The Thalmor, the Frenzied Flame, and Gnostic Horror

 The very first movie that my family got on DVD was The Matrix. My dad had gotten a G4 Macintosh that came with a DVD-ROM drive, and so what was then a new home video format had now become available to us. I had seen previews of The Matrix, but the marketing campaign for the movie cleverly kept the actual premise of the film secret, enticing viewers with its slick, stylish, mindblowing visuals (having invented "Bullet Time," a technique that put dozens of still cameras around a scene, hidden within a greenscreen environment, so that you could freeze time while the "camera" moved around the scene).

The story, of course, is well-known at this point: Neo discovers that the world he inhabits, which resembles a dreary urban 1999 with soulless office work, is actually a virtual environment operated by tyrannical machine overlords, who instead use humanity as batteries while lulling them into complacency by trapping them in this digital limbo. (My dad, ever the pedant, complained about the fact that human bodies would take far more energy to maintain than they'd put out, but I think that A: they're not a source so much as a capacitor for energy, and B: there's either an element of contempt here or a kind of "Zeroth Law" thing where the machines are technically protecting humanity by keeping them in this state.)

The movie blended a whole lot of philosophical ideas while also drawing heavily upon Anime as an inspiration at a time when the medium was far more niche in the West. After its sibling directors, the Wachowskis, both came out as trans women, though, looking back on the movie, you can see the way in which its story works as a trans allegory, a metaphor for breaking out of a rigid system of cultural expectations (including gender roles) to live as oneself - in particular, the villainous Agent Smith insistently refers to Neo as Thomas Anderson, the name that he was given at birth but not the one he chose for himself. I wouldn't learn the term Deadnaming for about two decades after seeing the movie, but this is exactly what Agent Smith is constantly doing.

Still, I don't think the movie was meant to be purely read as a trans allegory, and can be more broadly viewed as an allegory for breaking out of all manner of dehumanizing systems, from patriarchy to capitalism.

But beyond that, the central kind of fantasy of it all: that the world you know is not the real world, and that one might attain a higher level of power and wisdom by escaping into the true world beyond, is a potent one at the center of fantasy as a genre (the Matrix is obviously more sci-fi, but tonally it could be seen as a fantasy story as well).

Gnosticism is a tradition within the history of early Christianity that, of course, is a lot more complex and nuanced than I'll be able to cover here (and I'm not any authority on this anyway,) but one of the central concepts is that of the Demiurge - a being who appears to be godlike, but is actually inherently corrupt and only pretends to be the true divine creator, and the false reality that the Demiurge has created.

The Demiurge might be malicious, or might be ignorant and foolish, not even realizing that they are lying.

But the idea is that while the true creator created a pure and holy spiritual universe, that the Demiurge created physical reality, and by doing so, trapped flawless, perfect souls in profane, weak physical forms. Salvation, to the Gnostics, was achieved by discovering the truth of one's pure origins, and would allow a kind of escape from the profane physical world to ascend into the true universe beyond the material.

The Gnostics were considered heretics by the early church, but the ideas that they presented have, I think, become part of Western cultural thought, and even link up in some ways with philosophies from other parts of the world.

Surely, the world we exist in includes suffering. Quite a lot of it, in fact. Three is certainly an appeal to the idea that one could escape all of it.

But... what if they're wrong? And what if this went beyond mere philosophical speculation and into the realm of action.

To be clear, I'm not going to talk about anyone doing this in the real world, but I think we can draw some parallels once we look at two examples.

In The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, taking place centuries after the events of the previous game, we find an Empire that has been forced into a subservient position by the neighboring Aldmeri Dominion. The Dominion has within it a kind of agency called the Thalmor, who were described by the developers as a faction that, no matter where your loyalties lay in, say, the Skyrim civil war, you were meant to hate.

They are not only a kind of secret police, but also a kind of inquisition, imposing religious laws that the Dominion had forced upon the Empire that forbid the worship of Talos, the a human who had ascended to godhood.

Why do they want to do this? Well, because Talos is evidently the lynchpin that keeps the physical universe from being destroyed.

And why would they want it destroyed?

Because they are basically Gnostic fundamentalists: they believe that the elves (or "mer,") were once free spirits that roamed the cosmos in a formless state of bliss. As long as the physical world exists, they are held back from returning to this state.

Which... makes things a bit complicated. After all, if they're right, might it actually be better to allow for this collapse of reality as we know it? The High Elves (Aldmeri) view Lorkhan, the Demiurge-like figure who helped create the world, as a villainous monster who imprisoned their souls. But humanity, or at least the Nords, revere him as the god Shor, who led humanity to fight off oppression and tyrants (notably, the elves).

The Thalmor are pretty universally hatable. It is their imposition of these religious laws upon the Empire that leads to the civil war in Skyrim. And in a modern, tolerant, secular view of the world (one that I certainly hold but is clearly not universal) it seems pretty clearly villainous to undercut the core of another peoples' culture. But the Thalmor believe that the end - in this case the end of the world - justifies the means, and that this apocalyptic fate would actually be better for everyone, and not in a "mercy kill the universe" way but a "usher in an endless golden age of spiritual freedom" way.

I think a similar concept is at work in Elden Ring.

Of all the dangerous threats in the Lands Between, the most mysterious and horror-coded is the Frenzied Flame. There's no one single demigod or faction associated with it - it wasn't until the Shadow of the Erdtree DLC that we got a proper boss aligned with the Flame.

But if we follow the path that leads to the Three Fingers, and we get Hyetta to serve as our Finger Maiden for them (even if we wind up using Miquella's Needle to cleanse ourselves of it and thus have our cake and eat it too - too bad Melina never shows up again to let us explain how we accomplished this,) she explains that the belief associated with the Frenzied Flame is that, at the beginning of time, there was the One Great, but that the One Great divided itself, no longer held together in wholeness and allowing for different things to emerge from the fractured whole.

Hyetta claims this was a mistake, and that all suffering and pain has been a result from this fracturing. The Flame of Frenzy, though, will melt everything down, ridding the world of all that divides and distinguishes, and restore the One Great to its original, undifferentiated form.

I think that this idea runs parallel to that Gnostic idea. In this case, the One Great is sort of both divine creator and demiurge, but we might say that the part of the One Great that remained in a position of divine authority, the Greater Will, is really playing this role of Demiurge.

So, the Frenzied Flame is this force that works toward the reconstitution of that original One Great. But... it does so in a manner of pure horror.

One of the things that I've always felt was really fascinating about the Flame is that we don't really see a lot of people talking about it. It seems to arise in places of despair - the tomb of the wandering merchants is where the Three Fingers can be found, but we also see how Midra's Manor was once a beautiful place that was burned by the Hornsent Inquisition, its master impaled with a truly horrifying torture implement (how is he not dead with that thing going directly through his brain?) But even little minor places, like the village on the Weeping Peninsula (not sure what they're despairing about, but the name of the landmass doesn't imply it's the happiest place) or the Leyndell soldiers trapped on the slopes of Mt. Gelmir, resorting to cannibalism as they're cut off from reinforcements and supplies - these are all places where the Frenzied Flame has power. (Oh, I forgot the place up on the Consecrated Snowfield. No clue what is going on there, actually.)

But the point is, there are these weird parallels with the Golden Order. One might even see how the Shamans' ability to amalgamate with others' bodies might be viewed in this manner. The Law of Regression - is that a little hidden nod to the Frenzied Flame within the Golden Order?

What is interesting is that in all of these cases, there is this feeling of a crime or mistake that has ruined things - that the imposition of a physical world was an evil act.

And this goes in pretty stark contrast with the more widespread and popular conceptions of creation - that the world's birth was a good thing, and that the fact that everything exists is good, even if there are flaws in it. And likewise, isn't the classic heroic fantasy narrative about saving the world from destruction?

When Melina makes her last plea to the Tarnished not to take on the Frenzied Flame, she speaks specifically of how it will prevent "births," which I find pretty interesting given that it's not a word we hear elsewhere in the game, as far as I know. What she specifically means is, of course, open for debate (this is FromSoft, so everything's always open for debate). But I think this is an appeal to the idea that the physical world allows for new possibilities, for new ideas and things and people to arise.

There's something appealing, certainly, to an endless and eternal state of perpetual bliss. But by complicating things, by making a world of texture and color and distinctions, we actually have something - we have meaning.

Swashbuckler Rogue

 The only reprint that sticks with its original name, the Swashbuckler is actually one of the most iconic rogue archetypes. In the One D&D playtest for 5.5, they originally planned to have the Swashbuckler as the PHB's fourth Rogue subclass, and as much as I like the Soulknife, I do think that this is far more of an obvious, core Rogue fantasy that really deserves to be one of the basic options.

This is the Rogue who doesn't hide in the shadows, but walks into the false-king's banquet hall pointedly holding a poached deer. It's the most classically-heroic Rogue, potentially, though typically in the role of a scrappy underdog. Through wit, charm, cunning, and rakish audacity (so to speak,) they make fools of their foes.

Now, because this is appearing in the WoW book, let's give a little history of the Outlaw spec, which began its life under a different name.

In WoW, all three Rogue specs dual-wield melee weapons - there's no ranged Rogue, and they're the only pure-melee class that cannot perform the tank role (Hunters and Shamans each have a melee spec, but they're more often fighting at range). Furthermore, the other two specs, Subtlety and Assassination, fight only with daggers, while these Rogues fight with a larger array of weapons - swords, maces, axes and fist weapons.

When WoW came out, the spec was called simply "Combat," and while it was, actually, often the best spec (back when the balance of the game was far worse and certain specs were truly just better than others,) its flavor was... you fight with larger weapons.

However, come the Legion expansion in 2016, Combat was renamed to Outlaw, embracing a far more specific and flavorful identity, and changing up a lot of its abilities, including incorporating a pistol that the Rogue would draw and fire to use certain abilities (not equipped as a piece of gear, the pistol was more of just a visual for the abilities). Outlaw can be interpreted as having more of a pirate/swashbuckler vibe, though there's also a bit of a Wild West gunslinger (with a bit of a gambling theme - true to both archetypes).

A spec I avoided like the plague because it was so boring prior to this, Outlaw is actually very fun now, and while I still love Subtlety best, I do have a secondary Rogue character in WoW who goes Outlaw.

Now: the D&D subclass, however, does not appear to be in anyway pulling on the WoW spec for its mechanics. This looks to be almost purely a revision of the existing subclass that was last seen in Xanathar's.

Let's get into it!

Level 3:

Fancy Footwork:

When you make a melee attack against a creature, it can't make opportunity attacks against you for the rest of your turn, whether you hit or miss.

    This is, I think, unchanged, but also strongly enables you to get up into melee as a Rogue. With your bonus action no longer needed to disengage (unless you get up in front of multiple foes) you free it up for either a dash (to get back away from that enemy you just attacked) or to make an off-hand attack (though thanks to weapon mastery, we're probably not worried as much about that, though we might if we get the Dual Wielder feat), or have some other thing to do. It makes us very mobile, which is great.

Rakish Audacity:

You get a bonus to your Initiative rolls equal to your Charisma modifier. You can also use Sneak Attack without advantage if you're within 5 feet of a target and no other creatures are within 5 feet of you and you don't have disadvantage.

    Again, I think this is unchanged.

    Rogues can afford to be fairly "SAD" (single ability score dependent) and so you can actually manage to have a decent Charisma. It's already a Dexterity-focused class, so you'll have a pretty good initiative bonus anyway, and if you get something like Alert, even better.

    Now, the second part here is the real boon: We can basically always get sneak attack. While it might be hard to do if we want to strike a foe surrounded by its allies, I think we can usually find a space to stand where we'll only have one foe within melee range. If that space is within 5 feet of an ally, then we're probably getting Sneak Attack anyway because they're also likely within 5 feet of our target.

    The only bad scenario here is if we can only get into melee with a foe while an ally is just out of reach of the foe. But that's pretty unlikely, and so what I think this means is that we can be very confident we'll get sneak attack - if we're going into melee.

    Again, I think this is identical to the old version, but this is another feature that I think makes this subclass a popular choice for 3-level Rogue dips.

Level 9:

Panache:

You gain two new Cunning Strike options.

    Just as a note: I love the idea of Cunning Strikes. But I do think that their deep flaw is just that Rogues are already struggling to keep up in terms of damage, and so sacrificing damage for utility feels a bit unfair when you have, say, Battle Master Fighters getting utility on top of damage with their maneuvers. If Sneak Attack did significantly more damage (some have suggested even letting it scale every level, so you have a d6 for each Rogue level) this might work out better. But that's not this subclass' fault, nor is the fact that their second subclass feature doesn't come online until level 9.

Goad (1d6): The target makes a Wisdom saving throw. On a failure, they have disadvantage on attacks against creatures other than you until the end of its next turn.

    So, this is a taunt, though with a save to avoid it, unlike what, say, Ancestral/Spiritual Guardians or Armorers get. The real question, though, is... do you want to taunt a foe? Rogues do have one solid defensive reaction, but it only halves incoming damage. Here, though, I think this becomes far better if we are fighting from range, where they won't even be likely to be able to target us in the first place.

Awe (3d6): Creatures of your choice within 30 feet of you make a Wisdom save or become Charmed until the end of your next turn.

    An AoE charm can be very good, defensively. Hard to use outside of combat, of course, given that you have to land a sneak attack. A real flavor win, though, as this feels like a great thing to use when you're alone in a room full of enemies and have to beat a hasty retreat.

Level 13:

You get even more Cunning Strike options:

Invigorate (2d6): One creature within 30 feet adds 1d6 to their attack rolls and saving throws until the end of its next turn.

    This is kind of fascinating. I believe (again, the wording here isn't precisely what's printed in the video I'm using as a source) you could target yourself with this. But if you have an ally concentrating on a really important spell, or you have some friend who has some really great buff to their attacks, this could wind up being very nice to hand out. We lose 7 damage, but that might be made up for by this bonus.

Parrying Stance (2d6): You add 1d6 to your AC until the start of your next turn.

    Especially given the melee focus on this subclass, getting a way to boost AC will be nice. While by level 13 we should hopefully have capped our Dex (even with three General Feats, if we start with 17 we will be there) and thus we should have comparable AC to someone in half-plate, a little extra is certainly nothing to say no to. But this really is a weighed choice between better survival and a chunk of our damage.

Level 17:

Master Duelist:

Immediately after using Sneak Attack, make another attack against the same target, provided you're within 5 feet of it and no other creatures are within 5 feet of you.

    This looks pretty good, but we have to temper our expectations a bit: that second attack can't trigger Sneak Attack by definition. Also, if we miss on our attack, we don't get this. I do think that this really, really encourages a Swashbuckler to dual-wield, and even take the dual-wielder feat, which is already pretty helpful for any Rogue.

Overall Thoughts:

    I think this subclass is fine, and good, even, but we do have to grade on a curve for Rogues. If we pumped the Rogue up a little bit (and moved the second subclass feature to, like, level 6) it'd be amazing.

    I think you can potentially get the same kind of Errol Flynn-like swashbuckling flavor with, say, a Valor Bard and might actually feel like you're pulling the whole archetype off even better that way. But if you do want to play a Rogue, I think this is going to be a good choice that does enable a lot of what you're looking for.

Path of the Spiritual Guardian Barbarian

 The Ancestral Guardian Barbarian was introduced in Xanathar's Guide to Everything. While perhaps overshadowed by the Zealot, which wound up in the 5.5 PHB, this has also long been a pretty well-established and effective subclass. Notably, Ancestral Guardians are one of a handful of subclasses across any class that is built to truly play a "tank" role in a group.

I actually have a ton of familiarity with the original version of this subclass, because one of my players in my 6-years-and-counting Ravnica campaign plays one. And I will tell you: he might not put out the most damage (though with an artifact weapon that deals an extra 2d8 damage along with other benefits, he's no slouch) what he does do very well is protect his allies. The key is, not only does he impose disadvantage on attacks against other targets than himself, but the soft-taunt debuff also extends damage resistances, to the point where, especially if the monster is doing any non-bludgeoning/piercing/slashing damage, they truly do less damage to anyone else.

The subclass is renamed here as Spiritual Guardian, which I guess just broadens out which spirits you might call upon. What I will say is that in the Ravnica game, I have had NPCs talk to the Barbarian and refer to him as a Shaman, because he literally is one - having a connection to unseen spirits upon whom he can call for aid, which is more or less the actual definition of a shaman. So, ironically, while I don't think the Barbarian is the best class to emulate a WoW Shaman, in this case at least the subclass literally has you play a shaman using the real-world definition.

Now, the rough concept of this subclass is to make it work for WoW's Enhancement Shaman. Don't get hung up on this too much: it's nothing like Enhancement. Actually, honestly, the Elements Barbarian is closer to what Enhancement feels like, while to get a real Elemental Shaman feel you'd want to go with something like a Circle of the Land Druid and focus on elemental damage types like lightning and fire, or maybe even just go with an Evoker Wizard (or a Genie Warlock, actually). The "ancestral spirits" theme of Shamans is really secondary to its "primordial elements" theme in WoW. And while Elemental and Restoration Shamans can both take the "Farseer" Hero Talents (a system that works as a kind of secondary subclass that is role-agnostic) that do actually have ancestor spirits appear and fight alongside you, Enhancement is the one spec that doesn't get this option.

So, really, even more than other suggested subclasses, we should kind of set aside the WoW of it all and truly treat this as its own, setting-agnostic option. I'm also going to try to take it on its own merits, in part because while I see the Ancestral Guardian in play, I'm not often looking at all of its features laid out in front of me. Naturally, my experience with the subclass will color my impression of this one. Will this be like the new Grave Cleric, where it would be good if we didn't have a better version that existed previously? Or will this one shine and actually be an improvement over something that's already solid? Or maybe it will be just a lateral move.

Let's get into the features.

(Credit here goes to the Dungeon Dudes, using their video ranking the WoW subclasses.)

Level 3:

Spiritual Protectors:

When raging, when you hit with a weapon or unarmed strike, you can choose one effect:

Distract: The target has disadvantage on attacks against creatures other than you or another Barbarian with this feature until the start of your next turn.

    The key change here (other than having two other options to use) is that this no longer imparts resistance to the damage of those attacks if the monster decides to go after your friends regardless. That actually does wind up being a pretty big nerf to this, as a monster might still decide they'd rather risk disadvantage to hit a target that will take full damage from their attack rather than hitting the Barbarian.

    It's very unlikely you'll have two Spiritual Guardians in the same party, but then, my party has two Storm Sorcerers. Obviously, this is the standard "soft taunt" that you see with Armorer Artificers and Cavalier Fighters, though I don't think they have carve-outs for others of their subclass. However, if you do have one of those two characters in your party, you should both blanket the target with disadvantage. I will say this is less exciting if you're using a weapon with Sap, though it does apply to all attacks.

Hinder: You can apply the Slow weapon mastery in addition to another mastery.

    Slow doesn't stack up, but if you really need to keep a foe from fleeing, this can help. Indeed, combining Distract and Hinder will help you lock down foes and keep them from hurting your friends (though if you slow them enough that they can't get to your friends, Distract is kind of redundant). Probably the most situational choice.

Strike: You deal an extra 1d4 of your choice of Cold, Fire, or Lightning damage.

    Ok, this is interesting. it's not a ton of damage, of course, but unlike other Barbarian damage buffs at 3rd level, this is going to apply to all attacks. You thus get slightly more value out of it if you're dual-wielding or can weaponize your bonus action through something like Polearm Master. 1d4 ain't much, but it's not nothing either when you can apply it to every attack. And this also gives you a good option when you just want to pour out as much damage as you can.

    Generally, I think the taunt has taken a nasty nerf, but the existence of these other options does make this a bit interesting, and not strictly worse. What it does is push this subclass a little away from the tank archetype - not fully away, but lets you play one that is more about damage.

Level 6:

Spirit Shield:

While raging, you can use a reaction when another creature within 30 feet takes damage to reduce the damage they take. Roll d6s equal to your rage bonus, and reduce the damage by the number rolled.

    I think this is the same as the old version (the math on how much you reduce might be different,) but this is going to help you mitigate what damage does go through. (Actually, now that I check, the damage mitigation scales up slightly faster, as you'd get d6s added at levels 10 and 14, while the rage bonus goes up faster than that).

Level 10:

Consult the Spirits:

Once per short or long rest, you can cast Augury or Clairvoyance without a spell slot or material components. The sensor for Clairvoyance takes the form of an invisible ancestor spirit.

    This is unchanged. It's also only rarely impactful. It's not that these spells aren't good, but this is a pure utility boost, and doesn't do anything for you in combat. Now sure, giving Barbarians stuff to do outside of combat is great, but you're not going to feel much of an impact here at this level.

Level 14:

Spirits' Fury:

Once per turn, when you roll an 18-20 on the d20 while making a melee weapon attack as part of the attack action, you can make one additional attack with the same weapon.

    This is a totally different feature from the old version, which would let you deal force damage to the attacker that triggered Spirit Shield. But what do we think of this? Well, first off, I do think this is the one real nod to Enhancement Shamans, who imbue their weapons (they always dual-wield) with elemental magic, most famously "Windfury," which lets their attacks trigger additional attacks that hit at the same time. Baseline, this is going to be going off about 15% of the time, though if we're always using Reckless Attack (or getting advantage some other way,) we'll have a 27.75% chance of triggering this, and with two attacks, that becomes a 48.8% chance. If we're dual-wielding with a Nick weapon, it can become a 62% chance to get it (though we'd prefer to get this on our main-hand attack, as we probably don't have the Two Weapon Fighting Style.)

    So this actually has a decent chance to happen, though I suspect you'll be very sad if you go through a few combats without seeing it trigger. I think I'd have to see it in play to get a feel for how fun it is for this to go off versus how frustrating it is when you never see it happen.

Overall Thoughts:

    My gut tells me that this is a bit like the Grave Cleric revamp, though less of a nerf when you break it all down. The big elephant in the room here is that the World Tree Barbarian is probably the best "tank" Barbarian - while that doesn't have any taunt-like feature, it is probably overall better at protecting allies. And this version, losing the blanket resistance it imparts to anyone the target hits, truly loses its most potent tanking feature. (As a DM, I'll often think "why even bother going after someone else if I'm getting disadvantage and doing no more damage on a hit than I would to the Barbarian?" which is precisely how a tanking feature should work.)

    So yeah, I don't think this is necessarily bad, but by pushing the subclass away from tanking and a bit more toward damage-dealing, it loses some of its identity. Now, the math on said damage-dealing is a bit of a question mark. I suspect that it's not going to keep up with Berserkers or Zealots, though, meaning that you're sort of straddling the "pump damage out" and "protect allies" roles, while D&D generally rewards specialization.

Oath of the Holy Paladin

 My "main," the character that I prioritize in WoW, bringing him first into any new expansion or patch content, eager to get him leveled up to the current level cap and then geared up as best I can in the current season fastest, is a Paladin. While I generally play Protection, the tank-focused spec, most - especially as they've leaned into allowing tanks to deal decent damage so that it's not that tedious to "solo" on them (while WoW has a lot of group-focused content, a lot of the game can be played on your own, especially with the introduction of Delves in the previous War Within expansion) - I have also had a fair amount of experience playing as a Retribution Paladin, their DPS spec.

Having played this character since my first days in WoW 20 years ago, and having spent about 19 of those years with this character firmly as my "main," you might ask me: how's the healing spec?

And my answer would be... No clue. I've never healed a dungeon on him.

See, in WoW, group roles are much more clearly delineated than they are in D&D. While healers do have damaging abilities (in part to help them when soloing,) their real, primary focus, is on casting healing spells to keep the party up. You're expected to keep every character at max HP, or as close as you can, and only if things are going very smoothly do you ever turn your attention to the bad guys.

This means that the game of a healer is very different than that of a tank or DPS character. DPS characters just try to most efficiently kill the enemies, while tanks will work to ensure that all the enemies are focused on them through a mechanic called Threat - but the way that tanks generate threat is by... damaging enemies. So ultimately, if you're used to playing a melee DPS character, tanking isn't really all that different, except that because the enemies are paying attention to you, you need to be the one pulling them into proper positions, as well as more closely monitoring your own HP and using damage-mitigation abilities to help your healer keep you alive.

Healers, though, are playing this weird triage/whack-a-mole game that I have never, in 20 years, gotten the hang of (largely I'm sure due to the fact that I don't really enjoy it and thus don't get practice).

I put all this forth to say that healing is very different in WoW as compared to D&D. D&D healing spells, even after the buffs in 5.5, are more about slowing down the gradual draining of HP over the course of a day, and often it's more efficient for a healer, be they a Cleric, Druid, or in this case, Paladin, to kill monsters rather than top up their allies. After all, if you do a Cure Wounds for 15 HP, and then the monster does 20 damage to your target, would it not have been better to hit that monster and potentially killed it before it could hurt your friend?

Now, the Paladin has always had a bit of healing available to them in D&D. In 5E, they both have a fair number of healing spells like the Cleric that they can prepare, but also their Lay on Hands pool, a predictable and very flexible healing feature that can be perfectly titrated to the amount of healing that is optimal for the situation (such as slapping a friend with just 1 HP to get them up if they're still making death saves during a fight).

Now, here's another nuance:

In WoW, your spec can change a lot of the fundamental ways your class works. Since 2012's Mists of Pandaria, which revamped how specs and talents worked (there another major revamp in 2022's Dragonflight, but these changes remain,) a Holy Paladin has, for example, more Mana to spend on healing spells.

In D&D, though, subclasses (even the big Death Knight and Demon Hunter ones) really can't mess with some of the class fundamentals (for one thing, it'd be a nightmare for multiclassing,) which means that Paladins are always going to be a half-caster. This means that they won't have any kind of resurrection magic until level 9, and won't get something like Greater Restoration until tier 4. And with slower spell progression, even their basica healing spells like Cure Wounds can't be upcast as much. Like the Alchemist Artificer, this kind of hamstrings them in comparison to something like a Cleric to be a really dedicated healer.

So, can this subclass make up for it? With all that preamble out of the way, let's take a look:

Oath Spells:

1st: Cure Wounds, Healing Word

2nd: Lesser Restoration, Prayer of Healing

3rd: Dispel Magic, Mass Healing Word

4th: Aura of Life, Death Ward

5th: Greater Restoration, Mass Cure Wounds

    This is a healer's toolkit for sure. It's not terribly exciting given that these are all spells a Paladin could prepare anyway - while that "frees up" a bunch of other Paladin spells... you could have prepared those instead anyway. This will, obviously, make sure that you're always packing a ton of heals. Is it maybe redundant? Yes. Will these spells come in handy? Sure.

Level 3:

Beacon of Light:

As a magic action, you can expend a Channel Divinity to wrap an ally within 60 feet in holy energy. For 1 minute, any time you heal a creature other than the affected ally with a spell or your Lay On Hands, the chosen ally also regains half as many HP.

    Note here that you can't actually target yourself with this, as it's an "ally," and I think the game defines that as someone other than yourself (while "a willing creature" would include yourself). This lets you do a kind of half twin-spell for a minute on healing spells. I think the ideal use case here is actually out of combat. You pop this and then start running Aura of Vitality (another spell that's actually really great outside of combat) and then put this on the person who needs the most healing, then go around healing all less-injured allies. To maximize this in combat, you'd need to be healing kind of every turn and then also hope that the target actually needs that healing each turn.

    As an out-of-combat heal-booster, this is actually pretty sweet, though.

Level 7:

Lightbringer's Aura

Whenever you cast a spell or use Lay on Hands to restore hit points to a Bloodied creature within your Aura of Protection, the creature regains an extra 1d6 HP.

    Now, the good thing here is that you're more likely to be healing allies if they are bloodied. Once again, though, this becomes insane when you're out of combat. There is nothing stopping you, if you aren't worrying about 6-second-to-6-second intervals, from just hitting an ally for 1 point of Lay on Hands at a time, which means that this turns, again, out of combat Lay On Hands, from a pool equal to 5 times your level into a pool equal to basically 4.5 times your level, which makes it far more efficient at healing. Just... only out of combat. If you're pumping in 15 points of LOH, this winds up boosting it to 18.5 average, so rather than a 350% increase, it's only a 23% increase.

Level 15:

Infusion of Light:

Whenever you cast a spell that deals Radiant damage, you refresh your Lay on Hands pool by a number of HP equal to the total rolled for the spell's Radiant damage, up to a maximum of 5 times your Paladin level.

    Given that your max LOH pool already is 5 times your Paladin level, this feels redundant unless this could push you over your max, which I don't think it would.

    But this is actually a really cool idea: If you use Divine Smite on a crit (and Divine Smite, remember, is now a spell, and of course it always did Radiant damage,) you could get a whole lot of LOH back. Now, there is a sight bonus action traffic jam here, but if you healed a friend for your full 45 LOH pool on turn 1, and then you do a 3rd level divine smite, that's going to look like 18 (or 22.5 against a fiend or undead target) LOH back to you.

    Genuinely, this is a very cool idea, and the ability to recuperate your LOH does help a bit with the fact that you're still a half-caster.

Level 20:

Holy Deliverance:

As a bonus action, you can imbue your Aura of Protection with holy power for 10 minutes (or until you end this for some reason). You can do this once per long rest, or restore a use by expending a 5th level spell slot. You gain the following benefits:

Healing Power: Whenever an ally starts its turn Bloodied in the aura, that creature regains HP equal to your Charisma modifier plus your proficiency bonus.

Sunlight: The aura is filled with Bright Light that is sunlight.

    By level 20, you would really prefer not to let anyone go unconscious, but this will prevent friends from having to roll death saves. More to the point, it's going to give them a moderate heal. How big of a heal? Well, at best we're looking at 11, or possibly 12 if we go for a second epic boon that boosts Charisma. That's not very much healing, to be honest. Also, sadly, Healing Power doesn't work with Lightbringer's Aura because this isn't a spell.

    So while it's not as bad as the Death Knight level 20 ult in that it actually does something on its own, I can't say it's the most exciting thing.

Overall Thoughts:

    There's a cool idea here: building a subclass that can make a Paladin act as a true full healer. The problem, again, as I said in the preambles, is that "true full healers" aren't really a thing in D&D. Even a Life Cleric is probably going to be doing some offensive stuff unless they're fully RPing as a pacifist.

    The best idea in this subclass is Infusion of Light, which rewards the Paladin for doing what the class is best at (smiting the hell out of monsters) by letting it do what it is decently good at (healing) more. But that doesn't come until level 15.

    Truly, I do think that this is a good healer, if you're talking about healing as specifically "restoring hit points," but it thrives after the battle, not during it. And other things a healer wants to do, like removing conditions or protecting allies from taking damage in the first place, are not really something this subclass gives you, at least not at a time that makes up for the slow spell progression.

    Funnily enough, while this was before even my time (I only played at the tail end of Vanilla WoW,) there was apparently a time in the early days, when the very first raid, Molten Core, was current, when people would bring Paladins into their raid purely to buff everyone outside of combat, and then have them leave and hop onto other characters who were better-optimized. So, here, that "these guys are useful when we're not fighting anything" identity is actually preserved.

    (Blizzard got a lot better at balancing the game over the years, and all three Paladin specs have had their moments as the top-tier performers in their respective roles.)

    I will say, though: given that D&D Clerics get to wear serious armor and wield big old weapons, I really feel like if you truly want to play a heavily-armored healer-warrior... just go with a Life Cleric?

    So far, to be honest, the only WoW subclass that has blown me away is the Mystic Brews Monk, and while some are doing really interesting things, I again feel that the desire to replicate WoW gameplay in D&D holds a lot of the design back. Mystic Brews shares nearly nothing in common with the Brewmaster Monk from WoW on a mechanical level, but it captures the flavor (so to speak) of the spec excellently.

    Much as I feel that 5.5 would have benefitted a bit with a less slavish devotion to rules established in 2014, I think this book might have benefitted a bit by striking out on its own with new mechanical ideas inspired by WoW's lore and vibes more than its game mechanics. And, look, that is a bit of this to an extent.

    Also, to bring some perspective here: this is a truly unique Paladin subclass that is doing something very different than other Paladins do, and I applaud that. But it's also evidence that I would love a design for half-casters that allows subclasses to turn them into full-casters, which I think would be a bold new avenue for subclass design that would also really help with a lot of subclasses that seem to gesture toward that without actually accomplishing it.

    We're nearly done with our WoW subclass round-up, and by Tuesday I should actually have access to the book myself. For now, thanks again to Insight Check for posting all of this. I believe the only ones we have left are the reprints/revisions, the Swashbuckler and Spiritual Guardian (formerly Ancestral Guardian).

Shadow Domain Cleric

 Buckle up and manage your expectations.

In WoW, there are several "hybird" classes, which are classes that can perform roles other than Damage. (In fact, only four classes our of its 13, the Rogue, Hunter, Mage, and Warlock, are DPS-only classes). Priests are not the only ones with just a single DPS spec - the same is true for Paladins and Monks, and when the Demon Hunter and Evoker came out, each only had two specs, so they also only had a single DPS option, though each has since been given a second dps spec. But what makes Priests unusual is that they still only perform two roles - healing and DPS - but they have two healing specs, Discipline and Holy.

Furthermore, until the Demon Hunter's Void-themed Devourer spec was added earlier this year, most classes had a pretty consistent aesthetic and theme - a Paladin was a wielder of the Holy Light regardless of whether they were a tank, damage-dealer, or healer. Similarly, a Shaman was calling up on elemental magic. But Shadow Priests take a class that looks quite classically heroic and good-aligned and went very dark, embracing dark magic, driving foes to insanity, and consuming them with necromantic plagues.

Over time, admittedly, Discipline has started to take on this "balance of light and shadow" theming, but Shadow Priests have only changed as the game has sort of narrowed in on what Shadow magic really is - initially kind of a catch-all for dark magic, but now more specifically related to the Cosmic, Lovecraftian Void, playing up the madness angle (interestingly, one of their key spells, Devouring Plague, was recently reflavored as Shadow Word Madness) and also having a lot of weird aberrant creatures emerge through their spells.

Thus, if we weren't getting any new subclasses in this book, you might actually consider playing something more like an Aberrant Sorcerer or Great Old One Warlock. Given how I understand this subclass will wind up looking... you might still want to consider that.

But let's try not to let others' opinions shape ours and look at the features on their own terms.

Domain Spells:

Level 1: Dissonant Whispers, Shadow Word: Pain

Level 2: Crown of Madness, Mind Spike

Level 3: Summon Undead, Vampiric Touch

Level 4: Evard's Black Tentacles, Psychic Horror

Level 5: Dominate Person, Void Eruption

    Few things - Shadow Word Pain, Psychic Horror, and Void Eruption are all new. I believe that SWP is basically a DOT - which as I've mentioned before, doesn't work as well in D&D as it does in WoW, and I think the damage is quite underwhelming even for a 1st level spell. Psychic Horror if memory serves is a Fear/Stun spell, possibly with some damage along with it. Void Eruption is a big burst of AoE damage. Note that while I think Summon Aberration would have arguably been more appropriate here, Shadow Priests also do have a thing where they periodically shoot ghostly apparitions at their foes. This is all on-theme, and Summon Undead is really good (good damage and really good debuffs on foes). Dissonant Whispers is also quite good, though not all the spells here are as amazing.

Level 3:

Shadowform:

As a bonus action, you can expend a use of Channel Divinity to take on a shadowy form for 1 minute, or you can dismiss it early. It also ends if you become incapacitated or deal radiant damage with a spell.

    This last part is a bit rough - in WoW, the original version of this (which lasted until cancelled) would prevent you from casting healing spells. But in modern WoW, where they can curate the spells that each spec gets, it no longer does that. This will shut down a lot of great Cleric spells, though if you have your Spirit Guardians doing Necrotic, I think you can manage this.

Shadow Stealth: When in an area of Dim Light or Darkness, you can take the Hide action as a bonus action.

    I don't really see this shadow stealth come up a lot, to be honest. And we can't use this on the turn we activate it.

Void Empowerment: When you cast a spell using a spell slot that deals Psychic or Necrotic damage, you can add 1d6 to one damage roll of the spell.

    Ok, this could be pretty good, but let's also break down how it will work: does this buff Spirit Guardians? Only for one damage roll. Used on an instant-cast AoE spell (like I believe Void Eruption will be) this will be pretty good. I'd have just let this be added to cantrips as well. Toll the Dead getting an extra d6 would be pretty great, but alas.

    Really, I feel like this should do more - a d6 on all Necrotic and Psychic damage would be, I think, appropriate given that this isn't even an always-on subclass feature and still requires a resource. I also think something like Temp HP or a higher AC would be a better defensive feature (granted, Clerics in D&D are much better-armored than Priests in WoW).

Devouring Plague:

When a creature within 30 feet of you that you can see fails a saving throw, you can cause the creature to take 1d10 Necrotic damage. If you do, you regain HP equal to the Necrotic damage dealt. You can do this Wis times per long rest.

    Ok. The damage here is pretty low given that it's limited uses, though we'll see if this gets better. We are of course also getting healed with it, so the damage shouldn't be that high. I do like that there's A: no action required and B: doesn't have to be a fail against your spells and abilities. I'm going to keep an eye on this - if it sticks at this damage/healing to level 20, I think it starts to look kind of useless, though I will say that without any action required, it's not like you'll ever stop using this - it'll just be kind of a marginal benefit.

Level 6:

Dispersion:

When you are hit with an attack roll, you can use a reaction to disperse into shadowy energy. Until the end of your next turn, you have resistance to all damage (including the damage of the triggering attack), but you also cannot take any action, bonus action, or reaction. While dispersed, you gain a fly speed of 40 feet. When the effect ends, you can spend up to half your total Hit Dice, regaining HP as if you had finished a short rest.

You can do this once per short or long rest.

    First off: weird feature to translate into D&D, of all of the Shadow Priest abilities. But also... I kind of hate this. And part of the reason I hate it is because there could be situations where it's useful, but it's a real feel-bad ability. I mean, you are sacrificing your turn, more or less. You don't even get a free disengage with this. You can, sure, fly away from a foe that just hit you, but not as part of the initial reaction, and you also literally cannot disengage to avoid an opportunity attack. Is this actually going to really save you that much pain? In WoW, this feature does prevent you from using other abilities for a couple seconds, but WoW is so much faster-paced than D&D. A full turn without an action is utterly brutal. I hate this.

Level 17:

Vampiric Embrace:

While Shadowform is active, whenever you roll the d6 to add extra damage to a spell, one creature of your choice within 30 feet of you regains that many hit points.

    I try to keep my tone civil and constructive with these.

    Are you fucking kidding me?

    This is a d6 of healing, 3.5 average, at level 17. On a limited-resource buff you place on yourself, which also requires you to expend spell slots.

    As a point of comparison: the Life Domain at this level gets to just treat every healing spell like they rolled the maximum amount. A 1st level Cure Wounds with a +5 to Wisdom will thus go from an average of 14 healing to 21, or 7 extra healing, which is more than you could possibly get with this ever.

    And by level 17, you're probably not casting a lot of 1st level spells in combat.

    Truly, this is just a tiny little F-you for sticking with this subclass to tier 4.

Overall Thoughts:

    This whole subclass feels like a real missed opportunity, which makes me pretty sad.

    I think you could have built it as a Cleric that really focuses on damage-dealing. Giving us ways to heal allies when we deal damage does, sure, match a very minor theme in the WoW version, but that's the primary vibe of the Discipline Priest/Cleric. Instead, this should have been all about pouring out damage and eldritch madness.

    Broadly, my main critique of the WoW book's new subclasses is that by focusing on bringing recognizable spells and abilities from WoW into D&D, they've forgotten that these games just work very differently. But in this case, the actual Shadow Priest abilities they've chosen to recreate here are also not what I'd consider defining traits of the spec.

    Shadowform, certainly, is an iconic Shadow Priest thing, but to be frank, it's mostly because of the visual. You enter Shadowform and you will look like you're perpetually in vaguely purple darkness. You just click it on and forget about it.

    Much like Affliction Warlocks, though, this is a spec that in WoW is very much focused on stacking up multiple damage-dealing effects (though Affliction goes far harder on this,) which is just not something that works very well in D&D. If this subclass were instead focused around something like frightening creatures when you deal psychic damage to them (not entirely unlike an Undead Warlock's Form of Dread,) or something where you could, say, as a bonus action, send out Shadowy Apparitions to any creatures of your choice in a given range and deal either low guaranteed damage or perhaps have them save to take damage scaling with your Cleric level (and maybe limit it to a certain number of uses per day,) this would have, I think, better captured the actual feel of this spec.

    I also think that we need more dark-themed Cleric subclasses, and while we have the Grave Domain, sure (though I think Horrors Within tried to fix what wasn't broken and wound up nerfing it) I think Shadow in general would be a really evocative domain to play with. It's a shame that this is what we wound up with.

    I think the Oath of the Holy Paladin is also available to check out, which I'll visit next, but which I also suspect that I'm going to not love, as I think that it again tries to make something that makes sense in WoW work in D&D when it probably shouldn't (echoes of the Alchemist Artificer and trying to make half-caster healers).