Comparing the New Dragonborn Options in UA with the PHB's

 My longest-played character is Jax Sardare, a blue dragonborn Eldrtich Knight Fighter. He's built to tank, and while the entire party just got dumped in the Nine Hells with all of our equipment left behind (hopefully a briefly temporary situation - we'll see) generally speaking, here's how he's built:

He started with a +3 to Strength, a +1 to Con, a +2 to Intelligence, a +1 to Charisma, and +0s to Wisdom and Dex (yes, the most common saving throws. Shush.) And he's got the Defensive fighting style, giving me a +1 bonus to AC while wearing armor (which makes his current predicament all the more frustrating.) At level 12, he's bumped his Strength to +5, his Con to +2, and taken the Tough feat. I prefer to take the "average" amount of health when I level (randomness in play and at character creation is fine, but I don't want a character ruined because I've been unlucky with rolls years after I first started playing him) so at level 12, he's currently got a max health of 124 (he'll be going up 10 per level for a bit, as I'll be getting Warcaster next, but will probably get at least one more bump to Con and possibly push it to +4 at level 19 if I don't go for Shield Master.)

His most important equipment is a set of adamantine plate, a +1 shield, and a +1 battleaxe. So he has a passive AC of 22, but with the Shield spell (which I technically have to drop my axe to use until I get Warcaster, but I can always just scoop it up or Weapon Bond it back to my hand in a pinch) he can regularly bump it up to 27 (given that I'm rarely casting non-cantrip spells, I typically cast it any time I'd take a hit, so I almost have a practical AC of 27.)

Anyway, that's probably not super relevant. He's a pure Fighter (much as I had wanted to possibly multiclass into Wizard, we're at a point where I can't actually get any of the super-cool high-level spells anyway, so I figure I'll focus on his tank-fighter build.)

As a PHB Dragonborn, beyond the +2 to Strength and +1 to Charisma, you get two other racial features - resistance to the damage type of your draconic heritage (so lightning for my blue boy) and then a breath-weapon based on that ancestry (for me, a 30x5-ft line of lightning.) The breath weapon does 2d6 at level 1, then goes up to 3d6 at level 6, 4d6 at level 11, and 5d6 at level 16. The target makes a Dex save against a DC determined by your Constitution (so, 8 + PB + Con). This takes an action and recharges on a short rest.

The new Unearthed Arcana version, however, improves various things.

First off, the ability score bonuses, in keeping with the new rules for such things, simply become a +2 to any score and a +1 to any other (which is also how existing Dragonborn can be made in this post-Tasha's world.) So, for instance, I might have put that +1 to Con or Intelligence instead of Charisma, had that been the case.

You still get resistance to the damage type of your ancestry, so that's a wash.

There are also new options for ancestry, though, which include Gem dragons. But I'm going to look at this simply from my established character's perspective. While his neutral alignment (though frankly I play him as more Lawful Good than his official Lawful Neutral) might suggest he could actually be a Sapphire, rather than Blue dragonborn (and thus get thunder damage and resistance, as well as a different new racial) we'll just assume he's still a Blue. (Also, of course, humanoids have always had free will when it comes to alignment, and dragonborn, to my understanding, have never had their alignments particularly connected to the corresponding dragon types.)

So, there are really only two changes here (aside from the aforementioned ASI.)

The first is Chromatic Warding. As an action, Jax could become not just resistant, but immune to Lightning damage for 10 minutes. This ability can be used once per long rest. Lightning's not super uncommon, but it's not as common as, say, fire, so this might be a bit situational. Still, it's better than the literal nothing I have compared to this, so I'd take it.

Now, however, we're going to look at the breath weapon.

The UA breath weapon works differently. While it's the same shape (not so for, say, a Red Dragonborn, whose breath goes from a cone to a line) we have three major changes to this.

The first is that it's now d8s instead of d6s. The average roll for a d8 is 4.5, compared to a 3.5 for a d6, so at level 1 it's doing 2 more damage on average per breath. By my current level it's 4 more, and at max it's 5 more. Not a huge amount, but significant, and the other changes are a bigger deal.

The second change is that a dragon breath can now happen once each time you take the Attack Action, and it takes the place of one of your attacks. If you don't have any extra attack feature, it basically just means that you do it as a full action. But as a Fighter who's past level 11, that means that I can use this and follow it up with two weapon attacks. And if I action surge, I can do so again, meaning two breaths and four weapon attacks. 4d6 is a little underwhelming when I'm giving up three 1d8+6 (I have a +1 battleaxe) attacks or my Green-Flame-blade/war magic attack combo (which becomes 3d8+6 and then 2d8+2 to a second target, plus another 1d8+6), but if I can weave a 4d8 blast of lightning potentially hitting two targets, that becomes a lot more appealing. (Even against a single target, the 4d8 comes out to about 18 damage on average (or 9 on a successful save) while to do so I'd only be losing a single attack that does on average 10.5 damage on a hit - and if I can hit more targets, that starts to multiply.)

The third change is that you now get to use this a number of times equal to your proficiency bonus, and recharge them on a long rest.

This is the one area where the ability is technically not strictly better than the existing one, as you can get the old version back on a short rest. However, given that at level 1, you've got a PB of 2, that means that you need to have at least two short rests per day to get more breaths out of it. At level 12, my PB is 4, and it's going to be hitting 5 when I next level up, so unless you're taking an absurd number of short rests per day, you'll still get more breaths in a day with the new version.

This is, of course, playtest material, but I think it's a huge improvement over what is a thematically awesome but mechanically underwhelming race from the PHB. As a race that lacks darkvision but doesn't get any of the crazy cool features that other night-blind races get (like a variant human's level 1 feat or a Halfling's lucky feature) the Dragonborn could use some love. Really, the change to the way the breath weapon works sells this for me, as I can imagine using it far more than I currently do.

What's the Best Damage Type in 5th Edition?

 Damage types in D&D have no inherent rules attached to them. Technically slashing, fire, and necrotic are all just words. They all come with flavor, and describe what's happening in the world in different ways, but absent all content that goes with the rules system that D&D provides, they have no meaning.

But, of course, in any modular game like D&D, tags of this sort can wind up meaning quite a lot.

The biggest distinction is, of course, between the "magical" and the "physical" damage types. Bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing are the only damage types that non-magical, non-futuristic weapons can produce (and most magic weapons do as well). But then, some magical spells, like Cloud of Daggers or Catapult will deal these, and flames, frigid water, and literal acid that have no magical property will nevertheless do damage that is usually associated with magic.

I want to take a look at every damage type and see how likely they are to deal solid damage to a monster. I'm going to limit my categorization to resistances, immunities, and vulnerabilities, mainly for the purpose of keeping it easily searchable. Obviously, there are cases like radiant damage preventing a zombie's undead fortitude or fire/acid damage preventing a troll's regeneration that are going to fall through the cracks here, but I'll try to be reasonably thorough. I'll be searching through monster stat blocks, filtering for vulnerabilities, resistances, and immunities (and looking at conditionals, like whether the damage comes from a magic weapon.)

(Also, this post is from between the releases of Candlekeep Mysteries and Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft, so these are always changing.)

The damage types in D&D are Acid, Bludgeoning, Cold, Fire, Force, Lightning, Necrotic, Piercing, Poison, Psychic, Radiant, Slashing, and Thunder.

    Acid:

Vulnerabilities: 1

Resistances: 48

Immunities: 43

Notably, all Yugoloths are immune to acid damage. I guess Gehenna has a lot of acid?

    Bludgeoning:

Vulnerabilities: 16

Resistances: 24 (unconditional) 204 (conditional)

Immunities: 1 (unconditional: only the artifact Mighty Servant of Leuk-o) 82 (conditional)

As one of the "physical" damage types, it's not surprising to see all the resistances and immunities to non-magic damage. Bludgeoning is particularly good, though, when dealing with many skeletal monsters, as well as some made of glass or ice.

    Cold:

Vulnerabilities: 7

Resistances: 163

Immunities: 62

As one of the more common "environmental" damage types, it's not a surprise to see a lot of resistances and immunities here. The vulnerabilities are all for fiery or lava-like creatures. Actually, I had sort of lied about inherent rules attached to damage types - creatures (including player characters) who are resistant to cold don't need to worry about getting exhausted due to extreme cold.

    Fire:

Vulnerabilities: 24

Resistances: 127

Immunities: 99

Again, like cold, fire resistance can prevent exhaustion from extreme heat. Also, anything in water gets resistance to fire damage (which makes me wonder then, if RAW, falling in boiling water inherently does half the damage it should). Fiends generally are resistant to fire and all devils are immune to it. Fire does get a lot of vulnerabilities from both frozen things and also any dry things like a scarecrow stuffed with straw.

    Force:

Vulnerabilities: 2

Resistances: 0

Immunities: 5

So far (and likely to stay that way) the least interactive of the damage types, Force sort of represents a generic "it's magic" element. Helmed Horrors, interestingly, are immune to it (along with some other types) and most of the things immune to Force are variants on those. Still, a mostly safe bet (which is good news for Warlocks).

    Lightning

Vulnerabilities: 1

Resistances: 115

Immunities: 58

Another classic damage type, all demons get resistance to this (along with fire and cold). 

    Necrotic:

Vulnerabilities: 2

Resistances: 66

Immunities: 54

Necrotic is sort of the opposite of radiant, but a lot more things (I believe) are resistant to necrotic than radiant. Notably, I think all incorporeal undead (like ghosts, specters, etc.,) are immune to this.

    Piercing:

Vulnerabilities: 3 (conditional)

Resistances: 33 (unconditional) 208 (conditional)

Immunities: 82 (conditional)

Another "physical" damage type, magic piercing weapons should always get the job done. Notably, Rakshasas and their variants are actually vulnerable to piercing damage from good creatures, which is apparently a simplified version of earlier editions where it was specifically from crossbow bolts fired by good characters.

    Poison:

Vulnerabilities: 0

Resistances: 46

Immunities: 414

Damn, poison's got some real downsides. I guess it doesn't help that almost all constructs, almost all fiends, any Yuan-ti, and probably a lot of oozes are totally unaffected. I don't know about best, but poison damage might turn out to be the least effective damage type, with over four times as many immunities as the next damage type. But then, let's hold off, because Psychic's next.

    Psychic:

Vulnerabilities: 1 (poor Flumphs!)

Resistances: 18

Immunities: 79

This is kind of interesting. Like poison, there are more immunities than resistances. Just as poison can't affect non-living things, psychic can't hurt mindless things. (And there's usually a good overlap.) Still, this is clearly better than poison by the numbers.

    Radiant:

Vulnerabilities: 9

Resistances: 15

Immunities: 7

You might be surprised to see so few vulnerabilities to this holiest of damage types (though it can simply be from literal light, like a laser pistol, or other forms of radiation like sickening radiance.) Often, though, it's not that a creature is vulnerable to radiant, but that it's resistant to so many other types. Still, with so few things that won't take full damage, radiant's a very powerful damage type, and might win out.

    Slashing:

Vulnerabilities: 0

Resistances: 20 (unconditional) 210 (conditional)

Immunities: 9 (unconditional) 82 (conditional)

Yep, lots of oozes just don't mind sharp things passing through them - though I don't really know why any other physical weapons wouldn't similarly fail to affect them. This is, I think, the most common weapon damage type (though given that non-futuristic ranged weapons all do piercing, I could be wrong) but also I think the one that runs into the most problems.

    Thunder:

Vulnerabilities: 3

Resistances: 36

Immunities: 6

Thunder is one of the harder damage types to come by, but also seems to be pretty broadly effective. Did you know that Earth Elementals are vulnerable to it?

Ok, now let's try to score these. Because vulnerabilities double the damage the target takes (like adding one more instance of that damage) and immunities eliminate all the damage (like subtracting your one instance of the damage) I'm going to value them as opposites, while resistances will be half as much, as they only subtract half the damage. Because resistances and immunities are going to be more common, we're going to count them as the positive values, and the best damage type will be the one with the lowest score.

So, a vulnerability grants a type -2 to their score. A resistance adds 1. An immunity adds 2.

We're going to handle bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing damage a little differently: using a nonmagical weapon will significantly decrease their effectiveness, so we're going to talk about them as two separate damage types each. I'm including the "good piercing damage hurts Rakshasas" in the calculations here.

Ranked from worst damage type to best:

Poison: 874

Slashing (nonmagical damage): 412

Piercing (nonmagical damage): 399

Bludgeoning (nonmagical damage): 362

Fire: 277

Cold: 273

Lightning: 229

Psychic: 174

Necrotic: 170

Acid: 132

Thunder: 42

Slashing (magical): 38

Piercing (magical): 27

Radiant: 11

Force: 6

Bludgeoning (magical): -6

    So there we have it: I highly recommend avoiding poison as a primary source of damage, as you're going to run into resistances and immunities to an absurdly higher degree than any other damage type. Meanwhile, on the flip side, once you can get magic weapons, bludgeoning damage is going to be fantastic - you're more likely to encounter things vulnerable to your strikes than immune, and only a handful of things are resistant to magic bludgeoning damage.

Given that bludgeoning's most of what a Monk will do, that's good news for them.

For you firebugs out there, I've got bad news for you: once magic weapons become easy to get, you're second only to poison in ineffectiveness. Though other classical magical elements like cold and lightning are not far ahead of you.

Among magic damage types, force and radiant are both quite good options, largely due to a lack of resistance or immunities. Likewise, consider that most things that are resistant to radiant damage are good-aligned things like celestials, so unless you're playing an evil campaign or your DM is being very subversive, you're likely not to have to worry about this all that much.

Radiant damage tends to be limited to Clerics and Paladins, though Force is a great option here as well (again, good news for Warlocks.) Among the more easily-accessed damage types, acid seems like a pretty good option. I'd recommend Thunder, but there aren't a ton of spells that do that.

I was pleasantly surprised that psychic pulled out so far ahead of poison, which makes my desire to play a Soulknife feel surprisingly more viable.

I think there's also something to be said for analyzing the ease of access to these various damage types, though that's a whole complicated process that I'm not eager to get into right now. I suspect the reason we see so much resistance and vulnerability to fire, cold, and lightning is that I'd bet these are also the easiest elements to get your hands on as a spellcaster. Still, maybe consider focusing on acid! (Again, as long as you don't expect to be facing a lot of yugoloths.)

New Unearthed Arcana Bring Draconic Race Variants, Feats, and Spells: Part Two

 Ok, we've handled the variant dragonborn and kobold options. Let's get into the feats:

There are only three feats here, and they're each linked to one of the three varieties of dragon - chromatic, gem, and metallic.

Gift of the Chromatic Dragon:

This gives you the following benefits:

As a bonus action, you can touch a simple or martial weapon and cause it to deal an extra 1d4 acid, cold, fire, lightning, or poison damage. You can use this once per long rest.

Then, when you take acid, cold, fire, lightning, or poison damage, you can use your reaction to gain resistance to that damage for that instance. You can use this reaction a number of times equal to your proficiency bonus per long rest.

Gift of the Metallic Dragon:

You learn the cure wounds spell and can cast the spell without expending a spell slot once per long rest. The spellcasting ability is your choice of Intelligence, Wisdom, or Charisma, which you select when you get the feat.

Additionally, as a reaction when you or another creature within 5 feet of you is hit by an attack roll, you can manifest spectral wings to add 1d4 to the target's AC for that attack, potentially preventing the attack. You can use this PB times per long rest.

Gift of the Gem Dragon:

This increases your Intelligence, Wisdom, or Charisma score by 1 (max of 20).

When you take damage from a creature within 10 feet of you, you can use a reaction to force the target to make a Strength saving throw (DC based on the ability you chose to increase) dealing 2d8 force damage and knocking the attacker back 10 feet on a failure. You can do this PB times per long rest.

    So, these are interesting. The Chromatic Dragon one could be interesting on a fighter to get lots of extra damage in there. I think the Metallic Dragon one is particularly interesting if you're playing an Arcane caster like a Wizard or Sorcerer, gaining a healing spell.

Interesting options, but let's move onto the spells:

These are a little too involved for full write-ups, so let me see if I can sum up.

Draconic Transformation is a 7th level spell that grants you benefits similar to those of a dragon. You get blindsight out to 30 feet, incorporeal wings that give you a 40-ft fly speed, and a bonus action (you also get it for free when you cast the spell, which is itself a bonus action) to breath in a 30 ft cone for 3d8 force damage, which is a bit low for a 7th level spell, but is more of a cherry on top of the other benefits.

Fizban's Platinum Shield is a 6th level spell that creates a kind of force-shield around yourself or a creature within 60 feet of you, which you can switch to other targets within 60 feet on each turn as a bonus action. A creature shielded by the thing gets half-cover, resistance to acid, cold, fire, lightning, and poison damage, and also gets evasion (save for zero on dex saves, and only take half damage on a failure.) Also, I'm given to understand Fizban is someone from Dragonlance, so this might be further evidence that we could be getting a Dragonlance setting book.

Flame Stride is a 3rd level bonus action spell that increases your movement speed by 20 feet and prevents you from taking opportunity attacks. When you move within 5 feet of a creature or object that isn't being worn or carried, it takes 1d6 fire damage (though a single creature or object can only take this once per turn.) Higher spell levels will increase the speed boost by 5 and the damage by 1d6. So, if you want to run through hordes of enemies, burning them, this is the spell for you.

Icingdeath's Frost is a 2nd level spell that lets you shoot out a 30-ft cone (or 15? There seems to be some contradiction in its range line and the description.) Everything inside has to make a Con save and takes 3d8 cold damage on a failure and gets covered in ice for 1 minute, or until a creature uses its action to break the ice off itself or another creature. While covered this way, their speed is zero. On a success, the creature takes half damage and isn't frozen. Higher spell levels add 1d8 damage to the total.

Nathair's Mischief is a 2nd level spell and is probably my favorite. You fill a 20-ft cube with fey and draconic magic. You roll a d4 to determine the effect, and can move the cube 10 feet and reroll on the table at the start of each of your turns. The effects are:

A scent of apple pie that can charm people on a failed wisdom save.

Bouquets of flowers that spray water in peoples' eyes, requiring a dex save to avoid being blinded.

Each creature has to make a wisdom save or start giggling uncontrollably, becoming incapacitated and moving in a random direction.

Or drops of molasses hover in the cube, making it difficult terrain.

These effects last until the start of your next turn, so you'll keep getting different effects while you concentrate on it.

Raulothim's Psychic Lance is a 4th level spell that shoots psychic energy at a target you can see - or one you name as you cast the spell - forcing the target to make an Intelligence saving throw or take 10d6 psychic damage and be incapacitated until the start of your next turn. If you name the target, it can't benefit from any cover or invisibility. The damage goes up by 1d6 per spell level.

Finally, Summon Draconic Spirit works like the various "summon" spells from Tasha's, only this time you conjure a large dragon. It's a 5th level spell. The draconic spirit has high armor (at 5th level it gets AC 19, adding 1 per level) and does a breath attack every turn (though only for 2d6) as well as Bite and Claw attacks (equal to half the spell's level rounded down, as usual) that deal a much more modest 1d6+4+spell level piercing damage. You choose between Gem, Metallic, or Chromatic, and this determines its damage resistances. Also, when you summon it, you gain one of its resistances until the spell ends.

I love the Tasha's summoning spells, so I'm really happy to see this one added. Obviously this is better for groups of enemies, as it's the only one with a multi-target attack, though the breath weapon will not be a ton of damage for anyone who's able to cast 5th level spells. Its high AC makes it pretty tanky, though, and I think it has higher health than most of the other summoned creatures.

New Unearthed Arcana Bring Draconic Race Variants, Feats, and Spells. Part One: Races

 Well, well, well. The Gothic subclasses and lineages that came out in UA were a pretty good hint at a new Ravenloft book. Now, we've had two recent draconic-themed UAs, giving us the Ranger's Drakewarden and Monk's Way of the Dragon. And now we're getting more dragon stuff.

We did hear we'd be getting sourcebooks for three classic D&D settings this year, with Ravenloft as the first. I'll come right out and say that I know very little about Dragonlance as a setting, though I know it's a classic and popular one. Mostly from the name I've always conceived it as a little more classically Arthurian (very medieval with a big emphasis on knights and such) but I'll admit that is founded on basically nothing but the name. Still, I suspect that dragons play a pretty big role in the setting, and so I wonder whether there's a connection here.

Anyway, let's get into the options: we have new variants on the dragonborn and kobold races. We also have new feats that are all dragon-themed, and then a new set of spells that are also dragon-themed.

Let's start with the variant races:

The character I've played the most and the longest is my Blue Dragonborn Eldritch Knight Fighter - built as a nigh-un-hittable tank (he's currently got an AC of 22 and has the Shield spell, which is the main thing I use my spell slots on.) The dragonborn as seen in the PHB has a strong theme, but its abilities are slightly thin: you have your breath weapon and resistance to your ancestry's damage type (so lightning for me.)

The UA introduces three separate Dragonborn variants: Chromatic, Metallic, and Gem.

First, let's talk about what is kept:

You still have resistance to your ancestry's corresponding element.

You also still have a breath weapon, but it works differently:

For one thing, rather than using d6s, it now uses d8s - meaning you start off dealing 2d8 and then by level 17 you're doing 5d8. This comes out to about 2 more damage at level 1 and then getting 1 higher average damage per tier (so by tier 4, your breath does an average of 22.5 rather than 17.5).

However, that's not all: perhaps the biggest thing for me as a Fighter is that you can now use your breath weapon in place of one attack, rather than your full action.

Finally, you get to use this a number of times equal to your proficiency bonus per long rest, instead of the current once per short rest.

So not only is it easier to slot into your action economy, but you can also use it more.

There is one change that some might not be as happy about: Chromatic dragons will now always use it in a 30x5ft line, while Metallic and Gem dragons all use a 15-ft cone.

Now, beyond these existing (if altered) features, the three variants also come with special abilities.

Chromatic dragonborn can use an action to become immune to their ancestry's damage type for 10 minutes, which they can do once per long rest.

Metallic dragonborn get an alternate breath option that they can use once per long rest, which either pushes a target 20 feet back and knocks them prone (if they don't succeed on a strength saving throw) or incapacitates them until the start of your next turn (if they fail a constitution saving throw).

Gem dragons are special, and get two features. First, they have Psionic mind, which allows them telepathically to communicate with any creature they can see within 30 feet of them (if the creature speaks a language,) but doesn't give the creature the ability to respond telepathically.

They also get Gem Flight, where they can, at level 3 and higher, as a bonus action, summon gem-like wings that give them a flying (and hovering) speed equal to their movement speed, which lasts 1 minute and requires a long rest to recharge.

Also, because we haven't actually seen Gem dragons in 5th Edition yet, here are the five types and their associated elements:

Amethyst: Force

Crystal: Radiant

Emerald: Psychic

Sapphire: Thunder

Topaz: Necrotic

Moving on, we have a new version of the Kobold.

Kobolds have only 60 ft. darkvision and no longer any sunlight sensitivity. Their movement speed is 30.

You now choose a draconic legacy when you create the character, choosing one of the following options:

Advantage on saving throws to avoid or end the frightened condition.

Gain one cantrip from the Sorcerer spell list (and choose Intelligence, Wisdom, or Charisma as your spellcasting ability for it.)

Gain the ability to make unarmed strikes with your tail that deal 1d6+Strength.

You also gain the Draconic Roar ability: as a bonus action, you can roar at enemies within 10 feet of you. You and any who can hear you roar gets advantage on attack rolls against those enemies until the end of your next turn. You get to use this a number of times equal to your proficiency bonus, recharging them all on a long rest.

Which is, frankly, insane.

All right, well, this is a lot. I'm going to save the feats and spells for their own post.

Speed Factor - For Unpredictable, Probably a Lot Slower Combat

 Pulling out another optional rule from the DMG, let's talk about Speed Factor.

Once initiative is rolled in a typical D&D combat, it becomes a predictable rotation that goes around to each combatant before looping back to the first, at the "top of the round."

There are ways to simplify this with other optional rules. For example, you can change initiative rolls to initiative scores, where your "passive Initiative" is used, which means that you'll generally have your party acting in the same order each fight. You can also do "side initiative," where you treat the initiative check as a group check and have the party alternate with all the monsters.

But then there's speed factor.

I'll come right out and say that I think you need to be really, really into crunchy math to do this, as it's almost certainly going to slow your fights down significantly. But it also introduces some new elements that could be fun, if only to experiment with.

Here's how it works:

Every combatant rolls initiative each round. However, rather than taking turns in order based on those rolls (though that seems like it could work as well,) instead each combatant decides what they're going to be doing with their turn before the round begins, and they're committed to those acts.

This actually makes a fair amount of sense, as it simulates the simultaneity of a party's moves. In the "lore" of a round of combat, people aren't patiently waiting for their turn, but are all engaging in various acts at the same time.

Here's where it gets super, super crunchy:

Depending on what your action does, you'll get a modifier to your initiative roll that can speed you up, or in most cases, slow you down.

Also, your size will modify it as well (giving gnomes, halflings, and goblins a real nice advantage.)

I'm not going to go into every single modifier (it's on page 270 of the DMG if you want to look it up) but here are a few examples:

A melee attack with a light weapon will give you a +2 bonus to your initiative - you can get your strike in quickly thanks to how light your blade is. If you attack with a two-handed melee weapon, though, you get a -2 modifier.

Different modifiers also stack, so a weapon that's both heavy and a two-handed melee weapon will add up to -4, but a longbow, which is heavy and two-handed, but not a melee weapon, will only be penalized for the heaviness, so -2.

However, the modifiers don't stack on themselves: a player who makes a main-hand and off-hand attack with, say, a pair of shortswords, will only get the single +2 bonus.

If a creature doesn't take their chosen action on the turn, they don't take any action (but can still move.) I'd rule that you could, say, target a new target as long as it's the same action, but if you, say, want to try to use dominate person on the berserker and he dies before you can, leaving only the priest who is very likely to save out of it, you could simply not take your action and save the spell slot.

Spells take longer depending on their level. So while a cantrip has no speed factor modifier, each level of the spell dips your modifier down by 1, so if you're casting some massive 9th level spell, that will reduce your initiative for that round by 9.

People decide their actions before they roll initiative for the round, so while they'll know their total modifiers, they won't know the precise order of things until the rolls are resolved.

So let's talk about this, and how it would work:

Again, it's going to mean a whole lot more bookkeeping. It's going to make every round of combat a little more puzzle-like, and it's definitely going to make combat go slower.

What you get out of it, though, I think, is two things:

The first is that it's very flavorful. Given that Dex-based characters are usually the ones swinging around light weapons and Strength-based ones are more likely to use heavy two-handers, you're already going to get a bit of this. But I actually love the idea that casting something massive like Cone of Cold takes longer than simply blowing out a quick Burning Hands. And for something as god-like as a 9th level spell, it makes sense to me that you'd have a whole bunch of stuff happening while the wizard in the back is waving her hands around, creating a bunch of glowing runes in the air in front of her that then spread out into the sky and conjure a hail of meteors. (I guess technically meteorites if they hit the ground?)

It also feels to me that this really encourages more considered play (which, again, will slow things down.) For example, three rounds into a fight, if that wizard is sitting at 10 hit points, they might calculate that it's fine for them to sit still and cast the big spell because they know that the two death knights coming for her are after her in initiative - she knows she'll get the spell off before they can get into range, and that the cleric can get to her even if they do somehow survive the spell.

But with speed factor, it's a real gamble. Those dudes are attacking with longswords, which don't affect their initiative, so there's actually a decent chance that they could get a higher initiative this round. Maybe she needs to just dash and get away asap.

Much like spell points, this would seriously change the game. While I think spell points ultimately would probably just make the game's tempo a bit unbalanced, 

5E's Zombie, Its Role and Purpose in First Adventures

 While I think the classic "standard first combat" for D&D tends to be against goblins, or sometimes kobolds, for whatever reason, I tend to prefer using undead creatures. Maybe it's just because I loved Wrath of the Lich King (World of Warcraft's second expansion,) but there's something really satisfying about fighting the undead. I guess in part it's pretty guilt-free (hell, you might be doing them a favor) and also because I think that they make for cool monsters that imply some larger, supernatural threat to deal with later.

There are lots of undead monsters at all challenge ratings, but I think two of the most versatile and ubiquitous are skeletons and zombies. I'll leave the former for another day (even though I think I actually like them more as monsters) so we can focus on these Romero-esque shamblers.

Let's break the zombie down: How do we use this thing?

Well, let's talk about the various important elements of the zombie, and how it relates to 1st level adventurers.

Something you'll learn from DMing a 1st level adventure, especially if you've been running a lot of mid-to-high-level stuff, is that you need to be very careful not to kill your players. If you're the kind of DM who really takes an adversarial role with your players, the lower their level, the easier they are to kill. But there's nothing preventing you from just stomping them with three krakens at a time, and there's little fun in that. I think a good DM is always trying to hit a sweet spot in which the players are challenged but are also probably going to win the day.

At the highest levels, players are so powerful that you can throw pretty much whatever you want at them. But the inverse is also correct: PCs will go down very, very easily at low levels.

Let's talk about a zombie's offensive capabilities.

First off, and importantly, a zombie has a movement speed of 20. That's slower than any playable race's speed, which means that a player character will always be able to run away from a zombie. That being said, a zombie can dash, like any other creature, and can close that distance at the expense of their attack, but could get an opportunity attack if the player tries to run away. Still, a zombie is slow, and that means that players have a good chance to get in a hit or two before the zombie becomes a real threat.

They have a single attack that has a +3 to hit and deals 1d6+1 bludgeoning damage on a hit.

Characters wearing medium or heavy armor will typically have an AC of 16, or maybe 15 if they're in scale mail with only a +1 to Dexterity. If they have a shield, bump that up to 17 or 18. Dex-based characters in light armor might have an AC of 13 or 14. A creature with no armor and 10 Dexterity only has an AC of 10. But let's assume that the targets the zombies are more likely to go after, because they have to wade into melee range as well, will have an AC of about 16 on average. That means the zombie will have to roll an 13 or higher to hit, which is only roughly 1/3 of the time. Against a true tank - like a fighter or paladin in chain mail with a shield - they're only going to hit on a 15 or higher, which means they're only hitting just over 1/4 of the time.

That's actually great for a monster that 1st level characters fight - you want them to miss more often than they hit, because a hit looks really bad at 1st level.

Even if you have a Barbarian who rolled insanely high stats and has a +5 Con at level 1, and maybe is a variant human who took the tough feat, they're still only going to have 19 health at level 1.

Most characters won't have nearly that much. A Monk might have a +2 to Con, and starts with just 10 HP.

The zombie's slam attack will do 2-7 damage, with an average of 4.5. That means that a single hit will often take about half a target's health. If it hits a wizard or sorcerer, who might have a +1 to Con, they could take them down in a single unlucky hit.

Still, they're unlikely to, and characters with lower AC and health should generally try to stay away.

With only a +3 to hit and not a huge amount of damage output, one might wonder how a zombie gets a CR of 1/4, rather than being 1/8 or even 0.

That's why we need to look at their defensive capabilities.

First, an argument for a lower CR: their AC is only 8, which is far lower than most things in the game. A level 1 player will generally have a +5 or +4 to hit with their primary attacks, and that means that you only need to roll a 3 (or 4) or higher on the d20 to hit these guys. We can reasonably assume that in most fights with zombies, every attack against a zombie will land.

How can this be allowed? Because a zombie has 22 hit points. For comparison, most other CR 1/4 monsters have under 20 hit points, with a lot of them hovering around 10, maybe a bit more.

An attack with the heaviest (non-firearm) weapon you can muster (a lance, greataxes, maul, or greatsword) will do 12 damage on a hit, plus a modifier, so a maximum of 17. That means that, without a crit, the best roll a level 1 player can land will still not actually take a zombie down in a single strike.

In fact, I think that there are only a couple 1st level spells that can do 22 damage or more on a non-critical hit.

The point is: a zombie isn't going to go down immediately, and with the action economy so sparse at low levels, that means that a party up against an evenly-matched number of zombies won't be able to take them all out before they get a turn, even if their initiative is terrible.

Beyond that, though, zombies also have Undead Fortitude. This is a trait that prevents them from dying when they get hit with a killing blow. If they're reduced to 0 hit points, they can make a Con save with a DC equal to 5 + the damage they've just taken, and if they succeed, they drop to 1 instead. There's no limit on how many times they can do this, so a zombie could actually take far more than just two or three hits to go down.

There are two exceptions to this, though: if the damage is from a critical hit, the zombie automatically fails (this I think generally represents the Romero zombie convention of zombies requiring a head shot.) The other exception is radiant damage.

At level 1, I think that only Clerics (and I guess Divine Soul Sorcerers) have access to radiant damage (paladins get it at level 2,) so this will, once again, encourage the party to pack a cleric. Their Guiding Bolt, which does 4d6, could actually take out a zombie in one hit, though only if you roll very high (two 5s and two 6s minimum.)

Now, the DC of undead fortitude will often make the save fail, so it's not as if this will make theme extremely resilient. But it will sometimes extend their longevity.

If we sum this all up: we have a monster that is slow and very easy to hit, and does not a terribly huge amount of damage, though enough to be a real threat to a low-level character. What does that mean?

It means a single zombie is very rarely going to be much of a threat. But in hordes, the amount of damage needed to take them down will be fairly high. The party will thus want to make use of their slow speed to keep them at a distance.

In fact, I think that a tactically exciting zombie fight, and one you could do at low levels, is actually basically just Night of the Living Dead. The party can have a big building with barred doors that can keep the zombies away or at least bottlenecked into narrow entrances. Melee characters can then man those entrances and swing at the zombies that come in, while ranged can shoot down at them from above.

Given those advantages, you could use a lot more zombies than would typically be recommended, so long as you don't have too many of them in a position to attack at a time. Large numbers will tax resources and force players to be strategic, but as long as it's not like every player character is surrounded on all sides by them (unless they've really messed up) you should have a winnable scenario.

Spell Points Rule Option

 You might be surprised at how many optional rules variations they suggest in the Dungeon Master's Guide. I think that a lot of players (myself included) memorize 5th Edition's rules and like to get it all correct to the letter to resolve ambiguities in-game, though even then there are a lot of rules that are technically optional (like flanking!) that people tend to throw in anyway.

One that I find really interesting is Spell Points.

I only came to D&D on the cusp of my 30s, and so my background in RPGs was primarily with things like Final Fantasy (and other Squaresoft RPGs from the 90s) as well as games like The Elder Scrolls, and obviously World of Warcraft.

So, to me, the natural way that a spellcaster works in a game is that you have a resource - Mana, MP, Magicka - usually something that starts with an M (though my first, Mario RPG, had FP for "Flower Points," because the magic in that game was linked to the Fire Flower found in Mario games). It was actually pretty mind-blowing to read the rules of D&D and have this whole "spell slot" system.

In many ways, the systems are similar - you have limited resources to cast spells (with the exception of Cantrips) but there are some oddities that arise from the spell slot system which, if you're used to D&D by now, will seem like the normal state while the optional Spell Point system in the DMG causes weird things to happen.

Here's how Spell Points work:

Spells that would otherwise cost a spell slot now cost a number of spell points to cast.

1st level spells cost 2,

2nd level spells cost 3

3rd level spells cost 5

4th level costs 6

5th level costs 7

6th level costs 9

7th level costs 10

8th level costs 11

9th level costs 13

So, you can see how this is kind of divided by tier. Spells a pure caster can use in the same tier go up in cost by 1 per level, but when you jump to a new tier of play for spell levels 3, 6, and 9, the price goes up by 2.

A pure caster will get a higher number of spell points with each level, and be able to cast higher-level spells, so a level 1 pure caster will get 4 spell points (allowing for two 1st level spells, just like the normal system.) At level 3, they can now cast 2nd level spells, and have 14 spell points, which similarly lets them cast 4 1st level spells and two 2nd level spells, much as they would in the normal system.

But the distinction here is that they could, if they wanted, instead cast 7 1st level spells, or they could cast 4 2nd level spells and just a single 1st level spell.

While I'm not going to do the math for every level (by level 20 you get 133 spell points) I imagine that it translates to what you would get if you traded out the spell slots for spell points.

But by breaking these into a more fungible currency/resource, it makes spellcasting far, far more flexible.

Let's actually look at that 20th level character. At 20 you're pretty godlike in power, but with spell points, this becomes insane:

At level 20, using this system, you could cast 10, that's right 10 9th level spells (and a single 2nd level.)

Now, I have never played a high-level pure caster. The highest-level character I ever played was a level 18 Artificer in a one-shot. As a half-caster, he'd be the equivalent of a level 9 pure caster, so he'd have 57 spell points and could cast up to 5th level spells. Now, as an artificer, and specifically an armorer, a lot of his most useful spells were utility. So I could do something like cast Faerie Fire 28 times in a day. Or, I could blast out 11 lightning bolts.

While spell slots are a limited resource, in intense battles at high level, time and the action economy are the bigger concern, which means that generally, you're going to want to use the most action-efficient spells.

As a DM, I've found that if you want a fight to be intense at higher levels (even just 11) you're going to want to have a few encounters to sap the players of their capabilities. The spell slot system allows players to easily conserve resources for the final fight. Let's say that you're a level 11 Wizard in such a rush to a climactic fight. You might decide that, until you're fighting the big dragon, you're going to hold on to all your 6th, 5th, and maybe at least one of your 4th level slots so that you can bring out the big guns. That's easy enough to do.

But with spell points, any cast spell is going to drain your one resource pool.

On the other hand, if you can get to that final fight without draining too much - maybe the party goes invisible and uses Pass without Trace to get by the minions and go straight to the big bad. Then, you can unload on the dragon with a 6th level spell every round for six rounds, which will probably be enough to kill the thing pretty easily.

Essentially, I think this system will force players to be more considerate in their resource management, but it will also mean that DMs have to be more aware of how much burn can happen in a short period of time.

I'd say that this will make spellcasters strictly more powerful, even if it requires careful use. But as a DM, it'll also mean that your Lich can now cast Finger of Death 11 times a day.

It is definitely a rule I'd be willing to try in a one-shot.