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.

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.

Dark Sun: Details a Bit Light on the Most Edgelord-y Setting

 There's a certain class of nerd that frequently complains about how, as various franchises have sought a broader appeal, that they've lost some of their grit.

I tend to be very wary of such nerds, because there's often an underlying (or, in the past decade or so, pretty overt) element of that that is some combination of racist, misogynistic, homophobic, transphobic, or in some other way being upset that people who aren't like them are able to enjoy something.

That being said, I do think it's true that in a more corporatized media landscape, there is a lot of sanding down of the edges on things. Many words have been written about how the current state of Hollywood seems afraid to portray any kind of sex or sexiness.

There is a lot of nuance, though, to how something like a Trigger Warning is supposed to work - it's not censorship, but just a heads-up for audiences that might have experienced related traumas. I think that there's a place for all subject matters to be dealt with in art, though the freedom to approach certain themes or ideas in the manner you wish to doesn't mean people don't have the right to complain about it (Freedom of Speech goes both ways).

All this is to say: the animated trailer for D&D's new Dark Sun two-book set is clearly meant to send the message: we're going brutal with this.

Now, the prospect of a Dark Sun book has long been rumored, and when we got such things as a Warlock Patron "Sorcerer King," it was basically confirmed that we'd have something set on the bleak world of Athas.

The trailer depicts violence in an utterly gruesome matter - and not, really, that much else. Warriors on some wasteland battlefield tear one another apart. The first shot is someone falling to the ground, presumably just felled (and for his sake, I hope he's dead by the time he hits the ground) before another warrior literally rips the skull and spinal cord from his body (Mortal Kombat-style,) rendered in unflinching detail.

The message, to my mind, is that the big tent approach D&D is taking is also making a space for the edgelords.

And... I actually think I'm fine with that.

Dark Sun has a lot of themes that are seen as radioactive in today's nerd culture, like slavery, for example. I think that these subjects can be explored in nuanced and interesting ways - it just means being careful.

Basically, just make such subject matter opt-in. The use of safety tools in TTRPGs isn't about banning anything that might be disturbing or dark, but it's about finding what is actually fun for your players. And while you might be very comfortable with lots of dark subjects, it's important to remember that the people you play with might not be.

But more likely than a binary "everything goes" versus "nothing that's rated above PG" it's more likely that there's going to be some nuance to it. For example, I know a lot of people (myself included) who are far more ok with sexual content than hyper-violent content (the logic being that sex is something normal people do all the time, and deadly violence is something I think we all would prefer to avoid in our lives). But you might also be more interested in slavery as a thematic element if it's about uprisings and rebellions, fighting for freedom, and not focusing on the brutal torture and abuses suffered by those bound by chains.

Every D&D group is going to have different perspectives and opinions, and while I think players signing on to play, say, Storm King's Thunder, are unlikely to encounter things that make it too uncomfortable to play, the same general "just be a compassionate person" guidance is really the key to approaching a setting like Dark Sun.

But the point is, by talking about it, you might also find that your players are all super into the hyper-violent brutality of the setting, and that gives you a big old green light.

Anyway, in terms of details about it, we don't really have much, other than that it'll be a two-book set. One book will be more player-facing, with subclasses and the like, and almost certainly, this will include the Psion class, the first full new class to be added to the game since the Artificer.

I have high hopes for the Psion, based on its UA playtest, and especially if we get some new spells for it.

The other book is, I believe, more of a setting book, though I'm not sure if there will be "a big adventure" or if it will be more akin to the 5.5 setting books where you get lightly-sketched adventures that could be done in a session or two.

I'm also curious to see if some of the gameplay restrictions from earlier editions will hold true in this. For example, I think metal is supposed to be very precious, with metal weapons (I heard) being as rare as a +1 weapon. I'm not sure I love the idea of nerfing martials that way, though if there are also consequences for spellcasting because of the warped way magic works there, maybe it'll balance?

I think this one is slated for "late 2027," which means we probably have about a year before we get our hands on it.

Going In Depth with D&D/WoW Crossover

 Ok, let's get the details straight here:

Dungeons & Dragons: World of Warcraft is the upcoming product coming in November that acts as a setting book for D&D using the world of Azeroth.

Subclasses:

Initially I misunderstood and though they would be giving us all the classes from WoW as full and independent classes, but apparently there are instead several subclasses, some of which aid in re-skinning an existing class to function as the equivalent in D&D.

Oath of the Ebon Blade and Oath of the Holy are two subclasses for the Paladin, the former letting you play as a WoW Death Knight (curious to see if it's akin to the "Oathbreaker" one we saw in UA) and the other being presumably a more healing-oriented Paladin like WoW's Paladin healing spec.

The Demon Hunter is a new ranger subclass. In WoW, Demon Hunters are those who decided to fight hellfire with hellfire, and took on demonic magic into themselves to fight against those evil fiends. Hopefully this will take some cues from the Hollow Warden to be a bit stronger than your typical Ranger subclasses.

Clerics get the Shadow and Discipline domains, based on the specs for WoW's Priest class. Shadow is all about blasting your enemies' minds with nightmarish psychic damage and communing with the eldritch power of the Void, while Discipline is built around healing your allies by striking your enemies, and has a bit of a "fire and brimstone" flavor to it. (Actually, I think this kind of flavoring isn't there as much anymore. It's a bit more of a mix of light and dark, primarily healing with the light and harming with shadow).

Barbarians will get the Path of the Elements subclass, which presumably is meant to give us the equivalent of an Enhancement Shaman, who sling elemental magic around them as they fight up in melee.

Then, three existing subclasses (maybe I'm wrong about the Oathbreaker/Ebon Blade connection) are the Path of the Spiritual Guardian Barbarian (which has a less obvious connection - I'd actually say this could also be an Enhancement Shaman - Shamans are literally people who commune with unseen spirits,) the Swashbuckler Rogue (equivalent to WoW's Outlaw Rogue) and the Warrior of Mystic Brews Monk (WoW's Brewmaster Monk).

Again, I actually think just making new subclasses is the more reasonable direction for this - adding Evokers, Shamans, Death Knights, and Demon Hunters as fully fledged new classes would be a lot. 

For species, there are apparently new "WoW-mapping" rules for 5 existing species (presumably Humans, Dwarves, Elves, Gnomes, and Orcs) and then new ones for Dracthyr, Draenei, Earthen, Forsaken, Haranir, Mechagnome, Pandaren, Tauren, Troll, Vulpera, and Worgen. (Surprisingly no Goblin here, which technically haven't yet gotten a 5.5 version.)

There are going to be a whopping 60 new spells, which seem to all be player spells/abilities from WoW. Examples include Rune Strike (ok, actually, that's not a thing anymore,) Demon Spikes, Moonfire (here I thought that was just Moonbeam?) Also, naturally a bunch of magic items and such.

There's also evidently a profession system, which seems built around downtime activities, so I'm not sure how this will differ all that much from normal D&D crafting, but let me play an engineer.

There are evidently a crapton of monsters - 50 new monsters and 30 new "dungeon bosses," which I assume will be legendary creatures in line with the Horrors Within Darklords. I don't know if we have specifics, but I'd love to see Hogger as a legendary level 1 monster.

Seven classic (well, not all "Classic") dungeons are also included, revised to work as D&D dungeons. These are:

Azjol-Nerub (underground realm of creepy spider people who were absorbed into the undead Scourge)

Blackfathom Deeps (ancient elf ruins submerged in underwater caves and taken over by the apocalyptic Twilight's Hammer cult)

Deadmines (the headquarters of the Defias Gang, who seek to overthrow the government of the human capital of Stormwind)

Dire Maul (ancient Night Elf ruins taken over by ogres, ghosts, and ancient demons)

Onyxia's Lair (home to the evil and manipulative dragon who, fun fact, kind of engineered the animosity that led to the Defias Gang's war on Stormwind)

Scarlet Monastery (bastion of a group of crazed zealots whose fight against the undead has descended into paranoia and madness)

Shadowfang Keep (well, depending on if we're talking the original SFK or the post-Cataclysm one, it's either the castle occupied by the crazed archmage Arugal, who unleashed the werewolf-like Worgen upon the world, or it's occupied by a group of undead traitors to the Kingdom of Gilneas, who would rather sell out to the nation's enemies than acknowledge a kingdom mostly transformed into Worgen).

    I will say, I can't be upset by this. WoW has, of course, been a big influence on the way that I run D&D (my goblins basically always have Brooklyn accents, though this has also worked quite well in Ravnica - which you could argue was kind of an early in-house Universes Beyond). There's plenty of good genre cross-over, so it'll be very easy to pillage this content and use it in non-Azeroth-set campaigns.

I'm also eager to get my hands on some stat blocks: I want to see Murlocs and Abominations, and I'll be really curious to see what stat block they make for the Lich King (I think it ought to be higher-CR than a standard Lich, though perhaps in the low 20s to account for having a bunch of minions).

I was also quite encouraged by a lot of the UA stuff - the Mystic Brews monk, assuming it's an evolution of the "Intoxicated..." something something, which was itself built on the Druken Master, looked a lot of fun (specifcally the ability to brew various beverages that gave you effects, like blowing a breath of fire each round).

Naturally, some of the species could, in theory, be broadened out to be setting-agnostic. Tauren are Minotaurs, and the Lupin from Ravenloft could very easily stand in for Worgen. Mechagnomes aren't... quite Autognomes (think cybernetic gnomes rather than artificial gnomes).

But basically, this is a setting that I'm actually more familiar with than any established D&D setting, so it's aimed right at me, even if it has the stink of corporate synergy on it.

Dark Sun, Universes Beyond, and More D&D News out of GenCon

 Well, Universes Beyond is coming to D&D.

If you're unfamiliar, this terminology was established for Magic the Gathering, where they started making card sets in licensed IPs from other companies. Recently, those Universes Beyond sets have been coming out as Standard-legal (the most up-to-date, "current" format for the game, comprised of sets that have come out in the past few annual seasons).

As was leaked a few days ago, D&D will be getting its first of these UB materials set in the world of Warcraft. That's naturally a franchise I'm pretty intimately familiar with (nearly half my life playing WoW,) and certainly makes sense for a game like D&D, as it's also a broad fantasy setting.

The remarkable thing about it is that they plan to have 16 playable species (let's see, that'd be what, core 6 on each side makes 12, and then Pandaren and Dracthyr, maybe a few of the allied races?) as well as all 13 playable classes, with "specializations" for each... presumably these will just be other subclasses (though surely a Retribution Paladin would be a Oath of Vengeance Paladin?) I'm very curious to see how classes like the Demon Hunter or Death Knight are expressed in D&D terms. (EDIT: I got this wrong - it's just subclasses, which honestly seems way more feasible)

The "mic drop" at the end of the presentation was that the next UB setting they're going to do is Star Wars. Given the existence of SW5E, I imagine it'll also work fairly well. Personally, I'm less interested in actually setting a campaign/adventure there and more just drawing from it to help make a more science-fantasy version of Spelljammer (with used-future spaceships instead of sailing vessels in space).

I've had sort of mixed feelings about Universes Beyond - at this point, every other standard MTG set is a UB one. But unlike Magic, you aren't strong pressured to buy into each product in D&D, and tables can establish how much they want to allow or limit various content.

Anyway, moving on:

Dark Sun is official, and it's certainly being marketed as the ultimate brutal edgelord setting (evidently the books will have to be shrink-wrapped as it's meant for 18+ audiences only). The animated trailer they played was grisly, with bodies being torn apart. There was one shot in which a person seemed to send a pulse of psionic energy into a group of foes, whose heads then exploded, which I'm taking to mean that the Psion class is in (given that the Unearthed Arcana version was pretty well-received, I'm not surprised).

Greyhawk: Crown of the Witch-Queen is a new full-length adventure book coming next year, centered around Drelza, the vampiric daughter of Iggwilv/Tasha/Zibilna.

In the interest of supporting existing settings, they're going to third party companies to make books for the Forgotten Realms, Ravenloft, and Eberron. Kobold Press will be working on the Forgotten Realms book, Ghostfire Gaming will work on the Ravenloft one (they have some background with Dark Fantasy after all) and Visionary Production and Design (which did Exploring Eberron) will work on Eberron.

There are also some updates planned for D&D Beyond, though I haven't really looked into that as much.

Anyway, given the leak about the Warcraft book(s), I don't think we got any really big shocks here - maybe Star Wars, though it's also kind of an obvious one to go for with Universes Beyond.

But I'm very curious about Dark Sun, a setting I've heard about a lot but am not super-familiar with. No news on the "villain" book just yet, though it could come later in 2027 - the Warcraft book is coming in November of this year.

The Intelligence Officer for D&D

 I have a deep affection for the brooding, depressing, paranoid world of the spy thriller. While I do enjoy an action-packed James Bond movie, the more realistic and pessimistic version of the genre, particularly from the works of John Le Carré (who actually worked in British Intelligence, and had to get special permission from his bosses to publish The Spy Who Came In From the Cold while still working in that field) inspires me more.

In a lot of ways, you get the grimy back-rooms and shady characters of a Noir-ish crime drama, but with much higher stakes.

Now, D&D is a game about fighting monsters, and so this is not a build that would necessarily work in a one-size-fits-all party. Instead, this would have to be for a campaign that really focused on spycraft and espionage.

When you think of the ultimate spy character in D&D, you probably think of a Rogue. I actually think you'll be a bit disappointed if that's the route you go. Rogues (setting aside their shortcomings as martial warriors) are built to move swiftly and silently, to be assassins and thieves (I mean, those are literally two of their subclasses).

But the way actual Cold War spycraft worked wasn't really how Hollywood portrays it. It wasn't the American CIA officer who snuck into some Soviet research facility to take photos of their new submarine plans. Instead, the officer would recruit someone working at that facility, meet with them in secret, and persuade them to take the extremely high risk in exchange for something - usually money, and perhaps a promise to eventually exfiltrate them to start a new life in the US.

And that's why I think that the ultimate spy in D&D would be an Eloquence Bard.

I'll note here that I think Liam O'Brien had a similar idea in Campaign Four of Critical Role. While his character, Halandil Fang, is more like the William Shakespeare of the setting (a brilliant playwright and head of the city's most prominent theater company,) the tasks set to him at the "Schemer's Table" have been very high-stakes spycraft (a little more of an underground revolution than Cold War spying, but similar "maintain a plausible cover while secretly undermining the powers that be" drama).

First and foremost, the thing that the Eloquence Bard gets right from level 3 is Silver Tongue, which is effectively the Rogue's Reliable Talent, but specifically for Persuasion and Deception checks. Admittedly, at low level, getting no less than a 10 plus your modifier on these rolls might still not cut it in really dire situations. But if we grab Expertise in these skills, and assume we start off with a +3 to Charisma, we'll be rolling no lower than a 17 by level 3.

These skills are going to be really core to what we do as a spy. Persuasion can sometimes be used as a "misleading the target by telling the truth in a certain way," but it's also going to be crucial if you want to persuade assets you meet to do what you need them to do.

Now, I'll allow for the following: you might actually want to start off at 1st level with Rogue, because you will get one more skill proficiency this way. Multiclassing with both will allow you to get more expertise, though I think it's possible we'll want to just stick to Bard for a little bit for spell progression.

Other skills that I think will be very helpful to have are Insight, Perception, Stealth, and possibly Investigation. As a Bard, we're not going to get all of those, but we could pick a species that gets one of them as a bonus (Elves, for instance, can get Perception for free - and the fact that they never technically sleep and can actually keep watch while Trancing could be very helpful).

We'll naturally want to focus on Charisma as our best stat, but I'd say after taking care of enough Con to have some meat on our bones, we probably want to have a bit of Wisdom. It is tough - as a Light Armor class that doesn't actually focus on Dexterity, we'll probably have a terrible AC, so you might instead push Dex, which will help with Stealth.

I'll also say this: there's a case to be made for grabbing a bit of Sorcerer here - primarily for Metamagic, as we'll likely want to have Subtle Spell available to us.

One of the biggest challenges that an intelligence officer has in a hostile place is that their movements are being tracked constantly. It was crucial, of course, to not actually be identified as an intelligence officer, because at best you'd have your diplomatic credentials revoked and be deported, and at worse, they'd capture you and interrogate you (probably under torture,) and maybe kill you (though as I understand it, it was the cultivated assets who tended to be tortured to death).

Thus, any means to be able to do your work without making it clear you're doing your work can be helpful. Still, depending on how your DM rules it, you might be able to get some spells off without Subtle Spell and still go undetected if you, say, break line of sight and maybe are allowed to mutter the verbal components under your breath.

So, what spells might we consider taking?

For cantrips, I think Message feels pretty obvious - if you could arrange for your asset to sit in a public place and do something innocuous (akin to reading a newspaper) while you're in an inn looking down from a window on an upper floor and can just message into their heads, you could get a lot of discussion done without the asset seeming to be speaking at all.

Prestidigitation actually could be really great - if you need to make a Dead Drop (where you don't actually see your asset, but just leave instructions or equipment for them stashed away somewhere) you could identify the place it's hidden with a secret mark that then, conveniently, disappears after an hour.

Next, for 1st level spells, Charm Person might actually be best used when cultivating an asset - you charm them and then make your case. They will know that you charmed them when the spell ends, but you might find a way to put them into a position where they'll forgive you.

Disguise Self is a great option, though I'll throw this out there: you might instead want to get proficiency with a Disguise Kit. Disguise Self is thwarted by Dispel Magic, or even Detect Magic, and Truesight. A mundane disguise does not set off any pings in any kind of magical detection. I don't think it would even fail under Truesight given that it's not like this isn't your "true form."

Illusory Script - yes, it's tough to justify this on a Bard, as compared to a Wizard - is tailor-made for this kind of thing. You leave a dead drop instruction for your asset, and if someone happens to stumble upon it, the writing might be something innocuous.

Naturally, any kind of illusion spell, from Minor Image to Silent Image to Major Image to Programmed Illusion, could be very useful in myriad ways.

Onto second level spells:

You might consider grabbing Enhance Ability both for your party but also for your assets. The duration isn't super-long, but if you can make contact before they go on a dangerous endeavor, it will make them more likely to succeed.

Detect Thoughts is also pretty obvious: both for finding hidden listeners and also getting better angles to work on people.

Invisibility is obviously pretty helpful.

Suggestion is a pretty powerful one - you can effectively make an asset of someone if they fail a wisdom saving throw. While this probably won't be as reliable as someone you really coach through things, it can work in a pinch.

Now, rather than going through every spell level, I'm going to just talk about a few highlights. Naturally, as a Bard, at level 10 we can start getting any spell from the Wizard, Cleric, or Druid list, so the possibilities become very broad.

Nondetection could be helpful, but I think if you have to cast this constantly to avoid being detected, you're probably screwed. It might work if you're sending someone in where they're not supposed to be, but the whole point of cultivating an asset is that they are supposed to be there. Now, it could help your asset avoid getting their mind read via Detect Thoughts, but that's a pretty specific situation.

Mislead, a 5th level spell, is basically built for spycraft. You simultaneously go invisible while an illusory double of you takes your place. It's kind of what Loki does in the Thor movies, and if you're being tailed, you can send the illusion around a corner and have it vanish, or even have it just sit at a cafe doing nothing for an hour while you put some distance between you and the people surveilling you.

Modify Memory feels like a real must-have, the kind of major ripcord you might need to pull if a foe witnesses you.

Rary's Telepathic Bond can give you a really lasting connection with your asset in case they need guidance while they're on a mission for you.

Mind Blank and Glibness can both be really helpful. Frankly, as someone running a campaign with a high-level Bard, I kind of hate glibness because it just says "I succeed on all Charisma checks" (he's got expertise in all four charisma skills,) so when his character needs to do a high-stakes argument, there's very little interactivity to it.

But Mind Blank is one that could really help you if you're coming up against enemy mind-readers.

I will say that I don't know how sustainable a grim Cold War spy campaign will be at higher levels. I think Dark and Gritty in D&D really works best in tier 1, where bad luck or bad decisions can truly put you in a bind. The higher-level players get, the more ripcords they have to pull, and while you might be able to sustain the tension by finding some conceit for you to still need to empower low-CR NPCs to do these tasks, at a certain point, the game really allows a high-level character to have a better chance than any Apprentice Mage or Warrior Veteran.

Still, I think you could have a lot of fun if you played a character like a real spy, if a DM is willing to buy in to that fantasy.

The Paralysis of the Digital RPG

 So, my initial experiences of RPGs were JRPGs, where you're basically playing through a pre-written story. The way things end is the way things end.

I've hit a point in Cyberpunk 2077 where I realize some of the actions I took earlier in the game are having consequences. For example, I was unable to romance Panam because I guess I screwed up some dialogue earlier on.

I really want to just let go and let the actions I've taken as a player allow me to see the story I've built for them, but I get frustrated with this kind of thing because of the knowledge that it could all go differently. I found myself growing paralyzed playing Baldur's Gate III for the same reason.

It's a funny thing, because I love TTRPGs (see this blog) where we have infinite freedom to do as our characters will, but in a sense, because it's all infinite, there's no real sense of what you're missing out on if you choose a different path. The DM might set aside certain stuff they had prepared, but there's no "multiple endings" because there's only the one that you got.

And, like, actually the kind of sweet turning-down of V by Panam worked fine, genre-wise. Cyberpunk is very indebted to noir, and the hero not getting the girl in the end is a totally valid way for a story to go. It's just that I sort of feel like this kind of "miss this thing early on and you miss out on something later" style of gameplay doesn't make me feel freer.

I'm sure I'm in the minority here. And I don't know, maybe it says something about me that I want a very clear path laid before me.

But it does kind of make me appreciate that Remedy has said that Control Resonant won't have multiple endings. They are, after all, making a big interconnected world where continuity between games has to make sense (though at least for now it's only between two game franchises). But I also appreciate that I'll be able to play Dylan's journey across Warped Manhattan without worrying that I'll, I don't know, screw up and get the ending where he gets re-corrupted by the Hiss and kills Jesse (assuming that's not... you know... the actual ending. Which would be a hell of a downer).

More annoying was that my first attempt at the final mission with Panam, I tripped the alarm and we wound up getting chased by bad guys, in a fight that as far as I could tell was utterly unwinnable because I couldn't Quickhack the people in the cars chasing us and so I had to rely on my not-very-good smart weapons, and the van we were in kept getting destroyed. I wound up re-loading (the "continue from last checkpoint was already at this unwinnable stage) so I could get the thing done with perfect stealth, quicksaving a few times.

It's funny, because a lot of what I really like about this game is that it doesn't really penalize you a ton in its core mechanics. Healing items and grenades regenerate, and ammo is plentiful, so a rough fight that you make it through is fine. Your car can get super-damaged, but the next time you call it, it's fine.

I guess I like games that allow you to just go with your own flow. And I suppose for some people, these alternate endings and relationship options are fun rewards for doing things a certain way, but to me they feel like punishments for not doing things a certain way.

(EDIT: Ok, evidently I didn't screw it up, and there were more missions (quests?) in that storyline. Now that I've completed it, my V's partnered up with Panam. So, honestly, maybe I was just salty over nothing.)

Finally Really Figuring Out the Systems of Cyberpunk 2077

 Ah, ok!

So apparently the various bits of Cyberware you can get installed will often scale with a given attribute. I'm super-invested in Intelligence, so I've been going through and making sure that I get all pieces that scale with that, though there are some slots that don't seem to have any pieces that work with it.

My general sense is that a character will want to kind of mix their traits, but to largely focus on just two or maybe three. I've been racing to what I assume is the cap for Intelligence at 20 (I assume it's the cap for everything - not unlike stats in D&D) and then will probably go for Technical Ability next.

I'm not really champing at the bit to start a new V, though I have thought that a kind of corpo cyborg samurai would be fun, maybe going Body/Reflex and Cool?

Anyway, I am having the usual open world issue where part of me just wants to race through the main story missions while part of me doesn't want to get ahead of myself and ensure I'm doing enough side quests to keep all my gear as top-grade as possible.

I've now done a story chapter outside the city, which is a nice bit of scenery change, and I've met some of the Nomads, one of the three backgrounds you can pick, including one character I assume is going to be a major figure in the game moving forward.

The weird irony of my build is that I don't really care that much about weapons. I basically only fire when my hacking RAM is on cooldown. And I've gotten pretty good at hacking into cameras in a location and then using those to do quickhacks on the foes inside. Ideally, they're all down before I even step into the building. I did a side-gig where I had to rescue a doctor who had been held against her will by Maelstrom (a real psychotic and evil gang) and more or less wiped out all the enforcers there while sitting up on some ducts outside the building.

The risk here is that they can often trace your location when you do this, but ideally you take them all out before that becomes a problem. I can't recall if I have some perks that help me mitigate that.

Anyway, I now have all the cyberware slots filled (except the extra ones you unlock with perks in the Technical Ability tree) including an Intelligence-scaling Monowire, which has proven a pretty effective melee weapon.

Also, the Cyberpsychos don't seem so impossible to deal with now. You're generally supposed to take them down nonlethally (the overall goal of these missions is to try to find a way to rehabilitate them,) and luckily the game seems to assume that's what you're trying to do, so I think when they hit 1% they go down and turn off any Damage-over-time effects you have. (Contagion, a quickhack that does poison damage over time and spreads between foes, has proven a very efficient way to deal with big groups of enemies - though it doesn't work on robots and drones).

Anyway, I find myself flooded with various Fixers and people calling me with jobs, which I think is a measure of my Street Cred - basically, as you do more missions and jobs, you earn a reputation. Mine must be as a terrifying Netrunner who can wipe out a building without being seen. Indeed, given the things I've pulled off, I do think that it makes sense I'm making a name for myself.

I am super curious to see what the game's story is like for the other two backgrounds. It makes total sense that my Street Kid character would get mixed up in all of these dangerous jobs, but I'm really curious to see how a Corpo gets dragged into it. I could imagine a world in which it's a totally different story, or at least the route to getting involved in the biochip heist is a different one, but I don't know.

I Want Scarier Celestials in D&D

 So, I was browsing YouTube, as is my wont, and the Richaadeb cover of The Promised Consort showed up. His cover, and of course, the original, really sell the majesty of that boss fight. While my main memory of the fight in-game is beating my head against a wall until I finally just barely managed it on my most overpowered character (I've gotten to the fight on a couple other characters, but haven't beaten it a second time,) if you take a step back and really consider the context of the fight, it's profoundly epic: a fight against both a demigod and a newly-crowned actual god.

Much like our fight against the Elden Beast in the base game, I interpret the music that plays as essentially being an ethereal choir singing the praises of the divine power that we're in the middle of fighting, exhorting them to best us (though I sort of feel like maybe the choir in the Elden Beast fight starts to kind of sing instead of the fulfillment of fate as we gain the upper hand).

Demons (or fiends in general, if we're talking D&D) make for great monsters to fight because they're definitionally evil (well, depending on the setting and game, I suppose). Their capabilities make them terrifying, but there's a moral clarity that slaying demons is an automatically correct thing to do.

It's very rare in D&D that we fight Celestials. Largely, that's because player characters tend to be good guys, and Celestials are often also good guys. This isn't strictly always true - Celestials cover beings of the good-aligned upper planes, yes, but also the neutral planes, like the Rilmani of the Outlands, or Sphinxes (who were monstrosities in 5.0,) who aren't really tied to any specific plane.

In D&D's cosmos, Fiends and Celestials really play quite similar roles, being the denizens of the outer planes, and typically the servants of the gods.

I... sort of like the idea of a different distinction, though:

D&D's alignment system is iconic, of course, and it's also the organizing principle behind the Outer Planes, which I love. But it's also something that's been downplayed in recent years (I don't even remember if the 2024 Player's Handbook even suggests you declare an alignment).

I think it's notable that Devils are the Lawful Evil variety of fiends (ok, sure, Rakshasas are as well - and I do think it's kind of fascinating that they're also from the Nine Hells but exist outside of the diabolic hierarchy). Devils, though, are all kind of linked to one another as a single hierarchy that ultimately answers to Asmodeus. And while Asmodeus is a god, he is also, at least in older Planescape content, considered a lesser god because he's not in the Nine Hells by his own will. In a lot of ways, he's really just the most powerful archdevil, and figures like Mephistopheles or Mammon aren't gods at all, even if they might be extremely powerful.

While not unified like devils, demons are their equal and opposite numbers, inhabiting the Abyss and typically serving one demon lord or another. But similarly, these demon lords, even the mightiest among them, Demogorgon, aren't gods either.

It's almost like fiends sort of occupy this odd environmental niche within the Lower Planes.

Now, in fairness, it's specifically angels, and not Celestials in general, who I believe are described as directly serving gods. I can't recall if Guardinals or Archons are described as playing those roles.

But I do think there's a real opportunity here: that Celestials could be the creature type that serves gods - any gods.

In the 5.5 Monster Manual, they changed Empyreans in the following way: in 5.0, they were always Celestials, whereas in 5.5, they're described as being either Celestials or Fiends, depending on their alignment.

I actually don't love this. I think that a being that is so directly tied to the gods, maybe a minor deity in its own right, should be a Celestial. Again, that's a matter of taste and vibes, not an argument based on the canon lore.

The Celestial servant of an evil god would then make for a potentially epic encounter.

Let me tell you about some of the lore in my homebrew setting:

The broad pantheon is a little complex: the gods are not all the same kind of deity, with some that are ascended mortals, some that are from other settings (I caved and had a few canon deities show up in the world, though I think their worship is pretty rare) and there's one deity that some people consider to be the only true god of the setting while others think that it's just another deity that hasn't been accounted for in most religious traditions (they're both kind of right). One is even secretly a Great Old One (though a friendly one).

But the most commonly worshipped deities are at least depicted by mortals as a classical polytheistic pantheon akin to the Greek gods. And among these, there are gods of light and gods of dark. Generally, light and dark correspond with good and evil, but I really like there to be just a little bit of ambiguity there. Deities can choose which Outer Plane they reside in (or even if they want to live in a different part of the multiverse) so the fact that the goddess of the hunt resides in the Beastlands doesn't necessarily mean she's all that nice - but she does count as a Goddess of Light as a result.

The Gods of Darkness reside in the lower planes, but they have at least one powerful angel that serves them. None of the angels look remotely "normal" in their true forms (Magon, who's the supremely heroic and benevolent servant of Doros, the God of Sunlight and Justice, has a head like a blazing sun around which four floating masks orbit to just barely shield those who see him from his blinding glory - naturally, he takes on a more classically humanoid shape when interacting with mortals) but the Angels of Darkness are quite unnerving.

As an example, Valthatria is the Angel of Pain, and serves Vyssar, the Goddess of Murder, Torture, and Cruelty. Valthatria's most distinguishing feature is that her head is detached from her body, but held to her shoulders by six sculpted, iron hands that appear riveted in place to both her shoulders and her face.

There are a couple reasons I like making these Celestials instead of fiends.

The first is just an aesthetic one: I'll concede that the variety of fiends in the Monster Manual actually gives you a ton of flexibility in how one might look, from the classic fallen angel Erinyes to the weird rotting vulture-thing that is the Vrok, I just kind of think that I like calling these celestials.

The second is a mechanical distinction with lore implications: while it's not super-common, there are things that are more effective against Fiends, probably most famously Divine Smite. As elite servants of evil gods, I like the idea that a Paladin is no longer at any sort of advantage when fighting the Angel of Pain. Righteousness and just "being the good guy" aren't enough to help you against these beings.

I also like that it just kind of muddies the waters a bit: you can't be totally sure where you stand.

I'll note that I think Brennan Lee Mulligan and I are on a similar wavelength here, as the lore of Araman, the setting for Critical Role's fourth campaign, makes a major distinction. We haven't fully plumbed the depths, but with Tyranny, a player character who is explicitly a demon (and not in the way that Draw Steel Devils are basically just people who come from the Seven Cities of Hell, but truly an ancient being of pure concept only recently given flesh - though I suspect she uses Tiefling stats) we get a sense of what fiends are like (and it's actually a bit goofy) while Celestials, in this world where mortals felled the gods (who are way more petty like Greek, or even Norse, gods,) may have once been majestic, but are now basically eldritch horrors (not sure what aberrations are in that setting, or if they'll even use them).

I've never read or seen Berserk, the manga (and anime adaptation) that was a major influence on FromSoft's Soulsborne games, like Elden Ring, but I'm given to understand that "angels" and "gods" in that are truly horrifying things (and that the main villain is a former mortal and ally of the main character who betrayed everyone to achieve apotheosis - likely a major inspiration for Miquella, the ascendant god whose "promised consort" we fight). Indeed, I think a lot of Japanese media depicts angels as horrifying monsters (I know that's a big part of Neon Genesis Evangelion,) the cultural underpinnings of which I'm not super qualified to analyze.

I also think there are some interesting themes you could play with regarding Gnostic ideas: there's a concept in Gnosticism (though I sometimes conflate this with Manicheanism, so bear with me) where the physical world is a falsehood and prison created by the Demiurge, a being who thinks itself to be God, but is not - whether this is out of malice or out of misguided ignorance is open to debate. But the acts of this demiurge and the world created by them are blamed for the suffering and evils of the world. You could imagine that antagonistic Celestials are there to enforce the will of the Demiurge, and thus play an antagonistic role toward the heroic player characters.

The 2025 Monster Manual has 17 Celestials, which is way more than the 2014 one, due in large part to the changes to Sphinxes (and there are more of them) and the re-classification of many Beasts to now be Celestials (screwing over Moon Druids and anyone with the Polymorph spell). But that's compared to 54 Fiends found there - it's clear which type they expect players to fight more often.

But I guess what I'd look for is some really solid high-level Celestials. Angels are actually already there - the least powerful is CR 10. But I'd love to see plenty of CR 20+ Celestials to truly present epic encounters. Radahn from Elden Ring would probably have been a CR 10 Legendary creature in his first fight out in Caelid (where he's lost his mind with the Scarlet Rot) but is, like, maybe CR 30 when we fight him as the Promised Consort (being the hardest boss in all of Elden Ring and essentially the true final boss given that his defeat finishes the DLC).

(This is maybe a whole other post, but we could maybe also get some high-level, legendary humanoids as well. I kind of love that Draw Steel's "biggest, scariest monster" is just the greatest human soldier who has ever lived.)

Cyberpunk 2077 is Making Me Curious to Try the TTRPG

 I think I'm starting to get into the groove of Cyberpunk 2077. I think the game could do a little better job at tutorializing things, but I think I've more or less gotten the sense of how to upgrade my character. I still sometimes run into a Cyberpsycho that tears me apart super-quick, but I had a moment where I truly felt like I had "gotten" my character.

Focusing largely on Intelligence (though I'm not sure if I should be spreading my stats more widely or actually refunding everything to just go straight to the top with Int) my primary combat strategy is Quickhacks. Now that I've managed to purchase and upgrade some of these hacks (and upgrade my operating system, which is a piece of cybernetics that requires you to see a Ripperdoc) I've been able to pull off some super nasty things.

When on a mission to rescue a friend/associate from a place that makes "XBDs" (think the movie Strange Days, in which people make recordings of individuals' experiences to be able to live through them - normally this is something like fun sexy times. These are called "Braindances," or "BDs," but the black-market, real horrifying shit is referred to as either Black BDs or XBDs, which is stuff like snuff films and the like... kind of like in that movie, whose mere trailer gave me nightmares as a kid) I hopped up into a damaged building across from the one where the friend was being held, and took out the single guard sitting watching TV next to a computer console. Taking that guy out silently from behind, I hacked into the security system via the console, which gave me access to the security cameras. And from the vantage of the cameras, I was able to hack various other objects around the facility, drawing guards to various explosive objects with "Distract Enemies" and then detonating them with another quickhack. Those who weren't near any such objects, I simply hacked their cyberware directly, taking them down with Overheat and Short Circuit. With, I think, a single exception, none of this was with my own eyes, simply doing it via the cameras. Once the place was cleared out, I simply walked around and looted everyone.

It really made me feel like a legendary hacker, and while things were a bit messier down in the basement, it was one of those really satisfying times when everything felt like it was working as my character build was meant to.

I have an admittedly weird aversion to Cyberpunk as a genre. Maybe it's that the world it portrays is too much like the one that I live in. I mean, we're in a world where megacorp tech companies have absurd degrees of power and influence. I find it less fun that the genre depicts a world in which corporations and gangs are the biggest powers, with governments kind of hanging on as weak vestigial structures. The latter element in particular feels darkly relevant today, with the cheapening of America's government under the helm of the most unabashedly corrupt president in the country's history.

I guess when I think about stories built around betrayal and mistrust in a dark and grimy world, I gravitate more toward Cold War-era spy stories, where the big powers are the governments, and a lot of the darkness comes from the fact that both sides are so in the weeds about the tactical game of spycraft that they lose sight of the ideals that brought them into conflict in the first place.

Another thing that's kind of odd is that the characterization of the high-ranking "Corpos" is built very much around this kind of stoic Japanese honor, and also a focus on legacy. The real world's corporate overlords don't seem to be interested in building lasting institutions so much as getting while the getting's good. They're also much more strangely ideological, believing in weird science-fiction-y ideas without seeming to grasp that they'd be the villains in such stories.

Anyway, I'm curious to see how the game maps to the TTRPG system. Naturally, we've had plenty of games that are based on or at least inspired by TTRPGs. Baldur's Gate III works remarkably similarly to D&D 5E (with a few tweaks here and there). I believe the most recent edition of Cyberpunk is Cyberpunk RED, which is set between the eras of 2020 (the version from the 80s) and 2077 (not sure if there's a tabletop version of that or if it's just this game).

Funnily enough, having run a Ravnica-based D&D campaign for over six years now, I could for sure see a reimagining of the setting as a Cyberpunk one - just turn the Guilds into Megacorps and you're about 90% there. And hey, there's even precedent for Cyberpunk fantasy with Shadowrun. House Dimir is now an information technology corporation, the Orzhov Syndicate focuses on "corporate solutions." The Simic Combine is full-on biotech.

WoW/D&D Crossover Possibly Going to be Announced?

 According to this post on EN World, there was an accidental leak of an announcement for what appears to be a World of Warcraft sourcebook for D&D. Naturally, I'd be curious about that given that these two games are (I'd assume) the two that I have posted about the most on this blog (I do still play WoW, but I've felt like I have less to say about it in recent times).

Having played WoW for nearly 20 years (about twice the time I've been playing D&D,) I've often thought about how it would make a fantastic D&D setting. Notably, I'm not the first to think that, as there were official WoW products that came out in I believe the 3.5e era, and possible 4e.

Obviously, WoW is built on a similar structure to D&D, where players create characters who are members of certain races and classes and go on adventures, quests, and delve into dungeons. Warcraft's world is a deep and rich one, with lore that has really grown out from its very simple "orcs versus humans" origins.

While Warcraft began as an RTS series, its third entry added some RPG-like elements, paving the way for the MMO that, for the last 22 years, has been dominant or at least profoundly prominent within the medium (I think FFXIV did overtake it as the biggest subscription-based MMORPG, and of course there are tons of Free-to-Play MMOs that have more players. Not actually sure if FFXIV is still ahead of it or not). It's been in those 22 years of WoW that the story and lore of Warcraft has expanded profoundly, and you'd have far, far more than enough material to get you through a 20-level D&D campaign just by taking some of the stories of its now 11 expansions, before you even consider just coming up with your own original stories.

There's no way that a single sourcebook will be able to cover the entire game as it exists now, with its thirteen classes and 26 playable races.

My best friend and I are both D&D obsessives and longtime WoW players (both of us technically started during vanilla, though I only at the tail end of it and he stopped playing for a bit, picking it up again shortly before Wrath came out) and we've often talked about how to handle various things, re-skinning elements of the game.

Naturally, for classes, there are a lot of clear equivalents. Paladins, Rogues, Druids, Monks, and Warlocks are all in both games. Likewise, Priests are basically Clerics, Mages are basically Wizards, Hunters are basically Rangers, and Warriors are basically Fighters (though you could argue that one of their three specs/subclasses is really more Barbarians). However, it's less obvious how to handle things like Shamans, Death Knights, Demon Hunters, and Evokers (maybe the last one is Draconic Sorcerers?)

I'm not going to hold my breath for a sourcebook like this to add a new class.

However, for species/races, there are a fair number of options. From the get-go, Humans, Dwarves, Gnomes, Goblins, and Orcs are there. Night Elves are basically Wood Elves, Blood Elves are basically High Elves. Then, you can get to re-skinning a bit. I think that the Draenei could use the statistics of the Aasimar without too much trouble (oddly, they sometimes look more like Tieflings - I honestly think Jester from Critical Role's 2nd campaign really looks a lot like a Draenei, and even sounds like one with her vaguely-Greek-ish accent). Reborn can stand in pretty easily for the Undead, and Tauren are really just Warcraft's Minotaurs (if Minotaurs were really chill and nice). The new Lupin from Ravenloft basically gives us the Worgen (which are more specifically just Warcraft's version of werewolves). I think the Duergar could give us our Dark Iron Dwarves. Among the original 8 vanilla races, the only one I might struggle with is the Troll, which doesn't have a very obvious D&D equivalent.

In the Battle For Azeroth expansion (from 2018,) WoW added a huge number of "Allied Races" (including the aforementioned Dark Iron Dwarf) that are mechanically their own thing, but clearly meant as a "variant" on existing options. Some have pretty convenient options existing already in 5E (I think you could do Shadar-Kai as the Void Elves). But I doubt that they're going to work all of these in.

More core, though, are the handful of neutral races - Pandaren were the first (neutral meaning that they can belong to either faction,) and have no clear D&D equivalent. Dracthyr were introduced in 2022's Dragonflight expansion, and are clearly the equivalent of the Dragonborn (though less bulky, and with permanent wings).

One thing the book would maybe need to address is factions: In WoW, each character belongs to one of the two big factions, the Alliance and the Horde. Storywise, the two sides were at war with one another (the Alliance was actually formed to counter the Horde,) but there were ebbs and flows of conflict, often pushing the two to set aside their difference to face a greater threat. In recent years, that conflict has mostly died down, to the point that the current expansion, Midnight, has both factions operating out of one of the Horde's main cities (Silvermoon, home of the Blood Elves).

The restrictions have even lifted to the point where you can actually run dungeons and other content in parties that are mixed between members of the different factions (though "outdoor" content doesn't allow cooperation).

Thus, while I think that the Alliance/Horde division is very important to the lore of the world, I don't think there needs to be any built-in restriction in the rules to prevent you from having parties with, say, Goblins and Dwarves fighting alongside one another.

I'll be curious to see, though, if we get some cool legendary stat blocks for big Warcraft villains. While he's been deader-than-dead for a long time now (with a storyline that really emphasized they would never bring him back,) Arthas Menethil is probably the franchise's most iconic villain, a prince and paladin who allowed his obsession with vengeance to transform him into a death knight and ultimately saw him becoming the Lich King overseeing the undead Scourge that he once fought.

Getting stats for Faceless Ones (n'raqi) and C'thraxxi, the aberrant servants of the evil Old Gods, as well as some of the cool high-tech space demons of the Burning Legion would be really fun.

But I also think it'd be fun to just run lower-level adventures in places like Duskwood or Thousand Needles at the slower, more deliberate pace of D&D.

Anyway, we'll see if and when this book is actually announced.

Cyberpunk 2077

 Yeah, I'm late to the party.

But I guess my algorithm started showing me videos of Mike Pondsmith talking about the process of turning his TTRPG into a video game.

I've always felt a strange kind of disconnect from Cyberpunk as a genre. I've never read Neuromancer or Snow Crash, and I think the aesthetics of the genre aren't really my go-to vision of the future, even a dystopian one.

Futuristic sci-fi does, of course, often comment on the present, and the fact that Cyberpunk as a genre came out in an era in which American leadership grinningly dismantled the New Deal welfare state to empower massive corporations is not, you know, coincidental. Technology was also on a stratospheric rise, and people didn't really know where things would go.

It's a strange thing, because I feel like Cyberpunk got some things really spot-on (the growing power of corporations, the unsustainable privatization and commercialization of everything leading to profound wealth inequality and unaffordability) and some things quite off (Japan entrenching itself as the dominant global cultural force, everyone and their mother getting cybernetic implants).

There's a sequence in Cyberpunk 2077 that gives us a glimpse of 2023, but it's an alternate history version of it (to be fair, the game came out in 2022, so it was technically the "near future" at the time) that conforms to the established lore of the TTRPG - back in the 80s, 2023 seemed like a really long time off. This game, as the name implies, takes place 54 years later. Now, if I play my cards right and manage my health well, I could pretty plausibly live to see 2077. I doubt it'll look like this game does, but then, it's staying true to the genre more than trying to accurately depict the future.

I've just made it to "Act Two" of the game's main story, with Act One's conclusion leading to a real series of twists and turns. The game is an open-world, but the main story still impacts pretty hard. What I don't know is if I've failed to explore some of the game systems, or if they've been holding out on really pushing me toward them until we get a bit of that story underway.

Going pretty hard into Intelligence as a stat, my most powerful weapon is hacking, which I've been using to overheat foes I'm fighting. My stealth abilities aren't amazing, and I'm not sure if that's a skill issue or a matter of stats and character builds. But combat, at least so far (I'm on the normal/standard difficulty) is forgiving enough that I haven't had too many problems (I struggled a bit with a Cyberpsycho, who I kind of wound up cheesing, but I think those are supposed to be the optional, super-difficulty foes).

I'm curious to see to what extent different backgrounds make for different experiences. I've gone Street Rat, as that seems the most classic protagonist archetype for the genre.

I appreciate the ways in which the game doesn't seem to need you to micromanage things. You have a healing item that recharges over time, and your health regenerates out of combat. This isn't a game about carefully managing long-term damage, letting you be a bit more reckless in combat.

Anyway, I finally have enough money (Eddies, or "Eurodollars," the imagined merged currency) to buy some new gear, but I don't yet really know what I should get. I think probably I'll want to invest in cybernetics (and whatever gear governs my hacking abilities). But so far, I haven't really gotten any tutorials on crafting, so I think I wasted some resources making a gun that I thought I'd be able to deconstruct to get said resources.

As a note, I've also been checking out The Ghost in the Shell, a new anime adaptation of, you know, Ghost in the Shell. When I was in college, I watched Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex (probably first seeing it on Adult Swim.) This show, and the 1995 movie, were very serious in tone, but evidently the new show is more in keeping with the manga it's based on, with moments of real cartoony silliness, a staple of anime/manga that was always kind of startling to me when watching such things (like Trigun, which can be deadly serious and then have Vash the Stampede have a cat face when he's acting cute).

Like Cyberpunk, I'm not really an "anime guy," but I do enjoy the occasional work of the medium. I liked how deeply philosophical Ghost in the Shell got, and I think that's there in the new show, but with a lot of that weird silliness in there as well.

Reimagining the Rogue

 I love Rogues on a conceptual level, and in other RPGs, I've often gravitated toward them as a kind of secondary archetype (or tertiary - I tend to like heavily armored melee/magic hybirds first and then some kind of spellcaster, often with a "dark" vibe second). In WoW, for example, my Undead Subtlety Rogue was the first I ever got to the then-level cap of 70 in Burning Crusade (19 years ago!) In D&D, at least in 5E, Rogues play a sort of weird role in a group. They're designed primarily as a utility class, but without the magical spells that a Wizard or Artificer brings to the table (though Arcane Tricksters, of course, lean back this way). Thanks to having more skill proficiencies, expertise, and eventually (and coming online earlier now than it did in 5.0) Reliable Talent, they're the "good at skills" class.

Personally, I don't think this really does the premise of the class justice. While it's certainly a cool thing to have, I A: don't think that this is necessarily the first thing you think of when you think of the Rogue as a fantasy archetype and B: seems to justify disempowering them in combat.

To be clear, the math on Rogue damage isn't all that straightforward. For one thing, Sneak Attack damage goes up every two levels, so there's less of a clear "breakpoint" in their damage output. This damage isn't necessarily consistent either: certain combat scenarios will take Sneak Attack off the table, such as if there's any source of disadvantage. Because it's such a giant chunk of a Rogue's damage, though, it also means that if we can find ways to make multiple attacks, this can boost our overall damage output significantly because as long as we hit with one of them, most of our damage is going through (I say most, but this doesn't really become the case until we get to around level 10 or 12).

I think that if we want to make the Rogue work in combat, we've got to make big changes to Sneak Attack - honestly, tearing the whole thing apart and building something with the same name might be the best option.

But, let's not get ahead of ourselves:

One thing I do think is worth preserving is that Rogues should be using lower-damage-die weapons. The classic archetype is a character who wields daggers and shortswords, and the Shortbow is a better fit for a sneaky Rogue (while Longbows are Heavy and thus can benefit from Great Weapon Master, I'm inclined to believe that without that, the fact that Shortbows have Vex make them usually the better weapon in 5.5).

Frankly, the lack of proficiency in higher-damage weapons is the only "price" I think Rogues should pay for getting some kind of source of additional damage. (Rapiers are actually toward the higher damage numbers, though I think probably most Rogues who are going for melee at all are probably dual-wielding a Shortsword and Scimitar).

Part of me wants to create an incentive to wield a dagger at least in the off-hand, but I think we'll just let the Thrown property do that for us (and maybe the Piercer feat).

Crucially, though, this means that the thing we're no longer taking away from the Rogue is that massive boost that all other martial characters (even some subclasses of not-typically-martial classes): Extra Attack.

Honestly, I think this will go a long way toward helping Rogues catch up. It's not enough to fully replace Sneak Attack, obviously, but it's a big start.

But what beyond that?

Well, now we need to address Sneak Attack.

In a vacuum, Sneak Attack adds 3.5 to 35 damage per turn over the course of your leveling journey. The actual number is a little more complicated because of the chance to hit and the chance to miss, as well as the chance that you're not actually going to get it. Actually calculating the chance you get Sneak Attack is kind of impossible, as all manner of scenarios might present themselves.

So, let's consider our first change:

You just get to choose to get Sneak Attack. No requirements to have advantage or an ally nearby, and you don't lose it if you had a source of disadvantage on the attack (as I interpret it, even if you cancel out disadvantage, if there's any source of disadvantage, you're SOL).

What impact would this have, then? I'm going to do a very quick-and-dirty version of my "vs Wyvern" calculations here: if we had a +9 to hit (not unreasonable for a level 10 Rogue) and were making two Shortbow attacks (we're ignoring Vex for brevity's sake) we'd be hitting on 5s or higher, getting an 80% chance to hit. Two attacks would mean 1d6+5, or 8.5, twice, which gives us 17 80% of the time and a crit bonus of 7 5% of the time (usually I do the attacks separately, but it's just a factor of two either way) so that's 13.6+.35, or 13.95. Then, our Sneak Attack at this level is 5d6, or 17.5 average. The chance we get it at all is 96% (the chance not to would mean the 20% miss chance happening twice) so that's 16.8, and then the chance we get a crit with it is 5% (chance on the first attack) or 5%x20% (chance we crit on the second attack after missing on the first) which is conveniently a 1% chance, so that's a total of 6%x17.5, or 1.05. Add it up and Sneak Attack is giving us 17.85, so when added to our normal damage, that's 31.8.

That's actually pretty decent damage, and it's even lowballing it because of the effect that Vex will have on it.

    So, if that satisfies you, we can just kind of stop here: just say you can do Sneak Attack once per turn when you hit with an attack. And, of course, give Rogues Extra Attack.

But I actually think this could be something of an overcorrection.

One of the issues we run into, I think, is that Great Weapon Master casts such a long shadow over martial damage. I'd be inclined to think that this might, for example, leave a class like the Barbarian in the dust (though unlike Rogues, Barbarians often get additional sources of damage from their subclasses). If we were looking at only a vanilla Barbarian who just relies on their Rage bonus, Sneak Attack very clearly outpaces it.

Part of what I think balances out the several d6s of damage Rogues get with a Sneak Attack is the fact that they only get one attack (unless they're dual-wielding). But I also think this element of design has really held Rogues back - there's a certain "feel bad" element to the class even if the numbers did line up because of what I talked about in this post. In short, that more attacks "smooths out" your damage output by effectively creating a larger sample size.

My initial inclination was simply to lower the amount of damage a given Sneak Attack does, but then slap it on every attack. If we were adding, say, our PB (or the equivalent scaling with Rogue levels) number of d6s to each attack, this would ultimately wind up giving us slightly more damage by tier 4, but it would work a bit more like Rage damage, Radiant Strikes, or even Hex/Hunter's Mark.

If that were too much damage, though, I thought about making it a limited resource. Perhaps it's actually just as much damage, but the Rogue can only do it a certain number of times per Short Rest (feels right that it'd be a Short Rest resource, like a Monk's Focus Points).

But thinking about this in thematic terms, I actually think limiting Sneak Attack to once per turn feels right. Mechanically, this could represent a careful and patient sniper lining up a kill shot or a scrappy street-brawler feinting and ducking under their foe's arm while bringing the blade up into their ribs.

Now, making it a limited resource I do think actually kind of works on theme, but this also might be an unnecessary nerf to a class that already kind of struggles to keep up.

You know, the more I think about it, the more I'm inclined to the simpler solution. One real advantage here is that it also disrupts as little as possible. Cunning Strikes would still work just fine.

Let's take a step back, though:

Ultimately, what this proposal would do is primarily just add a second attack. Sneak Attack is not guaranteed, but I think for the most part, in most combats, you'll have some means to get it (most often just by having a friend near the target, though the Vex mastery might really change this. I just haven't played with a Rogue since 5.5 came out, except my own in a campaign where we weren't allowed to upgrade). This just simplifies things, and I actually think helps the Rogue with brief solo fights, which the class feels kind of inclined toward.

I think we'd need to consider some other breakpoints, though. Given that I haven't been doing a whole bunch of "reasonable fights at level 5" calculations, I don't know how useful it would be to actually do that for this version of the Rogue.

But my main inclination is that by giving them Extra Attack, you'd put Rogues on the same basic chassis as all the other martial classes, and then you could get a broad sense of whether Sneak Attack measures up to the effects of Rangers' and Paladins' spellcasting, Barbarians' Rage and subclass damage bonuses, and such, and as long as those seemed to be in the same ballpark, you'd probably be good.

Ranged Battlemaster vs. Wyvern

 I like the flavor of Matt Mercer's Gunslinger subclass, which was famously used by Taliesin Jaffe in Critical Role's first campaign. But the downsides, mainly the chance at Misfire on your attacks, is a kind of class design that doesn't really fit with other 5E class and subclasses, with nearly all features being pure positives. It may have been a holdover from Pathfinder or 3.5, but it always bugged me that a non-Gunslinger in 5E could fire guns without worrying about their breaking while a Gunslinger did have that concern.

So, I have long thought that if I wanted to create a similar kind of character, I'd go Battlemaster. Indeed, the Battlemaster and Arcane Archer already have similar ideas to a Gunslinger, with a limited ability to alter shots, but I think the Battlemaster is the most versatile.

Now, ranged characters are a little nerfed in 5.5, thanks to the change to Sharpshooter. But I don't know that it's that terribly bad, especially when we consider a couple workarounds.

I see two primary paths here for damage, built around two specific feats: Crossbow Expert and Great Weapon Master.

Now, just to address the issue: this build probably won't work all that great with guns. The two firearms available in the PHB (formerly the "Renaissance era" firearms) hit hard, which is nice, but they have some major downsides. One is range - the Pistol only has a short range of 30 feet, and the Musket only 40. But the bigger one is that there's no feat in 5.5 that allows you to ignore their Loading property. While you could very easily just take the Gunner feat from Tasha's, if you're allowed to grab 5.0 material (which I generally assume,) this feat mostly just lets those weapons work rather than actually boosting their damage. Downgrading to a d8 from a d10 is not an enormous damage loss, and you get a lot in return.

Let's talk about what Crossbow Expert does for you: this is a feat that might play into the build in both of its iterations. The most crucial thing it does is let you ignore the Loading property, which would normally prevent the weapon from really being used with a class that uses Extra Attack. It also allows you to attack in melee without disadvantage if you're shooting a Crossbow, which is certainly nice. The last bit, and the one that may or may not actually be useful here, is that you can add your ability modifier to the bonus attack you get with the Light Property as long as the attack is made with a Hand Crossbow and you aren't already adding it (such as from the Two Weapon Fighting Style feat).

The latter piece basically enables you to dual-wield Hand Crossbows (like a Diablo III Demon Hunter) and even more or less gets you the Two Weapon Fighting Style as part of it to allow you to grab just Archery.

Now, even if we want to use a Heavy Crossbow, we'll want this feat anyway, so you could take it at level 4 and be a little freed up in terms of which option you want to use.

The other feat, Great Weapon Master, is more specific, and a little kludgy. While GWM boosts solely Strength and its Hew property only works on melee weapons, the Heavy Weapon Mastery aspect of it actually applies to two specific ranged weapons: the Longbow and the Heavy Crossbow. (Bizarrely, the Automatic Rifle, Shotgun, and Musket don't count).

Now, if we're dual-wielding Hand Crossbows, this won't do anything for us. That might be nice, as we could focus on Dex-based feats, but I also suspect this will be a bigger boost to our damage.

Just to figure that out before we go into other choices, let's figure it out really quick:

Fighters don't need their bonus action every round unless they're dual-wielding, so the two hand crossbows should be pretty easy to use most turns. With three feats by level 10, we could get our Dex to 20 (though we might be behind if we go with GWM). At this level, we could shoot three Hand Crossbow attacks per turn, each of which is adding Dex, so if we figure that's like 1d6+5 three times, that's 8.5x3, or 25.5 damage. If we are shooting a Heavy Crossbow twice, but getting to add our proficiency bonus because of GWM, even if our Dex is only +4 at this level, that's 1d10+8 twice, or 13.5x2, which is 27. It will be slightly less because of the fact that our hit chance is a little lower.

That said, Hand Crossbows have Vex, which is a more direct boost to damage than Heavy Crossbows' Push. Indeed, because we have Tactical Mastery at this level, both the Heavy Crossbow's Push and Longbow's Slow masteries are essentially worthless to us, as we'd be able to do that with any weapon.

Still, given that the scaling would favor the Heavy Crossbow at higher levels as both PB and our number of regular attacks go up, I'm going to go that way.

So, with that in mind, here's how I'd go with feats:

At level 1, our Fighting Style feat is of course going to be Archery, a very solid one, giving us +2 to hit with ranged attacks.

At level 4, I think we pick up Crossbow Expert. For the next two levels, we can freely swap between going Heavy Crossbow or two Hand Crossbows.

At level 6, we grab Great Weapon Master. We will need to have at least a 13 in Strength to grab this, but given that we're pretty single-ability-score-dependent, I don't think that'd be too taxing on our build. The main downside is that we won't cap Dex at level 8 unless we take a full ASI.

But, at level 8, I think we have a couple compelling options: Piercer is actually a pretty obvious choice - all ranged weapons save "futuristic" ones do piercing damage, so this should apply to basically everything we do, and we can even grab a rapier if we want and still benefit (though thanks to Crossbow Expert, we might as well still shoot our Crossbow).

Mage Slayer, of course, is always a good option as well.

I actually think I'm going to go with Mage Slayer, not because it's necessarily the best choice here, but because I don't want to have to worry about the once-per-turn reroll of damage.

As a note, if we prefer the aesthetic (or the very long range) of Longbows, we could swap out Crossbow Expert for Sharpshooter. Our damage takes a slight dip, but we will also be able to ignore cover and be fully effective at 600 feet (imagine being able to nail a foe at a length of two football fields - not that your DM is likely to put you in situations where you can actually do that).

Ok, that's feats and equipment sorted. Our final bit of set-up is Maneuvers.

We'll know seven maneuvers by level 10, and we have five d10 superiority dice.

Goading Attack is very nice on a ranged attack, as it might simply impose full disadvantage on the attack (though we can kind of get this by swapping in the Sap property).

Menacing Attack, imposing frightened at range, can literally stop a target in their tracks.

Pushing Attack might seem redundant with the Push Mastery, but consider that you can add both, potentially pushing a target away up to 25 feet.

Maneuvering Attack can help you play a kind of overwatch role, helping allies get into position or away from danger.

Commander's Strike might not be quite as exciting given that we're going to be hitting quite hard on our own, but it can massively improve the damage of a Rogue by giving them potentially a second Sneak Attack per round.

Precision Attack is not quite as important with the new Sharpshooter, but it will help prevent misses. Given that we'll have a pretty high attack bonus, I doubt we'll be using this a ton, but it can keep our damage consistent.

Honestly, I think this is going to rely a lot on your party makeup. But the key is that we can probably afford to use a maneuver on most turns, though we'll burn through them pretty quickly if we try to use them on every attack.

Let's assume the following:

If we land a critical hit, we'll burn a Superiority Die to get some extra damage. For the sake of our damage calculations, we'll assume we're not burning maneuvers outside of that scenario. This will deflate our damage output a bit, but one of the things that's really appealing about the Battle Master is that they don't necessarily just have a pre-programmed "rotation," and can be very reactive to the situation on the battlefield.

So, each turn, we attack twice. We'll burn a maneuver on a crit, meaning we might do that twice in a turn where we get very lucky and crit twice. We can say, just for the sake of consistency, that it's a Menacing Attack, or a Pushing Attack if they're already frightened of us.

If we do miss, we'll burn a die to try to hit with a Precision Attack.

Let's math it out:

We have a +4 to Dexterity, so with the Archery Fighting Style, our attack bonus is +10. Thus, we hit on a roll of 4 or higher. And if we roll a 2 or 3 (nat 1 is still an auto-miss) we can do a Precision Attack (we don't miss out on the Menacing/Pushing damage because we're already not critting). If we had rolled a 3 on the die, this will always turn it into a hit. If we had a 2, it's a 9/10 chance that it also turns it into a hit, so basically, within that 10% of rolling a 2 or 3, 95% of the time, it's still hit. So, that's 85% plus 9.5%, meaning we effectively have a 94.5% chance to hit. Our crit chance is the same standard 5%.

Our hit damage is 1d10+8, or 13.5 on average (the extra 4 coming from Great Weapon Master). However, our crit damage bonus is effectively 3d10 if we're saving maneuvers for crits, so that's 16.5.

Thus, we're looking at 13.5x94.5% or approximately 12.76, plus 16.5x5%, or .825, giving us 13.585 damage per attack. This then doubles with our two attacks to 27.17.

That's actually pretty low compared with some of the other things we've been doing. But let's assess some other elements:

First off, we'll probably do a little more damage because we might not save all our superiority dice for near-misses and crits. Also, the utility of inflicting the frightened condition can be pretty huge (or DC would be 16, which is decent). Against flyers, Trip Attack can actually be really powerful if they don't have Hover.

Also, this damage goes up by a full 50% at the next level, where it starts to look a lot more respectable.

I think the takeaway here is that you shouldn't expect to be the real damage-dealing powerhouse of the party. Instead, you've got a ton of utility you can apply while still making a meaningful contribution to the party's damage.

Mystic Arts Monk vs. Wyvern

 So, this is going to be a little tricky because while the presumably final version of the subclass is locked, and the YouTube channel Insight Check has a break-down of it, I cannot seem to find a written version of the subclass. For readers, that won't be a big deal, but for me it will mean referring to the video that breaks it down.

Still, the playtest version in the UA seems to have largely come through unchanged, with the exception of the nonfunctional capstone, which was fixed to now replace attacks within a Flurry of Blows rather than the attack action. This does mean that it will cost a Focus Point to get that spell in, but I think it's probably worth it, as you'll likely be doing that every turn by that level anyway.

We also don't really need to worry about it too much, as we'll only really care about the 3rd and 6th level subclass features, which I believe are unchanged.

So: what are the relevant features?

Well, first off: spellcasting. At level 10, we'll have 1st and 2nd level spells, along with cantrips. Like Eldritch Knights, Enlarge/Reduce is probably going to be our best concentration spell to boost our damage, as we'll be adding 1d4 to each of our hits with the Enlarge effect active on us. It'll also potentially help us grapple, as we'll now be able to grapple Huge sized creatures. Arguably, we'll actually get a greater benefit from this spell than EKs do because we can do more attacks in a turn with the level 10 boost to Flurry of Blows.

The other relevant piece here will be that we can weave a cantrip into our extra attack feature. Many of the same cantrips are available to us. Blade Ward can, of course, be a nice defensive option, and one that is probably more "affordable" to us because any given attack on a Monk isn't that much damage. But as I'd suggest with Bladesingers, EKs, Valor Bards (though they won't be able to pick them up immediately) I'd really suggest getting the excellent Booming Blade and Green-Flame Blade cantrips to let us do enhanced versions of attacks we'd want to make anyway. If you can't get these, True Strike is certainly an option, though note that this spell requires us to use our spellcasting ability, rather than merely allowing us to do so.

In terms of feats, I'd guess that Mystic Art Monks are probably going to want to lean a little further into Wisdom than some other Monks. You might choose to just go straight ASIs at each feat level to ensure you cap Dex, Wisdom, and get Con as high as you can. That said, I'm always down for taking Grappler on a 5.5 Monk. Weapon Master actually could be a decent choice if we want to dual-wield two light weapons - the damage dice for them will upgrade for us, so it's a nice little d8 boost of damage (at level 10).

Let's assume, though, that we're just getting raw stats with our feats, and we'll also be primarily using spells that are Wisdom-agnostic. We're going to assume, then, that by level 10, we've capped Dex so we can just focus our late-game feats on bumping Wisdom.

In order to use Booming Blade (our assumption for single-target situations, though GFB will always slot in for when there's cleave potential unless we're sure we can force them to move and get the punishment damage) we do need to be using a weapon that is worth at least 1sp. Luckily, Spears and Quarterstaffs both cost more than that. I'd guess that Spears are the better option (unless you're fighting skeletons) simply because of the option to throw them, though thanks to Martial Arts, we can really use any Simple melee weapon, or even martial melee weapons with the light property (which I think is just shortswords and scimitars?) They'll all be doing a d8 of damage, and the light property on weapons if we don't also somehow have Nick is kind of irrelevant in the face of our Martial Arts ability, so it's pretty arbitrary. (Actually, daggers can be great on a Monk because their damage will be just as good as anything else, and like spears, they can be thrown).

Now, a quick calculation: if we assume that the monster will move if we shove them away from us after hitting with Booming Blade, that'll add 2d8 damage. But if we just make another attack, we'll get 1d8+5, which is very slightly higher damage, so we're not going to pull those shenanigans unless we have a way to guarantee a knockback without sacrificing our damage.

So, the gameplan is this:

Turn one, we use our Action to cast Enlarge/Reduce on ourselves, growing to Large size and adding a d4 to each of our attacks. We then use Flurry of Blows to attack the target three times with unarmed strikes. On the first hit, we'll attempt a Stunning Strike. 

Turn two, we will use our (let's say) Quarterstaff to attack first with Booming Blade, and also attempt a Stunning Strike. Then, we make an additional attack (it doesn't matter if we make an unarmed strike or quarterstaff attack) and then again Flurry of Blows for three additional attack.

Let's figure out what kind of damage we're doing.

Actually, one last thing: let's assume we started with a 16 Wisdom and have not yet been able to raise that.

Ok:

Turn One:

Again, we Enlarge ourselves with our action. Then, it's three Flurry of Blows attack.

We have a +9 to hit, and so we hit the Wyvern's AC of 14 on a roll of 5 or higher, meaning an 80% hit chance. Each hit does 1d8+1d4+5 damage, or 12 average, with an additional 7 on a crit. So, 12x80% is 9.6 and 7x5% is .35, so we are doing 9.95 damage on that first attack.

Now, in the 80% chance that we hit on this attack, we will also try to Stunning Strike. Our DC will be 15. The Wyvern has a +3 to Con saves, so they fail on an 11 or lower, meaning a 55% chance to fail and 45% chance to succeed.

Here's where it gets a little messy: we get advantage on the next attack regardless, but we won't get it on the third attack unless they fail. But also, in the 20% chance that we miss, we won't have been able to use Stunning Strike. This isn't that hard to do for attack number 2, but it'll get more complicated the more attacks we get (turn two will be a lot crazier).

So, attack #2 is guaranteed to have advantage if we hit with the first attack. So, 20% of the time, it'll be the same average damage as the first attack, but 80% of the time, our hit chance grows to 96% and our crit chance to 9.75%. 12x96% is 11.52 and 7x9.75% is .6825, so with advantage our average damage is roughly 12.2. 12.2x80% is 9.76 and 9.95x20% is 1.99, so this attack will do 11.75 damage on average.

Now, attack 3 is where the headaches begin. We have advantage under the following circumstances: if the target failed the Con save versus Stunning Strike on attack 1, or if we hit the target on attack 2 after missing on attack 1.

So, the chance for that first scenario is 80%x55%, or 44% (the chance we hit on the first attack times the chance that the Wyvern failed). The chance for the second scenario is 80%x20%, or 16% (the chance we hit on the second attack without advantage times the chance we missed on the first attack). So, I believe this comes to a 60% chance that we get advantage on attack 3. Thus, we take the 11.75 average damage when we have advantage and multiply it by 60%, giving us 7.05 and then the 9.95 average damage when we don't have advantage and multiply it by the remaining 40%, giving us 3.98, for a total of 11.03.

Thus, on turn 1, totaling this, we can expect to deal an average of 32.73 damage. Frankly not too shabby for a set-up round.

    Now, onto turn two:

Here, that complexity is going to start going crazy as we have to figure it out over the course of 5 attacks.

Our first attack is now a Booming Blade attack, meaning it will hit for 2d8+1d4+5, so the damage and crit bonus goes up by 4.5, meaning average damage of 16.5 and crit bonus of 11.5.

Stunning Strike's effects, on a success or failure, end at the start our turn, so no worries about advantage on this first attack... which actually means we should probably save Booming Blade for our second attack.

If we then do so, we'll thus just do the familiar 9.95 average damage on this attack.

Booming Blade's advantage/disadvantage chances are the same as attack 2's on the first turn, so we're looking at an 80% hit and 5% crit chance 20% of the time and a 96%/9.75% 80% of the time. Without advantage, we're looking at 13.2 plus .575, for 13.775, and then with advantage, we're looking at 15.84 plus roughly 1.12, so 16.96. 13.775x20% is about 2.76, and 16.96x80% is about 13.57, so in total, this is doing 16.33 damage.

Now, our first Flurry of Blows attack should look identical to the first turn's attack 3, so we'll just use that value again, adding 11.03 damage.

Attack 4 on this turn is going to get really complicated: we get advantage if we hit on attack 1 and the Wyvern failed the save, if we missed on attack 1 and then hit on attack 2 and the wyvern failed, or if we missed on attacks 1 and 2 and then hit on attack 3. So, the first is the same familiar 80%x55%, or 44%. The second scenario is again 20%x that same 44%, or 8.8%. The third scenario is 80%x20%x20%, or 3.2%. So the chance we have advantage (if I've kept all these concept straight in my head) is 56%. So, we are looking at 11.75x56% and 9.95x44%, giving us 6.58+4.38(ish) for a total of 10.96.

Attack 5 (this is the last one, thank the gods) adds one more iteration onto this. Thus, we need to have missed with the first three attack and then hit with the fourth attack, or we need to have missed with attack 1 and hit with attack 2 and then the Wyvern must have failed their save, or missed with attacks 1 and 2 and hit with attack 3 and the Wyvern failed their save. Oh, or we need to have hit on the first attack and the wyvern failed their save, of course.

So, the first scenario is 20%x20%x20%x80%, or .64%. Scenario two is 20%x80%x55%, or 8.8%. Scenario three is 20%x20%x80%x55%, or 1.76%. Scenario four is that original 44%. Boy, I hope I didn't leave something out. Anyway, this gives us a 55.2% chance to have advantage. For sanity, I'm going to round that to 55%, and so we have 11.75x55%, or 6.46ish and 9.95x45%, or 4.48ish, giving this attack an average damage of 10.94, which you'll note is only .02 less than attack 4, meaning we might have been able to just approximate all of this.

Anyway, this means that by turn two, the average damage is 59.21, which is actually really freaking good.

This does require us to expend two FP each turn, but at level 10, that can be sustained for 5 turns. Concentration might not be the easiest thing to maintain here, given that we're probably going to be looking at a +3 bonus at most (and likely only a +2,) though Deflect Attacks can make Concentration saves a little easier.

We do have a set-up turn, but again, thanks to the fact that we're actually making more attacks with our bonus action than with our attack action, that doesn't punish us nearly as much as some other classes. Even if the combat only lasts two rounds, we average out to 45.97 damage, and that goes up if things get to round three.

This is beating a lot of my other builds. Indeed, if you didn't even use Stunning Strike and were making all attacks without advantage, you're still looking at 53.575 average damage on turn 2. It turns out that if you can add damage to every attack a Monk makes, they start really taking off, damage-wise.

And the nice thing is that this is relatively sustainable if you get some short rests in there. Assuming I have the numbers right, getting a 2nd level spell slot back can be done with 3 FP with a bonus action. While that'd be rough in combat, it's a great thing to do right before a short rest. At this level, you'll have 3 2nd level spell slots, so you might not even need to do that, but I think that's enough that you can probably afford to cast the spell every combat. Protecting concentration will be important, so you might consider delaying your Dex progression to take War Caster (which will feed into your Wisdom progression) but it's not the end of the world if you drop concentration, given how relatively easy it is to get those spell slots back.