Deathloop and the Nature of Video Games

 The first time I ever played Super Mario World, I was at an old defunct Girl Scouts' camp in Maine that my dad's colleague owned as a vacation spot. His son had a Super Nintendo, and my sister and I had really not played any video game consoles before.

Super Mario World is, to me, the quintessential, platonic idea of what a "video game" even means to me.

But my sister and I were both unused to the challenge and difficulties of video games, so rather than trying to progress through the game, we just ran the level Yoshi's Island 2 over and over and over again. We learned its patterns and were able to often get to the end, earning a bunch of lives and letting the older kids play the later levels.

The thing is, this kind of repetition and learning in games is a big part of how video games are structured. Speedrunners know every little corner and beat of each level in games like Super Mario World, but this kind of learning through repetition is also how, for example, a World of Warcraft raid works. You stumble through the fights the first time through, and while the gear you get lets you have an easier time through it, a big part is just learning the patterns and strategies of the fight.

Deathloop, interestingly, makes this idea canonical. Every time you re-play a level, it's not just a video game conceit, but is instead what is actually happening. The fact that NPCs have the same conversations and movement patterns each time you could back to, say, Updaam at Noon, is justified by the game's time loop premise, even thought it's exactly how every video game works.

In fact, I think this is almost an evolution of the concept in FromSoft's Souls games, which has an in-universe justification for why you come back when you die - rather than just having you sort of pretend like any time you fail in a level or area is not canonical, these games embrace it.

But Deathloop even covers the reason why NPCs act the same way each time.

Anyway, I'm nearing the end of the game. I've managed to take down each of the Visionaries at least once, and I've completed enough of their "leads" to set up the final break-the-loop mission.

I still think there are a lot of things I could figure out to make things a bit smoother. This is a game that has tons of optional secrets and methods to unlock.

Another Look at the One D&D Warlock

 Treantmonk's Temple is a YouTube channel that goes into the math to evaluate the power levels of things in D&D. Now, I'll confess that I have mixed feelings about optimizing and min-maxing in D&D. I don't think you should play a Paladin with 8 Charisma just because you want to play one that's kind of a mess (I convinced a friend to reconsider this by pointing out he was doing the opposite extreme of min-maxing) but at the same time, I think I have the most fun if you don't search out bizarre and out-of-character exploits to get super-powered characters who can never be challenged.

I've played Adventurer's League, and I know that some players enjoy the challenge of breaking the game that way, but the way I see it, especially in TTRPGs, the build should support the character and fantasy you're trying to portray.

Fantasy can include being a powerful adventurer, to be clear. But if your choices don't really serve the fantasy and are instead just about numbers going up, I think you and I play this game for very different reasons.

Indeed, sometimes if those choices arise naturally from the story, they can be great - Fjord in Critical Role's second campaign made total sense multiclassing into Paladin from Warlock (though I might argue that Ukotoa would have made more sense as a Great Old One patron. The Fathomless patron option didn't exist yet when that campaign started, which would otherwise be the obvious best pick).

Anyway, lest I get ahead of myself: Treantmonk's Temple did a video defending the One D&D version of the Warlock, and I thought I'd chip in my own impressions of what he argues.

As the video points out, the Warlock can still access spells at certain levels at the same rate of one every two that full spellcasters do - with the exception of having to wait until level 5 for both 2nd and 3rd level spells. You'll still be able to cast a 9th level spell at level 17, just as you can now. And by expanding the Warlock's spell choices to the entire Arcane spell list, they now have access to a ton of far, far better spells than they had before.

But let's talk about the issues that I have with the way this works (and fair warning, if you've read my earlier posts about Warlocks, some of these will be familiar).

The first, and simpler, of the issues I have is that this creates a bizarre shuffling required by the Warlock as they level up. If I want access to a 3rd level spell at 5th level, I'll pick up the Mystic Arcanum invocation. Cool, I have Fireball now. But when I hit level 7, and I want a 4th level spell, I'll need to spend another invocation to get, say, Polymorph. Now, when I hit 9th level and I want to get, say, Danse Macabre, I'd need another invocation... or, I could swap Fireball out from the first Mystic Arcanum and change it to Danse Macabre, and then take Fireball as a learned spell.

This is all doable, but it's a real fucking hassle. As an experienced player who understands the ins and outs of the game, I can manage this, but as a DM with players who might not have the comfort I do, I feel like this will be a tangled mess of trying to help someone fix their character sheet.

The second issue is one that is actually shared with the current version of Mystic Arcanum. Warlocks are weird in that, for low-to-low-mid-level spells, they love a spell that scales really well when upcast. In D&D, most spells fall short when you upcast them - you'd much rather cast Meteor Swarm than a 9th level Fireball, for example. But there are a handful of spells that are specifically intended for Warlocks that get much better when upcast. Armor of Agathys is my go-to example. At 1st level, it's unlikely this will protect against more than a single hit, and will do a grand total of 5 damage to the attacker. But at 5th level, the 25 temporary hit points could, depending on the foes you're facing, last two or three attacks, or even more, giving the spell a huge damage potential - if a creature hits you three times and their average damage is 8 or less, that's 75 cold damage you've put on them.

Likewise, the Tasha's 'Summon' spells like Summon Undead, Summon Shadowfiend, or Summon Aberration scale quite well with upcasting. Ironically, though, Warlocks will now find that Summon Aberration is a far better choice than the 3rd level spells of this list because it is natively 4th level. At level 7, I could use Mystic Arcanum to get Summon Aberration, and have a Beholderkin shooting mind beams out twice a round. If I wanted to do the same with my Skeletal Undead Spirit's Grave Bolts, I'd have to wait until level 13 because even if I can get Summon Undead at level 5, I won't have the spell slots to upcast it at 4th level until 8 levels later, and Mystic Arcanum does not allow upcasting. Indeed, I can grab Summon Fiend at level 11 to get three attacks per round from that minion before I can even give my skeleton a second attack.

Warlocks have never been able to do great high-level spell scaling, but they're built around automatic low-level spell scaling. This is a pretty profound change.

Now, maybe this isn't bad so much as it is different. In terms of power, you might be better off just taking higher-level spells via Mystic Arcanum instead. (Loathe as I am to admit it, the Summoned minions, cool as they are, have to hit a ton of times to equal a single Fireball that hits three or more targets).

One point I fully agree with Treantmonk on is that invocations are unbalanced. I adore Eyes of the Runekeeper from a flavor and vibe perspective, but in terms of player power, it falls so very far behind other options. Indeed, I think making Mystic Arcanum an Invocation feels very much like you're forced to choose between whether you want to be able to use that high level magic and whether you want the other customization options invocations give you. This was not a choice you had to make in the current version, so my initial reaction is to not like it.

But what's the counterbalance? I think that the Pact Boon redesign has made them all far more impactful. Pact of the Blade just does what it's advertised to do, and I think will encourage far, far more players to pick up the Blade without feeling they then have to go Hexblade. Pact of the Tome is actually very flexible now because you can cast it any time you have an hour to spare, swapping out the cantrips and ritual spells within. (Also interesting that the Tome pact lets you skip Agonizing Blast, or at least replace it at level 5).

Where I agree with Treantmonk profusely is that Hex feels like it should be better. The upgrade to increase its damage done is a bit of a wash (though it falls off in tier 4) but there are just far better spells to concentrate on.

I think I'd like to see either class features or the spell itself significantly redesigned. If we want Warlocks Hexing their foes, I think it's got to do more. The damage is not enough to justify itself when you could have, for instance, Summon Fiend up (at base level, the number of d6s a summoned Devil deals per round, without even accounting for bonuses, is twice that of a 5th level hex and available six levels earlier). A Hex should be debilitating in some way. Ability checks do happen sometimes in combat, but they're not as common as attack rolls and saving throws. One way this could make a huge impact is if, when cast at higher levels, the chosen ability score is further debilitated - maybe you start with ability checks, add saving throws when cast at 3rd level, and then add attack rolls made with that ability at 5th level. It's not game-breaking, but with no save, it can be a big deal.

And then maybe the damage doesn't go up to balance that. I don't know.

I'm sure, given the general sense from the community, that we'll see some big revisions to the Warlock in the playtest process, but what I'd hope for is to allow Warlocks to more smoothly access high-level magic, without a lot of swapping out in the leveling process.

Monks: Predicting Innovations Beyond Weapon Mastery

 As it turns out, the simple addition of Weapon Mastery to Fighters and Barbarians will be enough to give them a significant damage boost, or a great deal of battlefield utility, with effects like Push, Topple, Slow, and Sap.

In the 2024PHB, Monks will be classified as Warriors, gaining access to these weapon masteries along with, presumably, the Fighting Style feats. Truthfully, though, it appears that Rangers and Paladins are likely to also get the benefits of these Warrior traits (no word on Rogues, but as the last obligate weapon-based class, it would seem unfair to deny them weapon mastery).

Now, two things strike me about Weapon Mastery when it comes to the Monk. The first thing is that Monks are famous for their unarmed strikes. While any Monk with a magical weapon (and, before tier 3 or so, any quarterstaff or spear) is going to be using that weapon for their primary attacks, Monks are built around the utility of their unarmed strikes.

Now, you could argue that the bonus hit (or hits with Flurry of Blows) are icing on the cake, and don't deserve to get the weapon mastery bonuses. I'm not really here to offer solutions in this post, but only to suggest that there might be a reason to let Monks do something special with those masteries.

Indeed, one could imagine that when you choose a mastery at the start of your day, your unarmed strikes benefit from the same one - you might get Vex, or Slow, for instance. On the other hand, some, such as Flex or Nick, don't really make sense for unarmed strikes.

As an alternative, there might be a selection of specific "unarmed strike mastery options," and perhaps a Monk could get access here to things they normally wouldn't get on their weapons, such as Graze, Push, or Topple.

The Monk is far more fragile than most classes that are built to be in melee all the time - they have only a d8 hit die, but unlike Rogues (who are often at range anyway), they do not have anything like Uncanny Dodge. In order to gain a defensive benefit, they need to sacrifice both damage and a resource for something like Patient Defense.

I've always suspected that the reason for this is that the Monk's Stunning Strike is such a powerful effect when it goes off. You can more or less take a foe out for a full round, during which your party is set up to much more easily kill them. But Stunning Strike is not reliable - it requires a Constitution save (something almost every monster has at least some bonus to) against a DC set by a stat you might have as your secondary or tertiary priority. I think it's fine that this doesn't go off reliably, but because it's so powerful when it works.

However, we've got a new condition that's still powerful, but not so profoundly powerful that we would need to nerf Monks' defensive abilities in response. And that is Dazed. The Dazed condition limits the creature to either moving or using an action, preventing bonus actions and reactions.

This will not fully prevent a foe from making any attacks, but it will, for instance, allow the Monk to strike them and then run away safely, and keep the foe either locked down or unable to attack, severely lessening it as a threat, but not allowing the party to pile on with a bunch of attacks at advantage.

Dazing Strike could thus free up a lot of design space to make the Monk a tougher class to kill, and bring them in line with the other melee classes.

So, now that we're committing to that, where do we look to improve a Monk's survivability?

Let's compare a Standard Array Monk with a Standard Array Fighter. We'll assume each has a +3 to their main stat (Dexterity for the Monk, Strength for the Fighter) and +2 to two secondary stats (say Wisdom and Constitution for the Monk, and Intelligence and Constitution for the Fighter).

The Fighter at level 1 can get Chain Mail for an AC of 16, and has 12 HP. The Monk, using Unarmored Defense, gets an AC of 15, and has 10 HP.

Now, the Fighter can also pick up a shield, but let's assume that they're both more focused on damage-dealing (actually, the Monk isn't really choosing one or the other).

The balance of damage to survival is not precisely the same (and remember, we want the game to have these weird trade-offs where neither option feels strictly better than the other while still feeling distinct) but right now the Monk is taking more damage due to the lower AC and also has only 5/6 of the Fighter's HP.

Now, contrasted with the Barbarian, the Barbarian does tend to have lower AC than the Fighter (outside of magic armor, a Barbarian can technically reach higher AC, but it's unlikely) but they also have Rage and higher HP to compensate for these things. The Monk, usually at lower AC (with those starting stats, they're not going to hit the Fighter's nonmagical maximum until level 12 at the earliest) does not have any ongoing damage reduction.

And, if we're encouraging players to take feats rather than the standard ASI, they'll increase their ACs at a slower rate, and likely not getting to 18 AC until level 20.

So, how might we fix this?

The first is simple: we give the Monk a d10 hit die. Now, the Monk is keeping pace with Fighters, Paladins, and Rangers (who honestly would probably be fine with a d8) in terms of HP. Given their reliance on both Dexterity and Wisdom, it might be difficult for them to boost Constitution over time, though, so even here, they're likely going to lag a little behind on HP. That's not so terrible, though, if we expect them to be a little better at damage-dealing.

But if the AC and the HP are both lower, do we need something else?

I suggested in earlier posts that the Monk could have some subtractive damage reduction. A Barbarian halves the damage they take from most standard weapons, which makes them much better at tanking the massive hits of a giant monster, but a subtractive system would, by contrast, be more effective against lots of small attacks.

The Heavy Armor Master feat, in One D&D, reduces incoming "BPS" damage by an amount equal to your proficiency bonus. We could explore this as a model.

A Zombie hits for an average of 4.5 damage (1d6+1,) so if we gave Monks the same style of damage reduction, they will only take any damage in tier 1 if they the Zombie rolls a 2 or higher. I believe that the average here is 2.5, but just to check: we've got 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 damage, averaging to, yeah 2.5.

A Barbarian, on the other hand, using Rage, will simply take half the average, for 2.75.

Now, if we go to higher-level foes, a Marilith makes six Longsword attacks for an average of 13 damage each, and a single tail attack for an average of 15.

Our tier 3 Monk we'll say is knocking 5 off of each of these, taking a total of 48 from all the longsword attacks (if they all hit) and then 10 from the tail, for a total of 58.

The Barbarian it simply taking the full 78 from the swords and 15 from the tail, but halving both to 38+7, or 45.

By contrast, an Iron Golem (same CR as the Marilith) is dealing 23 damage with each of its two sword attacks, for a total of 46.

The Monk in this case is reducing the swords to 18, for a total of 36 damage, while the Barbarian is just halving both attacks to 11, taking only 22.

Now, in fact, both of these scenarios favor the Barbarian, but we could imagine that if it's not one big scary monster but just a ton of smaller ones, the Monk might come out ahead. Still, we create two classes that are better in different scenarios.

We could adjust the damage reduction to fine-tune it, perhaps decoupling it from PB.

I honestly don't think the Monks have too much trouble in terms of damage output, and as we looked at earlier, the new version of dual-wielding, now tied to the Nick weapon mastery, can give them a crazy number of attacks per round, and their access to two weapon fighting as a Fighting Style on top of that gives them a very solid damage output.

I don't know how long it will be before we get the One D&D version of the Monk, but I could imagine some big upgrades.

One thing I do wonder about is Ki Points - which are evidently being renamed "Spirit Points" in an effort to avoid drawing as strong a connection between the class an East Asian culture (the logic here is a little convoluted, but the idea is, I think, to make it less "the Asian class" and thus make the other classes equally work for Asian-inspired settings and characters... I'll let people connected to those cultures make the judgment call of whether this is a good move or not).

Currently, Ki Points (while they're called that) recharge on a short rest, and you get a number equal to your Monk level starting at level 2 (making them similar to Sorcery Points, except that those recharge on a long rest). Now, while it looks like they're migrating a lot of "short rest recharge" mechanics toward long rests - such as Second Wind and Warlock spell slots - they aren't entirely getting rid of them either - a Fighter's Action Surge is still recharging on a short rest, for example.

Monks do get a fair number of cool things outside of resource-consuming abilities, such as their super-fast movement speed, their Martial Arts bonus attack, and stuff like slow fall, deflect missiles, and eventual immunity to all poison damage and the poisoned condition. But I do think that it's easy enough to run out of Ki Points pretty quickly, and so if this does become a long rest recharge, I think we'll want to give Monks a higher total amount - perhaps doubling them.

I'd bet that there are going to be some radical changes to the Monk, given their exclusion from the PHB 5 packet. But if they are going with radical changes, it makes a lot of my speculation less likely to turn out true. So, we'll see.

The Deathloop Starts to Click Into Place

 So, I'm starting to get Deathloop.

The objective of the game is to kill eight different "Visionaries" whose lives are keeping the endless loop of the same day going. To break the loop, you need to kill all eight within a single day, and that's pretty damn tough, because everyone on the island is trying to kill you.

However, with the exception of Juliana, who periodically hunts you down like a Dark Souls invader, no one but you and she have any memory of previous cycles. This means that the enemies have the same behavior on each loop, and things like access codes (with one exception I know of) remain the same each day.

One of the Visionaries is a musician/DJ named Frank, and when you first go after him, you have to take him out in his recording studio. However, within there, you find an audio diary in which he confesses to being reckless with fireworks - and he's set to launch the fireworks display at the end of the "first night of the loop" celebration (which happens every night because everyone thinks it's still the first day.) You can then find out that there is an access code to the fireworks controller you can find in a workshop in the residential area (one of four "levels") called Updaam. The problem, though, is that at noon (one of the four times of day in each cycle) the place explodes before you can get to the code.

So, you need to go there in the morning and deactivate an over-worked generator that causes the explosion, and then come back at noon to get the code.

But once that code is acquired, you automatically remember it, and can auto-fill it at the fireworks depot in another part of town any time in the future.

So, you can go there in the morning (it's near another Visionary whom I think you can only get to in the morning) and sabotage the fireworks controller so that it will cause an explosion that will catch Frank in the evening - the last of the four time periods.

And that means that you don't have to go back and attack him at his studio.

What's nice is that the game kind of tracks all of these things so that you don't have to remember every sequence of events you need to go through.

But it also plays with the bizarre ethical and chronomechanical implications of the time loop. I don't think you can figure out that you need those access codes until you've killed Frank the first time, but once you have, you'll do it a different way.

The tone of this game is fairly cynical - these are generally kind of awful people who have chosen a bizarrely awful way to spend their immortality. The player character wants to break the loop in part just to escape, but you could actually argue that by doing so, he's saving all the people on the island from an endless purgatory of violence and meaninglessness.

Thus, the rather brutal ways you kill the unnamed "Eternalists" who serve as the main obstacles of the game and the way you set up elaborate death traps for each of the Visionaries is, in a strange way, an act of mercy.

I don't know precisely how the end of the game will play out - whether the broken loop resets one more time or if the people killed in that final iteration remain dead. But it's kind of a fascinating premise (which admittedly has been played with in Majora's Mask 21 years earlier).

Deathloop is a spiritual successor of (and evidently set in a future version of the setting of) Dishonored, but I think I'm finding myself more in tune with this game - the repetitive nature of the missions and levels makes stealthy traversal something you can feel yourself getting better at - ah yes, I remember that there's a turret I can hack here, or I remember that there's this window I can open here, etc. There's also, as far as I can tell, no penalty for using violence, whereas if I recall correctly, Dishonored had the environment grow darker and more hazardous if you killed more minions on your way to your targets.

The game is not forgiving - and it can be very frustrating when you get taken out during a multi-stage leg of some quest (such as the first time I tried to get to that workshop for the code and was taken out by an invading Juliana before I could reach it) but I'm finding that the elaborate complexity of figuring out all of these paths to taking out the Visionaries get broken down into suitably bite-sized chunks to keep it from being too overwhelming.

The New Standard: You're Not Getting Rid of Farewell That Easily

 Kamigawa Neon Dynasty was a fantastic card set. A return to a plane that didn't really work when it had the whole 2004-2005 release year and three different sets (blown away by the perhaps overpowered Mirrodin block and the absolutely beloved introduction of Ravnica in the subsequent year,) KND was exciting and fun, and it also bent Magic: the Gathering's genre more than it had ever before - for the first time, we saw futuristic technology that wasn't some vaguely-defined magitek, and showed the the fantasy genre can easily blend with other genres, such as Cyberpunk.

But, as a popular set, it also brought some popular cards that are... well, perhaps a little overpowered.

Maybe the biggest offender, as in, it's the card you basically are going to put in every single deck you have that uses red mana, is Fable of the Mirror-Breaker, one of the call-back Sagas that refer to a legendary creature from the original Kamigawa run.

The thing is, I don't actually mind this so much. It can become very powerful if left to its own devices, eventually copying creatures with powerful ETB effects or death effects. But it takes four turns to actually hit that point (or three if you have a way to get its flip side haste) and there are ample opportunities to deal with it.

No, the card from KND I can't stand is Farewell.

Farewell wipes the board. It wipes the graveyard. Selectively, it has the potential to wipe out everything the opponent has built up to this point in the game other than planeswalkers.

Basically, you build around using this, and on turn six, your opponent is set back almost to turn 1.

Board wipes are a healthy part of the game, mind you - they're a useful tool for control decks to get some good asymmetrical card advantage and stall things out to let them build to their finishers. But this one, which does not destroy but exiles, and wipes the graveyard, and artifacts, and enchantments, on top of creatures...

If this existed before Lorwyn block it would let you clear every single thing out of the game other than lands and cards in hand, and libraries.

So, I was, with some bittersweet joy (I love, for example, the Innistrad dual lands) looking forward to its rotating out with the Wilds of Eldraine.

But it seems we will not so easily be rid of Farewell.

That's because Standard, which has for as long as I can remember (and I think I was first aware of formats when I was playing MTGO back in 2005-2007) been composed of sets from the past two years, rotating out the older "block" (even if we don't use blocks anymore) in September, is now going to have three years' worth of card sets.

In other words, for this year only, there will be no set rotation. Innistrad: Midnight Hunt, Innistrad: Crimson Vow, Kamigawa Neon Dynasty, and Streets of New Capenna will all remain in Standard until fall of 2024.

When they rotate out with the as-yet unannounced (I think) set that comes then, we'll still have another full year of the Phyrexia Arc sets, meaning Dominaria United, The Brother's War, Phyrexia All Will Be One, March of the Machine, and March of the Machine: The Aftermath.

So, the good news is that if you're still playing that werewolf deck you made in the fall of 2021, you're going to be able to keep playing it for a good long while in Standard. But if you are sick and tired of losing attacking creatures to a flashed-out Wandering Emperor any time your white-deck opponent has four mana open, well... you're going to have to deal with that for a bit longer.

Thoughts on Each Weapon Mastery

 While the five previewed classes are nothing to sneeze at (and the changes to the Warlock cannot be understated - though I imagine I'm not alone in my hopes that they seriously revisit the change to their spellcasting system, which I think turns the Warlock into a different class and not one I'm as excited to play) I think the real exciting highlight of One D&D's 5th playtest packet is the introduction of Weapon Masteries.

I talked about these when the packet first came out, but I wanted to focus purely on the mastery effects themselves and talk about what I think about them.

Cleave:

This is one of the strongest of the masteries, and has a lot of great flavor to it. I'm not sure if this is the case, but I think the use of 'Cleave' to describe attacking two foes with a single swing might have originated in World of Warcraft (the game that inspired the creation of this blog,) but that's a storied and established-enough game at this point (when the new core rulebooks come out, it will be 20 years old, and I'll have played it for eighteen of those) that I think it's fitting enough to let it contribute this to the RPG lexicon.

Anyway, Cleave is strong, doing a lot of damage, but only in the right circumstances. I think it's an attractive mastery. My only issue with it is that it sits in some redundant territory in terms of flavor.

Great Weapon Master has changed in One D&D, but it still retains its bonus action attack when you score a critical hit or reduce a foe to 0 hit points. In both cases, I've always interpreted this as the weapon hitting with so much momentum (either from a particularly strong swing or because the foe it hit has been cut in half and no longer resists it) that you can strike another nearby enemy. But this is also, I think, very similar to the flavor of the Cleave mastery.

Now, mechanically, this plays well with Great Weapon Master, as the bonus attack from Cleave does not require a bonus action, so it remains very strong. Cleave will be fantastic when facing tightly-packed foes, though it's a bit all-or-nothing, and so players might wish to hold onto another weapon if possible when facing a single enemy, or spread-out foes.

Flex:

Ok, we go from one of the strongest masteries to what has got to be the weakest of the bunch. Versatile as a feature on weapons is good only because there is no downside to it. But Flex's downside is that you aren't getting one of the many other good masteries.

Upgrading from a d6 to a d8 or a d8 to a d10 only gives you a single extra point of average damage. In the grand scheme of things, this is going to be kind of negligible.

Now, there are Fighting Styles that don't really give you much either - I remember being kind of surprised to realize that Great Weapon Fighting only gives you 1.33 extra damage on a Greatsword or Maul, which makes it worse than Dueling or Two-Weapon Fighting. But at least this has a certain "feels better" effect, as you're less likely to be distraught when you roll double ones on your damage dice.

But as it currently stands, I'll almost always want a Battleaxe over a Longsword or a Trident over a Warhammer (at least if I'm not on a Fighter, who will be able to swap Flex out for something better).

Graze:

In terms of direct damage-increasing masteries, I think I might like this the best, even if I don't know that it's the most powerful. One of the most frustrating things a martial player can feel is when they miss on all their attacks, and feel like the entire turn is wasted because of some unlucky rolls. Giving you a bare minimum of damage to deal gives you a way to feel like you're at least helping a little bit.

Indeed, I'd almost be tempted to say that this is too powerful, but if an Evoker can roll half damage even on cantrips, perhaps it's ok that you can get that minimum damage on misses.

That said, a tier 4 fire bolt is doing 4d10+5 damage on an Evoker, or about 27 on average, halved to 13 (or a minimum of 4). A level 18 Fighter with a Greatsword who misses every one of their attacks is going to still be doing 20 damage.

So, this comes online immediately (the Greatsword is an option for starting equipment for Fighters) and might be a little powerful for those early levels. But still, I like this one.

Nick:

Ok, so Nick is great. The problem is that I think we all preferred when the functionality of Nick was baked into the Light weapon property, as it was in previous playtest packets.

I think basically every single person who read about this change to the light weapon property prior to packet 5 loved it, as it made dual-wielding work the way it always seemed it should.

Now, to be fair, Nick is only required for the off-hand weapon, so you can take other properties (likely Vex) on your main hand and get the full benefit of both. But we don't yet know to what extent Paladins, Rangers, and especially Rogues (who are often left out of the 'universal martial features' club) will be able to make use of this. Rogues in particular would benefit from having this, given both their love of dual-wielding and their frequent use of bonus actions.

If weapon mastery is given out freely to basically every class that fights with weapons, this might not be a problem. But I think it would be more elegant if this were baked into the Light property as it was before. Perhaps Nick, then, could instead be something else. Just based on the name, it sounds almost like it could be a less powerful version of Graze, but I'm going to keep a lid on the speculation here.

Push:

Finally, we get to a mastery that doesn't directly affect damage you deal. And as someone who loves Repelling Blast on a Warlock, I think Push is a fantastic thing for martials to get their hands on - reliable battlefield manipulation.

The only thing here is that this would seem to make shoving pointless in most situations. If you can push a target twice as far as you could shove them, especially based as an attack roll (which I think tend to hit more frequently than a successful contested athletics check) you're going to have a lot of fun with this one.

The real limitation here is simply with your own movement speed. The more attacks you get, the more you'll have to run to catch up with your foe to push them again. That makes this arguably more powerful on a ranged weapon, and only one ranged weapon has this naturally.

But I think this is great.

Sap:

So, this one I think is interesting. It's good, but weirdly gets better when you can spread your attacks around - which I usually tend to avoid as it's generally better to down one enemy before attacking another.

The other thing that's interesting about this one is that it only comes on a small number of weapons that are then severely limited as to which masteries can be swapped onto them, and because the limit is that the weapon cannot have any other properties, no weapon that doesn't already have Sap on it can gain it via a Fighter's ability to swap weapon masteries.

This requires a strong commitment to playing defense, so while I'm sure there are some character concepts that will like it, I'm not particularly drawn to it.

Slow:

Slow is not as cool as Push. I think that's really the main drawback to it. In a vacuum, it's simple but useful. This is, honestly, probably the most uncontroversially "balanced" mastery, feeling like it has a noticeable and useful effect while not really breaking things due to being overpowered.

The only thing I'd worry about with this is that it will often not really affect the battle in any significant way. If you slow an enemy who's already in melee, wailing on you, they're not going to worry much about their reduced movement speed.

Thus, this becomes a bit more helpful on a ranged weapon - and it does find itself on a lot of ranged weapons. And there, I think it's fine, basically working like Ray of Frost.

Topple:

Now we're freaking talking. Topple has some oddities to it - I think it's strange that the target makes a Con save instead of a Dex or Strength one - but even if those saves often succeed, the fact that it's less reliable actually makes it more dynamic, and makes its powerful effect less overpowered.

A few issues, though:

First off, this can technically go on a couple of ranged weapons, but unless you just want to set up your melee allies, you don't want to use this (it doesn't come naturally on any, so this isn't that much of an issue).

Second: is this not just better than Slow? I guess it doesn't automatically succeed, but unless the target's speed is less than 20 feet, knocking it prone will do more to slow it down than the Slow effect will.

The biggest problem, though, as pointed out by D&D Youtube Channel Treantmonk's Temple, is that this will force way more saving throws to be rolled in the middle of combat, potentially bogging down the flow of play.

I might be willing to pay that price, but it is something to consider.

Vex:

Ok, now this might be the most powerful mastery. Getting rolling Advantage on attacks is pretty great. Actually, the Armorer Artificer can get something like this effect with their Lightning Launcher at high levels. And boy howdy will Rogues absolutely love this if they can get their hands on it - genuinely, I think it would make a feat investment in Weapon Master well worth it (assuming they don't automatically get some form of Weapon Mastery in the Expert Class revisions).

The only reason not to like it is if it's too powerful.

But it has a few things going for it: it's attractive (the power helps,) and it's pretty simple and straightforward. Not much else to say.

    So there you have it. I'm kind of amazed that the Trident has gone from one of the least exciting weapon options to now one of the best you can get as a sword-and-board build, and as I've said before, I cannot wait to jump back into my Fighter at some point and start blasting foes around the battlefield with my battleaxe (putting Push on it until I can have both Push and Topple at the same time).

Getting Caught in the Deathloop

 A game that grabbed me with its 60s-style mod style and intriguing time-bending premise, Deathloop came out a good while ago and I didn't try it out until now (it helped that it was for sale on the PS Store for 20 bucks).

The premise, if you're not familiar, is that you are stuck in an endless loop on an island out in the "Polar Sea." After the game starts with your agonizing, brutal death, you wake up on a beach with no memories except for the odd floating text that shows up throughout the game, with a mission: break the loop.

Gameplay-wise, there's a bit of a Majora's Mask idea here - the island resets back to the same day each time, and you have to find a way to break the loop during that day, presumably so that time can move forward and people aren't trapped in this endless limbo - or at least, so that you aren't.

Essentially, the form this takes is that there are four broad maps, and each of them can be visited at four times a day - morning, noon, afternoon, and evening. Each is filled with people who have been encouraged to kill the player character and prevent him from breaking the loop. Why would they want this?

Well, the idea behind the loop apparently was to create a kind of utopian paradise where no one would ever die or even age. One could indulge in all manner of debauchery, violence, and hedonism with no fear of lasting repercussions. The hitch in that plan, though, it seems, is that the vast majority of people on the island don't actually retain their memories when the loop resets. To them, it's the first day of this grand utopian future - and it will always be that first day.

The exceptions are Colt, the player character, and Juliana, who now spends her time hunting him down and killing him - all in an effort to preserve this strange immortality they've achieved. In terms of gameplay, there's a Dark Souls-like Invasion system in which players can play as Juliana to show up in someone else's game and attack them (you can opt out of this is you aren't into PvP).

The game also uses a kind of loot system, and in the early missions, you find a way to hold onto individual items that you might like, with a resource called Residuum (also like Dark Souls, if you drop this when you die, you'll need to retrieve it before you die again, though enemies don't respawn as much).

It's funny, because I just watched a video essay about Glass Onion, the Rian Johnson film, which is also about a bunch of rich assholes who go to an island to escape some problem we mere mortals have to deal with (though this isn't just Covid, but time itself).

Deathloop is made by the same studio that did Dishonored, and while it's swapped out the 19th-century steampunk vibes for mid-century modern mod chic, I've actually heard it's set in the same world, perhaps just a century later (I'm 100% here for full on secondary-world fiction with a modern or semi-modern aesthetic).

Aside from Residuum, the other resource you have is Colt's memory - things like security codes can be auto-filled once you learn them, which makes traversal more efficient.

Currently, I'm stuck on a major foe who sits at the top of what would in a world without infinite respawns probably be a paintball or laser tag arena, though here they use live ammo. I've noticed a window high up on the building that is sometimes obscured by a cut-out of a planet (the arena is space-adventure themed) that I imagine is the quickest and most efficient way to take the guy out, but I don't know that I have the tools required to use that method yet.

Actually, infuriatingly, I actually took the guy down and nearly made it to the exit of the level, where I could use Residuum to infuse the "slab" he carried and thus be able to keep the teleportation ability of his for future missions and future loops (this might actually be how you can take him down quicker the next time) but died before I could get to the exit.

Like Dishonored, this is a game that favors a stealthy, strategic approach, though sometimes things devolve into a full firefight. Enemies hit hard, but sneaking up on them with your machete will let you take them out with relative ease (the violence is graphic, though not quite "Fallout 3 exploding skulls" graphic).

Ultimately, the game is setting things up for an eventual grand day in which you need to take out each of the eight major bosses in a single loop, but so far at least the game holds your hand enough to keep such a massive checklist of tasks manageable. I imagine there will be quick ways to take them out that you learn (like with that window) but only after you've amassed a great deal of knowledge and Residuum-infused gear.

Here, actually, the fact that there are only four levels (admittedly at four times of day each) makes the game's exploration an act of teaching you the maps, teaching you where the enemies are, and knowing where the paths of least resistance can be found.

I was kind of nervous going into it, but I'm starting to feel a bit more comfortable - though I'm devastated at that last death. We'll see how tricky it is to actually get through the end of the game.