Oceiros and Gundyr Down

 Well, I just killed the two knights and the caster up on the roof in front of Oceiros' room, popped an ember, and summoned Hawkwood, and Oceiros went down a lot easier.

Summoning allies does help a lot, giving you more time to recover (especially as a ranged character) but it doesn't make the fight a pushover. I managed to get Gundyr mk. 2 down on the same ember, but when I went to the twin princes, Sirris of the Sunless Realm did a great job tanking for me for a good while, but when I got into phase 2, I was on my own, and things didn't work out so much.

Still, I've gotten all the items out of the Untended Graves (though I might not even give the Firekeeper the eyes, as I'm planning on going Usurp the Flame).

I think I am very cautious about finite resources, like embers, though I suppose I can always get one by helping another player take down a boss - I'm not really used to the online mode here. The first Dark Souls was tough because humanity was a resource that could be lost like souls, and you needed to restore your humanity at a bonfire, so having more than one didn't really help if you left your souls and such in the boss room.

Personally, I really prefer Bloodborne's treatment of Insight, where you just accumulate it over the course of the game and there's no "mode shift" that determines if you can summon allies. I certainly prefer the Embers over DS1's Humanity, but it does still create this thing where after you kill a boss the penalty for dying is rougher.

I know there are diehards who really want these Souls games to be as brutally difficult as possible, but while I enjoy them, I actually think it would be nice if they were a little more forgiving and thus allow a broader audience to enjoy them.

Accessibility seems to be the topic of conversation in a lot of gaming circles. I've always understood accessibility from a point of view of just making the game playable at all to as many people as possible. For example, creating systems that label things that would normally be just color-coded so that colorblind people can play.

When it comes to difficulty, I'm sort of of two minds.

Naturally, difficulty modes have been a part of games for ages - essentially, once arcade games were not the primary form of video game (and thus perversely incentivized to make the game hard so that kids would stick more quarters into the machine,) video games began to evolve a lot as a medium.

In some ways, I think Dark Souls and its ilk is not so much a new, unheard-of level of difficulty, but more of a return to the difficulty of early Mario games (and, actually, a lot of more modern platformers.)

I do think there is a bit of a promise that RPGs make in the video game medium that you can always grind a bit to make a boss or area easier. Ideally, you never want to feel obligated to do that, but you can.

And I think that applies to the Souls games to an extent, but there are very steep slopes of diminishing returns - not only does leveling up only raise a single stat by one, but the rate at which the cost of leveling goes up, as well as the diminishing returns on scaling with stats, does make it either less of an advantage, or demand a truly absurd amount of leveling.

I love the atmosphere and lore of Souls games, and I think that the rhythm of combat does feel very good (I will say that's one of the things that is a little less fun about playing a caster, though now that I have my Moonlight Greatsword, I think I might be doing more melee combat). And I can imagine how dialing down the difficulty might allow players to ignore those rhythms more - if you don't worry about taking a hit, you might just avoid dodging and let your blows land to take out foes and soak the damage you take.

Still, I would love to see someone take this genre and put the same love and care into its design and feel, but make a game that more players are likely to beat.

Anyway, after my one attempt on the Twin Princes (and no, it turns out you can't target Lothric on Lorian's back with your spells) I've gone to Archdragon Peak, getting ready to fight the Ancient Wyvern, which was a lot harder than I expected it to be on my last playthrough, so we'll see how it is this time.

Elden Ring's Story Trailer

 Man, I love the way FromSoft does the lore for its games.

Like Demon's Souls, Bloodborne, and Sekiro, Elden Ring will be a souls-like game that is not part of the overall Dark Souls mythos, but shares a lot of gameplay elements. While I haven't committed to getting a PS5 just yet - and honestly, I might wait until there's a "full edition" of this game with all the DLC content bundled in before I get it, if I have the patience - I do think Elden Ring is going to be a mandatory part of my library.

Here, we get the clearest idea of the lore behind Elden Ring - the ring may have been a physical object, but more importantly it was the embodiment of the order of the world. We see that things went to hell when someone (who remains unidentified) stole a rune from it - the Rune of Death.

These games have always had some justification for why your character comes back after each death. Rather than retconning those away like most games (just resetting you to your last "save,") these incorporate the deaths as canonical, but have a mechanism by which you come back. In Dark Souls, the curse of undeath afflicts you, and your soul is drawn back to the mystical bonfires. In Bloodborne, you're tied to the Hunter's Dream, which somehow whisks you away from true death to set you out on your hunt again (and given that the entire game might take place in some kind of dream-reality, it evokes a certain dream-logic).

Here, I think the idea that the Rune of Death has been taken suggests that death in that world no longer works - people who die rise again.

The shattering of the order, then, has led to strife, as demigods war against one another for power. Over on VaatiVidya (one of the best sources for FromSoft analysis) he pointed out that the demigods, similar to Gwyn's children in Dark Souls, all have a common prefix, with characters like Godfrey, Godwin, and other names that start with a rather on-the-nose prefix.

That, then, makes the appearance of the two figures (whose names I can't recall right now) who are locked in constant battle suggest there are other pieces at work, as I believe neither of them (the woman with the prosthetic arm and the enormous dude with the two ultra greatswords) have "god" names.

I really love how FromSoft games introduce these complex interwoven factions, where it's not really clear how they intersect and what goals each has. For example, in Bloodborne, the School of Mensis sure seems to be super-evil, but are they enemies of the Choir (the people who, I believe, are the secret governing council of the Healing Church), or are they allies? And how do the Witches of Hemwick play into that?

I suspect that we're going to see a few obvious big bosses - those demigods - but then we're going to encounter a number of secret factions with their own agendas.

The blue storyteller who narrates this trailer seems to be our ally, but she ends the trailer by talking about how the "Elden Lord" is coming to restore order... unless you (we) plan to take the crown.

Man, what does that mean? It seems to suggest that there is some prophesied figure who will bring balance to the world again, but it's distinctly not us. What does it mean to be the Elden Lord? We're "tarnished," which seems to be something of a lowly position similar to Unkindled Ash from Dark Souls III. Whereas the player character in the first Dark Souls game is the Chosen Undead - a foreseen savior whose destiny is to link the fire once again - the third game has us playing a character who apparently failed to do that before, thus giving us a bit of an underdog status. Here, likewise, we're "Tarnished," which seems to go against the shininess of the true lords. How, exactly, did we attain that status? Are were mere mortals, or are we, ourselves, some kind of demigod who fell from grace?

There's such an enormous amount to unpack here. One thing that really excites me aesthetically is that the big general guy is said to have "conquered the stars," and appears to be linked to various gravity-based spells. There are also, apparently, telescopes you can find around the world that might be linked to him. I've always been a huge fan of the aesthetics of astronomy and space, and I believe there's some reference to a "cosmic age" before the Erd Trees - I've even seen some speculation that Elden Ring is secretly a science fiction story, though I have yet to see convincing evidence of that.

Anyway, the game looks amazing.

What I Am Hoping for in a Spelljammer Sourcebook

 There is a strong possibility that the next book WotC publishes for D&D (now that Strixhaven: Curriculum of Chaos is out) will be a campaign setting sourcebook for Spelljammer.

I've absorbed a fair amount of the broad concepts of Spelljammer by looking through wikis and hearing people talk about it. Given that I might be starting a campaign in Realmspace soon (though our newly-a-dad Paladin said he might be able to play again starting in January, so that campaign might be a little farther down the line) I am generally trying to avoid going into a deep-dive - I plan on negotiating with my DM what will or won't be verbotten for me to read in an upcoming book.

But I wanted to get into some thoughts about what I want to see in a sourcebook.

I think Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft is the best campaign setting book they've done for 5th Edition, though I'll put Guildmaster's Guide to Ravnica as a runner-up, along with Explorer's Guide to Wildemount, though this latter for different reasons.

To me, the purpose of a campaign setting sourcebook is very different from that of a published adventure. While the latter should provide enough context for a DM to present the setting that adventure takes place in effectively, its concerns are much more specific. While I think a good DM should customize adventures to suit the players in them, the point of a setting sourcebook is to inspire DMs to create a homebrewed story.

Ravenloft, given the cellular nature of the setting, is particularly fertile ground for homebrewing - before getting into established, canonical domains of dread, the book has guidance on creating darklords and their domains, with an emphasis on making new mini-worlds that conform to the general vibes of Ravenloft while still be original to the folks at the table.

There's a lot in there as well that talks philosophically about the nature of the horror genre, exploring different subgenres and how they can work to define the feel of a domain of dread.

This creation-focused approach is something I think a Spelljammer book would really benefit from. To me, one of the biggest joys of DMing is creating new environments and lore for the players to discover. There are a couple benefits to this, as well. The first is that you can craft worlds that are suited perfectly to the story you want to build with the players and their characters' goals and motivations. But on top of that, by creating new stuff, you never have to worry about your players "reading ahead" as it were. For example, in my version of Ravnica, there is a region in the deep undercity called "Lost District Tartelos," which has taken on a mythic, Atlantis-like status, where most people don't think it actually exists. While I've borrowed elements from canonical Ravnica lore - like the fact that it sank beneath the city due to bizarre eldritch magic associated with the Nephilim - in practice I can do whatever I want with it, and the players aren't going to be able to read up on it (I do have a player who quickly searches MTG Wiki any time I mention a canonical planeswalker).

For Spelljammer, I would love to see them take a similar approach to spacefaring sci fi. While I think there's probably less of a variety of subgenres than horror (given that spacefaring sci fi is itself a subgenre of sci-fi overall) I do think there are a couple angles you could approach things.

For example, I see a few subgenre elements that can be mixed together.

Space opera is an epic tale of empires and star-fleets clashing with the stakes elevated by the interplanetary scale. A planet can be destroyed in a story like this, which in most stories would mean the ultimate end of everything, but here can just be one particularly brazen act of cruelty that demands justice. Star Wars is obviously a great example of this, as are things like Battlestar Galactica and, to an extent, Star Trek (though we're going to look at that form a different angle).

Used future emphasizes a "real" and gritty version of life in space that deliberate downplays the wonder to look at how people have adapted to life in this most hostile of environments. Here, I think a fantastic example is The Expanse, though we see elements of this in Alien, and even a bit in Star Wars (though more aesthetically than thematically). This is a subgenre where "street-level" conflicts still remain an issue worth exploring, just complicated by the challenges of living in a place where people aren't meant to.

Bold Exploration, on the other hand, is, I think the better fit for Star Trek - this focuses on the endless possibilities of people and phenomena that one can find in space, not necessarily as a source of high-stakes conflict (though that can certainly result) but as a challenge to our preconceptions and even just as an opportunity to discover an endless number of new worlds and peoples.

Alien Horror is essentially the big old Venn diagram overlap of Cosmic Horror and Science Fiction. While cosmic horror tends to have a contemporary setting, and a lot of science fiction has seen humanity adjust to the existence of alien life (often finding it's not all that different from ours,) alien horror sees a confident, spacefaring humanity encounter alien life that is incomprehensibly powerful and horrifying. Alien is the most famous example of this, though I'd throw Event Horizon in there as well, and, actually, for a lighter take, the Fifth Element, which blends this with Space Opera.

Planetary Romance is a subgenre I'm far less familiar with - it's typically associated with older sci-fi (basically pre-1950s,) with I think John Carter of Mars (the Barsoom series) being the classic example. This is less about traveling to different worlds than being the alien on a strange world and getting caught up in its epic conflicts.

    To get back on track, I'd love for a Spelljammer sourcebook to take a similar approach to Van Richten's by emphasizing that space, as a setting, allows you to easily build your own sub-settings. You can always add new planets and new worlds. Even if a place like Realmspace is established and catalogued, the setting allows you to travel to any number of "undiscovered" crystal spheres with their own space-like environment within, and I'd love to see a strong emphasis on how to create such environments.

The next thing, which I think is really important, is strong rules for ship-to-ship combat. Ghosts of Saltmarsh had a pretty fleshed-out system for that, but none of the included adventures (which were all reprints) actually included any of it. Adding new systems to a game as complex as D&D is always a bit of a challenge, and I think the chance of failure goes up considerably when a system feels too disconnected from the familiar systems. So, while I think Starfinder having a totally separate combat system for ships still kind of works because it's considered a core system (though I haven't actually yet played, so I don't know), I think that D&D has got to tread carefully here.

I'm no designer, but my best guess would be to have a system in which it merely takes a player's action to use some in-ship system, but otherwise uses the normal combat rules. We'll see.

Anyway, one thing I really like about Starfinder as a system is its assumption that the party gets their own ship - especially how it de-couples the players' acquisition of wealth from the upgrades they can get for the ship, treating the ship less like a fancy magic item than a class to customize and level up. Granted, Starfinder has more built-in gold-sinks (every item you can get has a credit cost, and players don't just get a +1 weapon and stop worrying about upgrades,) so maybe this would provide some useful things for the players to spend gold on after they already got the Paladin and the Fighter plate armor. I'd love to see ships given enough customization to make the players feel invested in them - and I'd love to see something like a random table to determine a ship's quirks (like the Millennium Falcon sometimes not starting up until you hit a particular panel).

One thing I think we can be pretty confident about is that we'll get some player options. Already we've seen several Spelljammer-appropriate races on Unearthed Arcana for testing. (I hope they do more with the Giff, and maybe tweak the Autognome's inability to be healed by anything but the most basic healing spells, but overall they look cool). Personally, I really want to see the Artificer get a new subclass. Some other class should also get one - somehow Rogue feels like a strong option.

Naturally, I also want to see lots of cool alien monsters. We've gotten a few creatures associated with Spelljammer in previous publications, like Neogi and Giff, but I'm eager to see them bring out some new cool stuff.

One thing you might notice I haven't mentioned is any real specifics about the setting. I don't think the book should totally eschew this, of course. But I think I'm more interested in established locations as examples, rather than the firm box in which you can have these adventures. One of the issues I have with Eberron: Rising from the Last War, is that the description of the world is a massive lore dump. In retrospect, I think I'd have found it more useful as a book (though I think Eberron seems like a very cool setting - don't get me wrong) if instead there had been more an emphasis on how to achieve that pulp adventure feel that the setting is built around.

Anyway, the Spelljammer book hasn't been officially announced, but it does seem like a strong possibility for some time next year. Fingers crossed, and we'll take a look (or at least, look at what my DM hasn't asked me to skip past) if and when it comes out!

Oceiros and a Painted World

 Man, Oceiros is not easy on a caster.

I've come to the conclusion that I just need to swap to a melee weapon in the second phase and stay under the boss as much as I can, as that seems to be the safest place, but he gets really fast when he goes into phase 2.

I think what's so strange about the fight is that the first phase of Oceiros is profoundly easy - you pelt him with Great Heavy Soul Arrows and he basically gets one attack in before he goes into the second phase. But that second phase is relentless.

I've also finally entered the Painted World of Ariandel. I got to the room with the unnamed girl who paints the new world (I've heard her referred to as "Ari") and now have the big woodsy area. I managed to clear that out but was out of both kinds of Estus flask and out of FP when I got to the two Millwood Knights guarding the basement of Ariendel's chapel, so I ran past them but died to the bloodsucking locust people when I tried to run through. I don't totally remember how to open the door there, or if there's a shortcut I can get to go back to the bonfire. Anyway, I lost over 40k souls when I didn't make it back there, which was frustrating.

Supposedly I've hit a hard cap for the Court Sorcerer's Staff intelligence buff (and then actually spent some more levels on Intelligence because I didn't realize that). I need to figure out if there's any way I can continue to boost my damage, or if I really just need to invest future levels in survival.

One of the frustrating things is that the melee weapon I invested levels in to get the stats for it is the Moonlight Greatsword, which you can transpose off of Oceiros. I've gotten him down to about 20% several times, but there are very few chances to heal in his second phase and his hits take off about 50% of my health.

Oceiros is such a key boss - while technically he's optional, he is a prerequisite to get Champion Gundyr, the Ancient Wyvern, and the Nameless King. I mean, I intend to get every boss down, but it does feel like I hit a bit of a bottleneck.

Have Not Yet Gotten Strixhaven

 For the first time in a while, I didn't actually pre-order the latest D&D book. I imagine I'll get it eventually, being the completionist I am when it comes to 5th Edition, but I was a bit more excited for Wild Beyond the Witchlight and Fizban's Treasury of Dragons.

I'll be honest, I don't know exactly what the rationale behind the choices for the MTG/D&D crossovers. Ravnica getting a setting book made total sense to me, given that it's one of, if not the most popular MTG setting. It's also very different and unusual compared with other D&D settings (though you could make the argument that Ravnica and Sigil actually bear a striking resemblance).

So, when Mythic Odysseys of Theros was announced, I was a little surprised. Theros was a relatively popular block, as I understand it, but it was also fairly straightforward. It seemed odd to have a setting book for that rather than places like Innistrad, or Zendikar (the latter of which I know to be popular even if I don't really know why).

So, when the Strixhaven book was announced, I found it doubly strange - this was a brand-new setting that was only introduced earlier this year. Whereas Ravnica had been around for something like 13 years before Guildmaster's Guide came out, Strixhaven was, well, kind of just a riff on Hogwarts.

Lest I seem too dismissive, I will say that I think that they've done some cool things with it - MTG's worldbuilding creative team does a lot of fantastic and imaginative work. But I guess I did not really have much of an emotional connection to Strixhaven like I do with, say, Dominaria.

It's here where I put on my cynicism goggles and remember that each of these books came out around the time that a major MTG release featured the plane. We had the year of Ravnica with Guilds of Ravnica, Ravnica Allegiance, and War of the Spark, and we got Mythic Odysseys not long after Theros: Beyond Death. And, of course, Strixhaven: School of Mages came out earlier this year, with Curriculum of Chaos following in its wake. So there is a kind of "brand synergy" thing going on here, cross-promoting Wizards of the Coast's two most iconic games.

Of course, removing those goggles, I can also imagine that the D&D creative team likely picked Magic settings they wanted to play around with.

Curriculum of Chaos appears to be primarily an adventure book, though it has a playable race as well. But it seems to be that more than a broad campaign-setting book. WotC has also talked about how the intention is to allow you to drop Strixhaven into other settings of your choice - the plane of Arcavios is really not very fleshed out in the MTG set, with the story and cards focusing on this one school within it. Thus, the idea is that a DM could plop Strixhaven into a different world like Eberron or the Forgotten Realms (or maybe make it a rival to Prism University in Ravnica?)

While I have been hoovering them all up, I'll confess that adventure books are probably the publications I'm least likely to get a ton of use out of. I really prefer homebrewing adventures and campaigns.

So, I'm cheating slightly by checking out some of the contents on the book on 5E.tools. The dragons who founded each of the schools are very powerful, and I'm actually really excited about the new design philosophy for spellcasters as demonstrated by some of these stat blocks. While their damage options are reduced to one or two, the actual damage of them is pretty impressive, which means that I think a DM can feel confident that they'll really be a threat on the battlefield. As an example, an Oriq Recruiter (the Oriq are basically a conspiracy of people ejected from Strixhaven for practicing dark magic, or recruited after washing out and promised power through warlock-like pacts) is CR 4 and has a multi-attack with its Psychic Knife (a melee or ranged spell attack) that does 5d6+4 damage on each of its two attacks. It does have some spells, but these aren't damage-dealing; they're things like Charm Person and Suggestion and some illusion magic to help them sneak around. But the spells use innate spellcasting rules, just allowing you to cast each of those spells once or twice a day (or at will in the case of the illusions) while the "standard" damage-dealing action for a turn is pretty obvious.

I am very, very excited to see some of the really iconic monsters like Liches get this treatment.

Anyway, I half expect that I'll just drop by my local game store and pick up a copy today, but we'll see.

Feat Thoughts for Armorer

 So, my initial plan was to go with Tough for my armorer's level 1 feat. He is most likely going to fill the tank role, and effectively giving him the HP of a Barbarian seems like it would be a natural move.

Defensive Field does, effectively, increase their HP. A Barbarian is probably a bad example given that Barbarians are there to soak damage - they get hit more often (unless they get god-like stats early on) and rely on resistance to said damage and their higher health pool to survive. An Armorer is tank-like more like a Fighter or Paladin. Even without Tough, Defensive field does, eventually, give an Armorer more effective HP than a Barbarian, so it could be overkill.

Let me consider a couple other options.

Fey Touched: One thing that seemingly everyone suggests is Fey Touched. This buffs Int (or Wisdom or Charisma, but obvious I'd go with Int) as well as giving you Misty Step and one 1st level spell from divination or enchantment, using the stat you took with the feat. You can cast each once for free and then re-cast them using spell slots of the appropriate level (so, 2nd for Misty Step, which means only once per long rest until level 5). Definitely worth consideration. The Divination or Enchantment spell could be things like Bless or Command or Tasha's Hideous Laughter.

Alert: Getting to go early in initiative is actually pretty good for a tank - you want to be the first into the fray and the first thing that foes see, and getting a +7 to initiative rolls could be very nice for that purpose. It also means potentially getting off something like Faerie Fire before the battlefield gets muddied with friends and foes. Also, not allowing invisible enemies (or simply those who are hidden) get advantage when attacking you is pretty great (and fairly tank-y).

Gift of the Metallic Dragon: A new one from Fizban's, this has two major benefits. First, you learn Cure Wounds, choosing Int, Wis, or Cha as your casting ability (obviously going with Int) and, like with Fey Touched, you can cast it once for free and then use spell slots as normal. We already have Cure Wounds, but this means it's effectively always prepared. Not a bad thing to have. But on top of that, you also get Protective Wings. A number of times per day equal to your Proficiency Bonus, you can use your reaction to add your PB to your AC or that of a creature within 5 feet of you. So, this eventually becomes kind of like Shield (and eventually slightly better, though only in tier 4). Honestly, I think the main reason I'm hesitant to take it is that this is the same group I've been playing my Eldritch Knight with, whose bread-and-butter is casting shield when something manages to hit past his 22 AC. And I've had some arguments with the DM over whether I get to hear what the monster actually rolled before I choose to cast it (I think Jeremy Crawford has declared my side right, which is that you hear the total roll before you cast it, and I'd argue that an adventurer can see if something is a direct hit or a glancing blow).

Artificer Initiate: I mean, if I really, really wanted to double down.

Eldritch Adept: I could get Devil's Sight this way. But I can also just make some Goggles of Night.

Fighting Initiate: So here's an interesting thing: Armorers don't get proficiency in martial weapons (the built-in weapons are simple,) so in theory they wouldn't meet the prerequisite. However, Artificers also get (as an optional rule) proficiency in firearms, and according to the DMG, firearms are all martial weapons, which means that Artificers have proficiency in those specific martial weapons, which should count. Among these options, there's of course Defensive, which means pushing AC up one more point. Also, there's Blind Fighting (though if you're going for that, you might as well just go with Eldritch Adept instead and get Devil's Sight, which is superior in almost every scenario.)

Heavy Armor Master: We actually can't take this yet at level 1, because we need to hit level 3 to be proficient in heavy armor. I also don't really like this feat, as the 3-point reduction is unlikely to fully mitigate any hits, and if we start facing magical foes, their attacks aren't going to be lessened. Basically, I could only see this being really good at low levels against skeletons, goblins, and bandits.

Medium Armor Master: This... is actually slightly good. I think it's probably not really worth it, as you'll also need to have 16 Dexterity to make full use of it. However, if you really want to lean into the Infiltrator Mode, you could get plate-level AC with Half-Plate, but no disadvantage on stealth checks.

Shield Master: Given that I can reliably get a Shield with a net +3 bonus, this could be a pretty good bonus for that. Still.... not sure about it.

War Caster: A good feat, no doubt. The fact that you have proficiency in Con saves does mean that the concentration aspect here is not quite as important (with my base build, by level 20 you get a +19 to Con saves, meaning you need to take at least 42 damage in a single hit to have a slight chance to lose concentration). Booming Blade as an opportunity attack could be very funny. The somatic component aspect here is less important given that my weapons will be built into my armor, which I can use as a spell focus (and thus can do somatic components while holding them).

Telekinetic: This gives a boost to one mental stat (obviously we're going with Int) as well as giving us the Mage Hand cantrip (which we can make invisible) and its range is increased by 30 feet (so a total range of 60 feet). As a bonus action, we can shove a creature 5 feet toward or away from us if the target fails a Strength saving throw (and a creature can choose to willingly fail).

    So, honestly, I think that the ones that are really standing out to me are Alert, Fey Touched, and Telekinetic. As someone who tends to play characters with very low initiative bonuses, I've got to be honest that Alert is looking really, really nice.

Part of me is really hesitant to give up the HP boost. We'll have to see how we do on stat rolls.

Armorer Preparations

    The long-running D&D campaign I've been playing on Sundays (with my Eldritch Knight Fighter) is going on a longterm hiatus - we're getting near the end of the main story, but a lot of it is tied up in our paladin's character backstory, and that player became a dad a few months ago, and hasn't been able to play much. While I hope we eventually get back to that campaign, our group has decided to start anew.

The plan is for a game set in Realmspace - our DM asserts that it is a Realmspace campaign, and not a Spelljammer campaign, which I think is splitting hairs, but oh well. Realmspace is the region of space in the Spelljammer setting that contains Toril, the world known as the Forgotten Realms.

She has told us not to read up on the setting at all until she has a packet to show to us, and to allow us to be surprised in our exploration of the region (I am, I'll confess, infamous for knowing a lot of "meta" knowledge, though in my defense that's mostly because I'm also a DM).

Anyway, after starting off my triton wizard in our Wildemount campaign, I've fulfilled the requirement I set for myself, which is to make sure I play a pure caster. Now, I'm going to make the Armorer I've wanted to play since reading Tasha's Cauldron of Everything.

Now, I've kind of obsessed over this, so I already have a strong sense of how I'd like to set the class up, but I put some thought into a level-by-level plan.

First off, the first two levels I'm going to grab Fire Bolt as one of my cantrips. While there are a lot of optional rules that allow for more flexibility in picking cantrips, Artificers explicitly get to swap them out when they level. So, to start with, I'm going to use Fire Bolt as my main attack and then probably swap it to Green-Flame Blade when I hit level 3.

The infusions I plan to run early on will be Goggles of Night (I'm planning on going variant human with the Tough feat at level 1) and Enhanced Defense. Enhanced Weapon is definitely nice to have, and we'll have to see how I feel about it overall, but the fact that my weapons will deal thunder or lightning damage means the pressure to get a magic weapon is somewhat lessened in those early levels.

Level 3 to level 8 will mean being stuck only infusing one thing into my armor, which does mean having to choose between buffing armor or weapon. I suppose one option here is also to stick Enhanced Defense on a shield, though by level 6 I can just put Repulsion Shield for what, at that level, will be a superior option. I suppose level 3 to level 5 I can buff a shield with defense and my weapons with the enhanced weapon, though given that I'm not going to be the main damage dealer, I might even just give a party member the enhanced weapon instead (for the time being).

I am, of course, operating as if we weren't going to get any magic items during the campaign - which is very unlikely. But at least for the planning stage, it's easiest to look at it this way.

An armorer only really needs Intelligence and Constitution to work properly - because you can ignore strength requirements on heavy armor, there's no need to get Strength up to 15. I am still hoping at least to get a +1 or more to Strength to carry my heavy suit (though I don't think we'll be tracking that, it feels fair.) If I wind up with the Standard Array, I suspect my Charisma will be the dump stat. I will want to get at least a +2 to Dexterity to make sure I can make full use of Medium Armor for those first two levels. And actually, frankly, medium armor could serve me until I can get my hands on plate armor. That said, Splint armor is significantly cheaper than Half Plate, so that'll be the easier route to get a base 17 (before infusions). But there is no need for me to pick up Chain Mail if I have the +2 to Dex, as I'll get the same AC with the Scale Mail starting equipment.

I've found that the Infiltrator mode on the armor doesn't seem to need as many infusions to maximize its effectiveness - so I'll likely keep most of the infusions the same and just be a very hard-to-hit ranged damage dealer if I wind up in that role. This has the added bonus of letting me swap to tank mode on a short rest, as I won't need to reset any of the infusions (Enhanced Weapon gets transferred between Lightning Launcher and Thunder Gauntlets when you switch modes).

At its core, I think the tanking build will want Enhanced Defense, Repulsion Shield (assuming I don't get a better magical shield,) Enhanced Weapon, and then eventually Cloak of Protection and Ring of Protection, which, by the level you can get all of them, gives you a combined bonus of 5 AC, which is how we get the 25 AC with a set of plate and a shield.

Again, unless I roll really superior stats (here's hoping!) I'll be using my ASIs purely to fill out Int and Con. As a variant human, I can put a +1 into two stats, so with standard array, I'd start off with the 15 in Intelligence bumped up to 16, and then put the 14 into Dex and the 13 into Con bumped up to 14. That leaves the 12, 10, and 8. Likely 8 to Charisma, and then maybe just 10 into Strength and 12 into Wisdom.

While I do have an instinct to just pour as much into Con as possible and ensure that I have a massive amount of HP, I do think Shield Master could be a reasonable feat to pick up, effectively giving me +3 to all Dex saves and potentially evasion as a reaction (without the Shield spell, I don't really have much to do with reactions until I hit level 15).

I might also pick up Resistant Armor as an infusion, not necessarily to use all the time, but if we're facing a red dragon or something, and I know we are going to during the night before, I figure resistance to fire damage might be more useful than the +2 to AC. That is, of course, largely contingent on how much our DM lets us know what we're up against ahead of time - the last game we very much stumbled into most dangerous situations without much of a clue to what was coming.

Depending on the rest of the party, of course, I imagine I'll also want a few infusions to hand out to them. Repeating Shot is great for powerful weapons that you can't necessarily get ammo for easily - if we find a Laser Pistol, for example.

I actually think it's unlikely I'll go for Enhanced Arcane Focus for myself - as an armorer, my spells are really primarily utility, and more often saving throw-based. If I can get an All-Purpose Tool I'll be very happy, but mostly use it for things like Faerie Fire (or Lightning Bolt).

Thinking about Cantrips, Green-Flame Blade does seem like a pretty good one to get - I'd argue that even if the Thunder Gauntlet isn't its own independent thing, it is considered a simple weapon, and presumably that part of the armor costs at least one silver. The cantrip does become fairly useless in Infiltrator Mode, to be fair, so I am almost tempted to eschew it in favor of more utility.

Still, by level 5, if you have two targets, you're hitting for 2d8+3ish on one target and 1d8+3ish on another. By level 17, even in single target situations, you're hitting for 4d8+7, compared to 2(1d8+7), so 25 versus 23 on average (and crits are going to be bigger).

Anyway, this is, of course, all on the mechanical side of things.

My general concept for the character, at least for now, is that I want to play someone with a pretty stable home life. I have a backstory that I wrote a while ago in which he's a married civic engineer who has an old colleague who was killed when experimenting with some sort of necromantic power source for his own artificer projects, which my character tried to convince him to stop working with. And then, years later, he gets a letter from this dead friend who seems to blame him for what happened and implies a threat against his family, so he has his wife and kids stay with his wife's family (who are a badass orc clan) and tries to find the friend who rose from the grave, it seems.

Anyway, we'll see how well that works in the setting. I'm hoping I can coordinate with other players to possibly have a pre-existing relationship with one or two of them, as I think that can be fun to play. Really, I want to have a very down-to-earth, gruff but with a heart of gold kind of vaguely old-school Brooklynite vibe to him. (I guess I'm actually kind of synthesizing my two grandfathers here, as one grew up in Brooklyn and the other was a really talented engineer/tinkerer who would never buy something if he could make it himself.)