Closing Out the Covenant Campaigns (For Now)

 This week marks the 9th and final chapter of the covenant campaigns. In practical game terms, the rewards include anima spheres for weapons (my Shaman got both a big and a large one, which is presumably so that I could get a main hand and shield for Elemental/Resto, but mine's Enhancement, so I got got a fist weapon and... a shield) from the sanctum hall LFR vendors (item level 187) and you can, for a big chunk of anima, upgrade your covenant armor sets to 197 (the final upgrade is 300 anima per piece, so unless you've been hoarding, it might take a while to get it all upgraded.)

I've now done the Kyrian (Paladin), Venthyr (Death Knight,) and Night Fae (Shaman) ones. Every campaign ends on a relatively climactic note, but certainly not one of finality, given that I think we'll be getting more of these over the course of the expansion.

I'll be doing the Necrolords one (on my Warlock) probably tomorrow, so I might edit this post later to add the rundown. But let's go over the basic story for each campaign, and how they conclude (again, for now.)

Spoilers to follow:

Candlekeep Mysteries - New Adventure Anthology for 5E

 WotC has announced the next book for D&D 5th Edition - a new adventure anthology (like Tales of the Yawning Portal and Ghosts of Saltmarsh) called Candlekeep Mysteries!

There are 17 such mysteries - which take the form of short adventures - that will span from level 1-16. I suspect that there will also be some information about Candlekeep (my longest-running PC's hometown!) to potentially link these adventures, which all start with the discovery of a book at Candlekeep.

We don't have a ton of info yet about the individual adventures or if there are any particularly new elements at play. Both Tales of the Yawning Portal and Ghosts of Saltmarsh were collections of previously-published adventures from earlier editions, updated to work in 5th Edition. EDIT: The adventures are advertised as new, which suggests that unlike the previous anthologies, these will be brand-new adventures.

Naturally, after Tasha's release, it was to be expected that the next book would be a published adventure. One wonder what will come next, perhaps a new campaign setting book (we got Wildemount and Theros last year, not long after Eberron the previous year. My fingers are crossed for Ravenloft, Planescape, or Spelljammer.)

Reviewing the Level 20 Class Features

 Very few people make it to level 20 in D&D. It's not a question of difficulty - more or less anyone with friends that have high-level spells can come back from just about any ill fate - as much as it is time. Also, as a DM, I can tell you, you need to throw some really nasty stuff at your party to provide a challenge once they get into the higher levels (the Xanathar's encounter building system is fairly good, but I recommend erring on the side of harder, and definitely making sure that any solo monster has maxed-out health and legendary actions.)

By the time you hit level 20 in D&D, you're going to be incredibly powerful. While those who are not full spellcasters might look with an envious eye to the miracle-level 9th-level spells that Bards, Clerics, Druids, Sorcerers, Warlocks, and Wizards gain access to (and Warlocks only a little) a level 20 Barbarian is still an absolute brute. Consider that your average person has 4 hit points, and a level 20 Barbarian with maxed-out constitution taking average health has 285 hit points (if my math is right,) this is someone who can tank an asteroid (and takes half damage!) They have the fortitude of 71 people combined.

Hitting level 20 is a huge achievement, but what does it come with? By this point, casters have already gotten their highest-level spells, so what features do you wind up with?

Let's go class by class and see how we feel.

Artificer:

Yes, it's the newest class, and so it feels a little weird to start with it, but alphabetical order is a really convenient way to list these.

At 20, Artificers get Soul of Artifice:

You gain a +1 bonus to all saving throws per magic item you are attuned to. Also, if you're reduced to 0 hit points but not killed outright, you can use your reaction to end one of your artificer infusions, causing you to drop to 1 hit point instead of 0.

So, first off, that first bit is actually great, given that a high-enough level artificer can be attuned to 6 different items. Adding 6 to every saving throw is amazing. The infusion-ending reaction is also pretty great, giving you potentially 6 chances to not go unconscious, though you lose power with each use.

I think this is a really cool, interesting, and useful capstone feature (though I think there are some funky RAW issues about using your reaction when you're at 0 hit points, but this is clearly a place where exception-based game design means it should obviously allow you to do this, though perhaps it could be worded as "if you would otherwise be reduced to 0 hit points, etc."

Barbarians:

At level 20, you get Primal Champion:

Your Strength and Constitution scores both increase by 4, and your maximum for those scores is now 24.

Also, level 20 Barbarians have an unlimited number of Rages per day.

This is perhaps not so flashy, but it's certainly not bad. Getting 2 more AC from your Con (assuming you're unarmored,) 40 additional health, and bonuses to both your chance to hit and the damage you're doing are all great. I think this is the only baseline class feature that allows scores to go over 20 (naturally, I'd assume that if someone has a Manual of Bodily Health or Gainful Exercise that they had read, I'd rule that this is "your maximum for those scores also raises by 4" instead of setting the hard amount at 24. So while the cool factor is really only there if you just like big numbers (which is probably appealing to those who like Barbarians) this does feel unique and very obviously helpful, so I think it's a good one.

The unlimited rage thing is, again, not super flashy, but it does feel pretty great that you never have to worry about wasting a rage on some out-of-combat ability check. Having resources to spend and conserve is a good strategic aspect to the game, but it's also fun when you hit a point where you never have to worry about that again.

Bard:

At 20, Bards get Superior Inspiration

If you roll initiative and don't have any uses of Bardic Inspiration left, you regain one use.

This one is, I think, a pretty standard model for what I think are the "useful, yes, but also quite boring" capstones. Basically, it means that between fights, a Bard can't ever run out of uses of their most iconic class ability. Still, getting one more d12 to throw to an ally is a little underwhelming (and also dependent on whether the DM has people re-roll initiative between waves of enemies in a big battle.) Basically, this is underwhelming and in no way has any real cool factor.

Cleric:

At level 20, Clerics get Divine Intervention improvement.

Your calls for intervention succeed automatically, no roll required.

The winner here really is the Divine Intervention feature, which you get at level 10. However, taking that from a 19% chance to a 100% is a massive step up, and in the hands of creative players and DMs, this can be an awesomely dramatic ability. (A couple sessions ago, our Cleric rolled his first successful DI, which allowed them to bypass an entire garrison of undead soldiers, which was awesome.) Divine Intervention before you get this is a cool sort of Hail Mary (kind of literally) but I think that if level 20 is meant to mean you've become the epitome of what your class represents, being able to call down your god's power without fail feels both flavorful and powerful, and thus this is very much on the good column.

Druid:

At level 20, Druids get Archdruid

You can use Wild Shape an unlimited number of times per day, and you get to ignore somatic and verbal spell components as well as material spell components that are not consumed and don't have a monetary cost, including while in your Wild Shape forms.

Like Barbarians getting unlimited rages, being able to Wild Shape as many times as you want is a very cool feature (and also means that it's nearly impossible to kill a level 20 Circle of the Moon druid, as they can just poof into elemental form over and over, still attack you, and just shift again if they ever get knocked out of it.)

The other element, though, is where this really gets into the awesome category - being able to do component-less casting (which, by the way, means nothing can be counterspelled) and also doing it while potentially in some shapeshifted form really embodies the notion of a Druid as a force of nature -as if they are just a conduit through which nature exerts its power.

Fighter:

At level 20, Fighters get their third Extra Attack:

When you take the attack action on your turn, you can attack four times.

Fighters' ability to attack more than twice does create some interesting math in groups - for instance, if you have a weapon that does extra dice of damage, you're probably best off giving it to the fighter after level 11, because they'll be multiplying that damage by more. That said, level 20 seems a long time to wait for a fourth attack (you get your second at 5, like most martial classes, and your third at 11). Given that an Eldritch-Blast-spamming warlock gets four attacks at level 17, it feels like that should be when Fighters get this.

Is it useful? Absolutely. Is the fact that an action surge can mean eight attacks in a single turn kind of insane? Yes (see Percy in the Search for Grog Vox Machina epilogue one-shot, where I think he did something like 200 damage in a single round.) But it's also, ultimately, more of the same (and the fact that Monks can do, admittedly only a limited number of times, but 4 attacks in a round by level 5 makes this a little underwhelming.)

Monks:

At level 20, Monks get Perfect Self:

When you roll initiative and have no ki points remaining, you gain four.

This is very much in the vein of the Bard one. Again, it's not a bad thing to have, but it's extremely underwhelming.

Paladin:

At level 20, they get... a Subclass Feature!

Given that each subclass has a different thing, it's hard to review all the mechanics, but most tend to be really flashy. I see these (most of them, at least) as sort of major "cooldowns" (to use a WoW term.) Generally, you become some sort of avatar of the oath you've sworn and this has a lot of different benefits. It's a big burst of power, but tends to last only 1 minute, which means just one fight (though I think it'll be rare for it to run out before the fight's over, unless you're in a real slog.) Actually, at least one subclass (Oath of Redemption) has one that works differently.

Still, these tend to be the very definition of big and flashy, so I give this big thumbs up, even if players might agonize about when to actually pop this once-a-day (except Redemption) ability. Top marks.

Ranger:

At level 20, they get Foe Slayer:

Once on each of your turns, you can add your Wisdom modifier to the attack or damage roll of an attack made against one of your favored enemies (or the target of your Favored Foe, if you've taken that alternate feature.) You can use this feature before or after the roll, but before any of the effects of the roll are applied (so basically before you hit or miss, and before you know if you've killed the target or not, I guess.)

Hoo boy. Ok, now, being able to add to the attack roll, sure. But for damage, getting at the very most 5 extra damage per round at a level when martial classes are putting out profoundly more is just kind of insulting. Rangers got some love in Tasha's, but sadly there was no cooler alternate feature for this one. The real killer here is that it requires the target either be your favored enemy or your favored foe. First off, I don't like Favored Foe because I think it's worse than just Hunter's Mark in most cases, so I wouldn't recommend taking it. So if you just have Favored Enemy you need to hope you're fighting that type of enemy to get any benefit out of this. I feel like there's some cooler, flashier ability that is waiting in the wings here - something like analyzing the foe to line up a guaranteed critical hit or something.

Rogue:

At 20, they get Stroke of Luck:

If you miss with an attack, you can turn that miss into a hit. Alternatively, if you fail an ability check, you can treat the d20 roll as a 20 instead. Once you use this, you cannot again until you finish a short or long rest.

Ok, I like this. Rogues are the one primarily physical damage class that don't get extra attacks, and so the focus is on lining up the perfect shot or strike to land for their insane sneak attack damage (which by this level is 10d6, on top of the weapon's ordinary damage. Likewise, the idea of rogues as broad experts that are just plain good at things comes through in the second clause (though, notably, it doesn't say "you succeed," so you don't get to just auto-win.

In a weird way, the lack of flashiness is its own sort of rogue-like flashiness - things just work out for you when you need them to most.

Sorcerer:

At level 20, they get Sorcerous Restoration:

You regain 4 spent sorcery points when you finish a short rest.

This is similar to, though not quite the same as the Bard and Monk ones. Indeed, depending on how many short rests a DM allows in a day, you could actually use this to get an infinite number of level 1-5 spells. Still, I'd put this in the same category as the aforementioned ones - undeniably useful, but a bit dull.

Warlock:

At level 20, they get Eldritch Master:

You can spend 1 minute entreating your patron to regain all your spell slots. Once you do this, you must finish a long rest before you can do so again.

Warlocks are always trying to fit a short rest, and this basically lets you take a 1-minute short rest once a day (Genie Warlocks can also do one in 10 minutes once a day as well.)

Again, depending on how many times you can usually get a short rest, this varies in usefulness. Still, it reinforces the idea of Warlocks as being able to recharge quickly, and four 5th-level slots are nothing to sneeze at. Still, it is low on flashiness, and I think there could have been something more exciting here.

Wizard:

At level 20, they get Signature Spells:

You pick two 3rd level spells from your spellbook. You always have these prepared and they don't count against the number of spells you have prepared. You can cast each without expending a spell slot, but then cannot do so until you finish a short or long rest, unless you do expend a spell slot to do so.

Overall I kind of like this, though it is sort of just an expansion of Spell Mastery (the 18th level feature.) Still, getting a free Fireball and Counterspell once per short rest, as well as always having them prepared, is not bad at all. What this lacks in flash it makes up for in strategic customizability and genuine power.

    So, overall, I think there are some clear winners here, with the Druid and Paladin ones probably my personal favorites. I did work our earlier how you could have a +19 bonus to Intelligence and Constitution saving throws as a level 20 artificer without any magical items given to them by the DM, so I do have a soft spot for Soul of Artifice.

Twisting Corridors - Set Aside a Lot of Time For It

 The Twisting Corridors opened today, which function as the sort of high-challenge, "Mage-Tower" version of Torghast.

Essentially, it's three Torghast wings stacked on top of one another. I ran it with my friend (I on my Protection Paladin, he on his Balance Druid) and we got an Upper Reaches, Coldheart Interstitia, and a Soulforges wing, all in a row. By the end of it, we each had around 90 anima powers, and things were insane.

At least on layer one, it's not too bad - I'd say it's not as easy as a layer one of the normal wings, but also not as tough as some of the higher layers currently available. By the time you get to floor 13 (the last of the "wings") you start seeing elite enemies and things start to require a bit more attention, but it's really not too bad.

The rewards for the Twisting Corridors (other than the weekly Bolvar quest) are cosmetic - there's a battle pet, a title, and a mount (that works in the Maw!) But this is meant to be optional content.

Anyway, given how long it took, I have not yet finished my 1000 anima quest and thus haven't yet seen the next chapter of the Kyrian campaign.

Castle Nathria LFR Wing Two Tank First Impressions

 The second wing of Castle Nathira is now open, and once again, we haven't actually faced Shriekwing, the first boss of the raid on other difficulties.

Instead, we have Sun King's Salvation, Artificer Xy'mox, and the Court of Blood.

There are all fights with about three million things going on, but we can boil them down to the essentials:

Sun King's Salvation:

This is a Valithria Dreamwalker-like fight in which the healers are the DPS - at least for most of it. DPS is mostly there to make sure that the adds go down quickly enough, and tanks will need to focus on some Stoneborn adds that require a tank swap. Periodically, a Shade of Kael'thas will show up, which does a frontal cone fire attack that needs to be dodged and has its own tank-swap debuff - the tanks will just trade him and the stoneborn. The Shade prevents Kael'thas from getting any healing, but DPS against it will heal him. This one's the easiest of the wing.

Artificer Xy'mox:

In the long run, probably the hardest, as it requires coordination and personal responsibility - both banes of LFR. The key mechanic is that two players will be singled out, given a few seconds before they take some damage and then drop a wormhole gateway where they are. Stepping into the gate will let anyone transport to the other one. You then use these wormholes to escape various deadly mechanics. Tanks will need to swap periodically as the active tank will get a debuff that explodes, damaging everyone around them.

There are some big line attacks similar to the boss in De Other Side to dodge. One phase two, the boss will start spawning exploding wild seeds, which can be picked up and moved (and should be moved to the opposite end of the room,) later exploding for massive damage in a huge radius.

The third phase is the real killer - there's a sword in the floor that will sometimes start to suck people toward it and then explode for massive damage. You want to have one portal entrance near the sword and one outside its radius so that you can allow yourself to be sucked in and then jump out before the detonation.

Court of Blood:

This fight is bonkers - there are three bosses, which you'll kill sequentially (we found doing Niklaus first was easiest.) Tanks will need to swap two of them (the two male Venthyr) as they have stacking debuffs they put on the tanks. DPS needs to kill adds asap.

Periodically, the bosses will retreat and the raid needs to find their spot on the dance floor, then move to the glowing red tiles to do the proper moves of their dance. You get a stacking haste buff when you succeed, or lose that buff and take some damage if you fail.

Each time one boss dies, the others heal to full and get a new ability.

Overall, this wing feels like a whole lot, but we did have three weeks of practice on the last wing, so I imagine we'll get the hang of this one eventually.

Elsewhere in the Shadowlands and the Future of Cosmic Warcraft

 There's a certain personality-sorting to be done with the covenants in Shadowlands. We're give four options, with four very distinctive zones and vibes. But it's also been made explicit that there's plenty of the Shadowlands that we haven't seen - near-infinite (or perhaps infinite) realms of which we are glimpsing only four primary ones, along with the Maw and Oribos.

In fact, De Other Side seems to be its own Shadowlands realm, connected to but separate from Ardenweald (that'd be a cool covenant to join.)

Every expansion has added some new questing zone (even if Wrath's was just the tiny Hrothgar's Landing for a couple of Argent Tournament daily quests - that I would totally forgive people for forgetting it was a thing at all) and so it stands to reason that in the course of the Shadowlands, we'll likely find ourselves in some other part of the land of the dead.

Where might that be?

Well, the possibilities are literally infinite, so I'm going to try to speculate based on what we have so far.

The Land of the Brokers:

The Brokers are sort of un-remarked-upon by the other members of the Shadowlands, which implies that they've been around for a long time. Are the Brokers, like the members of the various covenants, largely former mortals who took on these Broker forms after they died? Perhaps those who lived for deals, commerce, and trade go on to some kind of crowded bazaar of an afterlife?

On the other hand, there are entities we've met in the Shadowlands that are native to it. The Sylvar, Vorkai, and Fairies of Ardenweald all seem to be original to Ardenweald. Likewise, there's a quest in which the Countess in Revendreth seems to be trying to portray herself as an original Venthyr, rather than a former moral, which implies that someone like Renethal (whom we know to be the first Venthyr Sire Denathrius created, at least until we find out that the Dread Lords were the first or some other big lore reveal) was never a mortal. So it's possible that the Brokers are natives to the Shadowlands.

Thros:

While I'm less convinced that Thros is part of the Shadowlands than I once was - at the very least, I don't think it's part of the system of covenants and such, I think it's possible we could venture there. The only reason I'm hesitant to suggest this is that the Drust story has been confined (much as it was last expansion) to a single zone - there's no larger threat they pose in the other zones, which I think cuts down on their likelihood of their playing a bigger role.

Helheim:

Helya's presence as one of the Jailer's allies has been brought up a couple times - she orchestrated the Maldraxxi attack on Bastion and also seems to be the one leading the Mawsworn Kyrian. But given that she seems to be in the Maw itself, is she trapped there? That being said, she has been sending Mawsworn out of the Maw to, for instance, abduct the four leaders as the expansion began. Indeed, can things just escape the Maw into Azeroth thanks to the rift? I doubt it's that easy, or we'd be seeing Zovaal marching around Azeroth (holy crap, I'm just imagining the Titans unleashing Sargeras to fight Zovaal and how awesome that would be and also there's no way any of us would survive.) Helya is a master of planar dynamics, though - could she find some way to return to Helheim?

Ok, so, those are the places I'm tossing out as potential future locations we travel to this expansion.

I think what's really interesting about this expansion is the new lore for the Warcraft cosmos we're getting. The Shadowlands, when they were first being named explicitly in Chronicle and Legion, seemed fairly simple - indeed, my interpretation was that they were simply the ghostly realm that we found ourselves in when we died in-game (which I think might be sort of still partially canonical). Given how much more complex the Shadowlands have been allowed to become, I'm now really curious if we'll see an expansion to the other realms of existence in the Warcraft cosmos.

The Twisting Nether, for example, is a place we've often touched. I think we were in it when we killed Kil'jaeden, given that his death seemed rather final. As the realm of demons, I think it's clearly a dangerous place, but I also sense that it's not 100% evil, either. After all, Shamans' Astral Recall (their 10-min hearthstone spell, which used to be a lot more exciting when hearthstones took an hour to cooldown) talks about how they are yanked through the Twisting Nether to get back to their home location. That's been the language on the spell since vanilla, and they've never changed it. And I find that odd, given that the way the Nether has been so firmly tied to demons and fel magic, rather than the spiritual magic of Shamans. Perhaps, much as there have been shockingly few undead creatures in the Shadowlands, we might discover that demons are just one of the many denizens of the Twisting Nether.

It also really opens up the possibility for a more complex Emerald Dream. As originally conceived, the Dream is just a version of Azeroth where humanoid civilization never came about, and thus nature is left preserved and pristine (and there was never a Sundering.) But this is the sort of thing I'd be happy for them to ret-con, as I think there's a lot more story potential in an Emerald Dream that's more of a realm of life. Are there Day Fae there?

I suspect the expansion that follows Shadowlands will be much more grounded and Azeroth-based, but I also think that Blizzard is in a position where they either have to come up with new lore or just have us face the Old Gods and the Burning Legion over and over. Clearly, this time, they've chosen to come up with new lore.

In D&D, there's a concept called tiers of play - from level 1-4, you're local heroes, the champions of a region or major town. From 5-10, you're heroes to an entire kingdom or nation, dealing with threats that threaten the stability of the realm. From 11-16, you're heroes of the world, facing down evils that threaten the entire planet. And then, from 17-20 (the D&D level cap,) you're heroes of the multiverse, facing down massive cosmic threats that rage between planes of existence.

In WoW, we've sort of been in tier four since Burning Crusade. Granted, to keep things from getting dull, we've cycled back down to some of those lower tiers, and it's not a perfect comparison. But I think WoW has the opportunity to let us do these massive, cosmic-scale stories and work - something we're clearly in the middle of right now. So I hope we'll get to travel the cosmos, even if we'll always call Azeroth our home.

The Shadowlands Rogues' Gallery (So Far)

 In a game like WoW, you need bad guys to fight. In recent expansions, we've had a fair number of established lore figures as end-raid bosses. (One could be forgiven for forgetting that such figures as Yogg-Saron were actually only introduced in the expansion where we killed them.)

Shadowlands has a unique opportunity for us to face individuals we've seen before. While there are some possibilities that there are other things going on - for example, I don't know exactly what the deal with the Drust is - almost all the villains in Shadowlands seem to be working for the Jailer. So let's go through the list of bad guys and talk about what role they might ultimately play in the expansion.

Spoilers ahead.