Bladesinger (Using One Spell Slot, for Damage at Least) vs Wyvern

 The Bladesinger and the Eldritch Knight are two sides of the same coin - one is the Fighter who gets a bit of wizardry and the other is a Wizard who becomes a martial class. While I love my EK dearly (and I'm champing at the bit for a chance to play one again - ideally bringing my old character Jax back because our party was ostensibly temporarily in the Nine Hells but the campaign fell apart before we could get out, and I don't love that as a fate for him) I'll also say that I'm almost certain a Bladesinger is the more powerful option, simply because Wizards are, well, super-powerful.

Now, part of that power is that you don't actually have to use all that martial stuff. Literally any Wizard of high-enough level could get their hands on Conjure Minor Elementals and Scorching Ray and do just absurd amounts of damage, scaling remarkably well each time you get access to higher-level spell slots (you could even multiclass to Sorcerer if you have enough Charisma to get Innate Sorcery because your spell slot progression will continue even if you can't pick higher-level spells).

The math is real easy for that - at 10th level, you have 5th level spell slots, so you'd just cast CME at 5th level on turn 1, and then for the rest of combat, get within 15 feet of your targets and burn your other high-level slots on Scorching Ray (maybe reserving your 5th level to recast if you lose concentration). If you have a +9 to hit with your spells, you'll land it on a 5 or higher against a wyvern. That's (3d8+2d6)x5 if you're doing a 4th level Scorching Ray. Each one lands for 20.5, and so if you've got an 80% chance to hit, and then 5% chance to crit, each one's landing for 20.5x85%, or 17.425, so a 4th level spell slot gets you freaking 87 damage per turn.

Even when we account for the first turn requiring set-up, that's still an average of 43.5 per turn in a two-round combat, and it jumps up to 58 over three turns, making it far better than any of these other builds (though the Eldritch Knight, pulling off far more shenanigans, does comparable stuff, and that was even with the Staff-and-Board build, meaning that a Great Weapon Master build would probably do better.

Yes, CME is kind of a busted spell, and even with its nerf in errata, it's still among the most powerful in the game when used like this. (Scorching Ray is fine, but surely wasn't designed with the assumption you'd be adding damage to each attack).

But what if we wanted something more sustainable?

Here's the limitation we'll set: we are not going to use more than one spell slot. We're going to make use of our Bladesong to make melee attacks.

In other words, we're going to pick some decent concentration spell and then go to town.

Let's start building:

    Stats:

Funny story: when I rolled stats on the Wizard I've now been playing almost five years, I was tempted to go Bladesinger, because I rolled so well, starting with an 18 in Int, +3 to Con, and +2 to Dex. But I had already come up with a story that very firmly made him an Order of Scribes Wizard (he was an apprentice archivist at the Cobalt Soul in Port Damali, and during the campaign he's been made an Expositor).

The new Bladesinger, though, is a little less stat-dependent, due in large part to the fact that your Bladesong now allows you to use Intelligence for your attacks.

Having decent Dexterity is still not a bad thing - it'll still increase your AC, and indeed, given that you can no longer wear any armor, rather than getting access to Light Armor, so that Dex is going to be slightly more precious. That said, Bladesong will also give you AC equal to your Intelligence modifier - we still benefit from Dex, but as long as we're decent, we can focus our attention on just boosting Int as far as it will go (indeed, we also get that for Concentration saves, meaning we're truly Int all the way).

    Gear:

The interesting thing is that while the SCAG/Tasha's Bladesinger would pretty much always go rapier, as it's the highest-damage finesse weapon, you actually have a lot of freedom now - you can go with a Warhammer, even, as long as you're not wielding it in its Versatile mode. Basically, a d8 weapon is going to be our assumption, but whether it's a Longsword, Rapier, Flail, Harpoon, or whatever is kind of irrelevant. We don't get Weapon Mastery, so it's really up to you (and up to what magic weapons your DM is handing out). Now, you could pick some alternatives. If you get Polearm Master, a Quarterstaff or Spear are both solid options. And if you want a little bit of reach, you can take a Whip, which does step you down two damage dice, but the reach can be great if you want to attack outside of the reach of most creatures.

And no armor, so that's simple.

    Feats:

I'd be tempted to grab some martial feats - Polearm Master would actually work great if we wanted to fight with a Spear or Quarterstaff (the Pole Strike making up for the lower damage die) but I also think we need to race to a 20 Int here. As such, what I might do is just grab War Caster at level 4 (assuming we've gotten a 17 Int from our background) and then just ASI at 8 to ensure we're capped on it. That actually leaves us with the freedom to pursue non-Int General Feats at levels 12 and 16 if we get to those levels without guilt.

For Origins Feats, of course, I tend to ignore these. Savage Attacker could boost us slightly, but I generally don't find it worth it, and would prefer Lucky, Tough, or Alert.

    Spells:

While we're not spending more than one spell slot, we will be using a Cantrip, which we can wave into our Multiattack. The cantrips will of course be either Green-Flame Blade or Booming Blade, the former if there's an opportunity for cleave (or we're fighting something that is vulnerable to fire or otherwise harmed more by it like a Troll) and the latter in single-target situations.

Now, what of our concentration spell?

Well, CME is still a very solid choice. At 5th level, we'd be adding 3d8 damage to each of our attacks, which could mean 6d8 total. If that's what we're getting, are there any spells that can beat it?

Wizards have a lot of spells, so this is a challenging question. We're going to ignore spells that hinder a specific foe, as we'd prefer to just have all this active to attack as many targets as we like, even if we're assuming we're just hitting a Wyvern in a white room. We also don't want one that uses our action, as we want to take advantage of our Extra Attack, so nothing like Dragon's Breath.

Haste would net us an extra attack each turn, but our attacks themselves don't actually deal a ton of damage. We're doing like 1d8+5 per attack, so 9.5 versus the 3d8 we'd be getting from CME, or 13.5, or really 6d8 or 27 given two attacks. Now, if we had something like a Vicious Weapon, this would start to look more appealing, but even then it would only give us one extra attack that deals 1d8+2d6+5, or 16.5, which still isn't matching that.

(EDIT: It occurred to me re-reading this post that, technically, given that we can get the Attack Action as one of our hasted actions, we might be able to "replace" that one attack with a use of Booming Blade - essentially, this attack action would be an "Extra Attack" of 1. That's up for DMs to maybe rule on. This would bump the damage to an extra 2d8+5 rather than 1d8+5, so it comes to an average of 14. This still doesn't beat CME, though, because across two attacks, we're still getting nearly, but not quite, twice as much damage.)

What about Summon Spells? One among this category that I think has gotten a buff thanks to the fact that fewer monsters have resistance/immunity to nonmagical kinetic damage is Summon Elemental. While there's not as much utility to them as something like an Undead spirit, they hit hard. If we cast this at 4th level, we get two attacks from them for 1d10+8, which winds up being 13.5 damage, and that means that we're actually doing about as much with them as we would with CME at 5th level (it's slightly less because their crits don't hit as hard). Some other advantages in this specific situation are that an Earth Elemental is resistant to piercing and slashing damage, and they're all immune to poison, which makes it harder for the Wyvern to actually kill them.

And you know what, CME gets used so much. This is more fun. Summon Elemental it is! (And this leaves us a nice 5th level slot if we need it later on.)

Actually, before we move on, I wanted to mention a fun one that my best friend's Bard sometimes uses in our Ravnica game - Yolande's Regal Presence. This lets you knock back foes and make them prone if they enter an emanation around you, or if your emanation enters their space. It deals 4d6 psychic damage on a failed wisdom save, or half as much as a success. The reason I'd consider this is to take advantage of Booming Blade, similar to what we did with the Eldritch Knight's use of the Push mastery. But the sequence here isn't quite right - we'd need to bounce them and then run up to them to take advantage if we knocked them prone.

    Gameplan:

Pretty simple: if possible, we have the Elemental up (we're going Earth - while it'd be good to have a flying one to chase the Wyvern down, those lesser dragons are so fast that our Elemental wouldn't be able to catch up anyway, so it doesn't really matter). If not, we spend our first turn casting that. Then, as a bonus action, we activate our Bladesong. It honestly might not be a terrible idea for the Earth Elemental to try to grapple the Wyvern just to keep it in place, though your DM might be very strict about whether Extra Attack and Multiattack are the same thing, and if they can use one attack to grapple and a second to make a Slam.

The Elemental makes its attacks and then, turn two, we step in and start attacking as well.

And that's about it. I'll be honest, I'm not predicting this to do amazing damage, but we'll see. This is a resource-conservative build - we know we can go hog wild on them and do insane damage when we want, but this is for serious dungeon crawling.

    Mathing It Out:

Both we and our Elemental have a +9 to hit, which means an 80% hit chance.

The Elemental hits for 1d10+8, or 13.5, and an extra 5.5 on a crit. That's 10.8 plus .275, so 11.075 per attack. That then becomes 22.15 with two attacks.

Turn two, we're going to make two attacks, but the first is Booming Blade (or Green-Flame Blade).

Thus, this one is going to hit for 2d8+5, or 14, adding 9 on a crit, so 14x80% is 11.2 and 9x5% is .45, so we get 11.65 damage here.

Then, our second attack is just a normal attack for 1d8+5, so 9.5 on a hit and adding 4.5 on a crit. 9.5x80% is 7.6 and 4.5x5% is .225, so we get 7.825, or 7.83 to round off.

Thus, by turn two, we get a total of 41.63, or rounded off to 41.6.

And you know what, I think that's actually pretty damned respectable. It's not blowing the socks off of our other builds, but this is doing it all with a single spell slot that isn't even our highest-level slot.

There are also some nice defensive benefits here:

The Earth Elemental, for one, is going to be resistant or immune to all of the damage the Wyvern puts out. The Wyvern's most deadly attack is its tail stinger, but the Earth Elemental will take only 5 damage on average from it (when it normally does 35 total).

As for us, if we assume a +2 to Dex, we can cast Mage Armor, which, along with Bladesong, will put our AC at 20. Then, the Shield spell can push that to 25. Get our hands on some Bracers of Defense, and you're matching my super-tanky Eldritch Knight. Then, if we managed a +3 to Con, we'll get a +8 to concentration saves. On top of this, if we do get hit anyway, Song of Defense will allow us to spend spell slots to prevent 5 damage per spell level, which also means lowering the concentration save DC by 10 per spell level (of course still a minimum of 10). In other words, if we took the full burst of an Ancient Green Dragon's breath weapon (for other dragons we'd just use Absorb Elements,) which does 77 damage on average, we could expend a 5th level spell slot to drop that by 25. The 32 remaining damage would call for a concentration save with a DC of 16, which we would get on an 8 or higher, but with advantage, that 65% chance becomes an 87.75% chance to maintain concentration (our elemental would be fine). I mean, for sure if it was an ancient dragon and we were level 10, we'd want to spend our turn getting the hell out of there as quickly as we could, but still. Not bad.

My Wizard vs. Death Knight

 So, I've been doing all these builds at a hypothetical campaign- or at least tier-boss fight against a Death Knight. At CR 17, these monsters would be a serious challenge for a level 10 party of an average size, but within the realm of encounter-building guidance in the DMG (a high-difficulty encounter).

It just so happens that my Wizard is, in fact, also at that threshold at the end of tier 2 (and given the campaign has been going for like four and a half years, it's about time!)

Now, I've talked a lot about hypothetical builds, with feats and all that stuff. But let me talk about my own actual character and use the spells I have available.

This is going to be simple - much quicker and easier than our previous builds. It's going to revolve around well-documented and busted spell combo, Conjure Minor Elementals and Scorching Ray.

With a bit more energy and space to get into it, let's talk about how we use these spells and how my subclass, the Order of Scribes, affects it:

Conjure Minor Elementals is a 4th level spell that creates a 15-foot emanation around you. The area is difficult terrain for your enemies, but more importantly, whenever you land an attack (spell or weapon) on a target that is inside that emanation, you add 2d8 damage from your choice of Acid, Cold, Fire, or Lightning damage (though as a Scribe, that's even less restrictive).

This spell, notably, had to be nerfed with errata after the PHB came out, because it used to scale up by 2d8 with each level up upcasting. That was nerfed to just 1d8, but this scaling is still incredibly good if we can manage to make lots of attacks.

That is where Scorching Ray comes in. This spell is a 2nd level spell that shoots 3 rays of fire at our target. Each ray does 2d6 Fire damage on a hit. When upcast, rather than increasing the damage of each ray, it instead adds additional rays.

At level 10, we have two 5th level spell slots, 3 4th, 3rd, and 2nd level spell slots, and four 1st level slots. The latter won't factor into this - we'll save them for Shield and Absorb Elements if needed.

Now, there are a couple things that benefit us as a Scribes Wizard:

First, we can always swap one damage type from a spell with that of another spell of the same level that we have in our spellbook. For example, Bigby's Hand can do Force Damage, so if we cast a 5th level spell, we can change any of its damage types to Force (though if it does multiple types in a single instance, like Destructive Wave doing thunder and... fire, I think?, you can only choose one of those to swap).

Second, we can also use Manifest Mind, which gives us a little incorporeal buddy (it can only be destroyed with a spell like Dispel Magic) that we can move around as a bonus action on our turn, and a few times per day, we can cast spells as if we were in its space instead of our own.

This should work with Conjure Minor Elementals - once cast through the Manifested Mind, the emanation will radiate out from it, rather than from us.

But let's talk pitfalls:

Against a Death Knight specifically, we're in trouble: the DK can cast Dispel Magic twice a day. This can apply both to the Manifest Mind and the Conjure Minor Elementals spell. Arguably, having it waste an entire action to do so might be worth it, but it will require us to re-cast the spell and start our rotation over again.

Another thing is that Death Knights have Lunge as a legendary action. While this only allows them to move up to half their speed, and we're also putting them in difficult terrain with our emanation, they can use Lunge three times per round, meaning that they could potentially get up to 75 feet of movement, which would easily be enough to get out of our 15-foot emanation and even beyond our ability to catch up with them.

Manifest Mind can only move 30 feet on a turn, and given its vulnerability to Dispel Magic, we might have to skip it. Thus, it'll be us and our squishiness that we need to employ within 15 feet of our target.

If the Death Knight flees (rather than just trying to attack us to break concentration - which we'll get to) we could use Phantom Steed to give ourselves a speedy 100-foot mounted speed. The Death Knight also has this spell, though. Also, Phantom Steeds are not resilient in combat - any damage dispels them.

But let's say that the Death Knight is boxed in - maybe we have allies with Sentinel (not in my current party) or just terrain that prevents them from getting away.

The Death Knight deals an average of 25 damage on a hit. That's serious damage that could take me down in just a few attacks. But assuming I have the healing to survive an assault like this, my chance to maintain concentration is thus: I have a +3 to Con saves. We have two Paladins in the party, and so especially if I'm standing relatively close to the Death Knight, I'm probably within their auras, meaning an additional +3. So, against 25 damage, it's a DC 12 Con save, and I also have Warcaster. Even if the Paladins can't use Interception to reduce the damage, I'd still save on a roll of 6 or higher, meaning only a 25% chance to fail, and with War Caster, that becomes only a 6.25% chance. Not nothing, but pretty good (I also have the Coat of the Crest, which has three charges and can give me resistance to the Death Knight's slashing damage for a round as a reaction if I get hit, which would make the damage closer to 19).

I do have Counterspell, which I've never actually used. While Dispel Magic would automatically work against Manifest Mind, I'm planning on casting CME at 5th level, so the Death Knight would have to roll an 11 or higher to successfully dispel it. If I saved my reaction for Counterspell (dubiously safe given that they're probably also coming after me with their legendary actions even if they're using Dispel Magic) my DC is 17, so with a +5 to Con, they'd have to roll a 12 or higher to save. They do have advantage, so the 55% chance to successfully prevent the spell is reduced to 30.25%.

In other words, against this monster in particular, this strategy would have a lot of potential problems. It might be diluted a bit if the rest of the party were causing other problems the Death Knight needed to be able to deal with, for sure, but given the power of this spell combo, I would probably make myself a priority target.

    But let's just imagine a world in which this all works.

Very simply, turn one, I cast Conjure Minor Elementals. Any damage it does is fine. We cast it at 5th level, so we now add 3d8 in addition to whatever our attacks do.

Turn one is just that - no damage done, which isn't amazing, but we start to make up for it quickly.

On turn two, we want to save a 5th level slot in case we lose CME for whatever reason, so we'll cast Scorching Ray at 4th level instead.

That's 5 rays. Each does 2d6+3d8 damage (again, the Fire works fine, but we can actually swap it with any of the damage types from CME because we're a Scribes Wizard and it's being cast at 4th level).

The damage on average per ray is 20.5 on a hit. Because it's all dice, we can roll in the crit chance to the hit chance to get our average damage per attack. With a +9 to hit (I rolled stats and got an 18 Intelligence at level 1, so I was able to get 20 Int with War Caster and Keen Mind - the latter maybe not being the most powerful feat, but very in-character) I'm hitting on an 11 or higher, which is 50% of the time. Add in the 5% chance for a crit and we get 20.5x55% for each ray, or 11.275 on average per ray.

On turn 2, we're doing five rays, so we get 56.375 damage. We do this again on rounds 3 and 4. At this point, we alone would have done 75% of the Death Knight's HP, so we can probably assume that the combat is over by this point. Frankly, I think 3 rounds is more likely, and we'll calculate based on that.

Because of the round of set-up we need, this does significantly reduce our overall damage per round. Over three rounds, we're looking at 37.58 (roughly).

This falls behind the Aberrant Sorcerer build, but we also didn't average that out with the set-up round. The Sorcerer does still get to do some damage on that round, and I also think the Sorcerer is in much better shape to actually maintain its spells, but looking back on that post, they do 19.95 damage on round one and 53.34 damage on rounds two and three, so their average beats us pretty handily with 42.21.

What I will say is that ours is going to scale better at higher levels, probably.

While this would be a terrible idea against the Tarrasque (which is both immune to spells that have attack rolls and also fire damage, the latter of which we can deal with as a Scribes wizard, but not the former,) if we fought that Death Knight again in tier 4 (not impossible, though he'd need a lot of minions to be a serious threat to 17th level characters, and thus we might focus more on AoE spells,) and were willing to burn a 9th level slot for CME and go down the line with all the high-level slots for Scorching Ray, we'd be shooting 9 rays with an 8th level Scorching Ray, and each would be dealing 2d6+7d8 damage on a hit, which is 38.5 damage per hit. If we somehow still don't have anything to boost our spell attacks, we'd still have a +11 to hit, so a 60% chance to hit. 65%x38.5 is 25.025, and with nine rays, that's 225.225, meaning that in theory, we'd nuke that Death Knight in one turn if we didn't lose the spell after our first turn.

Probably not what we'd actually do with our spells, though - I think using Shapechange or True Polymorph to turn into, like an Adult Gold Dragon or something might have greater utility.

Building an Alucard for Ravenloft's Strahd von Zarovich

 A couple years ago, my friend ran The House of Lament, the starter adventure in Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft. As a joke, initially, the character I came up with for it was Alexander von Zarovich, a dhampir rogue who was the son of infamous Darklord Strahd von Zarovich. His backstory was that he had been initially born as a means for Strahd to escape the Domains of Dread (back during Strahd's collaborations with Azalin) by essentially creating a suitable vessel to transfer his soul into while leaving his soulless body behind to remain trapped as Darklord. The experiment failed, and so Strahd transformed his son into an assassin, sent to terrorize his enemies. When Alexander accidentally killed the current incarnation of Tatyana, Strahd cast him out, banishing him to the Mists. Finding himself in Lamordia, he lived as an orphan but was taken in by a kindly adult who helped rehabilitate and de-program him, allowing him to grow into a (relatively) well-adjusted adult.

While the idea of a dhampir son of Strahd was the kind of one-shot joke character, I actually realized the concept had legs (hence the extensive backstory). I haven't had an opportunity to play this character in a larger campaign, but I could see myself doing so.

Naturally, there's some precedent from the Castlevania series, with the character of Alucard, aka Adrian Tepes, the son of Dracula and his human wife Lisa. As a Dhampir, Alucard heroically opposes his monstrous father while also being a bit of an edgelord himself.

Initially, my idea for Xander would be as a Rogue - that's how I played him in the House of Lament - but while I like that conceptually, I think A: a little frustration with the Rogue as a class and B: a desire for a more effective melee fighter has led me to consider an alternative.

Initially I thought maybe a fighter, probably a Dexterity-based one using a Rapier or perhaps dual-wielding. And then it struck me:

Bladesinger.

While I tend to prefer my Battlemages heavily armored, the Bladesinger does satisfy that definition of being a character who can use both spells and weapons (I know that "Battlemage" means other things to different people - to me I think it's kind of the less IP-specific "Gish" idea, which is best embodied in D&D with the Eldritch Knight Fighter subclass).

Not only is the Bladesinger a cool and powerful subclass, but it also, I think, fits well with the aesthetic of a vampiric warrior - vampires are rarely seen wearing armor, for example. They also tend to have magic powers, and we're going to be looking at a lot of the spells I'd choose to fit in with these themes (which also happen to go together for the most part).

I've got a build here that goes to level 10.

The 5.5 Bladesinger, from Heroes of Faerun, makes them a little less dependent on having high Dexterity, because you can now use Intelligence to attack while in your Bladesong. I do think you'll still want at least decent Dex, as it still raises your AC, initiative bonus, and of course helps with Dex saves. Potentially you could go with 15s in Int, Dex, and Con, though I tend to prefer starting with a 17 in my top stat at level 1 in 5.5 so that I can put it to 18 at level 4 with a General Feat.

Naturally, we'll be grabbing War Caster at level 4, which A: is basically what every spellcaster should take at level 4, but B: also really good given that we'll be mixing it up in melee and being able to Booming Blade as an opportunity attack.

Given the desire to have some feats in tier 3 to boost Dex and/or Con, I'm going to actually say we just push Int to 20 at level 8, rather than taking another Int-based General feat. Shadow Touched would certainly be thematic here, and there are some other Int-based feats to consider, but I have an OCD thing about capping stats.

For weapon choice, there are lots of options, because you're basically going to get a d8 weapon at best - even if you fight with a longsword, you can't use its versatile property without ending Bladesong, and given that you don't get weapon masteries, it's really just a choice of damage types. Thematically, I really feel like we've got to go with the Rapier, which just feels like the elegant vampiric weapon to pick. I could see a Whip also working, which sacrifices 2 damage on average for extra reach. That reach could be very helpful as a (somewhat) squishy Wizard, but I'm going to say let's risk it.

Now, spells:

For cantrips, the must-haves are Booming Blade and Green-Flame Blade. The former is particularly good as an opportunity attack with War Caster (unless your DM is an insane stickler and says that the spell targets the weapon, rather than the target of the attack). We can start off with True Strike if we're beginning at level 1 in order to be able to attack with a weapon before we get our subclass, but we might want to just stick to the back until then. We might consider having a ranged cantrip (Mind Sliver feels on-theme and is also good) but these are going to be our bread-and-butter. Blade Ward is also a decent choice, as once we get to level 6 and get our special Extra Attack, we can pop this up to effectively increase our AC by 1d4 on each hit (though it does eat up our concentration, so this might be better if we're in a big dungeon crawl with a lot of smaller fights where we don't want to blow a high-level spell slot on something).

First level, we want to grab Shield and Mage Armor. We cannot wear armor in the Bladesong (a change from the old version) so this will be our best option for armor unless we can get something like a Robe of the Archmagi or something far later on. Remember that Bladesong doesn't change the math of how we determine our armor - it just adds our Int modifier to AC, so if we have a +2 to Dex, Mage Armor, and +3 to Int at level 3, that's a healthy 18 AC, which will be better than even heavy-armor wearers unless they have a shield or somehow snagged plate this early. I'd also take Absorb Elements, another staple. Staples like Find Familiar (feels like it should be a bat) and Identify/Detect Magic are also good - we will still be a Wizard, and people will rely on us for stuff like that. I also like Jump here, which helps with our mobility as a melee wizard and again, feels very much like a vampire thing to do.

Second level, another spell I'd take on any character, Misty Step feels particularly good for our vampire theme (doesn't Alucard have an ability in Symphony of the Night where he turns into mist to go through barred barriers?) This is such a staple spell that I have zero hesitation putting it in there. It'll also potentially help us get to foes faster. Invisibility is another good utility spell that, again, lends itself to our spooky vibes.

Third level, there are a few standard choices (I'll never not take Fireball on a Wizard,) and Fear is a really good and again, thematic choice for our big Crowd Control spell. However, we now have an interesting question: Do we take Spirit Shroud? I made a post last fall comparing this spell to Conjure Minor Elementals. The short story: Spirit Shroud is more convenient, but doesn't scale as well. Each adds damage to attacks you make if the target is within a relatively close emanation, which is really powerful when you can make lots of attacks (it pairs well with Scorching Ray,) and given that our Bladesinger can regularly make two attacks per turn starting at level 6, we can often benefit from this. Spirit Shroud is less damage, but I do think it's way more thematically on-point than CME. It also only requires a bonus action to cast it, so we can start attacking on the same turn. That said, we also need our bonus action to activate Bladesong, so we probably won't be casting it until turn 2 in combat. Now, that's not really a downside given that if we have CME, we'll probably be activating Bladesong and then casting that on turn 1 and not attacking until turn 2 anyway - with Spirit Shroud we can at least attack in a non-augmented way on turn 1. So, it really depends on A: how long your combat lasts and B: how much you can upcast your spells. While I took CME on my D&D Beyond build of the character, I might actually argue that you should go Spirit Shroud if for no other reason than it feels way more on-theme. For other 3rd level spells, I like Summon Undead - all the Summon spells are pretty good, and both add a body to the field and do pretty decent damage (Summon Undead also has great utility, as the Ghost can automatically frighten anyone they hit, and the Putrid spirit requires some set-up and for monsters that aren't immune to being poisoned, but can paralyze things).

Fourth level, Polymorph is a key one - being able to turn into a Wolf or a Bat (talk with your DM about re-skinning higher-CR beasts so you can stay on-theme) is another big vampire trope. Conjure Minor Elementals is less thematic but still great for any Wizard who makes attack rolls. Greater Invisibility can be a really strong spell for both attack and defense if you can spare the concentration.

Rounding things out at 5th level, I think we've got to take Steel Wind Strike, which is a weird sort of pseudo-AOE spell that works very well with the idea of a weapon-wielding Wizard. It plays well with Spirit Shroud/CME, and while it's limited to 5 targets, how often do you get 5 targets in a Fireball? I also grabbed Danse Macabre, which is mostly just fun but I also think not all that bad - considering that Skeletons in 5.5 now have a base attack bonus of +5, if your Int is maxed out, they'll have a +10 to hit and deal 1d6+8 damage on each attack. With five skeletons shooting bows, that's 5d6+40 damage. Against an AC of 18, that's 38.25 average damage per turn. It is dependent on how many skeletons you have access to.

In terms of gameplay, there are some arguments that even a Bladesinger should mostly play like a standard Wizard most of the time, holding back from the fray. But to that, I say: why don't you want to have fun? Truly, by level 10, we're going to be pretty resilient - with +5 to Int, Mage Armor, and still just +2 to Dex, we're going to have an AC of 20 during Bladesong that can then be bumped to 25 if we get hit thanks to the Shield spell. If we get Bracers of Defense, raise those by 2. We might even consider starting with a +3 in Dex, though I generally think a Wizard should favor Con more than Dex, as not all damage requires them to hit you with an attack, and you still only have a d6 hit die. At level 10, we can expend spell slots as a reaction to reduce incoming damage by 5 times the spell's level. I think judicious use of that feature is an important challenge for the Wizard using it - reducing the damage of a dragon's breath, for example, could make it possible for you to maintain concentration on a spell.

One of the fun things about playing this as a Dhampir is that you could, in theory, have a fight along walls and ceilings, which does feel like a fun idea for a rapier-wielding warrior. Being based in Con, and with very few ways to increase the damage, I don't think you'll be using the bite attack all that much, but that's kind of true for all dhampirs.

We will be getting an update to the Dhampir in Ravenloft: Horrors Within, though I don't know how much is likely to change (I suspect not a ton, though they seem to be presenting the Gothic Lineages as more just full-on species in their own right, so we might have some changes to Ancestral Legacy).

At level 10, we get 5 Bladesongs per long rest, so we can probably expect to have it active every fight unless we're in serious dungeon-crawl mode. If we do run out, I think we just hurl spells from afar or focus on buffing allies.

When we want to bring our A-game, we spend the first turn activating Bladesong and then going in for the attack (if we're close enough - we should have a 45-foot movement speed) with a Booming Blade on single targets or Green-Flame Blade if we can hit a secondary target. On turn two, we'll want to activate Spirit Shroud at 5th level (we always want to cast it at odd levels, given how it scales) and then attack again, now dealing 2d8 extra damage (our choice of radiant, necrotic, or cold - radiant's probably the most reliable, but thematically we might go necrotic more often than not) per hit. Again, if we are using CME instead (also at 5th level, this now adding 3d8 to our attacks - I feel like Fire damage would be the thematically appropriate one, though Cold also works. Just pick the right one for the monsters you're fighting), we'll spend our first turn setting up, getting Bladesong and CME running, and then turn two we'll use our action to either attack or if we have a target-rich environment, we can do Steel Wind Strike, hitting each foe for both the spell's 6d10 and the bonus d8s. Note that this will blow both our 5th level slots, so we should only burn both of these spells if we want to burn a lot of gas.

If we want to be a little more conservative, casting either Spirit Shroud or CME at base level is an option. Greater Invisibility is also a decent choice (assuming your foes don't have Blindsight/Truesight).

Again, we are a Wizard, so we have tons of alternatives given the situation. Fear, for example, can seriously thin the ranks if we're facing a massive horde of foes.

When facing a hard-hitting foe, we can run in, attack, and then Misty Step to avoid their strikes if we're not sure Shield will be enough to keep us safe. Also, if you want to play it extra-safe and conservative, consider Blade Ward as your concentration spell, which you can cast on turn 1 after Spirit Shrouding with your Extra Attack. This feels ideal for minor fights in a dungeon room - I'm thinking specifically the vineyard in Curse of Strahd that is overrun with Blights - each fight is trivial, but there are so many little fights there that they can chip away at your HP and resources.

Anyway, I think this could be a very fun archetype - while the Bladesinger can work in any campaign, I do think that it's a strong choice for a lithe, elegant dhampir warrior in a very gothic campaign.

Maximizing CME as a Druid or Wizard

 So, I'm in a kind of middle ground between power-gaming min-maxxers and "vibes, man" character building in D&D. I like my characters to be powerful, because that's the fantasy of the game as far as I'm concerned. I don't do enough one-shots to actually get a chance to try out every whacky out-there build or joke character, so for a long campaign, I want a fleshed out character whom my fellow players will learn to love (or fear, as was the case with by Warlock in Descent into Avernus - very much a "glad he's on our side" kind of character) but who is also just mechanically working within expected parameters.

Broadly, the primary thing that I'm really skeptical toward is multiclassing. I think that there are for sure cases where a multiclass build makes sense for a character. In our Wildemount game, one of the two Paladins multiclassed into Warlock and it made perfect sense - the entire campaign, he's been haunted by the charred ghosts of his former comrades who were all killed in a magical firestorm at Blightshore (one of the major "don't go here" places in the Exandria setting,) and by accepting their direct aid, he's basically made a pact with them (though curiously, it seems to be a Great Old One patron, rather than Undead, as I'd have assumed. I don't really know what is going on with them, so all I do is mutter "got a light?" when the ghosts appear to the rest of the table).

Still, I generally try to build characters along a single class track unless there's a really compelling story reason. The only truly mechanical reason I'd do it is if I wanted to play a Pact of the Blade Warlock, because I think they get so, so many of their problems solved by just starting as a Fighter for their first level.

In that campaign, I've been playing a Wizard. I really can't complain at all about the class, as I've felt plenty powerful with the spells I've picked. Fireball is great unless you roll really awfully low, and even then, even if you're only getting like 14 damage out of it (which is only half of its average damage) it's still over a big enough area that that feels pretty significant if you're in a target-rich environment.

My usual go-to concentration spell is Summon Undead (while my character is a very classically heroic, quite naive young wizard who was basically just out of wizard school at the start of the campaign, his favorite professor was the Necromancy one, and so he likes summoning forth undead spirits to help,) which I think is a very worthwhile option, and if you can maintain concentration, a pretty spell-slot efficient one at that. It's also fairly versatile, with various forms of crowd control or just straight, safe ranged damage (in a fight against a bunch of humans working with a succubus, I was using Drow Poison on a Light Crossbow with True Strike, which was often setting up my Putrid Spirit to paralyze them - after I had knocked the fiend unconscious with the poison on the first turn of the entire combat, which he remained for like three rounds).

But while the Summon spells are great for sustained single target damage, I think it's pretty clear that there are ways to do bigger bursts of damage.

Conjure Minor Elementals, which in 2014 was mainly there to let you summon a bunch of Mephits or maybe an Azer or two, is profoundly different than it used to be. I've written about this spell many times before.

The "obvious" path to getting a lot of power with this spell is to use it on a character who is a melee/martial hybrid - someone who can get a lot of attacks in and thus multiply the 2d8 bonus the spell grants to your attacks as much as possible.

While I think that it's plenty powerful on a tier 4 Eldritch Knight, who get 4th level spells at level 17 and will eventually get four attacks per attack action at level 20, I think the damage winds up scaling up better with pure spellcasters. Bladesingers and Valor Bards are going to naturally want to use this (Dance Bards too, I guess). Bards, of course, will need to wait to get Magical Secrets to get this spell, as it's not natively on their list. The spell is actually only on the Druid and Wizard spell lists, though there are some subclasses (and I know for sure one or two of the Eberron Dragonmark spells of the mark) that will get it as well.

An Eldritch Knight will be able to make more attacks than a Bladesinger using this spell, but won't be able to upcast it. And with just one or two levels of upcasting, that benefit begins to fall off.

Druids, of course, can also build around weapon attacks - you can get martial weapon proficiency with the Warden Primal Order option, or you can just shape-shift, with Moon Druids in particular getting some forms that will be able to attack three times a turn.

But let's say that you really just want to stick to spells? What are the best options?

Well, the answer is pretty clear: you want non-concentration spells in which you (not a pet) are making lots of attacks. These attacks do need to be within a 10-foot range (though because my Wizard is a Scribes Wizard, I think I should be able to use my Manifest Mind to cast CME and move my floating book-spirit around while I pelt away from a safe distance and still get the damage bonus.

So, what spells?

The only cantrip I'm aware of that does multiple attacks is Eldritch Blast, so if you can get this spell on a Warlock, it'll be very good. But we're looking at the classes that get this spell natively. An attack cantrip will certainly benefit from the spell, but you're only really adding 9 damage a turn on a hit. Not really what you want for a fourth level spell (the skeletal spirit from Summon Undead is going to be hitting for like 12 twice a turn cast at 4th level).

The only Druid spells I could find that aren't concentration but call for attack rolls are Elminster's Effulgent Spheres and Syluné's Viper, each of which only allow one attack as a bonus action. This could mean, coupled with a cantrip like Starry Wisp, you could get two attacks out of this, but that doesn't seem all that exciting.

Wizards, however, I think, will feast on this:

Chromatic Orb could hit multiple times, though you'd need to have all your enemies packed tightly within your 10-foot emanation to get the benefit of the CME.

Scorching Ray is probably your first, easily accessible, really powerful option here. At its base 2nd level, Scorching Ray shoots three bolts that each do 2d6 damage, meaning that with the 2d8 bonus from CME, you're already more than doubling the damage you do with the spell. Upcasting Scorching Ray is going to add additional bolts, rather than making each bolt more powerful, which is great, because it's a further multiplier of your damage. Casting CME at 4th level and Scorching Ray at 3rd, you'll be getting 4 bolts that are each hitting for about 16 damage apiece. If they all hit, that's 64 damage.

Steel Wind Strike is the next option. This will effectively extend the range of your CME because you'll be teleporting around for each strike, and your emanation travels with you. The trick is that this only gets full damage if you can hit all five targets - it has to be spread out, not concentrated on one target like Scorching Ray can. Still, each hit will land for 6d10 (33 on average). With 2d8 added to each of those, you'll be hitting for an average of 41 each. If you can somehow also get advantage, that'll be great, because all the damage is doubled on a crit. To compare, if we were casting Scorching Ray at 5th level with a 4th level CME, we'd be getting 6 rays each dealing 2d6+2d8 (again, 16 average) and so in theory we could do 96 damage total. Against 5 targets, of course, Steel Wind Strike is doing a total of 205, but we can't concentrate it on a single target. (Also, SWS doesn't upcast). Incidentally, if were were to flip that Scorching Ray option, casting CME at 5th and SR at 4th, we're looking at 5 rays, but each is now dealing 2d6+3d8, or about 20.5 on average, for 102.5 total. So, yeah, I think if you want to build around this, you probably want to use an upcast Scorching Ray for single targets and Steel Wind Strike for situations with 3-5 targets.

One spell that you might not initially think of (I have to credit Colby over a D4: D&D Deep Dive for this one) as working with these is Contingency. This 6th level spell lets you effectively pre-cast a 1st-to-5th level spell at an earlier point that will take effect when its trigger occurs. This could be something like casting Water Breathing when you're fully submerged (not necessary for my Triton, but I get it) but in this case, it's less of an emergency than an opportunity to cheat the action economy: if you come up with a special word or phrase as the trigger, you can cast this the night (or some days) before you need it so that you can get CME running and still have your action and the ability to cast a spell with a spell slot on your first turn. For as insane as the damage of CME is, you always need to put a little asterisk there that you still typically wind up doing no damage on the first round of a fight, and so if the fight only goes two rounds, the insane damage output of these spell is effectively halved. But if you set up a contingency, you will (at least for one major fight) be able to hit the ground running.

Like Druids, Wizards get access to the aforementioned Elminster's Effulgent Spheres and Syluné's Viper, but these aren't going to be really maximal, damage-wise.

Spellfire Flare (also from Heroes of Faerun,) however, works great with this. Like Scorching Ray, it's a low level spell that adds additional bolts when upcast rather than just adding damage to the attack. Each attack does 2d10 Radiant damage, and at base 1st level, it does just one bolt. Targets won't benefit from half or three-quarters cover against it.

    Ok, so how is it, damage-wise? Do we replace Scorching Ray with this?

    The problem is that it does fewer bolts - when upcast to 2nd level (Scorching Ray's base level) it will do 2 bolts, which means that it's always one fewer shot than Scorching Ray. On the other hand, the actual bolts hit harder, for 2d10 (11) rather than 2d6 (7). At 2nd level, in fact, without CME, it's already slightly outpacing Scorching Ray with 22 average damage compared to 21.

    But Scorching Ray has an edge on number of bolts. So, if we toss in a base level CME, and then cast, say, a 4th level version of each of these, what are we looking at? Scorching Ray is doing 5 bolts for 2d6+2d8 each, so 80 damage. Spellfire Flare is doing 4 bolts for 2d10+2d8 each (20 apiece) so... 80 damage. Huh. Didn't expect to hit the level at which they were totally equal. And I guess further upcasting favors Spellfire Flare because Scorching Ray is adding 16 while Spellfire Flare is adding 20 with each further upcast.

    However, if we upcast CME as well, the balance tilts toward Scorching Ray. With a 5th level CME and 4th level attack spells, we're looking at 2d6+3d8 with 5 bolts at 4th level (102.5 total) versus just 4 bolts of 2d10+3d8 (24.5 each) for a total of 98.

    Honestly, I think the choice between Spellfire Flare and Scorching Ray is really a bit of a judgment call. If you're upcasting CME, Scorching Ray does better, and likewise if you're not upcasting Scorching Ray or Spellfire Flare very high.

    However, Spellfire Flare has two other factors that really help it: it's Radiant damage, which is far less often resisted than Fire damage (and lots of monsters are fully immune - again, as a Scribes wizard this is less important to me) but also, the ability to ignore partial cover means, situationally, you're going to be hitting more often. Truly, both are strong options, and I think it mainly depends on how much upcasting you're doing and with which spells.

Crown of Stars has the same issue as the Effulgent Spheres and Viper spells - while sustainable, you only get one attack per turn. That attack does do 4d12, but you're only increasing that 26 average by 9 with CME each turn.

And yeah, that's about it, as far as I can tell.

To review:

I think your best options for maximizing the power of Conjure Minor Elementals with spells alone are Scorching Ray, Spellfire Flare, and Steel Wind Strike.

The latter does a lot of damage on its own, but must be treated as an AoE option - you can't concentrate its power on a single target. Scorching Ray and Spellfire Flare are both really solid options, but you might need a spreadsheet to figure out which is optimal in which circumstance, as the sliding scale of upcasting will change which comes out on top. You can, of course, pick and prepare both, but I think you'll probably just want to pick one or the other.

Remember that this is for burst damage - to maintain this amount of damage round after round, you're going to need to expend a lot of spell slots. But if you really want to melt a boss quickly, it's a good way to go.

A Dumb, Fun Trick I Thought of For My Wizard

 I have a 9th level Triton Wizard character I've been playing for a few years now. I went into the campaign understanding that Wizards aren't necessarily the most damage-focused class, but I wanted all the cool utility that the Wizard spell list affords you.

However, I thought of something dumb:

Since it was published in 2024, and even with the nerfs (which I looked at with the previous post,) I've wondered if it would be fun to play with the new Conjure Minor Elementals.

I rolled really good stats when creating this character, and I felt a certain temptation to make him a Bladesinger, but the entire concept for the character was built around him being part of the Order of Scribes (he was an apprentice archivist of the Cobalt Soul, though he has since been promoted to Expositor - importantly, he has the consciousness of an Age of Arcanum Wizard bound within a book that serves as his Manifest Mind feature - as a note, I was shocked when Emily Axford had a very similar concept when she came on as a guest in Critical Role's Campaign Three - I had already been playing mine for a couple years I think at that point. Great minds think alike?).

Given that CME really benefits from making lots of attacks at close range, I was a bit sad to realize I couldn't necessarily play in that space.

Or could I?

Let's put the pieces together:

So, we've got Conjure Minor Elementals, of course. At level 9, I can upcast this to 5th level, to deal 3d8 extra damage with each attack.

Next, we have Manifest Mind. This is such a bizarrely silly feature, where you can cast a spell as if you were in the position of your Manifested spellbook-consciousness. You can move this thing around 30 feet per turn as a bonus action. It's incorporeal and doesn't even have HP - the only way to get rid of it is a Dispel Magic. The reason this is so good for us is that, as a Squishy Wizard, we can instead cast CME from the Manifest Mind, allowing us to fly it right up to our enemies, putting them in the emanation without endangering us.

For our third piece, we run into the following issue: as a non-Bladesinger Wizard, I don't have extra attack, so is it really that exciting to add 3d8 to just a single, like, True Strike or Fire Bolt? That's, like, ok, but not really that exciting. So that's why we take Scorching Ray. Scorching Ray, a 2nd level spell, shoots three beams that each deal 2d6 fire damage. Each upcasting of the spell adds another beam. Now, of course, on its own, that means that a 3rd level Scorching Ray only does the equivalent of a fireball, but only on a single target.

But let's look at how it winds up looking when we combine these:

Turn one, we're kind of sad - just casting CME, using one of our Manifest Mind charges to cast it through Sarkavo (my ancient wizard consciousness).

Turn two, though, as long as our target is in our emanation (no matter how far we are from them) our attacks get that bonus damage. If we just cast Scorching Ray at base level, that's three beams that each deal 2d6+3d8 damage, or 17.5. That means that if we get three hits, that's 52.5 damage. Now, sure, you could argue that's more like 26.25 damage per turn, as we had to skip damage on our previous turn.

But let's go crazy:

If I wanted to Nova as big as I could, we could do a 5th level CME on turn one, and then a 4th level Scorching Ray on turn two. That would be 5 beams each dealing 17.5 damage, so we're talking 87.5 damage. In two rounds, that's 43.75 per round.

That's decently spicy at level 9.

And, the longer the fight goes, the better this does, as long as we're willing to burn a lot of spell slots (and we're only blowing our 5th level spell on a fight that we'll need tons of damage for).

Also, as a Scribes Wizard, I could change a lot of the damage types here: Having Sickening Radiance in my spellbook, I can make the Scorching Rays deal Radiant damage. (CME's a little less clear: I think you can only change the damage type when you cast it. But Acid is pretty reliable).

Let's say we're fighting an Abominable Yeti (we're in the Crystalsands Tundra right now). These have an AC of 15 and immunity to cold.

I've got a +9 to hit with my spells (maxed Int, PB 4). So I hit on a roll of 6 or higher (75% chance to hit). Because all the damage here is rolled, we can just add the 5% crit chance to this, so we're basically just looking at 80% of our damage potential.

So, turn 1: we cast CME.

Turn 2: we cast Scorching Ray at 4th level (we're fine with Fire damage on all of these). The average damage on a hit is 2d6+3d8, or, again, 17.5. 17.5x80% is 14 on the dot. We shoot 5 beams, so we're doing 70 damage on average.

Turn 3, if we do this again with another 4th level slot, we're getting another 70 damage, and by this point, the Abominable Yeti is dead.

(As a note, I have both Cold resistance and War Caster, so I'm in pretty decent shape to succeed on concentration saves against the Cold Breath.)

Yeah. Hm. I think I'm going to try to get these spells (naturally I have neither within my spellbook currently).

What Subclasses Should Get a Revision: Wizard

 The Wizard got four times as many subclasses as several other classes in the 2014 PHB. That's actually kind of insane. And yet, there was a certain logic to it: D&D has eight schools of magic, and Wizards simply had a subclass associated with each of those schools. In 2024, they standardized the number of subclasses each class got in the PHB, which was a net gain for the overall number of subclasses printed there, but it meant that Clerics and Wizards each lost a few.

Of the pure-WotC-released books, Wizards got the fewest new subclasses, but with two coming in their Critical Role collaboration, Explorer's Guide to Wildemount, they're still quite well-off when it comes to options.

Of all of these supplementary subclasses, one of them was recently reprinted in Heroes of Faerun, the Bladesinger (also probably the most popular non-PHB subclass). Thus, the subclasses we'll be looking at are the Schools of Conjuration, Enchantment, Necromancy, and Transmutation, as well as War Magic, Chronurgy, Graviturgy, and the Order of Scribes. (Note that the naming convention would likely see all of these changed to be, like "Chronurgist" or "Scribe.")

Before we get into these, there's an interesting question: are they obligated to reprint the four missing 2014 PHB subclasses? These are tied so directly to the core idea of magic in D&D, after all. I strongly suspect that WotC feels that obligation, but I'm going to be harsher and more discerning in my judgment here, and act as if the eight schools of magic weren't a thing and that we were purely looking at this from whether this type of wizard seems like a cool archetype to explore.

Conjurer: Yes

    WotC decided, in the PHB design, to have kind of symmetrical pairs of opposites for their subclasses. In the case of Wizards,  you had Evokers (offense) and Abjurers (defense), and Divination (truth) and Illusion (lies). I actually think this symmetrical design, as thematically cool as it was, wasn't actually best for the game. The Conjurer, to me, is among the most classic Wizard archetypes. Given the changes to Conjuration spells, we do probably need an update on this one.

Enchanter: No

    When I think of a character who's going to do a lot of mind-manipulation, I really think of a Bard well before I think of an Enchanter. And given that we already have the Illusionist as the "befuddle and confuse your foes" subclass, Enchanter feels kind of redundant.

Necromancer: Yes

    I mean... you knew I was going to say this. But beyond always liking the "dark" subclasses, I genuinely think that the Necromancer is a really core fantasy archetype. While we have things like the Undead Warlock to kinda fit this, I think the "not a Lich yet, but might be one day" subclass deserves to have a fully updated version if itself. Frankly, it's another subclass I would have pushed to get into the 2024 PHB.

Transmuter: Yes

    Boy, I'm really leaning yes here. While the Transmuter has never excited me, personally, all that much, I think that the representation of a real Alchemist (a far better one than the Artificer subclass) is a truly classic Wizard archetype. This is also straight up the kind of magic that Merlin from Disney's Sword in the Stone uses, which at least to me is more or less the quintessential "Wizard Classic."

War Magic: No

    Did anyone play this subclass? Did you remember that it was a thing? Also, you'd think that a subclass called War Magic would let you be a bit more of a battlemage, wielding weapons and spells in equal parts. The Bladesinger does that far more effectively, while this is focused on reactive magic like counterspell and dispel magic. No, bin it.

Chronurgist: No

    Had I not come up with a very Scribes-focused backstory for my wizard I've been playing nearly five years now, I would have almost certainly gone with Chronurgy. But then, the other wizard in our group did, so I get to enjoy that vicariously. This, like the next one, has the issue of being tied to the Exandria setting. I think there's absolutely a place for a time-wizard in D&D, though one could argue that the Diviner is kind of that already. But also, this is probably fine as is anyway.

Graviturgist: No

    Almost precisely the same reasoning. I love a cosmic/space-themed Wizard (which is not as explicit with this subclass, but certainly seems like it could work that way). It's A: owned by CR and B: works fine enough as it is. If WotC wants to do their own space-themed subclass, I'd be totally down.

Scribe: No

    I have now been playing an Order of Scribes Wizard longer than any other character I've played (though he's only level 9). The subclass does have features that can be pretty situational. But I really enjoy it (I also profoundly enjoy copying spells at 60x speed! 2 minutes per spell level rather than 2 hours means I can easily copy them as part of a short or long rest. If I ever play another Wizard, I'm going to really miss this). Anyway, it's a cool subclass that's a little outside the box, and so I think it both works and is also weird enough that we don't desperately need to see a new version of it.

And there we have it, all the subclasses that haven't had an officially announced revision now reviewed. I might do a brief post with just a list of the subclasses that I chose.

The intent, here, was to just register (in the aether of the internet) my opinions on how backwards-looking D&D's design should be. To reiterate: the whole point of making 5.5e rather than a full new edition of the game was that the makers can look forward, rather than having to recreate everything all over again (ok, to be fair, the real reason was that they didn't want to alienate the enormous 5E fanbase). I'm sure there's a lot of pressure to re-release everything, given that it will be easier (thus faster and thus cheaper) to develop than brand-new options. But I think if WotC wants to build up some good will (something they sure could use) they really need to give us some exciting new stuff to play with.

Bladesinger Wizard

 Boy, we've been here before, haven't we?

The Bladesinger Wizard is, I think at this point, the most-published subclass in all of 5E, first appearing in SCAG, then again with some light revisions in Tasha's. Now, we're getting a third version (don't worry, the three original Artificer subclasses will catch up to it in the should-have-been-published-by-now Forge of the Artificer, due in I think December). The revisions here are, I think, more extensive, and I think are probably a buff overall.

Bladesingers allow you to take your squishy Wizard to the front lines to fight in melee, and come with tools to make that a less suicidal idea. Let's look at it!

Level 3:

Bladesong:

As a bonus action, you can enter the Bladesong as long as you are not wearing armor or using a shield (which, as Wizards, we probably aren't). The Bladesong lasts 1 minute and ends early if you become incapacitated, or if you don a shield or armor (though what armor can you put on in less than a minute?) or if you dismiss it (no action required) or if you use two hands to attack with a weapon. You can invoke the Bladesong Int times per long rest, and regain one use when you use Arcane Recovery.

    So, given that it's not just on a short rest, but only upon use of Arcane Recovery, this effectively means Int+1 uses per day.

While it's active, you gain several benefits:

Agility: You gain a bonus to your AC equal to your Int modifier (minimum +1) and your speed increases by 10 feet. You also have advantage on Dexterity (Acrobatics) checks.

    So, while I'd recommend most Wizards pick Con as their second-highest ability score, Bladesingers will probably want to make this Dex (though Con is also good). If you get +3s to both, you'll have an AC of 16, though note that this doesn't change the math on how you calculate AC, but is just a bonus, so if you have Mage Armor up, that should then actually be an AC of 19, with the Shield spell also available to you - in other words, Bladesingers can push their AC to be quite high. Assuming we cap Intelligence, that's going to eventually get to 21 (or 26 with Shield) and if we push more Dex, we can get it even higher.

Bladework: Whenever you attack with a weapon with which you have proficiency, you can use your Intelligence rather than Strength or Dexterity for attack rolls.

    This is new, not in the old versions, and actually frees you up to use a lot of other weapons. While Rapiers were the obvious choice in older versions because they're the strongest finesse weapons, now you can quite easily use other one-handed weapons. Note that you'll still be at a d8 at most, because you can't use the versatile property without ending your Bladesong.

Focus: When you make a Con save to maintain concentration, you can add your Intelligence modifier to the total.

    That's a pretty big deal (and partially compensates us for having to pump Dexterity at the expense of Con). Given that most concentration saves are DC 10, this gets us closer to fully pushing failures off the board.

Training in War and Song:

You gain proficiency with melee martial weapons that don't have the two-handed or heavy property. You can use a melee weapon with which you have proficiency as a spellcasting focus for your wizard spells. You also gain proficiency in your choice of Acrobatics, Athletics, Performance, or Persuasion.

    The final piece of the puzzle. This opens up War Picks, Longsword, Rapiers, Warhammers, Battleaxes, Whips, Morningstars, and Tridents (possibly more, though that's what I can think of at this point). Most are d8 weapons, and as we don't have weapon masteries, it'll be somewhat arbitrary which we choose. Rapiers are the classic, though if my Triton Wizard had gone this route (and he had the rolled stats for it) I might have gone thematic with a trident (which are better in 2024 rules - arguably the best one-handed melee weapon). While we have to keep one hand free to maintain the bladesong, we don't actually need it to hold a spellcasting focus thanks to this feature.

Level 6:

Extra Attack:

You can attack twice instead of once when you take the attack action on your turn. You can also replace one of those attacks with a Wizard cantrip that has a casting time as an action.

    The Bladesinger introduced it, and now shares it with Eldritch Knights and Valor Bards. While Booming Blade and Green-Flame Blade already let you double-dip a little on this power progression (as cantrips also scale in level,) the fact that you're now attacking with Intelligence opens up a few more options. True Strike is a solid choice for single-target damage (though because of the Bladesong bonus, I think you could argue that BB and GFB have better scaling now, each adding a d8 to your primary damage compared with True Strike's d6). Alternatively, you could do something like Chill Touch (you do have a free hand, after all). Now, given you probably have a +4 to Int at this point, Booming Blade with a d8 weapon will hit for 2d8+4, or 13 total, while Chill Touch will hit for just 2d8. Acid Splash is a decent option here, for some cantrip AoE, but I think you're overall better off with the SCAG/Tasha's cantrips. If you're restricted by your DM to 2024+ options, I do think True Strike becomes you likely best option here unless you need some range. (1d8+1d6+4 is 12, versus only 9 on average for a d8 cantrip, or even 11 with Fire Bolt). Toll the Dead could rival True Strike if you get the d12 version (which you might accomplish by making the second attack your cantrip,) as 2d12 is 13 on average.

Level 10:

Song of Defense:

When you take damage while Bladesong is active, you can use a reaction to expend a spell slot and reduce the incoming damage by 5 times the spell slot's level.

    While fully negating damage from an attack is going to probably take a pretty high-level slot at this level, the benefit here is reducing the damage by a little bit. This can really help with concentration saves - if you get hit for 40 damage by a dragon's breath, expending a second level spell slot will reduce the concentration save from 20 to 15, making it far more likely for you to succeed. But also, given that we still have a tiny hit point die despite our high AC, any way to reduce incoming damage is welcome, and by level 10, 1st and 2nd level spell slots are relatively cheap.

Level 14:

Song of Victory:

After you cast a spell that has a casting time of an action, you can make one attack with a weapon as a bonus action.

    Kind of the old version of Improved War Magic for Eldritch Knights, it does kind of make sense they didn't just take the new version, as using "two of your attacks" on a Bladesinger would be the same as just... taking the Magic action to cast a spell. Bladesingers are probably not loaded up on a ton of great damage-dealing feats (though I'll note that Polearm Master does work with Quarterstaves - though the pole strike wouldn't apply here) so that extra attack won't be huge... except when you remember that we have things like Conjure Minor Elementals. Indeed, this feature works great with that, as you can cast it with an action and immediately benefit from it.

Overall Thoughts:

The best part about Bladesingers is that at the end of the day, they're still a full Wizard. While I like my Battlemages more heavily armored and wielding big weapons (meaning basically Eldritch Knights,) this is going to be a fantastic choice for people wanting to play a melee/magic hybrid, and remains one of the best and most transformative subclasses in the game.

And that's it! All the new subclasses in the new book. I don't know that I have a fantastic instinct for determining which subclasses are the most powerful, and will have to see some of these in play. But I think that at the very least, there aren't any true clunkers like there were in SCAG. Again, I'm shocked they revisited the Purple Dragon Knight, and it remains a subclass I don't really care for.

Anyway, between this and the UA the other day, I've done a lot of subclass reviews, so I'll be happy to take a break.

Happy Halloween!

UA: Enchanter

 Looking at the last (at least in the order that I've done these) Wizard subclass to get a revision to the previous UA which itself was a revision of the 2014 PHB subclass, we've got the Enchanter.

I'll confess: this is one of those subclasses I've never been particularly drawn to, because I feel like if I wanted to be the character that charmed and beguiled by foes, a Bard seems like the obvious choice to go with. That said, I think you could make the argument that this is potentially a very sinister subclass (actually, come to think of it, I may have considered an Enchanter Wizard to play as a House Dimir character in Ravnica, which, you know, sinister). Indeed, while Necromancy gets all the heat for being gruesome, there's an argument to be made that raising soulless bodies of the dead isn't really harming anyone (well, except the monsters you have them fight) while Enchantment is a deep violation of a person's free will and autonomy.

That said, I think you can play this very whimsically, perhaps with a Fey theme (maybe you were instructed by an Archfey,) though again, that can also be quite sinister. Or, you could play this as kind of a psychologist - a student of the human(oid) mind.

Once again, because I'm too lazy to cross reference three versions of this subclass, but also to try to look at this with the freshest eyes, I'm going to, for the most part, take the UA subclass' features on their own terms.

Level 3:

Enchanting Conversationalist:

You gain proficiency in your choice of Deception, Intimidation, or Persuasion. Additionally, when you make an ability check with the chosen skill, you can add your Intelligence modifier to the check (minimum of a +1 bonus).

    In effect, this sort of makes the chosen skill an Intelligence one - you still probably want a decent Charisma modifier. This is fine, but nothing huge.

Enchantment Savant:

This one works like all the 2024 Savant features.

Hypnotic Presence:

As a magic action, you can choose a creature that you can see within 10 feet. They make a Wisdom saving throw, and on a failure, they're charmed by you for 1 minute or until your Concentration ends, or if they are more than 10 feet away from you, or the target can neither see you nor hear you, or they take damage. While charmed, the creature is incapacitated and has a speed of 0.

You can use this once per long rest, but you can also restore a use by expending a 1st level or higher spell slot.

    Ok, this can be very powerful if it works. There are a lot of ways to break the effect, but we're basically treating it like a 1st level spell. It's crowd control, and the fact that they can't just repeat the save to break out of it is nice. Still, it's a bit fragile. Sure, you might effectively steal a monster's turn, but you've also spent one of your turns using this, so you'd better hope you can get more than one turn out of it.

Level 6:

Split Enchantment:

When you cast an Enchantment spell that can be cast with a higher level spell slot to target an additional creature, you raise the spell's effective level by 1.

You can use this Int mod times per long rest.

    A lot of enchantment spell work this way, which is pretty nice. I'm not sure this is very exciting for your only 6th level feature.

Level 10:

Instinctive Charm:

When a creature within 30 feet of you that you can see hits you with an attack, you can use a reaction to force them to make a Wisdom save against your spell save DC. On a failure, the attack misses instead and if there's another creature in range of the attack other than the attacker, they target that creature with the same attack roll. If multiple creatures are within range, you pick which they go after.

You can do this once per long rest, but you regain your use when you cast an Enchantment spell with a spell slot.

    Ok, having played with a Rune Knight that uses the Cloud Rune, this sort of shenanigan is a lot of fun - turning a crit against an ally into a crit against a monster. However, there are multiple ways the Cloud Rune, which is one option of many that a Rune Knight can get earlier than this, is better: this one requires the attack to be against us, and it requires the target to fail a wisdom saving throw. Given that this is all that we get at level 10, I wonder if they could just let this automatically happen.

    You can potentially get a lot of uses out of this feature, if you're constantly refreshing it. But I also think it's notable that as a Wizard, you should be staying the hell away from foes that would attack you. In an ideal world, you're very rarely using this feature. And it's all you get at 10.

Level 14:

Alter Memories:

You always have Modify Memory prepared. When you cast the spell, you can target a second creature with it that is within range of the spell.

    Thematically, I love Modify Memory. And anyone who watched Critical Role's second campaign knows that it was behind maybe the most awesome moment in the entire campaign (the cupcake incident). But it's very situational. Now, granted, just having this spell prepared at all times means that you're likely to use it more often, and it is kind of the ultimate in enchantment/brainwashing. It can solve a lot of problems, narratively, allowing parties to get away from the mayhem they caused by tampering with the witnesses. But is modifying it to target two characters that exciting? How often do you have precisely two NPCs who need to get neuralyzed?

Overall Thoughts:

So, I don't think there's anything wrong with this subclass, per se. But I think it's kind of boring. Perhaps it's damning that I can't really think of much to say about it.

UA: Transmuter

 So, as anyone who has been reading this blog in the last few years, I've found myself fascinated by the apparently-ubiquitous references to Alchemy within all manner of fantasy fiction. Its symbolism and model for how the world works is profoundly compelling, despite or, I think more likely, because it was the irrational tradition out of which the great rational tradition of modern science was born. Likewise, its resonance within the field of psychology makes it a really powerful point of reference for all manner of fiction.

I've never loved the Alchemist subclass for the Artificer, which is a shame because I think that, thematically, it ought to be a slam dunk (it's also the one artificer subclass that requires zero aesthetic re-skinning to put it into a perfectly standard medieval fantasy world).

But I also think that, given some if its features, the Transmuter Wizard might actually better represent a Alchemist. Part of that might just be that Artificers maybe should have been full casters (though I don't mind that they're half-casters on any of the other subclasses).

Anyway, let's take a look at this and see how it works. Again, rather than comparing every little change from its 2014 version and its previous UA version, I'm going to take this on its own merits.

Level 3:

Transmutation Savant:

This works like all the other Savant abilities as they were updated in 2024.

Transmuter's Stone:

When you finish a long rest, you can create a magic stone that lasts until you use the feature again. The stone is a tiny object, which you can use as a spellcasting focus for wizard spells. A creature that has the stone on their person has proficiency in Constitution saving throws and gains one of the following benefits, which you choose when you create the stone. You can also swap the benefit when you cast a Transmutation spell using a spell slot:

Darkvision out to 60 feet, or if you already have it, increasing your Darkvision range by 60 feet.

Increases your Speed by 10 feet.

Grants resistance to your choice (when you create the stone or swap the benefit) Acid, Cold, Fire, Lightning, Poison, or Thunder damage.

    Ok, while I'm not here to compare this with the older version, it's clear that this does fix one of the old one's issues, which is by making the proficiency in Con saves universal. Wizards don't get Con save proficiency without a feat (or starting off as a different class,) and so this was always the by-far most obvious choice for the stone's function. Now, you always get it, and the other three, all situationally useful, are a little more balanced with one another.

Wondrous Alteration:

You always have the Alter Self spell prepared and can cast it once per long rest without expending a spell slot. While under the effects of the spell, you gain additional benefits for each of its options:

Aquatic Adaptation now also allows you to Dash as a bonus action while underwater.

Change Appearance now also grants you Advantage on Charisma (Deception) checks.

Natural Weapons increases the damage of the new growth to 2d6 (up from 1d6 - remember that the baseline one also allows you to attack with your spellcasting modifier).

    This is all fine, though I guess my issue with "giving you advantage on Deception checks while disguised" is my usual problem with features that seem to give you a bonus that I, as a DM, would be giving you anyway. To be fair, you could be lying about something other than your identity when under this effect, so maybe it's good to explicitly spell it out. But a generous DM like me might de-value a feature like this unintentionally. That said, it's one element of one of three 3rd level features, so maybe that's not such a big deal.

Level 6:

Empowered Transmutation:

When you cast a Transmutation spell that doesn't deal damage, such as Fly or Magical Weapon, using a spell slot, you can treat the spell as if it were cast one level higher. You can use this feature Int times per Long rest.

    This looks, on the surface, like a kind of "limited Twinned Spell for Transmutation spells," except as the example of Magic Weapon (wait, is it "Magical?" Was that a change? After checking the PHB, no, that's a typo in the UA) shows, it might alter the spell in different ways to upcast it. I'm not fully convinced we need this limiter on uses, but I also don't think it'll be too much of a burden.

Level 10:

Potent Stone:

Now, when you create your Transmuter's Stone, you choose up to two benefits. You can only choose each benefit once, except for the damage resistance one, which you can choose twice as long as you choose different damage types (though given that resistance doesn't stack, you'd want to anyway). You can change either or both benefits when you cast a Transmutation spell with a spell slot.

Additionally, you have new benefits to choose from:

Mighty Build gives the bearer advantage on Strength saving throws and doubles their carrying capacity.

Tremorsense grants 30 feet of tremorsense.

    So, I think this is a pretty well-designed upgrade to the feature: new benefits to choose from to go along with more power by being able to choose more options. Once again, the benefits here are mostly situational utility.

Shapechanger:

You always have Polymorph prepared and can cast it once per long rest without a spell slot. Additionally, when you target yourself with the spell, you can modify the spell to gain additional benefits once per long rest:

Game Statistics: You retain your personality, memories, and ability to speak, as well as your Intelligence, Wisdom, and Charisma scores, class features, and feats.

Transmute Spells: you can cast transmutation spells while shape-shifted, except any with a Material component that has a cost or is consumed.

    I really like this: Polymorph is a fantastic spell, and it makes sense that a Transmuter would be able to treat it a little more like a Druid's Wild Shape (though getting forms that are more powerful than even a Moon Druid will ever be able to use with that feature). On my Wizard, I often use Polymorph as a protective measure - if a party member is close to going down, I give them a fully-healthy temporary form with a boatload of hit points to keep them in the fight. It's interesting that it says you retain your class features but then specifies you can cast Transmutation spells - I assume this is meant to clarify that your beast-form cannot cast other spells, despite the fact that you can still speak (I can understand perhaps saying that most forms can't perform Somatic components, but surely a Giant Ape with a Wizard's intelligence could pull that off?) A free 4th level spell once per day is also pretty nice, even if it comes three levels after you first got the spell (I have to imagine that any Transmutation Wizard would have picked that up before level 10).

Level 14:

Master Transmuter:

While you carry your Transmuter's Stone, you can take a Magic action to consume the transmutation magic within it and choose one of the following benefits. After using the stone this way, it crumbles into dust (you can make a new one after a long rest). You can, however, prevent the stone from crumbling by expending a spell slot of 5th level or higher. The benefits:

Major Transformation: You can transmute one non-magical object, no longer than a 10-foot cube or eight connected 5-foot cubes, into another nonmagical object of similar size and mass of equal or lesser value. You spend 10 minutes handling the object to shape it.

Panacea: You touch a creature as part of this Magic action and restore half their maximum hit points (rounded down) and cure all magical contagions, curses, and attunement to a cursed item. This will also clear the Poisoned and Petrified conditions.

Restore Life: You cast Raise Dead using the stone in place of the normal material component, without expending a spell slot.

Restore Youth: You touch a creature and decrease their Exhaustion level to 0 and permanently make them appear 3d10 years younger, to a minimum of young adulthood.

    I think the big difference here from the old version is that you can retain the stone if you spend the spell slot. Another way of thinking of about that is that each of these effects can be thought of as a 5th level spell. Raise Dead, obviously, is a 5th level spell. But I think if you look at the effects of Panacea and Restore Youth, they're comparable to Greater Restoration, another 5th level spell, only they're better: Greater Restoration doesn't do any healing and it also only reduces a single level of Exhaustion. Major Transmutation is, I suppose, comparable to the 4th level spell Fabricate.

    The point is, if we were to frame this as "you always have Raise Dead and Greater Restoration prepared, and you can cast one of those spells once per day without expending a spell slot," that would probably be a pretty decent feature, and this is better.

Overall Thoughts:

This is certainly more of a utility subclass than a flashy one with crazy damage, but Wizards are already kind of the best utility class, and Transmutation is a school of magic that leans very heavily into utility. I think it's a very solid subclass, and one that I think any party would be happy to have.

UA: Conjurer (Again)

 Like we did with the Necromancer, I'm going to look at the Conjurer Wizard in the revised Arcane Subclasses UA without comparing it to what came before (for the most part) and just try to look at it on its own terms as if it were brand new.

That said, I'll mention again that this subclass holds a special place for me, as it was the subclass my best friend chose for his wizard in my very first D&D campaign. Sadly, that campaign fell apart - I dream of reviving it at some point, though of the original players, he's the only one I still play with, so it would require a big re-tool. Boy, though, I had some crazy plans (involving his wizarding role-model uncle whom I always conceived as being basically a high elf David Bowie - not a stretch - and the idea that he had traveled to the Far Plane and became split into multiple versions of himself, so that my friend's character would have gotten a jeweled skull like the one in the music video for Blackstar as a magic item that was his uncle's skull, but also there was a version of him he would be able to meet get help from as well).

Ahem.

Of course, the 2024 PHB saw a massive redesign to a lot of classic conjuration spells, making it far harder to put a lot of bodies on the battlefield (ironically, the ones that can still do that are either Necromancy or Transmutation spells). Still, as a big fan of the Summon spells, most of these will work great for your Conjurer, and of course, you can also focus on the other aspect of Conjuration, namely teleportation. Let's look at the features.

Level 3:

Benign Transposition:

As a bonus action, you can teleport up to 30 feet to an unoccupied space you can see, or alternatively, you can choose a space occupied by a willing Medium or smaller creature and both teleport to swap places.

You can use this Int times (minimum 1) per long rest.

    Let's first point out that this, at worst, an uncounterable, free Misty Step. And with no components, you will never be stuck in a jail cell. That's already very good (it does have the odd consequence of potentially making you not want to take Misty Step). While I don't think the subclass builds on it like the Archfey Warlock, this is a spell that I take on basically any character who can get it, because it's such amazing mobility and insurance against grapples and restraints. Being able to swap with a friend is a great bit of extra utility. (You could even use it twice to get both you and a friend through a pinhole crack in a wall.)

Conjuration Savant:

This is updated like all the other Savant features, giving you a free spell of your chosen school every other level.

Level 6:

Distant Transposition:

Your Benign Transposition now has a range of 60 feet, and you regain all uses on a short or long rest.

    Hot damn. A good feature gets a buff. Not much to say about it except that it's good. This would be underwhelming if this were all you got at 6, but as an improvement to the 3rd level feature, this is simple but great.

Durable Summons:

When you use a spell slot to summon or create a creature with a Conjuration spell, they get Temp HP equal to twice your Wizard level. While these temp HP remain, they have resistance to all damage except Force, Necrotic, Psychic, and Radiant.

    Ok, so this is 12 temp HP minimum, and eventually 40, which is not a small amount. Furthermore, against most monsters, you're going to be able to effectively double those Temp HP thanks to the resistance.

    Notably, this would be insanely powerful using old Conjuration spells - giving all 8 of your Pixies 12 temp HP that is going to look like 24 temp HP in most fights would be insane. Instead, we should consider this in the context of a spell like Summon Fey. These guys have 10 HP per spell level (base 30 HP, though you're casting this at 4th level, right?) Thus, if we're fighting things that are doing, say slashing damage, you're effectively adding 24 on top of that. That's certainly a durable summon.

    Now, it does say "these temporary hit points," so I don't know if you can refresh them with some other spell or feature that adds more and still retain the damage resistance. But even with an hour duration, these summoned minions are still relatively disposable - this is going to make it more likely that they actually last the full hour duration.

Level 10:

Focused Conjuration:

Taking damage can't break your concentration on Conjuration spells.

    I think this is unchanged, but even if it's very simple, it's really great. You're still vulnerable to getting incapacitated or losing concentration in other ways, but especially at these levels, where you can start taking dragon breaths that would call for a DC 30 Con save or something, being able to just maintain that concentration regardless is really nice. Does it devalue War Caster? Sure. You might consider if you can afford not to take it. That said, given that this doesn't come online until level 10, you might have wanted to take that for the earlier levels (and it's still useful if you have non-Conjuration spells you might want to maintain or even to get your spell-opportunity attacks.

Level 14:

Splintered Summons:

When you cast Summon Aberration, Summon Construct, Summon Dragon, Summon Elemental, or Summon Fey (notably not Summon Fiend, nor Summon Undead, though the later is actually a Necromancy spell. Also, did they not reprint Summon Shadowspawn? Huh) with a spell slot, you can modify the spell to summon two creatures instead of one. The creatures have to be the same kind (I assume meaning you can't have a Fire Elemental and a Water Elemental, for example) and the creatures' Hit Points are halved.

You can modify a spell this way once per long rest for free, or can expend a 5th level spell slot to restore your use of the feature (no action requried).

    This is... honestly it might be too powerful. And it hurts to say that because it's so freaking cool.

    Consider, for instance, that the halving of the HP is actually not as bad as you'd think because of Durable Summons. If you conjure two Beholderkin Aberrations at 6th level, they'll have 30 HP apiece, but if I do this at level 14, they're getting 28 temp HP each, already basically putting them back to what a single creature would have gotten, and they're resistant to most damage while they have those 28, meaning that, outside of AoE, monsters are going to actually have to do more damage to these than they would against a single conjured aberrant spirit. Then, each of them is doing three Eye Ray attacks, each of which deal 1d8+9. Before accounting for miss chances, that's 6d8+54 per round, or 83 damage per turn. And next turn, you get to do whatever else you were going to do with your action. (Once again, it's not quite 83 DPR, because you're probably going to miss some attacks. But it's six attacks.)

Overall Thoughts:

    I think this looks pretty good to me. There's a lot of powerful Conjuration spells to consider here. I do think that if you had any interest in casting any of the heavily-revised "Conjure" spells, this subclass will strongly encourage you toward the Summon spells instead.

    While there's not a ton of mechanical emphasis on the teleportation/transportation aspects of Conjuration, I also don't know if there's much design space there. Benign Transposition's redesign I think basically covers you there. While you no longer recharge the feature by casting a Conjuration spell, I think in most cases this version will give you more uses per day, especially after the level 6 upgrade.

    I think it's neat! While Splintered Summons could be too powerful, I otherwise didn't spot any big mechanical problems here, and I would be fairly happy to see this version of it. It's thematically on point and feels powerful.

UA: Necromancer

 So, you might notice that I'm not starting with the Arcane Archer. The reason is, to be honest, to comment on the Arcane Archer would require so much cross-referencing both between the previous version of the UA and the original to find the subtle distinctions between them that I just don't have the energy to do right now. I'm reading House of Leaves right now (making better progress than my previous attempts) and my patience for jumping between several different related texts is being poured into that labyrinth of a book.

While I also have some (mostly good, I think) things to say about the Conjuration Wizard (a subclass I have a special affection for, as my best friend's character in my very first D&D campaign was one) I wanted to start with the great spooky wizard class and see how it looks.

For similar reasons, I think I'm going to approach this not as a big comparison with the versions that came before, but just treat this as if it were a brand-new subclass and evaluate it that way.

Level 3:

Necromancy Savant

This works just like any other Savant feature as we've seen in the 2024 PHB, giving you a free Necromancy spell for your spellbook every other level. I'm a big fan of the new Savant features.

Necromancy Spellbook

This is a multifaceted feature:

You get Necrotic Resistance, which I actually think is a pretty good - even at low levels, if you're fighting incorporeal undead like specters and ghosts, this will help out a lot. It's certainly situational, but I think it's a good resistance to have.

Grim Harvest lets you heal an undead creature within 60 feet of you when you cast a necromancy spell using a spell slot, healing them for the spell's level plus your wizard level.

    I had initially missed the "Wizard Level" aspect of this, which made the healing pretty pathetic. But actually, no, this becomes quite a big heal. You won't be using necromancy spells every turn - there's no 3rd level Necromancy spell that clears out a crowd of monsters like a Fireball. But this can boost the resilience of your minions.

Undead Familiar grants you Find Familiar in your spellbook (I kind of like the language that "[the spell] appears in your spellbook," as if you didn't actually write it there as part of your research, but some mysterious power put it there) and allows you to summon a Skeleton or Zombie to use as your familiar.

    What this accomplishes, and I appreciate that, is that from the very start, your Necromancer is going to have an undead minion following them around. Now, you might want to work it out with your DM whether town guards, innkeepers, etc., will freak out or not when you have this thing following you around, but then, you're playing a Necromancer - you're there for the spooky vibes. (I can't recall if the new version of Find Familiar technically lets you bamf your familiar into an extradimensional space anymore, but I figure you could rely on this if it does).

Level 6:

Grave Power:

This gives you two features.

Grave Resilience lets you reduce your Exhaustion level by 1 when you use Arcane Recovery.

    This is certainly cool... if you find yourself getting Exhausted. Personally, I think the redesign of Exhaustion in 2024 means that monsters and other challenges can be far more liberal in their doling out of Exhaustion, but it's still pretty rare.

Overwhelming Necrosis allows damage form your wizard spells and features to ignore resistance to Necrotic damage.

    This is basically useless. Almost nothing has resistance, rather than immunity, to necrotic damage. I get the intent: to make Necromancers feel good about using Necrotic spells. But it's already a very reliable damage type as long as you're not fighting incorporeal undead.

Undead Thralls:

You automatically get Animate Dead in your spellbook, and can cast it once (I assume this means per long rest, though the UA technically just says once) without using a spell slot. When you start casting the spell, you can modify the spell's level to effectively be one level higher (again, I assume per long rest, like when you use the free cast, but the wording here is flawed). Additionally, when you cast a necromancy spell using a spell slot that creates or summons an undead creature, they get the following benefits:

Undead Fortitude increases the creature's max HP (and current, as you summon it) by a number equal to the level of the expended spell slot plus your Intelligence modifier.

Withering Strike lets the undead creature deal extra Necrotic damage equal to your Intelligence modifier (minimum 1) when it hits a creature with an attack roll.

    Ok, a lot to process here: Animate Dead will turn a corpse or bone bile into a zombie or skeleton, respectively, but upcasting it actually turns that one into three (you still need the proper amount of remains to raise). The creatures are under your control for 24 hours, but you can re-cast the spell to regain control. This means that you could, with this feature, maintain three skeletons/zombies more or less indefinitely (unless they're killed, of course, which is not unlikely to happen).

    In terms of combat capabilities, a Skeleton has a +5 to hit and a Zombie a +3. The former also has a ranged option for their attacks. That said, Zombies are far more resilient. There's no buff to their chance to hit here, so I do imagine that these will start to struggle a little at high levels to contribute much to the battle, but if they do hit, that's still going to be potentially 1d6+8 (mix of piercing and necrotic) damage from three different skeletons (so 3d6+24) once you get +5 to Intelligence.

    Animate Dead doesn't require concentration, so between this and the free casting of it once per day at 4th level, there's not actually much standing in the way of your having a bunch of undead minions following you around, which is, you know, the Necromancer fantasy.

    Notably, you might also have Summon Undead up at the same time, and this creature will scale a lot better because it uses your attack bonus. With +4 to Int and cast at 4th level, a Skeletal Undead Spirit is already dealing 2d4+3+4, or 12 on average with each hit. Thanks to this bonus, which does apply to that spell as well, you're going to be doing four more, or 16 on each hit, potentially dishing out 32.

    I don't love using low-level creature stat blocks at high levels, but even at high levels, you might send your undead minions to act more or less like additional familiars, giving all your party members the Help action, if you hit a point where they're really struggling to hit the bad guys.

Level 10:

Harvest Undead:

Immediately when you become bloodied but aren't killed outright, you can use a reaction to reduce an undead creature under your control to 0 HP. You then regain HP equal to your Wizard level.

    And hey, there's another use for your low-level undead minions. I really like that the limitation here is just how many minions you have. If this healing gets you back up from bloodied, you could use it again.

    That said, I don't love that this has to happen in response to the damage that makes you bloodied. I might say instead that if you take damage and are bloodied afterward, you can use this. Also, technically, is this intended to let you heal if you hit 0 HP? You're not "killed outright" if the damage doesn't go past your negative maximum (which is unlikely at 10th level,) but in theory you're unconscious if you hit 0 HP, so do you have a reaction to use?

Level 14:

Death's Master:

You get two benefits when holding your spellbook (DMs, be generous with that).

Bolster Undead lets you use a bonus action to grant any undead you have created with a necromancy spell within 60 feet of you temporary hit points equal to your wizard level. A creature can benefit from this only once per 24 hours.

    Interestingly, there's no duration here, so you'll want to use this right after summoning any of your minions. Note also that you don't need to cast the spell with a spell slot, meaning your three minions from your free Animate Dead each day can benefit from this.

Extinguish Undead lets you when an undead creature you can see is reduced to 0 HP, cause it to explode with necrotic energy. You roll d6s equal to half its unexpended hit dice (rounded up), and each creature in a 10-foot emanation makes a Dex save, taking necrotic damage equal to the number rolled and being unable to take reactions until the start of their next turn on a fialure, or half damage only on a success. If the target you explode is not under your control, you must use a reaction to use this and expend a 5th or higher level spell slot.

    Once again, a closer reading makes this better: initially I thought this took a reaction regardless of target, meaning it couldn't work with Harvest Undead, but that was wrong. A 5th level spell slot to target a foe is a bit rough, but consider that you might use this on something as powerful as a Death Knight Aspirant (or even a Death Knight,) which would explode for 21d6! 73.5 damage is for sure worth a 5th level spell slot, right? (Also, DMs, don't play the "oh, well, they had taken a short rest and expended a bunch of their hit dice" game.)

    Naturally, the most common use of this feature is to explode your own minions, possibly in tandem with Harvest Undead. Unfortunately, the Undead Spirit brought forth by Summon Undead doesn't seem to list hit dice, but given that exploding our own minions takes no action, we can ensure that they're all going to be a problem for anyone who takes them down. Just be careful using these near your allies.

Overall Thoughts:

    I'll admit that in writing up this summary, I found myself less worried about the subclass' power level than I was before, spotting details I had missed. First and foremost, what this subclass accomplishes is giving you the necromancer fantasy.

    Now, it does accomplish this in large part by going back on several changes I thought were wise from the 2024 revision: limiting how many extra creatures a player can control on the battlefield and also ensuring that the extra creatures have good attack scaling. This is a subclass that does, for sure, have the potential to bog down combat.

    As such, I'd highly recommend that players talk with their DMs and fellow players to make sure that they're ok with one player commanding as many as four or more creatures in addition to their PC in combat. And if you do play one of these, try to be good about planning out your turns ahead of time and ensuring that you're able to efficiently move through those turns.

    Again, I think my preferred version of a Necromancer subclass is essentially a pet subclass, or at least give it some Danse Macabre-style boost to your low-level minions' attack bonuses. But I do think that this is looking far closer to what people want out of this subclass.