Monday, October 26, 2026

Massive Influx of WoW/D&D News Stuff

 So, I've spent the better part of the day listening to Insight Check's various videos and streams after there has apparently been a lifting of a lot of NDA stuff regarding the WoW D&D book.

I'm not going to summarize everything here, but let's see about the highlights:

Death Knights:

Death Knights, which are Paladins that use the special Oath of the Ebon Blade subclass, look like they'll be ok, but not overpowered. Indeed, at least when looking at the features that the Death Knight replaces from the Paladin (mainly Lay on Hands, along with a replacement for Divine Smite as a spell that works almost exactly the same) it's arguably less powerful (Rune Strike, which replaces Divine Smite, does necrotic damage and only gets bonus damage against Celestials, both of which are going to be nerfs in most campaigns,) but you're still mostly using the Paladin chassis, with no alteration to the Paladin's best feature, Aura of Protection. In other words, it's probably going to wind up still being quite good.

Demon Hunters:

Demon Hunters actually seem to have less extensive changes to the base class than the Death Knight (given that Death Knights count as Undead, I'm sort of surprised that Demon Hunters don't count as Fiends, though to be fair, that might have been a bigger problem for them, potentially). Primarily, the subclass seems to introduce a new resource mechanic that works a bit like the Phantom Rogue's soul trinkets, which can be used for utility like getting free (or rather, alternative-cost) castings of the Jump or Feather Fall spell, or getting a "Soul Cleave" action where you can do essentially an AOE swipe around you.

Monks:

The Warrior of Mystic Brews has some really great stuff once you hit level 6 - the level 3 features are basically the same as they were with the Drunken Master in Xanathar's, but the brews you can pick up are very powerful, even if you need to pick one per rest (and I think you'll basically always want to spend the FP to make the brew last 8 hours). I don't know if it will stack up with the Mystic Arts (boy, that'll be confusing) subclass, but I have high hopes for this one, and certainly seems to be delivering on the cool concept of the Drunken Master. The terrible Drunken Master feature, Drunkard's Luck, which was your sole level 11 feature and let you spend 2 Ki to cancel disadvantage on a d20 test (not give you advantage, just cancel disadvantage) is now just one of three brews you can take, and works infinitely better, by literally giving you Heroic Inspiration every time you make a d20 test while you don't have Heroic Inspiration. I don't think this means that you just get permanent advantage on everything (I assume it's like: you get HI after you roll, say, a Stealth check, and then you can of course just spend that on your Initiative roll after you failed that stealth check, and then you make an attack roll straight, earning you HI, which you can then spend on the dex save when the dragon you just punched breathes fire at you. But still, this is advantage on basically half of all d20 tests you take, which is still freaking amazing. And the other options are good too.

Monks also have a few feats designed to emulate elements of WoW Monks, including one... I can't remember if this is called Fists of Fury, but in addition to treating 1s as 2s on unarmed strikes and light weapon damage (meh) you'll get a stacking bonus to damage for each hit you land with unarmed strikes on a single turn on the same target. So, by level 10, if you're making 5 unarmed strikes with a Flurry of Blows and hit on all of them, that winds up adding up to 10 more damage, which is not quite Great Weapon Master numbers, but in the same ballpark.

Clerics:

We didn't actually get any real overview of the Discipline Domain, though they seemed to like it, but evidently Shadow is a let-down (especially with an insultingly weak capstone). That's a shame, as I think we could use more good dark Cleric subclasses.

Druids:

While there's no new Druid subclasses, the Cat and Bear forms added as options for Circle of the Moon (which represents the Feral and Guardian specs in WoW) gives us some templates. Bear Form seems likely to be the better option in most cases, as Cat form bizarrely does not let you make two attacks with its multiattack, instead letting you Prowl and then attack from stealth with some bonus damage. To be fair, this does mimic Feral in WoW, where your Cat form functions effectively like a Rogue. Bear Form has higher AC and just lets you make two attacks, and honestly feels a lot more like the general "Land Animal" form that we might have gotten for 5.5 had they stuck to their guns with the One D&D Playtest (this time, though, the AC is 15+Wisdom, which means you'll have a perfectly reasonable AC).

Barbarian:

While it's still the most controversial idea out of the WoW book, Barbarians are representing Shamans. We didn't get a ton from this discussion, but supposedly the Spiritual Guardian update to the Ancestral Guardian is a buff to the old subclass, which was already one of the best (I've been DMing an Ancestral Guardian Barbarian in my Ravnica game, and he's such a good tank that it honestly makes me a little frustrated at times, which probably means it's good design). The Path of Elements is evidently not at all like the Storm Herald, which is a relief, though its focus on an elemental cycle is something I wonder about given how short D&D combat goes (that said, if it's a three-turn cycle, maybe that's fine, as it's not unusual to get three turns in a combat).

Paladin:

No word on the Oath of the Holy subclass, and obviously we covered Oath of the Ebon Blade already. But I did want to say that Divine Shield is in and seems to be very good - a reaction-speed spell that gives full damage immunity, prevents any forced movement or reduced movement speed, and then gives you advantage on your next attack - the last bit being sort of whatever, but still: this is the ultimate defensive reaction spell. Imagine using this when the big bad drops a Meteor Swarm on you and shrugging it off like it was nothing.

Ranger:

Again, we already talked Demon Hunter, but Beast Master Rangers are also getting an alternative feature to Roving, which lets your pet have one of three specializations, each of which grant a passive benefit as well as giving the pet the ability to cast a spell on both you and itself once a day without components. These spells are Haste, Freedom of Movement, and Stoneskin. Note that Stoneskin has a costly and consumed material component, which is why you never see people cast it. These are also 3rd and 4th level spells, and I think you get this feature at, like, level 6, which is way earlier than a Ranger would get such spell levels.

    Generally, the vibe I've gotten is that there are some interesting big swings here in terms of design, but also that there's a wide range of quality and power between the various options. Tons of this should work perfectly fine in a non-Azeroth campaign, so I'd encourage those who have something against WoW or just are against the idea of Universes Beyond (the latter of which I'm more sympathetic to,) to still consider allowing these options at your table, even if you don't want to vote with your dollars (or whatever currency you use) to buy the book yourself. Hell, between Insight Check's roundtable stream and spell videos, I think you get literally the entire Death Knight, so just copy it all down without paying a cent! (Not advocating for piracy in general, but in a case where the stuff is all out in public with WotC's blessing, I mean... no issues there, right?)

    One thing I think we might need to consider, though, is how the existence of the Ebon Blade "Paladin" gives us a dramatically different way of making playable Death Knights real in comparison with the potential "Feat Path" approach they tested in the "Villainous Options" UA. Frankly, I think that this is a more elegant solution, given that this kind of a Death Knight will still have the feats open to take things like Great Weapon Master or Inspiring Leader.

    In a world where WotC had a design team about three or four times as large, maybe we'd get fully-fledged classes for things like this, which in the end might actually be the ideal scenario.

    But I think that this book's approach to "hero classes" could open up a new avenue of "design tech" that WotC could use in the future to make more dramatic variants on existing classes.

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