My Favorite New Subclasses in Tasha's Cauldron of Everything

 With a huge weight off my mind today thanks to some totally non-gaming-related news, I feel that I can look forward with less trepidation to future, exciting things, including the release, later this month, of Tasha's Cauldron of Everything, the spiritual successor to Xanathar's Guide to Everything, which injected wonderful new content into 5th Edition D&D.

There are new subclasses for us to get used to, most of which are pretty freaking cool looking.

So, I'm going to go class-by-class and pick which subclass appeals to me the most. Now, not all of these subclasses are brand-new, and I'll probably skew a bit toward those that are. Let's begin!

Artificers, which were brought in with Eberron: Rising from the Last War, are getting their setting-agnostic publication with all three of their original subclasses. The Armorer is a new, fourth one, and I'll be honest, I'm sort of torn. Mostly, I'm leaning toward that one or the Battle-Smith, though the Artillerist is also pretty appealing (any subclass that gets access to Fireball is pretty exciting.) I think ultimately that the Armorer might win out, given that I like the idea of being some kind of steampunk/magepunk Iron Man.

Barbarians are getting Path fo the Wild Soul and Path of the Beast. While Wild Soul seems like a lot of chaotic insanity, the fact that with Path of the Beast you can more or less play as if you're a full-on werewolf is too much for me to pass up. (I've written a character backstory already.)

Bards get College of Eloquence and College of Creation, the former of which is a reprint. Eloquence is actually really good for a number of reasons. That said, Creation is a really wonderfully whimsical subclass, which fits well with the Bard (though if College of Spirits ever comes out, man is that my top pick.)

Clerics get Order, Twilight, and Peace domains. The answer here is pretty obvious - Twilight brings with it such a rich potential for visual description, along with some cool effects to play with regarding light.

Druids get Circles of Stars, Spores, and Wildfire. While Circle of Spores, published originally in Guildmaster's Guide to Ravnica, wonderfully captures a potentially creepy side of Druids, I can't really ignore Circle of Wildfire, which could really allow my Wicker Man Druid to take on its true form. It doesn't hurt that it's got great damage and healing abilities.

Fighters get the Rune Knight and the Psi Warrior, which are both pretty cool. I'm going to give the edge to the Rune Knight here primarily because the other psionic subclasses appeal to me a bit more (also, the character I've played the most is an Eldritch Knight, so a knight with magical abilities is less novel to me - which, granted, you could say of the Rune Knight as well.)

Monks get Way of the Astral Self and Way of Mercy. The Astral Self one is fairly cool, but I've got to hand it to the Way of Mercy for being utterly creepy, even if you're a good guy. Also, as the first monk subclass that can heal others, it's going to be a welcome addition to most parties.

Paladins get the Oath of Glory and the Oath of the Watchers. The former is a reprint and also a subclass that never really drew my attention all that much, so I lean toward Watchers. The Watcher oath is one I'd really like to try in a modern setting, flavoring it as a UFOlogist or something like that.

Rangers get the Swarmkeeper and the Fey Wanderer. The Swarmkeeper is pretty nutso, which is fun, so I could see trying that out.

Rogues get the Phantom and Soulknife. The Soulknife is probably the psionic subclass that most excites me, so I'd be very into that.

Sorcerers get the Aberrant Mind and the Clockwork Soul. While the Aberrant Mind would really fit with my general taste for cosmic horror in my D&D, I think I really like the idea of an oddly mechanical sorcerer - it acts as a kind of opposite counterpart to the Wild Magic sorcerer - if one is connected to the plane of Limbo and the other to the plane of Mechanus. So I kind of love that (especially the suggestion that when you cast a spell, your eyes turn into clock-faces.)

Warlocks get the Fathomless and the Genie. Man, I gotta go with Genie, right? Not only do they eventually get Wish, but I've also always felt genies were an underused fantasy creature. Also, I love the idea of using the bottle as a kind of poor man's Mordenkainen's Magnificent Mansion.

Finally, we have the Wizard's Bladesinging and Order of Scribes. I'll be honest, I wasn't too enthused about Order of Scribes at first, but it's grown on me. While I do like magic/melee hybrids (and after playing an EK for so long, having one that gets the full range of magic spells would be nice) I think I'd go scribe in this case.

Now, if only I had enough D&D games to play that I could try all these out...

Path of the Beast Might Get Me to Play a Barbarian if I Can Flavor it as Being a Full-On Werewolf

 Readers of this blog might notice that the image in the background has always been my Worgen Warrior in World of Warcraft rocketing across the skies of Tanaris. I adore the Worgen, even though through the luck of when expansions came out means that the Worgen character I play is a bit far down the list of my alt-priorities.

But I think werewolves are really cool, especially if you can play a heroic one. (Maybe I'm just a dog person?)

Playable werewolves in D&D are kinda-sorta supported by the core rulebooks, but with some caveats. First off, if you get bitten by a werewolf (or any lycanthrope, but let's talk wolves specifically here - and also I guess ignore that the lyca in lycanthrope means "wolf," so a werebear really ought to be an ursanthrope) you have a chance to be cursed and become one yourself.

I think in practical game terms, this is a way to make them scarier - this is the sort of monster that can really remove a player from the party, because the curse alters their alignment. While a player character can be chaotic evil, usually the implication for running the game is that if a character's alignment is forcibly changed, it'll result in the character coming under the control of the DM. But it also leaves open the option that the player just gets some changed statistics.

There are a few reasons why making a player character a lycanthrope but also allowing them to stay in the party starts to be a little messy. Lycanthropes are immune to non-magic weapon damage that aren't silvered (unless you have a non-magic weapon that does unusual damage, like a laser pistol.) For a monster, that provides an interesting challenge. For a player character, it could be super-overpowered.

Instead, we have a couple of sort of half-options.

The Shifter race in Eberron is one of the playable races there that is clearly based on existing Monster Manual entries. Much as the Changeling is a playable Doppelganger and the Warforged are playable Golems, the Shifter is kind of a playable Lycanthrope.

In Tasha's Cauldron of Everything, though, we're also getting the Path of the Beast. While the Path of the Totem Warrior has a spiritual connection to various animals, the Path of the Beast has your rage manifest as an actual physical change, growing claws or sharp teeth.

Shifters generally have a bit of a bestial aspect at all times, but they can grow more animal-like briefly as they "shift."

Now, flavorwise, I don't think either is meant to look precisely like a full-on werewolf - more like a person who gets, well, sharp teeth, an extended muzzle, or furry.

But the beauty of D&D is that if the DM agrees to it (and the best DMs have internalized "Yes, and...", a core principle of improv) you can re-skin any rules-systems to match the story you want to tell with your character.

Indeed, I think using Path of the Beast to approximate a Werewolf works fantastically - the resistance you gain to physical damage might not be immunity, but is reminiscent of it. In fact, a brave player could even tell the DM that they will forgo that raging resistance if their foes are using silver weapons to lean into the fantasy (and a good DM would not take this as license to arm every foe the party faces with such weapons - but perhaps have a group of monster hunters chasing after the player character who do).

While lycanthropy is a curse (and, surprisingly, can be cured with a simple Remove Curse spell, though I'd recommend DMs make it a bit more complicated - perhaps only allowing it to succeed on a New Moon, when the lycanthropic power is weakest) I also think that the alignments as listed in the Monster Manual are more advisory - I believe there's even a chaotic good werewolf in Rime of the Frostmaiden, so I would not always assume that every werewolf is a brutal murderer.

Frankly, I'm tempted to roll up a Path of the Beast character right now. I'm thinking it would be Variant Human and then go with the Tough feat to make him just an absolute boatload of hit points.

Replaying FFVII Remake on Hard

 After you beat (the first part of - as in, what is currently out) Final Fantasy VII Remake, you unlock the ability to do Chapter Selection, which allows you to jump around to different parts of the game. Likewise, you also unlock Hard Mode.

Playing in Hard Mode will allow you to unlock additional Manuals so that your characters can further upgrade their weapons, and thus gain better stats and abilities beyond the level cap.

The game is certainly challenging in Hard Mode, but you'll have presumably unlocked some excellent Materia by that point that can sometimes make things easier. For example, I have an Elemental Materia that is at its second tier, which, when put in a piece of armor and linked with a green elemental materia orb grants you immunity to that damage type. Fighting Reno the second time with both immunity to lightning damage as well as the Counterstance ability made it, shall we say, a lot easier, even when boosted by the hard mode difficulty.

The oddity about Hard Mode is that you cannot use items - at all, neither in nor out of combat.

This makes exploring every nook and cranny a bit less rewarding - you can't use the items you find.

Given that I spent much of the game buying up every Ether and Turbo Ether I could find, the vast stockpile I gathered over the course of my first run is now just sitting there, no more useful than the Score you earn in Super Mario World.

It does mean you need to rely on the natural recharge of your MP - you don't even get it back from resting on benches. As such, I highly recommend giving one of your characters the Prayer ability materia, as this can be a hefty party-wide heal that costs nothing but a filled ETB bar (actually, you might need two.)

Coming back to the game after a few months, I am again struck by how solid it is - the way that it blends a more modern action-focused gameplay with the old menu-strategy style of the older FF games. Also, the writing and characterization is really excellent (I love the way they write Aerith as innocent but not naive, and even subtly imply that she knows her eventual fate, even as the game teases the possibility that this time we might be able to spare her... and whether or not that's a good idea.)

(OK, here's where I'll remind readers that I haven't actually played the original game, at least past the part where you go through the collapsed tunnels with Aerith, which of course comes way earlier in the original game given how stretched out Remake's version of Midgar is.

Anyway, I'm given to understand that the original game - and spoilers for a 23-year-old game, I guess - ends with Sephiroth casting the Meteor spell to destroy the world, but it's stopped when Aerith's spirit, which has become one with the Lifestream, casts Holy. It seems in this Remake that Sephiroth is trying to change the course of events, and perhaps what is presented as a good thing - Aerith's survival - is actually his way of preventing her from stopping him in this iteration. Naturally, I'm sure we'll find some way around it by the end of the story, but I am curious to see how it goes.)

Given how beefy one can get by the end of what is just part one of a multi-part game, I suspect that Part Two or whatever it winds up being called will have some sort of reset. In fact, I won't be surprised if there's no carry-over of save data. Frankly, I'm just hoping that the next part will be for the PS4, though if it's not, that's going to be a bit of an incentive to get myself a PS5.

The Table of Contents of Tasha's Cauldron of Everything

 Hey! Ever feel like you've got something huge that you don't really want to be obsessing over, so you look for something else!

Well, we have the table of contents for Tasha's Cauldron of Everything, and that means some confirmation and lists of stuff we know we'll be seeing!

So let's start!

First, after a "using this book" intro, we get:

Chapter 1: Character Options

This starts with Customizing Your Origin, which is all about altering various elements of your racial features to better suit your character. You'll be able to swap out ability score bonuses as well as certain proficiencies and languages (maybe your half elf never met their elvish parent, but hung out with a lot of dwarves, so they know Dwarven instead of Elvish.)

There will also be some rules on swapping out skill proficiencies as well as even your subclass.

Moving on, we get to the classes.

The Artificer is introduced with all the features it had in Eberron: Rising From the Last War, but in addition, the new Armorer subclass is added, and I believe some of the "replicate magic item" infusions have been replaced to have non-Eberron-specific items.

The established classes are all getting new optional class features, as well as new subclasses. The subclasses are the following.

Barbarians get the Path of the Beast and Path of Wild Magic.

Bards get the College of Creation and the College of Eloquence (the latter being a reprint.)

Clerics get Order Domain (a reprint,) Peace Domain, and Twilight Domain.

Druids get Circle of Spores (a reprint,) Circle of Stars, and Circle of Wildfire.

Fighters get new Battlemaster maneuver options, as well as the Psi Warrior and Rune Knight subclasses (as well as some suggestions on thematic battle master builds.)

Monks get the Way of Mercy and the Way of the Astral Self.

Paladins get the Oath of Glory (reprinted,) and the Oath of the Watchers.

Rangers get the Fey Wanderer and Swarmkeeper, as well as new Beast Master companion stat blocks.

Rogues get the Phantom and the Soulknife.

Sorcerers get the Aberrant Mind and the Clockwork Soul subclasses.

Warlocks get new Eldritch Invocations as well as The Fathomless and The Genie patrons.

Wizards get Bladesinging (reprinted, though I think also slightly revised) as well as the Order of Scribes.

Then, we get some additional feats.

Chapter Two is Group Patrons. This is a mechanics-light concept that is more about organizing a campaign (or at least part of a campaign) around various organizations or benefactors that can send you out on quests. This concept was introduced in Eberron: Rising from the Last War, but here it's given a more setting-agnostic version. There are subchapters for different patrons: Academy, Ancient Being, Aristocrat, Criminal Syndicate, Guild, Military Force, Religious Order, Sovereign, or "Being your Own Patron."

Chapter Three is called Magical Miscellany.

The first segment is a list of spells. This doesn't seem as extensive as the spell list found in Xanathar's Guide to Everything, but it includes some great reprints and some really awesome new creature-summoning spells.

The spells include:

Blade of Disaster (actually reprinted from Rime of the Frostmaiden)

Booming Blade (reprint)

Dream of the Blue Veil (apparently a spell specifically for crossing between settings in the Material Plane - so you can go from Forgotten Realms to Greyhawk, etc.)

Green-Flame Blade (reprint)

Intellect Fortress

Lightning Lure (reprint)

Mind Sliver

Spirit Shroud

Summon Aberration

Summon Beast

Summon Celestial

Summon Construct

Summon Elemental

Summon Fey

Summon Fiend

Summon Shadowspawn

Summon Undead

Sword Burst (reprint)

Tasha's Caustic Brew

Tasha's Mind Whip

Tasha's Otherworldly Guise

The summoning spells all work about the same - you have a stat block that scales with the level at which you cast the spell, getting a fairly powerful combat ally. Most allow you to choose between 2-3 types of thing to summon - for example, your aberration can be a Slaad, Starspawn, or Beholderkin, and they get different attacks and abilities based on which type they are.

Also, it's good to see the excellent SCAG cantrips reprinted, which are fantastic for Eldritch Knights and Bladesingers.

Still in this chapter, the next section has some flavoring advice for personalizing spells.

Then, we get magic items (prepare for another big list.) This includes the Magic Tattoos, which work pretty much like any other magic item, except that the attunement process also has the item meld into your skin (and when you unattune, the needle reappears.) So here they are:

Absorbing Tattoo

Alchemical Compendium

All-Purpose Tool

Amulet of the Devout

Arcane Grimoire

Astral Shard

Astromancy Archive

Atlas of Endless Horizons

Baba Yaga's Mortar and Pestle

Barrier Tattoo

Bell Branch

Blood Fury Tattoo

Bloodwell Vial

Cauldron of Rebirth

Coiling Grasp Tatoo

Crook of Rao

Crystalline Chronicle

Demonomicon of Iggwilv (note: Iggwilv is one of Tasha's various monikers, so this is very on-theme.)

Devotee's Censer

Duplicitous Manuscript

Eldritch Claw Tattoo

Elemental Essence Shard

Far Realm Shard

Feywild Shard

Fulminating Treatise

Ghost Step Tattoo

Guardian Emblem

Heart Weaver's Primer

Illuminator's Tattoo

Libram of Souls and Flesh

Lifewell Tattoo

Luba's Tarokka of Souls

Lyre of Building

Masquerade Tattoo

Mighty Servant of Leuk-o

Moon Sickle

Nature's Mantle

Outer Essence Shard

Planecaller's Codex

Prosthetic Limb (maybe a reprint from Eberron?)

Protective Verses

Reveler's Concertina

Rhythm-Maker's Drum

Shadowfell Brand Tattoo

Shadowfell Shard

Spellwrought Tattoo

Teeth of Dahlver-Nar

Whoo boy! That's a lot of items, which have some really intriguing names.

Chapter Four is Dungeon Master's Tools.

This starts with some advice for running a Session Zero.

Next, there's a section on Sidekicks, which have been developed since their debut in the Essentials Kit, with three types (the Expert, Spellcaster, and Warrior,) which are all designed to be a sort of light class that can supplement a group (for instance, if you only have a couple players) or can serve as a "beginner" class for a player who isn't ready to jump into the full complexity of D&D.

Then, there's Parleying with Monsters, which was described as a rules-light section talking about how to think about what monsters want, and how to run encounters that aren't necessarily combat-based.

Next, we get some rules about Supernatural Regions, with special environmental rules. The environments listed are:

Blessed Radiance

Far Realm

Haunted

Infested

Mirror Zone

Psychic Resonance

Unraveling Magic

Next, there's a section on Magical Phenomena. This includes:

Eldritch Storms

Emotional Echoes

Enchanted Springs

Magic Mushrooms (wow, they just... called it that.)

Mimic Colonies

Primal Fruit

Unearthly Roads

(I'll confess, I don't entirely know how these two categories are distinguished.)

Next, we have Natural Hazards (some of these show up in Rime of the Frostmaiden.)

Avalanches

Falling into Water

Falling onto a Creature

Spell Equivalents of Natural Hazards

And then we end with Puzzles, which includes some pre-built puzzles with handouts you can give to the players, and suggestions on how to run them.

So, there we have it! That's what we'll find in Tasha's Cauldron of Everything. The player options are likely to make the biggest splash, but I'm also really eager to read more about the magic items and, frankly, the environmental things are lighting up my imagination in a few ways.

Is there a Dark Tower TTRPG, and Shouldn't There Be?

 D&D is built on the tropes of the fantasy genre. From Tolkien to Howard, Lewis to Vance, the game is built to allow you to inhabit a world of magic, monsters, and various humanoid races with invented histories and cultures.

While I played Magic the Gathering starting when I was an elementary school kid and I read The Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings when I was 14, the fantasy series that I'd say influenced me the most is Stephen King's Dark Tower series.

And it's a weird one.

King is primarily known for his horror novels, perhaps none so iconic as IT, which came out the year I was born. But if you've read King, you'll find that he infuses his horror with a lot of humanism, and even if a lot of terrible things happen, there's generally some sense that we can fight against the monsters, and that the good guys (perhaps fewer than where we started) prevail in the end.

I believe that supernatural horror and fantasy are almost the same genre. Fantasy is just when the protagonists have some means to fight against the great evil that threatens them. Whereas a demon menaces the mundane heroes of a horror story, in fantasy, the hero might learn magic or some ancient sword technique to fight back. It's the shift that when the big scary monster corners our hero, the result of the ensuing violence is not a foregone conclusion.

So, while I'll confess that my knowledge of King's ouevre is skewed toward his seven-book fantasy epic, I tend to think of him more as a fantasy author than a horror one.

Which brings me to TTRPGs. I've played a Song of Ice and Fire-based TTRPG (of the same name,) which emphasizes careful plotting, even having an "intrigue" mode that works a bit like combat.

The Dark Tower, though, is a very different kind of fantasy epic. Here's the basic premise:

Roland Deschain is the last Gunslinger, living in a post-apocalyptic world that has "moved on," where the environment is breaking down along with all of reality. Roland is on a quest to travel to the Dark Tower, a cosmic lynchpin that more or less hold the universe together (and is in danger of collapsing.) As a Gunslinger, Roland was a member of a knight-like organization in the Kingdom of Gilead, where his father was the king (note: the first of these books came out before A Handmaid's Tale, so I wouldn't read anything into the name of the kingdom other than its biblical implications.) He is a 100% certified grade-A badass with the revolvers he wields, which were created by reforging the steel of the sword Excalibur by his world's version of King Arthur, known as Arthur Eld.

Along the way, Roland gathers a group of individuals from our world (or a version of our world) from different decades, eventually forming a sort of ersatz family as they travel along on this quest.

Stylistisically, the world is a mix of Wild West and Post-Apocaylpic wasteland, not to mention demonic monsters and evil sorcerers. It's a world in which a cowboy with a magic gun faces off against a psychotically homicidal AI-driven train. Journeys between Roland's All-World and the other heroes' New York City link the modern world to this fantastical one (which may or may not be our own future, or could just be a totally different universe.)

The books are a convoluted mess, don't get me wrong, but I love them like a family member. The question, then, is whether you could build a game out of them.

All-World does not lack for monsters and other like concepts. But worldbuilding is also, I think, less of a concern for King. The path of the novels is pretty linear - indeed, there's an actual metaphysical line somewhat analogous to a leyline (called The Beam) that guides the characters to their destination over the course of the series. It's implied that if one strayed from this path, one would eventually find a kind of broken down void, a bit like The Nothing from The Neverending Story.

There is, perhaps, something to be mined from Roland's youth - we never really get an accurate gauge of his age; he could be 40 or 4,000. But there is an extensive flashback (it actually takes up 500 of the 4th book's 700 pages) in which we get a bit more of a sense of that world. In the post-apocalyptic landscape, a western-like civilization has grown back, though there are witches and human sacrifice and a whole lot of mutants.

I suspect it would be easier to build a setting inspired by, rather than based directly on the Dark Tower.

Still, I think it was Jim Davis of Web DM who pointed out that D&D is really a western, and I think that the logical conclusion is to embrace that whole-heartedly.

I'm sure that Deadlands probably fits this fairly well, but I think what I love about the Dark Tower is just how utterly weird it is.

For me, I've been using it as an inspiration for a lot of D&D homebrew - an area of my homebrew world is very Western-inspired, and I've homebrewed stat blocks for Taheen (the animal-headed creatures that are like if Egyptian gods were banal office workers) and just today a Speaking Demon (a creature encountered in the first book.)

Still, I wanted to share my love of this series and recommend that anyone who wants to get out of the stuffy medievalism of a lot of fantasy to check this out.

Armorer vs. Battle-Smith

 With Tasha's Cauldron of Everything arriving in about two weeks, not only is the Artificer getting its campaign-setting-agnostic release (once being able to be around other people becomes a thing, I've got to play one in AL!) but we're also getting a new subclass in the Armorer.

As it stands, there are three existing subclasses for the Artificer, with the Armorer making a fourth. All three are getting reprinted along with the class. The Artificer, like the Paladin and Ranger, is a half-caster, but while the latter two place more emphasis on their martial side, using spells to back up what is largely a weapon-based class, the Artificer is a little different. Artificers get Cantrips and they get their spells starting at level 1 - in fact, a level 1 Artificer is a lot more like an armored Wizard than a Paladin.

It isn't really until level 3 that the class decides what it's going to be. While you never get access to high-level spells, the Alchemist and the Artillerist still focus on casting. I have an Artillerist in my Ravnica game, and their damage routine, while mostly built around just firing an eldritch cannon and using Firebolt, is still pretty intense - with firebolt at this level doing 3d10+1d8 (so an average of 21) and the cannon dealing 3d8 13.5 average damage, for a total of 34.5 average damage per round.)

But the Battle-Smith is a weapon-based subclass, sacrificing none of its casting ability thanks to the fact that you get to use Intelligence to attack with magic weapons (and as an artificer, your weapons are almost always going to be magical.)

So here comes the Armorer. This is also a weapon-based subclass, and again, you get to use Intelligence to make your attacks. But there are differences.

First off, the Battle-Smith has a pet. The Steel Defender obviously adds damage, but can also keep you safe and repair itself. You can also use it to scout or keep watch, which is pretty cool. Just having one more thing on the battlefield for you is nice, even if it's just to draw fire from foes.

The armorer, then, is sort of more internal.

The first obvious bonus is you get to wear heavy armor but don't need any particular strength score to wear it without lowering your speed, which means that this is essentially the only subclass in the game that does not need to put any thought into Strength or Dexterity when thinking about their AC.

Now, we don't actually have the official version of the subclass yet, but we know that you'll be able to use two different modes for your armor. The Guardian is built for tanking, allowing you to gain Temp HP regularly and giving you a melee attack that deals Thunder damage and encourages foes to attack you instead of your allies. The Infiltrator removes the stealth penalty from heavy armor and gives you a ranged lightning attack that you can boost for additional damage.

I think one of the most exciting prospects for the armorer is that you actually get to put more infusions on items, as long as your bonus infusions go onto your suit (which can carry multiple infusions based on what part of the armor gets them.)

So where do I see upsides and downsides?

First, point in favor of the Armorer - with the heavy armor, you can be very tough to hit. And depending on how well the Temp HP option for the Guardian suit works, you might actually wind up being one of the harder-to-kill tanks in the game.

Also, the fact that you can rest in your armor and it can fit beneath your clothes means that night time ambushes on your party will not leave you unprepared.

On the other side, though: the battle-smith gets to use any magical weapon, while an armorer only gets to use Intelligence to attack with the armor's built-in weapons. In most cases, this won't be a big deal, as it's pretty rare in a campaign to see magic weapons that go beyond a +1 or something else you can pretty easily infuse (and the armorer can infuse those built-in weapons.) However, if you get something like a Flametongue or other weapon that does additional dice of damage, that can be a really major factor in pushing weapon-based classes higher in damage output.

I also think the Battle Smith get a little off-the-cuff versatility. They might have a Repeating Heavy Crossbow that they primarily use, but if something closes in melee, they swap to their infused +2 Maul. Given that the armorer can only swap between Guardian and Infiltrator during a rest, you're going to be committing to a ranged or melee style.

Still, I also think that while a Battle Smith is going to be more of an idiosyncratic support-damage-dealer, the Armorer can potentially stand with the rest of the true tanks, even with only a d8 hit die.

I am somewhat torn on which I'd want to play, but I'm very eager to see how the finalized version of the Armorer turns out.

Thinking About the Oath of the Watchers

 So, Paladins are only getting one brand-new subclass in Tasha's Cauldron of Everything - the Oath of Glory is a reprint of Mythic Odysseys of Theros' Greek-hero inspired subclass. The other is the Oath of the Watchers.

We don't have the finalized version of it, but Watchers were featured in Unearthed Arcana. The following is a copy/pasted description of the Oath's flavor:

Paladins who vow the Oath of the Watchers seek to protect the mortal realm from the predations of extraplanar creatures, many of which can lay waste to mortal soldiers. Thus, the Watchers hone their minds, spirits, and bodies to be the ultimate weapons against such threats. Paladins who follow the Watchers’ oath are ever vigilant in spotting the influence of extraplanar forces, often establishing a network of spies and informants to gather information on suspected cults. To a Watcher, keeping a healthy suspicion and awareness about one’s surroundings is as natural as wearing armor in battle. 

Tenets of the Watchers A paladin who assumes the Oath of the Watchers swears to safeguard the mortal realm from otherworldly threats. 

Vigilance. The threats you face are cunning, powerful, and subversive. Be ever alert for their corruption. 

Loyalty. Never accept gifts or favors from fiends or those who truck with them. Stay true to your order, your comrades, and your duty. 

Discipline. You are the shield against the endless terrors that lie beyond the stars. Your blade must be forever sharp and your mind keen to survive what lies beyond.

    So, the basic idea behind this oath is that you're a kind of planar defender - which I'd say also works with most paladin oaths. Ability-wise, the subclass really emphasizes the vigilance and elements based around guarding locations and people.

    A Watcher Paladin can deal with any planar entities coming into their home territory - they can turn elementals, fey, fiends, and aberrations. And they have a number of tools that can punish spellcasters and help keep their allies on their toes and mentally safe.

I'm really fascinated by the idea that paladins of this sort build networks of spies and informants - much more cloak-and-dagger than your typical paladin style.

To me, the fact that aberrations are amongst the things they can abjure really lights up some of my modern-D&D ideas: namely, I think this would be a great subclass for someone terrified of aliens and UFOs.

While the Watcher's tenets bend toward protection of innocents, the real emphasis of it seems to be extra-vigilance and keeping alien (i.e. extraplanar) entities out.

I imagine a person who has a traumatic experience with extraplanar entities, perhaps an abduction or something, and their psyche becomes defined by obsessive behaviors to ensure their safety. Looking Glass from the HBO Watchmen miniseries feels like a good pop culture example. Eventually, they find others that validate their experience and trauma, either of similarly dismissed or ignored victims or some already-extant secret organization that keeps watch.

I think you could play this character as deeply neurotic, but with neuroses built around a fear not just of this happening to them again, but of its happening to anyone else.

I generally like the Paladin class a lot in 5E - the Divine Smite mechanic is very satisfying, and the various protective auras and such are a really nice bonus on top of the martial half-caster frame. And I think I've got my first prospective character should I ever play a modern D&D campaign.