which seeks to essentially conquer parts of neighboring planes for Mount Celestia - a plane that is, yes, very much like heaven, but doesn't it feel wrong that it should be trying to take pieces of other good-aligned planes like Bytopia or Arcadia?

Anyway, D&D campaigns famously often start in taverns, and the treatment of the planes as functional places where people live gave me the following idea: What if you started your campaign in the worst dive bar in the entire multiverse?

And by worst, I don't necessarily mean most dangerous or horrific (though it's certainly a bit of both,) but just the epitome of the kind of place where, should you find yourself drinking there, you will ask yourself very serious questions about just what went wrong in your life that you would end up there.

Cue the Rotten Dug, a bar out in the middle of the wastelands of the Plain of Infinite Portals, the uppermost layer of The Abyss.

Built inside the poorly-taxidermied corpse of some abyssal beast, the Rotten Dug is infamous for its Pus Pies, which are like little pot-pies made with the ever-oozing pus from the dead colossus (I told you the taxidermy was done poorly) that is technically edible and nutritious if you can keep it down (demons like it fine, but mortals generally only eat it if they are starving, and even that's a risk).

Run by an (abyssal) tiefling barkeep named Lavender, with a cannibal human cook named Stark, and their security guard, a disgraced, emaciated Vrock named Corvap (who responds only to threats against the staff or the structure of the building - customers are on their own,) it's the only place to take shelter for miles around (though given it's the Outer Planes, the distances aren't consistent).

I've been trying to design adventures that are more sandbox-like, as I worry my tendency is to create things that are too linear, so the idea here would be that the players begin at level 1 (might up that to level 3 just to give myself more options for monsters,) stuck like everyone else there, when a demon gang comes in looking for a guy from the Fraternity of Order who has bounties on his head from several different powerful individuals seeking him out.

In doing various quests radiating out from the tavern, they'll discover that the Guvner (a common term for members of the Fraternity) knows how to get out of the Abyss, and that he stole knowledge from a demon lord (Dagon) relating to a ritual of apotheosis, putting him in very high demand indeed.

Eventually, they'll find that he's been captured by Yugoloth bounty hunters, and will need to find some way to get him released, which will likely involve making a lot of money out in the wastelands.

One side quest I've come up with is that they meet a Yuan-Ti petitioner (the soul of a dead person - because the Outer Planes are also afterlives, petitioners are just like other NPCs here, except that they're bound to the plane). The Yuan-Ti sacrificed itself to a secret serpent god in the hopes that by giving it their body and soul, they would effectively merge with the Abyssal Serpent (think Rykard from Elden Ring, if you're familiar with that). But when they died after the rite, they woke up on the first layer of the Abyss. Now, they're looking for the correct sinkhole to jump into to take them to the proper layer with their god (the sinkholes are the eponymous infinite portals). The likely conclusion to this story is that the Abyssal Serpent isn't real, but is just Tharizdun luring people to their dooms, but I think there could be some fun philosophical questions about godhood and individuality here, so the little gut-punch ending might not even be necessary.

Anyway, my interpretation of the Plain of Infinite Portals is that it's the bleakest, most miserable desert imaginable, with demon ichor bubbling up like tar and hardpan that sends clouds of asbestos as it crumbles underfoot, with oily, sharp-leafed shrubs and razorvine growing as sparse flora. Borrowing from 2nd Edition's Planes of Chaos, it's dotted with iron fortresses, many of which have rusted and fallen to ruin. Basically, I'd give it a bit of a Western vibe, but really dialing up the wretched misery of it all (actually, I should probably watch more of the Fallout tv show, as I think that would probably have some of the vibes I'm looking for).

I've tended to think that grunge music from the 1990s seems like the right soundtrack for Planescape (I'm biased, also, because grunge/alt rock from the 90s is my childhood comfort-food music), and I recently got the album Frogstomp by Silverchair - an album whose art I remember distinctly from childhood but that I never actually listened to. There's a song off of it called Tomorrow (I think it was the album's big single) that describes what sounds like a bar down in hell, including that there's no bathroom and just a faucet with no sink with water that is "very hard to drink." I think I might work that detail into the Rotten Dug, with just a faucet that spills brown water onto the floor. I looked up the music video to it, which actually pretty closely matches the aesthetics I imagine.

Anyway, as an adventure in the Abyss, it's going to be dark and unhinged, with lots of gross-out bits and casually gruesome violence. The Abyss is a place of nihilistic violence, so I think that kind of James Gunn's The Suicide Squad feel is appropriate.

Just Who Is Actually an Albinauric?

 Since growing up with Star Trek: The Next Generation and loving Data as a character, I've always had a real fascination with artificial people. Robots are a pretty classic staple of sci-fi, and I'm a big fan of them, but the notion of making a person who is meant to be not just human-like in behavior, but truly emulate human appearance and intelligence, is one that feels threaded throughout science fiction and even myth.

We're in a weird era regarding the development of artificial intelligence. The Large Language Models like Chat-GPT kind of took the world by storm, and everyone's trying to integrate them into their businesses and digital services before we really have a great sense of how useful they'll really be (my dad is a now-semi-retired professor of computer science at one of the top CS departments in the world, and has developed something of a reputation as one of the few vocal LLM skeptics in the field). Personally, I don't think that we've actually created real intelligence, nor digital consciousness (though proving consciousness is more of a philosophical debate than a technical one).

Still, the idea of an artificial person who thinks and feels is one I don't think is strictly impossible. After all, our own bodies and brains are just organic machines that have developed over billions of years of trial-and-error evolution. It stands to reason that we could make something similar with artificial materials.

Elden Ring has vast lore, and in typical FromSoft style, the nature of that lore is vague and implied, and very much open to interpretation. Just getting a broad timeline can be difficult, and I suspect that some might even contradict itself, the information we find in-game being imperfect.

However, within the lore, we have a type of being called the Albinaurics, and they've always fascinated me. Generally pale in complexion (whenever I type this I feel like it must be the UK spelling of the word, but then "complection," which feels like how it should be spelled, is always caught by spell-check functions), there are three kinds of Albinaurics we see in-game. Some look like wizened old men. Others look like fairly healthy young women. And lastly, we have bizarre bulbous-headed ones that look vaguely frog-like in appearance. The former two are both paraplegic, and in the case of the old men, their legs are literally fading from existence. The loss of their legs seems to be fatal - likely coinciding with other internal issues.

We know them to be artificial people, but it's not strictly clear who made them.

One possibility is that they're made by the Nox of the Eternal Cities, underground (in Elden Ring's "underdark"). But we don't actually see a lot of them there, other than the bloody red ones around Mohgwyn Palace. Instead, we see larval tears, the mercury-like blobs that can transform into people.

I suspect there's a connection between them, but I don't know that we can strictly say that the Albinaurics are created in the same way that the Mimic Tears are.

There are a few pretty clear suspects (even sometimes identified explicitly). Loretta, whom we fight a summoned spirit of at Caria Manor and later fight for real at Miquella's Haligtree (she's basically the midway boss in the Haligtree/Ephael legacy dungeon) is very likely an Albinauric. She has at least been a champion to them, and seems to have come there to protect Albinauric refugees seeking acceptance into Miquella's new society there (there are also some cocoons not unlike Miquella's that seem to have Albinaurics attempting to be reborn there - though, and this is a real aside, I saw a take somewhere that suggested that the body in the cocoon is actually Mohg's, not Miquella's, which honestly solves a lot of lore questions I've had, and we can just assume the Mohg we fight is a kind of projected manifestation of his through his blood, given that he and Morgott are clearly very adept at manifesting such projections. And hey, isn't the plan for Mohg to be "reborn" as Radahn?)

Anyway, all that aside, the fact that we face Loretta on horseback is actually kind of telling - while the wizened man Albinaurics will sometimes crawl at us, the Albinauric women often ride wolves to give them mobility. None of the non-frog-like Albinaurics can walk.

Put a pin in that.

Similar to Loretta, Gaius in the Shadow of the Erdtree is said I think explicitly to be an albinauric. He rides a massive boar (with what sometimes feels like an impossible large attacking hit-box that's insanely hard to dodge). His armor consists of only a chestpiece, gloves, and helmet, because he doesn't have legs (though we can find a set of leg armor that was evidently there to mock him).

Now, artificial life is not necessarily restricted to the Albinaurics. Already, we have the Mimic Tears. But as we discover in Shadow of the Erdtree, the Jar Warriors (who certainly count even in modern days) were originally created by stuffing Marika's people into jars in the hopes of creating a "Saint."

The exact meaning of "Saint" is an interesting one (I can think of two people explicitly called Saints, namely Trina and Romina,) but I think there's a very strong implication that Marika might have actually been the result of one of these jar rituals actually being a success. This would mean that, while the core of Marika was one of the Shamans from the village, she might have actually been combined with others to form an amalgam capable of being an Empyrean.

Her dual nature as Marika and Radagon has long been associated with the creation of the Alchemical Rebis, which is a goal of Alchemy.

But I wouldn't call her an Albinauric - she just might be a "made" person, and I'd even hesitate to say "artificial." (Though the fact that her form is like a crumbled statue at the end of the game really makes you wonder how organic she truly is - or anyone, for that matter.)

One thing that does seem to link Albinaurics - at least those of the first generation (and I will say now, I can't think of any real interesting stuff to say about there being a second generation of albinaurics with frog heads) - is the failure of their legs.

And you know who doesn't seem to have functional legs?

Literally all of Radagon and Renalla's children.

Admittedly, this is a bit circumstantial. We never see a full picture of Rykard before he merged with the God-Devouring Serpent, only portraits that are at best waist-up. We also never see Ranni in her original body, only the seemingly burned corpse she left at the top of the Liurnian Divine Tower.

But we do see Radahn in his original body.

One of the really endearing things about Radahn is that he mastered gravity magic so that his ancient horse, Leonard, could continue to carry him even when he grew to enormous size. Leonard is there in the boss fight against him in Caelid (we can presume the poor horse dies when we take him down).

Now, when we fight Radahn again in Enir-Elim at the end of the DLC, he's fully capable of running around on his own, but that's because he's literally been transplanted into Mohg's body. Much like Ranni has no problem standing up in the Age of Stars ending, it's because she's not in her original body (actually kind of interesting that the three children of Renalla aren't really in their original bodies anymore).

Anyway, Radahn is always on Leonard, even in the pre-release trailer when he faces off against Malenia. You know what else you might notice about his model during the boss fight?

Dude's got no feet.

Now, I think earlier on, there was speculation that this was just the result of his long madness under the effects of the Scarlet Rot, and that his feet were basically sanded away by his endless wandering across the battlefield.

But... what if the children of Radagon and Renalla are actually Albinaurics? Then, the degradation of Radahn's feet would be consistent with the affliction that the Albinaurics suffer. It would also explain the desperation that Ranni and Rykard each felt to find new bodies.

But what about Renalla and Radagon?

It's a real matter of debate as to whether Radagon was ever an independent individual, or if he was always just Marika's masculine persona (her animus, to use a Jungian term).

I'm inclined to think that neither of them is an Albinauric. Radagon obviously has no problem standing when we fight him at the end of the game (indeed, with all the botanical imagery in the game, Radagon represents a trellis with his Great Rune). And while Renalla cannot walk when we fight her (the second phase of the fight is actually an illusion created by Ranni to give her mother some dignity,) her sister Relanna is perfectly capable of walking around when we fight her, so Renalla's bed-ridden status might not be physiological so much as psychological.

How would that work, though?

Well, the first phase of the Renalla fight has a ton of legless children endlessly reborn by Renalla, who might actually be Albinaurics.

And this is something I've always struggled to unpack:

Why are the Knights of the Cuckoo called that?

The Cuckoo is a bird famous (infamous?) for destroying the eggs of other birds and laying their eggs in the empty nest. The mother bird victim will then raise the young Cuckoos, thinking they are her own.

And so, I had always thought that Renalla must be the victim of some similar plot. Was it just the amber-like egg containing her Rune of Rebirth?

Or was it three artificial children?

Look, it's a lot harder to trick a mother into thinking that children are hers than a father, given how physiology works (yes, I know that a trans father can be the one to carry the baby to term, but I'm using "mother" and "father" here in the sense of their reproductive role). But in Elden Ring, it's clear that birthing offspring does not necessarily work the way it does in our world.

There's lots of reason to believe that Radagon's marriage to Renalla was a matter of political expediency, and fully exploited the fact that Renalla probably thought it was a real act of love and equal partnership. Ranni is rightfully enraged that her mother was used so poorly, knowing what a magnificent and powerful person she had been. Renalla was clearly broken by Radagon's abandonment.

But given the callousness with which Radagon treated Renalla, I also think it is well within reason to think that he took full control over her heirs and offspring, making them rather than siring them.

Ironic, then, that if we consider the Age of Stars ending canonical (I don't think any single ending is likely to be considered canon, but the Age of Stars one feels the most right to me,) then it was one of these artificial children who would unmake the Golden Order and overthrow Marika.

UA: Vestige Patron Warlock

 You know what's metal as hell?

Forging a pact with a dying god.

Yes, the Vestige is a patron that was once a powerful deity, but is on their way out, soon (or maybe already) adrift on the Astral Sea. Conceptually, there's certainly some potential for this to overlap with the Great Old One, but I think the GOO is implied to have never really been tied directly to the religious framework of gods, celestials, and fiends. But I think the potential for deeply esoteric lore and ancient secrets is very strong with this concept. Let's hope the mechanics match that potential!

Before we get into them, though, the Vestige patron is notably a pet subclass, giving you a manfiestation of that vestige that acts as a battle companion. Maybe it's because I played WoW first, but it always struck me as strange that there was no Warlock pet subclass.

Patron Spells:

The approach here is very different: you pick from the Life, Light, Trickery, or War domains of Clerics. Your Vestige spells are the same list as the Cleric subclass' spells.

I'd probably say that Life and War are the best options, but I'm not very confident in that. Life will of course give you a lot of healing, if that's something your party could use. Cure Wounds at 5th level is an average of probably 50 healing.

Level 3:

Vestige Companion

You get a combat pet, like Beast Masters or Battle Smiths. Your is a Vestige Companion, which can be a Celestial, Fiend, or Undead. You can re-summon it when you finish a long rest and change its appearance and its creature type.

Like other subclass pets, you need to use a bonus action to direct it unless you're incapacitated. You can also sacrifice one of your attacks to let it take an attack each turn.

If the vestige is reduced to 0 HP, you can spend 1 minute performing a magical ceremony to get it back - unlike the other subclass pets, you don't need to expend any spell slot to do this, so you should basically always get it back unless you have two fights in quick succession.

Also, unlike other pets, you can dismiss the vestige into a pocket dimension as an action, like a familiar, and then you can use an action while it's dismissed this way to summon it to an unoccupied space within 30 feet of you.

The companion is Small, has an AC of 13+ your Charisma (so likely starting 16 and going up to 18) and has a 30-foot hovering fly speed. It's immune to being Charmed, Frightened, or Prone. It has resistance to the damage associated with its type (fire for Fiends, necrotic for Undead, or radiant for Celestials).

It has an attack called Vestige's Strike, which is either melee or ranged up to 60 feet, and deals 1d6+3+your Charisma, dealing the damage associated with its type (see above).

It also has a bonus action it can do 1/day, which depends on its type:

Cursed Invocation (Undead): The vestige curses a target within 30 feet of it that you can see for 1 minute. While cursed, the target has disadvantage on attacks against you or your vestige.

    Solid enough, and definitely best to use against a tough boss monster.

Fiendish Swap (Fiend): If you are within 60 feet of each other, you and the vestige teleport to swap places.

    There's some fun utility you can get out of this, though the 1/day limit will make you probably try to hold on to it too much.

Healing Touch (Celestial): The vestige touches another creature, who regains HP equal to 2d8 + your Charisma and they end one of either the Blinded, Deafened, or Poisoned condition.

    A pretty solid emergency heal. Nothing enormous, but nice to have. Not quite as exciting if we take the Life domain spell list, but still good to have.

Level 6:

Vestige Recovery

The Vestige now regains its bonus action Divine Power (the three bonus action options in its stat block) when you take a Short or Long rest or when you use your Magical Cunning feature.

    Ok, you know what? I just said that these things were less impressive with such limited use. This addresses that. This might not be that exciting for our whole level 6 feature, but it's welcome.

Level 10:

Aura of Power

Your vestige becomes more powerful and can manifest an aura in a 30-foot emanation when you use a Magic action to activate it. The aura lasts a number of hours equal to your Charisma modifier or until the Vestige disappears or is temporarily dismissed. You, the vestige, and your allies within the aura gain resistance to Fire, Necrotic, and Radiant damage and have immunity to the charmed and frightened conditions. You can manifest this aura once per long rest.

Also, when you drop to 0 HP while within the aura, you instead change your HP to a number equal to your Warlock level plus your Charisma. The vestige is then dismissed to its pocket dimension and can't be returned until you finish a long rest.

    Ok, a lot to unpack:

    Getting all three resistances and the condition immunities make this pretty powerful. And it can last quite a long time. You won't be able to play any dismiss/summon shenanigans while it's active, as that'll cancel the aura.

    I'd honestly prefer getting something other than the "drop to zero" protection, as I think we already get that with other subclasses like the Undead patron.

Level 14:

Semblance of Life

Once per long rest, while the Vestige is within 90 feet of you, you can cast a special version of Summon Fiend, Summon Undead, or Summon Celestial without requiring any material components or expending a spell slot. Rather than summoning a new creature, your Vestige takes on the stat block of the summoned spirit for the duration of the spell, reverting to its normal form when the spell ends. The spell is cast at a level equal to half your Warlock level, rounded down (maximum 9th level) and its duration is reduced to 1 minute.

    Phew, ok, let's unpack this:

    Warlocks normally can't upcast Summon spells beyond 5th level, with Summon Fiend as the only one they can cast at higher levels via Mystic Arcanum. When you get this, you'll be casting it at 7th level. Effectively, this gives you an extra 7th level spell, and later an extra 8th level and 9th level, though limited in which spell that can be. That being said, Summon spells are quite good and scale well.

    I'd like to see it clarified, but I think that if the "spirit" version of the vestige is reduced to 0 HP, it ought to revert to its normal form rather than dying - in theory a Warlock could just drop concentration right when it would take lethal damage, so as a DM I'd just rule it like the 5.0 version of polymorph and Wild Shape, where any damage carries over to the original form.

Overall Thoughts:

    My instinct is that this is probably pretty good. I think it would be cool if they expand the Patron spells to work with any Cleric domain, which would let the subclass continue to grow a little. Because the pet can fly and make ranged attacks, it should be able to attack pretty reliably.

    What I find kind of weird though, is that the "pet" warlock subclass would be "a dying god." It feels like an inversion of the patron/warlock relationship, even if the vestige is more like an avatar than the deity themselves. Of all patrons, the Vestige feels like it should be the one that fills the warlock with awe (and possibly dread).

And that marks the last of the Mystic subclasses. Very curious to see where these might be found - I think we're due for a new "general rules expansion" book in the vein of Xanathar's and Tasha's, and book with a theme of "magic" would be a great place for these four and the Arcane subclasses seen earlier.

UA: Magic Stealer Rogue

 The Rogue, of course, already has a subclass that focuses on magic. The Arcane Trickster is a popular option as a 1/3 caster. But did you want to play a Rogue who could interact a lot with magic while not actually casting any spells themselves?

Like the Spellguard Paladin, the Magic Stealer (can't call it Magic Thief I guess because of the Thief subclass) has a kind of love/hate relationship with spellcasters, with some features that disrupt enemy spellcasters and some that can aid friendly ones.

Let's take a look:

Level 3:

Empower Sneak Attack

When a creature within 30 feet of you casts a level 1+ spell (I see we're using more efficient language here) you can use a reaction to absorb some of the spell's energy. Until the end of your next turn, the next time you hit with a Sneak Attack, you deal extra Force damage equal to a number of d6s equal to the spell's level.

You can take this reaction Int times per long rest (minimum 1).

    So, on one hand, we have a similar issue with the Scion of the Three Rogue - a feature that is very cool, but also very limited in use. Not that it makes this better - arguably it makes it worse - but you might not encounter many enemies casting leveled spells, especially at early levels, but also depending on the foes you face. Against a Lich? This will be quite nice. Against an Elemental Cataclysm? Not so much. The damage boost is nice - Rogues honestly need a bit more damage-boosting in their subclasses, as the base class' damage output leaves something to be desired. But it's very limited use - likely 3 times per day until level 10 or so. Luckily, you get a second 3rd level feature, and this one's... maybe really good.

Drain Magic

As a magic action, you can touch a willing creature under the effects of a 1st or 2nd level spell. You end the spell's effects on them, and then that creature regains an expended spell slot of 2nd level or lower (their choice). You can do this once per short or long rest.

    Make no mistake: this lets your friend level up a spell slot.

    While it would obviously be best to use on some hostile spell - someone casts Blindness/Deafness on them, for example - the more likely way for you to use this is to have a, say, Wizard cast Detect Magic on themselves, and then right when the 10-minute duration is up, you end the spell six seconds early and give them a 2nd level spell slot.

    The limit per short rest of course prevents you from going too crazy with it, likewise the spell level limitation (though check back in with me later,) but the ultimate fact here is that you're essentially turning a 1st level spell slot into a 2nd level spell slot, which is cool. And unlike the other feature, you're almost certain to be able to use this regularly in any campaign.

Level 9:

Magical Sabotage

You gain the following new Cunning Strike options:

Spell Susceptibility (cost 2d6): The target has Disadvantage on the next saving throw it makes against a spell until the start of your next turn.

    While somewhat costly for our damage, this can set an ally up very nicely.

Disrupt Spell (cost 3d6): Whenever the target casts a spell before the start of your next turn, they must make an Intelligence saving throw or the spell dissipates, wasting the action/bonus action/reaction used to cast it, though if it was cast with a spell slot, the slot is not expended.

    Couple things: First, this is essentially a preemptive counterspell that targets Int saves. Granted, while a lot of monsters don't have good Intelligence saving throws, spellcasters often can. However, this also works on all spells they try to cast before your next turn, so if they fail to cast a spell with their action, they still also have to save to cast a spell as a bonus action. Another nuance here that I think we need to figure out the ruling on for DMs is this: NPCs don't use spell slots anymore. When a Lich casts Chain Lightning as a 1/day spell, does it get to retain the spell slot if it's counterspelled or prevented with this feature? Or, because it's not a spell slot, is that use still expended? Is this meant to favor players? Or are we meant to treat those X/day spells as using spell slots?

Steal Resistance (cost 2d6): Choose one kind of damage. If the target has resistance to that kind of damage, until the start of your next turn, the target loses that resistance and you gain it.

    This becomes way more powerful if you're fighting foes from pre-5.5 sources that have resistance to bludgeoning, piercing, or slashing damage made with non-magical weapons. That was everywhere in 5.0, and most monsters also didn't have magical weapon attacks. More likely, though, is doing something like grabbing a Demon's fire resistance.

    One hitch here is that a lot of very elemental-themed monsters are fully immune to the damage they're associated with. This doesn't work if you use it on a Fire Elemental, both failing to make them any more vulnerable and failing to grant you resistance. I think my fix might be to say that if they're immune, they remain immune, but you still get the resistance.

Level 13:

Improved Drain Magic

You can now use Drain Magic as a bonus action. Additionally, you can now end 3rd level spells as well as 1st or 2nd as before. The target recovers an expended slot of 3rd or lower now.

    3rd level spells are a pretty huge leap from 2nd, so this is a big bonus. Being able to turn a Mage Armor into a, like, Fireball, is a pretty huge deal. Also, by making this a bonus action instead of an action, it's much easier to use on detrimental spells (though I don't know how often you'll have 3rd or lower spells cast on your friends when you're level 13). Still, I think this is a good improvement to what is already the best feature for this subclass.

Level 17:

Eldritch Implosion

When you use Empower Sneak Attack, you can force the target to make a Con save (DC based on your Dex). On a failure, the spell dissipates with no effect and the target has the Stunned condition until the start of its next turn.

    You know, I actually think this is a pretty cool capstone. A counterspell (though notably, unlike Counterspell 5.5, they don't get to keep the spell slot) that also stuns the target is pretty great. Again, you're only going to be able to do this a few times per day, and your foes are going to need to be casting actual spells for this to work.

    But I like that this effectively disincentivizes them from casting spells - not only might it not work, but they might get stunned. That dragon might elect to stop casting spells as part of their multiattack.

Overall Thoughts:

    Once again, like the Spellguard Paladin, I think this subclass could do very well in campaigns with a lot of spells flying around. But truly, I think Drain Magic has a lot of potential. Even if the subclass doesn't wind up being that powerful on closer analysis, I applaud that it truly feels very different from any other I've seen, even the Arcane Trickster.

UA: Oath of the Spellguard Paladin

 So, my main in World of Warcraft for nearly my entire time playing the game (it'll be 20 years this September) is a Protection Paladin. When I first encountered the Paladin class, it was in Quest for Glory V, and in that, you started with a shield that had a big sort of mystic eye on it, so I initially thought of Paladins as a more arcane/esoteric class. While I do enjoy the righteous, holy light feel of my WoW Paladin, it would be cool to give him a more arcane aesthetic (as I've written many times, I love "Battlemages" like the Eldritch Knight).

The Spellguard has some of those vibes - a Paladin oath dedicated to countering wicked spellcasters. But on top of that, they're also strongly oriented around being bodyguards. While they don't work quite like the Ancestral Guardian Barbarian, for example, they will be very good at protecting an ally.

Frankly, the RP potential to have a party with a Wizard and their loyal friend and protector Paladin is strong (like an Aes Sedai and their Warder from The Wheel of Time).

Let's get into features:

Oath Spells:

1st: Detect Magic, Shield

2nd: See Invisibility, Silence

3rd: Counterspell, Dispel Magic

4th: Freedom of Movement, Otiluke's Resilient Sphere

5th: Circle of Power, Hallow

    Ok, first things first: Shield is insane on a character who wears heavy armor. I could almost never be hit on my Eldritch Knight, and a Paladin has better spell progression. But there are also some very solid spells here, like Dispel Magic, Freedom of Movement, Otiluke's Resilient Sphere.

    Silence, Counterspell, and some others here really secure this subclass as the, if you'll pardon the expression, "Mage-Fucker" subclass.

Level 3:

Guardian Bond:

As a magic action, you can expend your Channel Divinity to forge a bond with a creature within 5 feet of you for one hour or until you're unconscious. (You can also end it early if you want, and it ends if you use this on another creature).

If the creature is within your reach and it hit within attack, you can use a reaction to add your Charisma to the bonded creature's AC (minimum of +1) and potentially make the attack miss.

    This is strong, though we should note that you need to really stick close to the ally. "Within reach" is interesting, because you might thus really want to fight with a reach weapon (and maybe be a Bugbear as well) to ensure that you have the most ability to protect them.

    If we assume you try to start off with a +3 to Charisma, this is pretty solid, and if you're able to cap it, that becomes basically a Shield spell you can cast on your friend. Notably, while it only lasts an hour and takes your Channel Divinity, the actual uses of the reaction are unlimited, so if you can stay close to your buddy, you can really protect them quite a lot. But that range is, admittedly, pretty tight.

Spellguard Strike:

Also at 3, when you see a creature within your reach casting a spell with Verbal, Somatic, or Material components, you can take a reaction to make a melee attack against them with a weapon or Unarmed Strike.

    This is nice - but we also need to reckon with how spellcasting NPCs have changed in 5.5. While they still often cast real spells, most of their "bread-butter" damaging "spells" aren't technically spells, and there's no indication on whether an Archmage's Arcane Burst involves any components. Technically, I think they don't. Still, they'll often cast a real spell especially on the first few rounds of combat.

Level 7:

Aura of Concentration

Your Aura of Protection grants advantage on Constitution saving throws that you and affected allies make to maintain Concentration.

    While I'd advise nearly any spellcasting character to pick up War Caster ASAP, thus making this redundant, it's likely you won't have that, and you're the person who most often benefits from your aura. With advantage and your Charisma bonus to the saves, this will make it very hard for you or nearby allies (like the one you're probably protecting with Guardian Bond) to lose concentration.

Level 15:

Spell-Breaking Blade

After you hit a creature with your Spellguard Strike, you can cast Counterspell as part of the same Reaction. If the creature is still able to cast their spell despite your Counterspell, your spell slot is not expended.

    Again, this is very dependent on whether you are facing a lot of spellcasters that are actually casting spells. If you are, I think this is great, getting both some damage and locking them down on top of that. This could be insanely clutch if it stops something like a villain escaping with a Dimension Door spell. And I like the refund here, especially given that a 3rd level slot is probably a lot more precious to you as a half-caster.

Level 20:

Eternal Spellguard

As a bonus action, you can empower your Aura of Protection for 1 minute (or until you end the effect for some reason). You can do this once per long rest, but regain the ability if you expend a 5th level spell slot. You get the following:

Bodyguard: When the target of your Guardian Bond is in the aura, they have resistance to all damage.

Protection from Magic: You and your allies in the aura have advantage on saving throws against spells.

Spell Ward: Spell attack rolls against you and your allies in the aura have disadvantage.

    Really important clarification needs to be made: In the 5.5 monster stat blocks, they don't mention if something is a "spell attack" or a "weapon attack." But I'd argue that an Arcane Burst from an Archmage is 100% a spell attack, even if it's not technically a spell being cast. If it's only "spells that use an attack roll," this becomes much less powerful.

    But I think one of the really great things here is the Bodyguard feature, really expanding the use of Guardian Bond.

Overall Thoughts:

    This subclass has the potential to be awesome in the right campaign. But you are going to need to be fighting a bunch of mages, which largely means humanoid NPCs. That said, it need not only be such monsters. Yes, we've got Liches, but also most adult/ancient dragons now incorporate spellcasting into their multiattack, and powerful fiends like Pit Fiends have spellcasting as part of their suite of abilities.

    As a DM, I'm super grateful that spellcasting monsters don't have a ton of spell slots to track anymore, but I do think especailly at higher levels, you will still see them casting real spells, and this subclass is very well-suited to dealing with them.

    Guardian Bond is one of the subclass' biggest universal features, but you've got to think a lot about who you want to protect with it - protecting a squishy Wizard does make sense, but that might make it harder to wade into melee while the casters are far away. You might actually be better-suited putting it on a Monk or Bladelock.

    Yeah, I think this is quite powerful, and situationally insanely so. But I can also imagine scenarios where you've just picked this for the wrong campaign, and that would feel bad.

UA: Warrior of the Mystic Arts Monk

 Spellcasting is a common feature in 5E - only four classes don't get it or Pact Magic, and the Rogue and Fighter each have a subclass that allows you to get a very limited form of spellcasting. Even as only 1/3 casters, the Arcane Trickster Rogue and the Eldritch Knight Fighter are considered among if not the very best of their respective classes' subclasses.

Well, chalk up a third one-third caster: the Monk Warrior of the Mystic Arts.

It's a little bit different, though for the most part functions similarly to the others, and particularly has a lot of parallels with the Eldritch Knight. Let's get to it!

Level 3:

    Spellcasting:

This is your sole 3rd level feature, though it's a pretty big one. Again, like EKs and ATs, MAs (I guess?) get one-third spell progression. So, at level 3, you'll have 1st level spells, getting 2nd level spells at 7, 3rd level spells at 13, and 4th level spells at 19. Thus, you're really going to have to focus a lot on efficient spells and cantrips.

Monks already focus on one of their mental stats a lot anyway, so thankfully they just make your spellcasting ability Wisdom, rather than Intelligence like the other 1/3 casters. However, the other big difference here is that you'll be taking spells from the Sorcerer spell list, rather than the Wizard one.

Spell slot and cantrip progression is the same as the other 1/3 casters, but there's absolutely no limitation on spell school (something that was relaxed but not eliminated in the 5.5 revamp for the others).

    I will say, some of the spells that I get really excited about on an EK are not quite as impressive here - Shield, for example, is still not a bad choice to pick up, but thanks to Deflect Attack, you have some powerful competition for that reaction, and already had something that does a roughly equivalent thing.

    But, obviously, spellcasting is very powerful, and between utility spells like Jump (which is extra cheap for Monks given their high movement speed) and anything that can boost the damage of their attacks (admittedly there aren't a ton of those at 1st or 2nd level) will be very powerful, though at least looking solely at the PHB, they don't get, like Conjure Minor Elementals, and while they get Magic Weapon, that's not going to help with Fury of Blows. Oh man, they don't get Spirit Shroud either...

    Still, I'm sure there are some good spells to pick from, and it's the kind of feature that technically expands every time they add new Sorcerer spells to the game.

    For Cantrips, True Strike can work fine, but I'd go for Booming Blade/Green Flame Blade if you can use older content. Monks can fight fully unarmed, but you can use a weapon for your main Attack Action attacks. (We'll also see soon why we want a good attack cantrip). Booming Blade can combo well with a Shove as a bonus action, especially as it scales up at higher levels and will eventually out-damage an unarmed strike, probably (4d8 is like 18, and a tier 4 unarmed strike with +3 Wraps is 1d12+8, or 14.5. Even at level 20 with 24 Dexterity it's only 16.5).

    One thing that feels a little wrong here is that we don't get any other 3rd level feature. Arcane Tricksters get Mage Hand Legerdemain and Eldritch Knights get War Bond. These guys ought to get something on that power level.

Level 6:

    Mystic Focus

Much like a Sorcerer can convert spell slots to sorcery points and vice versa, MA Monks can do the same with Focus Points. You can expend a spell slot to regain FP equal to the slot's level (no action required). And then, as a bonus action, you can convert FP into spell slots, gaining a 1st level slot for 2, 2nd level for 3, 3rd level for 5, and 4th level for 6 (you can only regain expended slots, and thus can't get higher level slots at a lower level).

    I believe this is the same cost progression that Sorcerers have. But there's a real powerful hack here: Monks get FP back on a short rest. Thus, you can kind of be a "coffee monk," converting all leftover FP before you take a short rest into recovered spell slots, so you could theoretically keep recovering your spell slots constantly if your DM allows you to take lots of short rests. Monks also have a lot more ways to regain FP in 5.5, so this could be really, really strong.

    Mystic Fighting Style:

When you take the Attack Action, you can replace one of your attacks with a casting of a Sorcerer cantrip that has a 1 action casting time.

    So yes, looks like the "Bladesinger Extra Attack" feature is becoming much more common. This is obviously good. While we might be less excited about weapon-based cantrips like True Strike, Booming Blade, or Green-Flame Blade given that we want to be punching things, there's no reason we can't have a Spear or what-have-you. Indeed, thanks to Martial Arts, the weapon we use to attack with one of these cantrips is going to scale in damage. I tend to like GFB for its multi-target damage, but Booming Blade, as mentioned before, works nicely with the Monks' ability to make Unarmed Strikes as a bonus action, so you can Booming Blade them and then shove them away, potentially forcing them to take the extra damage if they want to close the distance again (it's not quite as elegant as just using a Push weapon with it, but still good). I will also say that something like Mind Sliver could be great for making Stunning Strike more likely to work. And Blade Ward (one of the suggested spells) can effectively boost your AC by 1d4 for the cost of an attack (potentially supplemented with Shield).

Level 11:

    Centered Focus

When you expend a Focus Point on Flurry of Blows, Patient Defense, or Step of the Wind, you have advantage on any saving throw you make to maintain concentration on a spell until the start of your next turn.

    By level 11, I think this basically means every turn. Getting a big chunk of the Warcaster feat is also really nice for a class that is very multiple ability-score dependent (you'd prefer to just take ASIs for the most part). Now, what your best concentration spells? Enlarge is a strong option to give yourself an extra d4 on each of your attacks (I'd forgotten about that when figuring out good spells for MA Monks) but there are also lots of crowd control/utility spells to consider (Sleep, for instance).

Level 17:

    Improved Mystic Fighting Style

When you take the attack action on your turn, you can replace two of the attacks with a casting of one of your level 1 or 2 Sorcerer spells that has a casting time of an action.

    This is utterly worthless. Ok, maybe it's not utterly worthless, because if you take two levels of Fighter and want to Action Surge... No, this is worthless.

    This is a copy-and-paste of the Eldritch Knight's Improved War Magic, but spending two attacks to cast a spell makes sense because a Fighter at these high levels has three attacks. For a Monk, why in the world are we not just going to cast a spell of any level we can with the Magic action?

    Now, if this let us replace any two attacks on our turn with the casting of a 1st or 2nd level spell, that would be different - we could Flurry of Blows to cast a spell as a bonus action and then have an Unarmed Strike left over (remember that we get 3 attacks from FoB by level 10 now). But here, two attacks is the entirety of our Attack Action. So we're just not getting anything out of this.

Overall Thoughts:

Just having spellcasting is going to make this a powerful subclass. But I think they could do some more work on making it interesting beyond the spells it gains. Whatever is added doesn't need to - and in fact, should not be - very powerful, but I just want to get a little bit of special flavoring here.

And again, the capstone is profoundly worthless, essentially not even a feature at all. (The only scenario in which I can possibly imagine it being useful is if you multiclass into Fighter to get action surge, and for some reason you need to attack a target before casting the chosen spell, and your DM is a stickler about making you take your regular action before your action-surge action, which cannot be the Magic action. This is such a profound corner-case that I just don't think it justifies this nothing feature.) Given how pointless it is, I really wonder if the intent is instead that you can replace any two attacks with a spell, including your bonus action attacks, which would actually make this feature somewhat decent. But the way it's worded implies it's only from the attacks you get with the Attack action. (Oh, and maybe if you somehow got a weapon mastery and a nick weapon, you'd technically be making three attacks with your action. Still an edge case.)

Being able to cast a spell as part of, say, a Flurry of Blows would actually be somewhat akin to a Sorcerer using Quickened Spell, which would reinforce why Mystic Arts Monks get the mostly inferior Sorcerer spell list rather than the Wizard one.

Basically, really solid potential, and it might already be one of the best Monk subclasses, but it needs another pass or two.