One of the challenges of being a D&D obsessive is that, even as we sometimes bemoan the slow pace of content, the truth is that it comes out at a far faster rate than I imagine most people make enough characters to keep up with.
As a player, I haven't actually started a new campaign or even one-shot since the 5.5 Core Rulebooks have come out. I was able to convert my Wizard to the new rules, but the Rogue I was playing in Wild Beyond the Witchlight was not allowed to given that our DM was inexperienced and not eager to learn all the changes to the rules mid-campaign (he had hoped that the light tone of Witchlight and fewer combat encounters would make it easier to run. As a DM with over a decade of experience under my belt, I warned him that combat is the easiest thing to run in D&D).
Anyway, the result, of course, is a big character pile-up.
I've actually had a number of characters waiting in the wings since before 5.5 dropped, but I've perhaps re-ordered them based on which have gotten updates and how my priorities have changed.
I'll also say that these priorities really aren't hard and fast rules: my Wizard was something created a little spur-of-the-moment based on the campaign we were doing. While I wasn't sure the Scribes Wizard was the subclass I was most enamored of, I came up with a fun hook for my character, which was that he was a junior archivist with the Cobalt Soul who discovered the spirit of an Age of Arcanum Wizard who had put himself into a book. I will note here that the campaign was already in full swing for over a year before Emily Axford's guest character on Critical Role's third campaign arrived with almost an identical premise - I will not be accused of plagiarism! (Nor do I think she's ever heard of me or my character, so no accusations either way, of course.)
My background is in writing - I'm very lazily hoping to eventually get a novel or two published - and so I just have a lot of fun coming up with character backstories (it is kind of the cheapest high you can get as a writer - coming up with a premise without having to resolve anything). So, honestly, writing the backstories is a fun exercise in and of itself, likewise fleshing out my homebrew setting (though I do think it helps to have all that material to draw from once the players start interacting with said world).
So, I've got these following ideas:
Conrad, the Great Old One Warlock:
This was the first character I came up with when I got the 5.0 core books back in 2015. I did actually get to play him, but only in a brief adventure my best friend ran for the group from my original campaign when he wanted to give DMing a try. We only hit level 2 near the end of that adventure, so I didn't really get a ton of time with him.
I will say, I'm not entirely sure that I'd be so excited to play him - not because of any underlying flaws to the character concept, but just because I did already play an Eldritch Blast-focused Warlock in Descent into Avernus, and I don't know that he would necessarily play all that differently. Conrad is a very "dark powers, good person" kind of character, and I think after several years playing my very innocent Wizard, I don't know that this would be the next one on the list (though unlike the Wizard, for whom things are basically going ok other than the world-ending dangers of the campaign, Conrad is allowing is patron to change his body and mind in ways that might not be healthiest if he wants to stay human).
Hack, the Elements Monk:
This was the one that emerged after the 5.5 Player's Handbook came out. The Warrior of Elements is such a massive upgrade over the godawful Way of Four Elements that I was eager to try it out. An aeronaut from a flying town (this is something that I'd need to run by my DM) who got shipwrecked on an island with a monastery, Hack's trying to get home and blend his bar-brawling skills from his days as a sailor with the more focused martial arts the monks have taught him while also tracking down the massive flying dreadnaught that blew his ship out of the sky.
The new Monk might not be strictly super-powerful, but it did improve significantly with the 5.5 update, and I think you could play some very interesting games with a Grappler build that takes advantage of the Elements' Monks longer reach on unarmed strikes.
Jax, the Eldritch Knight:
This is actually the character I've played longest other than the Wizard. But while my whole gameplan in the game that ran from about 2019 to around 2022 was to make him nigh-impossible to hit, I'd like to rebuild him as a Great Weapon Master and lean into the high damage output (the Shield spell and Plate is still pretty good for survival, even without a +1 Shield).
Also, the campaign fell apart when we were trapped in Avernus without any of the gear we'd acquired (we were level 12, so we had a fair amount). I'd love to just have an opportunity to think that they're doing better now.
Aldric, the Undead Bladelock:
Another character I actually did briefly get to play. This was in 2024 right after the PHB had come out, so the DM (a friend of my sister's in New York - I was there for a little over a month after my nephew was born to help out because my brother-in-law had to work) was keeping things with the 2014 rules.
But between the improvements to Pact of the Blade and the admittedly minor updates to the Undead Warlock in Horrors Within (though notably, the change from an Expanded Spell List to Patron Spells is a pretty big bonus) I felt it was a good opportunity to have my Reborn guy working as essentially a fixer for an order of Death Knights who are all trapped in a crumbling, ruined castle to go in that direction. Aldric isn't bad per se, but is far less idealistic and generous than Conrad.
Name and Backstory TBD: Necromancer:
Yeah... I'm yearning to play a somewhat sinister character. And the Arcana Unleashed Necromancer has been on my mind now quite a bit. It's a character concept that needs a lot of coordination with the DM (primarily just seeing how practical it is for you to maintain a group of undead minions when traveling from town to town). Obviously, the issue is that I've already been playing a Wizard for quite a while, and while the vibe would be very different (though my innocent young Triton does dabble in a bit of ethical necromancy here and there) Wizards' biggest asset is their spell list. Could I really resist the urge to take all the same really good spells?
Abram, Armorer Artificer:
Broadly, I'm of the opinion that the Forge of the Artificer... er, Artificer is stronger overall than the one from Rising From the Last War. But I can also understand why the player in my Ravnica group chose not to convert at level 19, because the old level 20 capstone is so very, very good.
But if I were to play one from level 1, or level 3, I'd want to revisit the one I very excitedly started up in a Spelljammer game that lasted all of two sessions before the DM got busy (this was the same DM who had run the campaign with my Eldritch Knight for years, but a lot of the plot was built around the Paladin PC whose player became a dad and moved to the East Coast. Advice to DMs: building plots around your PCs is great, but be sure to evenly distribute this across the party, with threads that can be picked up even if a key player leaves).
Anyway, I'm pretty thoroughly convinced that the Battle Smith is the current best subclass, but I really like the Armorer concept (I just wish that the 5.5 one would make it explicitly clear that we could separately Replicate magic versions of the built-in weapons and magic armor, which the 5.0 one did make very clear).
The Artificer feels like a fun toolbox class in similar way to the Wizard, and I think some of the magic item shenanigans in the 5.5 version could be very fun to play around with.
Unnamed Mystic Arts Monk:
Look, the Elements Monk got such a massive glow-up. But also, the Mystic Arts Monk has got to be the best Monk subclass now, right?
Beyond power, I do think that getting spells, even as a one-third caster, opens up such possibilities for your character that it's really had to turn down.
And that is, I think, the big list. Obviously, there are ideas I'd be eager to try with other classes (actually, while I'd love to see how the Oath of the Ebon Blade Paladin replicates WoW's Death Knight class, I'd actually be pretty tempted to play the build I made for my Undead Subtlety Rogue, as seen in a recent post.)
Realistically, I'll be happy if I get to play any of these characters. And by the time I do, we likely will have a bunch of new options come out that will excite me more.
See the name of the blog.
No comments:
Post a Comment