The Satisfyingly Unsatisfying Lore of Dark Souls

 In Dark Souls III, the roughly seventh boss (there are a couple optional bosses you might face before him) is Pontiff Suleyvahn. He's the sort of halfway boss in Irithyl of the Boreal Valley, a city below the lands that are being drawn to Lothric, and whose true identity we won't discover until we've beaten him (though there are hints along the way).

Ultimately, Suleyvahn is a roadblock and checkpoint before you get to the area's main event - the horrific Aldrich, who is one of the four missing Lords of Cinder we need to collect in order to open the way to link the fire and refresh the world (if indeed that's what we want to do - I'm fully in the Usurp the Flame camp, as it feels like the most radical departure from a cycle that doesn't seem to be working anymore).

However, it's highly possible that this boss you fight roughly halfway through the game is actually the main villain of the story.

Breaking it down: between item descriptions, environmental hints, and the appearance of particular types of enemy we find in various parts of the world, we can eventually infer that Suleyvahn was born in the Painted World - a realm meant to give people who experienced tremendous loss in the real world a place to escape that pain and live peacefully (though, this being Dark Souls, it's now got its own problems). Living in a place of quiet grief clearly didn't work out for a person who had never experienced loss, so he ventured outside of it and became a sorcerer.

He eventually found his way to the Profaned Capital, where the Profaned Flame burned eternally, fueled by the darkness of the Abyss. That darkness inspired or corrupted him, and he set about doing several horrible things - he fed prisoners including children to Aldrich to increase his power, and he enslaved people and turned them into beasts with magic rings. It's implied that he was the scholar who convinced Prince Lorian to shun his purpose to link the fire and become a Lord of Cinder.

The way that the game is built, though, you wouldn't figure that out easily on your own. Dark Souls and other FromSoft games of the same sort are all about hidden hints and lore to be discovered by going all corkboard conspiracy theorist and linking tiny bits of information.

I think it's appropriate that George R. R. Martin was involved in creating the initial lore for the studio's newest effort, Elden Ring. While his Song of Ice and Fire series (the one that was adapted as Game of Thrones) has a story you can easily follow just by paying attention to the broadest strokes, the books (far more than the show) is chock full of stories-within-stories and lore that is bubbling in the background.

For example, a close reading of a few off-hand remarks can suggest that Lyanna Stark and Rhaegar Targaryen fell in love after Lyanna competed in a tourney in disguise as a man going by the "Knight of the Laughing Tree." There's implications that Euron Greyjoy (whose show version was utter crap) is some kind of dark avatar of a horrifying kraken god, or he intends to become one.

One of the things I really find fascinating about FromSoft games is how it's never really obvious what the "good" endings are. The most complex ending to get for Dark Souls III is the Usurp the Flame ending - this has the unkindled one take the First Flame within themselves and become the Lord of Londor, ruling as the true face of humanity. On one hand, there's this sort of tyrannical feel to it - usurpers generally aren't a "good guy" trope. And this is a land of Hollows, meaning everyone there is kind of zombies, and all look really messed up and undead. But on the other hand, it seems as if the whole Age of Fire was kind of unnatural in the first place - that Gwyn's arrogance really screwed the world up (or maybe his naïveté). Perhaps, after so many ages in which gods have repeated these cycles of cruelty and exploitation, maybe Londor represents something new, recognizing an internal balance of light and darkness, and life and death, and perhaps finding balance between them.

Indeed, in these games, sometimes what we're even actually doing is left vague. Yes, we find these powerful bosses to fight and kill, but what exactly are we accomplishing by doing so?

And, I think, in lesser games, that unsatisfying nature would be infuriating. It would feel like a haphazard scaffold of a story that did not match the quality of the gameplay.

But, somehow, these games make the obscurity of their lore and story a feature, rather than a bug. There's a kind of abstraction to the storytelling here that invites speculation and interpretation, rather than dismissal as meaninglessness.

I wonder to what extent the creative forces behind the games have solid answers. I imagine that some of them, like primary auteur Hidetaka Miyazaki, probably consider their version just one interpretation that isn't inherently more valuable than a player's. The fact that so many hints match up so well suggests to me that they do actually have some firm ideas about hidden lore, and it's not all just a bunch of darts thrown at the wall.

But even if they really do not have the same degree of narrative depth that the fans assume they do, I think it's a testament to the potency of their formula that it can feel this fun to delve into the games and attempt to unpack all the subtle implications.

Building for Versatility with the Armorer Artificer

 In case you couldn't tell, I'm obsessed with the Armorer.

While I have a tendency to really focus on tank-like RPG characters, I love the fact that next to the fantastic tanking capabilities of the Armorer's Guardian mode is the capable ranged damage dealer Infiltrator mode.

Most builds I've explored tend to favor one armor mode over the other. I think you can build a really tough-to-kill tank with Guardian mode, and I think you can abuse your 15th level advantage to get a lot out of an Infiltrator/Sharpshooter.

But with this post, I want to consider how one could build a versatile armorer - one who could excel in both a tanking and ranged damage mode.

So, let's talk about parameters.

First off, I'm avoiding any multiclassing builds. I'm sure there are good arguments to be made for picking up a few levels of Fighter, for instance (maybe going Eldritch Knight to get Shield along with Action Surge and other nice goodies). For me, though, I want to assume you find the Soul of Artifice feature at level 20 compelling enough to go all in on the class. This also reduces some of the insanity given the vast number of options that open up with multiclassing.

So, with that set aside, what choices to we really have to make?

Artificers can prepare different spells on each long rest, so we don't really need to talk about what you're taking for spells other than cantrips. (We do get to change one of these out each time we level, but I'm going to include them as that's a finite number of chances to change them - though as a DM I'd certainly allow swapping cantrips when you get enough XP at level 20 for an Epic Boon).

The next choice is infusions. All Artificers are a bit infusion-dependent - it is the central mechanic of the class, after all - but Armorers in particular get ways to buff multiple parts of their armor, making this extra important.

Finally, we can look at some Feats that could complement both playstyles. Naturally, you'll need to consider where you can afford these feats as opposed to Ability Score Improvements. Any Artificer will want to maximize their Intelligence, and Guardian mode does really favor getting a high Constitution.

I suppose race choice here is also a factor, though thanks to the changes to racial ability score bonuses in Tasha's, you're going to be far more flexible.

So, let's start:

Cantrips:

One of the real sacrifices you'll need to make if you want to be versatile with this subclass is that the SCAG melee cantrips - particularly Booming Blade and Green-Flame Blade - only work for Guardian mode. Infiltrator mode uses a ranged weapon, the Lightning Launcher, and thus means that these cantrips become dead weight if you're in that mode.

In either mode, we only have one weapon that uses our Intelligence modifier - Battle-Smiths can have a sword and a gun, and as long as both are infused (or inherently magical,) they're equally capable with both. But Armorers only have the one ideal weapon at a time. For that reason, I recommend grabbing a cantrip that uses a saving throw - when in Guardian Mode, it gives you a ranged option, and when in Infiltrator mode, you have a melee option (since your ranged attacks would be at disadvantage in melee range.)

With this in mind, my favorite options here are Acid Splash and Frostbite. The former has the potential to hit two targets, and does a type of damage that few things have resistance or immunity to. Frostbite has the same range, but requires a Constitution saving throw and only hits one target, doing cold damage, but the bonus effect is quite potent - giving the target disadvantage on its next attack roll. While I think tougher, high-level enemies will likely have strong Constitution saving throw bonuses, this could potentially make it easier to slip away from a foe that gets into melee with you in Infiltrator mode, or help you protect your party against a ranged attacker in Guardian mode.

Naturally, though, I think utility cantrips make a ton of sense for a martial artificer. While Alchemists and Artillerists need to have some damage cantrips, you're far less reliant on these, so you could even skip them entirely (at least after you hit level 3).

Thematically, Mending makes a ton of sense, even if you don't need it quite as much as you might as a Battle Smith or Artillerist. That said, if you wind up taking the Homunculus Servant infusion, you'll be able to use this to patch up your little buddy outside of combat, so it's a good option.

Then, as usual, things like Guidance, Mage Hand, Message, and Prestidigitation are always good to have around.

Infusions:

I will say that there are a lot of infusions that work really well for Guardian Mode and fewer that have a big effect on Infiltrator Mode. Given that your Lightning Launcher doesn't require ammunition, there's no reason to take Repeating Shot over Enhanced Weapon, so just grab that and it'll work for both the Thunder Gauntlets and the Lightning Launcher.

I do think Guardian Mode is going to want Enhanced Defense and Repulsion Shield, as well as Cloak of Protection and Ring of Protection. While none of these make your Infiltrator any better at shooting things from afar, it will have the nice bonus of making it really hard for anything to hit you, even if you're less likely to be taking damage given your range.

Here's something I'd like to see clarification on (or a DM's ruling). Can you wear robes under your armor? The Mind Sharpener is pretty cool - letting you auto-save on Concentration saves (and even letting you see if you'd succeed anyway first) a few times a day. Given that Artificers have proficiency in Con saves already, this might be overkill, but I think it's a strong infusion nonetheless - if we put Haste up on an ally (or ourselves) it'll be very good to not worry about dropping concentration on it.

Resistant Armor is another I'd consider for Guardian mode, if you're in the sort of campaign where you might get some hints as to what you're going to face in the coming days. While a Guardian will probably just want Enhanced Defense on by default, if you're about to fight a red dragon, it might be worth it to drop your AC in order to get fire resistance. Again, possibly less potent for an Infiltrator, but given that elemental damage often comes in ranged or area attacks, it might actually be better than simply boosting your AC.

Goggles of Night will be an obvious choice for any artificer who doesn't inherently have darkvision.

Now, Boots of Elvenkind are probably redundant if you're in Infiltrator Mode. Cloak of Elvenkind actually has an added effect - creatures have disadvantage on their perception checks to spot you (this, by the way, also means a -5 penalty to their passive Perception,) so this could potentially help a bit, though part of its effect is redundant for Infiltrators.

Winged Boots I think are an obvious one - as long as you don't use them constantly, you'll basically have a fly speed in every combat encounter. This will allow you to stay out of range of scary melee combatants if you're in Infiltrator Mode and it'll let you chase down flying foes in Guardian Mode.

Homunculus Servant is also potentially a strong option. It effectively gives you a construct familiar that can deal a little modest force damage. While Artillerists and Battle-Smiths will want to conserve their bonus action to use their Eldritch Cannons and Steel Defenders, respectively, as an Armorer you'll often have a free bonus action (Guardians will often want to reactivate their Defensive Matrix, but that is unlikely to be every turn). The homunculus can fly and also has a very respectable perception bonus - so you could use it to compensate if yours isn't that good.

Belt of Hill Giant Strength is actually something I'd consider looking at as well - this raises your Strength to 21. While you don't need high strength to move unimpeded in heavy armor thanks to your subclass features, this will allow you to carry more things (I think worn armor does count against your carrying capacity) and will also aid with things like Strength saves and Athletics checks. Getting another stat to +5 almost for free is pretty good, honestly. This can also potentially help you diversify your weapon options. While the Thunder Gauntlets' "taunt" effect is, I think, enough to make it an obvious go-to even if you can't ever quite push it to a +3, this will make it easier to fend for yourself in Infiltrator mode or simply be able to use cool weapons even in Guardian mode (though only simple ones). Your Extra Attack feature doesn't require that those attacks be the built-in ones, after all.

I might also look at Cloak of the Bat. Given that your Lightning Launcher can be in the chestpiece of your armor, that means you should be able to use it without using your hands - this means you can use the cloak's abilities to fly - though again, the advantage on Stealth checks is redundant in Infiltrator mode.

Feats:

Now, some of the obvious good feats like Sharpshooter run into the problem of not being useful for both modes. While we can be a little more liberal with infusions, given that we learn 12, ultimately, and can infuse 8 of them into our gear, it's unlikely we'll have more than one or two feats.

Let's get Lucky out of the way. It's good.

Next, I think Alert is a strong option. Given that our role is either to play the tank or the damage-dealer, we're going to want to go early in the combat and start to control the battlefield in various ways. Being able to drop a Faerie Fire on a group of enemies in round 1 can make the battle much easier. Alert is a good feat for just about every class and build, but I think it's particularly well-suited for our roles. This also means you'll never be surprised if you're not incapacitated, and you creatures can't get advantage on you just because you can't see them. Again, being able to act as soon as possible is very nice - the fact that we can don our arcane armor as an action also means that even if we're sleeping out of the armor to recover hit dice, we can very swiftly get into the action - potentially even before the ambushers get to attack us while we're unarmored.

Now, for a bit of a deeper cut: Medium Armor Master. This is stat-dependent - you'll need to have at least 16 Dexterity to take full advantage of it. If you're unfamiliar, this allows you to add up to +3, rather than just +2, of your Dexterity modifier to your AC while wearing medium armor. It also removes any disadvantage on Stealth checks while wearing medium armor. If you can swing a +3 to Dexterity, this effectively turns Half-Plate into quiet Plate. Thus, you get the maximum AC you'd get from wearing heavy armor, but now if you're in Infiltrator mode, you genuinely have advantage on stealth checks, rather than just a flat roll. Whether you can actually get your Dexterity that high while also trying to get good Intelligence and Constitution is a big question, especially if you're giving up an ASI for a feat (unless you're a variant human). This does make the proficiency in heavy armor you get with the subclass redundant, but if you can swing it, this can be a very nice feat.

Tough will get your HP to nearly Barbarian levels, but again, doesn't do much for Infiltrator mode (though of course everyone likes having more HP).

Fey Touched is a popular option for a lot of classes. This gives you Misty Step and any 1st level spell of the Divination or Enchantment school, both of which you can cast for free once a day, though you also get to use your spell slots on them. This could give you some stalwarts like Bless, or you could grab Hex or Hunter's Mark to buff your damage. This also boosts one of your mental stats by 1, so if you start off with an odd Int score, this is practically a freebie (assuming you don't have another stat that's odd that you want to raise.)

    Ultimately, splitting your focus between both of these armor modes is going to make it a little harder to excel in every way that you could. But I think you're not going to be sacrificing a ton. That said, I imagine that most parties will figure out which mode they need more - if you've got a Barbarian and a sword-and-board paladin, you might find you tend to stay in Infiltrator Mode more often. On the other hand, if your party is all Wizards and Sorcerers, you'll probably be finding yourself going Guardian most of the time.

    As such, if you get to play in a consistent group, you might decide that the Versatile build isn't worth the sacrifices. But again, I think you're going to be, like 95% as effective as if you had specialized one way or another, and while D&D does reward specialization, it also rewards creativity, and the flexibility you get here might let you roll with the punches in surprising and fantastic ways.

Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty Takes a Bold New Step for Magic: The Gathering

 If you're a regular reader of this blog, you'll know that I have no patience whatsoever for people who insist on genre purity. Star Wars, Final Fantasy, and Stephen King's Dark Tower series are all huge influences on my tastes in fantasy, and each of those remixes and shades their worlds with elements of other genres. Star Wars is a fantasy epic that also happens to be filled with robots and spaceships. Final Fantasy games vary, of course, but a game like Final Fantasy VII takes place in a pseudo-modern world with evil megacorporations and motorcycles along with magic and swordplay. And The Dark Tower is a mix of post-apocalyptic wasteland, western, and Arthurian quest mixed into one.

Magic has certainly made use of a wide range of the fantasy sandbox, and it has incorporated elements of other genres before - we have things like the Gothic Horror of Innistrad, Steampunk/Gaslamp Fantasy in Kaladesh, and a plenty of "lost, advanced civilization" stuff in Dominaria.

But from the looks of it, and from what I've read of its first web fiction story, Neon Dynasty is going to be Magic's first foray into true futuristic sci-fi - in a world that was already established as a place of magic.

1,200 years after the Great Kami War, as depicted in the original Kamigawa block, we find a Kamigawa where the kami spirits have long been at peace with the mortal races, and now electronic technology like computers and cybernetics seems to have been developed on the plane amidst all the magic.

There are a couple things that make me really excited about this: the first is simply that this feels so different from any other Magic plane we've gotten before. The other is that it breaks one of the hoariest fantasy tropes - the idea of medieval stasis. While I consider the Lord of the Rings trilogy some of my favorite films, and I loved reading the books (I read them in high school, in the paperback editions that had concept art from the movies with a banner that said "soon to be a motion picture trilogy from Newline Cinema!") I do remember thinking it odd that in the time between the Last Alliance at the end of the Second Age and the War of the Ring at the end of the Third, with over a thousand years of development, things seemed to be locked at the same technological level (indeed, I think canonically things actually regressed, in keeping with lots of myths about how ages past were better than what we have now).

But with Kamigawa, there has been serious technological development.

In a world of magic, sure, you could imagine that magical phenomena might take the place of technologies we've developed in our world. But I do think that humanity has shown a penchant for iteration and development - always seeking to improve on what came before. If physics as they work in our universe works in the planes of Magic, there's no reason why people wouldn't strive to improve technology in tandem with developing a better mastery of magic.

There are, also, already some interesting hints toward greater lore. For one thing, Kaito, the new ninja planeswalker introduced from the setting, has some past with a man with a metal arm - my guess being Tezzeret, whose loyalties seem to have jumped around from Nicol Bolas to, possibly, the Phyrexians (I don't know if we yet have an explanation for how Vorinclex got to Kaldheim - ever since the end of Time Spiral block, only Planeswalkers have been able to actually travel between planes, until the Planar Bridge opened the way between Amonkhet and Ravnica. Now, I believe Tezzeret was the one who secured the Planar Bridge, so could he have found a way to replicate that technology?

The MTG team has talked about what they want to do with this set - Kamigawa had some problematic mechanics, and so they're being careful on what comes back and what doesn't. I'm actually expecting the set to be fairly mechanically independent from the original block, though I could see some fun niche things like Ninjutsu make a return. Just, for the love of God, don't reprint Sensei's Divining Top. No card I can ever remember slowed down the game as much as that one did. I do wonder, though, if Umezawa's Jitte would be as painful as it was back in the day, given the greater availability of removal these days.

D&D At Its Best

 On Monday, the party in the Ravnica game I run had found a secret graveyard behind a manor house belonging to a powerful devkarin house within the Golgari Swarm. In Ravnica, and particularly the Golgari, the idea of a graveyard is a serious violation of their worldview, as all bodies should be recycled through either decomposition or undeath (ultimately both in most cases). Decrepit members of the family rose out of their graves as Vampire Spawn and attacked the party. The Cleric used Turn Undead, causing every one of them to flee - but one of them fled back into the manor house, where there was a party going on.

With the House Captain and several elite warriors coming to investigate after calming the fleeing vampire and convincing the partygoers that everything was all right, the party tried to think of a way to keep the guards away. Initially planning to use Stoneshape to close off the tunnel leading to the graveyard, instead, the Artillerist Artificer cast Shatter on the tunnel above, just as the first two guards entered the area.

They rolled only 9 damage, so what I did was determine that that was 37.5% of the total damage one could do with a base level Shatter. I then had them roll percentile dice - if the roll was under 37.5, the tunnel would cave in. They rolled a 37.

So, rocks fell and the guards died (the house captain had not caught up,) and the Druid, who was standing nearest them, had to make a dexterity saving throw, but only took a little bit of bludgeoning damage from the rocks.

It was not remotely what I expected for that encounter - the guards weren't even supposed to be part of it, mainly serving as a bunch of passive Perception beacons for when they were navigating the party - but it actually solved a big problem for me, which was how to keep the players in the sprawling, multi-level dungeon they had just entered.

Last night, we were playing in our Wildemount campaign, and I was on my level 2 Triton Wizard. We were going to rescue a guy who had been captured by the gang that he and his brother had been trying to get out of - only when we flushed the gang's leader out of his house, he came with the "kidnapped" guy, who seemed to have not actually wanted to leave in the first place.

While we might have just tried to slip away, one of the paladins didn't see this and just decked one of the gang members. Things went very bad very quickly as both paladins went unconscious and we found ourselves surrounded by eight gang members (I assume bandit stats, but at this level, anything can be a deadly threat). So, after doing a bit of pitiful damage with Mind Sliver, I pulled a Hail Mary play - I cast Silent Image in a nearby alleyway, showing a phalanx of Zhelezos (the law enforcement on the Menagerie Coast) coming toward the fracas, shouting "oh shit, is that the zhelezos?" Given that these armored guards were moving silently, the DM had me make a deception check - on which I got a 9. But then, the other Wizard (we are not a well-balanced party,) who is a Chronurgist, used Chronal Shift to allow me to re-roll, and I got a 19.

The bandits each rolled insight checks - and none of them succeeded. Thus, all but the gang's leader and the not-actually-kidnapped brother fled the scene, totally turning the tide of battle. (In fact, we didn't kill anyone - we used nonlethal damage and the other wizard used the Sleep spell to take down the gang's leader - whom we then took off to the nearest zhelezo station, claiming a reward.)

Anyway, these are two examples of what I love about D&D. You'd never be able to come up with these kinds of outside-the-box solutions in a video game - the programmers can't anticipate every possible idea a player might have.

It's a fun game. You should try it.

Reflecting on Shadowlands

 My relationship with World of Warcraft changed a lot when the stories of abuse and harassment came out. Light's the best disinfectant, as they say, but it can still be painful to see a place you had elevated in your mind turn out to be a hotbed of the kinds of behavior you despise. And it has been a confusing time - weighing the desire to support the artists and technicians who work to make the games that mean so much to me against the ickiness of sending money to a corporation that is doing everything it can to avoid meaningful consequences and engage in union-busting tactics to prevent future employees from effectively fighting back against this sort of thing.

If you read this blog, you've probably noticed a sharp turn toward other games (mostly D&D) because, well, my mind has made that sharp turn. I don't play nearly as much as I used to (which was, frankly, a lot) and the name of this blog feels sort of inappropriate given that I more or less just play on my main when I do.

Shadowlands had the potential to be my favorite expansion, but I don't think it'll quite make that distinction. It started off incredibly strong, but the delays caused primarily by the plague we're still dealing with (9.1 did come out before the allegations broke) forced a lot of the expansion's greatness to wither on the vine.

I'm someone who generally likes when WoW leans into its high fantasy element - I found the focus on the Alliance/Horde conflict in BFA to be tedious, and wish that we had gotten more of the cosmic horror elements involving N'zoth. And so, doing, essentially, WoW Planescape, I was really excited.

I also think I'm one of the few people who really enjoyed the Dark Souls-esque punishing mechanics of the 9.0 version of The Maw.

When Warlords of Draenor was cut to only two patches (and 6.1 was barely anything,) it was a disappointment, but also if there was any expansion I didn't mind them taking a breather on, it was the convoluted mess that seemed to be a nostalgia trip for people who didn't like that the story had developed beyond Warcraft 1. I don't know if it was because of the decision to cut Warlords short, but the trajectory of Legion following it was fantastic.

But with Shadowlands, we've been unleashed into a larger multiverse, and so to see that story cut short by one patch and one raid, at least in comparison to the typical expansion, is sad.

I guess we might never know (or at least not until some developer a decade from now talks about it,) but I do really wonder what the longterm ambitions for Shadowlands had been.

To be fair, we're not really looking at a Warlords situation here. Korthia was certainly not designed to give us a year's worth of content, but it did give us something to do in 9.1. And with 9.2 giving us Zereth Mortis, you could argue that in terms of world content, we are actually getting a real expansion's worth of stuff to do. Really, I think the only real distinction is that Castle Nathria retroactively became the first "tier raid" when I had conceived of it as more of a Uldir/Emerald Nightmare/Mogu'shan Vaults-style "intro raid."

One of the interesting notes within the reaction to the whole abuse scandal is that we've seen people like Ion Hazzikostas talk about a changing attitude toward some of their design philosophies - particularly regarding a kind of meta-design-philosophy of "father knows best." Time and again, we've seen Blizzard developers balk at fan-requested features, claiming that what would seem to be a quality-of-life change would ultimately wind up undoing some crucial aspect of the game's mechanics. More openness to change in the way they approach the design of the game could potentially reinvigorate it.

I'm still advocating for cross-faction grouping for things like dungeons, but that's my soap box.

I know there are vocal players who haven't felt a strong connection with Shadowlands' cosmic story. Generally, these players think that the story is best when we're grounded and back in more conventional conflicts with human-like antagonists. I don't think these people are wrong, but I also think that a balance needs to be struck.

I guess the reason I'm saddened by the cutting-short of Shadowlands is that I was hoping for the eye-opening Mists of Pandaria moment - when we arrived in Pandaria, it felt like we'd just left the Warcraft setting and arrived in a whole different fantasy story. But as we explored, we found connections to the overarching plot - the Mogu were revealed as Titanforged races, and we discovered that the Sha were actually the aftereffects of a slain Old God.

We've now discovered connections in the Shadowlands to other parts of the lore - perhaps the most shocking being the revelation that the Nathrezim were created in Revendreth, and have been working for the Jailer all this time. I don't know that any of these have really landed with the same impact, though - feeling less like a grand reveal and expansion of the lore than kind of a retcon that potentially creates inconsistencies with previous lore (like, I thought Nathreza was the homeworld of the Nathrezim).

That, I think is where Zereth Mortis could potentially make things more satisfying - Shadowlands has been reintroducing ideas first explored in Chronicle, with the primal forces arrayed around the material plane (and even showing a different chart, which, as Taliesin & Evitel demonstrated,  is actually the same from a different perspective).

Story-wise, Shadowlands has had a lot of cool things at work - finding Uther in an antagonistic role to start with was a bold move, but one that ultimately seems to be paying off as his capacity for empathy has given us a really interesting and nuanced view of Sylvanas now that her soul has been haphazardly glued back together.

I guess I want to keep steeping in these heady ideas about the cosmos and the moral and ethical implications of agency and responsibility when your soul is literally split into pieces.

The future of WoW is maybe more up in the air than ever before, both on an internal, narrative basis and on an external basis of its players and the company that makes it.

I've often thought about when my relationship with the game would end - most video games I'll be into for a while and then move on, but RPGs that are constantly added to naturally encourage long-term relationships with them. Fifteen years is a long time, which both makes it feel more like I'm on the tail end of it but also make the eventuality of ultimately stepping away from the game feel that much more emotionally fraught.

Having gotten into D&D over the past six years, I do think that a lot of the things I like in WoW I can do more effectively in D&D, but D&D requires scheduling and is more of a to-do than simply logging in and playing for a bit. And I still love Warcraft just as a fantasy setting.

I'll keep an eye on 9.2, and I'm curious to see what they announce as the next expansion (normally, this far into an odd-numbered year, we'd know by now). We'll see.

What I Want From a Planescape Setting Book

A couple days ago, I did a post about what I want to see in a Spelljammer campaign setting book. The post was motivated by the fact that it seems very likely that the next book after Critical Role: Call of the Netherdeep will be such a book. Spelljammer is one of those fabled settings - one that was briefly introduced in the late 80s but faded into obscurity due to unpopularity, only for a new generation of players to find out "holy crap, there's a spacefaring sci-fi D&D setting? How is this not the setting for, like, all your books?"

I've been on record frequently about my love of mixing the peanut butter of sci-fi with the chocolate of fantasy - I mean, I, too, was obsessed with Star Wars as a kid. So I am very excited for the high probability we're getting a Spelljammer book (I'd say we have similar evidence we did that a Ravenloft book was coming when they started testing the Gothic Lineages).

But I'll be honest: there's one setting that I'm actually a little more enthusiastic to see get a 5th Edition release, and it's one that I think was more popular, at least in the 90s. And that is Planescape.

Now, as a setting, Planescape is... the narrative borders of it are a little vague. One could make the argument that the DMG already gives us a pretty big part of Planescape, which is just the description of the various planes of the D&D multiverse. In a sense, Baldur's Gate: Descent into Avernus is sort of a Planescape campaign purely on the merits of the fact that most of it takes place on an Outer Plane (in this case, the Nine Hells.)

But Planescape has a little more specificity to it.

Planescape introduces the Outlands and the city of Sigil, along with figures like the Lady of Pain and the various factions that inhabit Sigil. The whole vibe of Planescape is far weirder than the kind of angels-versus-demons aesthetic one might assume you'd get from the Outer Planes.

One of my favorite elements of Planescape, and one that I think really shows off the look and feel they're going for, are the Dabus. Dabus are the servants of the Lady of Pain, who seem to maintain and rearrange the layout of Sigil to her liking. These beings are tall, humanoid-like figures who seem like they might have been designed by either Dr. Seuss or Jim Henson, and when they speak, rather than creating sound, they instead have speech bubbles that appear over their heads with a rebus (a pictographic cypher: the sort where the word "can't" would be depicted as a tin can followed by "+ T").

The factions of Sigil are various organizations that have wildly different views on the purpose of existence and struggle with one another for influence within the city and across the planes. Some examples include the Sensates, who think that any being should seek to experience every possible sensation they can, or the Sign of One, who each believe that the rest of existence only exists because of their imagination, and believe that harnessing that imagination can reshape reality.

Honestly, there are some strong parallels between Sigil and its factions with Ravnica and its guilds, but even as a big Ravnica fan, Planescape does pre-date it by over a decade.

Notably, Planescape was the setting that gave us Tieflings and Gith as playable races (though tieflings were more broadly "plane-touched" rather than being specifically connected to the Nine Hells).

So, with all that context, what do I want to see out of a campaign setting book?

First off, these books are meant primarily for the DM, and I think it's important to focus on adventure-building. Unlike Ravenloft or even potentially Spelljammer, Planescape doesn't have the setting microcosm options that you can see in those. While Ravenloft thrives in tightly contained mini-worlds, Planescape wants to throw the doors wide open. Even an adventure that takes place entirely in Sigil is going to make use of the whole city.

The danger with this setting is that it's a whole lot of things. The 2nd edition setting book spreads itself a little bit thin even when focusing only on Sigil and the Outlands.

So, there's even a part of me that feels like you'd want two books - one for the city and one for the Outlands (and maybe even a Manual of the Planes for 5th edition.)

But there are lots of other books to be published, so let's see if we can figure something out.

I really appreciated the way that Van Richten's Guide to Raven loft dedicated a lot of its pages to genre and tone. Really, the biggest reason to look at different campaign settings in the first place is to seek out a different tone. I think it would be good to really place a strong emphasis on how adventures in the outer planes should feel different than those on the prime material plane.

One key, I think, is that devils and demons that show up in the prime material plane are pretty much always going to be antagonists to defeat, usually without hesitation. But if you are going on an adventure in the Abyss, chaotic evil fiends are going to be the default of what you encounter while visiting, and while yes, you'll need to watch yourself very carefully, you'll also need to figure out a way to relate to and earn the trust of its denizens. I think emphasizing that good and evil (and law and chaos) are not just moral judgments, but also an inextricable element to the setting, and where balance between those elements might become more important than the victory of good over evil.

As I said before, the factions in Sigil (who have strongholds and bases in other planes,) do bear a resemblance to the guilds in Ravnica. It might be tempting, then, to structure the book in a similar way - devoting a chapter to each faction and going through plot hooks and adventures that would feature each of them. The only reason I think this structure could be a mistake is that the book might look too much like the Ravnica sourcebook. Indeed, even though the gods of Theros are cool, one of the things I found a little underwhelming about Mythic Odysseys of Theros was the way that it simply repeated that structure from Guildmaster's Guide to Ravnica.

I think that the Sigil factions should certainly get a good write-up in any Planescape sourcebook, but I wouldn't make it the primary focus of the book, because I think you'd wind up being forced to cut back on stuff about The Outlands.

This, of course, is always a challenge for settings that have a neat "set." In the 2nd Edition Planescape book, only 7 of the 16 Gate-Towns are described (the ones you get are Automata (Mechanus), Bedlam (Pandemonium), Curst (Carceri), Glorium (Ysgard), Plague-Mort (The Abyss), Ribcage (Nine Hells), and Xaos (Limbo)). I'd love to get details on all of these, but again, there are only so many pages you can fit between the covers before you have a weapon that does 1d6 bludgeoning damage.

Again, I think the emphasis for a sourcebook should tend to be how to build adventures that have the right feel for the setting than necessarily bogging us down with endless details about the world. So, I'd like to see a lot of guidance on how to make Planescape adventure both have that otherworldly feel and also show how philosophy truly shapes reality within the outer planes.

Now, as with any setting book, I'd also expect we would get some player options. Many classes already have kind of planar-themed subclasses, like the Horizon Walker Ranger or the Oath of the Watchers paladin. I think you could easily create subclasses themed around particular planes as well.

In the 2nd Edition Planescape book, we had tieflings and gith as playable races, along with the "bariaur," which is kind of a goat-centaur that hails from chaotic good planes like Ysgard and Arborea. I think making 5th edition Bariaurs would be a natural move, though I think we could also definitely see some other planar races and lineages.

Actually, one thing I think would be very interesting is to allow the creation of characters who are Primes, Petitioners, or Planars.

Primes are just like most D&D characters - denizens of the Prime Material Plane who have come to this wondrous and awesome realm. (And their gobsmacked reaction to the outer planes is generally why they're seen as idiotic hicks).

Petitioners are the souls of people who have died (either as planars or primes) and then gone on to the outer planes according to the gods they worshipped and the alignments they held in life. Petitioners are in the process of becoming celestials, fiends, or other planar beings. (To be fair, I think these are typically NPC-only).

Planars are humanoids who were born and raised in the outer planes, and have always lived their natural lives within the planes.

So, that might be another angle to approach playable races, maybe creating rules that alter the way that a race works if it's a planar version.

I do think that any setting book should have a bestiary filled with cool creatures, but I also think it would be good to emphasize the way that conflicts in Planescape need not be resolved purely through violence. The 2nd Edition book gives some guidance on how a DM can handle murder-hobo players, including potentially just having the big demon the players are trying to kill just ignore them and move on with its day.

Actually, a note on language:

Planescape came out during the height of the "Satanic Panic," when extreme "moral guardians" had condemned D&D as some kind of tool of devil-worship, given the presence of demonic monsters and game systems that involved summoning them (which, you know, was usually what the bad guys were doing, but don't count on reactionaries to understand such nuances). In an effort to placate the fears of parents who feared this game would turn their children into baby-sacrificing satanists, TSR made some changes to its worldbuilding, turning the Nine Hells into a realm known as Baator, and the resident Devils into "Baatezu." Likewise, demons were renamed "tanar'ri," and daemons, the neutral evil fiends, were renamed "yugoloths," which is the only one of those terms that really stuck (I think probably become daemon is way too easy to confuse with demon).

While I think it's good that sanity prevailed and people have recognized that merely portraying these evil creatures is not the same as encouraging its players to worship them, I honestly kind of like the notion that these words still exist - that maybe in their own languages, these fiends use these terms to refer to themselves. In fact, I believe that lore developed to suggest that Tanar'ri are actually only the most recent form of demon, and that earlier forms like Obyriths pre-date the Tanar'ri as earlier denizens of The Abyss.

Some of the planes have seen their names change over time. Obviously, the Nine Hells were briefly Baator (and I think are technically now "The Nine Hells of Baator,") but there were also some changes like Olympus becoming Arborea, the "Happy Hunting Grounds" becoming the Beastlands (which is definitely a good change, especially considering that the Happy Hunting Grounds were the invention of a white guy who just made it up and claimed that it was a Native American concept). Mechanus was originally called Nirvana (though I think it's still sometimes called "The Clockwork Nirvana.") And I think Carceri used to be Tartarus, while Hades was simply The Grey Waste. I think the current names are all pretty good, though I like the idea of internalizing some of the old terms and treating them not as some editorial change by the company that owns D&D, but instead just different names for the same place used in different contexts.

One of the things that's really fun about the 2nd Edition planescape book is its very 1990s "new weird" aesthetic. 5th Edition has had a pretty consistent look to it, with the exception perhaps of Eberron: Rising from the Last War (which I think re-used old art assets from previous editions). While I'd love to see Sigil and other Planescape elements rendered in 5th Edition's standard realistic style, I would hope we'd also get some other art styles in there as well. In terms of visual design, I think it's important that everything looks weird - no bureaucrat's robe, no soldier's armor, no merchant's hat should look "normal." I'm just looking at the Petitioner's section in the Player's Guide and there's a dude with a mantle that makes him look like a rhinoceros beetle and another guy who seems to be wearing some kind of slug as a cowl.

Planescape should be very, very "extra."

Thinking About D&D Tanking and the Armorer

 "Tanking" in MMORPGs is a traditional role that's been with the genre for a long time - certainly it has always been a part of World of Warcraft, where the first Alliance character I ever made (actually, technically the first character I ever made, though on the wrong server, so the "real" version is a couple days younger and many levels higher) and my main since 2008 is a tanking paladin.

But I remember struggling to totally grasp the concept when I first started playing. I sort of thought it was any melee character who focused on putting out lots of damage.

MMOs (or at least WoW) use a concept called "Threat" which is a predictable manner in which enemies will target a character with their attacks (or at least most of their attacks). The more damage you do, the more threat you generate, but those who have a tank specialization have a multiplier to their threat generation - even though they're doing less than the "DPS" does to the foes, their multiplier should more than compensate for it - if they can do half as much damage (and ordinarily they do more than that) they should have a solid lead in threat.

TTRPGs don't work that way. A DM/GM will make choices as to what monsters attack which party members.

The decision tree for a DM here is a little complex - depending on the monster, they might go after foes they consider weaker and easier to take down, or they might be reactive, striking back at whoever dealt them the most damage in the last round. A smart monster might act strategically, trying to see which party member they most want to disrupt and harm in order to win the fight, while a group of unintelligent and chaotic monsters might essentially choose targets at random.

So, tanking is a lot more complex in D&D than it is in WoW.

I think there are a couple things that make you "a tank" in D&D.

The biggest element is a focus on survival. As an example, pretty much all paladins are strength-based, heavily-armored melee combatants. The need to hit with melee attacks to use Divine Smite, along with their available fighting styles, encourages Paladins to go with one of two different loadouts - either a big, two-handed weapon or a strong melee weapon with a shield (by strong melee weapon I mean a d8 weapon - a longsword, warhammer, battleaxe, or flail). Yes, you can built a dex-based paladin or go with dual-wielding, but the class doesn't support these options quite as well (that's not to say that it isn't some theoretical best option - though I think that the benefits of dual-wielding are probably not as good as going with polearm master).

Using a two-handed weapon of course maximizes the damage you can do, but by not using a shield, you lose two AC, or up to 5 AC if your party comes across a +3 shield. That means you are going to be getting hit more often.

To me, what defines a "tank" in D&D is that you have a character (almost always built for melee) that can take more punishment from big melee attacks. You can do this in a few ways: the most obvious is higher AC, which reduces the chance that you get hit. Next, you want to have a higher maximum HP, which means it takes more hits to knock you out of the fight. Finally, you might have some form of damage mitigation. This last part is less common - the Heavy Armor Master feat subtracts 3 damage from any nonmagical bludgeoning, piercing, or slashing attack you take if you're wearing heavy armor. Much more common is a Barbarian's Rage mechanic, which gives you resistance to all bludgeoning, piercing, or slashing damage.

Typically, a Barbarian has a lower AC than tanks that wear heavy armor. They can wear medium armor, giving them a max AC (before magical armor) of 17, or 19 with a shield. But more typically, they'll go without armor, relying on unarmored defense. This is very stat-dependent. If you roll very good stats at the beginning of the campaign, a Barbarian's AC can actually get very high. The challenge, though, is that while you'll be likely to push Constitution, you're less likely to have a lot you can put into Dexterity. Still, even if a Barbarian never gets more than +2 to Dex, if they hit level 20 with maxed out Constitution, and they get a +3 shield and bracers of defense, they can actually get an AC of 26 - which is pretty freaking good.

Still, that's level 20. Most Barbarians are going to have a lower AC than other "tanks" but benefit greatly from their Rage granting resistance. Essentially, they're going to be taking damage more often, but the damage is reduced to a manageable level (Totem Warrior Barbarians who get the level 3 Bear totem effect actually get to have resistance to all damage except Psychic, which is very potent.)

Of course, my thoughts have been focusing largely on the Armorer. As a tank, they get to wear heavy armor like a Fighter or Paladin, but they have a lower average health due to the fact that an Artificer is a d8 hit die class.

However, they get around this through the use of Defensive Field. They have a bonus action they can use a number of times a day equal to their proficiency bonus which adds temporary hit points equal to their artificer level. The temp hit points last until they take the armor off or take a long rest, so as long as you aren't getting in and out of that armor all the time, it's almost like just adding more HP (as long as you use that bonus action again every time your temp HP is depleted - but Armorers actually have a pretty free and open bonus action each turn). The scaling of this also jumps up by a fair amount every time your proficiency bonus increases - to start with, it's a grand total of 6 temp hp (divided into two 3-point uses). But by level 20, you've got a total of 120 (6 20-point uses). Ultimately, with the same Con modifier, this gives you a higher effective max HP than a Barbarian - though of course, not the damage resistance.

At high levels, the Armorer has a few powerful tools to be more resilient to attacks. They can get a pretty high AC (without any magic items granted to them by the DM, they can get an AC of 25, though you can't push it a ton higher given that a lot of this relies on transforming your suit of armor). With Absorb Elements, you can, on-demand as a reaction, gain resistance to most elemental damage types, and though it consumes a costly reagent, you can also pop the 4th level spell Stoneskin to give you resistance to nonmagical bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing damage - this does require your concentration, but with your high Con save bonus, you've got a good chance of not dropping concentration on that (especially given that the damage is mostly halved by the spell.)

The "threat" aspect of tanking is mostly absent from D&D tanks. I'd say that the primary way that so-called "tanks" can handle foes is by positioning themselves in such a way that enemies would need to draw opportunity attacks in order to get to the "back lines" of your party - or, if there's a narrow enough space, they can even block the way. But a creature that can get past could easily just ignore a tanky character. I think this is, in part, why even "tank" characters are designed to put out a decent amount of damage - ignoring them can be costly.

However, the Armorer shares an effect that Ancestral Guardian Barbarians get which actually gives them a flavor of that D&D tank. The Armorer's Thunder Gauntlet weapon applies an effect to targets it hits, giving them disadvantage on attacks against any target other than the armorer. While this doesn't prevent them from going after the squishy wizard (and if a character had a low AC, I think a DM might just eat the disadvantage and risk it,) it does incentivize them to go after the "tank," rather than the armorer's more vulnerable ally.

This has an added benefit of aiding allies who are melee combatants but are less well-armored - the normal positioning and obstruction that protects spellcasters in the back does very little to help the vulnerable Monk who has to be in melee with the foes. Now, you're making them harder to hit just by attacking.

One of the things I've been thinking about in terms of my future Armorer is what to take with my level 1 feat as a variant human. My default idea had, for a long time, been Tough. Tough increases your max hit points by two for every level you have. It's almost like having your Constitution modifier boosted by 4, except it doesn't help with saves. In fact, I think it's more analogous to making your hit die two sizes larger, though only one size larger regarding your first level. A Barbarian's d12 hit die gives them an "average" of 7 points per level, while an Artificer's d8 gives it 5. This effectively bumps it up to 7 per level. Indeed, if you roll your HP (which I know some people consider the only way to go, but I avoid because consistent low rolls can ruin a character) this makes things a little more consistent - your maximum roll is 10, but your minimum roll is 3.

That being said: tough is kind of boring. It's just more health, and my hope is that with Defensive Field, I'll be rocking enough effective HP that my going unconscious is very rare anyway. Yes, that's eventually 40 extra HP by level 20, but I'm thinking about alternatives.

The one I've landed on is Alert - this prevents you from ever being surprised (meaning even if you get ambushed, you can still act while the foes are launching their sneak attack) and creatures can't get advantage on attacks against you from being unseen. (This feels like something I'd need to remind the DM about.) But, perhaps more excitingly, it adds +5 to your initiative rolls.

My most-played characters are a Fighter with a +0 to Dexterity and a Paladin with a -2. It is extraordinarily rare for me to ever act first in initiative. With a standard array build, I'd have a +7 to initiative rolls.

And I actually think there's a lot of use to going first as a tank. While yes, it's nice to let a wizard or sorcerer get in first to drop a fireball on your foes, I could wind up using that early turn to drop Fairie Fire into the group of enemies. And worst case, I can get my Defensive Field up (if it wasn't already) and charge in to have some control over the battlefield in terms of positioning.

It's also unlikely to be a common scenario, but there is one very cool thing to the Armorer - they can don their Arcane Armor as an action (even if it's heavy armor, which usually takes 10 full minutes). So, if we were caught while camping out, I'd be able to roll out of bed and get my armor on and be fully effective for round 2 very quickly.

There are other things I've looked at (and I think I've written about them as well,) but that's mainly what I'm thinking for now.