The Profundity of Shillelagh and the new Magic Initiate

 Magic Initiate in the 2014, current iteration, works the following way: you pick a class - namely Bard, Cleric, Druid, Sorcerer, Warlock, or Wizard, and you pick two cantrips from their spell list and one 1st level spell. You can then cast those cantrips at will, and you can cast that 1st level spell for free once per day - but only just that one time unless you have another way to cast it.

More importantly for our purposes here, you use the spellcasting ability of the class whose spells you took. If it's a Bard, Sorcerer, or Warlock spell, you use Charisma. If it's a Cleric or Druid spell, you use Wisdom, and if it's a Wizard spell, you use Intelligence. (Naturally, there's some overlap here, but you choose your class first, before your spells, and it's that class whose ability you use).

This does limit things somewhat - if you want to pick up, say, Guiding Bolt as a Wizard, you'd still have to use your Wisdom to cast it.

However, if we look at the Character Origins UA version of the feat, the design is significantly different.

First off, this is one of the free feats you can get as part of your background, which means it's far easier to justify picking it up.

Second, you can re-cast your leveled spell if you have spell slots to do so.

Another really big change is that, rather than dividing things by class, they instead sort spells into three categories - Arcane, Divine, and Primal. Rather than picking a class, you instead pick one of these three categories. There's also some overlap between these.

But, as you'll note, while the two classes that are generally "primal" casters both use Wisdom (Druids and Rangers) there are also instances where classes use different abilities - Clerics use Wisdom, but Paladins use Charisma, despite both being Divine spellcasters.

As such, the new version of Magic Initiate simply lets you pick your spellcasting ability for the spells in question.

And that opens things up significantly... and largely through a little spell called Shillelagh.

Shillelagh is a Druid cantrip. It's sort of a damage cantrip, though it doesn't actually do any damage on its own. Instead, you use it as a bonus action to empower a club or quarterstaff you have in hand - the wooded weapon grows more gnarled and bigger, and now, instead of using Strength to attack with it, you instead use your spellcasting ability. Its damage die also become a d8. Also, the weapon becomes magical for the 1-minute duration.

Because this is restricted to Druids, the main intentional use for it is that Druids can use it to get a bit more useful in melee situations, even though they're not built to be melee combatants (well, not as a baseline class at least).

Tasha's introduction of the Druidic Warrior fighting style, which would allow them to pick up this cantrip, is pretty great, as it allows a player to really focus in on being a Wisdom-based character (a good match for the updated Beast Master, who use their spell attack modifier to govern their pet's chance to hit).

But by adding it to this new feat, you open up a ton of possibilities:

Paladins would typically have to multiclass into Hexblade Warlocks if they wanted to be able to use Charisma as their melee weapon ability - a powerful combination, to be sure, but one that requires delaying or losing various paladin class features (most profoundly, delaying an Aura of Protection that is likely to be more powerful with a maxed-out Charisma).

This could also allow an Eldritch Knight Fighter to pour everything into Intelligence.

This also, in fact, opens up a lot more options for Pact of the Blade Warlocks. Bladelocks have been strongly incentivized to go with a Hexblade patron for their subclass ever since Xanathar's Guide to Everything came out. And while there's a thematic reason for that, it also limits your options. Taking the new Magic Initiate would make such a build much more viable for non-Hexblade subclasses (though it's tough to turn down medium armor and shields as well). Indeed, Warlocks have long used Pact of the Tome to get hold of a Charisma-based Shillelagh, but this locks them out of invocations like Thirsting Blade, which grant Extra Attack.

This would also likely be of real use to Valor and Swords Bards, who can fully invest in Charisma to boost their spellcasting and, thanks to their proficiency in Medium Armor, they only need 14 Dexterity to fully boost their AC.

A Bladesinger Wizard could also pick this up - because they only ever get light armor, they'll still probably want some Dexterity eventually, but early on they can really focus on Intelligence and still be quite effective in melee.

The point is, this little change to an existing feat can really revolutionize character builds for half-casters and other classes that wish to mix spellcasting and melee combat. Shillelagh is a cantrip that is somewhat forgettable when limited to Druids (except maybe in a Circle of Spores build that wants to make use of the bonus poison damage) but as soon as it branches out to other classes, it can be really good.

What's Next for One D&D Testing?

 One D&D, the development code-name for what we were previously calling 5.5 or 6E (similarly to how 5th Edition was "D&D Next") is officially in testing as of a few weeks ago with the Character Origins UA.

I've gone into fine detail about that UA document, with a general feel that it's mostly good except perhaps for the changes to critical hits.

Now, it's certainly possible that the next bit of playtest material will be a revision of what we just got - perhaps addressing issues that players have put forward.

Of course, UA is only partially for playtesting. It's also marketing - a type of marketing that I really don't mind, as it genuinely reaches out to the community and makes us feel connected to the game. But the fact that it's marketing is one reason that I think we'll be getting different content. It also might be easier to put out revisions after they've done a few of these, and leave out the stuff that they aren't changing (I don't think anyone's likely to object to, for example, Tool Proficiency).

Now, the three main choices one makes when building a character are race, class, and background. Again, I'm pretty heavily in favor of changing "race" to "ancestry," because it's straightforward, distances the game from a concept that's grown outdated, and also has the elegance of making character creation "A, B, and C."

But, more to the point, if the playtesting elements they plan to focus on are starting with character creation, classes could be next.

But classes are big - of those three initial choices, your class really defines your capabilities as a character in a way that race and background don't.

Given the complexity and enormity of what a class represents, though, I suspect that they can't just knock them all out in a single (granted, large) document like the previous UA.

It might, then, be easiest to start with classes that are unlikely to see major changes.

Personally, I think the Paladin is one of the best-designed classes in 5th Edition - it does what you want it to do, and it's quite good at the job. If anything, I could imagine the class receiving some nerfs, though I hope not. Really, the only change I think is really needed is changing the name of Improved Divine Smite to something else, because the feature doesn't actually interact with Divine Smite in any way - it just adds d8s of radiant damage.

Thus, if it's getting minimal changes, those changes could probably fit into one of these initial documents.

On the other hand, if they wanted to get major changes into players' hands as quickly as possible, perhaps we'll see a UA dedicated to only one or two classes, with a full detail of the changes. The Ranger, for example, could turn the Tasha's revised changes into baselines for the class (though hopefully redesigning Favored Foe). The Monk could also maybe use a few tweaks to let it more effectively perform its roles (I think a d10 or even d12 hit die would go a ways toward improving the class).

Now, on the other hand, we could have a radically different possibility:

There are some game systems that are somewhat underdeveloped. The one that I think really needs the most robust build-up is crafting. In the Character Origins UA, one of the potential 1st-level feats is Crafter, which explicitly makes you better at crafting things.

But crafting is one of those things that's pretty vaguely defined in 5E - to be clear, there are rules in Xanathar's for crafting even magical items, but these rules rely on Downtime - something that many, in fact, most campaigns that I've played in haven't really made use of. The longest-running campaign I've played in had us going on a journey constantly, and rarely if ever returning to locations we had been to. Even though my Fighter had the Arcana skill proficiency, which is required to make enchanted items, I don't think I ever got a single day of downtime, much less the weeks (or tendays, as this was the Forgotten Realms) required to craft something (I really wanted to make a Headband of Intellect so that I could stop worrying about my spell DC and just focus on Strength and Constitution).

Item crafting - and in particular, magic item crafting - is a potential Pandora's Box for DMs, to be sure. If you let players make all the magic items they want, they can potentially become far more powerful than they otherwise would (it also sort of steps on the toes of the Artificer, which is basically a class built around making the magic items that you want).

But at the same time, it's clear that this is a system players expect to have, and that the game seems to partially support. I don't know if this means just working the Xanathar's rules into the new PHB or DMG, or if they want to go back to the drawing board and figure out how it will work.

But, given its potential impact, I think it would be a good thing to get in front of playtesters.

What Might Be the Default Setting of One D&D?

 For those of us who got into D&D with 5th Edition, the Forgotten Realms, as a setting, is somewhat intrinsically linked to the game. Of all the published adventures, the vast majority of them are set within the Forgotten Realms, and more specifically, the continent of Faerun (and most of those being on the Sword Coast).

The Forgotten Realms are technically the oldest D&D setting, given that creator Ed Greenwood came up with the setting when he was a child in the 1960s, but it wasn't the original setting. I believe (and D&D historians can correct me if I'm wrong) that the first setting sourcebook was for Greyhawk, created by Gary Gygax. Numerous other settings have been put together as well. Dragonlance is a particularly famed one, but there are also ones like Dark Sun, Ravenloft, and Eberron. There are some that I could not even begin to tell you about like Mystara, Birthright, or Gamma World, because I don't really have any idea what their whole deals are. And, of course, Matt Mercer's Exandria setting is one of the most recent additions to the canon.

Of course, for my part, one of the great joys of being a Dungeon Master is being able to create your own setting. While I'm pretty sure I've spent more hours running my Ravnica game than I did my original campaign (while the old campaign ran from 2015-2019ish, we did not play as consistently) I do feel a strong attachment to my Sarkon setting, and I'm going to be splitting the difference a bit when I eventually get my Sunday group up and running to do a Spelljammer campaign in my expanded, thousand-years-later science-fantasy version of Sarkon and its set of linked Wildspace systems I call the Celestial Expanse.

The Forgotten Realms is a perennial favorite, though. I believe that it was the most common setting during 2nd Edition - the era that gave us games like Baldur's Gate, Neverwinter Nights, and Icewind Dale. 3rd Edition, though, I believe, pushed things toward Greyhawk. 4th Edition gave us Nentir Vale, which was part of their revamp of the D&D cosmos that created the World Axis as opposed to the Great Wheel.

However, with 5th Edition acting in large part to recapture much of what people loved about older editions, the classic Forgotten Realms and Great Wheel were both restored.

And the Forgotten Realms is a pretty good setting for D&D - it's built on the concept of all these different eras of past civilizations (the eponymous realms) that provide plenty of ancient dungeons for parties to explore and excavate. Meanwhile, though, the political landscape is fairly stable, allowing for characters to travel to fabled and familiar sites.

The Forgotten Realms is a suitable place for all manner of adventure, which has the unfortunate side effect of also rendering it a little generic - it's the "everything but the kitchen sink" fantasy setting, and thus I think would be hard to pitch the way one can with, for example, Dark Sun ("Mad Max meets Dune") or Ravenloft ("the horror setting.")

Now, of course, One D&D is not officially a different edition than 5th, but WotC has made it clear that they feel they've done so much in the Forgotten Realms that they're willing to take an extended break from it.

One thing I have noted is that D&D's recent releases are hinting toward something that has also been a growing trend in the zeitgeist: the multiverse.

Obviously, in pop culture we have things from Marvel Studios' newly-announced "Multiverse Saga" to indie films like (the excellent) Everything Everywhere All At Once. D&D's recent releases have included Journeys Through the Radiant Citadel, which presents the eponymous hub-city in the Deep Ethereal Plane connecting many other nations and locations on the Prime Material. Spelljammer: Adventures in Space might not have given us a lot of "setting" information (the biggest failing, in my mind, of the product) but it provided a consistent way to allow DMs to run multiverse-spanning campaigns (especially when you consider that the Astral Plane contains portals to the Outer Planes). In 2023, what might be the final 5th Edition release before One D&D comes out is going to be a Planescape sourcebook (official title TBD) which is, of course, all about planar travel in the D&D multiverse.

As such, I think it's not that crazy to imagine that One D&D might actually make the broader multiverse a big part of its setting presentation.

Now, how would that work?

One of the benefits of having most of 5th Edition's adventures take place in the Forgotten Realms is that there's a certain degree of continuity. NPCs like Artus Cimber or Volothamp Geddarm can show up in multiple adventures. The Bryn Shander in Storm King's Thunder has the same characters as that in Icewind Dale: Rime of the Frostmaiden.

Even though it's unlikely players take the same characters through those adventures (given how character advancement works) it's something that the players can latch onto.

In previous editions, of course, the stewards of D&D (whether they be TSR or Wizards of the Coast) published a lot more material - each setting got its own product line, rather than a single (or in the case of Ravenloft and Exandria, two) books per edition. Thus, a play group that loved Planescape could really focus on those books and get a number of published adventures for that plane-hopping stuff. Not only that, but it created room to flesh these places out considerably.

This year we'll be getting Dragonlance: Shadow of the Dragon Queen. But this is not a campaign sourcebook - it's an adventure book that happens to be set in the world of Krynn.

I do wonder, then, if we might visit many established D&D worlds in this manner - getting an adventure book that gives us a taste of what's going on there. Dragonlance will give us some new backgrounds and feats (playing into the new way that backgrounds work with One D&D, especially the feat they come with) and thus give us a little bit of material for campaign building outside of that adventure.

I wouldn't be surprised to see some adventure set in Dark Sun, or other popular D&D settings.

If they wanted to make the "default setting" be "the multiverse," they could potentially have multiverse travelers show up in these adventures.

I guess the question is how that would be received. Personally, while I have nothing against the Forgotten Realms, I was often frustrated being stuck there. I like the reality-warping strangeness of non-Prime-Material settings. But I know that there are plenty of people who want to preserve the "fundamentals" of D&D - fighting goblins in a pseudo-medieval setting looking for treasure.

There are, of course, plenty of settings to do that that aren't the Forgotten Realms. But maybe we're ready to embrace the weird and go for a multiversal primary setting.

In Praise of D&D's Redundancies

 In the Player's Handbook, every class that has the spellcasting feature (and also Pact Magic, which is technically a different one) has a lengthy explanation for how you calculate the saving throw DC of your spells. It's a lot of repeated words, always following the same formula: you take 8, add your proficiency bonus, and then add your spellcasting ability, which of course is different for different classes.

This fairly substantial block of text takes up a good half a page or maybe a little more in each of the class descriptions - and it's really almost all of them because even the Rogue and Fighter have subclasses with the Spellcasting feature. Likewise, Monks get a similar explanation for their Ki saving throws. So Barbarians are the only ones without this description, meaning there's about five and a half pages dedicated to repeating this.

And I think that's a great thing.

See, I was doing some character building for Starfinder - just to help me wrap my head around it in case I ever need to help others do so. I was building a Soldier, and took the Bombard fighting style (fighting style in Starfinder is the name for Soldier subclasses) that, at least at first, focuses on grenades. The cheapest grenades - a reasonable thing to stock up on at low levels - deal 1d6 piercing damage in a 15-ft radius, and thanks to the fact that my Soldier has an 18 Strength and is a Bombarder, I can throw them an additional 20 feet, for a total of 40 feet away.

But I had to search through the Core Rulebook to find any explanation of what the saving throw DC was for those grenades. This is true for a lot of abilities - class abilities will refer to abilities forcing a saving throw, but there's no explanation there, or even in the general class description.

When I was first looking at the rulebook when I bought it initially, I actually made a cheat sheet for each class because I didn't want to have to flip back and forth through the book before I'd memorized them.

Now, part of this is certainly due to the fact that I have seven years of experience with 5E D&D and have never actually run or played Starfinder. I'm sure this would become second nature over time. Starfinder also has variable DCs in some cases. For example, the Operative (rogue equivalent) has one DC that foes must meet to succeed on saving throws against your abilities (which is 10 plus half your Operative level rounded down, plus your Dexterity modifier) but a different DC for features that have enemies make a skill check against you (10 plus one and a half times your Operative level, plus your Dexterity modifier).

Indeed, there's really no place in the Soldier class description that makes any mention of how to calculate a saving throw, despite their capstone feature, Kill Shot, requiring one. So, one needs to look to the "Key Ability Scores" section on page 58 to find that, ok, it's 10 + half your soldier level + your Strength or Dexterity modifier (whichever is higher - like Fighters, Soldiers can focus on Strength or Dexterity).

D&D, given that it separates out the Player's Handbook and Dungeon Master's Guide, has a bit more room, but I really think that the format here, where the book frequently reminds you how to calculate these things, is a lot more user-friendly.

Anticipating One D&D Class Changes

 The survey for the Character Origins UA previewing One D&D - the 5.5th Edition we're going to be seeing in 2024 - has now gone up. We don't actually know what the next one will be - it could be a revision of some of the items here, or possibly more Rules Glossary-like clarification and changes.

But I think the most impactful thing we're likely to see is any and all proposed class changes.

Classes, after all, are the most impactful choices you make when building your character.

What we saw with Races in the previous UA was largely an attempt to preserve the overall shape of the existing options - with the exceptions of removing the Half-Elf and Half-Orc (with the intent on making mixed heritage possible between most races, but no longer reflecting that mechanically) and the addition of the Ardling, as well as new non-Infernal legacy options for Tieflings.

If you were already using the Tasha's rules regarding ability score bonuses, in most cases you'll see only minor changes and tweaks.

One D&D is being designed to be, where possible, backwards-compatible, meaning that we should be able to use subclasses out of Xanathar's and Tasha's (and the few subclasses that didn't get reprinted in Tasha's like the Chronurgist, etc.)

What this will require is that, at the very least, classes will have subclass features come online at the same levels, most likely. Personally, I find that a little disappointing specifically for the Bard, who only gets subclass features at three different levels - 3, 6, and 14. Most classes get four, while Fighters and Clerics get five (though in the Cleric's case, the level 8 one is just one of two options that each subclass gets one of or the other).

Where I think we'll see changes is going to be more fundamentally in the general class features.

What changes do I think we have evidence that we'll see?

First off, let's talk Artificers. I really, really hope we see this class printed in the Player's Handbook so that, moving forward, they can add more subclasses and Artificer-specific spells. What I think makes this possibility ambiguous is that, in the Rules Glossary part of the Character Origins UA, when describing Arcane spells, the entry says "Bards, Sorcerers, Warlocks, and Wizards harness this magic, as do Artificers." I could read this two ways: one is that saving Artificers for last is backward-looking and making sure that readers who might never have gotten Tasha's or ERFTLW (just "Eberron" feels too vague for a shortened name, though this isn't great either) realize that they're a thing too, or it's keeping them last because they're categorically separating it as an "other" class rather than one of the primary, PHB ones. So, really, who knows? (I mean, Jeremy Crawford for one, but I doubt he's going to blurt it out outside of an official announcement).

The only other piece of - again, pretty vague - evidence that I can note is the absence of Eldritch Blast from the Arcane (or any other) spell list. Eldritch Blast is a common choice for people who pick up the Spell Sniper feat, or Magic Initiate. But the new Magic Initiate, while arguably a lot more flexible (Shillelagh with Charisma for Paladins, guys!) can't get you Eldritch Blast because it's not on the list.

So, is Eldritch Blast gone? Hell no. It's iconic and so central to the way that Warlocks work. Barring some insane redesign of the Warlock (not that that's entirely off the table, but I'd be skeptical) I think Eldritch Blast must remain part of its toolkit.

The way I see it, though, is that as written in PHB 2014, not taking Eldritch Blast, unless you're a dedicated Bladelock (which I still think works too well with the Hexblade to try it with any other subclass,) feels like a trap. When the Warlock was introduced in 3.5e, Eldritch Blast was a class feature - cantrips were not, I believe, a thing yet, and so other spellcasters like Wizards would have to rely on things like light crossbows if they wanted to preserve their spell slots.

Making Eldritch Blast a class feature does a few things: the first is that no new player is going to forget to pick it up. It makes sure that no matter what, all Warlocks have access to their best damage cantrip and are "armed" properly.

The other thing this could do is encourage players to stick with Warlock for more levels.

Warlocks are a popular multiclass dip - they often have very powerful front-loaded abilities (the Hexblade in particular) that can be very valuable to a character with just one or two levels invested in them. One of the reasons for this is that picking up Eldritch Blast (and especially going to level 2 for Agonizing Blast, along with two short-rest 1st level spell slots) can be very valuable. And because it's a cantrip, Eldritch Blast doesn't care about class levels, only total levels when determining how may blasts it does. Thus, a Sorcerer can dip into Warlock for one or two levels, get Agonizing Blast, and then ignore Warlock and still see their Eldritch Blast grow in power.

If Eldritch Blast is a class feature, you could restrict its growing number of attacks to Warlock class levels, and thus encourage players to stick with it if they want to get their higher blast numbers.

I suppose another change that I noted in the previous post about what changes we could see to the Monk, Unarmed Strikes are a bit different. One thing of note is that an unarmed strike now seems to be something separate from a Weapon Attack (which was always confusing, given that you sort of expected all weapon attacks to involve, you know, a weapon). On top of making that a separate thing, it also folds Shove and Grapple attacks into Unarmed Strikes.

This means a lot for Monks - if we assume that Martial Arts continues to let you use Dexterity for your Unarmed Strikes, this now makes Monks a lot more effective and Shoving and Grappling. (Though keeping a Grappled target grappled might not be very easy, as the escape DC is set by your Strength.) Actually, Grappling requiring a free hand means it'll be harder for people with full hands (using a two-handed weapon or going sword-and-board, etc.) to do so - Monks might actually be the best at this, though I think it'll also give us an opportunity to see more people using the versatile property of weapons like the Longsword, Battleaxe, or Warhammer - you could attack with a Warhammer two-handed (d10) most of the time, but swap to single-handed (d8) when you're grappling someone.

This doesn't necessarily portend any specific Monk changes, but it does open some capabilities up. I also wonder if some of the Open Hand Monk's Open Hand Technique options are altered or re-written. Naturally, these combine the damage from a Fury of Blows hit with the secondary effect, whereas the new Unarmed Strikes makes you choose between one of its three modes (the first being damage,) so this is all still technically a bonus on top of existing rules. But there's enough overlap that I could see them rewriting some of this or tweaking the functionality.

Beyond this, I don't think we've got anything very solid to go on, to be honest (and even these are extrapolations of fairly minor details).

As far as radical class redesigns go, the one that feels the most plausible is the Fighter. The folks at WotC have repeatedly said that they really love the Battle Master design - it's one of the few subclasses that got expanded with Tasha's Cauldron of Everything, and I can imagine that WotC would want to open the door to create new maneuvers in future publications much like they do with Eldritch Invocations for Warlocks. But Eldritch Invocations are a class, not subclass feature.

The Fighter is an odd class - it's a pretty basic chassis on which you can build a lot of different concepts using feats and subclass features. There are basically only three universal Fighter abilities (four if you count their 3rd and 4th Extra Attack). Admittedly, the subclasses and the extra ASIs to help you pick up feats add a bit more, but I wouldn't be shocked if they made Maneuvers a classwide thing and then designed subclasses in the future that work with maneuvers, perhaps even providing unique ones. (Eldritch Knights could be redesigned to have a bunch of magic maneuvers either to supplement or even replace their 1/3 Caster spellcasting capabilities.)

The survey for the Character Origins UA is up for the next two weeks or so, and so I expect we'll see the next One D&D UA either when that ends or perhaps a couple weeks later. Looking forward to it!

Rethinking the Monk in One D&D

When I first got my hands on the Player's Handbook when I bought the core D&D rulebooks in 2015, I found myself surprised that some classes that I'd never been all to excited about in other RPGs were actually very exciting to me - the Warlock was probably the biggest case, but the Monk was another. I'd never been a huge fan of unarmed combatants in other games, but the Monk in D&D has so many cool things - fast movement, deflect missiles, timeless body, etc.

But as a class, they don't always perform the way you'd expect them to. There's a perception that Monks aren't really strong enough.

The extent to which this is true is up for debate - I haven't done the math, and I think the three attacks per turn for free is honestly not bad - though it falls behind the Fighter.

But I wanted to talk about my vision for the Monk moving forward.

First, let's discuss the elephant in the room - Stunning Strike.

This is the most powerful Monk ability, but that might actually be the problem. I think that WotC is afraid to make the Monk a really powerful tank or damage-dealer because of Stunning Strike's power. While monsters often succeed on their saves against it, a stunned enemy is a really insane shift in the battlefield, especially in fights with only a few monsters.

Stun means advantage on attacks and the monster cannot do anything on their next turn - a devastating blow to their action economy.

I would suggest that we rein this in - either apply something like the new Slowed condition, or perhaps give the monster disadvantage on attacks and give others advantage on attacks against it. This is undeniably a nerf, but it frees us up for the buffs that I'm going to propose beyond.

Let's talk about what we think the Monk should be best at. As I see it, the real fantasy of a martial arts master is the idea that they can face tons of opponents and never go down. Bruce Lee, Jet Li, Jackie Chan, and other martial arts stars often come off as the most badass when they trounce an entire crowd of foes - something that is extremely unlikely in a real-life scenario (fun fact, one of the mooks that Bruce Lee beats down in Enter the Dragon is actually Jackie Chan, before he was famous).

As such, I think that reinforcing the Monk's tanky-ness makes a lot of sense. Monks should be able to wade into a crowded battlefield and hand everyone's ass to them.

The first way to reinforce this is that Monks should have a d12 hit die.

Frankly, I think it's absurd that Monks only have a d8 hit die right now. They are the only class that is obligated to fight in melee (the others being Paladins and Barbarians - Fighters can choose to go for a ranged, dex build) that has less than a d10 (Rangers probably don't need a d10, to be frank.) Now, why a d12? Well, as someone else pointed out (unfortunately I can't remember who) Monks have trained their bodies more than any other class to be resilient. I realize some might say that giving any non-Barbarian a d12 could be stepping on their territory, in which case I might concede a mere d10, but I really think that a d12 makes sense flavor-wise for the Monk

The second is to give them some sort of damage mitigation. Having relatively low AC compared to a plate wearer, I think that they should have some way to survive an influx of damage.

Flavor-wise, I see this as knowing how to deflect and block attacks, not fully avoiding them, but reducing the damage and pain they inflict. Unlike the Barbarian's rage, where the Barbarian is just going into an adrenaline-fueled state where they can ignore pain and rely on the meatiness of their muscles, I think the Monk is doing this in a more active way.

The proposal I'll put forward is that relatively early on - maybe as soon as level 1, or perhaps at 2 or 3, you get a feature called "Deflect Blows." This reduces the damage you take from attacks (and maybe we'd say only weapon attacks and unarmed strikes) by an amount equal to your proficiency bonus.

The intent here is that the Monk becomes really strong when tanking large groups of mooks. A group of zombies striking at the Monk might see some of their attacks not even wind up doing anything - 1d6+1 can give you 2-7 damage, and so an average hit of 4.5 winds up getting reduced at tier 1 to 2.5 - almost but not quite halving it.

But a Monk is not as good as a Barbarian when it comes to the blows of some massive creature - a giant's sword cannot so easily be absorbed.

The exact amount absorbed would obviously be a question of balance, but this would further reinforce the notion of a Monk being a front-liner, who can stay in the thick of combat (which feels like where they should be).

Honestly, these changes would, I think be enough to really give Monks a clear role, and make them a really appealing tank for the group. But what about their capabilities as a damage dealer?

First off, it's a small change, but I might just bump all their martial arts die up a step - tier 1 give them a  d6, then d8 at tier 2, d10 at tier 3, and d12 in tier 4. This only comes out to an average of one more damage per attack.

The thing that I think gets frustrating for Monks is that your unarmed strikes cannot benefit from the +X bonus from most magic weapons. Even if you get a +1 Quarterstaff, your unarmed strikes are never going to get beyond 1d10+5. I might introduce some item that boosts unarmed strikes in the same way to help with this.

Actually, the changes to Unarmed Strikes in the Rules Glossary does a lot to give Monks new tools - they can be really effective grapplers and shovers. It strikes me, of course, that this makes some of the Open Hand Monk's abilities redundant.

Part of me wonders if Monks should just get a bit of extra damage on their hits - maybe adding their proficiency bonus (or half of it) to damage, though that might seem too similar to Rage.

The rest of the changes might need to happen through subclasses. My hope is that by nerfing Stunning Strike, one could be more generous with features like the Ascendant Dragon's breath weapon (something I think everyone was disappointed by).

Given that Monks have three stats they really want to maximize, they really don't have a lot of room for feats, which means that customizing the class is a bit tougher to do. I don't know how I'd fix that, but at the very least, the class design should come with an expectation that it needs to work without a ton of feats.

I love the Monk, and I would be very happy to see it get a lot more play in D&D. I'll be very eager to see what they come up with for the One D&D update.

The Real Question on Everyone's Minds: Dragonborn Breath Weapon Damage Comparisons (For a Level 12 Fighter)

 My longtime D&D character, in a campaign that sort of collapsed under "most of this plot is built around the story of the character played by the guy who just became a dad and can't really play regularly anymore" issues, is/was a Blue Dragonborn Eldritch Knight Fighter (Plate + a +1 Shield + Defensive Fighting Style + the Shield spell = an effective AC of 27 until I run out of spell slots).

When Fizban's Treasury of Dragons came out last year, they introduced three "new" races - the Chromatic, Metallic, and Gem Dragonborn. Lorewise, of course, the Chromatic and Metallic were just a mechanical update of the existing Dragonborn, separating them out into different races and changing the way breath weapons work along with giving each a new (and distinct) Chromatic, Metallic, or Gem feature you can activate.

So, Jax, my Fighter, got updated with DM's permission from a PHB Dragonborn to a Chromatic Dragonborn.

While the Chromatic Warding thing is cool (if a bit situational) the thing I was most excited about was the change to how the Breath Weapon works.

In the PHB, your breath weapon starts at 2d6 damage and you add a d6 roughly once per tier (though I think you get the third at level 6 instead of 5). You need to use your action to breathe your element (lightning, in my case) and then they make a Dex save with a DC based on your Con modifier, taking full damage on a failure and half on a success. For Blue dragonborn, it's a 30-ft line 5 feet wide, though for some it's a 15-foot cone. (And for Silver, White, and Green Dragonborn, the save is Con instead of Dex, as is typical for cold and poison effects).

At level 12, therefore, to use my breath weapon, I spend my action and deal 4d6 damage (average of 14) with a DC of 14 (despite being a tank, he only has a +2 to Con, though I do have the Tough feat, so his max HP is 124). And I can do this once per short rest, so practically speaking about twice a day.

With his +1 Battle Axe and being a level 12 Fighter, he can make three attacks a round, with an attack bonus of +10 to hit, and dealing 10.5 damage on each hit, for a total of 31.5 average damage if all hit. As such, to make the breath worth it for damage output, I'd need to hit three targets (and even then, the low DC means the damage would often be an average of 7 instead).

Now, the Chromatic Dragonborn, which I switched him to, works differently.

First off, the dice are simpler - it's 1d10 per tier of play, so at 5 it goes to 2d10, at 11 3d10, and at 17, it's 4d10. Damage-wise, this starts off slightly below the old version, but by level 5, you're pulling ahead. My Fighter at his level would get 3d10, which is 16.5 damage on average - a slight boost.

Next, the use of the ability is now PB times per long rest, rather than once per short rest. In practice, this means that, past tier 1, you'll likely get more or at worst the same number of uses per day (I don't think I've ever seen a D&D day with three or more short rests - indeed, I think in Adventurer's League at least, they never let you take more than one per module).

So, my Fighter gets 4 uses per day instead of, realistically, 2.

But then, the most important change: rather than a full action, the breath weapon now only takes one of your attacks. For classes that don't get the Extra Attack feature, this makes no difference, but for a Fighter in particular, this is huge:

So, Jax can now breathe as his first attack for 16.5 average damage (hopefully hitting a secondary target with it too) and then follow up with two strikes that each do 10.5 average damage, giving me, on a single target, 37.5 damage per round when I use the breath.

So, more uses, higher damage - clear upgrade. The "as an attack" aspect of this is also particularly good for a Fighter. A Paladin with similar equipment would, of course, at this level, be getting their Improved Divine Smite d8, and miss out on fully half their regular attacks. So, we'd see one breath (16.5) and one attack (2d8+6, or an average of 15). This is still a little better than two regular attacks, but not the very clear boost that the Fighter gets. We should also note that a Great Weapon build would see things a bit differently - with the Great Weapon Fighting Style, a +1 Maul, for example, would hit for 14.33 on average. Three attacks would thus be 43 average damage, compared to Breath/Weapon/Weapon, which would be 16.5 plus 28.67, or an average of 45.2 - still slightly better, but again not as dramatically (again, hitting a second target with the breath makes it much more powerful).

Now, the One D&D Character Origins UA (I told you we'd be talking about this until the next one comes out) rebuilds the Dragonborn once more.

This Dragonborn embraces simplicity, returning to the model of the PHB Dragonborn while indisputably (unless you're a very short-rest focused party) buffing them.

Perhaps to compensate for returning to the PHB simplicity, these Dragonborn have Darkvision - the catch-all that I think maybe a majority of playable races have?

But again, the way that the breath weapon works has been redesigned.

First off, it once again requires an action to use - which, again, means nothing to classes without the Extra Attack feature, but is a definite nerf to my Fighter, if I were forced to switch to this version. (Given that I haven't actually had a chance to play with the new, Chromatic Dragonborn version, I'd be very sad.)

Another change that is easy to miss is that now, regardless of your element, the shape of the breath is always a 15-foot cone, and the save for it is always Dexterity. This is, honestly, kind of a big deal for a Blue (or Brass, Bronze, Copper, or Black) Dragonborn because it is far easier to hit two or more targets with a 15-foot cone than it is with a 30-foot line (though it's also easier to avoid friends with a line).

Like the Fizban's ones, the breath weapon is now PB times per long rest, which I consider a buff.

The damage has changed as well - but now, it scales at every level. The damage is 1d10 + your level.

So, let's compare it at different breakpoints. At level 1, it's 1d10+1, or 6.5 on average - lower than the original PHB version, but higher than Fizban's. At 6 (remember, the PHB doesn't quite use tier breakpoints) it's 11.5, compared with 10.5 with the PHB version and 11 for the Fizban's version.

For my guy at level 12, it's 17.5, compared with 14 in the PHB or 16.5 with Fizban's. At at level 20, it's 25.5, versus 17.5 in the PHB or 22 with Fizban's.

So, the damage is definitely a buff. The damage range is also much narrower - indeed, the higher level you get, the larger portion of the damage is already known.

But, again, it takes a full action. 17.5 damage is definitely more than 16.5, but the fact that the 16.5 comes with two additional weapon swings makes this, to my character, a pretty profound nerf.

    And that's sort of the oddness of this: if you showed me this version of the Dragonborn with only the 2014 PHB version to compare it to, it'd be a clear upgrade. But the Chromatic, Gem, and Metallic versions out of Fizban's are a lot more appealing.