Napkin Math: Zombie Jamboree

 Ah, necromancy. The forbidden magic. One of the eight schools of magic, necromancy is all about manipulating life-force. I think you could argue that healing spells like Cure Wounds ought to be necromancy, rather than evocation, but the image we usually get with this is specifically the raising of the dead.

Undead-raising spells are spooky, but can also be an interesting tactical choice for your morally-dubious spellcaster. (Though I did see a meme once that had that guy at the desk in the park with a sign that read "Necromancy is just recycling. Enchantment is slavery. Change my mind!" which, you know, there might be a fair point there - unless the souls of the undead minions are trapped in those bodies, of course.)

There are only a handful of spells that can raise the dead to fight for you. Some are damaging spells that raise a minion as a side-effect if you kill the target, like Finger of Death or Negative Energy Flood. For the purposes of this post, I want to look at the spells that specifically bring forth undead minions to serve you as the primary effect of the spell.

That gives us Animate Dead, Summon Undead, Danse Macabre, and Create Undead - actually a fairly short list.

The question I want to address is this: what spell gets you the most bang for your buck in terms of damage output from your undead minions.

Notably, a Necromancer Wizard gets an explicit boost to Animate Dead, which we can cover when we look at that specific spell.

These spells also come at different levels. Animate Dead and Summon Undead (the only "summon" spell out of Tasha's that isn't a conjuration spell) are 3rd level. Danse Macabre is a 5th level spell. Create Undead is 6th level.

They also have varying casting times, meaning that some might require you to plan well in advanced of using the minions, while others can be cast mid-combat.

Generally speaking, upcasting a spell is not usually as effective as casting a natively higher-level spell. A 7th level Fireball, for example, does 12d6 damage, while a Delayed Blast Fireball does that at minimum, with all the additional effects you can have with that spell. Or, for a lower-level example, upcasting Shatter to 3rd level does 4d8 (about 18) damage in a 10-ft radius sphere, while a Fireball does 8d6 (28) in a 20-ft radius sphere.

Still, I think that the best I can do to see how these spells actually compare with one another is to see how they do when cast at the same level. That means 6th.

We'll then take the minimum level a spellcaster would have to be to cast them (11th) as our baseline. So, we can probably assume a +5 Intelligence at this level as well as a +4 proficiency bonus.

Now, attack modifiers will vary here, so I think we're going to need to look at this not just on a "damage per hit" basis, but a "damage per attack" basis to see the general output.

There are a lot of other nuances, like the resilience of the minions - if the thing doesn't last a round, it's not going to be doing much damage. Still, I'm going to assume a sort of perfect scenario here - a level playing field where the minions can all attack while the monster is focused on some other target and not using AoE abilities.

I think, also, for the sake of the exercise, I'm going to have the available "material components" favor whatever allows for the higher damage output (admittedly, zombies and skeletons have very different strengths - a zombie can take a lot more punishment, but a skeleton has a higher chance to hit and can potentially fight from range).

So, let's look at each spell and see what our minions can do.

Animate Dead:

Oddly, this spell raises more minions by upcasting it for each level than the initial spell grants you - only 1 at 3rd level, but 2 additional minions for each level beyond 3rd. Thus, at 6th level, this can raise 7 minions. It takes 1 minute to cast, so this needs to be done outside of combat in most cases, and the minions remain raised indefinitely, but only under your control for 24 hours (though you can cast it again to get back that control.)

Notably, this spell does require you to use your bonus action to use it. Depending on your other class features, this might be a problem, but I think Wizards usually have this free.

We'll assume you have skeletons to raise for maximum damage output.

A skeleton has a +4 to hit and deals 1d6+2 on each shortsword or shortbow attack. A Necromancy Wizard adds their proficiency bonus to that damage, so it becomes 1d6+6.

At level 11, we're just into tier 3, so a "boss" level enemy might have an AC of 20, though it might not have quite progressed to that point. Let's give it a 19 AC to split the difference.

Thus, our skeletons have the following array:

Miss: 1-14, (70%) Hit 15-19 (25%), Crit 20 (5%)

Hit Damage: 1d6+2 (5.5)

Crit Damage: 2d6+2 (9)

Necromancy Hit Damage: 1d6+6 (9.5)

Necromancy Crit Damage: 2d6+6 (13)

Thus, each skeleton has the following damage on average per attack:

Normal: 1.375 + 0.45, or 1.825

Necromancy: 2.375 + 0.65, or 3.025

Now, with seven skeletons attacking for us, we get the following total damage per round:

Normal: 12.775

Necromancy: 21.175

So, there we go. That's Animate Dead at 6th level. Let's move on:

Summon Undead:

Summon Undead is one of the Tasha's spells, and is thus way simpler to implement. You don't actually need a corpse to raise with this one - you just need the 300 g material component. You have three options for minion type here. The Putrid version does have the chance to paralyze foes, which could make it way more powerful, but in terms of raw damage output, I think that the Skeletal minion's grave bolt does just slightly more damage (2d4 versus 1d8, so a difference of 0.5 damage on average) and also has the nice benefit of being ranged (actually, the Putrid minion only does 1d6 - it's the ghostly one that does 1d8. Either way, 2d4 wins.)

This spell uses the caster's spell attack modifier to determine the minion's chance to hit, which is probably going to help you out a lot. At 11, with our assumed stats, you have a +9 to hit. Using our AC 19 target dummy, that means you hit on a 10 or higher. Cast at 6th level, you get three attacks per turn, and the damage of each of those hits is also buffed by the upcasting.

Summon Undead only lasts for 1 hour, but can be cast as an action. It also does not require a bonus action to direct your minion, meaning that you can cast other (non-concentration) spells using your full action economy (though for a wizard, concentration might be a bigger thing than bonus actions. Animate Dead only requires you cast it again the next day so that your minions don't start killing indiscriminately.)

So, our array here is:

Miss 1-9 (45%) Hit 10-19 (50%) Crit 20 (5%)

Hit: 2d4 + 3 + 6 (spell's level), for an average of 14 damage

Crit: 4d4+3+6, for an average of 19 damage

Thus, per attack we have 7 + 0.95, which pretty obviously comes to 7.95

With three attacks, that means an average damage per round of 23.85

That's still a bit more than what the Necromancy Wizard gets with Animate Dead, and a whole lot more than any other spellcaster would get.

Danse Macabre:

This is a spell I really like, and as much as I love the Tasha's Summon spells (especially as a DM) this one has a lot going for it. At its base, 5th level, you animate 5 corpses as zombies or skeletons, and each subsequent level you get two more. That actually means that it keeps pace exactly with Animate Dead. This one does require your concentration, and only lasts an hour, but it can be cast with an action and the minions just go inanimate when it's over, rather than potentially turning on you.

This does also require your bonus action to control them.

However, in terms of combat, the big bonus this gets is that you add your spellcasting ability modifier to both their damage and their attack rolls.

So, other than requiring concentration, that makes this strictly better than Animate Dead. (While we'll eventually get a higher proficiency bonus, the buff to attacks is huge.) But let's do the math on it:

At 6th level, you've got 7 minions. Again, we're going to be favorable and say they're all skeletons.

However, by adding our spellcasting ability modifier to the attacks, a skeleton winds up getting a +9 to hit (4 from itself, 5, from our ability). Conveniently, this gives us the same hit/crit array as the Summon Undead example (though if we were to get something like a Wand of the War Mage or Rod of the Pact Keeper, we lose out slightly.)

Hit Damage: 1d6+7, or about 10.5

Crit Damage: 2d6+7, or about 14

Damage Per Attack: 5.25 + 0.7, or 5.95

We have 7 of these guys fighting for us, which gives us 41.65, running away with an enormous lead.

Create Undead:

Now for the weird one. This spell can only be cast at night - I don't know what that means for planes where "night" isn't really a thing. At its base level, you can animate three corpses to become Ghouls. Like Animate Dead, it requires no concentration, but does require you use a bonus action to command them. And also like Animate Dead, you need to re-cast this to retain control over the minions after 24 hours.

Upcasting this gets weird, allowing you to raise ghasts and wights and even mummies, but we're talking the 6th level version.

Now, a ghoul has different attacks. The Bite does more damage but with a lower chance to hit, while the Claws have a higher attack bonus and also a chance to paralyze foes. The DC for this effect is very low - it's just 10 - but paralyzing foes is hugely powerful, so it's worth consideration.

Let's assume, though, that our boss has a hefty Con save so we don't have to consider that.

The damage of the Bite is only 2 higher, with a corresponding difference of two when it comes to hit chance, so my instinct is that the Claws, despite their lower damage, are going to probably give you more damage over time (not to mention the possibility of their paralyzation effect.)

A ghoul's hit bonus with those claws is +4, and the damage is 2d4+2. Notably this will not gain the benefit of the Necromancy Wizard's subclass feature.

So, our array is actually the same as it was with our Skeletons in Animate Dead.

Miss 1-14 (70%) Hit 15-19 (25%) Crit 20 (5%)

Hit Damage: 2d4+2, or 7

Crit Damage: 4d4+2, or 12

Damage per Attack: 1.75 + 0.6, or 2.35

With three ghouls, that comes to 7.05 - which is by far the least impressive of these spells. Interestingly Animate Dead upcasts for much more damage. While the paralyzation effect is amazing if you can get it, with a DC of 10, it's just so rarely going to work even on relatively frail minions that, well, this doesn't really look like it's worth it.

My sense is that Create Undead is less for a player to use, and more for a big bad the party is going to face down the road to use while they're still in tier 1. 3 ghouls is a significant challenge for a party that's level 2 or 3, but I just cannot imagine this being worth the 6th level slot for a player character.

So, overall I think that Danse Macabre comes away as the clear winner of these four spells. Obviously, you can get Animate Dead and Summon Undead at an earlier level. I think that Summon Undead still has a place in your spellbook for a couple reasons - one is that you don't actually need any corpses to cast it. The other is that it's fairly versatile. Skeletons raised by Danse Macabre are still rather easy to kill and will be wiped out by AoE. An Undead Spirit minion, even in its frailest skeletal form, will have 50 HP when cast at 6th level, which means it should be able to survive a fireball (it's also got a 150-foot range in skeletal form, meaning that it can stay pretty far from the fight and shoot from afar).

Now, if you are a Necromancy Wizard, Animate Dead does have the advantage of a full day's duration, and the same subclass feature that buffs their damage also buffs their health by an amount equal to your Wizard level. That's not enormous, but it could mean survival of a big AoE attack, potentially.

Of course, as a Necromancy Wizard you get that spell automatically. It's more of a question of which spells to actually cast. I think that Danse Macabre and Summon Undead are the ones you want to pack.

Curse-Rotted Greatwood and the Path of Sacrifices - Sorcerer Build

 Playing through on a Sorcerer, I'm finding that, as usual, DSIII progress is not particularly easy. I'm at a point where I need about 4000 souls to level up and each foe is dropping about 90, so pretty quickly I've hit a plateau.

While my Mail Breaker with a fire infusion is meant to be a sidearm - for when the foe has just a sliver of health after a Soul Arrow - I do think I'll want to get some Int-scaling weapon at some point. One thing I'm very aware of is that to lock on (which is more important when shooting these spells off) sometimes requires that you get pretty close to a foe - sometimes close enough to aggro them.

The Curse-Rotted Greatwood is technically an optional boss - its primary benefit is getting the Transposing Kiln for all those fun boss items. But it's also usually not that hard a boss to go after in those early levels. However, I am finding that it's a bit hard to deal with on a caster. I have yet to make it to the second phase, unable to burst the big spore-bundle at its front while dodging the attacks of all the respawning hollows. And the lock-on doesn't make your spells home in on that targeted area, so I'm considering just moving forward and leveling up a bit more before going back to it.

I haven't yet raised my attunement at all, so I only have two spells prepared at any given time. I picked up Farron Dart, which is a very fast but also very weak spell, and with basically no poise damage, I find it to be basically useless compared to the normal Soul Arrow.

Also, once again, I find it infuriatingly hard to figure out how to drop into the valley you need to visit to rescue the blind priestess - she teaches miracles, which is admittedly not as important for an Intelligence build. I know you can do it, but I believe fall damage is percentage-based, and most spots do over 100% when you fall. Might just look this up. It actually now occurs to me that I think I forgot to pick up the pyromancy teacher - Pyromancy in DSIII scales with both Intelligence and Faith, so it should be useful to me.

Anyway, given that most bosses do charge you, staying at range isn't totally easy, but I will say that this is a very different playstyle. My main character is actually a Dex-based character (using the Hollowslayer Greatsword, which scales decently with both Dex and Strength) so I should probably consider trying out a bow with that one.

I still think that, of these games, Bloodborne remains my clear favorite. There is, admittedly, less variation in fighting styles, but I also think I just vibe with its gameplay a little better.

Napkin Math: The Way of Mercy's Hand of Harm

 I think the next monk I play will be a Way of Mercy monk. While I'm not super-drawn to healers, I love the Monk class and I also have a longstanding obsession with masks from Renaissance Italy (specifically the Bauta, but also the Plague Doctor). I also love how the Mercy Monk can be a genuinely heroic and good healer who is nevertheless creepy as all hell.

A Mercy Monk is never going to replace a dedicated Cleric or Druid healer, but they can be a great supplement to the party's healing. However, they should also be able to do what a Monk is primarily meant to do - which is to kick a whole lot of ass.

One of the odd considerations to make is the efficiency of spending ki points to deal damage with the Way of Mercy. As a related example, the extra feature introduced in Tasha's, Quickened Healing, is actually strictly worse than a Mercy Monk just using Hand of Healing on themselves (both do nearly the same healing, using your martial arts die and either your Wisdom modifier (Hand of Healing) or Proficiency Bonus (Quickened Healing) but Quickened Healing costs 2 ki and Hand of Healing only costs 1 - so even if your Wisdom modifier is a little low, you should still get more healing per ki out of your subclass feature.)

At higher levels, a Monk can be fairly liberal with ki points. But at lower levels, especially at 3rd level when you get this subclass feature, you might want to figure out the best way to spend your ki.

The most common thing to spend ki on before you hit level 5 is Flurry of Blows. Normally, a Monk can make a single unarmed strike as a bonus action after using the attack action. Flurry of Blows gives you a second strike - meaning that for 1 ki per turn, after you get Extra Attack, you can make four strikes per turn. But you still get 3 for free.

Hand of Harm allows you to add necrotic damage to a hit when you land an unarmed strike. This is equal to your martial arts die plus your wisdom modifier.

Now, especially at lower levels, you probably have a higher Dex than Wisdom modifier. As such, a flurry of blows second strike that lands will probably do more damage (at least on average).

But I've seen it pointed out that there are some major benefits to saving that ki for a Hand of Harm.

The first is crit-fishing. Like Divine Smite, the die rolled for Hands of Harm is also doubled when you tack the damage onto a crit. You don't have to choose whether to spend the ki on the attack until you see the roll, meaning that if you land a crit, you can use the ability, but potentially save it if you don't.

The other, related aspect here is that Hands of Harm is never wasted (unless the target is immune to necrotic damage or was going to die to the regular hit anyway). Flurry of Blows, in a frustrating turn, might not wind up actually giving you any damage if you have low attack rolls. Thus, you could find yourself very frustrated after spending a ki point and getting precisely nothing out of it.

Now, of course, there's nothing here stopping you from doing both except for the limits to your ki as a resource. But in the early levels, or in campaigns where you have a lot of combat between even short rests, you might want to try to be efficient as possible.

Let's actually see if we can calculate the average damage here and see if these assumptions are correct.

I'm going to look at this at level 3. Once you hit level 11, you can spend a single ki for both a Flurry of Blows and Hands of Harm. While this still runs into the pitfall of potentially leaving you high and dry with a bunch of misses, we're going to keep things simpler for now.

At level 3, you haven't had any ASIs and your proficiency bonus hasn't gone up, so you should have the same attack stats as you did when you first rolled up at level 1. I think most Monks will start with a +3 to Dex and either a +2 or +3 to Wisdom (I think with the Standard Array you can either get both Wis and Con to +2 or have one at +3 and the other at +1. For the sake of argument, let's assume that our Monk has spread the love).

A nice tier 1 major villain might have an AC of 16 (generally I've calculated these as starting with 16 and going up by 2 AC each tier for a major, challenging fight in which the monster is likely to live for multiple rounds.)

We've got a +5 to hit, so we hit the target on a roll of 11 or higher.

Now, we also have another thing to consider: while our bonus action attacks are always unarmed strikes, we might be using something like a two-handed quarterstaff for our primary attacks. As a d8 weapon rather than a d4 weapon, that's 2 extra average damage per round. But we can't Hands of Harm with the Quarterstaff.

As such, for now, I'm going to assume we are using the quarterstaff, which means that we're really only paying attention to the bonus action, as the main action is going to be the same either way.

So:

We have the following hit array:

Miss 1-10 (50%) Hit 11-19 (45%) Crit 20 (5%)

The Flurry of Blows is a bit more traditional to calculate.

Each hit with a Flurry of Blows should be 1d4+3, or 5.5 average damage

A crit is 2d4+3, or 8 average damage

So, our total damage per attack is 2.475 + .4, or 2.875 (if that looks low, remember that we're missing half the time).

Because we get two of these,  that's 5.75 damage per bonus action.

Now: we're not just looking for that. We're trying to see what that 1 ki point buys us. And typically, it buys us about 5.75 damage.

Here's where it gets tricky:

Hands of Harm also costs 1 ki. But in this case, we only ever spend that ki after the attack roll is made. Let's assume that the player does not have any reason to think that they're going to crit - after all, one out of twenty is somewhat rare, and they'd rather feel like they're using their resources when they can than simply waiting around for something that might not happen. So, they're going to spend this on both hits and crits. (Also, since we're contrasting this with Flurry of Blows, we only have one unarmed strike to put this on, which simplifies things).

What this means is that we can fully excise any misses from this equation.

So, the array is now Hit 11-19 (90%) and Crit 20 (10%)

The damage we add with a hit is 1d4+2, or 4.5 damage.

On a crit, we're adding 2d4+2, or 7 damage.

That comes to 4.05 + 0.7, which is, you know, 4.75.

But I'm a goober! Because the Flurry of Blows doesn't actually buy you two strikes!

While Flurry of Blows does replace your normal Martial Arts bonus action, that free bonus action always gives you that extra strike.

As such, we should have never doubled the 2.875 damage that the ki point bought with Flurry of Blows. Half of that 5.75 was always there for you anyway.

And that means that yes, the Hands of Harm is a significantly more efficient use of your ki.

Now, what if you got +3 to Wisdom from the start?

Now, the average damage of hits and crits each goes up by 1. Actually, thanks to the 50% miss chance, the math here is, I think, very simple, because by ignoring misses, we just get my original erroneous result for Flurry of Blows - and thus you get twice your bang for your ki buck.

Of course, this is all about ki-to-damage efficiency. If you actually want to pump out the most damage per round, you probably just want to use both of these in tandem, though at level 3 you'll run out of ki points halfway through the next turn. Finding a balance between damage output and resource efficiency is kind of going to be up to you - feeling out how important it is to conserve your ki.

At level 3, in fact, I might even suggest you really do hold off until you crit unless you desperately need to take down a monster quickly. But I do think that if you're wondering which ability you should spend the ki points on, this math should make it clear that Hands of Harm is the right one to prioritize.

EDIT:

As a note, when you hit tier 3 and get Flurry of Healing and Harm, you now get a free Hands of Harm when you Flurry of Blows (you can also use both Flurry of Blows attacks to instead do a Hands of Healing, but that's neither here nor there - it's just very efficient for ki use. Actually, it makes me think that if you're using it out of combat you should just find a tree to hit next to the people you're healing, as it's more efficient than just using Hands of Healing itself - but that's neither here nor there).

Now, technically, there could be situations where it's actually more ki efficient to just keep the ki point for a Hands of Harm. While you get a free one with Flurry of Blows, there's still a chance that that ki point goes to waste if you miss with both attacks.

At this point you likely have a +9 to hit (with 20 Dexterity and a PB of 4). But a tier 3 foe could easily have 20 AC (though perhaps you're not facing real bosses until your PB has gone up to 5). This actually means that... yep, it's the same array of hits and misses.

Now, I think that even with a 50% chance to miss (and thus a 25% to miss with both attacks) you're probably still getting way too much damage out of hits to make it worth it to hold the ki back for guaranteed hits. You also have 11 ki poinits at this point, so you can afford to be a little more liberal with them.

The math does get a little more complex, though, as the free Harm happens if either attack connects (for the sake of argument, we'll assume that the player will use the Harm effect if the first one hits, regardless of whether it's a crit or not, and not just hope the second one will crit.)

This is a bit like a calculation I was doing earlier involving Sneak Attack and dual-wielding Rogues.

So, if we spend one ki for a Flurry of Blows at this level, here's what we get:

Hit 11-19 (45%) Crit 20 (5%)

Hit Damage: 1d8+5, or 9.5 average damage.

Crit Damage: 2d8+5, or 14 average damage.

So, each given attack, we get 4.275 + 0.7, or 4.975 damage.

We don't double this, because we're only getting one more of these attacks. (I almost made that mistake again).

The tacked on Hands of Harm damage looks like this:

It's got the same chance to hit or crit on the first attack. The damage looks like:

Hit Damage: 1d8+2, or 6.5 average damage

Crit Damage: 2d8+2, or 11 average damage.

So, we apply the same coefficients to get the damage from Hands of Harm on average from the first attack:

2.925 + 0.55, or 3.475.

However, given the 50% chance to miss on the first attack, we need to see how much it will do on average on the second attack. Luckily, 50% is an easy fraction to work with. So, we halve the previous value and get the new one: 1.7375 (remember that this number also accounts for the 50% chance that the second strike will also miss, dragging down the average damage overall).

Thus, the total Hands of Harm average damage we get is 5.2125.

We now total up that with the extra Flurry of Blows damage to get our total ROI on that one ki point. It amounts to, on average (and again, assuming my calculations and methodology are correct) 10.1875 extra damage granted by that ki point. Not terrible!

Now, let's look at what we're getting if we only spend the ki for Flurry of Blows. Again, we don't have to incorporate misses given that we don't spend the ki if we miss. And we're only making one unarmed attack (at this level our Martial Arts die has caught up with a two-handed quarterstaff, but we also might have a magical weapon of some sort - my Drunken Master has a Sun Blade, which he could technically count as a Monk Weapon thanks to the new Dedicated Weapon feature - he's also a Wood Elf, so he has longswords, even if the Sun Blade didn't already cover that issue).

So, spending this, there's a 90% chance we're spending it on a hit and a 10% chance we're spending it on a crit.

Hands of Harm Hit: 1d8+2, or 6.5

Hands of Harm Crit: 2d8+2, or 11

That gives us 5.85 + 1.1, or an average of 6.95 extra damage for this investment of ki.

So yes, even with a relatively tough AC to hit, it's definitely worth it to spend that ki on Flurries of Blows at this level - even while there will be turns where you get two misses, the chance that you do hit and get a ton of damage out of it will make up for it.

Finally Trying Out a Sorcerer Build in Dark Souls III

 Partially inspired by the footage of Elden Ring, I decided to take a look at an aspect of the Dark Souls games I've never really tried: spellcasting.

I've done builds for all four of the Bloodborne throughput stats (and was shocked at how powerful Bloodtinge builds can be, though Arcane remains my favorite,) but my Dark Souls experience has tended to always favor slapping foes around with a big honking weapon and using a sturdy shield to block.

Now, I'm also years out of practice with this game. Vordt, who usually goes down first try, took me three attempts. I think the reason I was always resistant to using a magic build was the finite nature of resources in Dark Souls - while you can always recharge at a bonfire, that resets everything, so when you're out of mana (FP), you're out.

Well, of course, you can also allot some of the Estus charges to work for your Ashen Estus Flask, but that takes away from a very precious resource. So far I've tried to keep the regular Estus ahead, but I am going with 3/2 after getting the first shard, as those spells do hit pretty hard.

As a sorcerer build, you start off with Soul Arrow and Heavy Soul Arrow. The latter does about twice as much damage but also takes longer to cast and consumes more FP. You also start off with a Mail Breaker, which hits quickly and can stun lock some foes, which is very handy. I also took the Fire Gem as my burial gift, which I then infused into the Mail Breaker (I ain't going to be buffing Strength or Dexterity, so no need for great scaling.)

Luckily, the regular Soul Arrow doesn't consume an enormous amount of FP, so I've been able to be somewhat liberal with it. It hits decently hard, and really just having a ranged option is pretty great, as someone who has played exclusively melee in this game. Still, foes will close distance with you pretty easily, so you still need to be able to dodge.

I am, of course, only scratching the surface here. And while some claim that this sort of build makes the game easier, it is by no means easy (though I was able to kite and kill the blue knight in the courtyard between Vordt and the Dancer, so maybe as I get used to it this will be quite powerful.

Naturally, I'll eventually want to get a weapon with Intelligence scaling, though I would like to, if possible, really focus on spellcasting as a primary combat style. I wonder how viable that is, or if I'll just need to save my FP for boss fights.

Anyway, should be interesting to get farther into the game. My alts in DSIII tend to peter off around when I get to the Undead Settlement (so, pretty early, of course). And given that I never beat the Nameless King, Gael, or the dragon boss in the Ringed City (and of course not the Soul of Cinder) there's a part of me that thinks I should try to get those down first, but... eh.

Ranged and Melee Versatility for Fighters

 My experience with RPGs probably really started with things like Secret of Mana, Mario RPG, and sort of the Final Fantasy games, along with some adventure/RPG games like the Quest for Glory series. I remember playing Elder Scrolls: Oblivion, which had "classes" only as a kind of array of skills. Quest for Glory was the first game I played where you straight-up picked a class at the start, but WoW was, I think, the first game that was a full on RPG with very clear distinctions between classes.

So, the Warrior left an impression on me. I always preferred a bit of magic with my melee, but I also tend to gravitate toward the tough, heavily-armored classes. In WoW, all three of the Warrior's specializations are built around Strength and melee combat (two DPS and one tank).

In D&D, the equivalent of the Warrior is the Fighter (you could argue that the Barbarian is a bit like a Fury Warrior too). So, it did not even occur to me when I was first reading the class that you could build an entirely archery-focused Fighter. My assumption was that if you wanted to fight with a bow and arrow, you'd go with the Ranger. But, in point of fact, the class is actually built to work with both. (The Archery fighting style should have been a hint).

That said, not every feature works perfectly for both play styles. I think the general assumption is that most fighters are going to go with a melee, typically strength-based build (notably in the new season of Critical Role, Liam O'Brien's character Orym, a Halfling Battlemaster Fighter, is melee-focused but is also dexterity-based.)

The central mechanics of a Fighter are profoundly simple - you get extra Ability Score Improvements (7 over the course of your leveling as opposed to the standard 5), and then just Second Wind, Action Surge, and Indomitable, on top of a wide selection of Fighting Styles that you take at level 1. The base class features only iterate on these ideas, giving you more uses of Action Surge and Indomitable and then, uniquely, giving you more Extra Attacks after the first one at 5th level.

As such, they work perfectly for both melee and raged builds. Picking Archery as your fighting style will certainly push you toward ranged combat, while Great Weapon Fighting, Dueling, as well as a couple that involve using a shield will work primarily for melee (while Two Weapon Fighting is also usually a melee option, I did run a high-level one-shot in which a player took the Dual Wielder feat along with the Gunner feat and then dual-wielded Revolvers.)

So, the question I think becomes one of subclass. Naturally, the Arcane Archer wears its intended role on its sleeve, but what can we say about the other subclasses?

I'm not going to go through an exhaustive list of every feature of every subclass (especially since I already did that earlier this year) but I figure for each subclass option, I wanted to point out features that favored one or the other.

Battle Master:

This is a very customizable subclass. The broad subclass features don't have any real melee or ranged bias, so it's all about maneuvers.

Here, Feinting Attack, Lunging Attack, Parry, Riposte, Sweeping Attack, Brace and Grappling Strike all either strongly benefit a melee build or simply only work on melee attacks. There aren't any that are clearly built for a ranged build, though I'd argue some are more potent when used from range, such as Goading Attack - usually used as a bit of a taunt in melee, now, if you're very far away from the target, it's just a flat disadvantage on the enemy's attack rolls.

Given that you can pick and choose these maneuvers, there's nothing forcing you to take useless melee ones as a ranged Battlemaster, but it's clear that they're assuming more who take this subclass will go melee than ranged.

Still, it works for both, and the DC of your maneuvers is based on either your Strength or your Dexterity, whichever is higher, which is pretty open.

Champion:

The only slight edge a melee build (and specifically a strength-based one) gets here is Remarkable Athlete. But this subclass works great for either variety.

Eldritch Knight:

While I think an EK gets a huge amount of value out of the SCAG cantrips like Green-Flame Blade, which is melee-only, there's nothing inherent to the subclass here that doesn't work for a ranged player, so I'd say this is open for both.

Purple Dragon Knight:

I'm not even going to bother looking this up. This is maybe my least favorite subclass in the game, and its whole deal is just letting the party benefit from your base fighter features, which means it probably works for both, but honestly, who would even roll one of these up to know?

Arcane Archer:

The Arcane Archer is explicitly built around ranged combat, making it somewhat unusual for the generally-assumed-to-be-melee Fighter. This is the only subclass that has to go ranged, as your Arcane Shots must be fired not only from a ranged weapon, but actually explicitly from a shortbow or longbow. So yeah, no Crossbow Expert or Gunner feat for you. (Frankly, I think this is just kind of a worse Battlemaster, even if some of the shot options are cool).

Cavalier:

The Cavalier's Unwavering Mark specifically refers to melee weapon attacks, rather than ranged, which means that an entire feature here straight-up just doesn't work for a ranged build. Likewise, Warding Maneuver can only be used if you have a melee weapon or shield in hand. Hold the Line buffs Opportunity attacks. Interestingly, Ferocious Charger actually works if you just run at least 10 feet toward someone before making your attack - it doesn't say you have to run into melee (but the DC is set by your Strength modifier, rather than Dexterity).

And then Vigilant Defender is also all about opportunity attacks. So yeah, Cavalier really doesn't work at range at all.

Samurai:

Fun little historical fact - Samurai were expected to be expert archers. Basically, if your enemy got close enough to you that you had to draw a blade, you'd screwed up. But how does this subclass hold up?

Well, thankfully, this is totally agnostic to melee and ranged builds. No feature requires you to be in melee or at range.

Echo Knight:

This subclass' Unleash Incarnation feature unfortunately only allows your echo to make a melee attack, not just an attack. So, your little extra damage boost is melee-only. Other than that, no other feature is affected, but Unleash Incarnation is really the primary source of additional damage for this subclass (the rest is defensive utility and amazing maneuverability - which is honestly not as important for a ranged character anyway). So I would say there is a definite melee bias here.

Psi Warrior:

Actually, surprisingly, I don't see a single feature here that requires you be in melee to use it. Admittedly, it's less useful to knock someone prone (with Telekinetic Thrust at 7th level) at range, but it can be helpful situationally. So this is build-agnostic.

Rune Knight:

The Rune Knight has a delightfully diverse set of non-combat abilities (rivaled only probably by the Samurai,) but how melee-focused are its combat abilities? The DC of your rune effects is based on Constitution, rather than Strength or Dexterity, so while a ranged character might not prioritize maxing out Con as much as a melee tank, this is pretty open to both builds.

The frost rune's invocation buffs Strength and Con checks and saves, but I don't think that's really a bias toward one or the other combat style (it's just the saving throws that a Fighter get proficiency with.)

Mainly, some of the rune invocations require that you be within 30 feet of the target, which is easier for a melee character, but I don't know that I'd say that makes it useless for a ranged character (indeed, a ranged character might most want to use something that charms a foe and incapacitates them when it gets into melee range.)

I guess the extra 5 feet of reach when you get Runic Juggernaut at 18th level doesn't help a ranged character, but honestly, that's so minor - the fact that the Giant's Might damage works on both melee and ranged attacks means that I think this subclass works great for both styles.

Final Tally:

Only the Arcane Archer and Cavalier really have a truly strict requirement that you be either ranged or melee, respectively, though I think we can also say that an Echo Knight is losing out on a key feature if they go with a ranged build. I was pleasantly surprised, though, to see that the other subclasses had no such strict bias. I still think a lot of the Rune Knight's rune invocations are going to be easier to pull off if you're in melee, but you could still get full use of the subclass as a Rune Archer. Again, there are Battle Master maneuvers you won't be able to use as a ranged character, but you can easily just not take them and you'll be fully functional for your version of that subclass.

Napkin Math: Do Subclass-Granted Weapons Need a Buff?

 D&D classes aren't and don't need to be balanced quite to the razor's edge that video game classes generally need to. The sample size of D&D combat is way smaller, and there are many non-damage-based utilities that can provide value without necessarily being quantifiable in the same way. A Fighter will generally need to pump out a lot of single-target damage, because that's what it's built to do. But a Wizard would still be welcome in a party if it could do things like create battlefield-controlling barriers (Wall of Force, Wall of Fire, etc.) or buff party members (Haste, Stoneskin) or focus less on dealing with single monsters, but instead blasting away swaths of minions (Fireball, Cone of Cold).

But I still think that, in an ideal world, each published subclass would have some degree of equity.

So, I want to talk about subclass-based weapons.

For martial classes (and I'm counting Rogues and half of Artificers here) your damage mostly comes through the Attack action. And that means using weapons to attack your foes.

There's a moment in every campaign where the martial classes find a magical weapon for the first time. In most cases, it's the simplest of magic weapons - the +1 weapon. This generally comes around level 5, and becomes necessary if you find yourself fighting monsters that have resistance or even immunity to nonmagical weapon attacks. (There are some common magical weapons found in Xanathar's Guide to Everything with a pretty small effect, their biggest upside simply being the fact that they are magical.)

While WotC's official position is that a D&D game doesn't actually need magical items to work, you're going to find a lot of casters' concentration dedicated to Magic Weapon or similar spells if your Fighter, Barbarian, Paladin, etc. is going to actually be able to hurt, say, the demon lord that is your final boss.

However, there are a few classes and subclasses in which the focus is not on weapons you have acquired, but weapons you have innately. The Soulknife Rogue conjures Psychic Blades that they can just manifest while they attack, and which have all the properties a Rogue wants - they're light, finesse, and have the thrown property so you can use them from 60 feet away.

The Path of the Beast Barbarian undergoes a partial transformation to get bestial claws, a muzzle, or a tail with which they can attack.

I'd argue that the Armorer Artificer kinda sorta also has this, in that they're primarily going to be using their armor's weapons (these, however, can be infused, so it's slightly different.)

The issue I want to explore, though, is if this becomes a problem when it comes to scaling.

The Monk has always had to deal with this - in theory, once your martial arts die becomes a d8 at level 11, the Monk can truly throw out all their material possessions and fight at full capacity naked. Still, if they have a +2 Quarterstaff or any magical weapon that buffs their hit or damage rolls, or really has any other beneficial effect, they're going to want to hold on to it. Their unarmed strikes won't get this bonus, but you could argue that, given that they still get their two regular attacks with whatever magical weapon they might have, the unarmed strikes can be balanced separately.

But a Beast Barbarian that has the option to use a nice magical greataxe or what-have-you is going to have to weigh abandoning one of the core concepts of their subclass against using a superior weapon.

I don't know, off the top of my head, if WotC accounted for this issue in the design of these subclasses. And that is a tricky balance to pull off: different DMs and different campaigns are going to act differently when it comes to giving out magical items. If you have an extremely item-poor game, having your own natural weapons (that overcome damage resistances as part of the subclass) would be a huge advantage, but if your Beast Barbarian gets some crazy thing like Akmon, Hammer of Purphoros (a warhammer artifact weapon from Theros that deals an extra 3d10 fire damage on every hit, and I think is probably the best melee weapon in all of 5th Edition - though an Ascendant Dragon's Wrath weapon of any sort is not far behind) their Claw attack is going to look pretty darn pathetic.

This is not a game like World of Warcraft, where classes are balanced with an expected "item level" of magical gear (with basically all gear after the earliest levels having at least some magical bonus) and so this might be a fool's errand.

My instinct is that Rogues care slightly less about their weapons as long as they can overcome resistance to nonmagical damage. A Soulknife's blades dealing psychic damage means that in most situations, they'll be fine - though the class is at a disadvantage against mindless things like Golems or some psychic-resistant or -immune aberrations. But given how much of a rogue's damage comes from Sneak Attack compared to how much comes from weapon damage, it's really just the bonus to hit that is the primary concern.

To an extent, the same is true for Barbarians, as they're going to get a more significant portion of their damage from their Rage bonus and their Strength modifier (at level 20, it can be up to +7).

So, I think we're mainly talking about the Beast Barbarian, and specifically its Claw attack, which seems to obviously be its highest damage-dealing option for its melee attacks.

As a note, the way that the Claws are worded, there's a weird kludge here - you get the extra attack as long as you make at least one Claw attack as part of your Attack action. This means that by level 5, you could make one attack with a super-magical weapon and then the second with your claw, which would open you up for a third attack also with the claw.

Ok, we're almost done with the preliminary ideas here, but we have two other notes to think about:

First is that what makes the Claws seemingly so good is that they aren't actually dual-wielding. While the implication is that you're slashing with both hands, technically all three of your attacks could just be your dominant hand, leaving your off-hand to hold something else like a shield. They are not light, though, so you can't actually turn it into four attacks with a traditional off-hand bonus action strike (fun fact, if for some reason you want to use two different weapons, you can actually make a normal attack with your off-hand with all the usual benefits if it's one of your attacks in the Attack Action.)

The second is a note that Barbarian damage math gets stupidly complicated because of Brutal Critical. While the higher potential Strength and, more importantly, your Rage bonus relatively de-value your weapon dice, this turns around and adds value to them, but also in a weird way, making a Greataxe's 1d12 eventually (though only at very high levels) outstrip a Maul or Greatsword's 2d6 simply. On top of that, the AC of a target then shifts the relative values. Somewhat non-intuitively, a monster with higher AC raises the value of Brutal Critical, because critical hits get a higher share of the attack rolls that actually result in your dealing damage.

Ok, one more thing: we need to choose which subclass to compare Beast to when it comes to relative damage output. Though I haven't crunched the number on all of them, my instinct is that the Zealot Barbarian might have the best boost to output.

Again, there are a lot of factors that can be tweaked here, so consider this a rough sketch rather than a comprehensive analysis. I'm also not, like, a mathematician, so there could be some huge errors in either my calculations or my methodology.

Characters also scale as they level, so I'm going to make a few assumptions and select a few slices of the leveling pie to compare.

I'm going to look at things at the last level of each tier of play. So this will be level 4, level 10, level 16, and level 20. I'm going to assume that we've got a character who started off with a 16 in Strength at level 1, and is not going to have any feats (Barbarians do have a lot of stat dependencies, so I think it's not unreasonable that someone would go for maxing out Strength and Con and doing as much Dex as they can).

Now, regarding AC: for max-level play, I usually use 22 AC as a standard (25 could work, though that tends to be for only the super-high CR creatures). But that's pretty high for level 4. I think I'm just going to have the AC rise by 2 each tier - 16 for tier 1, 18 for tier 2, 20 for tier 3, and 22 for tier 4.

Phew, another preliminary: what kind of weapons are we talking about? I think that I'm going to keep things simple: at tier 1, the Barbarian has no magical weapons. At tier 2, they have a +1. At tier 3, they have a +2, and at tier 4, they have a +3.

I'm also going to be having the "standard" for Barbarians be a Greataxe, and have the Beast just use its claws. I actually did some non-blog napkin math that suggested that every Barbarian should actually dual-wield thanks to the Rage damage and the additional magical weapon damage, but for now I'm going to stick with the Greataxe model, which I think is quite common.

Finally: What do we hope to learn from this? As I see it, if the Beast can do up to 90% of what the Zealot can with its magical weapon, that's still pretty balanced, and could be off-set by other factors (though the Zealot has some insanely powerful features, like being able to simply not die if they're raging - I think it's still one of if not the most powerful high-level Barbarian.)

Let's begin!

At level 4, both of our Barbarians have taken a +2 ASI to Strength, raising it to 18 in both cases. Both should have a +6 to hit, +2 rage bonuses, and +4 strength modifiers. Facing an AC 16 monster, they need to roll a 10 or higher to hit. Thus, they both have the following array:

1-9 (45%): Miss. 10-19 (50%): Hit. 20 (5%): Crit

The Beast's Claw attacks each do

Hit: 1d6+4+2 slashing damage, for an average of 9.5 damage on a hit

Crit: 2d6+4+2 damage, for an average of 13 damage on a crit

We multiply the damage of the hit by its chance, and the damage of the crit by its chance, and then we add those together to find the damage per attack. (We don't need to bother finding 45% of 0 for misses).

Level 4 Claw: 4.75 + 0.65 = 5.4 damage per attack.

The Beast is doing two Claw attacks per round at this level, so that comes to:

10.8 damage per round.

Zealot's Greataxe and Divine Fury.

Ok, before we start, Divine Fury makes things complicated. It always goes off on the first hit per turn. At tier 1, that's not a problem because it's part of the single attack. But when we get Extra Attack, it gets two chances to go off. We'll cross that bridge when we get to it.

So, the Zealot's Greataxe does

Hit: 1d12+4+2 damage, for an average of 12.5 damage her hit.

Crit: 2d12+4+2 damage, for an average of 19 damage per hit.

Using the same methodology, we get:

Level 4 Greataxe: 6.25 + .95 = 7.2 damage per attack.

But, we also need to add Divine Fury. The damage here is 1d6 + half your Barbarian level. I believe, like Divine Smites, that the d6 is doubled on a crit, so we'll calculate that:

Hit: 1d6+2: 5.5 damage

Crit: 2d6+2: 9 damage

Level 4 Divine Fury: 2.75 + 0.45 = 3.2 damage per attack.

So, we add those two together (perhaps we should have simply added that damage to the single attack - again, this gets more complicated down the line) and so we have a total of 10.4 damage per turn.

Ok, the Beast is ahead, but only slightly with .4 damage per round. Now, we jump to level 10.

Level 10:

At this level, our Zealot has gotten a +1 Greataxe. Our Beast is sticking with the Claws. Both now have Extra Attack. Given the marginal lead the Beast had already, I'm thinking the Zealot is going to overtake it. A couple other things to note: we now have Brutal Critical, which means that crits are going to do 3 dice rather than 2. More complicated is that we're going to see Divine Fury have an increased chance to occur given that there are two chances for it. I'll be calculating it separately from the attacks to account for this.

Also of note, both subclasses have new features that can change the math here - Beasts can use Infectious Fury to effectively "smite" a limited number of times per day while Zealots can give the party advantage for a round. These are limited-use, however, and are beyond the complexity I'm willing to explore here, so I'll set it aside.

By this point, the Barbarians should both have maxed out their Strength to 20/+5. Proficiency bonuses are up to +4 at this point, and Rage damage is up to +3. We are also going to see a disparity in hit chance because of the magic weapon the Zealot is using.

Level 10 Beast:

At this level, the Beast has a +9 to hit. Its Claw now does 1d6+5+3 damage. And it can now make three Claw attacks per round. The AC we're using is now 18. And again, Brutal Critical. So, we get the following:

Miss: 1-8 (40%) Hit 9-19 (55%) Crit 20 (5%)

Claw Hit: 1d6+5+3, or 11.5 damage

Claw Crit: 3d6+5+3, or 18.5 damage

Damage per Attack: 6.325 + 0.925, or 7.25

With three attacks per round, this comes to 21.75 damage per round.

Level 10 Zealot:

Again, what complicates this is going to be Divine Fury. We'll cover that after the greataxe damage. The bonus to hit, thanks to the magical axe, is one higher, for a +10. So, we get this array:

Miss: 1-7 (35%) Hit 8-19 (60%) Crit 20 (5%)

Greataxe Hit: 1d12+5+3+1 = 15.5 damage

Greataxe Crit: 3d12+5+3+1 = 28.5 damage

Damage per Attack: 9.3 + 1.425, which comes to 10.725.

With two attacks per round, this comes to 21.45 damage - from the axe. But now we need to add in Divine Fury.

What we now need to do is treat the 35% miss chance as its own microcosm of an array. If we miss both attacks, we don't get any Divine Fury. But if we miss the first one, there's still a chance that we'll get a crit on the second. There's no choice in the matter here, which might actually make the math simpler. I think the way I'll handle this is to first calculate the damage per first attack in the round. The divine fury will only proc on the second attack if the first one misses, so we'll basically take that value and multiply it by 135%, with that extra 35% representing the situations where the first attack misses (essentially, it's less likely the divine fury will activate on the second attack because it might have already gone off on the first). So, same array, but now:

Divine Fury Hit: 1d6+5, or 8.5 damage

Divine Fury Crit: 2d6+5, or 12 damage (your Brutal Critical is going to your weapon damage, not this.)

Damage per first attack: 5.1 + .6, or 5.7 damage.

Now, in that 35% chance where the first attack misses, we get the same array. 5.7 x 0.35 = 1.995

Giving us an average Divine Fury damage per round of 7.695.

Add the Divine Fury to the Greataxe damage per round and we get:

Level 10 Zealot damage per Round: 29.145

Already, the Zealot is cruising ahead of the Beast by a fair amount - while the damage from the weapon attacks still favors the Beast, Divine Fury is more than making up for it. Again, we're ignoring Infectious Fury, which might be a bad call, as it could be considered a pretty important part of a Beast's damage output. I might revisit that at the end of this. (That said, the target gets to save against this feature for zero damage even after the hit, and it's limited to at most 6 times a day, so I'm a little hesitant to consider it a reliable part of the package.)

I'm actually tempted to stop here. The Zealot will continue to scale up faster than the Beast. Yes, having one extra attack will mean 1d6+11 by level 20 (+7 strength, +4 rage) but that's already basically countered by the Divine Fury hitting 1d6+10, and then you're also hitting more often and doing an extra 3 damage with each greataxe hit thanks to the weapon bonus.

So, let's actually get to the hypothesis of what I think might solve the scaling issue for classes that rely on built-in weapons. I think we need some sort of item that can be picked up like a weapon that will buff any natural or conjured weapons. Call it a +X Amulet of the Sharpened Claw.

+1 Amulet of the Sharpened Claw: While wearing this amulet, your natural weapons, and any weapons you conjure or summon as part of a class feature, get a +1 bonus to attack and damage rolls, and count as magical for the purposes of overcoming resistance to nonmagical weapons.

What would happen in, say, that level 10 scenario, if the Beast Barbarian had such an item.

A lot of the math is already waiting there for us:

We use the array the Zealot had:

Miss 35% Hit 60% Crit 5%

Claw Hit Damage: 1d6+5+3+1, or 12.5

Claw Crit Damage: 3d6+5+3+1, or 19.5

Damage Per Attack: 7.5 + 0.975, or 8.475

With three attacks per round, we get 25.425.

It's still below the Zealot, but it's caught up significantly.

Ok, I'm going to just go for broke and imagine this all at level 20:

Level 20 Beast with Homebrew +3 Amulet:

Our attack bonus here is +16, thanks to +7 from Strength, +6 proficiency bonus, and +3 from the amulet. With AC 22, we need to roll a 6 or higher.

Miss: 1-5 (25%) Hit 6-19 (70%) Crit 20 (5%)

Claw Hit: 1d6 + 7 + 4 + 3: 17.5 damage

Claw Crit: 5d6 + 7 + 4 + 3: 31.5 damage

Damage per Attack: 12.25 + 1.575, or 13.825 damage per attack.

Which then gives us 41.475 damage per round.

Level 20 Zealot with perfectly normal +3 Greataxe:

All the hit chance stuff remains the same.

Greataxe Hit: 1d12 + 7 + 4 + 3: 20.5 damage

Greataxe Crit: 5d12 + 7 + 4 + 3: 46.5 damage

Damage per Attack: 14.35 + 2.325, or 16.675

With two attacks, that gives us 33.35 damage. Now for Divine Fury:

Divine Fury Hit: 1d6 + 10: 13.5 damage

Divine Fury Crit: 2d6 + 10: 17 damage

Divine Fury Damage on First Hit: 9.45 + 0.85, or 10.3

And then 25% of that in case the first attack misses: 2.575

So, total Divine Fury per Round: 12.875

Adding that to the Greataxe damage per round, we get: 46.225.

So!

As it turns out, again ignoring the extra damage of Infectious Fury (perhaps at our folly) we have the Beast with this hypothetical item still underperforming compared to the Zealot, but keeping up a lot closer, with 41.475 damage per round compared to the Zealot's 46.225. That is, actually, about 90%.

If you've followed me this whole time, and you haven't found some massive error in my premises or calculations, then I think this is a point in favor of the idea of making an item like the Amulet of the Sharpened Claw.

Now, there are a few other subclasses for other classes that I might consider. And I also wonder if making this amulet apply to unarmed strikes would make Monks far too powerful, or maybe just allow them to keep pace with other martial classes.

Art and Experimentation in Encounter Design

 I think that art is always an act of experimentation. Every novel written, every painting painted, every song written, recorded, and mixed, and every movie made by the staggering number of people who contribute to the project, is an attempt to see if some idea, technique, or premise works. What "working" means can be measured in different ways. I've always rejected the idea that, for example, some movies are art while others are not. Even if you're making the most hackneyed, profit-focused movie, it's still art. It can be bad art. But it's still art.

D&D is a weird proposition. In some ways it is a product - created by Wizards of the Coast and sold to us in the form of books and online services like D&D Beyond. But it's also a medium in which DMs craft worlds and stories, and in which players craft characters and collaborate in the creation of those stories.

I think that the world of art criticism has struggled to wrap their heads around games as art. To members of my generation (that would be the older side of Millennials) I think most intellectually-minded folks would consider games to obviously be a medium of art. I remember when beloved film critic - and one who in particular had a lack of pretension when it came to movies that were "low art" - Roger Ebert objected to video games being art on the grounds that the player interacted with it, thus potentially changing the form of the presented work. I think that's a roundabout and retroactive argument to be made to justify what was likely a sense of generational anxiety toward a medium that has outstripped film at least in terms of monetary intake. After all, this would also seem to deny the "art"-ness of high-minded performance art pieces that require audience participation. And I think that it's a blurrier line than perhaps Ebert thought of it - going into a museum installation, for example, you decide the pace of exploration (much like a game, frankly.) Perhaps, as someone attuned in particular to the medium of film - a medium in which the auteur (usually director) has profound control over everything the audience sees and hears - his view was shaped more by his chosen art medium than any objective position.

I have a fairly broad definition of art that I even think might be too restrictive - essentially, I think it's any object, performance, or experience that is created to evoke an emotional response. And yes, that means that advertisements and fast food and political propaganda stand under that wide umbrella. Art isn't a matter of quality or pureness of intent.

So, we come back to D&D.

I've been thinking about the challenge of being a DM. Once a week, I have a group of 4-7 friends who log into Roll20 and Discord and I guide them through my take of Ravnica as we continue an ongoing story. I have a series of nested goals: I want the campaign overall to be satisfying, with arcs and developments that make the players feel like they were part of a thrilling and, perhaps, meaningful story. I also want this session to feel memorable and substantive. And then, I want this moment, right now, to feel meaningful and worthwhile.

I think a lot - maybe all - DMs have this little mental check-in after they run a session. The glow of the excitement of running the game, and the fatigue of being the primary talker for four hours, gives way to a post-session analysis: did that work? Are the players having fun? Am I giving them enough agency? Am I giving them enough content?

I have a serious perfectionist streak. And it's not a very helpful one - more often than not it cripples my creativity, making me doubt my ideas before anything get onto the page. When I picked up the core D&D rulebooks in 2015, I set out not just to be a DM - I wanted to be a damned good DM. And when I have players tell me that they've enjoyed the games I run, it makes me feel amazing. But there's a little voice in my head that is always talking about how it could have been better.

"Sure, these monsters were cool, but couldn't you have had some environmental wrinkle to make the fight more complex?" "That session was just kind of wall-to-wall combat. Aren't you worried your players are going to get fatigued with all this battle?" Or, conversely "Oh man, we didn't roll initiative at all this session - aren't you worried your players are annoyed they didn't get to show off all their cool abilities?"

Last session was basically just one long combat encounter. I've found that tier 3 characters (especially with a pretty generous flow of magic items) have been pretty hard to challenge (well, to be fair, I think it's specifically that this party probably has an average AC of 19 or 20, so the low-level "minion" monsters barely ever hit any of them - when it's mass saving throws, things are a little scarier) so I built an encounter around saving as many people as the party could - a sudden attack by the Golgari Swarm saw infectious zombies spreading their corruption to various civilians, and so the party had to try to corral a bunch of commoners who, themselves, would become zombies if taken down by the monsters. I think they wound up saving roughly a third of them - which was honestly not that bad considering that they didn't know the mission when initiative was rolled.

It actually turned out really well - the players had fun (and some seemed to get almost as excited as I am about the way dynamic lighting shifted the gameplay - the Fighter/Paladin has a Sunblade and the Cleric cast Dawn on himself, so illumination wasn't as much of an issue as line of sight.)

But I think I also started thinking about my goals as DM and the sessions I run differently. They don't need to be these perfect, epic experiences. Instead, they're all experiments. I'm going to try something, and if it works, great. And if it fails, that's also great, because we learn more about the game and how to build it.

DMing is an art, not a science, after all.