The Awaken Spell Blows My Mind

 Awaken is a 5th level transmutation spell available to Bards and Druids. It has a casting time of 8 hours, a range of touch, and consumes a 1000-gold agate as its material component. You can cast this spell on a beast or plant with an intelligence of 3 or lower. When the spell goes off, the creature gains an intelligence of 10 and gains the ability to speak one language you know. If the target is a plant, it also gains the ability to move its limbs, roots, vines, creepers, and so forth, and it gains senses similar to a human's. Plants can have stat blocks similar to an Awakened Shrub or Awakened Tree, whichever is appropriate as determined by the DM. The target is charmed by you for 30 days or until you or your companions harm it. When the charm condition ends, the creature can choose whether or not it wants to remain friendly to you, based on how you treated it.

So...

This is crazy.

A 10 intelligence is meant to represent average human intelligence. That means that the creatures go from being simple animals or mindless plants to... well, people.

And that's where I feel like the potential for this spell gets really crazy.

Once you have the ability to speak and the human capacity for abstract thought, I don't see any reason why a creature of this sort couldn't take class levels. It might be slow going at first if they go with something like Wizard or Artificer (it would take them until level 19 to max out Intelligence). But, like, a Deer has a Wisdom of 14 - meaning they could be a decent Druid. Or, indeed, with a 16 Dexterity, they could go Monk - which might also allow them to deal with the fact that they'd have trouble finding armor and might need to rely on unarmed strikes (with their antlers, for instance) without the use of opposable thumbs.

Seriously, I think you could, using the custom lineage rules, actually make a player character who is an awakened beast. Unfortunately, primate beasts (such as an Ape) are actually too smart to benefit from the Awaken spell (an Ape has an Intelligence of 6, meaning that they're actually just as smart as the druid from my original campaign).

But generally, as a DM, always remember that you can easily justify talking animals and plants in your campaign.

Changing the Goals in D&D Combat

 In my Ravnica-based D&D campaign, the group's cleric has something of a... complicated relationship with his guild. In the invented lore for the campaign, a spirit known as Grigorev was once one of the five members of the Obzedat Council, which rules over the Orzhov Syndicate. For reasons that the party has yet to discover in their entirety, Grigorev was outmaneuvered by a fellow member, Karlov (who is canonical) and cast out of the Obzedat, shackled away under a curse known as the Pillory of the Sleepless (an aura from the original block) while Karlov consolidated his power.

The cleric has been hearing whispers from Grigorev for most of his life, and Grigorev serves as the god that grants the cleric his divine powers (Grave domain).

While most of the campaign has been focused primarily on the external Phyrexian threat, the cleric has been hunted by a death knight known as Czernog the Butcher (pronounced "cher-nog") who serves as Karlov's deadliest weapon.

However, researching Czernog's backstory with the help of a high-ranking archmage in the Orzhov with his own reasons to undermine Karlov, the party discovered that Czernog was actually a righteous Boros Legionnaire before he was captured and tortured into forsaking his oath.

A death knight is profoundly hard to kill permanently, given that they will always return after they are slain until they repent, which most aren't inclined to do. So, the archmage devised a plan: to trap Czernog in a Magic Circle and then use the party's renown to call upon Aurelia and absolve Czernog of the evil committed under Karlov's control.

What this meant was an unconventional combat encounter: the party needed to fight Czernog, but they could not kill him - instead, they needed to ensure that at the end of ten rounds of combat (representing the minute needed to cast Magic Circle,) Czernog was in a particular place within the ruined chapel where he was first ordained as a paladin of the Boros Legion.

In some ways, this was a dream to DM, because it meant I actually got to use all my cool stuff (though with a new sorcerer in the party, spells quickly became unreliable as the sorcerer could always cast Counterspell, so he had to rely on his melee attacks).

Still, ten rounds with death knight I had turned legendary by giving him legendary resistance, legendary actions, and altered some aspects of his HP and gear was a lot.

Essentially, it became a healing endurance match. Czernog had a scythe that had a 10-foot reach and dealt 2d6+5 slashing damage as well as 6d8 necrotic damage, with two attacks per turn and the ability to attack with a single legendary action. He could also use a legendary action to force a wisdom save against any non-undead creature that could hear within 60 feet, dealing 4d8 psychic damage and frightening creatures for a minute on a failure, or half damage and no fear on a success. +11 to hit with the scythe and a DC 18 for the "Shriek of the Damned," which is based on the Ring Wraiths from Fellowship of the Ring.

Ultimately, what the fight wound up being was first a bunch of damage to him (which honestly wasn't really necessary at all) and fighting off a total of 22 minions (mostly skeletons and zombies, but a couple of blackguards and a homebrew monster called a Scourge Knight that didn't really get a chance to do anything) with a bit of help from two Necromancer Wizards the archmage brought in, along with the five zombies and five skeletons they raised for the fight.

Once the area was cleared of minions for the most part, the party overlapped as many difficult-terrain effects around the spot Czernog had to be once he was there, and then the Barbarian and Fighter/Paladin both grappled him, holding him there until the end of round 10.

Meanwhile, the Cleric had to pour out a ton of healing, aided by the Druid.

It was a fun, different sort of challenge, and while I was hoping to scare the party just a little bit more, I was happy to see that they pulled it off without any of the party members dying (one of the necromancer wizards made a sacrifice play, dying to draw one of Czernog's attacks off the Barbarian to ensure he remained grappled, though as servants of a powerful Orzhov archmage, they knew they could be resurrected).

With Karlov's champion taken away, the cleric awoke the next day to receive a personal invitation delivered by none other than Teysa Karlov to have a discussion directly with the Obzedat Council, with a magically-enforced guarantee of protection.

An Elden Lord of Stars

 Well, I wound up going with the Age of Stars ending, because, well, I think it's the coolest one (and the one I worked the hardest on).

I actually managed to down Godfrey on the first attempt - it helped that I had Nepheli Loux and my Mimic Tear, not to mention how high level I was.

The final boss was a bit tougher. I don't think I ever died to Radagon, but I did start one of my Elden Beast phases with only six crimson tear flasks left. Still, I think it was only four or five attempts to take down the Elden Beast. Seriously, if you've taken down Malenia, I don't think much else in the game can put up a fight.

The game is actually quite generous in letting you do clean-up after beating the final boss. You get a site of grace in Marika's room, and you don't actually have to pick an ending immediately. But even after you pick an ending, they put you in Roundtable Hold with the option, at the Table, to start "Journey 2."

I do think there are one or two things I missed - I never picked up Shabriri's Woe and I didn't get every Walking Mausoleum down (though I have every remembrance item that I can actually use with my build). Also, I don't know if Varré has more for you if you actually do some PvP.

I've got to say, the Dark Souls formula translated shockingly well to an open-world game, and I think this is a masterpiece. I think the difficulty is also balanced much more fairly than, say, Dark Souls 3.

I'm extremely curious to see what kind of DLC we might eventually get for this, and if I can truly sit on my finished playthrough without going to New Game Plus, I might leave him in NG for if and when the DLC comes out.

For now, though, I think this means I'm going to setting Elden Ring aside. A legendary game.

Into the Ashen Capital

 So, on my "thorough" playthrough of Elden Ring, I feel as if I've combed every tiny corner of the map. I clearly haven't actually found everything (I'm missing the two "scarseal" talismans, though I have the upgrades, the "soreseals." I also don't think I have Shabriri's Woe. But at this point I've gone through so much of the game, combed through dungeons and bosses, that I felt it was high time (at level 152) to finally face Malikith and go to the endgame.

Malikith is, I imagine, a very tough boss if you fight him at a lower level, or with a less powerful build. And he did manage to kill me on the first attempt when I was trying to make use of the special item you can get by defeating Recusant Bernahl when he invades you (on the bridge leading to Malikith's boss arena, just go down the bridge and explore there and you'll get invaded). Focusing just on killing him, I was able to do so on attempt number two, though that second phase gets significantly tougher given how much the dude jumps around.

When you slay Malikith, you Destined Death is unleashed, and the Erdtree truly begins to burn. You wake up in Leyndell, Ashen Capital. Now, I had sort of assumed I'd be looking at a similar map and a full dungeon like the first trip to Leyndell, but the city has filled up so much with ash that almost everything is buried. There's one gargoyle left, and beyond that it's just boss fights.

I faced down Gideon Ofnir, the All-Knowing, which was pretty quick and easy as my Mimic Tear and I slammed down on him before he could do much. From there, I'll be going to Morgott's old arena right in front of the Erdtree, where the penultimate (or pen-penultimate if you count Radagon and the Elden Beast as separate fights) boss.

As is often the case, I'm feeling that sense of trepidation - I don't want the game to end!

Also, I've been mulling over which ending to go with. I cleansed myself of the Frenzied Flame, so I think that one's out, but that opens up the others. I also waited too long to talk to Corhyn, and found his bell bearing and Goldmask's mask in Altus Plateau (Goldmask's mask is a bit harder to find). So Perfect Order is out, but that's the ending I'd planned for my Dragon guy.

Basically, I'm tempted to go with the Age of Stars ending because I usually think of the most complicated ending to get in these games as the preferable one. But I also feel like that fits my intelligence-based Sorcerer much better. So, that leaves the Age of Fracture (the one you don't need to do sidequests for,) the Age of the Fell Curse or whatever it's called (Dung Eater's evil ending, though not as evil, perhaps as the Frenzied Flame one) or, what I'm leaning toward, the Age of the Duskborn, which is based on Fia's quest.

Anyway, I sort of want to go down a checklist of all the mini-dungeons and make sure I hit them all (I'd missed one in the Consecrated Snowfield near where you fight the named magma wyrm that gives you a special dragon spell). But I spent a while falling off the branches at the top of the Haligtree to try to get everything there (come to think of it, the second giant envoy might drop a weapon that I should try to get). I also cannot get the leonine misbegotten in the Haligtree town to drop the Iron Greatsword, but I figure the Gargoyle Greatsword is doing just fine for me as my off-hand weapon (really I'd just like to be able to leave one Sacred and the other Flame Art so I could swap my damage type at will).

Also, I want to talk to Gurranq now that I've killed Malikith, given that it seems strongly implied they're the same person albeit in a weird timey-wimey alternate timeline... or Malikith is in the future, or something.

But hey, maybe when I finish Elden Ring I'll feel like playing WoW again.

A Hugely Powerful Build, and Mohg and Malenia Down in One Session, and the Plot to Spare Melina

 It's funny, Mohg has classic bad guy written all over him, but getting to him (in the "true" fight) is, I think, far easier than getting to Malenia, and his fight is, while not easy (though let's revisit that) he's definitely easier than the Goddess of Rot herself.

My Wretched character has been one on which I've tried to be very thorough - I intend to basically do everything in the game that I can. I cleared I think almost the entirety of Limgrave and the Weeping Peninsula before I even entered Stormveil Castle (though I still had a little trouble on Godrick - which I hadn't really thought of as that tough of a boss on my previous characters).

Anyway, I'm using Fextralife's Blasphemous Herald build, and boy howdy does this thing just destroy foes. It's a Strength/Faith build that uses the following weapons: Blasphemous Blade (one of Rykard's remembrance weapons,) Gargoyle's Greatsword (off the Valiant Gargoyle fight that leads you to Deeproot Depths) and the Gargoyle's Blackblade (off the gargoyle boss standing outside of Gurranq's Bestial Sanctum). Basically, depending on if you want holy or fire damage, you swap between the Blasphemous Blade or the Blackblade (fire, holy, respectively) and then swap out ash of war to make the Greatsword either sacred of flame art, and wield it in the off-hand.

You power-stance by using two greatswords, and then you get most of your damage with jumping L1 attacks, though both the Blasphemous Blade and the Gargoyle's Blackblade have very powerful weapon skills. You then use the Clawmark Sacred Seal to buff with things like Golden Vow, Blessing of the Erdtree, and Flame Give me Strength, which all come together to make your double-whammy strikes hit like a freight train.

I've found that a lot of bosses - especially the slower-moving, big ones, get carved up pretty quickly here. You can't use a shield or even block with a weapon, so you need to rely on dodging for survival, but this is why we use the Dragoncrest Greatshield Medallion (or a lesser version given that you don't find that until basically right before Malenia.)

While I think it does a little less damage, usually I'm happier to be in "fire mode" given that the Blasphemous Blade has a passive effect that restores a decent chunk of HP each time you kill an enemy, and its weapon art not only hits super hard and knocks foes over and has decent range, but it also heals you I think for some portion of the damage it does.

Anyway, because I'm being very thorough, I went down into the depths under Leyndell, slaying Mohg, the Omen (which I guess is a projection of the real Mohg - and even though I found Mohg's Shackle I didn't wind up using it on either fight) and went all the way down to the Frenzied Flame Proscription, where you have to strip down to nothing but your skivvies to meet with the Three Fingers, who grab you, marking you with the Frenzied Flame.

The visual effect here is pretty cool - your eyes now glow yellow and you have these fingerprint scars on your body. But this also leaves you only the "bad" ending (well, one of two that I think are really objectively bad - the Dung Eater one isn't exactly great). However, if you complete Milicent's quest line (which starts with meeting Gowry right before the town of Sellia in Caelid) and then beat Malenia, you can get an item that you can then use in Placudisax's arena in Crumbling Farum Azula to purge yourself of the Frenzied Flame and allow for the other endings.

Ironically, the ulcerated tree spirit you need to beat before you can do the last stage of Milicent's questline gave me more trouble than Mohg, and maybe even more than Malenia - though the latter was easier for an odd reason.

So, Mohg I beat on the second try - the first I think I only died because he hit me right as I was drinking my flask of wondrous physick with the tear that cures his curses, and I thought I had successfully quaffed it, but didn't, so I died to his bleeds. The second attempt, though, this build just showed how insanely powerful it is and I killed him before he could get into his second phase (not unlike when I took him out with Comet Azur on my sorcerer build).

Again, this Blasphemous Herald build is really, really strong. If you buff up for the fight before you enter, you're going to be landing such insane damage on the boss that the fight will be over very quickly.

Malenia was not so quick - she has to be the toughest boss in the game, though I still haven't actually done Malikith or the bosses that come after him (on this character, because I've been so thorough, I might not feel so hesitant to finish Farum Azula, as I think I've done just about everything in Leyndell).

Now, I did wind up winning thanks to an odd glitch, but I don't feel so bad because I got her down to like 10% on a previous attempt and only later realized I hadn't been wearing by Claw Talisman, so if I had, I would have already won, probably. Here's the glitch:

During the first phase of the Malenia fight, when she's listed as "Malenia, Blade of Miquella," right as she was at very low health, I staggered her, and I hit R1 to start a critical hit just as the damage-over-time of Black Knife Tiche's ability ticked her down to zero.

When the cutscene ended, my character performed the critical hit animation and knocked Malenia out of the sky, so she just fell prone rather than doing her big rot-flower attack that usually starts the Goddess of Rot phase. But more than that, apparently there was some glitch with how her health was calculated, and so my striking her as she spawned left her at 1 HP. I ran up to her as she was recovering from the fall and landed a nice jumping L1 and that took her out.

Pretty crazy. But, now I have Miquella's Needle and can rid myself of the Frenzied Flame effect once I get to Placudisax (who, while not easy, is probably not going to be as tough as Malenia).

I've basically not done any grinding on this character - he's effective enough that I haven't lost a ton of runes to death, and I've been so thorough that he hasn't hit any boss where I feel like he's just not powerful enough to face them. At this point, he's level 142, with 50 Faith, 45 Strength (and the Omensmirk Mask for an extra 2) and now I'm pushing his Vigor to try to hit 50 (the other points are in Endurance and Mind, and I think a tiny amount in Dexterity).

I am still kind of blown away by how many Runes the enemies past the Prayer Room site of grace in Ephael give - it feels like that's there to make it very easy to catch up if you're a little underleveled to face Malenia.

But oh yes, the plot to spare Melina. As you approach the Frenzied Flame Proscription, Malenia basically begs you not to go further. See, the Frenzied Flame basically doesn't like that there's any distinction between different things, and wants to melt reality back into a single mass. Oddly, there's a real emphasis on Birth as the distinction between the world as it is and the world the Frenzied Flame would create. Hyetta, the woman you feed all those Shabrir "grapes" to in Liurnia, is there as well, and encourages you to seek the flame. You can expose her to the flame as well, burning out her eyes and granting you the Frenzied Flame Seal, whose incant scaling works with Strength, Dexterity, Faith, and Intelligence.

The reason we do this, though, is because we can use the Frenzied Flame to burn the Erdtree instead of Melina - she leaves us, and even vows to kill us if we become the Lord of Frenzied Flame (the bad ending,) but the logic here is that if we can then purge ourselves, we get to burn the Erdtree without killing Melina, and then avoid the apocalyptic ending that the Lord of Frenzied Flame would entail.

It just means having to beat the hardest boss in the game and find some of the most obscure and difficult-to-reach places in the game.

New Capenna Decks I've Had Some Success With

 When a new set comes out, there's always this sort of awkward stage where it's really not clear what decks are going to be super good, and so I often make some new thing with a lot of new cards that I'm all excited about, only to be beaten down with decks that have spent the last card set cycle getting refined and tested.

However, in the five days or so of New Capenna being available on Arena, I've managed to cobble together (with a lot of help from online deck lists) some decks that actually seem to be able to win now and again.

First off, there's a Cabaretti (Naya) tokens deck. This one is very vulnerable to sweepers - something that we have a lot of in Standard these days, between Meathook Massacre, Doomskar, Burn Down the House, and Farewell. But if you can manage to build up a lot of creatures with things like Esika's Chariot, Join the Dance, etc., there's some great payoff. Jetmir, the legendary mob boss of the Cabaretti, can be the thing you plunk down on the battlefield and just win the game with - he gives bonuses to all your creatures based on how many you have out, and giving everyone +1/+0 and vigilance, then trample, then double strike is pretty nice (though the latter you need nine creatures out to get).

The next deck I've been playing is a Brokers (Bant) deck that uses Teleportation Circle for enter-the-battlefield recursion. Here, we have cheap creatures like Prosperous Innkeeper and Topiary Stomper to ramp up, but then things get really crazy when we get Workshop Warchief or Titan of Industry - the latter of which is going to bring a ton of pain to your opponent, as you can kill enchantments and artifacts, pump out 4/4 rhino warrior tokens, gain five life, or put a shield counter on one of your creatures, which is nuts.

A deck that I'm hoping to refine is a sort of Maestro (Grixis) control deck that make use of a few cards like A Little Chat - which is a simple but useful card-draw engine - and of course, Ob Nixilis, the Adversary, which is the new hotness in planeswalkers. Having a bunch of Eyetwitches and Shambling Ghasts means that sacrificing a creature for these cards is actually more of a bonus than a drawback.

It'll be a few weeks before the new, most powerful deck archetypes reveal themselves, and of course, a lot of fairly old cards at this point are still pretty dominant - I think we're going to have to wait for Kaldheim and Strixhaven to rotate out of standard before those nasty Izzet control decks go away.

Radiant Citadel and Spelljamming the Ethereal

 So, while I think a ton of D&D fans are super-hyped for Spelljammer: Adventures in Space coming in the summer, we shouldn't forget about Journeys through the Radiant Citadel, the upcoming adventure anthology.

While I've found that I'm less excited about adventure books, given that I tend to prefer homebrew campaigns (at least as a DM, though I think probably as a player as well) the core concept of Radiant Citadel is one that I think has a ton of potential.

The Radiant Citadel floats within the Deep Ethereal plane - a region that I think there's very, very little content for.

The exact role the Ethereal Plane plays is a little nebulous - before 4th Edition introduced the Shadowfell, the Demiplane of Dread (a.k.a. the location of the Ravenloft setting) was considered to reside within the Ethereal. The Shadowfell combined elements of the Ethereal and the Negative Energy/Shadow Planes (in 5th Edition lore, you basically can't exist within either the Negative or Positive Energy Plane, but in older editions these were basically just elemental planes).

The Ethereal seems to play a similar role to the Astral Plane as the "plane between planes," but while the Astral connects the Outer Planes, the Ethereal connects in the Inner Planes.

But it gets more complicated: in Forgotten Realms lore, there's a Fugue Plane that is kind of in the Ethereal, and it's here that the souls of the dead wait to be taken to their proper afterlives (generally in the Outer Planes,) and is where gods who are sort of judges of the dead hang out (also where devils hang out and offer to find a place for anyone who doesn't have a god to claim them - FR lore's not really kind to the irreligious).

The Ethereal is also sort of odd in that it has the normal spatial dimensions and temporal dimension, but then there's also the "border" and "deep."

In game mechanics, the border ethereal is basically "just to the left of reality" that usually is how you can do things like incorporeal movement. Ghosts, for instance, can slip into the Ethereal, and relatively low level spells like Blink let you slip into the Ethereal.

What I find interesting about the Radiant Citadel is that what we've seen of it suggests that travelers come and go, with different crystalline structures docking with it, and myriad cultures and peoples mixing in it... which, to me, sounds not too dissimilar to Spelljammer.

Now, it appears that 5th Edition Spelljammer is going to expand the purview of its setting - while Wildspace is still around, and you can totally sail your Spelljamming ship between different D&D settings, this version will also see these vessels sailing into the Astral Plane.

And really, once that's opened up, you could go anywhere. Why not the Ethereal Plane?

See, I'd love to see the 90s weirdness that was Planescape, but I think that Spelljammer could provide the underlying structure to allow for more plane-hopping campaigns - rather than through portals, we'd be flying ships (though to be fair, those ships are probably going through portals).