Alea Iacta Est

 And there we have it: the third ending to Armored Core VI complete, along with the "Stargazer" achievement, which signifies that I've truly completed every mission in the game.

Spoilers ahead:

The Insane Audacity of AC VI's New Game ++

 There are two endings you can get on your first playthrough of Armored Core VI. One is grimmer, involving alien genocide and seeing your character remembered as a kind of necessary evil that ended the conflict on Rubicon by wiping the planet out (honestly, it's a bit like Leto Atredies II from God-Emperor of Dune, which is a story I think Fires of Rubicon draws a fair amount of inspiration from). The other is more hopeful, stopping the apocalyptic plan with the possibility that, with the corporations and PCA devastated, the RLF can actually secure independence and freedom for their world, and the Coral can live alongside them.

Playing a second go-round, you get the option to make different decisions than the ones you made before. Periodically (and as a new player, I definitely didn't notice these at first,) missions will be marked as "decisions," and will lock you out of the decision missions you don't pick. So, the second time you play through, you can do those missions you skipped, letting you eventually unlock every mission in the Replay Missions options.

But there are other differences. The first you'll notice is on the second playthrough. In the trivially easy "Attack the Dam Complex" or whatever it's called, when you get two superfluous Redgun allies to take on a bunch of very weak enemies (including an AC who tries to stop you but is horribly outgunned,) something changes after the first checkpoint: you get a mid-mission offer from the RLF to turn on your Redgun allies and defend the dam instead of attacking it. Now, you have to take out the Redguns there, which makes for a much more challenging mission.

Doing this (technically you can refuse this offer, which I assume will make the mission play out like it previously did) will give you a couple more missions to help the RLF. In the first of these, you rescue some RLF prisoners who were being interrogated and tortured, and you find that the spiritual/ideological leader of the RLF, Father Dolmayan, has had some kind of terrible portent of things to come. But that's about it.

However, on your third playthrough, in the mission "Survey the Uninhabited Floating City," things start off identical to how they were in the first two playthroughs: you have to deal with ECM fog that robs you of your radar and requires you to navigate through the fog. But while the version of the mission that plays out in the first two runs ends with a rematch against one of those giant attack helicopters from the introductory mission, in this version, that helicopter shows up and is immediately sundered by Dolmayan in his own AC, ranting and raving as he fights you.

I'm pretty sure that if you pick all the alternative missions you hadn't gotten before, the third playthrough will result in the third ending, and probably sees all the missions in the game unlocked, but who knows?

It's just kind of crazy. FromSoft's Soulsborne(iro-Ring?) games give you multiple endings, but as far as I know, all of them can always be attained on a single playthrough. These games have New Game +, but the difficulty goes up with each playthrough (which is why I've allowed the characters who have beaten Elden Ring to sit without starting their New Game+ until the DLC comes out and I've beaten it). ACVI doesn't officially get harder, in the sense that enemies are any tougher to take down, but some of these alternative missions will be a lot more challenging even in the early game.

And the fact that you don't just have to beat the game once to get all the missions, but twice is something I don't think I've ever encountered before. Nevertheless, I think it speaks to the quality of the gameplay that I'm still having fun two and a half ways through the game. I'm hoping I can replicate my IB-01: CEL 240 one-shot from my second playthrough, given that the first playthrough, that was the one boss that forced me to step away from the game and come back the next day.

Subclasses I'd Like to See Revisited

 So, as of playtest seven, we now have a list of subclasses we can expect to see in the 2024 PHB. I don't know to what degree this is subject to change, and for certain we will see some adjustments before the ones listed make it to print. But right now, these are certainly much more likely to see print than not. With the exception of the two classes that had more than four subclasses in the 2014 PHB, every subclass of the other ten PHB classes that was printed in the 2014 book will carry over (with a couple getting new names, but still thematically and mechanically linked to the old versions) along with another one or two to fill out every class' options to 4. These are:

Barbarian: Berserker, Wildheart (formerly Totem Warrior,) Zealot, and World Tree (new)

Bard: Valor, Lore, Glamour, Dance (new)

Cleric: Life, Light, War, Trickery

Druid: Land, Sea (new,) Stars, Moon

Fighter: Battle Master, Brawler (new,) Champion, Eldritch Knight

Monk: Hand (formerly Open Hand,) Shadow, Elements (formerly Four Elements,) Mercy

Paladin: Ancients, Devotion, Vengeance, Glory

Ranger: Hunter, Beast Master, Gloom Stalker, Fey Wanderer

Rogue: Assassin, Thief, Arcane Trickster, Swashbuckler

Sorcerer: Draconic, Wild Magic, Aberrant, Clockwork

Warlock: Archfey, Fiend, Great Old One, Celestial

Wizard: Evoker, Diviner, Abjurer, Illusionist

    In a lot of cases, they've made big improvements to the subclasses in the revisions. In particular, subclasses that were often looked down on a underpowered or hamstrung, like the Four Elements Monk or Beast Master Ranger (which admittedly got a big glow-up in Tasha's - and the update more or less just makes that version the default) were improved a lot.

But, of course, over the 9 years of 5th Edition, a lot of these classes have gotten many more subclasses, and given the polish that we're seeing with these revisions (though to be clear, there are some where the changes have weakened them, like the Zealot's Rage Beyond Death is not nearly as cool as the older version) there are some subclasses I'd have liked to see printed here if only to get a newer, better version of them.

I need to narrow my criteria here, though. This is not a list of subclasses I simply wanted included in the PHB because I thought they fit the core fantasy of the class in an interesting way. These are also not just subclasses that I like, thematically or otherwise. In a sense, these are subclasses that I feel have strong themes that make them an appealing choice to play, but which need some mechanical enhancement to make them live up to their fantasy.

Artificers:

    Alchemist: Admittedly, we knew we weren't getting the Artificer in the PHB, even though, especially as WotC has rolled back things like universal spell lists and class groups, it seems it would be all the more helpful to do so to let this class keep pace with the others in 5E. Honestly, I think that the Artificer does a pretty good job with most of its subclasses. The Alchemist, though, I think falls short in part because it doesn't really have a place to truly excel. The Artillerist is the other spellcasting subclass, but with the Eldritch Cannons, it is able to pump out a ton of ranged damage reliably, while the Alchemist is stuck in this odd place of being kinda-sorta a healer and with a kind of underdeveloped theme of boosting damage types that you could conceivably get out of various compounds brewed up with alchemy supplies.

    Armorer: I adore the Armorer, but I do think it would benefit from another pass to make sure that it's fulfilling its role. This is a subclass that can be built in two very different ways. I wonder if it would be too powerful to allow the Armorer to use both its melee and ranged weapons at the same time, perhaps only granting certain bonuses to it while its armor was set into a particular mode. Furthermore, with everyone getting Weapon Masteries, let's see some applied to the Armorer's built-in weapons. (This will be a theme).

    Battle Smith: Like the Armorer, they need Weapon Mastery, but otherwise they're probably ok.

Barbarian:

    Storm Herald: I adore the thematics of the Storm Herald Barbarian, but it has always struggled a bit. I think an easy change to this subclass would be to let you choose the kind of storm you create each time you Rage, letting you adapt to the situation.

    Beast: Likewise, I love the thematics of the Path of the Beast, but it does fall behind because of the way that its natural weapons don't scale with magical weapons or items. Generally speaking (and this is a theme,) I'd like to see any subclass that generates its own weapons find a way to keep up with peers that are getting their hands on super-powerful magic weapons.

Bard:

    Whispers: Thematically, I love the College of Whispers. But two of its three subclass features are really situational, forcing Psychic Blades to really carry the weight of the subclass. As a DM, I've struggled to create opportunities for my best friend's Rakdos Whisper Bard in what has tended to be something of an action-focused, combat-heavy campaign.

Cleric:

    I'll confess that I don't really have any strong urge to see any particular subclass revisited. I might have expected different picks from the PHB to make it into 2024, but I can't say that the ones I thought of needed significant reworks.

Druid:

    Spores: This is another case of a subclass I think is really interesting, but it also pushes the Druid into more of a melee playstyle than they're probably really supported by. Also, giving your melee attacks extra poison damage is not so great when there are at least three creature types who are nearly all immune to poison (undead, fiend, construct).

    Wildfire: I don't think this one is too underpowered, but maybe another pass at it.

Fighter:

    Like the Cleric, I don't know that there are any here that are really crying out for a rework. I think the underpowered ones are also often thematically underwhelming as well. For example, thematically, why is an Arcane Archer not just an Eldritch Knight? I might take another look at the Psi Warrior, but I don't know that it's in dire need.

Monk:

    Drunken Master: So, the Brawler Fighter looks like it could be a lot of fun. The problem? Everything it does is what the Drunken Master should have been able to do. The Drunken Master is a really fun concept on a thematic level, but the design doesn't really do much with it. I think you could go two directions with it: either go the Jackie Chan route, where you're doing a lot of improvised weapons and evasiveness, or you could go the Warcraft route and make the brewing and consumption of booze into a mechanical aspect - like being able to down a flammable, high-proof ale that you spit in a cone in front of you, lighting it on fire as you do.

    Astral Self: The spiritual, philosophical aspect of the Monk is something that I think remains painfully unexplored, and the Astral Self was, on a thematic level, a golden opportunity to do that. But the subclass suffers tremendously by being so intensely Ki/Discipline-point dependent. A version of this that let you, you know, use your subclass even if you were drained of resources would be a great idea.

Paladin:

    Honestly, there aren't a ton of subclasses for the Paladin in the first place, and I've always felt that your subclass is less impactful than it is for other classes because the Paladin itself is such a strong class overall (assuming they don't go through with the Divine Smite changes we saw in playtest six - I'd welcome some changes to allow, for example, alternative smites to be as easy to use as the main feature, but the nerf in 6 was a few steps too far).

    Oathbreaker: Actually, you know what, there is one subclass I'd like to see revisited. The Oathbreaker is from the DMG, and is intended for villains, but I think that the design of D&D has moved away from giving NPCs classes and subclasses as a player would have. And I think that the idea of a Paladin should accommodate darker archetypes. I don't even think an Oathbreaker need necessarily be evil - you could make it a subclass where you found that you couldn't do what you wanted to do within the strict tenets of your oath. That might mean you abandoned virtue for selfish gain, but it could also mean that you rebelled more against the "lawful" side of the traditional paladin rather than the "good." Basically, give us a version of this subclass where we don't automatically buff hostile undead or fiends and we're most of the way there.

Ranger:

    Monster Slayer: If you've read this blog, you know that I have a special place in my heart for Gothic Horror Monster Hunters, and this subclass seems built to make you the ultimate vampire/werewolf hunter. But its mechanics have always kind of lagged behind - a bunch of cool ideas, many of which are probably too situational. (Though I think that Slayer's Counter could be a really awesome ability and a great capstone if it worked on any target).

Rogue:

    Inquisitve: The Inquisitive is a really cool concept for a Rogue - basically being the scene in Guy Ritchie's first Sherlock Holmes movie in which Holmes defeats a far bigger and stronger guy in a bare-knuckle boxing match because he's able to analyze all the man's weaknesses in a fraction of a second. I think the subclass is honestly not as bad as some people make it out to be, but it also has some weird, archaic design that, among other things, seems to think that you're going to be exploring a space in initiative. I'd love another, modern pass on this.

    Soulknife: The Soulknife is an amazing subclass, but it's one that is going to miss out on a bunch of the new design of the Rogue due to the fact that its weapons don't actually count as any specific kind of weapon. Giving the Psychic Blades (and yes, I'm aware that that's the same name as a very different College of Whispers Bard feature) an official weapon type (clearly the off-hand one is basically a dagger - you could say the main-hand one is a shortsword) and then providing magical items that boost the attack and damage rolls of these weapons (as they've promised to do with unarmed strikes and improvised weapons) would really cement this as an awesome subclass.

Sorcerer:

    Storm: I was honestly shocked to not see this included among the 2024 PHB options, as it seems like such a slam-dunk conceptually. But the Aberrant Mind and Clockwork Soul (each losing the latter words in their names) are very popular in part because they're powerful, and powerful in part because of their bonus spells. Clearly, every sorcerer subclass should get bonus spells. Storm isn't bad, honestly, and Sorcerous Burst will give them a reliable cantrip that can deal their favored kinds of damage. So, they might not need much of a revision, to be honest.

    Shadow: My only issue here is the fact that the Hound of Ill Omen doesn't scale with us. Granted, its primary purpose is simply to be near an enemy and thus impose disdavantage on its saves against our spells, but it would be nice to make this a sort of pet-subclass akin to the Battle Smith or Beast Master.

Warlock:

    So, confession: I'm glad the Hexblade isn't making into the 2024 PHB. It was always a subclass that I felt was picked almost entirely for mechanical reasons and not for flavor ones, and I'm glad that Bladelocks will easily be able to play any subclass. The Genie, similarly, is totally fine and powerful enough, and I think strays just far enough outside of the "quintessential" options that I'm fine with it being left out of the PHB. The Undead is already a kind of reworking of the much less impressive Undying. I'd have really liked to see it in the PHB instead of the Celestial, but I also think it's a subclass that doesn't really need a rework. So, I don't really have a pick for a Warlock that I need to see revised. I'm fine with confining the Undying to the ash heap of history, and the ones in Tasha's and Van Richten's are plenty powerful enough as it is, as long as the broad change of Expanded Spell Lists becoming Patron Spells is applied to these as well.

Wizard:

    Necromancer: The lack of the Necromancer in playtest 7 was honestly a bit of a shock. Not only is it useful to have a "dark" option for the Wizard, the subclass could also use a bit of an update, for example swapping out Undead Thralls' spell feature to use Summon Undead instead of Animate Dead (though we have yet to see how the latter spell might be redesigned). If we do see "villainous subclasses" like the Death Domain and Oathbreaker Paladin, I think there's some hope we could see this subclass presented there. But I think it's a shame we won't see this in the PHB.

Fires of Raven

 So, the second playthrough of Armored Core VI went a lot faster. I think a large part of this was that I had done a fair amount of farming in the first run in order to purchase lots of weapons and other AC parts, whereas this time I had more or less gotten most of what I really wanted, and so ploughed through the actual missions.

Spoilers ahead.

A Vision for the Monk

 So, we're probably about two months out from the next iteration of the Monk in the One D&D (or "2024 Core Rulebooks") playtest, given that we just got playtest 7 (a playtest that, while it was sort of conservative and undid a lot of changes in previous playtests, nevertheless wound up being one of the least controversially approved UAs in the playtest so far, if general internet consensus is to be believed).

I've talked about mechanical ideas for how to "fix" the Monk. I put that in quotations because I think you can play a Monk and have lots of fun with it. And I think that the internet can create feedback loops. YouTube optimizers will condemn a subclass or class or other mechanic as brokenly unusuable when it's like 10% less powerful than another option, when most players will, I think, be willing to accept that variance if it means getting to live out the fantasy they're going for by picking a class.

Game design can come in a spectrum of foregrounding mechanics versus foregrounding the story or thematics - what I usually refer to as Flavor.

Sports are basically purely mechanical games. There's no "plot" to be resolved in a game of football. But sports are also games in which the skill to play the game is not just a strategic understanding of the mechanics and how to use them to outwit your opponent, but also to physically condition yourself (or your players) to perform better than your opponent. I can decide, as a pitcher, if I want to throw a curveball or a fastball, but that tactical decision is only part one. Then I have to execute on it.

But games, going back to some of the earliest forms, like Chess, have almost always involved some kind of flavor. You could imagine a game identical to Chess that simply has arbitrary names assigned to its pieces, or purely functional one (a "diagonal" piece rather than a "bishop"). But instead, Chess becomes this abstraction that represents the clashing of armies and kingdoms in warfare.

As an RPG, D&D is of course much, much heavier on the flavor side of things. And that brings me to the point of this tangent: that mechanics need to reflect the flavor in a game like this (I'll note that a game like Magic the Gathering is one that has a ton of flavor to it, but is much more focused on the mechanical side of design by its nature).

And that brings us to this: what is the flavor of the Monk?

That's going to vary from person to person, but I think there are cultural touchstones we can all look to and agree are a big part of it.

While much of D&D's classes take inspiration from some mixture of Arthurian legend, Tolkien, and Conan the Barbarian, all being Western cultural artifacts (though Conan's stories did include people from other ethnicities, such as the Wizard Akiro, played by Mako,) the Monk is very much inspired by East Asian culture, and the traditions of Kung Fu from China.

In the West, our main exposure to these traditions grows out of the Hong Kong cinema of the 1970s, with Bruce Lee emerging as the quintessential star of the Kung Fu movie. There are many other performers who followed in his path, such as Jackie Chan, Donnie Yen, Jet Li, and Michelle Yeoh.

I will here put a big caveat that this is not an area I've studied extensively, and not a culture I'm from.

Some traditions of kung fu, most notably Shaolin kung fu, use the practice of martial arts as a spiritual exercise, part of a larger tradition of meditation and philosophy, and so the image of a Shaolin monk, and of a monastery as a place to practice martial discipline, emerges from this kind of tradition.

Practically speaking, one of the things that distinguishes a Monk as a warrior is their lack of armor. Martial arts demonstrations and competitions typically have practitioners wearing simple clothing that allows for ease of movement, and the emphasis on agility and control over one's body, along with speed, as the way one defends oneself.

While kung fu certainly includes the use (and mastery) of many kinds of weapons, many traditions also include or emphasize fighting unarmed. In some cases, the belief is that the spiritual and philosophical underpinnings to the physical control grants extraordinary effectiveness, but in a more simple way, there is care and discipline that allows the focus of strength and power to, for example, break wooden boards with one's bear fists or feet (something that is often part of a demonstration).

Especially in a game system where other non-magical (or not pure spellcaster) classes are all about using various kinds of weapons, the Monk stands in as the master of unarmed strikes (though the new Brawler Fighter starts edging in on that territory).

    And here, we come to one of our first mechanical goals: A monk should be able to be as effective without using any weapons as other martial classes are with a weapon.

Now, tying into the unarmed fighting, we've also touched on how a Monk is typically seen without wearing any armor.

But beyond that, there's another trope out of kung fu movies that we should examine: our martial arts heroes are usually fighting multiple enemies at a time.

If you look at most fight scenes in these movies, unless the hero is facing off against a single powerful villain or henchman, usually they're facing off against a whole crowd of them (actually, Jackie Chan played one of the nameless swarming henchmen in Enter the Dragon, getting fought off along with like a dozen other guys by Bruce Lee). The way that they accomplish this varies depending on the fighting style or just heroic style - whether through clever improvisation or just utter mastery of their skills. (Chan in particular is famous for grabbing props and using them as weapons to fight off crowds of foes).

    So, here, I think we get another mechanical goal: despite not wearing armor of any kind, our Monk should be able to hold their own against crowds of enemies, and be able to stand their ground.

Now, the kung fu movies I've mentioned that serve as major inspirations to the class are usually only fantastical in how profoundly better a fighter their heroes are than the many henchmen they churn through. In Enter the Dragon, Bruce Lee never loses a fight, and if memory serves (it has been a while since I watched it,) only even really gets hurt when he faces off agains the main villain.

But D&D being a fantasy game, the supernatural aspect of the Monk can be emphasized. I won't really weigh in on metaphysical/philosophical underpinnings of real-world martial art philosophies, but in a D&D world, the supernatural should absolutely be part of the Monk's capabilities. It won't necessarily take the form of spellcasting (though I wouldn't be opposed to a Monk subclass with Eldritch Knight/Arcane Trickster-style access to spellcasting).

    There's less of an obvious mechanical outlet here, as it really depends on what kind of supernatural effects can be achieved.

Still, I think we've now arrived at the primary things that the Monk should be able to do - they should be able to fight effectively without any weapons. They should be able to fight effectively on the front lines without wearing armor. And they should be able to wield some kind of supernatural force attained via their philosophical disciplines.

This post isn't here to suggest ways they should accomplish those goals - I've made plenty of other posts that suggest tweaks or new features in an effort to do so.

But I thought it would be worth getting the bare bones of what the class should be in mind, and then seeing what needs to stay, what can go, and what needs to be added, and what needs to be altered, to fit with these goals.

Armored Core VI New Game Plus Impressions

 When you beat Armored Core VI, the credits roll, and then you immediately get the dialogue that follows the introductory mission in which you secure the ID of Raven. (They don't have you replay that mission).

For a while, things look the same. You're a newcomer independent merc working for one faction in one mission and then turning on them in the next. Admittedly, the context is clearer this time around - I know, for example, how Balam, Dafeng, and the Redguns are all part of one corporate faction and how Arquebus, Schneider, and the Vespers are part of the other.

But the missions are identical, and pretty easy with all the parts you've unlocked over the course of the game. While nothing's strictly better - I think they make every weapon and AC part with a certain "budget" - you certainly feel a lot more powerful when you can build an AC with dual miniguns and Stun Needles.

In the early part of my first playthrough, "Attack the Dam Complex" was a go-to credit-farming mission. If you just blow through it and take care of the mandatory objectives, it's an utter cakewalk, especially if you just skip past the RLF AC that tries to talk you out of the mission.

And in New Game Plus, it starts off identically.

And then Walter tells you he's getting a call from the RLF. That's new. They're offering to pay you double what Balam is paying you if you turn on the two ACs you've been sent with and take them out instead of destroying the dam.

You actually get the option to refuse this offer, but naturally you're going to take the new option. And with this, well, A: you get a checkpoint, and B: you get a very different mission. And what was a cakewalk becomes a quite challenging one, as the two former allied ACs now turn on you and team up.

Following that, I got a brand-new mission: I was sent to escort an RLF helicopter sending commandos on a prison break. You wind up rescuing two (trying for three, but one is dead by the time you get there) RLF officers, including Little Ziyi, who attacks you during the equivalent mission in the first playthrough.

So, clearly, the intention here is to do multiple playthroughs. You lose absolutely nothing by doing so - every mission you've completed previously is still available in Replay Missions, and you retain every part and OS Chip. Indeed, after several missions (maybe after I beat Balteus the second time, which... boy, if you use the Weapon Bay and swap between Pulse weapons and Shotguns and use a very speedy build, it's a pretty quick and easy fight) AllMind came to me with new Arena fights, which granted way more OS chips. At this point I think I have every weapon type maxed out (except perhaps melee).

The game is certainly not easy - the Coral-powered AC at the end of the penultimate chapter is really painful - but it's not terribly long. But these oddities extend the game's life significantly. There's a lot of replayability in this, which is something I've found a lot in FromSoft games (I've beaten Elden Ring on like six or seven characters).

There's no reason to make a new save file in Armored Core VI, given that doing so erases your existing one, but also, everything can be replayed. The only reason you might do so is if you make a decision between exclusive missions that you regret, but you're probably better off just playing through and doing the other decision on New Game +. I will say that I sort of wish I'd done the ruthless mercenary choices in my first playthrough so that I could do all the heroic options on this playthrough, but honestly, given the grittiness of this setting, there's no version of the story that lets you come out feeling good (I probably shouldn't feel bad for killing Cinder Carla, given how many times she committed perfidious surrender in the mission where I met her, but I kind of like the scrappy aesthetic of the RaD folks, again, even though we find out they're not quite the "anarchist junkers" that they seem to be at first.)

There's no real narrative justification for the changes in NG+, but it is kind of fun to have these weird differences pop up. The altered mission and the new mission were much bigger challenges than the stuff I was generally doing the first go around, so it injects some late-game difficulty into the early game.

Deep Delve: Pact of the Blade

 Yeah, we're doing another Warlock one.

The Hexblade. It's a ubiquitous subclass in 5E. I've played one in Descent into Avernus, but I also did so making the perhaps insane choice to not go Pact of the Blade. Still, mechanically, it's still plenty powerful.

But the flavor is... lacking.

The premise of Hexblade is that you've made a pact with a sentient weapon. But there's also an implication that you're also drawing on the power of the Shadowfell. Ultimately, what I tend to find is that a lot of players just kind of pick any idea for a patron and just use the quite nice and powerful mechanics. My Hexblade Warlock had an actual Hexblade as his patron (though in the backstory I came up with, the blade was sort of a focus for a long-dead knight that was called "The Blade of the Silent City" within the Shadowfell, whose soul resided in the blade that hovered in front of her throne, where her motionless, desiccated corpse lay).

The thing is, people take this subclass, or often dip into this subclass, because it gives you a few amazing things at level 1 - the ability to use Charisma instead of Strength or Dexterity for your weapon attacks, medium armor, shields, and Hexblade's Curse.

And I have said for a long time that, at the very least, the functionality of getting to use Charisma as your weapon ability should be baked into Pact of the Blade, allowing other subclasses to be able to play a Bladelock without being at a sever disadvantage compared to Hexblades.

And WotC has delivered! The form has shifted in the last two playtests involving Warlocks, but let's look at how it works in playtest 7.

Pact Boons are now Eldritch Invocations, but there's a kind of "suggested path" to take either Pact of the Blade or Pact of the Tome at 1st level. We might cover Tome later, but I think it has a less direct impact on your gameplay even if it's still quite good.

The idea of Pact of the Blade is to allow your Warlock to be a melee combatant. Let's see how well it achieves that.

Before we begin, though, we need to address a change from playtest 5. In 5, Warlocks got Medium Armor training across the board. This has been rescinded. Now, especially given that Warlocks are unlikely to invest heavily in Dexterity (especially with the change to Pact of the Blade,) I think taking Moderately Armored as a level 1 feat is a good call (actually, I just looked back to the Expert Classes UA, and realized that Lightly Armored now gives you Light, Medium and Shield training. So Moderately Armored is gone, but you get its functionality with this. Honestly, this might be a good call for Wizards and Sorcerers as well). Getting an easy 18 AC (with Scale Mail and a Shield and a modest investment of +2 to Dexterity) is probably worth your 1st level feat, and with Warlocks, you can even get more relatively easily with Lessons of the First One.

AC is good for everyone, but especially if you want to build a character who goes into melee. With a +2 to Dexterity, you'll nearly keep pace with heavy-armor wearers, only losing out when they upgrade to Plate.

Without further ado: what is the new Pact of the Blade?

Pact of the Blade is now an Eldritch Invocation that has no prerequisites. Warlocks now get an EI at level 1, and get two more at level 2, and then the progression is similar to the old version, except that we ultimately cap out at 10 total. Essentially, we get front-loaded a bit and then settle into an "every three levels" thing.

As a Bonus Action, you can conjure a pact weapon in your hand, which is a Simple or Martial melee weapon of your choice. You can also create a bond with a magic weapon that you touch. Until the bond ends, you have proficiency with the weapon, and you can use its Mastery property, and you can use it as a spellcasting focus.

When you attack with the bonded weapon, you can use your Charisma modifier for attack and damage rolls, instead of using Strength of Dexterity. You can also cause the weapon's damage to deal Necrotic, Psychic, or Radiant damage, or use its regular damage type.

The bond ends if you use the feature's bonus action again, or if the weapon is more than 5 feet away from you for 1 minute or more, or if you die. And a conjured weapon disappears if the bond ends.

    So:

    The biggest thing is that the "Charisma for your weapon" thing is now part of Pact of the Blade. Bladelocks also get to play with the Mastery system, which is fun. The new damage types are further allowing them to dispense with the distinction between magical and nonmagical bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing damage. However, I think it's notable that we're not choosing when we make the bond, but actually on every attack. Radiant is probably the most reliable damage type of these three, but they're all pretty good, even if Force might make more sense.

As before, this lets you use weapons you wouldn't normally be able to use as a Warlock.

However, I think it's important to point out that Heavy Weapons now impose disadvantage if you have less than a 13 in the appropriate ability score for them. If you want to wield a Greatsword as a Bladelock, you will need to have at least 13 Strength to avoid getting disadvantage.

    Ok, so that's the whole invocation. I think it does what you'd want it to, but compared with the version in playtest 5, we're missing a few features. Those are now their own invocations, so let's take a look.

Thirsting Blade requires you have 5 levels of Warlock or more and also that you've taken Pact of the Blade. We can pick this up at level 5, as we get a new invocation at this level (though we can also swap invocations when we level up).

Thirsting Blade now officially gives you the Extra Attack feature when using your Pact Weapon only. You can attack twice, instead of once, when you make the Attack action. Additionally, when you hit level 11, your Extra Attack now confers two additional attacks instead of one (for a total of 3).

    And that's interesting: basically, you'll be keeping up with Fighters in terms of number of attacks, but also you'll be keeping up with Eldritch Blast. And this has always been the challenge of Pact of the Blade - when is it going to be better than Eldritch Blast? Depending on the weapon, it can now keep up at least until tier 4, when EB becomes four separate attacks. I will also note that if you get a +1 weapon, your damage with a d8 weapon will keep pace with an Agonizing Blast-enhanced Eldritch Blast, and with higher bonuses, you'll do more. With the same number of attacks, therefore, you'll start doing more damage per round (at least until level 17). While a Blastlock can keep pace with a Bladelock in terms of attack bonuses thanks to things like Wand of the War Mage or Rod of the Pact Keeper, the damage bonus of Agonizing Blast doesn't scale up with magic items.

Eldritch Smite is an invocation that requires 5th level or higher in Warlock and Pact of the Blade.

Once per turn, if you hit a creature with your pact weapon, you can expend a Warlock spell slot to deal an extra 1d8 Force damage to the target, plus 1d8 per level of the spell slot. If the creature you hit is Huge or smaller, you can knock it Prone.

    So, this is unchanged. I might pick up Thirsting Blade before this just because it's more reliable damage. But I think it's also worth noting that technically this scales up higher than a Paladin's Divine Smite, which maxes out its damage as a 4th level spell. And, of course, Warlocks will get 5th level spells far sooner than Paladins.

    If you need a big burst of damage, especially after you crit, this is probably pretty good. But again, even if Warlock spells are somewhat limited, I have to point out the Summon spells here. A max-level Eldritch Smite will do 6d8, or about 27 damage (54 on a crit). A 5th level Summon Undead with the Skeleton option will, when it hits, deal 26 damage per round for the same spell slot investment. (Yes, it's not quite as much because it has a chance to miss - but if we only give it a 50% chance to hit and ignore the chance to crit, that's still going to nearly match a crit Eldritch Smite after four rounds - for a spell that can last an hour.)

Lifedrinker is an invocation that requires level 9 or higher in Warlock and Pact of the Blade.

When you hit a creature with your pact weapon, the creature takes 1d6 extra necrotic, psychic, or radiant damage (your choice) and you can expend one of your Hit Dice, roll it, add your Constitution modifier (minimum of 1) and heal for that amount.

    Now, this is probably a nerf from the old version, which let you add necrotic damage equal to your Charisma modifier (minimum of 1) to the damage of your pact weapon, but situationally this could be better - on a crit, for instance. Or if you're fighting ghosts. The healing is potentially useful in a clutch moment, but it is of course expending a resource you'd normally use for healing.

But compared to not having this - a weapon that gets extra dice of damage is generally going to be very good. Thirsting Blade I would consider mandatory for a Bladelock build, but this one is also probably close to that level of priority. If we have a Longsword, for example, wielded one-handed (assuming we got Lightly Armored for medium armor and a shield,) by level 11 we're making three attacks around for 1d8+1d6+5 (before accounting for magical weapons,) so about 39 damage if we hit with all of them. And hey, if we've Hexed them, we're doing 49.5, compared with the "damage baseline" optimizers seem to use, which is EB+Hex, for 1d10+1d6+5 three times, or 42 damage per round. (Though you should use a Summon spell instead of Hex in most cases).

    Ok, so I think the new Pact of the Blade allows you to pretty reasonably build a character who is capable of attacking well in melee. Now, what other stuff would you want to support it?

We talked about picking up Lightly Armored, which I still think is a good call (and even if you're not taking Pact of the Blade it's a pretty good idea).

The Archfey, which in playtest 7 has the ability to use Misty Step a massive number of times and gets various bonuses to that spell, makes a lot of sense as a melee combatant. Run in, attack with your pact weapon, and then Misty Step away.

Armor of Agathys has always been a strong choice for melee Warlocks. Especially when it gets upcast, not only is it doing more damage, but it's also likely surviving long enough to deal that damage a couple of times. Cast at 5th level, it's making up for the lower hit die than the one Fighters and Paladins get.

A Great Old One Warlock who goes Bladelock will now basically never have to worry about the range on Awakened Mind to get their Clairvoyant Combatant bonus.

So yeah, I think that this makes for a reasonably viable playstyle - as long as you figure out a way to get a decent AC.