Critical Role and Campaign Three: Continuity?

 This past Thursday, Critical Role launched its third campaign, introducing us to a new* party and a new setting - the spire-city of Jrusar on the continent of Marquet.

(As a note, there are some spoilers in here for the first two campaigns.)

As someone who has been a big fan, having watched/listened to the entirety of the first two campaigns and the other Exandria-set one-shots and mini-arcs, this is a lot to be excited for. While I play plenty of D&D on a weekly basis, Critical Role is so well-produced and entertaining that I'm happy to be an audience member.

Critical Role's campaigns take place on the world of Exandria, which has become a canonical setting for D&D thanks to the show's popularity (to be fair, in a certain way, every homebrew world is "canonical" thanks to the limitlessness of the game's meta-settings).

The first campaign mostly took place on the continent of Tal'dorei, though the party, Vox Machina, did go through a few arcs visiting the other major continents. The second campaign, with the Mighty Nein, was set almost exclusively on and around the continent of Wildemount (which was probably the one they spent the least time on in the first campaign.)

One thing I noted during Campaign Two was that DM Matt Mercer was very reluctant to make reference to the events or characters of the first campaign. There seemed to be a kind of rule in place that it was to be pretty fully-separate. Now, to be fair, there was a bit of overlap. For one thing, a memorable NPC from the first campaign was brought back in a much more prominent role as the quasi-god for one of the party's clerics to worship (behind-the-scenes, Laura Bailey had initially intended to make a Warlock character, for whom Artagan would be a pretty classic Archfey patron, but when her husband Travis Willingham decided to make a Warlock, she chose to rework the concept as a Cleric, though even if it was mechanically a cleric character, flavor-wise it really blurred the line.) Apart from a brief meeting with a major NPC from the first campaign toward the end of the second - which was mostly just "we need to talk to a powerful wizard" - there was a pretty solid separation between the campaigns - no one watching the Mighty Nein adventures would feel any sense of continuity lockout.

Campaign Three looks to be relaxing some of those restrictions.

First off: this summer, Critical Role had a short mini-campaign called Exandria Unlimited. This was DM'd by guest Aabria Iyengar, letting Matt Mercer play alongside Liam O'Brien and Ashley Johnson, along with other guests Robbie Daymond and Aimee Carrero. The whole thing was I believe eight episodes, and while it resolved one story, it left things very much in the air.

However, when players were being brought to the table to introduce their characters, it turned out that Liam O'Brien's Orym, Ashley Johnson's Fearne, and Robbie Daymond's Dorian are also going to be part of the third campaign. (I don't know if Daymond is permanently joining the cast or not, but it seems highly possible.)

Already, this means that there's a bit of backstory from EXU for viewers to perhaps want to go back to in order to fill out what they know of these characters. But also, EXU was set on Tal'dorei, and as a result, was more firmly tied into the events of the first campaign. In fact, Orym is a member of the Air Ashari, a society that is led by Keyleth, Marisha Ray's character from that first campaign. Indeed, Orym appears to have been sent on his quest by Keyleth herself, which creates a firm line connecting his story with that of the first campaign.

But beyond even that, after these three were introduced, Travis Willingham wasn't even there when the first combat began. However, when he arrived, there was another surprise - his character was also familiar.

Sir Bertrand Bell was a character created for The Search for Grog, a post-campaign one-shot (though it became a two-shot) that was made possible after Willingham's infamously low-intelligence goliath Barbarian Grog drew a particularly disastrous card from the Deck of Many Things. Given that Grog's soul had been sucked out and hidden away in Pandemonium while his body was left in a catatonic state, Willingham naturally needed a different character to play, thus giving us the braggart and charlatan (but nevertheless capable) Bell.

Sir Bertrand was at a fairly high level for the Search for Grog, in order to match the rest of the party (some of whom were even level 20) but was de-leveled to 5 (still more than the rest of the party, who are all level 3) for this campaign. I'm not sure how that will work in the long run.

Indeed, I'm not really sure how the "long run" will work for this campaign. EXU ended with what I thought was the implication that it would be just one season of an ongoing campaign that would pick up perhaps next year. But with 3/5 of the party joining CR's primary campaign, I wonder how that will work.

We've only had one episode with the other half of the party - Ashton, FCG, Imogen, and Laudna. Laudna does seem to be encouraging a lot of speculation. We know she is a Warlock and Sorcerer, and on the Warlock side at least has the Undead patron (her use of Form of Dread would seem to confirm that,) but as with any warlock, there's room to speculate on who her patron is.

Fueling that speculation is the fact that Laudna is apparently from Whitestone, which was the home of Vox Machina's Percy de Rolo (and would, after the initial defeat of the Briarwoods, become the party's de facto home base.) Given that the Briarwoods (servants of Vecna who initially killed off almost all of Percy's family) were a vampire and a necromancer, there has been some speculation that Laudna's patron might be them, or perhaps Vecna himself. The Briarwoods are dead, which would make it difficult for them to be warlock patrons (Silas Briarwood was finally destroyed permanently in the final Vox Machina one-shot, which also happened to take place on Marquet) but hey, this is fantasy. The rules can always be bent.

Technically we don't even know what Laudna is. Her art depicts some slightly hidden pointed ears, which could indicate she's an elf, though pointed ears are also sometimes associated with vampires, which could suggest she's a Dhampir (I've even seen it suggested she could be the Briarwoods' daughter, which would be a pretty straightforward origin for a half-vampire).

The point is, this campaign is clearly not cordoned off the way that the second campaign was. If that's the case, I'm hoping that there's also some connection to be seen with the Mighty Nein's adventures.

That being said, I'm very content (and would in fact prefer it) if the third campaign has plenty of time to develop on its own terms.

Sci-Fi D&D, Spelljammer, and Thoughts Coming from Starfinder

 While I've said it before on this blog, I'm not going to assume you've read all my stuff, so here's my background: I've played D&D 5th Edition for about six years. I recently picked up the Starfinder Core Rulebook and Alien Archive, and have been reading the book back and forth to learn the system. I've never played Pathfinder.

The most recent D&D Unearthed Arcana seems to imply that we'll be seeing a Spelljammer campaign setting sourcebook some time next year (I'd guess around early spring).

I've never officially played in a Spelljammer campaign, though I did play in a one-shot my friend ran that took place in Realmspace (it was an all-Warforged party, but with one player who didn't get the memo and played a human.)

While I've never read an actual Spelljammer sourcebook, my basic sense of the setting is the following: it does involve spaceships and interplanetary space, but the physical laws of reality are still very much within a fantasy context. Gravity on the setting's spaceships, known as Spelljammers (though there's also a legendary vessel called The Spelljammer) simply treats the middle of the ship as a plane of gravity, which carries an atmosphere with it. So you can fight on the deck of a ship in open space because your pocket of air will simply stick to the ship (you can also go to the underside of the ship and be stuck to the bottom, as the other side of that plane also attracts things).

Each canonical world in D&D (at least those in the Prime Material Plane) exists within a "crystal sphere" that serves as the bounds of that physical realm. So, places like Krynn (Dragonlance,) Toril (Forgotten Realms,) and Oerth (Greyhawk) are planets that float within their own crystal sphere. These spheres can contain other planets and such, but are relatively small compared to the grand expanse of the universe. As I understand it, simple teleportation magic like the Teleport spell can allow transit between those worlds, as they are still on the same plane of existence, but an individual would be unlikely to have the familiarity to make such transit safe. The Dream of the Blue Veil is a reliable and safe way to travel these worlds.

However, one can also do so in a Spelljammer, which requires you to use magic to open a portal in the Crystal Sphere and enter the Phlogiston, which is a sort of endless ocean of magical matter with currents that can be navigated to take you to other worlds. One of the oddities of the Phlogiston is that, while arcane magic works normally there, the gods are unable to have any effect on it, meaning that divine magic is nullified while in it.

The concept of Spelljammer was meant to evoke archaic models of the universe. Generally, when we look at space travel, it's usually within a science fiction context - even works where the supernatural is a powerful force (such as Star Wars) often treat space-travel as something to be solved with technology. Spelljammer, on the other hand, seems to firmly push things into the magical and fantastical realm. As I understand it (and I could be wrong,) the world of Spelljammer is not one of jump-drives, plasma blasters, and scrappy rust-buckets outfitted with illegal technology, but rather the magical equivalent thereof.

Starfinder (which, having the actual book, I'm obviously a bit more familiar with) mostly plays in a sci-fi context. However, it's also distinctly science-fantasy - it has gods that are not just theoretical, as well as magic and other planes of existence from which outsiders (such as angels, devils, and demons) come. It's also got elves, dwarves, and other such stock fantasy races on top of more original, otherworldly aliens.

But while magic exists, there's less of an emphasis on it. For example, The Drift, which is the most common from of faster-than-light travel, does happen to be another plane, but it can only be reached via technological means (the technology happened to be gifted to the various mortal races by a god, but on the other hand, it was the god/goddess of artificial intelligence, so we get a bit of a ping-pong effect here.)

The ships in Starfinder reflect a diverse number of alien homeworlds and designs, but they look more compatible with Star Trek, Star Wars, and Battlestar Galactica than Spelljammer's "sailing ship but in space" looks.

Starfinder is based on the Pathfinder rules system (and to be fair, as someone who has not played Pathfinder, I don't really know how much has changed) but it's clearly been overhauled to accommodate a more sci-fi genre experience. For example, there are skills one can learn like "Computers" and "Engineering," and "Piloting."

Class design is also very in-universe. The Mechanic could arguably be likened to the Artificer, but it has many abilities that only make sense in a sci-fi setting where there are computers to hack. The Technomancer, which is Starfinder's Wizard/Sorcerer equivalent, does focus on spellcasting, but you also get abilities that, for instance, draw on the power of an ordinary battery (which is usually used to power various technological devices or serve as ammunition for energy weapons).

Clearly, Paizo was not willing to just slap on some new races and subclasses can call it a day in designing Starfinder. However, this does carry with it the consequence that, while you can convert a Pathfinder character to work in Starfinder, it is pretty much a separate product line.

When it comes to Spelljammer, I don't think that Wizards of the Coast would want to break it off as a truly separate game, and I think as a result it has to bow to the demands of the fantasy genre.

On one hand, I get that - and I would really benefit from the ability to use my huge library of 5E books to provide content for a potential Spelljammer campaign.

I guess the question I then have is if Spelljammer must give up some of the sci-fi tropes that I enjoy. Even though I think of myself as more of a fantasy guy than a sci-fi guy at this point, I grew up obsessed with spaceships and robots. While Starfinder has a whole dedicated system to hacking computers or building starships or running vehicle chases, I suspect that at least some of that would require a bit of homebrewing.

Of course, this is all speculative until we actually get an updated Spelljammer book - and that's not actually confirmed yet.

Starfinder has a default setting written into its core rulebook, but I think the system is easily versatile enough to let a GM homebrew a new setting. While I know some people really prefer a rules system to have the setting and specificity built in (I think that Matt Colville talked about how he had designed a class that was specific to its setting, and how this was good practice,) I sort of feel differently. Especially for rules systems, but even for something as broad as a class, I think giving them a great deal of flexibility in the lore allows people to do with them what they want. I like that, for example, various Colleges for Bards are just a broad sense of their vibe and style, rather than specific places in a specific setting (though giving examples from various worlds is fine).

I don't know what the ratio of DMs/GMs is between people who run things in established versus homebrew settings, but I feel like part of what makes TTRPGs so fun is that you get to be so inventive. While I've enjoyed running my Ravnica-based game (and at some point want to run a Ravenloft one - though that's much more homebrew-friendly) I do really miss having full control over the setting and letting myself build the world to serve the kind of adventures I want to run (and add in things the players come up with as canonical to the world.)

That's getting a bit off-track. I do really appreciate the way that WotC (and predecessors) handle the kind of meta-settings. The Prime Material Plane is large enough to allow everyone's homebrew world to be "canonical," just as the Demiplane of Dread allows every homebrew domain to be.

But, the question is: within those settings, can you make significant shifts to the genre?

I Kinda Just Want There to be More Metroid Dread

 Metroid Dread is a good game. It's hard to get a total aggregate of players' opinions, but I think most people have been very positive on the game.

The second time around, the density of bosses didn't bother me so much, though I suppose when you're blazing through the game you're going to hit a whole bunch of them in a row anyway. I still think the music doesn't really have the iconic quality Super Metroid did. Is that just the benefit of almost 30 years of familiarity? Possibly. The thing is, the musical moments that excited me the most were the ones that were updates of those familiar tunes - the prologue is just a rearrangement of the Super Metroid prologue music, and the lengthy cutscene around the middle of Dread uses a rearrangement of the Lower Brinstar/Red Soil theme from Super Metroid (which, to be fair, is one of the best tracks from that soundtrack.)

The only new piece of music that I think really got stuck in my head was the Ferenia music, which does have an ominousness to it, but I also think that the electronic instrumentation they've chosen reflects an issue I've had with a lot of Nintendo music in the past couple decades - there's a kind of tininess to it that makes it seem less grand than it could.

Granted, I think it's fully appropriate for Metroid to have a somewhat electronic sound - we don't need to go fully symphonic for it - but I think there could have been something a bit bigger about the sound. I'm not a music theorist, so I don't really have suggestions on how one would improve it.

I think the game's most profound victory is the feel of its controls. While it took a little time to get used to holding down the various shoulder buttons and such, once you're comfortable with the free-aim system, it makes you feel extremely precise. Samus is also so much more agile than she felt in Super Metroid (the wall-jump, which was not so ubiquitous an ability in 1994, was always this kind of super-special technique that was very difficult to pull off. I'm glad that Metroid Dread makes it very easy.

I do think that the graph-paper-y layout of the environments feels a little odd in this modern day of video games. Even supposedly natural cavern systems look as if they're constructed out of evenly-sized blocks, though I appreciate how the game nods to the idea of a more natural three-dimensional space, such as how the backgrounds in Ferenia show staircases that would allow someone who isn't hopping around like a lunatic to access its floors.

Dread is hardly small for a Metroid game. Indeed, I think it's likely that its whole map is actually significantly larger than that of Super Metroid (I'd like to see ZDR overlaid on Zebes to compare them - should google that). But I guess just in this day and age (when I'm a more practiced gamer and also less likely to give up for a play session if I die to a boss) it couldn't last super-long. Metroid Dread is decidedly old-school, and was built in part as a new playground for people who have been speed-running Super Metroid for nearly 30 years. While my second run (a sort of "foot off the brake but not always on the gas" attempt) reduced my time from 12 to 5 hours, I've seen people pulling off runs that go under two hours already.

I'm not really someone who wants to dedicate himself to shaving off seconds from a completion time, and if anything, I'd love to do another run where I stop to smell the roses. (In a way, I almost regret going for 100% on my first run).

One thing I think could be cool is if there were to fully remake Super Metroid with the mechanics of Metroid Dread. You'd certainly have to tweak a few things (for one, having Missiles and Super Missiles as a separate attack in Super Metroid allows them to introduce the latter far earlier.) But most of the items you gain in Super Metroid already exist in Dread, so I think the biggest challenges would just be creating the proper assets (and hey, you've already got Kraid!)

As I've said earlier, creating DLC for Dread could be difficult, as ZDR is kind of a self-contained labyrinth. But I wouldn't mind having some kind of shorter, mini-metroid game that maybe allows you to carry over your abilities from the main game and pick up a couple new ones.

The big hope is that this game's sales numbers (which I think have been quite high) will reinvigorate the brand, meaning we could get more 2D Metroid games without waiting another 19 years. We'll see.

Critical Role Campaign 3 Begins!

 Well, after months away, we finally have the third campaign of Critical Role running!

Oh, and it's spoilers from here on out, FYI.

5.5 Ideas: Fighters

 5.5 is about three years off, but its eventuality is an opportunity to talk about the kinds of changes I'd like to see moving forward with D&D.

We can probably safely assume that the existing PHB classes will be reprinted in the new PHB (though I'm hoping the Artificer sees print there as well.) The Fighter is a staple of the game, and has existed in one form or another since the beginning (I believe it was originally a "Fighting Man" or something - never understood why they didn't just call it a Warrior, but oh well.)

While a powerful class, I think the Fighter in 5th Edition is a bit lacking. Ultimately, your sublcass gives you the far more interesting features than the class itself.

If you set aside subclass features, the fighter really only gets three unique features - Second Wind, Action Surge, and Indomitable. Action Surge and Indomitable get improved as you level up, allowing you to use them more frequently. Meanwhile, the only other features you get with the class are Fighting Style (which Paladins and Rangers also get - albeit with fewer options,) Extra Attack (which you get more of than any other class, but not until level 11) and Ability Score Improvement (of which you get two extra compared to most classes.)

Now, Fighters also get subclass features at five different levels, which is the most of any class (I think Clerics do as well). Subclasses vary greatly in terms of the things they provide.

Philosophically, we might decide that it's fine that the base fighter is fine as it is - a bare scaffold on which to hang a more interesting subclass. But let's say we disagree.

WotC has made it pretty clear that they're very happy with the Battlemaster, one of the three subclasses from the PHB, and they've added new maneuvers to use with it, along with feats that allow other classes (or non-Battlemaster Fighters) to get a lesser version of the subclass' defining feature.

To me, the obvious thing would be to redesign the Fighter so that they all get Maneuvers fueled by superiority dice.

In order to balance this out, you might need to nerf or even remove things like Indomitable or Action Surge. The former I wouldn't terribly mind, but I do think that the latter would probably cause an outcry - Action Surge is just cool, while, in my experience, Indomitable is just a fancy way to fail the saving throw a second time.

So I'd say keeping Action Surge (maybe nerfing it to only ever being a once-a-rest ability to make room) would be the right call.

But I think that giving all Fighters a choice of maneuvers in the early levels - maybe 2 (and perhaps holding Action Surge for a later level) would be really cool. The whole concept of a Fighter is that they're a disciplined and skilled warrior, and I think maneuvers really reflect that concept well.

Now, there is an argument to be made that Fighters' simplicity should be preserved. For example, for a brand new player that wants a very simple class to play, I always recommend the Champion Fighter as the absolute simplest class/subclass, and adding maneuvers to the class would mean that everyone is at least operating on a Battlemaster level of complexity.

Still, I think it could energize the Fighter. On top of that, if this were a base feature, you would have another thing for subclasses to interact with - maybe a redesigned Eldritch Knight can produce various magical effects when they use a maneuver. Or you could redesign the Arcane Archer to use maneuvers rather than a separate-but-very-similar feature with its Arcane Shots.

Overall, I think this would give the Fighter a clearer mechanical identity.

Now, what would happen to the Battlemaster? It might mean just eliminating it as a subclass - as it would basically have become the class class. In general, I think that the PHB should have at least three subclasses per class, so what ought to replace it? The Arcane Archer, if it were redesigned to use maneuvers, might be a possibility, as I think making it clear that Fighters can be ranged and use ranged weapons would be good. On the other hand, it might be a little too similar to the Eldritch Knight.

I actually like the idea of a battlefield-commander subclass. Currently, the Purple Dragon Knight (aka Banneret) technically fills that role, though the mechanical design is... utter crap. So I'd just make a new subclass (maybe call it a Commander) that perhaps places an emphasis on using maneuvers to aid allies - maybe have a way to let your allies use your maneuvers.

Now, getting into subclasses - among the PHB ones, I've basically eliminated one of the three already. The Champion I think should remain simple and easy, and doesn't need huge changes.

So let's talk Eldritch Knights.

My EK is the character I've played longer than any other class or subclass. It's very cool, but I think there are a few things that could be improved.

First off, I wonder if it would be possible to make it (and the Arcane Trickster Rogue) into half-casters like Paladins, Artificers, and Rangers. I think this would likely not be too powerful. Really, just having to get to level 7 to even get 2nd level spells is a huge burden.

I'd also add the following feature at level 3 when taking the subclass - "You can use a weapon or shield as a spellcasting focus for the spells granted by this subclass." Without this, EKs are more or less forced to take Warcaster (or drop their weapon every time they want to cast Shield or other spells) and I think this would just help you play the fantasy of being a battlemage.

I also kind of think it would be cool for the EK to have its own dedicated spell list, but maybe that's overkill.

7 Hours Shaved off of My Second Metroid Dread Run - Still Not Fast Enough

 My initial run of Metroid Dread took about 12 hours. My second (still on normal mode) took just over 5. Now, the second time around I basically did zero backtracking. I paused in a few places to collect some scattered hidden items (I did the Burenia Shinespark Puzzle again I think just to prove to myself I could, which probably added a good ten minutes,) though it also let me skip a whole bunch of Burenia en route to the Gravity Suit).

I don't know exactly how time is tracked - as I understand, pausing also pauses the stopwatch, as it were. But I also suspect that multiple attempts on a boss will count toward it.

Some of the latter bosses still gave me some trouble - I think Escue took me like 4 or 5 attempts. Raven Beak took I believe 4 attempts.

Actually, on Raven Beak - first off, what a cool fight (though the second phase seems very dependent on RNG). I found that just spamming the wave beam was actually faster than missiles during the counter animation in the second phase - I was able to get him to phase 3 in just two counters, rather than 3.

I also found that 4 Power Bombs was not quite enough to wipe out every big "sun" ability he used in the final phase, so I was forced to dodge (the penultimate attempt I made I got the sun and his charged shots at the same time, which wiped me out).

Under 8 hours but over 4 meant that I got the Samus Returns image for the gallery. I did this on a new file, so my Chozo Archives unlocked on the first file are not filled in (I think I got the Hanubia one, though, as there are like two items to find there, and I got them both.)

One thing that I read is that when you unlock all the teleporters, you can choose which one you go to, which would have been very useful for backtracking to get items, but I haven't yet confirmed that.

Other than just never dying to bosses, I'm not really sure what I could do to shave off that extra hour and ten minutes I'd need to get the under 4 hour ending reward. I don't know that I'm going to really work too hard to do so - after two full runs, I think I should probably let Metroid Dread sit for a while so I don't totally burn out on it.

I do still really hope that Nintendo either finds a way to add some DLC content or comes out with another Metroid game in the next couple years. Of course, in theory Metroid Prime 4 is still in the works. I'm very curious to see what future Metroid games will be about. Supposedly Dread is the culmination of the story that started with the original game, though I kind of feel like it's more of a sequel to Metroid Fusion, which was sort of the start of a new story after Super Metroid.

We'll see.

5.5 Wishlist: Warlocks

 Conceptually, I love the Warlock. It inherently creates a story for your character - what did you do to contact your patron (or did they contact you?) What were the terms of your pact? Is the deal complete, or do you have further responsibilities?

Mechanically, Warlocks are pretty unique. I do think that on the surface, a lot of players might be disappointed to find that Warlocks don't have the same versatility as a Wizard. You might expect that the deal you made gives you deep and broad knowledge on how to use magic, but the gameplay focus on one very good cantrip and a lot of features that aren't really spells might feel like it's missing the class fantasy.

One thing I would highly recommend is that you can "re-skin" the wizard as a warlock. You can play your wizard as if you made a dark deal (or not even dark - not every patron is scary and evil) with your patron to unlock the secrets of magic, and then you can basically treat your spellbook as something that your patron gave to you - to go farther, you could even flavor your "research" and other additions to your spellbook as things that your patron has granted to you.

But mechanically, I want to talk about the Warlock as it is.

In terms of tactical gameplay, I think the Warlocks is basically the magical recreation of a martial class. If you think of Eldritch Blast as a weapon (which it looks a lot like if you get Agonizing Blast,) you can basically compare it to a Fighter who uses a heavy crossbow as their main attack - only that you get your four attacks per turn three levels earlier.

The rest of the class is sort of supplemental to that, but if you set aside the desire to be a super-versatile spellcaster like a Wizard or Sorcerer (and honestly, given the small number of spells they learn, I don't even know that we can really call Sorcerers super-versatile) what you wind up with is a very strong damage-dealer that has a ton of powerful abilities on top of that.

Still, we're not here to laud every aspect of the current design - we're here to see what could be improved.

Another thing to bear in mind here is that the intent is not solely to make the classes more powerful. The intent is to improve gameplay, and just making every class a lot stronger could potentially make the game less fun when every encounter is a pushover.

But, we've got to look at what could be improved with the Warlock.

First and foremost, I want to address the big old elephant in the room: the Hexblade.

The Hexblade is simultaneously very powerful mechanically and very odd flavorfully.

The official story is that your patron is a sentient weapon. While it bears some connection to the Shadowfell (maybe specifically the Raven Queen,) that connection is only implied. Unlike the other patrons, the driving theme of a Hexblade's mechanics are, well, a mechanical focus on melee combat.

In two prominent actual-play streams, we've seen the Hexblade at best tangentially connect with the true patron and in other cases not even remotely. Fjord in Critical Role's campaign 2 did at least have a connection to a magical weapon, but the actual patron would fit much better with the Great Old One, or even closer, the Fathomless (which didn't exist yet when the campaign started.) Really, the "blade" element of the pact was really the pact boon. In Dimension 20's the Unsleeping City, Sofia, the drunken master monk, multiclasses into Warlock and gets a hexblade patron, though the patron itself is a sort of avatar of all bodega cats, which I'd say makes more sense as a Fey patron. (I haven't seen the second Unsleeping City season, but I also understand that their pure Hexblade warlock character actually has a pact with a devil, which pretty clearly means it should be a Fiend patron, unless there are other plot elements I'm unaware of.)

The point is, the flavor of the Hexblade is so oddly specific that no one seems to want to actually use it, while its mechanics are so strong that people will ignore the flavor in order to take the subclass.

I would like to see the Hexblade's mechanics broken up like a big company violating antitrust laws. Hexblade's Curse is fine, but the existence of Hex Warrior - with your hex weapon (allowing you to use charisma for weapon attacks and damage rolls) and the addition of medium armor proficiency and shield proficiency - is just too good.

The Pact of the Blade is there to let any warlock wield a weapon and use it in place of cantrips like eldritch blast. But at this point, anyone who actually wants to play that way would basically be a fool not to go with the Hexblade.

So, the first thing I'd do is make any summoned weapons with Pact of the Blade get those Hex Weapon features, regardless of your patron. Next, I'd make the ability to get medium armor and shields an eldritch invocation - perhaps one that requires Pact of the Blade.

This would certainly have consequences. It would make it a little less convenient to do a multiclass dip into Warlock on, say, your paladin. But I think it would also make other Blade Pact playstyles much more viable.

Next, I think you could revisit expanded spell lists. For most classes, if a subclass grants new spells, you simply get them always. I think that this should apply to Warlocks as well. Generally, having a bunch of spells available isn't really game-breaking as long as you're limited by spell slots.

I think I'd also have all Warlocks automatically learn Eldritch Blast. Not having it seems like a trap.

Now, what about those spell slots?

I'm a little torn here. On one hand, I'd love to get more spell slots to work with as a warlock. But I also think that they serve as an important limitation. Having just one at level 1 sucks, but that pain fades fairly quickly. I might look into seeing if you could get 3 at tier 2, 4 at tier 3, and 5 at tier 4 and see if that didn't make them too powerful.

A part of me also feels like perhaps Mystic Arcanum could work a little differently. I get the desire/need to keep them from refreshing on a short rest - two 9th level spells per day would be a bit much. But I think it would be cool to let you learn multiples at each level and swap them out - maybe you can only "prepare" one per day of each level.

Now, in terms of subclasses:

I think that the options in the PHB are a great baseline for Otherworldly Patrons in terms of flavor. Naturally, the Fiend makes a ton of sense as the sort of classic Faustian Warlock patron. I do wonder if perhaps they could even make separate subclasses for devils and demons, though, which could be interesting - taking the basics of the current Fiend patron and making it specifically a Devil.

Mechanically, I think that all of the PHB sublcasses suffer a bit from overcautious conservatism on the part of the designers. The Great Old One, which is my favorite patron flavor-wise, suffers tremendously from a number of supremely underwhelming features. What does Entropic Ward even have to do with ancient alien monstrosities? And Create Thrall is cool but profoundly situational.

I'd like to see the Great Old One get a full redesign around cosmic horror tropes - perhaps something like an aura that causes foes fear and maybe psychic damage. We did, of course, see similar ideas at work with the Aberrant Mind sorcerer, but I think that we could deal more in hidden knowledge and madness than the Aberrant Mind's focus on body horror.

Of the three originals, I think that the Fiend probably holds up the best, but each subclass in there could use at least a new coat of paint (though seriously, give me a totally redesigned Great Old One warlock.)

There might be some eldritch invocations from later books that might be good to work into the new PHB, but I think that the overall mechanic of invocations should 100% be kept - it's one of the things that makes Warlocks so cool (if you've never taken Repelling Blast, I highly recommend it - potentially multiple pushbacks per turn that have no save against them are very, very good. I neutralized a Glabrezu in one turn by knocking it into the River Styx.)

Now, regarding pact boons. I don't know if the Talisman boon from Tasha's has been terribly popular - it seems a bit underpowered. Pact Boons might be fine the way they are - less a powerful feature in their own right than something of a scaffold on which to build more powerful abilities (such as the various eldritch invocations that require one of the boons).

One thing I'd like to see the book talk a bit about is the nature of the Patron-Warlock relationship. This can take many forms, but maybe some discussion of the nature of how that power is granted could be interesting.

Anyway, I don't know if I'm going to do this sort of post for every class, but I thought I'd start here.