Imagining Four Subclasses for Experts

 So, while in my last post I contemplated how the Cleric and Wizard would have their subclass options in the new Player's Handbook narrowed down to four (again, if you're outraged by this, remember that you'll still be able to use any subclass published in the 2014 PHB, or Xanathar's, Tasha's, or Wildemount), but this "4 per class" change will be a positive one for every other class.

I know I've speculated on this before, but with a bit of greater knowledge about the way that classes are going to work (obviously with a bit more revision and refinement) in One D&D/2024 D&D/Nu5 or whatever we're calling it (I've literally just come up with Nu5 and already feel sick because I feel like most things with "Nu" in my experience suck. NuMetal is why there was so little good rock music when I was in high school, and why I have the music tastes of a Gen Xer who's about ten years older than I am).

So, let's talk about our parameters for figuring out what we could expect to find in the 2024PHB.

As I see it, the PHB subclasses are meant to represent the broadest, most iconic subclasses for the class. They are meant to represent the archetypes that fall into that class category, requiring them to stick to the common forms, but also demonstrate the diversity of premise within a given class.

Indeed, one of the smart decisions in the way that 5E was designed is that the classes in general have such a broad identity that many other fantasy archetypes can fit within them. Where another game might attempt to make multiple classes out of these concepts, 5E recognizes the similarities between them and finds a way to show that they're kind of facets of the same core idea. And that has meant that, while 5E only added a single new class over the course of its initial run (what I'm calling the 2014-2024 version of it) it had plenty of room for subclasses to find weirder and more idiosyncratic ideas to play with.

So, the balancing act required here is to come up with subclasses that represent classic, easily-understood or recognized archetypes, but that are also sufficiently distinct from one another to feel like you're creating a sufficiently broad space for experimentation with new subclasses in subsequent releases. I doubt it will be easy. But we can also look to the 2014 PHB as a jumping off point. I suspect (and hope) that, in a lot of cases, we'll be seeing updates to the existing 2014 PHB subclasses - all of the sample subclasses we've seen to playtest the new versions of the classes have been updates to versions in the 2014PHB, so I think it's a safe bet that we'll see at least one, and in a lot of cases, many of the existing subclasses revised and reprinted, with the exception of Clerics and Wizards' culled subclasses.

That being said, it's already been indicated that we could be seeing new subclasses, like a proposed Bard College of Dance, so there could be as-yet-unfilled holes here.

To begin, we'll look at the Expert Classes, which we got to look at first in the One D&D playtest.

Bards:

We know we'll be getting the College of Lore. Bards are advertised as the generalist support class, with a lot of ways to boost allies and confound enemies, but also as being able to do a little of everything, including some small combat capabilities. I'll argue that a Bard is not really any better than a Wizard at weapon-based combat unless they pick a subclass that supports it, but since 2014, that's been a part of their toolkit. The College of Valor certainly serves that function, giving us something more of a swashbuckler (though keep that word in mind for two classes down). Now, I'd argue that College of Swords winds up being a more interesting subclass that plays a similar role, but we could of course see Valor getting a rework to be more exciting.

However, what we're talking about with the Bard is fully doubling the subclasses available to them. The divide in the 2014PHB options clearly shows "Bard as spellcaster" and "Bard as melee combantant" as its archetypes. Among the subclasses published later, there are two other subclasses that encourage melee (Swords and Whispers - the latter being a little more Rogue-like with a Divine Smite-style mechanic) and four more that play more in the "support spellcaster" space.

The 2024 Bard does have some inherent healing capability, and I wonder if they'd push into a broader idea of the "Jack of All Trades" identity to make a healing-centric subclass. However, a healer is still, in its way, a support caster. I could imagine that we'd have, in broader terms, two melee subclasses and two caster subclasses. If the College of Dance Bard is actually real, I'd imagine it's likely to be more of a melee combatant, focusing on the fluidity of movement and possibly borrowing some of the evasiveness and grace of a Monk.

Now, one of the ironies of the 2014 PHB is that I don't think that either Valor or Lore really fit with the rock star feeling that I think most players think of with the Bard class. Valor is a trickster swashbuckler while Lore is a traveling storyteller (and, to be fair, closer in flavor to the historical traditions of Bards and Skalds - as someone who gathers up stories and lore and histories). But I think if any existing subclass seems to fit into that idea of "Rock Star," it's got to be Glamour.

Glamour could sit with Lore as one of the more spellcasting/back-row subclasses, but where Lore is gathering all of its magical secrets, Glamour could focus much more on the mental manipulation and enchantment side of things.

Bard Subclass Predictions: Lore, Valor, Glamour, "Dance"

Ranger:

Again, the 2014 Ranger has only two subclasses, and the choice is basically "do you want a pet or not?" The revised Beastmaster from Tasha's Cauldron of Everything more or less fixes the problems with the original version, so I have almost zero doubt that that will make it into the 2024PHB with minimal revisions. Perhaps the greatest fix that the Tasha's version makes is that you don't have to worry about sending a beloved pet into battle, because it's easy to get it back if it goes down (this was a big problem in Critical Role's first campaign, where Trinket was the beloved team mascot but generally didn't participate in most fights out of a fear of losing him - something the animated series I think sort of retcons to make him more awesome).

Anyway, the Hunter is the one truly confirmed subclass, whose identity is... honestly a little generic, but that's the intention behind the "default" subclasses.

I think everyone was very encouraged by the revisions to the Ranger in the Expert Class UA, as it seems to be a far more functional and powerful class than it has been. But I also think the Ranger's lack of popularity in 5E has also left me, personally, at a bit more of a loss as to figuring out the various archetypes.

I do think that part of the fantasy of a Ranger is that they're the person that you could drop into an untamed wilderness and they'd be fine. They're sort of your ideal commandos, where a Fighter is a front-line battlefield warrior, the Ranger is the one who goes behind enemy lines or treks through some span of wilderness to find the enemy base. And I do think that the Gloomstalker does kind of fit that flavor of being the deadly predator of the darkness. It also has the benefit of being a very popular subclass.

The other archetype that I personally adore is the Solomon Kane/VanHelsing figure, the sort of horror-hunter - the character who shows up when a supernatural monster is terrorizing innocents who are living in the middle of a horror story. What I really like about this archetype, and the Monster Slayer subclass that represents it, is that we actually see the Ranger in a very different potential environment. Whereas your typical Ranger is found out in the wilderness, the classic environment for the Monster Slayer is in dense urban cities or in hamlets terrorized by whatever foul creature haunts them from the abandoned castle that looms above them. But it also really ties into the "expert" notion of the class. VanHelsing in Dracula is able to lead the fight against the eponymous vampire because of his wide breadth of knowledge about what one can do against such a creature.

Ranger Subclass Predictions: Hunter, Beastmaster, Gloomstalker, Monster Slayer

Rogue:

So, unlike Bards and Rangers, the Rogue already has three subclasses in the 2014 PHB, which means that if we're happy with the original three, we only need to add one.

We know that we're getting the Thief, which is, I think, truly the iconic Rogue subclass (indeed, I think "Thief" as a class name pre-dates Rogue).

And, I think that Assassin is arguably just as iconic a Rogue subclass as Thief. While I have serious quibbles with the 2014 version on a mechanical level (the level 3 feature is great, but the 9 and 13 ones are nothing, only for the 17 one to again be great, but I think in most cases this is best as a 3-level dip) I definitely think that Assassin will make the cut with revisions to make it better.

The only downside here is that Thieves and Assassins both sit in nearby corners of the Rogue design space - the shadowy one.

The Arcane Trickster does not, I think, represent as broad and recognizable a fantasy archetype, but it gets a big boost from being both very powerful and also fitting in a high-magic setting like most D&D worlds. It also has a lot of fun ideas (of course a Rogue would get very good with Mage Hand) so I'm predicting and would be happy to see Arcane Tricksters reprinted.

That leaves only one open slot. And I think that if we're going to talk about classic archetypes, we need do no more than think of the most iconic heroic rogue in English-speaking traditions: Robin Hood. And Robin Hood is the prototypical swashbuckler, iconically portrayed by Errol Flynn and later by Cary Elwes channeling Errol Flynn. The answer here is just too obvious, isn't it? You could argue that the Swashbuckler is, in fact, the ultimate fantasy hero archetype, with so many adventure stories featuring people who fit that bill. On top of that, Swashbuckler itself contains within it plenty of other archetypes - it covers pirates, highway scoundrels, and daredevils of all sorts.

Plus, from a design standpoint, it shows that a Rogue does not always need to stalk through the shadows. This is the Rogue who makes a spectacle of an entrance and duels their foe one-on-one.

Now, the only challenge here is that the archetype shares a lot of territory with the Valor Bard. I'd argue that this is more of a case of the Valor Bard dipping its toe into the Swashbuckler's territory rather than the other way around, and the classes play sufficiently differently that I don't think it's a problem. Indeed, I think a party with a Swashbuckler Rogue and a Valor Bard would be well on its way to being a band of Merry Men.

Rogue Subclass Predictions: Thief, Assassin, Arcane Trickster, Swashbuckler

The Culling of the Wizard and Cleric Subclasses

 Let's just note here that the dire wording of the title is meant as a joke. At the Creator Summit yesterday, one of the ideas mentioned about the 2024 Player's Handbook is that every class will get four subclasses in it. For most classes, this is an upgrade - Barbarians, Bards, Druids, Rangers, and Sorcerers only had two each in the 2014 PHB, and Fighters, Monks, Paladins, and Warlocks got three. But Clerics' and Wizards' respective cups ranneth over, with 7 Cleric subclasses (8 if you count Death Clerics, but that's in the DMG, not the PHB) and 8 Wizard ones.

The vast overrepresentation of subclasses for these classes does make a little sense given their role in worldbuilding and establishing mechanics. Clerics are tied, generally, to gods, and the variety of divine domains can be a useful thing for DMs building homebrew worlds to populate their divine pantheon with (though it doesn't always work out how you expect - the Spelljammer campaign I'm running in my homebrewed cluster of worlds has a Cleric of Rastvar, who is my neutral good god of invention, scholarship, and astronomy, who went with Trickery Domain as their subclass). Wizards' subclasses in the PHB simply reflect the eight schools of magic, tying their mechanics directly to that broader rules system used to classify spells.

Those eight schools of magic go back, I believe, to 1st edition, so that's basically sacred at this point. Subsequent subclasses for Wizards have been forced to go into alternative design space.

I could imagine, actually, seeing all four of the 2024 PHB Wizard subclasses getting new names that break them away from strict ties to those schools of magic, if for no other reason than that a new player who never had the 2014 book might go "hold on, why are there evocation, necromancy, conjuration, and divination wizards, but no illusion one?"

In other words, Wizards might go in a very different direction, which could mean that none of the 2014 subclasses get reprinted.

If things were to go this way, the one exception I could imagine is the School of Necromancy - perhaps renamed, instead, as the Arcane Tradition of "Necromancer." We have two later-implemented Wizard subclasses that either are or could easily be changed to have a name that describes the type of Wizard, rather than the school to which they belong. My Wizard could be a Scribe, given his Order of Scribes subclass. One that has the Bladesinging subclass could be called a Bladesinger.

The reason I pick out Necromancer specifically is that, unlike a lot of the other Wizard subclasses, there's a very strong and established vibe and fantasy trope affiliated with that word. Evokers, Conjurers, and even Enchanters can be kind of interchangeable in fantasy (not to speak of the conflation of Wizards and Sorcerers - while the show as a bit of a mess, I loved the way that The Falcon and the Winter Soldier defined a Wizard as a Sorcerer With a Hat, after Doctor Strange was erroneously called a Wizard, even if that's precisely what he is in D&D terms).

Now, it's possible then that we'd still get some of the other popular subclasses printed under new names to match this new, less restrictive nomenclature. Divination (which I think has got to be the subclass I see the most, especially from more min-maxy players) could be a Prognosticator or Soothsayer or Augur. Evocation could be called Elementalists (though this name might better suit an as-yet nonexistent subclass that would play around with elemental damage types). Conjuration could be Summoners.

The subclasses I could imagine being more likely to fall by the wayside here, I'm largely basing on the rarity with which I tend to see them. I don't think I've ever seen someone play an Enchantment wizard. Illusion can be very powerful, but can swing to either being way too powerful or, if the DM gets sick of it, nearly powerless. Abjuration I have, actually, seen someone play, but I think most people aren't so interested in playing the defensive wizard, and I actually think Bladesingers are probably harder to kill anyway. Now, Transmutation is actually kind of the ultimate utility Wizard (and of course, I got a lot of exposure to one thanks to Critical Role's second campaign,) but one of the oddities of it is that it's basically meant to be an alchemist until they made Alchemist a subclass for Artificers. (The Transuter Stone is obviously meant to play the role of the Philosopher's Stone.)

So, here I might feel more comfortable making predictions for what the four Wizard subclasses would be. While they might change names and possibly shift identities a little, I think we can expect to have the following:

Evocation would probably stay because it's the simplest "I cast fireball" wizard subclass. Necromancy, again, I think covers a whole other major fantasy trope, and is an obvious and iconic fit. Divination is very popular, and I think also covers another big fantasy trope (the only point against this is that I think the role of future-predictor often falls to more mystical/spiritual figures with a divine vibe). Finally, perhaps I'm biased because my best friend played one in the first campaign I ever ran, but I think Conjuration is sort of the perfect "next most standard" Wizard after Evocation.

That, then, would leave Abjuration, Enchantment, Transmutation, and Illusion out in the cold. I could maybe imagine swapping Transmutation in for one of the four in the previous paragraph, but overall this looks plausible to me.

Now, let's look at Clerics.

Life Clerics we already know are in, as they're presented as the primary subclass for the class. That's also quite appropriate, as the Life Cleric is all about the most typical role the Cleric plays, which is healing.

That leaves us with six divine domains that need to be culled down to three (assuming, of course, that we don't get newer subclasses like Grave Clerics rolled into the PHB - an assumption I'm going to operate under).

And frankly, I'm not sure that any of these is quite as iconic, so this is a bit of a tough call. So, I'm going to start with the subclasses I think are more likely to be cut, rather than those more likely to be carried over.

And first on that list has got to be Nature Domain. Nature Domain is one of those subclasses that kind of borrows flavor from another class, in this case, it's the "Druidy Cleric." And certainly, there are nuances to draw about the way that gods of nature and the wilds might provide divine magic that is distinct from the primal magic of druids - essentially letting you be a cleric of the kind of god that druids would worship. But this is another subclass I've never seen anyone ever play, and I think that between the "preserving life" elements of the Life Domain and the "wrath of nature" elements of the Tempest Domain, Nature finds itself in a kind of vague in-between world that doesn't really have much of a purpose.

The next choice here is trickier, but I think that my cut would be Knowledge Domain. While not going quite as far as Nature, there's a bit of off-brand feeling to this subclass - though which class you're imitating is admittedly somewhat open to debate, with perhaps a bit of Wizard and oddly a bit of Rogue (in the Rogue-as-investigator identity). That being said, I did mention how divination magic is usually depicted in a mystical, divine manner in fantasy (I mean, it's literally DIVINation,) so perhaps this is an obvious keeper if you really play up the Knowledge Domain as a kind of oracular seer.

Now, the next one I'm sort of surprising myself by. When I first read the PHB, I had guessed that Light Domain would be the "standard" Cleric, possibly due to my background playing World of Warcraft, where The Light is the sort of classic, holy force in that game's cosmos (interestingly, among its five main types of dragons, there are distinctions made between Life and Nature). But I actually think that the classic holy spellcaster - the "white mage" in Final Fantasy terms - is the Life Domain, and can be flavored very much along that "angelic, golden light" aesthetic, which leaves Light as a Cleric that literally focuses on shining lights and such, and that's actually something I could see cutting (though they are the only Clerics who get Fireball).

That would leave Life, Tempest, Trickery, and War Domains. Again, I could see swapping one of these out for a more Oracular Knowledge domain cleric. But which one?

I've seen people playing all four of these, so I don't know that popularity would be the guide. Of these subclasses, the Trickery one seems like the least obviously Cleric-like (though, of course, one must remember that there are plenty of Trickster gods, and Invoke Duplicity is something that Loki does all the time in the MCU - and Loki is nothing if not a trickster god). War Domain, you could argue, overlaps a little with the Paladin, but on the other hand, war gods are common in fantasy (and real world mythology) and often come in both good and evil flavors (again, like in real-world mythology. Both Lawful Good Athena and Chaotic Evil Ares would be appropriate choices for the War domain) and the D&D Cleric has always been a little more martial than just representing a priest.

So, very tentatively, my guesses for what subclasses we get in the 2024 PHB are the following:

Cleric: Life, Tempest, Trickery, War.

Wizard: Conjuration, Divination, Evocation, Necromancy, with Evocation as the "standard" subclass.

In future posts, I'll do another round of predictions for other classes to see what subclasses we might find.

As a disclaimer/reminder, the Creator Summit also made mention of a College of Dance Bard subclass, which means that there's plenty of possibility that a lot of classes will get entirely new subclasses. For these particular classes, I think there's already so much there to work with, especially if they're willing to make significant reworks and changes to the mechanics, but I might toss out some ideas for other classes as to new things we might see.

Also, I don't know when we're likely to get the next UA - it's a big one, so it might take longer to come out than the previous cycle did, but perhaps that only means that the survey period will take longer. Or maybe they'll just dump a ton on us at once. They only have another year or so for these tests, so they've got to get it all out there.

Spellbooks, Spell Preparation, and Wizard Identity in One D&D

 One of the consistent patterns in the One D&D playtest is that spellcasters are all becoming prepared-spells classes.

In the current iteration of 5E, there's a mix - Artificers, Clerics, Druids, and Paladins all have full access to the entire class spell list and can pick any spells they want that they're able to cast from their list at the end of each long rest, up to a certain amount (I believe it's a number of distinct spells equal to their spellcasting modifier plus their level for Clerics and Druids and half their level for Artificers and Paladins). Meanwhile, Bards, Rangers, Sorcerers, and Warlocks (as well as 1/3 caster subclasses, the Eldritch Knight Fighter and Arcane Trickster Rogue) simply learn new spells as they hit certain levels, and can only swap one out when they level up, making these sort of long-term decisions (the Warlock Mystic Arcanum feature, which is their means of getting 6th-9th level spells, I think is technically stricter and doesn't let you swap them out at all, officially, though as a DM I'd absolutely allow one to switch it if the original choice isn't working out).

Wizards have a foot on either side of this line. While they don't have access to the entire Wizard spell list, they get a sort of mini-game that allows them to learn additional spells beyond the two free ones that they get each level (starting with six at level 1). This minigame is somewhat DM-dependent - it's up to the DM to see how much gold the party gets access to, and how frequently the Wizard can find old spellbooks or spell scrolls to add spells to their collection. A rather wizard-unfriendly campaign could see them only ever getting their two spells per level past 1, which would mean that by level 20, they would have only 44 spells (not counting cantrips). But a campaign where money is plentiful and there are free public wizard libraries in every town would allow a wizard to potentially have a full 519 spells (again, not counting cantrips).

Then, among the spells copied into that spellbook, they prepare spells the way that a Cleric or Druid would, choosing from among them each day. The Wizard has the largest spell list of all classes, but it's unlikely that they'll ever have all the spells on that list, given the cost, time, and rare opportunity required to copy each spell. (My Wizard has the Order of Scribes subclass, so the time issue is negligible - even a 9th level spell only takes 18 minutes to copy, compared to 18 hours for other Wizards.)

However, as we've seen in the One D&D playtest, every previewed spellcaster class instead gets to prepare spells after a long rest, choosing from their entire spell list (so far with restrictions based on schools of magic and one of three broad lists, though it sounds like future playtest content might still designate some iconic spells as being limited to individual classes, such as, likely, Chaos Bolt for Sorcerers).

This, then, raises the question: what does the Spellbook even do anymore?

Presumably, the Wizard will have unfettered access to the entire Arcane spell list. I don't know if Sorcerers or Warlocks will be restricted in their choice of spell schools. Warlocks, I could imagine, might not be able to get Evocation spells, given that things like Fireball are usually limited to certain Warlock subclasses. Sorcerers are tougher - I could imagine cutting Conjuration from them, given that they tend not to have as many summoning spells, but then they would also lose teleportation spells like Misty Step.

If Sorcerers get access to the whole Arcane spell list, but Wizards are still limited to picking only spells they've copied into their Spellbooks, it would have the ironic effect of sort of swapping the two classes' general role - in current 5E, Sorcerers tend to have to focus on simpler, often blastier spells, and are built to be really good at raining down magical damage on foes, while a Wizard has more of a broad spellcasting toolbox, where they can pick up useful odds and ends here and there.

If we assume that Sorcerers and Warlocks will follow the "prepare any spell your class can cast at this level" model we've seen with every other spellcaster in the playtest, I think that the functionality of the Spellbook will have to change.

But I don't think we should get rid of it. The Spellbook is so iconic to the Wizard that losing it would feel like really losing what makes the Wizard a Wizard. So, what then?

My first thought is that Wizards might be able to expand the number of prepared spells they have per day beyond what other classes can do. The Wizard's role, after all, is to be the one with a vast trove of arcane knowledge. I could see this taking two different forms:

The first is that adding a spell to your spellbook would essentially work like Domain or Oath Spells. You effectively always have that spell prepared, and it doesn't count against the spells you've prepared. Now, the challenge here is that, left as is, that would be crazy-powerful. If acquiring spells for your book happens as easily as it does in the current version of the game, you'd have over twice as many spells ready as a Cleric. To deal with that, first, you'd significantly reduce the number of spells that the player can put in their spellbook.

You can do this two ways. The first is simply removing the free spells you get when you start off at level 1 and the two you get each time you level up. Essentially, you're still preparing a bunch of spells each day (presumably using the new system where you get one spell of each level to prepare for each spell slot you have that can cast that spell, so two 1st level spells at 1st level, etc. - unless they mercifully change that back to the old formula I far prefer) but if you want to have these extra prepared spells, you've got to find them, and then spend the time and money to add them to your spellbook.

Alternatively, though, you could also build a system that works the same regardless of how much money, spell scrolls, and time your DM affords you, which would be that instead, you simply get to add a certain number of spells to your spellbook as you level up. This would, of course, remove the "Spell Pokémon" minigame element of the class (Gotta Catch 'em All!) but it would make this a predictable and fair system for all Wizards.

However, perhaps there's another use for the Spellbook.

Another option is that Spellbooks could be used to more easily swap out your prepared spells. Perhaps Wizards would be able to, over the course of a minute (perhaps a limited number of times per day,) swap out a prepared spell for something copied into their spellbook, letting the Wizard focus on their go-to spells, or perhaps "frequently useful but also frequently not useful spells" for what they put in their book. Having Knock in your spellbook will be great if you come across a locked door while wandering across the desert, but not having to have it prepared for the many days that the closest equivalent to a door you encounter is the sphincter of some Purple Worm is also great.

The purpose of the Spellbook in the current class design is to reflect the Wizard's role as a versatile spellcaster, so the massive upgrade to the versatility of other spellcasters makes it important to find a way for the Spellbook to do this job in the new environment.

Now, to be fair, for all we know Sorcerers and Warlocks will simply have to one-and-done learn spells still, and this is all moot. But given how consistent the changes have been to spellcasters (and a change that I like, because I'm generally in favor of changes that make it harder for a player to "screw up" their character because of a poor or inappropriate build choice) I can only assume that we'll be seeing Sorcerers and Warlocks get the same treatment.

Information Gleaned from the D&D Creator Summit

Yesterday, WotC hosted a bunch of D&D content creators to talk to them about One D&D and such. There was, of course, a lot of discussion about both the nightmarish PR disaster that was the OGL fiasco, and a lot of discussion about how D&D content creators have borne the brunt of a lot of the backlash for it, as well as concerns about how D&D will manage the ingrained biases and legacy of prejudice within its fantasy game, along with questions about the structure of the team and how cultural consultants doesn't really make up for the lack of diverse voices in the central authorities of these projects.

The summary I have looks like it was a kind of live feed of the conference on Enworld.org, so some of the details come through a little sketchily, but we get some details.

I don't want to gloss over the cultural and corporate stuff, but I also don't know if I have much to contribute to that conversation.

So, instead, I'll be focusing on the fun stuff - hints of design philosophy going into the updated core rulebooks.

First off, WotC insists that these are not a new edition, and not even a 5.5. They point out that 3.5 still changed things to the point where you needed conversion documents to use content produced for 3.0. The ideal here is that someone can build a character with the 2014 PHB and play it alongside a player using the 2024 one, with possibly the only change being that the 2014 character now gets an additional feat.

Likewise, the intent is that you should be able to pick up Curse of Strahd or Storm King's Thunder and run the adventure just fine - even if the Swarms of Rats or Werewolves you use for encounters in that adventure are coming from the 2024 Monster Manual and might work differently mechanically.

Broadly speaking, they acknowledge that the stat blocks in the Monster Manual just don't all actually match the CR math that they use internally or what's found in the DMG, and that the updates aim to fix that.

The PHB will have a big, easily-searched rules glossary at the back, which should not have the 2014 PHB's infuriating index problem (like redirecting you to some other entry in the index rather than just printing the damned page number). Information is going to be findable in multiple locations to make it easier to find it.

Likewise, rules that do get changed or renamed will have their old names in the glossary, and inform the reader what the thing is called (for example, we can expect that the entry for Race will say "this has been changed to now be called Species, and here's where you can find information about it").

Now, into some of the nitty gritty details:

The PHB is going to be longer, and every class is going to have four subclasses in it. This does mean that the Wizard and Cleric will have fewer subclasses in the 2024 PHB than they do in the 2014 one, but the subclasses that don't get an updated reprint will still be usable with the new versions of these classes.

I suspect this means that they will be transferring over the most popular subclasses, and those with distinct identities, with revisions. There could also be some brand new ones - they're exploring a College of Dance Bard option, though I'd guess that iconic and popular subclasses from Xanathar's and Tasha's will likely make it in. The Undead Patron from Van Richten's, for example, seems like it could be a "standard" option for Warlocks. In most cases, each class is getting more options to explore, and they also intend to have a piece of art depicting every subclass in the book to convey a visual example.

The Monk rests in this awkward place as the one class that represents cultural traditions from a non-Western culture, but in the process also engages in stereotype. Ki points are being renamed Spirit Points to let the class expand to a broader flavor and lore for the class, but the designers also acknowledged that the larger problem is that the other classes are lacking in non-European influence, the hope being that the Monk is not the "token Asian class," but rather that all classes are depicted as being able to come from cultures inspired by any real-world culture. I wish them the best of luck on threading that needle.

On a mechanical level, Monks are explicitly being given an upgrade, because they felt that their damage output was too low for what is meant to be a powerful Warrior. This is, of course, subject to playtesting.

Weapons are getting changes, the details of which are a little hazy, but the basic idea is something called Mastery - that weapons of certain types will have additional properties that some classes can make better use of. An example given is that a Wizard can attack with a dagger, but they won't be able to use its "nick" property the way that a Fighter could (though there's no detail here as to what that property does). Another example is that if you have mastery in clubs, you can slow a target down in addition to dealing your damage. This system also makes Tridents better than Spears (though how it does that remains unsaid in this particular summary of the event). Shortswords are also, evidently, back to being martial weapons, and they claim mastery will allow for "martial" classes to get use out of them that Rogues don't, while still allowing Rogues to make use of them, and... yeah, I've gotta see the details.

Another big deal is that Pistols and Muskets have been added to the PHB weapon list. The idea is that every classic D&D setting has at least these types of firearms, and the time reference for D&D is generally late-Medieval/early Renaissance, so the existence of these weapons makes sense. They're still expensive as they are in the DMG, leaving more advanced firearms for DMs to decide whether to use.

I'll say that I like this change, even if I understand the impulse by many players to want to keep firearms out of their fantasy worlds (or rather, I sympathize with those who want to limit the use of guns given our gun-saturated American culture).

Again, we'll need to learn more about how Mastery works, but the Fighter, for instance, will have a lot of flexibility in using multiple Mastery options on a weapon.

Sorcerers and Warlocks will of course be seeing the change that they only get their subclass at level 3, but the intent is to give them a little more at 1st level to make them feel distinct. Clerics, in the revamp, have Channel Divinity to feel Cleric-like despite waiting for a subclass, so Sorcerers get a little chaos magic, like getting Chaos Bolt for free. Warlocks have some kind of lower-stakes pact to make at level 1 (I wonder if this could be the Pact Boon) and all Warlocks will automatically get Eldritch Blast.

While the Arcane, Primal, and Divine spell lists are still going to be a thing, they're also going to make some spells class-exclusive, and will be noted as belonging only to that class. This seems like a good compromise, and I wonder if we'll see that applied to things like Find Steed, which is currently in the playtest much better for Clerics than it is for Paladins.

The DMG will have a section on running sessions 0s, with advice about using safety tools.

The Monster Manual is said to have nearly 500 monsters, with almost all new art. There's a greater focus on high-CR monsters and NPCs, and again, the stat blocks have been tuned to better reflect their CRs. And also, things should be easier to find - a Gelatinous Cube will be listed under G, rather than O for Ooze (that being said, I'll say I do like having all the demons together).

The DMG will include some guidance on building a campaign's structure and have new encounter building guidance. It will also contain some lore about the D&D multiverse - an example being explaining who Orcus is.

Personally, while I think that's useful, I hope there's still an attitude that encourages creation of lore - while I like having the canon stuff there to pull from, the thing I love about D&D is being able to create within it. Again, I loved the way Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft talked about Horror Genres and how to build a compelling Darklord and their Dread Domain, foregrounding the DM and players' creativity, and I'd hope the DMG leans in that direction.

There will also be some guidance on magic item rarity and how players can craft, buy, and sell them. Having clearer rules for this, especially as someone who runs a campaign with an artificer, would be very welcome.

One of the big things here is that any mechanical changes are going to be put into the SRD, which will be in Creative Commons, so no one will have to buy the books to get them - that will only be for the modular pieces like new subclasses and such.

Spells, monster CRs, and the like are not going to change so as to make sure that all of this will remain compatible with existing 5E.

The PHB will have 9 species. Orcs and Goliaths are being added to the list, while Half-Orcs and Half-Elves are being cut (though you can still make them if you like them using the 2014 book,) with the previously-explained rationale that "half-" races carry a lot of problematic baggage. As explained in the Character Origins UA, mixed ancestries are welcome, but will be mechanically represented using one species or another. Goliaths are intended to play a role that is essentially to Giants what the Dragonborn is to Dragons.

Lastly, Planescape: Adventures in the Multiverse will be a box set with a 96-page gazetteer, a 96-page adventure, and a 64-page bestiary with a DM screen.

I'll say I'm glad it's longer in total than the Spelljammer set was, but I am wary that the "campaign setting" sourcebook part comes to only 160 pages in total. I don't think my dream of a Van Richten's-quality sourcebook is likely to come true, but hopefully half of the gazetteer won't just be deck plans of ships. Give me a lot of Tony DiTerlizzi art and I'll calm down a little.

Oh, actually, lastly lastly, they also announced that the next One D&D playtest document will include all six remaining PHB classes, meaning all three Warriors and all three Mages. 

Still Thinking About Control

 I'm of two minds.

One of the problems of modern gaming is the idea that everything's got to be an ongoing service. Games vie to be the one you log in to (and yes, logging in usually online) and hopefully pay some kind of subscription to generate constant income. I remember being hesitant to try World of Warcraft given the subscription fee, and while I've gotten now over sixteen years out of that game, I've also poured in I think over two thousand dollars (actually, doing the math it's just over 3k) in subscription fees and bi-annual expansion purchases.  And I think between DLC and other patch updates, a lot of games want you to keep playing them and build up a culture and streaming ecosystem around them. And I think we should have games that just end and exist as finite works of art.

On the other hand, when I really love a game, I can feel kind of sad when it's over, often feeling like I want to replay it or squeeze some more enjoyment out of it.

Control is a game that probably should just come to some final conclusion, credits roll, game over in the best sense. But the way that it's built leaves it open ended.

The game is something like a Metroidvania or a far more forgiving souls-like (the loss of Source on death, and the capturing of Control Points as both fast travel locations and health-recharge stations are not too different conceptually from dropping your Souls and finding Bonfires) but while Metroid games have you leaving the maze-like world (often as it explodes around you) when the game ends, and Souls games similarly opening the door, at least, if not pushing you through it, to New Game Plus, Control hits the ending more like an open-world game.

In a game like Skyrim, it makes perfect sense to dump you out into the world after you beat Alduin, because Elder Scrolls Games have always (ok, at least in the two I've played, which are that and Oblivion) treated the main story quest line as just one of many. I've had plenty of characters who have, instead of even worrying about that, only existed to, for example, do the Dark Brotherhood quests (which are often excellent if profoundly dark).

But the more open-world design that is so prevalent in video games these days has spread into games that don't necessarily need to be that way. Before Control, I played through God of War Ragnarok, GOW5 has an excellent, dramatic story, and I was really there mostly for the character drama that I got to play out in-game. But the game's open-world, quest-based design leaves things open - there's even a quest that you can't even complete until you've gotten past the game's ending.

Control is not an open-world game. But it also sort of is. Its primary gameplay structure is a series of missions that send you out into the Oldest House, trying to both find out what happened to player-character Jesse's brother, Dylan, and also solve the problem that is the mind-controlling and body-warping resonance known as The Hiss.

But while those missions don't feel like they're just one of many storylines to follow the way that the main quests in an Elder Scrolls game do, the world is nonetheless populated with a lot of side quests that fight or prominence in your "mission log" with the main story.

The things I love most about this game are the atmosphere and the breadcrumb worldbuilding. The opening moments, in which Jesse enters the curiously empty lobby of the massive brutalist office building of this never-before-heard-of federal agency, where the only person you meet at all is an odd janitor who speaks in literally-translated Finnish idioms who also happens to be the subject of a painting that mysteriously turns into an elevator... it had me gleefully unnerved.

And I'd love to continue living in that bizarre world. What's unfortunate is that the side-missions vary greatly in quality - as much as I adore Ahti the Janitor as an NPC, the side-missions he gives are like the most rote, basic MMO-style quests. There are some great ones, and also some awesome "futz around until you find out you can do this" things like the Luck & Probability laboratory. I remember feeling like a damned fool when I realized only after having beaten the second DLC that the framed photos of broken walls were an indication that you could smash through the wall behind and find a hidden area.

While I don't have every single last secret, I have, by most definitions, truly beaten and completed the game, and while I'll start it up again to wander the Oldest House some more, I feel a certain tension - it's fun to screw around there, but it's not as fun as when I was delving into all the weirdness of its story.

Any mystery story has the same problem: the potential of the mystery is what's fun. It's not even that I think Control's story doesn't conclude in a satisfying way (there are flaws to the story, but that's true in any story,) but I guess the sad thing is that the absolute thrill I had in the game's opening minutes is something I don't know I'll be able to experience again. That (fun) sense of sarcastically saying "oh yes, this is fine, everything's fine. The memo at the security station says we can't take smart phones or smart watches, or anything "smart" into the building, and no No. 2 Pencils either, and also nothing that is archetypal... yeah, that's fine. That elevator wasn't there before, and also, wasn't this lobby back there previously?"

The one way I have been able to get a little of that is in my roommate's playthrough, where I've had to fight my urge to give helpful advice and instead just let him just figure out the game for himself.

But getting back to the ending of the game - the open-ended "Endgame" segment, after the main story is completed, does allow you to then go back and finish the side quests, and it's a reasonable launching pad to send you off to the DLCs.

But A: I don't think either DLC works quite as well as the main game (though I definitely liked AWE better than Foundation) and B: Once those are concluded, they have their own not-as-compelling side quests to go through.

The answer here, of course, is simply to move on to another game. But I wonder what it is about Control that has be continually wanting to start it up again and play more. It might be that it's just so in tune with the kind of genre I enjoy, and it's nice to both get a game that hits that genre feel so well and also to actually have a name to describe it.

I think a New Game Plus system might have been good for Control. The strange choice to have only one save file is odd - in a game like Alan Wake, where you don't really carry any accumulated power or progress between levels, it's easy enough to just hop to a previously-completed chapter. I believe that Control lets you regain the progress you've made after jumping forward again, but it's ambiguous enough that I'm hesitant to try.

Anyway, I know a sequel is in the works, but I suspect it's a long ways off.

Dreaming Up Control 2

 So, in case you couldn't tell over the course of the past few weeks, I've become kind of obsessed with Control. In part, it's inspired my delve into the "New Weird" literary movement that the game is meant to be a part of, and the realization that a lot of my own writing could be classified as New Weird (as a note, I think that these specific, granular genre categories are useful when used descriptively, rather than proscriptively. In the past I've described my writing as "modern fantasy" or "surreal fantasy." I don't really like the Magical Realism descriptor because I tend to associate that with works that seem kind of embarrassed to include the supernatural or paranormal and seem to try to reassure readers that it's all pure metaphor and not taking the unreal on its own terms).

I've watched a pair of long video essay critiques of Control, one by Monty Zander and the other by Eric Crosby, neither of whom are video essayists I've seen anything else of, but they had interesting angles to look at the game in their essays. Zander begins his essay with a poo-pooing of the very idea of having to specify what the New Weird is, claiming that you could simply use a broader label like Science Fiction.

Personally, I actually like having the label, though again, as a way to describe a work done on its own terms, noticing patterns and tropes, rather than as a set of rules one must follow to earn the "new weird" certificate.

Control was explicitly and intentionally made to be a "New Weird" video game, and borrows ideas and tropes from some of the key pieces of that genre, like the Southern Reach trilogy (of which I've only read the first, though that was only a week ago, so give me some time).

Remedy Studios has made clear that they had an ambition to link up their games in a kind of shared universe. Alan Wake's in-world-fictional protagonist of the books he writes, Alex Casey, is likely meant to be a legally-distinct equivalent of Max Payne. And while it's hinted at in the main game, Control's second DLC, AWE, makes explicit that the events of Alan Wake take place in the same world as Control (and given Alan's reality-warping powers from that game, might have actually been the reason for the events of Control in the first place).

While Alan Wake is clearly inspired by the works of Stephen King and David Lynch. Lynch's Twin Peaks is a deeply oneiric take on the soap opera (you could argue, and many have, that Twin Peaks: The Return is a similar look at the gritty "peak TV" dramas like Breaking Bad or the Sopranos) but if you squeeze through the disorienting formalism of Twin Peaks, you could interpret it as a sort of investigation into the paranormal with a branch of the FBI dedicated to investigating such weird things. (The X-Files also took a lot of inspiration from Twin Peaks, toning down Lynch's dream logic to tell a more straightforward but nonetheless weird series of paranormal mysteries). The FBC in Control (which is of course also inspired by the internet-born SCP Foundation) plays an odd role as both the vast government conspiracy that covers up the truth but also the Scully and Mulders of its world, who go and actually seek the truth about the strange and paranormal.

However, I think you cannot discount Stephen King's influence. I started reading King when I was 17, and I picked up The Gunslinger, the first book in his Dark Tower series. The Dark Tower series is fantasy... of a sort. But while there are, yes, wizards and some kind of demonic dark lord in it, our knight errant on his quest looks more like the hero of a Spaghetti Western, who lives in a world that is part medieval fantasy, part post-apocalyptic hellscape, part wild west. Robots, sentient trains, mutants, invisible demons, and freestanding doors that lead into the minds of three separate people from New York in different decades are all parts of this story. The World Has Moved On, which means that the very rules of reality are breaking down, so why should anyone be bound to any specific genre conventions?

I've read other King books, and though he is of course the most popular living horror writer, I'm always tempted to argue that he's not really a horror writer at all. Certainly, he writes stories in which profoundly scary things happen, but they also tend to have really weird elements.

In the Shining, yes, the Overlook Hotel is filled with some sort of evil presence (that is probably not simply ghosts and more like some cosmic horror... thing). But in that world, Danny Torrance also happens to have psychic powers, which help him and his mother escape the madness the hotel infects his father with. In 11/22/63 (admittedly one of the less horror-genre works of King's), there's a doorway in an old diner that lets you go to the same precise moment in 1958 (I think I've got the number right,) resetting any changes made to the timeline each time you step back into it, and there are people from some other time or universe whose job it is to monitor that portal.

The point is, I think you could make an argument that, though the term only came about after most of the Dark Tower series had been written, it might count within that category of New Weird. Or maybe it's just Weird Fiction. King, after all, was inspired by Lovecraft (though replaced, for the most part, Lovecraft's misanthropy and bigotry with a much more caring dose of humanism). But in that case, you could argue here that Weird Fiction is the larger category, not far off from just Speculative Fiction in general.

Which now brings us back to Control.

The sequel, which has been announced, has the following problem: the original game's most iconic element is its setting, the Oldest House. Now, you could in theory set a new game still in the House, and merely have us explore other sectors we didn't see on our first trip. Of the two DLCs, the one I enjoyed more was AWE, which took place in the abandoned Investigations Sector, while the Foundation DLC took place in natural caverns beneath the House. Foundation is certainly a larger departure in terms of aesthetics, but I personally found the look of it less inspired - the advantage to the Oldest House was that, even if many of its spaces purely served to act as places for you to fight Hiss and navigate the labyrinthine corridors, there was a sense of purpose to it all - people worked here, and there might be someone who had to find this one particular office every day at 9 am. The caves of the Foundation were sort of... just video game spaces.

But setting a second game entirely within the House would, I think, also be a mistake. The open-world elements of Control make the end of the game a little depressingly non-final. Jesse is still trapped there, even if the worst of the crisis has passed. And while, yes, she's now embraced her role as the Director of the FBC, I'd have loved to have some cutscene at some point show her and Pope walking out the front door, being able to finally relax and go home before coming back to work the next day.

Another question I have about the game is whether we'll get any more of Doctor Caspar Darling. Much of the story involves a changeover in leadership, and by the end of the game, Pope has taken over from Darling as head of research. Darling's sins under the Trench regime are certainly not something easy to forgive, and his own status is ambiguous. But his videos over the course of the game are some of my favorite parts of Control, and in particular, his final video (which could be only Jesse's imagination, but I like to think it's a message intended to cheer on and pump her up from Darling himself). But could we really justify his continued presence in the story?

I could imagine a much different structure to a future game, in which Jesse goes out to various AWEs to investigate and solve problems. More conservatively, the game could simply focus on a single AWE in which Jesse is largely on her own, which would allow for the same kind of vaguely Souls-like Metroidvania structure.

The key, though, to retaining the strengths of the original game, would be to maintain the excellent environmental and breadcrumb storytelling. I suspect that the documents found across the Oldest House were in part inspired by the vast amount of lore you can pick up in FromSoft's games from item descriptions.

Luckily, if the story is about Jesse investigating some AWE, there's plenty of room to have fun FBC memos scattered around some devastated base camp for what you could imagine was some FBC task force sent there that has mysteriously vanished or otherwise been... incapacitated. But we could have all this take place in a new environment.

I will say that I think I agree with Monty Zander's criticism of the game's loot system. While I enjoyed the fact that the crafting materials were incorporeal concepts, appropriate to the psychic basis for the Service Weapon, I think that the loot chase has gotten a little too prevalent in gaming these days, and I don't think the system as implemented really serves to make Control more fun.

What I think would be better is to have a smaller number of bonuses that each sit at a single power level. This makes the choices feel more impactful - you're not just upgrading from a +12% damage boost to a 24% damage boost, you're instead deciding whether you want to spend less energy on Launch or allow Seize to take effect faster (these are both existing mods, but I don't think we need to have them existing in a hierarchy of quality).

It was, in fact, quite refreshing playing Alan Wake, in which there was no character progression system at all, other than perhaps sometimes finding more powerful flashlights. Video games had a long and storied history of letting you play the whole thing without getting explicitly more powerful. In traditional Mario games, the only way in which you get more powerful is that you, the player, gets better at playing the game. Now, I love a good progression system, but these are best when it's more about expanding the potential for strategy and tactics, rather than simply making numbers go up.

(I realize the irony of making that statement on a blog that started primarily as a World of Warcraft blog, but at this stage in my 16 and half years of playing WoW, I'm really in it to see the environments and witness the story and get cool transmog appearances, and only really worry about my DPS numbers so as not to be holding the group back.)

What I definitely want to see is a story in which the Hiss is over and dealt with. The Hiss worked fine as a villain for the first game - I really like the idea that the Hiss isn't even really intelligent, but just a sort of infectious frequency that perpetuates itself. But while The Dark Presence feels like it would have to continue to be the main problem of Alan Wake 2 (albeit taking new forms and demonstrating new capabilities) I think the promise of Control is that, while the Hiss crisis is bad, it's only at the top of the crises the FBC has dealt with. The presence of The Mold, for example, shows that even during the Hiss crisis, there are other problems the FBC is dealing with, and so it seems that a sequel should have a brand new crisis to deal with.

Again, like Monty Zander, I think some of the open-world elements of the game struggle to justify themselves. Pretty early on I found myself just ignoring the Bureau Alerts unless I was in the area already, and while Ahti the Janitor is one of my favorite elements of the world and the story, his janitorial tasks were pretty pure "open world busy work." Langston's Runaways, on the other hand, were great - each being its own unique little puzzle with its own unique set piece.

My general hope would be to nix any side quests that are dull "find x things to interact with in this section of the game and just click a button near them." Doing this and scaling back on the loot system would work together to better streamline the game.

And, don't get me wrong, at this stage I find myself wanting to go back and play more, only to realize that with most of those side missions complete (I think at this point the only things I have left to do are, like, the harder modes on SHÜM and the Jukebox) there's really not much point. But I think a game that leaves you wanting more is better than a game that wears out its welcome (though, of course, as I've just argued, Control hasn't).

As a last note, I think that, despite all the mods you can get for the Service Weapon, one of the problems in Control is that Launch as an ability is so much more fun and on top of that so much more powerful, that I often feel like the Service Weapon itself is more of a "filler" ability as you wait for your energy to recharge. And, of all its forms, I never really found a form I liked better than the standard "Grip" form. There wasn't really much of a sense that different scenarios called or using different forms, with a few exceptions.

Still, I loved Control, and I'm eager to see what they wind up coming up with for a sequel. I believe Alan Wake 2 is due this year, so I'll be checking that out.

Anticipating Planescape: Adventures in the Multiverse

 So, Spelljammer was a letdown.

It's not that what was there was really flawed - we got cool new playable races, interesting fantasy-space-physics (which I... tend to ignore for a more sci-fi style worldbuilding) and a book filled with cool monsters that is actually larger than the bestiaries we typically get with campaign setting books.

But there was a problem, which is that there was so very little "there" there. There's a description of the Rock of Bral, a cool location to be sure, but very little discussion of how one is to build an adventure that feels "Spelljammer-like." It felt in some ways like it was just telling you to use the ships to get from one established setting to another.

Calling the Planescape book for 5E "Planescape: Adventures in the Multiverse," which is so similar to "Spelljammer: Adventures in Space" makes me a little nervous. Because this nomenclature suggests that Planescape could be seen as a sort of "transitory" setting that you simply use to jump from one world to another. Also not helping that idea is that the idea of "multiverse" has kind of been blurred - are we talking about different worlds of the Prime Material Plane, or are we actually embracing the weirdness of the Outer Planes and Inner Planes?

I never played D&D until 5th Edition was out, but as detailed on this blog, I read through the "Planes of Law," "Planes of Chaos," and "Planes of Conflict" products from 2nd Edition, along with, of course, the Planescape Setting book. The stuff in these is really, really interesting and cool.

What I hope for in a 5th Edition Planescape book is something that will at least touch on the weird and wild locations of the planes.

What I don't want, and what I'm nervous we might be getting, is simply a description of Sigil as a location and a vague "and there are portals there to just about anywhere in the multiverse!"

Now, sure, Sigil is a beloved part of the Planescape setting, and would certainly have to play a role in any sourcebook. It is designed to be the hub from which your adventures radiate into the planes.

But given that 5E does not have a Manual of the Planes or really much description of the planes outside of a few blurbs in the DMG, I'd be sad if they went unexplored.

Now, I'll keep my fingers crossed that we'll get something more in line with Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft, which is to date my favorite 5E supplement - a book that went deep on how to run adventures in that setting and really zeroed in on tone and vibe while simultaneously throwing in a lot of cool character options and monsters.

I realize, of course, that having read all that 2nd Edition stuff, I'm versed enough to run a Planescape game that has the feel I'm looking for. And WotC's philosophy on how much they publish is very different than how TSR's was in the 90s. Inevitably, the 5E Planescape sourcebook is not going to be able to cover as much ground as the many books that came out in the 90s.

But I'm hoping they learned some lessons from the response to Spelljammer: Adventures in Space.