The WoW/D&D Book Seems Very Ambitious: Lineages and "Hero Subclasses"

 I've been looking up interviews with designers on the WoW/D&D crossover book, and this one with James Wyatt gave us a lot more exciting and interesting details.

Hero Subclasses:

The Demon Hunter and Death Knight are being presented in the WoW book as subclasses for the Ranger and Paladin, respectively. Hearing that, I'd been a bit worried about how well that would really get the vibes and flavor of those classes across. While I think that the base classes they're attached to are fairly appropriate (I could imagine Demon Hunters as using the Warlock base class, but you'd need to force them to go Pact of the Blade somehow) subclasses can be somewhat limited in how much they change how someone plays the game.

The approach, however, to how WoW classes are represented in D&D is something that Wyatt touched on, saying that the approach varies from class to class. Mages of all three specializations are basically Evoker Wizards, but he says that they'll list suggested spells to take and even have new feats to support the playstyles associated with those specs.

But when it comes to these Hero Classes, while details are sparse, the idea is that you need to start the character at 3rd level to play one, and that the third-level features the subclasses have will go back and make some changes to 1st and 2nd level features from those base classes. The impression I get is that these subclasses will be more dramatically different than other subclasses - naturally, a Beast Master Ranger fits perfectly with the Beast Mastery Hunter from WoW, but a Demon Hunter is a totally separate class in WoW. If this subclass then makes more extensive changes to how the Ranger actually works, it might help differentiate itself more while still making use of the existing Ranger framework.

Sadly, we don't really have details on how this will work. My first guess is that Ebon Blade Paladins might do Necrotic damage instead of Radiant with their Divine Smite (maybe changing its name - perhaps Rune Strike?) But the potential is there for more extensive changes as well.

Lineages:

So, I'd assumed the path of least resistance for the way they handle playable species. And in fairness, some of the options will be 1:1 with the D&D ones. Wyatt mentioned that D&D Orcs and WoW Orcs are basically the same, so if you want to play an Orc who lives in the suburbs of Orgrimmar, you can just use the option from the Player's Handbook.

However, it appears that they're not going the simplest route on all of these. I'd assumed that the Night Elves would simply be re-skinned Wood Elves, and that the Blood Elves would be re-skinned High Elves. But evidently, they'll be including lineages for all five WoW Elf peoples - the Night Elves, Blood Elves, Void Elves, Nightborne, and the High Elves (curious to see if that one does just use the PHB version). In WoW, you can only play two kinds of Trolls, the Darkspear or Zandalari, but evidently there will be other options, like Forest Trolls (basically the Amani) and then perhaps the Ice Trolls (Drakkari,) Desert Trolls (Farraki) and Jungle Trolls (Gurubashi, though technically the Darkspear are from this lineage as well).

He mentioned specifically that the Draenei will have four lineages: "Exodar" Draenei (kind of the default) and Lightforged Draenei, both of which are playable in game. Then, you can play as a Man'ari Eredar (former demons who have rejoined their Eredar kin after the defeat of the Burning Legion, which is available just as a cosmetic option for standard Draenei in WoW) and finally the Krokul/Broken, who have been part of the Draenei people since they were introduced in Burning Crusade (2007) but have never been playable.

Regarding humans, they expect you to simply use the PHB version of the Human, but they're adding new Origin Feats to reflect different national backgrounds. I assume we'll at least get ones for Stormwind and Kul Tiras (the two playable humans in WoW, unless you count the werewolf-like Worgen and the Undead, both of which are former humans).

While the recent Lupin from Ravenloft: Horrors Within certainly could stand in for the Worgen, apparently the Worgen in this book will be an original species, though Wyatt described them as being based on the framework of the Shifter from Eberron, but narrowed down to exclusively wolf-themed features.

I believe Tauren were also mentioned, with lineage options for Taunka. Presumably, they'll include the Highmountain Tauren and possibly the Yaungol.

    The more I learn about this book, the more impressed I am at the high ambition it seems to reflect. This doesn't seem like a "let's just tweak things barely enough to make it fit in D&D's rules," but seems to be a really radical reimagining how how 5.5's rules work to best emulate the WoW feel.

My big criticism of D&D's direction over the course of much of 5E is that it could stand to be bolder. In other interviews, I've seen them talk about how they might bring ideas designed for this WoW book into the broader 5.5 systems, and that makes me excited that this will be far more than a corporate-synergy-friendly cash-grab, and might actually wind up being one of the most important books in 5.5.

Dungeon Bosses and the WoW Dungeons Coming in the D&D Book

 Yeah, I mean, you had to expect I'd be writing a lot about this, right?

With the exception of Azjol-Nerub, all the dungeons featured in the World of Warcraft D&D book are from the original release of World of Warcraft.

"Vanilla" WoW featured the two large continents of Kalimdor and the Eastern Kingdoms. Broadly speaking, the continents were mostly home to one of the two player factions, with the Alliance having a larger presence in the EKs and the Horde having more territory in Kalimdor (but with each having a bit of territory on the other - the Undead control the fallen kingdom of Lordaeron, in the northern part of the Eastern Kingdoms, and the Night Elves' home territories are in the north of Kalimdor).

Anyway, the way dungeons work in WoW is that most have somewhere from 3-5 bosses. Boss fights tend to have special mechanics that players need to contend with to successfully defeat them (though admittedly there were some fights in the early days which were "tank and spank" fights that were extremely straightforward). Usually they're pretty linear, though sometimes you can beat some of the bosses in different orders, and occasionally (though I don't think any in recent years) there will be optional bosses. Each boss drops loot from a unique table, so if you know that a particular, say, belt you want drops from a boss, you might run that dungeon until that item drops for you. Between these boss fights are "trash," which are less powerful enemies that can still potentially be challenging, but are there to kind of pace out the dungeon. Other than the normal randomized loot that anything will have, these typically don't drop anything predictably. WoW, of course, can't have all the complex nuance of character interactions that D&D has, so its gameplay is almost entirely combat-focused, and a dungeon is a long string of fights.

In 2010, six years after the original launch, the Cataclysm expansion saw a major revamp of the original two continents, redesigning the questing experience and, in some cases, changing some of the dungeons to reflect the story's development. Some of these dungeons from Vanilla would also get revamps later on that weren't tied to Cataclysm. (One reason for the changes was that, starting in the first expansion, the idea of Heroic Dungeons was introduced, which let you set the difficulty of a dungeon up so that it would be appropriate for max-level characters. While initially this was only for dungeons from the latest expansion and within that expansion's expanded level range, starting in Cataclysm, they made heroic versions of dungeons you'd have visited at low levels, including Deadmines and Shadowfang Keep).

Which is all to say that some of these dungeons have multiple versions of them.

What I'm here to investigate, ultimately, is whether the 30 "dungeon boss" stat blocks are specifically meant for these dungeons, or if these will be more broadly 30 iconic dungeon bosses from across WoW's history.

So, let's total them up:

Azjol-Nerub: 3

The sole dungeon not in the Eastern Kingdoms or Kalimdor, it's instead up in the frozen continent of Northrend, home to the Undead Scourge put also the seat of the Titan Keepers, Ulduar. Underground, the spider-like Nerubians have their realm, which has been conquered by the Undead Scourge, including its Scarab Lord king, Anub'arak, who is its final boss. There's only one version of this dungeon, which has three bosses.

Blackfathom Deeps: 8

Big underground cave system with some Night Elf ruins buried in it. Naga and Satyr came to the caverns to claim the ancient power of the place, which was once a temple to Elune, the moon goddess worshipped by the Night Elves. The hydra Aku'mai, thought to be an ancient pet of the Old Gods, has taken residence here. In Vanilla (and in the currently-available "WoW Classic") the dungeon has 8 bosses, with Aku'mai as the final one. The dungeon got a sort of "light" revamp during Warlords of Draenor, but wasn't tied to that expansion's plot and not given a Heroic version, and it still has 8 bosses.

Deadmines: 6

Now, Deadmines got a pretty major revamp in Cataclysm, moving the timeline forward six years, and it's explicit that the conflict in it was caused by the events of the original version. Interestingly, the normal mode of the dungeon didn't have us confront Vanessa VanCleef, the main antagonist. It was only on Heroic mode (a difference of doing this at, like, level 15 versus level 85) that we had our bout with her. (She's also revealed to have survived in the Legion expansion six years after that, and can even become an ally for Rogue players). Anyway, the map of the dungeon remains the same, and I think there's a new boss in the place of each of the old ones (though I think "Captain" Cookie, the murloc, is in both).

Dire Maul: 16... Technically

Dire Maul's weird. It's actually treated as three separate dungeons now, and many of the bosses in the northern part, which is ogre-themed, are really more like mini-bosses with similar if not the same mechanics. If we cut them out, the total comes out to 12, which is still a lot, though only 4 per wing, which is more typical for a dungeon.

Onyxia's Lair: 1

This one was a bit of a surprise, because Onyxia's Lair is basically one big cavern with a fight against a powerful black dragon. There are a couple of trash pulls to get to her, but the main appeal to this back in Vanilla (and later when they brought it back for WoW's 5th anniversary during Wrath of the Lich King and boosted her to a level 80 challenge) was that you could go in, do a single raid boss, and be done.

Scarlet Monastery: 6 or 7

In Vanilla, Scarlet Monastery was actually four very short dungeons with one or two bosses each, the Scarlet Library, Scarlet Armory, Scarlet Graveyard, or Scarlet Cathedral. In Mists of Pandaria, which came out in 2012, they did a total revamp, basically rebuilding the place from the ground up as two more conventional 3-boss dungeons. The Graveyard and Cathedral were combined into what is now called Scarlet Monastery, and the Armory and Library were combined into what is now called Scarlet Halls. The reason the boss count here isn't the same is that the original Scarlet Graveyard began with a torture chamber and a boss there that was the lead torturer (whose name escapes me,) who didn't make it into the 2012 revamp. Interestingly, the "canon" of our previous fight through the Monastery was preserved, with bosses playing similar roles to the original ones but as different individuals, with the exceptions of the undead skeletal mage Tlanos the Soulrender (a former Scarlet inquisitor who succumbed to the Plague of Undeath) and High Inquisitor Whitemane, whose resurrective powers evidently allowed her to come back after being defeated the first time (fun fact, she earned her "redemption" by becoming one of the Ebon Blade's Four Horsemen, among its most fearsome Death Knights).

Shadowfang Keep: 5 or 10

Similar to Deadmines, Shadowfang Keep kept the same map, but underwent a pretty profound revamp to what was actually found in the dungeon. In Vanilla, it was mostly Worgen (basically werewolves) and Archmage Arugal, who went mad after he summoned the worgen to Azeroth to fight the undead Scourge and didn't realize the whole "infectious wolf-men" problem would be a thing. In Cataclysm, it's almost entirely different, with the treasonous Lords Ashbury, Walden, and Godfrey of Gilneas holing up there after betraying both Gilneas and the Forsaken. The dungeon currently has five bosses, but had twice as many in Vanilla (though some of those were really minor fights). The "new" (16-year-old) version of it ends with a fight against Lord Godfrey (an NPC who specifically shows up to mock Worgen players after they're infected in a cutscene, so we're really set up to despise him).

    Totaling it:

Obviously, the numbers here aren't consistent. But if we assume the simpler, smaller versions of each dungeon, it comes out to 41.

Given that we're only getting 30 "dungeon boss" stat blocks, I'm inclined to come to two conclusions:

One is inescapable: that some of these boss fights will not require bespoke stat blocks, and might be presented simply using either some of the 50 regular monster stat blocks or even existing D&D ones.

The second is not guaranteed, but would be my preference: that we get plenty of dungeon boss stat blocks outside of these dungeons. After all, only one of these dungeons is from an expansion (even if some got revamped with the release of an expansion). And these don't cover all the dungeons from Vanilla, either. Memorable bosses like Ook-Ook from Stormstout Brewery or Mueh'zala from De Other Side (who's also pretty important lore-wise) would be really cool to have.

Indeed, I'm sort of surprised that the dungeon list is so weighted toward Vanilla. Maybe they figure those are the most recognizable to WoW players how might have lapsed for some of the expansions, or maybe the books will primarily focus on the Eastern Kingdoms and Kalimdor (which is honestly pretty reasonable given how utterly massive Azeroth is as a setting, fleshed out enormously over 22 years and ten expansions). There is, of course, the Icecrown Citadel adventure being sold separately, which is meant for levels 16-20 (which, as epic as the Lich King is as a foe, I had thought he was a perfect "tier 3 endboss.") But I think Wrath content is nearly as universal as Vanilla stuff, given that the expansion came out so long ago and was, for many people, WoW's peak (personally I think it was Legion, though there's an argument that the Dragonflight/War Within period was even better. For me it's a matter of taste rather than my attempt to be objective).

Looking at the "Updated Subclass" UA with Warcraft Context

 In October of last year, we got an Unearthed Arcana that had a notably bland title: "Updated Subclasses." Nothing thematic tying them together.

These were all riffs on subclasses that had already appeared in 5E. The Spiritual Guardian, Warrior of Intoxication, and Storm Herald had all appeared (maybe with slightly different names) in Xanathar's Guide to Everything, and the Oathbreaker had been a subclass in the 2014 DMG meant for villainous NPCs (though I strongly advise DMs to use normal stat blocks rather than full character builds for NPCs.)

I had thought at the time that this was likely to presage an upcoming "of Everything"-style book that would just give us a bunch of new subclasses for 5.5. However, now that we know about D&D's crossover book with World of Warcraft, it's all coming into focus.

One of the really interesting things that seems implied by the subclasses being presented is that D&D will interpret WoW's Shaman class as Barbarians. Now, the Shaman in WoW is primarily a spellcaster, tied to primordial elements and the spirit world. In a lot of ways, they're similar to Druids as a "nature"-based class, but while Druids are focused more on living things (though also a bit of a celestial sun-and-moon-and-stars theme) Shamans are focused on the raw elements, throwing lava and lightning around.

Of the three "specs" for Shamans, two stand at range, casting spells. Elemental Shamans send out bolts of lightning and hurl lava, while Restoration Shamans use the power of water primarily to send waves of healing energy. (In WoW, healing works very differently - if you're the healer, you're probably spending most of your time casting healing spells, and only if your party is in great shape do you every turn your attention to damaging enemies - though some healing specs will incorporate damaging enemies as part of their healing strategy.) The third spec, Enhancement, is the one where you get into melee, dual-wielding and charging (or enhancing) your weapons with elemental power and also casting spells in melee.

I think that both the Spiritual Guardian and Storm Herald subclasses are thematically tied to the Shaman as a class, but it's interesting because a class that in WoW is very much focused on casting spells is, in D&D, going to be the class that truly can't (with the exception of Spiritual Guardian's outside-of-combat ritual spells).

At Gamecon, I believe they announced that the Storm Herald was getting a top-to-bottom redesign, which is probably for the best as the old subclass and its UA version were both cool conceptually but mechanically kind of sucked. 

The Warrior of Intoxication is clearly tied to WoW's Brewmaster Monk. In WoW, this is the tanking spec for Monks, thematically using Drunken Boxing techniques to stagger the damage they take, and then cleanse that "staggered" damage with purifying brews (essentially, the way it works is that you only take part of the damage of each hit you land, while the rest is spread out over time. On its own this makes you easier to heal, but you can also effectively get your "damage debt" forgiven by using a particular ability). It's not pure martial arts, though: Brewmaster Monks toss barrels of brew around, splashing enemies and then using Breath of Fire to ignite the alcohol and do damage over time against them.

Now, in this context, the Oathbreaker Paladin is surely what they were using to secretly test out the Oath of the Ebon Blade, which is how the book will represent Death Knights. In WoW, Death Knights are a full class with three different specs (the lore behind them is that your character was a hero of Azeroth who was then slain by the Scourge and selected to be raised as a Death Knight. However, while you fight for the Scourge in the starting experience, an attack on Light's Hope Chapel, a bastion of the heroic Argent Dawn faction, makes you realize that A: you were set up by the Lich King as fodder to draw out the Paladin Tirion Fordring, and B: that you have regained your free will and are not bound to serve the Scourge, allowing you to reform and become a heroic adventurer. (Note that if you place a race that was added post-Cataclysm, you don't get such a dramatic introduction and are just a heroic Death Knight from the start, serving the far more benevolent Lich King, Bolvar Fordragon).

Anyway, what is likely the playtest for the Oath of the Ebon Blade allows you to summon undead minions (likely 1 initially, and then 2 if you can get your Charisma modifier up to +4 or 5). This, I think, is meant to give you something equivalent to the WoW Death Knight's Raise Dead. For two of its specs, the tank-focused Blood spec and damage-focused Frost, the ghoul you raise with this spell acts as a temporary pet. For Unholy, the other damage spec, this is a permanent pet that fights alongside you, and some of your abilities can enhance its attacks.

I will say that I don't know how relevant this will be at higher levels given that the stat blocks don't scale.

It's interesting here that this UA actually included the Cavalier as well. I don't think the Cavalier was ever a terribly popular subclass, and it's not super obvious what it would be equivalent to for WoW. Possibly the Protection Warrior, which is the tank spec for Warriors (basically the WoW version of the Fighter, though I'd argue the flavor of the Fury Warrior is more like a Barbarian). Perhaps this subclass didn't score well enough to make it into the book.

Now, I will say that they only described the Spiritual Guardian, Swashbuckler, and Mystic Brews subclasses as updates to existing subclasses (Mystic Brews being the clearly better name for the Intoxication Monk). While the Path of the Elements is likely to have some similar flavor to the Storm Herald, as mentioned above, it's expected to be a total mechanical overhaul. But they also don't describe the Oath of the Ebon Blade as being an update, so perhaps it's less similar to this Oathbreaker than I thought.

Spirits and the Golden Order in Elden Ring

 The world of Elden Ring is haunted by disembodied spirits.

It's actually nuts: our horse (a horned horse, which is actually a detail whose significance only occurred to me just now) is a spirit that manifests when we blow on our ring-whistle. Melina is burned in body, with only her spirit able to meet us at Sites of Grace. We have summoned spirits via their Spirit Ash. Ghostly spirits are everywhere, even before you get to the Land of Shadow, where most of the Hornsent are shadowy spirits, slain in Messmer's crusade.

And then, the Erdtree is also a spirit.

It's never stated explicitly, but there is a lot of implication across the game that at some point in the past, the Erdtree burned to ash, and that the version we see towering over the Lands Between is, effectively, its ghost. Some NPCs ask if we see the Erdtree, which would be a ludicrous question if it were still a physical object, glowing brighter than the sun. However, it's implied that to see the Erdtree, one must also see the Guidance of Grace, and that is not something that everyone is capable of doing.

Now, it's not a perfect theory: in support of it is that Leyndell is already covered in ash, with alleys and backstreets mostly buried. Why, then, after we are the ones to burn it with either Melina's help or with the Frenzied Flame, is there significantly more ash, such that nearly the entire city is buried beneath?

(As a side note, something occurred to me: In Alchemical tradition, there's a stage in the Magnum Opus called the Rubedo, in which the sun turns red, which red also representing the highest of the elements, fire. In Elden Ring, the Erdtree has kind of usurped the role of the sun as the source of light, with a past "Sun Realm" era long fallen away. When we burn it, the tree still stands, but it is consumed with a deep red flame. Is this the Rubedo of our grand alchemical work to transform the world?)

Marika's reign can be roughly divided into two eras, one with Godfrey as her Elden Lord and one with Radagon. Notably, it seems that with Godfrey, Marika was kind of tied more to the physical world. Her sacred rite was to collect the sap of the Erdtree for people to, I assume, drink. Godfrey, being tied more to nature via the Crucible and his old barbarian ways, was thus paired with this more kind of nature/fertility goddess whose blessings were tangible nourishment.

With Radagon, however, the religion of the Golden Order became far more abstract and conceptual. Radagon promoted a more scholarly understanding of the Golden Order, existing beyond the realm of the physical and into the metaphysical. You can even see how the older Erdtree holy symbols were organic, making use of tree imagery, while the Golden Order Fundamentalist symbols are more geometric and less representational.

What if Radagon's influence on the Golden Order was a reaction to some catastrophe? What if it was the destruction of the Erdtree, the centerpiece to Marika's religious order, and the very boon that she granted to people that legitimized her as a god, required a radical redefinition about what faith in Marika actually meant.

Now, where within all of this the Night of Black Knives, the removal of the Rune of Death, the Shattering all take place is something I can't really say for certain (I've generally assumed the Shattering was a reaction to the Night of Black Knives, but that means it'd have to have been after the removal of the Rune of Death because the Black Knife Assassins needed that rune to do what they did... I think? Boy, what does it even mean for Maliketh to be guarding the rune in Farum Azula when bits of it are in Ranni and Godwyn's bodies?)

I'd argued earlier that Melina's total lack of fear in being the kindling for the Erdtree might actually be because her spirit won't be destroyed if she does so. It's not the Flame of Frenzy. Though, what's weird is that in the Lord of Frenzied Flame ending, Melina does appear, looking like he hair is singed by the fire, and seems to physically exist, which is... boy not even sure what to do with that.

Marika went on a war to conquer the Lands Between while Godfrey was her lord, and I believe the final battle was agains the Fire Giants, which led to a massacre not unlike that of the Hornsent.

Marika's animosity toward the Hornsent isn't hard to understand, given what was done to her people (and I think probably done to her as well - I think she's the "successful" Jar-Saint that the Hornsent were trying to make, and I guess it didn't occur to them that doing so would make an incredibly powerful individual who would hate you with a burning passion).

And you know what, this might also kind of explain her attitude toward death. The Hornsent were obsessed with spirits - with ghosts - and Marika built her entire Golden Order around the idea that no one would permanently die. You die, your body and soul are recycled through the Erdtree, returning to life as a real, living, breathing person, not some ghostly spirit.

But that's no longer possible when the Erdtree is, itself, a ghost.

It's interesting, because I think Radagon's transformation of the Golden Order is an allegory for the development of religious thought in human culture. Theologians over the past couple thousand years have described far more sophisticated and complex and, well, less grounded ideas that are dervied from ancient religions. I don't mean to say that ancient people weren't sophisticated, but there's a kind of rabbit hole of subtle distinctions that lead people into holy wars with one another, or having people executed for heresy, where if you're not well-versed in the intricacies of the theology, you might be confused as to why these people are even in conflict.

In other words, this kind of sophistication isn't necessarily progressive, and I think it's pretty strongly implied that the Golden Order under Godfrey was probably a lot better to live under than it was under Radagon (though maybe not so great for the people in the process of being conquered - like... better, but not necessarily good).

It's ironic, though, that Marika sought to build a world grounded in the physical reality, the familiar, living world, but her Order was then turned into this cerebral, abstract thing.

Is this the reason she decided to tear it all down?

Marika's motivations are one of the biggest enigmas in the game. While Melina is able to quote her at various churches, we never actually hear her or Radagon speak (let's just set aside the question of whether Radagon was ever his own fully independent person or not, or if he was always just Marika's male aspect).

When we make it to the interior of the Erdtree (which I didn't clock until someone online pointed it out, but we actually seem to start there in the opening cutscene before showing up at the Chapel of Anticipation) we see Marika crucified on a Rune Arc, with a massive lance the red color of the Rune of Death impaling her (very Spear of Longinus-coded).

Who did this to her? Truly, I have no clue. I doubt it was Radagon, as this imprisoned him just as much as it imprisoned her.

Still, I think that there's this interesting tension: the Fundamentalist version of the Golden Order might be totally antithetical to her original vision. But then, it also seems that she and Radagon, despite sharing the same body, are also at odds with one another.

Last little note:

Given these affiliations, it might be ironic, then, that Marika's Scarseal and Soreseal boost "mental" stats like Intelligence, Faith, and Mind, while Radagon's Scarseal and Soreseal boost physical stats like Strength, Dexterity, and Endurance, as you'd think they would be opposites. Maybe, and this is kind of a shot in the dark, but maybe it's that these are the qualities that they lack, rather than what they posses and grant?

Speculating on the Demon Hunter in D&D

 The Demon Hunter was introduced ten years ago as a playable class in World of Warcraft with the Legion expansion. Established in the lore in Warcraft III way back in 2002, the original Demon Hunter was the Night Elf Illidan Stormrage, who was actually twin brothers with Malfurion Stormrage, the first Druid. Illidan had begun his career as a Mage (basically Warcraft's version of a Wizard). While not Highborne (the ruling caste of the Night Elf society, under Queen Azshara, the most powerful mage in the world,) he consorted with their ranks thanks to his aptitude for arcane magic.

When Azshara was contacted by the Dark Titan Sargeras, the fallen god-like being who created the demonic Burning Legion in an effort to burn the universe to prevent the eldritch power of the Void from claiming it, she decided she had finally found a worthy partner to rule alongside her, and opened the way for the Legion to invade Azeroth.

While Malfurion and his and Illidan's childhood friend/the woman they were both in love with, Tyrande Whisperwind, led a resistance against the invading Legion, Illidan feigned loyalty to Azshara in order to learn all he could about the demons, ultimately learning how to use their Fel magic. Granted communion with Sargeras himself, the Dark Titan showed him such awesome terrors that the fel power burned Illidan's eyes out, but granted him a second sight.

While Illidan fought the Legion behind the scenes, his methods were extreme, and after the Legion was defeated, he was imprisoned for his demonic consorting. And that imprisonment lasted for ten thousand years. (It's notable that elves naturally over a thousand years in Azeroth, but the Night Elves in particular were blessed with immortality for those ten thousand years, so none of them aged in all of that time).

When the Legion returned (in the events of Warcraft III) Tyrande grew desperate for those with the knowledge of how to combat them, and raided the vault where Illidan was kept, releasing him. Illidan took his fight to the Legion, and consumed the poweran artifact called the Skull of Gul'dan (Gul'dan being a powerful and very dead orc warlock who died in Warcraft II). Doing so gave him the power to defeat Tichondrius, one of the most powerful Dreadlord demons, but transformed Illidan into a half-demon.

Later, Illidan left in exile to Outland (the shattered fragments of the Orc homeworld of Draenor) and gathered up loyal Night Elves and Blood Elves to train them in his ways. Playable Demon Hunters in WoW are members of this group, the Illidari.

In gameplay, Demon Hunters wear Leather (the equivalent of Light armor, if you consider "no armor" to be the equivalent of those who wear Cloth) and all dual-wield weapons. Until the current expansion, they only had two specializations (basically subclasses,) Havoc and Vengeance. Havoc was the damage-focused one while Vengeance was the tanking one. The new expansion added Devourer, which uses void magic instead of fel magic, and is more of a (very mobile) ranged spellcaster, though unlike all other spellcasters, they also dual-wield weapons.

Ok, all that background aside:

How do we make this into a Ranger subclass?

First off, we need to strip this down to its iconic essentials. That means probably making it feel more like the Havoc spec than the other two, which I consider the most "quintessential" Demon Hunter spec.

I actually think the Ranger does make decent sense as the chassis upon which the Demon Hunter is built, even if the class itself can sometimes struggle. I also wonder if the subclass is going to be flexible enough to allow for a ranged version. (In WoW, Rogues are all dual-wielding melee damage dealers, so it was honestly kind of weird when I first saw D&D Rogues using shortbows).

Naturally, as a Ranger, the Demon Hunter is going to primarily be making weapon attacks. I imagine, like the Hollow Warden, we might see some mechanics that nudge you toward playing in melee. One such thing might be Immolation Aura.

This is an ability in WoW that causes the Demon Hunter to deal pulsing fire damage to every nearby creature for a few seconds (it also generates Fury, their resource, though we're sure not to carry that over in D&D). Now, this could, for sure, just be a spell that they get, but if it's on the subclass spell list, it'd probably push them a little toward melee.

The next thing to consider is their eyes.

Like Illidan, all Demon Hunters have to, as part of their initiation, gouge their eyes out. The Fel magic they take into themselves lets them sense the world around them. In gameplay, this is really just cosmetic, but you get an ability called Spectral Sight that allows you to see invisible creatures and sense creatures and treasures through walls for a few seconds.

I think it would be cool if the subclass gave you Blindsight out to a short range at level 3 - like 10 feet, but that maybe at higher levels (14, or whatever the Ranger subclass capstone is) you'd get to make that into Truesight with perhaps a larger range for a certain amount of time some reasonable number of times per long rest.

One thing all Demon Hunters get is Metamorphosis - while they have demonic features like horns and cracked skin all the time, they can sometimes turn into hulking demons (this is your major "cooldown" ability in WoW, though Devourer does it a bit differently). Now, this could be a spell (probably at a higher level) but I could also very much see this being the main capstone feature for the subclass. The transformation might allow you to make more attacks, or add damage to the attacks you do, and/or perhaps give you some defensive benefits.

Eye Beam is one of the most iconic Havoc-specific abilities, where you shoot a beam of fel energy out in front of you. It's almost exactly a line-shaped spell. I think this could be done as a spell, or it might be a subclass feature.

Fel Rush is another ability you get early on, which shoots you forward and deals some damage to any enemies you pass through. I think this could be done either as a low-level spell (maybe 1st or 2nd level) or, if it's a subclass feature, maybe you get this at level 3 and get to use it, like, Wis mod times per long rest (or short rest, if they're feeling generous).

The only reason I'd find it unlikely a lot of these are made into spells is that it would be weird to see a Beast Master using spells like them. Might they be classified as Warlock spells that are then on the subclass-specific spell list? Perhaps.

We haven't seen a UA for this (indeed, other than the revamped/returning subclasses, I don't think we've gotten a playtest version of any of the brand new ones, unless that Oathbreaker one was sneakily the Oath of the Ebon Blade,) so we'll probably have to wait until November (or at least until we get the next season of Dungeon Masters) to really get a sense of how it will work.

Iconic Warcraft Monsters to Port into D&D

 Yeah, I know, I'm a sucker.

Like the Final Fantasy set for Magic the Gathering (which came out not long after my playthrough of all six Pixel Remasters, so I was pretty caught up on old-school FF lore,) my general distaste for corporate synergy has been overcome by a deep-rooted affection for the Warcraft universe and so I'm actually pretty hyped about the upcoming WoW/D&D sourcebook.

There's a ton to imagine - including a rather extensive list of subclasses (I don't think we're getting subclasses for quite all the classes, but I think it'll be the most subclasses in a single book since the Player's Handbook, and setting that aside, probably since Tasha's).

But I figured we could be relatively concise here and instead imagine what monsters we might see included.

The total number of monsters listed is 50 "monsters" and 30 "dungeon bosses." I'm assuming that the latter will be legendary creatures (will they be specifically from the dungeons being re-created for D&D? I think probably a lot of the boss fights in those dungeons will be dealt with as more standard encounters, which hopefully frees up iconic bosses from other eras of WoW).

50 Monsters is still a fair number, even setting aside those dungeon bosses.

The book is said to touch on all the eras of WoW from its launch in 2004 to the current Midnight expansion (the 12.0 version of the game, meaning the eleventh expansion). If we figure a good 10 at least are going to be perennial creatures that are found in nearly every expansion, that leaves 40 to spread out across those 11 expansions (if we imagine Vanilla was sort of home to the "standard" creatures). So, roughly four per expansion, which isn't enormous (though there might be some crossover).

I'll group those "perennial" monsters in with Vanilla. I don't promise to make a comprehensive 50-monster list, but it might not be that hard to do.

    Vanilla:

Murlocs:

Unofficial mascots of the series, Murlocs are fish-people who, yes, bear a bit of a resemblance to Kuo-Toa, but are kind of more colorful and... well, I wouldn't say they're goofier, but maybe goofy in a different way.

Abominations:

Most of the Undead Scourge can be handled with existing Undead stat blocks that already exist in D&D. Abominations are ostensibly Flesh Golems, but they're definitely either Large or Huge size and they very specifically have hooked chains they use to reel in foes.

Satyrs:

Yes, Satyrs exist in D&D, but they're very different. In WoW, Satyrs are demons that used to be Night Elves. They're somewhat unique among demons, though, as they tend not to be loyal to the Burning Legion (omnicidal high-tech demonic space army bent on burning the cosmos to a cinder) but are instead tied to the Emerald Nightmare, which seeks to corrupt the natural world with the influence of the Old Gods (think Great Old Ones).

Quillboars:

Standard common humanoid enemies, Quillboars are kind of pig-people who also have porcupine spines for some reason, and don't seem inherently evil so much as just aggressive.

Two-Headed Ogre Mages:

Ogres in WoW are a bit weird, because for the most part, they're the same big dumb brutes they are in D&D, but they also have a history of having a sort of vaguely Roman-coded empire with a strong tradition of arcane magic, which is most often the practice of two-headed ogres (maybe having two heads makes them smart enough?)

Naga:

The Naga are a common recurring threat: former Night Elves who would have been drowned during the Sundering ten thousand years ago (in which most of the world's surface was flooded) if Queen Azshara (the powerful and vain mage-queen of the Night Elves at the time, who had kind of opened the door to a demonic invasion by the Burning Legion) hadn't made a deal with the Old God N'zoth. Now, they're aquatic, serpentine people who are ruthless and vast in number, still serving their queen.

Keepers of the Grove/Dryads:

I think these are really basically the same species, but the males are called Keepers of the Grove while the females are called Dryads. Unlike D&D Dryads, these are kind of "deer centaur," and it was actually the union of one of them with an Earth Elemental that birthed the centaurs. Again, often affiliated with the Night Elves.

Drakonids:

Giant humanoid dragonkin, the Drakonids were created by the dragons to serve and protect them. Not to be confused with the Dracthyr, though Drakonids weirdly look more like D&D's Dragonborn.

Troggs:

Honestly, these could probably be covered by Grimlocks, but they're just different enough that I would maybe need something different.

Dragonspawn:

Very much like the Drakonids, these were created by the Dragons to serve them. Dragonspawn are... kind of "dragon centaurs."

Dreadlords:

Also known as the Natrhezim, these demons are the ultimate infiltrators (in a bit of lore that they almost seem to be backpedaling away from, they were even revealed to have not originally been demons, and infiltrated the Burning Legion). In many ways the classic demon-looking demons (kind of like a D&D Horned Devil).

    Burning Crusade:

Man'ari Eredar:

The corrupted Eredar from whom the Draenei split, the Man'ari are among the most powerful demons in the Burning Legion (while the Legion was ultimately led by the Dark Titan Sargeras, it was the Eredar Kil'jaeden and Archimonde who really ran its day-to-day operations.

Ethereals:

Former humanoids whose physical bodies were lost in an effort to defeat the Void Lord who invaded their home world of K'aresh, the Ethereals hold their form with magically-treated bandages, under which you can see the glowing essence of their spirits.

Fel Reaver:

Among the most terrifying constructs created by the Burning Legion, a giant mech, essentially.

Arrakoa:

Yeah, not Aaracokra, though if they sound similar, that's probably not a coincidence, as they're also bird people. At least in Outland (the present day version of the world that was once Draenor,) the only surviving Arrakoa are whose who were infected by the shadowy power of Sethe, and lost their wings and walk hunched and twisted. They have become practitioners of shadowy magic.

Broken:

Members of the Draenei who were afflicted by a curse (actually related to that of the Arrakoa) that has cut them off from The Light and broken their bodies, but are still part of Draenei society.

Naaru:

Celestial beings that look like giant crystal structures and are sort of the primary "entities" of the Light. While in theory it's extremely rare, players of WoW have often witnessed Naaru falling into their Dark/Void versions.

    Wrath of the Lich King:

Vrykul:

The viking-like giants and ancestors of humanity were originally Titan constructs before they were transformed by the Curse of Flesh. In Wrath, their ancient king was taken out of stasis by the Scourge and he led his people into an alliance with the Lich King.

Faceless Ones/N'raqi:

Towering tentacle-faced creations of the Old Gods, the Faceless Ones sow madness wherever they go.

Taunka:

Bison-like off-shoots of the Tauren people native to Northrend, the Taunka join up with the Horde, but they're a little less focused on harmony with nature than the Tauren.

Wolvar:

Wolverine-people!

Tuskarr:

Walrus people!

Var'ghul:

Undead vrykul who failed to become the elite Ymirjar and now serve the Lich King in death.

    Cataclysm:

Twilight Dragons:

One of Deathwing's experimental draconic hybrids, these dragons are linked to a mysterious "twilight realm," and are basically all crazy.

Stone Worms:

Earth Elementals that look like a series of gem-encrusted stone rings.

Earthen:

They actually show up in Vanilla, and they'll be playable, but we might get some stat blocks as well. The pre-Curse of Flesh version of the Dwarves. (They're actually quite central to The War Within).

Merciless Ones:

Aberrations that look like floating octopuses and latch onto peoples' heads to mind-control them.

    Mists of Pandaria:

Mogu:

Tyrannical ancient rulers of Pandaria who managed to reverse the Curse of Flesh to return to their original stone forms and wish to re-conquer the continent and subjugate all its people.

Hozen:

Monkey-folk who get swept into fighting the Alliance in the name of the Horde.

Jinyu:

Fish-folk who get swepet into fighting the Horde in the name of the Alliance:

Sha:

Monstrous spirits born from the dying curse of the Old God Y'shaarj who thrive on negative emotions and help spread those feelings.

Virmen:

Crazed rabbit-people who like to steal things and destroy farms.

Grummles:

Delightful mountain-folk who are vaguely ground-hog like.

    Warlords of Draenor:

Botani:

Vicious plant-people who seek to spread and take over everything, feeding on animal life.

Ogrons:

Cyclopean ancestors to the Ogres (who are themselves ancestors to the Orcs).

Gronn:

Cyclopean ancestors to the Ogrons.

High Arrakoa:

Warlords of Draenor takes place in an alternate timeline that's also displaced by 35 years, and these are the Arrakoa as they were before the curse of Sethe, who are pretty nasty and persecute those who have been cursed.

    Legion:

Drogbar: 

Subterranean ogre-like/troll-like people.

Withered:

Nightborne elves past the point of no return in withdrawal from lack of arcane magic, turned mindless.

Valarjar:

Vrykul warriors chosen after death to be given new metallic bodies in service to the Titanforged Keeper Odyn.

Inquisitors:

Among the many demons of the Burning Legion, these eyeless, floating demons are often accompanied by several floating eye-demons. Honestly, there are a ton of Burning Legion demons to go with, and we might start off with more perennial ones like Felguards, Infernals, and Doomguards, while we might be able to just reskin Hell Hounds as Felhounds.

Storm Dragons:

Existing outside of the five standard dragonflights, the Storm Dragons of the Broken Isles might be able to just be re-skinned Bronze or Blue dragons, but we'll see.

    Battle For Azeroth:

Drustvar Witch:

The witches of Drustvar are... it's not clear if they're actually human (maybe former humans). Their constructs might simply use something like Scarecrows. Though to be fair, they could also just be treated like Hags.

K'thir:

Well, the funny thing is that these could easily just be Mind Flayers, as they look exactly like them. Still, these more humanoid-like servants of the Old Gods feel like a possibility.

Sethrak:

Snake-people of the desert of Vol'dun.

Aqir:

Aberrant sapient insectoids who were created by the Old Gods.

    Shadowlands:

Kyrians:

Angelic beings of the realm of Bastion, the afterlife for those who dedicated their lives to the service of others.

Venthyr:

Vampire-like beings of the realm of Revendreth, the gothic purgatory of the Shadowlands.

Sylvar:

One of the fey species of the Night Fae in the nature-tied afterlife of Ardenweald.

Brokers:

Mysterious soul-traders that travel the Shadowlands, revealed recently to actually be another group of people from K'aresh, and are essentially the same as the Ethereals but with different containment suits.

Devourers:

Void beings that have broken into the Shadowlands to devour souls.

    Dragonflight:

Primal Dragons:

Dragons that are more elemental-like than reptilian, who rejected the transformation that the Titans gave to the original five Dragon Aspects.

Djaradin:

Giantkin who have long warred with the Dragons.

Niffen:

Underground mole-like people.

Infinite Dragons:

Warped versions of the Bronze Dragonflight. The Bronze Dragons were made guardians of the timeline, while the Infinite Dragons seek to create and explore infinite branching timelines. (Presented initially as chaotic evil, they're now kind of chill.)

    War Within:

Kobyss:

Humanoid kind of angler-fish people who seem totally insane, use necromancy, and rise from the depths to attack surface-dwellers.

"Ascended" Nerubians:

Certain Nerubians were remade with the void powers of Xal'atath to weirdly become more humanoid in appearance.

Scarab Lords:

I mean, we've touched on Nerubians before, but their giant Scarab-Lords would certainly warrant a stat block (and they showed up as early as Vanilla, if not WCIII).

Big Kobolds:

I can't recall if they're actually called Swolbolds, or if that was just a Tome of Beasts entry. Notably, Kobolds in WoW are more like rat-people, who have a cultural obsession with candles (important when you live underground and need to ward off creatures of darkness). Kobolds in WoW like to wear candles on top of their heads.

    Midnight:

Petalwings:

Well, there's a lot of creatures from Harandar that look like beasts but are actually plants. Petalwings are bird-plants.

Dominaar:

Beings from the world now simply known as the Void Storm, the Dominaar are treacherous and radical individualists, treating every relationship as one that is transactional and due eventually to end in one betraying the other.

Ultradons:

Bipedal beasts who seem to be the apex predators of the Void Storm, infused with the selfish, hungering essence of the void.

Pangolil:

Large pangolin-like creatures from the forested Troll nation of Zul'Aman.

Blood Elf Crystal Defenders:

The Blood Elves have long had arcane constructs that defend Silvermoon and Quel'thalas in general.

    Conclusion:

So, this is actually a bit tough, overall. WoW does tend to focus on villainous factions, so a lot of the things we fight are actually humanoids. I've generally skipped over a lot of those, figuring they can be handled by normal humanoid stat blocks, but the truth is that we'll probably get a fair number of WoW-specific humanoids among those 50 monsters.

I'm also sure I've left out some really iconic ones here, focused on doing a relatively even spread between expansions. In all likelihood, I imagine we'll probably get more stuff from the more popular expansions, like Wrath and Legion.

Anyway, it'll be interesting to see.

Scaring Your Players With Higher-CR Monsters

 Two caveats:

First off, the campaign I'm currently running is at level 19. The players have fought the Tarrasque and killed it (half the party was unconscious at the end of the fight, so I kept my pride). There is nothing that is too high in terms of CR for them to face, so this isn't something I can do in this campaign anymore.

Second, I find it really hard, like, on an emotional level, to stray much from the guidance on combat encounter difficulty. I take great care to ensure that my players always face reasonable challenges, even if they might be tuned "hard," which, in the 5.5 DMG, does actually make for some pretty tough fights.

And yet...

So, I often see DMs, such as Brennan Lee Mulligan when running Critical Role's Campaign 4, or when he did Dimension 20's A Crown of Candy, talk about intentionally not balancing fights for the players' levels. The idea here is that the world sort of exists beyond the player characters, and it's up to them to ensure they survive it.

I think this makes a certain amount of sense, but notably it always seems to be invoked when the players are low-level. If I took this attitude toward my design for my level 19 party, even a plane as nightmarishly deadly as New Phyrexia (where they currently are) would still probably be trivially easy for them to manage except, possibly, when facing the Praetors (to be fair, I have basically designed the adventure as focusing mostly on boss fights with these characters, as I don't want them to be stuck at level 19 for more than a year, which I think was the case for levels 17 and 18).

But let's turn things around again:

Here's the thing: while there is resurrection magic in D&D (though notably, in both the campaigns I mentioned run by Mulligan, they're not allowed to use resurrection magic,) PC death should feel fair. In-world, of course, it need not feel fair - a tyrannical regime or deadly monster killing someone needn't feel fair, but it shouldn't feel unfair to the players at the table.

After all, as a DM, especially at lower levels, it's trivial to kill your PCs. Throw an ancient dragon at a level 3 party and they'll probably all die to the first breath weapon (even if they succeed on their saves).

However, there's a downside to making sure every combat encounter is fairly balanced: by the time you face a monster, you're ready to fight it, meaning that it never really gets to impose a sense of terror and dread.

I think my affection for Death Knights as monsters is well-documented here (I also love the WoW class). I think the most direct, clear example of a Death Knight in fantasy pop culture are the Ringwraiths from Lord of the Rings. They're undead, or the kind of Tolkien equivalent (they lived far, far longer than they should have, and their spirits remained even as their bodies withered away into nothing) and were basically noble lords who allowed this desire for immortality to corrupt them (I'm generally against the idea of death, disagreeing with the "death gives live meaning" rhetoric, but I sure don't want to live in a world in which asshole oligarchs like Elon Musk live forever).

Anyway, I also like Death Knights because they work really well as the kind of figure who could move about in society and not immediately draw attention to themselves. The Riders in Black who show up in the Shire asking about someone named Baggins certainly freak the hell out of the people they meet, but there's just enough plausible deniability to imagine that they're just, you know, creepy dudes and not ancient undead terrors.

So, the first really obvious way to use a high-level monster to scare a low-level party is just to use them as an NPC. Combat, of course, is just one of three pillars in D&D, and while it's the one that has the clearest and most extensive rules, it's not what the game needs to always center around.

Not every monster just kills everything it sees. Especially in the case of intelligent monsters, they probably have an agenda.

Let's concoct a scenario:

A, say, 2nd level party has gotten a quest to deal with a gang of bandits who robbed a caravan. It's a sort of secondary detail that the caravan they hit was bringing some artifacts from a ruined temple to a museum in the big city. The message the party gets is that this is just one of many robberies attributed to this particular gang, and it's a standard bounty quest.

The party shows up at the bandit's hideout, maybe an old ruined fort in the woods. When the party arrives, something's off. First, they find one of the bandits dead on the ground, a giant wound through their torso and into a blood-stained tree, and that the tree itself looks a bit withered where the weapon pierced it.

They arrive at the hideout, and find that there are bandits guarding the entrance, but they're not facing outward - they're distracted by something going on inside. Maybe this gives the party a chance to get the drop on them, or maybe they try to engage with them socially. The bandits, panicked, are probably hostile and still likely to fight. Maybe in the middle of a fight, a previously-unseen bandit emerges, seeming to be there to join the fight, but instead just screams at the top of their lungs and runs out into the woods.

In the middle of combat, there's an explosion: a Hellfire Orb has detonated elsewhere in the fort, and the fortress' roof is now burning with strange fire (maybe green, maybe blue - something otherworldly).

At this point, the bandits are probably going to just run for their lives. The party may consider doing so as well, and if that's the case, well, you've made your point.

But if the party's curiosity gets the better of their sense of self-preservation, they might go into the fort to try to recover the artifacts.

There, you can describe a scene of slaughter. If the bandit encounter was tuned to be a reasonable challenge, the party finds twice as many bandits all dead, the floor slick with blood. If the bandits have some bruisers with them, like an Ogre, maybe there's an Ogre who looks like they were slammed onto a shard of wood and impaled, making it very clear that a monster that would have been pretty serious for them is trivial to whatever has done this.

The party goes further into the fort. Maybe they find a survivor who is just hiding and can fill them in: that a knight in black armor they had never seen before came in and attacked without warning. Maybe they follow the trail of destruction down into the fort's basement, where the artifacts were being kept.

There, they behold the Death Knight (could be a Death Knight Aspirant - still high-enough CR to demolish a level 2 party) who is singularly focused on going through the artifacts. The Death Knight ignores them, and if they just stand and watch, the knight finally finds what they're looking for - an ancient stone key or something - and, if the party remains non-hostile, the Death Knight just pushes past them and leaves the fort.

Now, if you feel like you really want to hammer home just how deadly they are, here's another trick: the Death Knight isn't done with their slaughter yet - the bandits' leader, a Bandit Captain, is facing off with the Death Knight. The party might come in mid-battle, so the Bandit Captain has already taken a hit, and so they come in just as the Death Knight hits them with a lethal attack - make the attack roll, and roll the damage, and declare it all so the party knows precisely how much damage this guy does.

Let's consider various scenarios:

If the party tries to speak to the Death Knight, they might just remain silent, not interested in engaging with the party, because they're singularly focused on their mission, or perhaps provide only a gruff response.

If the party attacks the Death Knight, at this point, I think you have license to punish them. The first character to attack (maybe not in initiative, but the first one to suggest attacking) should be the Death Knight's target. Put them down - maybe don't coup-de-grace them, but consider that a Death Knight Aspirant hits with a single attack for 24 damage, which will likely drop most 2nd level characters in a single hit (even a Barbarian with a +3 Con will typically have 25 HP, so maybe two hits).

If the party leaves the Death Knight be after this, maybe only tending to the downed party member, the message is clearly delivered.

If the entire party attacks the Death Knight? Well, I think this is where you might need to get creative. On a certain level, this is a TPK the party has well and truly purchased with their actions. But if you don't want the entire campaign to be derailed, here's another option:

The Death Knight goes to strike, but pauses, looks up at the beams holding up the ceiling, the crackling fire raging above (remember that the roof was on fire?) and rather than striking the party down, simply pushes past them to leave the fort. Maybe one turn (not round) after they do this, the roof collapses, and while it's a lot of scary damage and a challenge to get out of the burning rubble, you make it a more reasonable thing for 2nd level players to escape. By the time they get out from under it, the Death Knight is gone.

Again, the ultimate fail state of D&D is a TPK. But I think particularly as players have become more interested in the narrative possibilities of the game, a TPK can be an unsatisfying conclusion to a story. It's certainly something you should talk about in a session zero (and later too).

Establishing villains early on is a pretty important way to set the stakes for a more narrative-based campaign. I think that the key to making the game feel reasonable, even if it's not "fair" in the strictest sense, is to really telegraph when the party is dealing with something beyond their means to defeat (and motivate them to get more powerful so that they can!)

Guessing the Level Ranges for World of Warcraft Dungeons in D&D

 One of the intriguing and exciting things about the WoW/D&D crossover is that they're re-creating several old dungeons from WoW as D&D dungeons.

For those who don't play WoW, a dungeon has a very specific meaning:

Dungeons are instances, which means that when you enter one, that version of the area exists only for you and the players in your instance group (your party, or your raid, which is basically a bigger party). Dungeons are built for parties of five players - one is the tank, another is the healer, and then three players play the "DPS" or damage-dealing role.

Dungeons then typically follow the following rhythm: you fight your way through "trash mobs," or lesser enemies, and then face off against a number of bosses, typically 3-5 of them in a dungeon. While there might be unique mechanics to trash, bosses tend to be more intricate, with various way you have to (or at least are supposed to) handle their mechanics. (For example, you might have a Goblin mobster who throws explosive barrels around the arena, but also lines up a deadly shot against a player that can only be blocked by one of those barrels, so you need to run to put the barrel between you and the boss while they're aiming, but then run away from the barrel when the shot ignites it and causes it to explode after a couple seconds).

In WoW, bosses each drop a random piece of loot from their specific list (progression in WoW is focused far more around gear than leveling up - basically hitting the level cap is the start of the game proper).

Now, as a computer game, WoW focuses a fair bit more on the combat side of things than D&D does. The number of encounters you'd have in a typical dungeon would probably take months for you to actually get through. D&D does have legendary creatures that function somewhat as "bosses," but each individual combat encounter is certain higher-stakes than a typical "trash pull" in WoW.

There are dungeons where there are things to do beyond fighting your way through enemies, like one from the Legion expansion in which you have to ask around at a party to find clues as to who is the hidden Dreadlord demon amongst the guests who holds a key to the dungeon's final boss. But these are somewhat exceptional: mostly, the challenge is just fighting.

Thus, I'm sure that the redesign of these dungeons will likely really shrink down the number of actual fights you have and introduce other elements to them.

But the other question I have is this: what levels do we imagine these dungeons being balanced for?

Again, in WoW, you spend most of your time at the level cap, generally running content from the current expansion (expansions always come out with multiple dungeons and other such content). All of the dungeons announced for this book were either from the game's original release (referred to as Vanilla by players, or sometimes Classic, though the latter is complicated because there's also an alternate version of the game Blizzard released that recreates the 2004 experience called Classic,) with just one exception being Azjol-Nerub, which came out with 2008's Wrath of the Lich King expansion (one of the most beloved eras of the game's history).

Now, before the game's first expansion, The Burning Crusade, introduced the idea of Heroic Dungeons (versions of dungeons that were tuned for level-capped players,) most dungeons were actually locked at a particular difficulty, and so, if you came to, say, The Deadmines at level 30 or so (not to mention the original level cap of 60), you were going to far-outclass anything it would throw at you.

I assume they'll be presenting these as dungeons in the D&D style, so they won't "scale" with players' levels. So, where might they fall?

Azjol-Nerub:

One of two dungeons from Wrath kind of linked to one another, the other being Azj-Kahet, the Old Kingdom. Azjol-Nerub was the term for the broader underground realm of the spider-like Nerubians (well, I say spider-like, though their ruling class is more Scarab-like). The Nerubians have ancient ties to the Eldritch Old Gods (for sure the Great Old Ones of WoW, though there are other contenders like the Void Lords, and there is a connection between them) but they were also conquered by Arthas, the fallen prince, who was a Death Knight serving the Undead Scourge before he merged with the Lich King, his ego and personality taking over the Scourge's dread sovereign.

This dungeon released in Wrath of the Lich King, the second expansion, which took place on the frigid continent of Northrend, meaning that the sort of "canon" of our characters was that we had already faced the enormous threats in Vanilla and the first expansion, so being strict to WoW's story, we might say this is obvious the highest-level dungeon.

Except... well, the game now has a level-scaling feature, so you could actually go to Northrend as soon as level 10 (the current cap is 90) and thus be able to do any of these dungeons at basically anywhere from 10-80 (the level scaling generally falls off once they want to push you into the latest expansion's content).

Azjol-Nerub has us confronting the undead king of Azjol-Nerub, Anub'Arak, and while he does come back for round two in one of Wrath of the Lich King's raids (the bigger, 10-25-person instances) he's still a pretty heavy hitter, who I'd guess would be CR 10 if not a little higher.

Thus, this feels like a big enough deal to have us come here in tier 2, maybe level 8-10-ish.

Blackfathom Deeps:

This dungeon has a mix of Twilight's Hammer cultists (who are apocalyptic chaos-worshippers, tied to the mad Old Gods, though probably just happy to support anyone who could lead to destruction) along with the Naga (serpentine mer-people, really quite similar in appearance to Merrow, who are former elves saved from drowning by one of the Old Gods when their civilization fell into the ocean like Atlantis, all dedicated to their incredibly powerful mage-queen Azshara). Naga are disciplined and regimented, and the final boss of the dungeon is a sort of hyrdra (in WoW, hydras are often represented in boss fights as just a series of serpentine heads emerging from water you have to fight separately - though there are some models that have the full body). Thus, I think this is either a late-tier 1 or, maybe more likely early tier 2 dungeon, around level 4-6.

Deadmines:

The Deadmines are the headquarters of the Defias Gang - originally the Stonemason's Guild of Stormwind, after they rebuilt the city following its destruction at the hands of the Horde in the First War, the House of Nobles refused to pay them for their work, and their leader, Edwin VanCleef, retaliated by forming a gang that would terrorize the rural areas of the kingdom. Very sympathetic motivations, but with very questionable methods. Given that we're likely fighting bandits as our primary foes here, I think this could be very low-level, even a level 1 dungeon, or at least one that you start at level 1 and maybe get up to level 3 in.

Dire Maul:

Dire Maul's an odd dungeon: the ruins of the Night Elf city of Eldre'thalas, it's really kind of got three things going on. Part of the city is haunted by ghosts, and the demon-summoning prince who's causing a bunch of arcane chaos there. Another has been taken over by ogres. And the third wing is corrupted by a Satyr, who in WoW are Night Elves who fell to demonic corruption and became demons (but are also kind of tied to the Old Gods, and particularly something called the Emerald Nightmare, which is a corruption within the Emerald Dream, its sort of nature-focused Feywild equivalent).

As a D&D dungeon, I imagine this will be one of those dungeons where you can tackle different parts of it with different quests and such. There's even a friendly faction of Night Elf scholars of the arcane (it's a thing that for ten thousand years, arcane magic was banned in their society thanks to the aforementioned Azshara and the problems she caused).

Basically, there's a lot going on here. But I'm not convinced that this means it has to be particularly high-level. I think this feels like a good mid-tier-2 dungeon, and given how huge it is, you might be able to have enough to cover a few levels, maybe starting at level 5 or 6 and being level 8 or 9 by the end of it.

Onyxia's Lair:

Something of an odd choice, to be honest: Onyxia's Lair is a raid, but there's just a single boss (the eponymous Onyxia,) a black dragon who schemed under the guise of Lady Katrana Prestor, the head of Stormwind's House of Nobles (notably, her father, Deathwing, had also schemed as Lord Daval Prestor, and took over a different human kingdom called Alterac). By the time she retreats to her lair, which is on the other side of the world from Stormwind, it's basically just a march to fight and kill her.

Onyxia's at least an Adult Black Dragon (though in WoW, Black Dragons breathe fire - they're tied to the deep places of the earth, so you could flavor their fire-breath as more lava-like, while the Red Dragons, who are guardians of life, have a fire that can, like, enrich the soil). Anyway, I think of all the dungeons, this is the most likely to be built for tier 3 players. I'm sure we'll get a bespoke stat block for Onyxia, and I think it should ideally be balanced for a level 14-16 party.

Scarlet Monastery:

Scarlet Monastery is interesting: it was WoW's first "winged dungeon," which really meant it was four very quick dungeons that would only take a relatively short time (though as the game has evolved, dungeons generally go quicker than they did back in the day. "Short" was like, "only an hour.")

The Scarlet Crusade is one of the main foes that Undead (or "Forsaken") players have to fight in their beginning zones. The Forsaken are those undead who regained their free will after having been brought back to life by the Plague of Undeath, a major weapon of the Undead Scourge. While the Forsaken, as a people and nation, have done some truly horrendous things, they're still ultimately people, and plenty of them are good and heroic (or even just innocent).

The Scarlet Crusade, though, are a group of religious zealots who never gave the Forsaken a chance to prove themselves, and instead seek to slaughter them just like they do the mindless undead of the Scourge. And, you know, while they're at it, the Scarlet Crusade might also just want to eliminate anyone else that isn't part of their cult, just in case they're corrupted with undeath. It's not in Scarlet Monastery that we discover this, but it turns out that the madness and paranoia in the Crusade is being stoked by a Dreadlord, a demon who has possessed the body of its leader and seeks to use it to wrest control of the Scourge back for the Burning Legion.

The Monastery is a place of militant, corrupt fundamentalists, a real Spanish Inquisition vibe. I actually think this could be a lower-level dungeon, perhaps being around level 3-4, though I'd kind of want it to be slightly higher, around level 5. But the foes here are all humans (except for some hunting hounds,) and while we've got some higher-CR humanoid stat blocks in 5.5, I think we really aren't likely to see this go beyond level 6 or so.

Shadowfang Keep:

I'm going to make an assumption here that this is the original version of the dungeon, as this changed significantly when WoW's third expansion, Cataclysm, saw a huge revamp of the original continents' questing zones. While Deadmines also changed a lot, the overall premise was similar (the final boss was instead Vanessa VanCleef, who sought to reestablish the Defias to avenge her father). Shadowfang Keep, however, was basically an entirely different dungeon with the same map.

But let's assume the original version: a castle lying in the very northern reaches of Gilneas (beyond the Greymane Wall, which was erected when the king of Gilneas decided to cut his people off from the world). Abandoned after the building of the wall, it was there that Archmage Arugal, a powerful wizard (well, Mage in WoW terms, but basically that's what its Wizards are) sought to find a way to fight the Undead Scourge, and happened upon a secret and forbidden druidic ritual to find the "Pack Form." Turns out, however, that by channeling the Wolf spirit Goldrinn, druids who went that way lost control and turned into the werewolf-like Worgen. The Worgen were supposedly immune to the Plague of Undeath, though, so Arugal went forward with summoning these beings from the Emerald Dream, and unfortunately, this caused their curse to spread through the region, transforming people into Worgen.

Arugal went mad, considering the Worgen his children to protect. (Eventually, the Worgen made it past the Greymane Wall and infected a sizable chunk of Gilneas, which is how we have playable Worgen - alchemists and later Night Elf druids found a way to calm the beast and let them retain their human minds).

I don't know if we'll get specific Worgen stat blocks, or simply use Werewolves (they are truly the WoW equivalent,) but if we imagine numerous encounters with multiple CR 3 werewolves, I'd say this is probably going to be a tier 2 dungeon.

That being said, it might be tricky given that playable Worgen will be a thing in the book, and this original version of Shadowfang Keep is very much built on the idea that Worgen are just deadly monsters (scary enough even to freak out the Forsaken - the dungeon is in the zone they're meant to go to next after their starting area).

In the post-Cataclysm version of the dungeon, the Worgen there are only ghosts, and instead it has been taken over by a number of Gilnean nobles who rebelled against the King after they discovered he had become a Worgen. Siding with Sylvanas, the leader of the Forsaken, and rising as Forsaken themselves, they then turned around and betrayed her (shooting her in the head, actually, which I think was the third time she died, though she got better), so both factions had beef with them.

Personally, I felt that this version of the dungeon is a little less iconic, but it would make more sense for Worgen players to be involved. In terms of level range, I honestly don't truly remember very well what most of the enemies in there were (I think there was a heroic version, like Deadmines, in Cataclysm). But we'll say that it could potentially be of a similar range.

One instance I'm sort of surprised not to see on the list is Icecrown Citadel. This was the final (well, ok, there was one single-boss raid that came out later that was more of a prologue to the next expansion) raid of Wrath of the Lich King, in which we fought through the bastion of the Undead Scourge and confronted WoW's most popular and iconic villain, the Lich King, aka Arthas Menethil, who's on the cover of the book.

We're certain to get a stat block for him. But I also think that ICC, as we called it back in the day, would make an excellent dungeon for the end of tier 3 - it's super epic, with a very memorable final boss fight. There are only a handful of raids I'd save for tier 4 (off the dome, I think Antorus, the final raid of Legion, and Sepulcher of the First ones, the final raid of Shadowlands, both feel well and truly tier 4, as they're on crazy cosmic scales).

While they're hoping to let the book cover at least all 22 years of WoW (if not the entire 32 years of the franchise as a whole,) they've clearly go to pick their battles. Making every single dungeon in WoW into a D&D dungeon would require a book the size of an entire shelf, and are we really begging for the Oculus?

I realize I'm also kind of hedging here based on the fact that WotC tends to release content that goes from level 1 to 12ish, and rarely gets into the late tier 3/tier 4 areas. That being said, I know that that's kind of changing with recent releases. So who knows?

Well, we will in November.

Very Vague Rumors of a Second Elden Ring DLC

 Elden Ring's Shadow of the Erdtree DLC was enormous: while the Land of Shadow certainly wasn't as large as The Lands Between, it was nonetheless a huge region with basically an entire Dark Souls' worth of stuff, sending us into iconic fights with Messmer and a resurrected Radahn and Miquella, as well as really fantastic side content like our exploration of the Abyssal Woods that led to Midra, or Metyr, the Mother of Fingers. (And who could forget Igon's howling fury at Bayle the Dread?)

What I think a lot of players were surprised by, though, was the lack of closure for the story of Godwyn, the first of the demigods to die, slain in soul while his body has continued to live. Godwyn is something of the Baldur of Elden Ring's pantheon, beloved by all (it seems) and whose death triggered The Shattering.

Let's do a summary here:

Godwyn is (though to be) the son of Marika and Godfrey (first Elden Lord and also first of the Tarnished, whom we defeat en route to the final fight against Radagon in the base game). It's likely he was the firstborn, and while Marika's whole Golden Order is built around the notion that she's eternal, in a more traditional monarchic system, Godwyn would have been the clear heir apparent. Godwyn defeated and befriended the dragons, ushering in the establishment of the Dragon Cult within Marika's Golden Order (Cult here in the more traditional term, as a kind of narrower religious movement that is accepted by the larger church but not adhered to by all. I think technically by this definition, a monastic order like the Franciscans would count. In polytheistic traditions, it would be like people who dedicated themselves particularly to, like, Athena, while still worshipping the other Olympians).

Godwyn is thought to have been a kind older brother to Malenia and Miquella. He also, presumably, had children of his own, as it seems that the various characters with "God" as a prefix to their names (subtle, right?) were all part of The Golden Lineage. Unfortunately, this eventually led to Godefroy (a minor Evergaol boss) and Godrick the Grafted, who claimed to be the rightful heir to the Elden Ring, though how direct his descent from Godwyn was is questionable (Nepheli Loux, interestingly, is probably a direct descendant if not the daughter of Godfrey, whose actual name is Hoarah Loux, meaning she's probably got a more legitimate claim as heir to Godfrey specifically, even if she's not descended from Marika).

Anyway, Godwyn was the golden child, but on the Night of Black Knives, he was ambushed and slain by the Black Knife Assassins. In a simultaneous act, the cursemark of death was inscribed in his flesh while the other half of it was inscribed on Lunar Princess Ranni's body. Ranni's soul survived but her body died, while Godwyn's soul was killed and his body left alive.

It's not clear if this was evident to start with, because Godwyn's remains were given Erdtree Burial down in the Deeproot Depths. Perhaps because his body lived on without its soul, this created a corruption that now spreads across the Lands Between - Deathroot, which leads to the rise of Those Who Live in Death - more or less Elden Ring's version of the undead (though interestingly, some item descriptions describe the various "nobles" found on the road as undead. Likewise, the Tarnished are described as "Those who Died Yet Live." Unlike the Tarnished, Those Who Live in Death are rotting and decayed, sometimes skeletal.

Godwyn is now considered the Prince of Death, and Fia's questline, where she serves her role as a Deathbed Companion, has her ultimately lay with the Prince to create the Mending Rune of the Death Prince, which gives us the Age of the Duskborn ending.

There are a few things that I find really interesting surrounding Godwyn.

Among the Golden Order Fundamentalists, there are some who hunt Those Who Live in Death, who find their existence to be an affront to the Golden Order, such as D, Hunter of the Dead. Fundamentalist incantations require equal parts Faith and Intelligence, and their dedicated Seal scales with both in equal measures. Many of these have special effects against Those Who Live in Death, preventing them from rising again once struck down the first time.

Ironically, Death Sorceries work the same way, requiring a mix of Intelligence and Faith, and again, their dedicated staff, the Prince of Death's Staff, scales equally with both.

Anyway, Deathroot is said to hold fragments of the Rune of Death, which is why Gurranq (aka Maliketh) has us gather it for him in his attempt to reconstitute it and keep it under lock (supposedly there's an old bit of folkore that dogs can purify dead things by eating them, which might have inspired this).

Godwyn's form is utterly bizarre - his face has transformed into something that almost looks like a scallop shell, and his lower half is that of a fish.

Now... the interesting thing is that we never actually see him before the moment he's assassinated, and when he is, he's being held up by his elbows much in the way that he's posed in death, and he's lower than the assassins. Is it possible that he always had a merman-like form? Certainly Marika's disdain for her Omen twin sons, Mohg and Morgott, with their omen horns (which marked them actually as Hornsent, who would have been considered blessed in an earlier age) would have abhorred Godwyn's exhibition of aspects of the Crucible, where people manifest animal-like features (including horns?)

Perhaps, or perhaps not: after all, Marika hated the Hornsent, which were specifically all about horns. But given that Godfrey drew power from the Crucible (even if he himself is fully human in form) maybe it wasn't even that much of a shock if Godwyn was born with that fishy lower half, and maybe it was acceptable?

Otherwise, there's a possibility that the fish tail was a result of his corruption by Death. There is a lot of aquatic imagery related to death as a power, such as the Tibia Mariners. Perhaps the abyssal depths of the ocean are tied to death, and so the Prince of Death would naturally take on a form more at home int he deep waters?

The strange thing is that Godwyn's presence is pretty thin in The Land of Shadow. The Land of Shadow holds a pillar where it is said that "all manner of death converge." The Suppressing Pillar seems like it was probably made on Marika's orders, given that, as a god who sought to embody abundant life, she loathed death in all of its forms. The Land of Shadows is, in many ways, the Land of the Dead.

Godwyn has a presence there, but it's not as extensive as you'd expect it to be.

There are three catacomb dungeons in The Land of Shadow. These are far larger than the ones in the base game, with multiple levels to descend. In each, you can find one of Godwyn's loyal knights, the Death Knights, who employ his golden draconic lighting magic. (Two are the dungeons' final bosses, while one is found dead there, and you can get their cool armor set, while the final boss is actually outside the catacombs and leads into the Abyssal Woods).

In either one or two of these (I can't remember,) there is a massive Godwyn face similar to the one we find in the depths of Stormveil Castle.

We know that Godwyn's body is growing, cancer-like, across the Lands Between. It's truly some of the most unnerving imagery in the game, with root-like structures manifesting eyes, and showing up even on some creatures (like the crabs in the moat outside of Leyndell where we fight Dung Eater or the various Basilisks).

Thus, these huge facsimiles of him might just be particularly advanced growths. But their presence in the Land of Shadow implies that the Deathroot does reach there somehow (hell, it even shows up in Farum Azula, which raises some really interesting questions about when the city flew up into the sky). I believe, though, that one of the odd details about the Shadowlands Catacombs is that, other than these massive faces, you don't actually see the Deathroot threaded through them like you do in the base game.

When the Shadow of the Erdtree DLC was announced, many players were convinced that we'd finally have our big fight against an undead Godwyn the Golden, and so a lot of people were kind of shocked and even disappointed that we were having a kind of rematch with Radahn as its big final boss fight.

Here's the thing: FromSoft tends to zig when you expect them to zag - Shadow of the Erdtree's marketing was focused a ton of Messmer, who is a memorable boss to be sure, but also kind of a supporting player in the real drama of the expansion. Similarly, Artorias of the Abyss was the headliner for the DLC that shared his name, but the actual final boss of that was Manus.

In other words, if we do get a second DLC, if they put Godwyn front-and-center, I would say the chances are very high that he'll be an important boss on the way to the actual final boss. If he's barely referenced, though, I think there's a fair chance.

All this being said: at this point, do we want more DLC for Elden Ring? Or would we want an Elden Ring 2? I know that Dark Souls III was kind of all about how dragging a series out for multiple sequels leads to diminishing returns. But Elden Ring's world is so profoundly dense with lore, even more, I'd wager, than that of Dark Souls.

I wouldn't be upset at all about getting an Elden Ring II (Roman numerals seem more appropriate for the series). At the same time, I suspect that the focus would be more on new elements, with a ton of new characters and taking place probably thousands of years after the first game. Of course, a figure like Godwyn is sure to still be around in thousands of years. How might the Deathroot have evolved in that time?

To be clear, all this speculation is based on a social media post that simply referred to the beauty of riding around on the Siofra River, but it kind of came out of nowhere.

My WoW Characters as D&D Characters

 With the official WoW/D&D crossover book now announced, I thought it would be fun to figure out what my various WoW characters would count as if translated into D&D.

I've been playing WoW for nearly 20 years, and in that time, the number of character options has expanded profoundly, so I have a ton of characters. But I generally have a "main" for each class, so I'll stick to those. The name of this blog, of course, is a reference in large part to how many alts I make - I'm always eager to see RPGs from multiple angles.

Jarsus: Human Protection Paladin --> Human Devotion Paladin

This one's fairly straightforward, but I will say that there's an alternative to the Oath of Devotion here, which would be Oath of the Watchers. I've also tended to lean into the Engineering profession's aesthetic, though this might be reflected more in just having tool proficiencies rather than fully going into levels of Artificer (though put a pin in that).

Oterro: Draenei Blood Death Knight --> Draenei Ebon Blade Paladin

So, the Oath of the Ebon Blade is basically the way they're going to handle player Death Knights in this, and that narrows our options a little. I suspect it will probably lean a bit more into the necromancer-themed Unholy Death Knight, but I don't think there will be a better equivalent for Blood.

Veranos: Night Elf Havoc Demon Hunter --> Wood Elf Demon Hunter Ranger

There's some promise of guidance to make established playable species work for equivalent WoW races, and I've always thought that Night Elves and Wood Elves are pretty clearly equivalents of one another. Like the Death Knight, the Demon Hunter is summed up in this one subclass, though I do think Havoc is the most "quintessential" of Demon Hunter specs, so I think this might be reflected decently.

Darsino: Undead Subtlety Rogue --> Forsaken Arcane Trickster Rogue

I'm not sure that any D&D subclass really captures the shadow-magic vibes of WoW's Subtlety Rogue. Honestly, it might work better with a Warrior of Shadow Monk. Soulknife is another possibility, as I think "Psychic" and "Shadow" damage in WoW are often equivalents (though Shadow is also sometimes the equivalent of Necrotic).

Tarbhad: Tauren Enhancement Shaman --> Tauren Path of Elements Barbarian

I know Ancestral Guardian is being reflavored as Spiritual Guardian, both of which could feel very WoW Shaman, but I think that my sense of Tarbhad is that he leans more into the elemental magic. It's very odd to have a version of him that can't cast spells, but he is focused on melee. I think if you wanted to do an Elemental or Restoration Shaman, you might lean instead into the Druid class, or even Cleric if you used Tempest Domain.

Goraas: Draenei Frost Mage --> Draenei Conjurer Wizard

The subclass here is very difficult to pick, because in WoW, they're simply separated by element, whereas in D&D, it's more "what you want to focus on with your spells." So, this could be Evocation, or really anything (maybe not Necromancer). But I guess the fact that a Frost Mage can summon a water elemental to fight alongside them made me think of Conjurer.

Morcanis: Gnome Demonology Warlock --> Gnome Fiend Warlock

This is funny, because in WoW, Warlocks are by definition using demonic Fel magic. Now, I actually think that this could possibly lean even farther into being a Conjurer Wizard - Demonology is all about summoning a ton of demons (mostly little imps). Indeed, the WoW Warlock is not really about forging pacts so much as it is delving into forbidden knowledge, which is honestly more like a D&D Wizard, just kind of "dark" themed.

Ardten: Worgen Arms Warrior --> Worgen Battle Master Fighter

Actually, I think I've been playing this one more as Protection lately, but I think the flavor of Arms is 100% consistent with the disciplined, tactical soldier that the Battle Master Fighter represents.

Etharian: Blood Elf Shadow Priest --> High Elf Shadow Cleric

I mean, they're adding Shadow Domain, so this one's basically a gimme. And for those unfamiliar with WoW lore, Blood Elves literally were called High Elves just a few decades back. After their kingdom had the majority of its population slaughtered by the Undead Scourge, they (or at least most of them) renamed themselves Blood Elves to reflect the bitterness and grief they feel.

Blattz: Goblin Survival Hunter --> Goblin Battle Smith Artificer

First off, only in the recent Midnight expansion have I prioritized this guy over my old Dwarf Beast Mastery Hunter, who would clearly just be a... Beast Master Ranger. But in WoW, Goblins and Gnomes are automatically given the ability to tame some "mechanical" (equivalent to Constructs) pets in place of beasts (others can get this ability, but need to do various things to attain it) and so Blattz has a mechanical squirrel as his primary pet. On top of that, Survival is a melee spec, which Battle Smiths sort of lean into (though you can still be fairly effective at range). And Goblins are one of the more "technological" peoples in WoW, so this just feels kind of right. Interestingly, there is evidently not going to be a Goblin species in the WoW book, and there still hasn't been a 5.5 update for them, though presumably we'd just use the Monsters of the Multiverse version, which was kind of pitched as a "pre 5.5" update.

Rackhom: Kul Tiran Guardian Druid --> Human Moon Druid

In WoW, "Feral" was originally the single spec that focused on shape-shifting, but because of the way that talents and specializations changed in Mists of Pandaria back in 2012, they broke out the tanking-focused Guardian spec, built around Bear form, from the damage-dealing Feral, built around Cat form. Either of these would be pretty well-represented by Circle of the Moon, though I will say that part of the reason I started prioritizing my Kul Tiran over my old Night Elf Druid was that their animal forms look like creepy wicker-man constructs made of furs and bone, and so I might even go with the upcoming Circle of the Titan. Maybe I just prefer the mechanics of that subclass. Anyway, Moon makes perfect sense here. (As a note, Kul Tiras is just another human kingdom, whereas the default humans come from Stormwind. That said, Kul Tirans are taller and bulkier, and it's implied that they might also be descended from the Drust after humans arrived on the shores of the island nation. The Drust are also heavily implied to be an off-shoot of the Vrykul, who were the half-giant ancestors of humanity, so it would make sense that they'd be co-fertile. Thus if you really squint, you could imagine Kul Tirans being heavily re-skinned Goliaths, but my assumption is that they're just going to treat Kul Tirans as humans. Indeed, while player character Kul Tirans are all the bulkier, bigger ones, among NPCs there's a mix of them as well as normal human models, so it's more just reflective of diverse body types.)

Gaotso: Pandaren Brewmaster Monk --> Pandaren Mystic Brews Monk

This is a pretty obvious one, though I wonder if the Mystic Brews Monk will also incorporate some healing to cover WoW's Mistweaver healing spec (arguably, Warrior of Mercy kind of covers their "Fistweaving" mix of melee and healing).

Arkanizormu: Dracthyr Devastation Evoker --> Dracthyr Draconic Sorcerer

It's funny - Dracthyr are kind of WoW's Dragonborn equivalent, but they're typically a bit slimmer and have wings. Initially they were only able to become what was then a new class, the Evoker, which is built around channeling the magic of the five Dragonflights (Red, Green, Blue, Black, and Bronze - though unlike in D&D, most of those flights are good guys. Indeed, even though the Black Dragonflight was evil for ten thousand years, the few surviving ones have reformed and are serving their original role as guardians of the world). Anyway, pretty clear analogue here.

    It'll be interesting to see how the various species, subclasses, and spells express the flavor and mechanics of the WoW classes. Naturally, there are a few other ways I think you could get a really clear analogue in D&D for certain WoW specs, like Circle of Stars really fits well with the Balance Druid.

Anyway, it's kind of exciting that we'll be getting this in only a few months.

What Will D&D Star Wars Look Like?

 So, when I was I think 9 years old, I got into Star Wars. Like, really, really into Star Wars. My family had the movies (at the time, there were only the three from the original trilogy) on LaserDisc (a format that was superior to VHS, but 100% obsolete once DVDs came out - think vinyl-record-sized discs, and you'd typically have to have a feature length movie on both sides of one disc and one side of another).

For a long time (in my memory it was like months, but was probably like a couple weeks) I would watch two Star Wars movies a day - starting with A New Hope (yes, the home video versions had that on the opening crawl, though the packaging just said "Star Wars") and then Empire Strikes Back, then the following day would be Return of the Jedi and A New Hope, and then the next day was Empire and Jedi, and then repeat.

While I haven't seen those movies in years, I'm sure that if I were to watch them again I'd be able to say almost all the dialogue along with the characters.

But my love of Star Wars kind of faded over time. The term "copium" wasn't a thing in 1999, but 13-year-old me certainly worked pretty hard to convince myself that Episode One was good. By the time the second prequel came out, I had decided Phantom Menace wasn't good, but I worked pretty hard to make myself thing Attack of the Clones was. The process repeated, but with shorter turn-around times.

Still, despite thinking the prequels were crap and the sequels were a bizarre mess (I liked Rian Johnson's deconstructive take, but it seems like no one at Lucasfilm seemed to have actually planned the trilogy out in advance, which is utterly insane for such a massive IP,) I do love that world. I think there's a reason that people keep wanting to go there and expand the Star Wars universe - it just scratches this itch.

I will say, of the Disney-era stuff, by far my favorite was Andor - though I've only seen the first season, as my access to Disney Plus lapsed before the second season came out (which I've heard is even better).

But I think it goes to show you that Star Wars is a world that can support lots of different stories (I actually really liked the early episodes of The Mandalorian, when it was more in that pulp-novel, wandering hero mode with very little dialogue. It kind of got buried under all the "lore" and the desire to backdoor pilot other shows). It can be a family-friendly adventure, or a gritty drama about how difficult it is to fight an authoritarian regime.

Now, I think that there's an elephant in the room we should address: SW5E is a hack of D&D 5E that is designed to allow you to run adventures in the Star Wars universe. It gets around copyright laws by being entirely free. Notably, it was this hack of the system that Dimension 20 used for A Starstruck Odyssey (naturally hacking it a bit more to work in the Starstruck universe).

In other words, you might argue that this product isn't really necessary - though I think the sheen of "official" will probably make it more popular.

Anyway, Star Wars is interesting because I do think it's primarily a fantasy setting. But it clearly has a science-fiction aesthetic, and it's probably more accurate to describe it as science-fantasy (arguably it's the quintessential example).

Indeed, when they released the 5E Spelljammer set, I think I had built that setting up to be something it isn't, which was science-fantasy, whereas Spelljammer is much more truly "fantasy in space," with its tall ships sailing between the stars.

What I was looking for, frankly, was something more akin to Star Wars, with laser guns and robots and enclosed spaceships. I adore the used future aesthetic, where the ships have rusty hulls scorched by oblique blaster bolts they managed to shrug off. It's certainly more in line with how I portrayed my "Sarkon Starbound" setting when I ran a brief campaign using Spelljammer rules (I think every player was one of the Spelljammer species - a Thri-kreen, a Giff, an Autognome, and an Astral Elf).

Now, what I'm really curious to see is how they handle the magic and magical classes of D&D.

See, as I understand it, Star Wars' magic is kind of all tied up in The Force, and while I'm sure some of the expanded materials do touch on other kinds of Force Users, in the movies at least we basically only ever see the Jedi and Sith. (I do like that Rogue One had someone who was devout toward the Force but with no special abilities. It's a reminder that you don't have to be a Cleric or Paladin to be religious in D&D!) How that squares with 5E, which is a system in which most PCs have some kind of magical ability, will be curious.

It'll probably be a while before we see this one. While the Warcraft book (I think just singular?) is coming in November, we got just the barest teaser for this one.