Paladin Deep Dive

 Two changes to the Paladin coming in the 2024 iteration will serve, I think, to really change the way that the class plays. We're entering a brave new world, and I will caution that this is arguably a huge nerf, but it might also simply be a readjustment of what we think a Paladin should be doing.

Let's start with the bad news: Divine Smite is now a proper spell. Assuming that it looks like the UA version, its damage should be the same. But there are a couple implications:

First off, as a spell, it will likely have a casting time. In the UA, it had a casting time of a bonus action, but unlike the 2014 of the various "smite spells," this bonus action is still only chosen after you know whether you missed, hit, or crit, so you will still be able to capitalize on a critical hit to deal double damage with the smite (this design looks like it is extending to the other smites, which is a buff to them). However, because it has this casting time, it will mean that you won't have a bonus action to use on other features (though there's good news here regarding some common Paladin subclass bonus action features that we'll get to) and, crucially, it will limit you to only casting Divine Smite once on your turn, and preventing you from using it on a reaction-based attack like an Opportunity Attack or a Battle Master's Commander's Strike.

This also means that you'll be beholden to spell components. I don't think there will be a material or somatic component (which would make attacking while sword-and-boarding very tricky) but that suggests there will be a verbal component, making it impossible to use when in an area of silence. Also, by making it a proper spell, they've effectively killed Paladin/Barbarian multiclass options, as previously you could get around Rage's no-spellcasting restriction by burning your spell slots on smite.

However, let's then talk about the good news:

Paladins (and Rangers) are now, like their Artificer half-caster companions, going to get their spellcasting at level 1. To me, this suggests that they want to make a more spell-focused paladin build a bit more viable.

At level 2, when they get their Fighting Style choice, they are no longer restricted to a curated list. Thus, Paladins can now pick things like two-weapon fighting (not a bad option given the level 11 bonus d8 of radiant damage on each of their attacks). It also appears they'll be able to forgo a Fighting Style to instead learn a number of Cleric cantrips (not unlike the Divine Warrior fighting style from Tasha's) if you really want to push hard into the spellcasting side of things.

    Personally, I'm a bit skeptical that a full-caster Paladin would be quite as effective, as I don't think they have the bonuses that, say, an Alchemist or Artillerist Artificer gets to compensate for not being full-casters, but I'm sure we'll see some interesting builds).

Now, Divine Smite's bonus-action-ness might have potentially gotten in the way of subclass features like Vow of Enmity. The good news here is that both that feature and the Devotion Paladin's Sacred Weapon are now basically free actions that you take as part of the attack action. This is particularly exciting for Sacred Weapon, which had the particularly onerous speed of a full action in the 2014 game, meaning that you basically had to waste your first turn if you wanted to make use of it. Now, you'll be able to charge up your weapon as Devotion or vow your enmity as Vengeance and still get in and swing your weapon and still be able to smite on one of those attacks.

Likewise, the level 20 "paladin ults" seem to be getting changed from action to bonus action - so, no smite on that turn, but at least you can attack. Also, Vengeance's Avenging Angel will now last much longer, allowing you to make use of your flying speed beyond the few rounds of combat.

Oath of Ancients is seeing their aura changed. This is going to look like a nerf: rather than giving resistance to all spell damage, they'll now give resistance to radiant, psychic, and necrotic damage. Here's why this might be better, though: it seems that most monsters and NPCs aren't technically casting spells. It will be more situational, but the old aura with new monster design might have never really done much.

The Smite change is one that I was worried was going to make it to the PHB, but I also think that this is one of those places where a nerf isn't the end of the world. Paladins were capable of insane nova damage, and this pulls back on that by effectively forcing them to be more conservative with their resource spending. It might also incentivize Paladins to be much more cautious about smiting when they haven't landed a critical hit (at least on the first attack in their turn,) lest they lose the opportunity to do so if they crit later on.

In the playtest, this was really one of the few changes that I would consider a nerf, but I don't think it ruins the Paladin entirely.

The Nerfing of Surprise

 One tidbit in today's Fighter deep dive was a rather immense change to how Surprise works as a mechanic.

First off, I think it's notable that Surprise in 2014 5E might not work the way that you think it does. In previous editions, there was a "surprise round" that took place before combat actually started. A lot of players, I think will insist that they can perform combat actions prior to the rolling of initiative, treating it as a sort of surprise round. But that's not actually how the game works.

The current rules, instead, have a sort of "condition" called surprise. When you roll initiative to begin combat, you first determine if certain characters are surprised. Most typically, this will happen if the aggressors are hidden from the surprised creatures. For example, let's say your Ranger has cast Pass Without Trace, bumping up the party's Stealth checks by 10, and with a group check, everyone in the party surpasses the monsters' passive Perceptions. The way it works (again, this is the current rules system) is that, even if the party is unleashing their barrage of attacks, you still roll initiative before anyone actually does this.

Surprise, however, means that you cannot move or take actions (including bonus actions) on your first turn in combat, and you can't take reactions until your first turn ends.

Interestingly, this means that an enemy wizard, for example, who rolls well on initiative, might still be able to cast Shield to block your attack.

It's funny, because I think the default manner in which I think most tables play this is quite different: usually, I see a number of "out of initiative" actions taken, with the first round of combat only taking place after, say, a Fireball has already gone off and potentially killed off some of the monsters in play.

Still, the net effect here is largely the same. The key, though, is that simply telling the DM you do this before they call for initiative is not sufficient to bypass the potential to be at a later point in the turn order. Indeed, I would actually say that this could be more effective given that a surprised creature cannot take reactions until they've had their "surprised turn" on the first round of combat.

But according to Jeremy Crawford, this mechanic was too effective - given that a typical combat only lasts a handful of rounds, giving players (or a sneaky monster) a full additional round to act before their foes can is, to the designers' opinions, too big of a benefit.

Thus, the rule is now significantly simplified: a Surprised creature has disadvantage on Initiative Rolls.

This is actually kind of crazy: Advantage and Disadvantage are powerful features, but they're still fundamentally just nudging the probabilities. You might roll a natural 20 on your Stealth check, creeping up utterly unseen, but if you whiff your Initiative roll and, despite disadvantage, that Troll rolls an 18 and a 19 on their Initiative, they still get to act before you.

I will say that the saving grace here is that you will still have the Hidden condition if you succeed on your stealth checks. Thus, even if that Troll gets higher in the initiative, they won't be able to see you or know exactly where you are - I think the DM can rule whether they even know specifically what is up or if they just have a bad feeling about what's happening, or even if they waste their turn because they don't realize that they're in a fight at all.

Champion Fighters, Assassin Rogues, and eventually all Barbarians do wind up getting advantage on their initiative rolls. Because of this, they become effectively immune to being Surprised, though of course they lose out on the advantage they'd normally be getting.

Still, this will definitely make the tactical advantage of sneaking up on some monsters a bit less powerful, but also protect players from sneaky monsters as well. And I do think that Stealth remains a powerful option to avoid fights outright.

But the ambush is definitely not going to be as great as it once was.

Fighter Deep Dive

 Today's single D&D video focuses on the Fighter. There is a lot of info - it's a 34-minute video - to cover, so I'll be largely talking about the points that stood out to me. Full disclosure, I played an Eldritch Knight for several years, and the subclass is near and dear to my heart, so you might find I focus on it a little more.

First off, an interesting behind-the-scenes remark Jeremy Crawford made is that, much as many of us fans had speculated, they experimented with making the Maneuvers from the Battle Master Fighter into a base feature of the Fighter class. Ultimately, they chose not to do this in large part to preserve the ability for players to choose the degree of complexity they wanted with the class. The Champion, after all, is built to be the ultimate streamlined, easy subclass to play, and this would have effectively made the Champion one of many Battle Masters. While I could easily imagine a 6th Edition or other new TTRPG making something akin to Maneuvers a core feature of their baseline martial class, I actually think this is probably the right call.

In the UA process, Fighters were given a broad capability to swap out the Weapon Mastery properties on their weapons. Now, however, at a certain level (I want to say 9?) they instead effectively always have Sap, Push, and Slow as options when they hit with their weapons, able to choose between those three and the weapon's innate mastery property. This will, to be fair, de-value weapons that already have these properties, but of course it will mean having a "mere" three choices rather than four. Interestingly, this also expands some of these properties to weapon types that wouldn't normally get them - hitting a target with a ranged attack that also inflicts Sap will allow an archer-style Fighter to help defend allies.

In an effort to give each class some out-of-combat features, Fighters will also be able to spend Second Wind charges (of which they will have more) to boost failed ability checks. Naturally this will help in situations where you need to bluff past some guards at the gala being held by the evil baron, but it could also help in combat, where you might need to make a difficult Athletics check to grapple a foe.

Fighting styles are expanding, with a number of styles introduced in Tasha's making it to the PHB, including Interception, Blind Fighting, and Thrown Weapon style, as well as I believe a mention that Protection was getting improved (though I don't think we got the details on that).

The Psi Warrior is the new fourth Fighter subclass for the PHB, but it sounds like it's not changed much from the Tasha's version.

The Eldritch Knight is going to retain what I thought was the most exciting change from the playtest, which is that War Magic now, rather than taking your action and granting an attack as a bonus action, instead uses the Attack action and allows you to replace one of your attacks with a Cantrip. Improved War Magic lets you cast a leveled spell, but replaces two attacks.

Here's the bad news, though: it appears that Improved War Magic will only allow you to cast 1st and 2nd level spells in this way. And thus, the glory of the Fireball-Action Surge-Fireball appears to be dead.

While not mentioned in this video, Action Surge was changed to allow basically any action other than the Magic action. However, because War Magic and Improved War Magic allow you to cast spells when taking the Attack action, this allowed you to get around the restriction. This should still work on cantrips and lower-level spells - you can still Thunderwave-Action Surge-Thunderwave (though at a much higher level) but it seems that you'll just be limited to spells that haven't quite hit that 3rd level power boost.

Still, I think we need to take the good with the bad - for the most part, this should simply free up our bonus actions, as by the time War Magic comes online, you have two attacks, so in the levels 7-10 range, you'll be making a cantrip and a weapon attack (and I highly recommend Green-Flame Blade or Booming Blade as your cantrip option, as it's basically just an enhanced weapon attack). At level 11, though, this pulls out ahead of the current version not only in preserving your bonus action, but because you'll now get your cantrip (already enhanced by being at level 11) but two, rather than a single additional attack. In other words, once War Magic comes online, if you have Green-Flame Blade or Booming Blade, it will always be optimal to use War Magic, whereas my level 12 Fighter would only use normal attacks when there was only a single target because the damage was a little better.

You will, of course, still be able to cast Fireball when you hit level 13 (do I resent that the campaign fell apart when we got within half a level of that point? I don't know, what do you think?) but you won't be able to double it up nor combine it with any weapon attacks (well, actually, you could action surge to get your attacks and even toss in a cantrip, or a lower-level spell if you've got Improved War Magic).

A small note: EKs can now use a spell focus. I don't know that this really gets around the whole somatic component complication, unless an arcane focus staff can also be counted as a quarterstaff. I think Warcaster will still be a good feat to pick up on an EK.

Overall, I think that's about it for info we wouldn't have gotten out of the UA process. I'm, of course, devastated by the killing of Fireball-Action Surge-Fireball, but I think the class is overall going to be in better shape.

The Great Old One as Previewed by Mark Hulmes

 Thanks to Mark Hulmes, we have a preview of the Great Old One Warlock subclass for the 2024 PHB. As far as I can tell, the subclass will be unchanged from the most recent Unearthed Arcana playtest, which means that it's an enormous improvement over the 2014 version that has very appropriately-flavored subclass features, but it also retains one of the odd mechanical wrinkles that I had identified in the playtest.

The Great Old One patron is a subclass very close to my heart, as the very first D&D character I ever played was a GOO-lock, and it's a character to whom I've always wanted to return.

This doesn't break the subclass by any stretch, but it does mean that I think in many situations, players will not play this "as intended" if they want to maximize damage output. Let's explore:

Warlocks, like all classes, now gain their subclass at level 3, and so you'll be gaining the features here a little later than normal. Awakened Mind has been redesigned to function identically to the Aberrant Mind Sorcerer's Telepathic Speech. It is now a two-way connection that lasts for a number of minutes equal to your Warlock level and while you're within a number of miles equal to your Charisma modifier. While the two-way change is nice, it no longer automatically translates, so you can't use this to bypass a language barrier.

Warlocks are all now gaining all the spells granted by their patron as simply spells known, rather than simply getting additional options. This means that you'll get 10 more spells by level 9, which is quite nice. (GOO-locks will also get Hex for free at level 10, which means it'll be the right time to swap the spell out, I guess). The spells are:

Level 3: Detect Thoughts, Dissonant Whispers, Phantasmal Force, Tasha's Hideous Laughter

Level 5: Clairvoyance, Hunger of Hadar

Level 7: Confusion, Summon Aberration

Level 9: Modify Memory, Telekinesis

GOO-locks will also get a new 3rd level feature called Psychic Spells, which allows you first to replace the damage of any of your spells to Psychic, and then also lets you ignore the verbal and somatic components of any Enchantment or Illusion spells (your Warlock spells only, if you're multiclassed).

    The damage thing here is one I suspect won't be all that commonly useful, as while Psychic damage is only rarely resisted, you're also sitting on Eldritch Blast, which is almost never resisted thanks to being Force damage. That said, the lack of Verbal and Somatic components for two spell schools could potentially be very helpful in social situations - allowing you to charm or distract foes without giving away that you're the one casting the spell.

At level 6, you get Clairvoyant Combatant. When you use Awakened Mind to create a psychic connection to a target, you can force them to make a wisdom save, and on a failure, they have disadvantage on attacks against you and you have advantage on attacks against them for the duration of the bond (which by this level is 6 minutes, as long as you don't end the connection early). You get to do this once per short or long rest, but you can do it again if you spend a pact magic slot.

    While this is somewhat mechanically related to Entropic Ward, this one feels like it makes way, way more sense with your theme and suite of abilities. It's also clearly much better, though you will need to get relatively close (30 feet) and use a bonus action. On a Bladelock, this will be a no-brainer (especially since the defensive bonus will be so welcome) but 30 feet is also not that difficult - even if you want to stay in range, you could be 45 feet away, dip into range and then back out without provoking opportunity attacks. Not ideal if you're making full use of Spell Sniper and Eldritch Spear, but still very doable.

At level 10, Thought Shield is, as far as I can tell, identical to its old version.

However, we also get Eldritch Hex. Hex is, of course, an efficient but not terribly strong spell at high levels. However, it gains some utility here because you'll now be able to impose disadvantage not only on ability checks of the chosen ability, but also saving throws. Granted, Warlocks tend to focus on the attack-based Eldritch Blast for their main source of damage, but you're a team player! If your Cleric has their Spirit Guardians up, you can impose disadvantage on Wisdom saves and make them more likely to fail. Maybe you have a Fighter with a Topple weapon mastery. Give them a Dex disadvantage and they'll be tripped up. Oh, also we automatically get Hex as known spell. I imagine most of us would have already picked it up at level 1, but we can get it back if we swapped it out at a level up, or we can swap it out now for another spell and not lose it.

Now, here's where the true wrinkle comes: At 14, we have a fully redesigned Create Thrall. Summon Aberration is already one of our Patron spells, so we've had it since level 7. But this creates a new option, and the implications are crazy.

We can now cast Summon Aberration in one of two ways: normally, or doing so in a manner that does not require concentration. Doing so reduces the duration to 1 minute (down from an hour) but also gives the Aberration Temp Hit Points equal to your Warlock level plus your Charisma modifier (so possibly 19 at this level).

When cast this way, the first time the Aberration hits a target affected by your Hex (and since you don't have to concentrate, you can have both spells active at a time) the Aberration deals additional Psychic damage to the target equal to the bonus damage from Hex.

    So, there's a lot to unpack here.

The intended use, I assume, is that we maintain Hex on the target and then get our Aberration up and focus fire them. But I don't know that that's actually the optimal option.

First off, we need to consider two possibilities: in the UA playtest, we did see a version of Hex that only deals its bonus damage once per turn, but that single burst of damage goes up as we upcast it. It goes from 1d6 at 1st level to 2d6 at 3rd level and 3d6 at 5th level. This is actually a better version of the spell, because as long as we land at least one hit, we'll get the full damage potential of the spell, whereas the current version's damage is only proportional to how many of our attacks hit.

This would also make Hex with an Aberration better, as that "first time they hit" rider will still allow it to fully benefit from the spell.

However, in a more recent playtest, Hex was reverted to its old mechanics, which would reduce the benefit of the Aberration's bonus damage to a mere d6.

But let's try an off-label use of Create Thrall. We can summon our Aberration without requiring concentration.

So why not just summon a second aberration?

We're expending a spell slot on Summon Aberration or on Hex anyway, so why not just put more damage out there?

    Ok, so here I want to run through three different scenarios and see what does the most damage. We'll go 3 rounds in each case, and for simplicity's sake, we'll assume that we hit with every attack and don't crit. We're going to choose the Beholderkin and assume it does the same damage it does in the Tasha's version. We're also assuming we have Agonizing Blast and +5 to Charisma.

Old Hex and Summon Aberration

First turn: Action to cast Summon Aberration, Beholderkin makes two Eye Ray attacks that each deal 1d8+3+5, or 12.5 damage each, for a total of 25 damage.

Second Turn: Bonus Action to cast Hex, Action to cast Eldritch Blast, making three EB attacks, dealing 1d10+1d6+5, or 14 damage per blast, or 42 total, plus the two Eye Rays for 25, and 3.5 additional from Hex, for a grand total of 70.5 damage.

Third Turn: Same as turn two minus casting Hex, so another 70.5.

    Total: 166.5 damage.

"Bunched" Hex and Summon Aberration

First Turn: Same as the first turn scenario above, 25 total damage.

Second Turn: Bonus Action Hex, Action Eldritch Blast. Damage here is the same but all the Hex damage comes on the first attack, so 42 total. However, our 25 damage from the Eye Rays is bolstered by 3d6 from hex, or 10.5, so our total for this turn is 77.5.

Third Turn: Again, same as before but no bonus action required, so 77.5 damage.

    Total: 180 damage.

Double Aberration:

First Turn: Action to summon Aberration, 25 damage from our Beholderkin.

Second Turn: Action to summon a second Aberration, so our summoned creature damage is doubled to 50.

Third Turn: 3 Eldritch Blasts for 1d10+5, so 31.5 damage total, then 50 from our two Aberrations, for a total of 81.5 damage.

    Total: 156.5

    So, this is interesting: for relatively short fights, it does seem that the slow build-up for the multiple aberrations is preventing too many Eldritch Blasts. However, in a longer fight, it could wind up overcoming things. We could, at level 14, technically get three Aberrations up and running, dealing 75 damage per turn, but it would take us three turns to get to that point.

In all cases, Eldritch Blast will out-damage the Aberration, but Summon Aberration will, given a couple rounds, will out-damage Hex. The "bunched" version of Hex is way, way better for this mechanic, but we don't know if it will be released that way. Hex being only a bonus action makes it a lot more efficient in short fights - if the fight only lasts a single round, it's definitely better than summoning the aberration. But the longer the fight goes on, the more worthwhile investing your actions into summoning aberrations becomes - as long as the fight does actually last long enough for you to get a turn casting Eldritch Blast.

New Info on the 2024 Core Rulebooks

 To hype up the now-available pre-orders for the 2024 Core Rulebooks (note that the Monster Manual isn't going to be there until 2025) WotC has released a series of interview videos talking about the books, with the primary focus being on the Player's Handbook, which comes out in September.

For those of us who followed the Unearthed Arcana process, we already know a fair amount of what is discussed here. They do showcase a lot of new art (the art for the Soulknife Rogue would work great as character art for my current Air Genasi Rogue, though with a slightly different haircut). Still, there are some new bits to be gleaned. I'm going to break this down category-by-category.

Backgrounds:

So, this actually might introduce a slightly undesired change, though I think it won't be too bad in the long run. Ability score bonuses come now from Background instead of Species, meaning that the Tasha's-era total flexibility surrounding these bonuses is actually on the outs. Choosing a Background will now be something with a big impact on your build because it contains not just skill proficiencies, but also your "Origin Feat" (a selection of broadly-useful feats) and your ability score bonus options. Each background gives you three abilities to pick from, and you can take a +2 to one of them and a +1 to the other, or take +1s to all three of them. An example given was that the Acolyte background allows you to choose between Intelligence, Wisdom, and Charisma. So, if you are a Druid, Cleric, or Ranger, you'll likely be taking some bonus to Wisdom, while if you're a Warlock, Sorcerer, Bard, or Paladin, you'll probably favor Charisma.

Still, this is not quite full freedom and flexibility like the Tasha's-era version. Acolyte, for example, would be a perfectly reasonable flavor-choice for a Paladin, but using Standard Array or Point Buy, there's no way your character can start with a +3 to Strength as an Acolyte.

However, the DMG will contain options for creating custom backgrounds, so while I felt a little defensive here, I don't think this will be too bad.

And, to be fair, assuming that level 4+ feats will carry a single ability score bump as they did in the UAs, I suspect we'll see a lot more characters without maximized ability scores who are still quite capable.

Species:

We did already learn about this, but to reiterate: Aasimar, Goliaths, and Orcs are being added to the playable species in the PHB (while Half-Elves and Half-Orcs are removed). Goliaths will be flavored more explicitly as being related to Giants, with essentially six sub-species corresponding to Hill, Stone, Frost, Fire, Cloud, and Storm giants (at least as of the UA, the existing Goliaths are the Stone Goliaths). Goliaths also appear to be getting a feature similar to the Path of the Giant Barbarian and Rune Knight Fighter where they can grow larger as a bonus action a certain number of times per day.

Notably, some species who had sub-races in the 2014 version are being consolidated. It appears that Dwarves and Halflings (and possibly Gnomes?) will now simply be a unified species. The intent here is to give more simple options, especially for the core, classic fantasy species.

Dragonborn will be integrating some of the Fizban's-era improvements to their breath weapons, letting them weave a breath attack into their attack action so that they can benefit from Extra Attack and the like. They can also grow wings to gain a fly speed at higher levels. The overall idea of this appears to be to let players use Species features without fully preventing them from engaging in their primary class features.

Aasimar will also become more flexible, as you no longer have to pick a single Divine Revelation as your only available choice - now, each time you use the feature, you can pick any of the three.

We didn't get any word on the Tiefling sub-species (I'd love to have Abyssal and Chthonic Tieflings, but I didn't see any art indicating that they were going to be there, so I'm not holding my breath).

Weapon Mastery:

Once again, it looks like all the "martial" classes other than the Monks are going to get access to this.

The only really notable and new thing that I hadn't considered is that Todd Kenreck suggested a Rogue fighting with a shortsword and a dagger could use the Nick property to make their off-hand attack with the dagger as part of the attack action, but then also make a bonus action off-hand attack. This, to me, means that it might be extremely powerful for a class like a Barbarian to dual-wield - by level 5, if this is true, a Barbarian wielding a pair of Handaxes (I think they get Nick) can thus make four attacks.

But the system, which was maybe the most approved thing in the UA process, is absolutely making it to the live game.

The Rules Hierarchy:

The manner in which the PHB is going to work is that if your campaign is using it, its rules will supplant anything found in the 2014 book. Among these are some changes that integrate common house rules, such as making drinking a healing potion into a bonus action.

There will be guidance on using subclasses and other character options published prior to the 2024 PHB, but I wonder if this will extend to the Cleric and Wizard subclasses that are not getting republished from the 2014 PHB - for example, the Necromancer Wizard.

Importantly, it looks like they've taken great care to arrange the books for ease of use. The PHB will have a "Rules Glossary" that contains all the things like Cover or Concentration or Jumping - a quick reference for all those fiddly little things.

Crafting:

The PHB will contain rules for crafting potions and spell scrolls, but crafting non-consumable magic items will be covered in the DMG.

Summons, Mounts, etc.

With the exception of the higher-CR Beasts that a Moon Druid can Wild Shape into, they say that any stat block that can be purchased or summoned by players can be found in the PHB. In the equipment section, for example, when they list mounts, you'll find all of them in the PHB.

PHB Structure:

The PHB is going to be arranged a little differently. It begins with a short introduction and then a relatively extensive bit of sample play. The general rules of how the game works are then going to come before character creation, including the Rules Glossary. The intent, I think, is that if a player is reading this the first time, they'll have a broad sense of how the game works in general before they get into the nitty-gritty of building a character. And further in there will be things like equipment and spells.

The PHB will include guidance for using older material, such as subclasses from Xanathar's or Tasha's with the new versions of these classes, or Species from, say, Monsters of the Multiverse.

DMG Structure:

The DMG is getting a similar structural overhaul. The first three chapters are The Basics, Running the Game, and then a big chapter of miscellaneous rules that you always seem to need to look up, like cover and the like.

The DMG will also include a bunch of downloadable Tracking Sheets to aid in keeping track of what has happened with certain NPCs, what treasure has been awarded to the players, and other things.

It will then also give an overview of Greyhawk as a campaign setting - using it as an example that players can either take and make their own, or to serve as inspiration for creating their own settings.

It will also include some sample adventures.

The DMG will include the Bastion system, which is being pitched as a very player-run system that can also be done on one's own - they suggested that if a session gets cancelled, the DM can simply give the players a Bastion turn, so that they can have fun stuff happening there and report it to the other players the next time they meet up.

Monster Manual:

Again, not a ton of brand-new information (to be fair, these videos were meant to be about the PHB) but there is both an effort to beef up high-CR monsters (given how effective the more recent releases like the monsters in Bigby's have been, I think they'll probably do fine) and to expand "monster families" so that you can have a monster of a certain flavor that fits the level of your campaign - such as a nascent vampire for lower-level parties or a super-powered vampire for high-level parties. They're also expanding the generic humanoid NPC stat blocks to be bigger.

These deep-dives are going to continue through the week, so we'll have more to pore over. I'm excited for these books - while each individual change is more of a light tweak, they do seem to be adding up to really tuning up the game in a fun way, and I'm optimistic about the impact it will have on the game.

What and Why is Night Springs?

 Alan Wake II's first DLC released a couple days ago. The entire thing is pretty quick - easily completed in a couple of hours. I'll confess that I was a little sad to find I'd consumed the entire thing after months of anticipation in such a short amount of time (I paced myself, taking a break between each episode and even waiting until the next day to do the third).

I think there's a broader question, as well, when analyzing any form of art, but particularly such a labor-intensive medium as video games, about intentionality.

Having finished the DLC, I went back to a new character I had made in Elden Ring, going through the game's first major dungeon, Stormveil Castle, and found myself wondering about the placement of two specific items related to one of the many factions of that game found in a particular room (specifically the Godskin's prayer book and sacred seal).

These games, and Remedy's, suggest to the player that every detail could be relevant. While Remedy's games have a more explicit story (again, my best friend and I had a discussion about how you could argue FromSoft's games are more about "lore" than "story") they share a taste for hiding details in the environment and level design to flesh out the world and reward the player for their inquisitiveness. Both studios inspire numerous "lore analysis" YouTube channels to comb through the details of their games.

However, we also have to acknowledge that sometimes, the reason for a particular item's placement or the presence of a particular enemy in a particular area is less about subtle lore implications, and instead because they need to put it somewhere, or they need some challenge or reward, and they use the assets they've developed.

Night Springs re-uses a lot of assets. Number One Fan uses the Bright Falls map, aesthetically changing a few things but keeping the overall environment and pathways unchanged, except where new barriers appear to block off some of the extraneous places. Likewise, North Star re-uses the Watery map, and specifically pushes you to only explore Coffee World. In both cases, the "set dressing" is altered to make it look and feel different, but it's still the same place overall. Time Breaker does seem to have some original environments - the strange "under the lake" place with all the discarded polyhedrons, for example, but most are at the very least re-using the "tile-sets" of existing places.

Still, all of these reasonable time-saving techniques aside, I think the next big question is whether these vignettes are weighted with the gravity of important lore, or if they're just a fun little side thing.

Notably, none of them are really survival horror. In all three episodes of Night Springs, ammo, batteries, and healing items are plentiful. I think I was walking around with like 400 shotgun shells on the first one. The gameplay balance is different - rather than trying to be very precise with my limited shots, I found myself unloading as fast as I could. I wonder if the enemies were even balanced differently than those in the main game, because it seemed they were going down faster to my liberal, rapid fire.

But let's talk story and lore.

The first thing to discuss is how these episodes end: all three have you ultimately find Alan, even when, in the first two, you're not looking for him.

Rose is, of course, looking for him, but Jesse is looking for her brother Dylan, and Shawn is looking for Mr. Door. Each of these paths lead back to Alan, who is credited as the writer of each of these episodes. If we're to assume that these are "canonical" in the sense that each was a story written by Alan in his attempts to escape the Dark Place, it seems to me that they might have served somewhat as "auditions" for heroes.

Alan has been trying, after all, to find someone who can be his savior - a role that Saga winds up playing in the main game. Now, the fact that Shawn finds him when looking for the Master of Many Worlds then seems to place his story after the events of the main game (and the Final Draft New Game Plus) but temporal causality is totally nonlinear in this game anyway, so it probably works out ok anyway.

On a meta level, two of the three protagonists are kinda-sorta the player characters/heroes of other Remedy games. Jesse's episode, of course, parallels the story of Control (she goes into an unfamiliar place looking for her brother only to find that a weird alien presence has taken over most of the people there - and hey, there are big inverted black triangles too!) while Shawn's parallels (I assume) elements of Quantum Break, where Shawn Ashmore played protagonist Jack Joyce.

This makes Rose the odd woman out, as her only prior appearance was in the first Alan Wake, where she was more of a victim/tool of the Dark Presence than anything. Interesting that she's the only one actually looking for Alan.

(As a note, using the leather-jacketed Mr. Scratch as "hot bad boy biker who's really just misunderstood and also a werewolf" is a very, very funny choice. I know that the werewolf part was probably to let them just re-use the wolf assets, but it ties in perfectly to the Twilight-fan-fiction vibes of Rose's writing.)

Rose is, of course, a character who doesn't come off super-well in these games. In the first, she's largely an innocent victim of the Dark Presence, her enthusiastic fandom for Alan is a little over-the-top but it seems more the result of Alan being a super-star author (not a profession that often elicits such a response). But Rose's kind of manic characterization in the second game starts to step over the line in some ways. I guess a fantasy is just a fantasy, but there's a strong parasocial thing going on with her. And ultimately, Cynthia Weaver pays the price for this, as it's Rose who steals the Angel Lamp from her, dooming Cynthia to becoming one of the "super-taken."

Number One Fan then gives us a glimpse of the way that Rose imagines her relationship with Alan - one in which her obsession and infatuation is vindicated, where he truly needs her just as she thinks she needs him. And the almost story-book nature of her adventure then suggests that Rose is suffering from some kind of arrested development. After all, Rose is almost certainly in her 30s by now, a fully-grown woman. But she has clung to this infatuation, and while it's not that she hasn't done anything else with her life (she is working at the nursing home in addition to the diner) but it all feels a little sad, if not enough to make us kind of dislike her.

The thing is:

This is all how Alan has written things.

In fairness, the first time we glimpse Rose in the first game does seem to be outside the bounds of the stories Alan has written. I wonder if we could interpret this as Alan seeing a perhaps overenthusiastic fan when he first enters the Oh Deer Diner and then using her, making her more of a stock character as he builds out the plot of Departure, and later Return.

The ethical reality of what Alan does in these games is truly vexing - it doesn't feel fair or right that he should play god in this way (and Rose gets off relatively easy - much better than Cynthia) but it also doesn't seem like Alan has a choice in the matter.

I do think it's kind of interesting that Mr. Scratch in this episode, while antagonistic and ultimately a boss for us to fight, is someone that Rose ultimately forgives and accepts, sparing him rather than killing him. If Scratch is the Jungian Shadow of Alan Wake, then it might be that Rose actually has a much healthier attitude - the Shadow can't be destroyed, only repressed or accepted, and while Alan has been fighting for thirteen years to rid himself of Mr. Scratch, Rose's solution leaves him intact and potentially changes the relationship Alan might have with his shadow.

Ok, let's talk North Star and Coffee World.

As stated before, there are parallels here between this and the plot of Control, which both see Jesse Faden entering a mysterious location to find her brother and then finding some alien influence transforming people into monsters.

However, I think the other notable element here is that the one friendly NPC in this episode is essentially Tim Breaker. Tim, notably, seems to think about the paranormal/supernatural in a more "aliens and UFOs" subgenre context. And it just so happens that the evil coffee taking people over in this chapter is seemingly from outer space.

The coffee function very similarly to the Hiss in Control - and in both cases, Jesse is exposed to the alien power, only protected from being converted herself by Polaris. (Is it intentional that both Polaris and Hedron are pronounced strangely? I've always pronounced those as "pol-AIR-us" and "HEE-dron," but in Control they're "pol-AHR-us" and "HEAD-ron.")

However, the symbolism isn't quite the same - across Coffee World in this episode, there are posters depicting a coffee machine and a coffee pot that look very much like the inverted pyramid of the Board and possibly the upright pyramid underneath (which is a symbol that does seem to represent the Hiss' attempt to infect the Board, which happens at the end of Control). Still, the evil coffee is Black Triangle Coffee, which would seem to imply that if there really is a parallel, the infectious alien presence is actually related to the Board instead.

(As a side-note, in my own fiction, there are monsters that mortals cannot see with their physical eyes, and they need to drink a strange liquid euphemistically called "coffee" to train their brains to actually register when they are looking at these things, so I appreciate the use of alien coffee.)

Tim (or pseudo-Tim) in this episode is a friendly face, but does also seem to kind of preach inaction. Ultimately, when we finally get into the warehouse, we find that he's been converted, and the room where we find him almost feels a little reminiscent of Trench's (or, I should say, Jesse's) office. Tim, as a police officer, is kind of a representative of authority, and Trench of course (spoilers for Control) turns out to have been patient zero for the Hiss invasion.

But it's also kind of interesting that both Jesse and Tim show up (or at least their doppelgangers do) in one another's episodes.

Furthermore, establishing the pattern, when Jesse finally does get down into the depths of the warehouse, she finds not her brother, but Alan, floating in the same big containment chamber that she encounters Dylan within in Control. While Rose was looking for Alan, Jesse wasn't, but the path she took led her to him.

Naturally, North Star doesn't fit within the canon of Jesse's story, and technically we're never told that she's truly Jesse - instead she could be any variant of the Remedy characters played by Courtney Hope. Still, the story so closely parallels that of Jesse entering the Oldest House that it's hard not to think of her this way.

Time Breaker, once again, feels like the densest of the three episodes. I'll probably be revisiting it in a later post, but I wanted to start with a few quick observations.

I never played Quantum Break, so there are likely a lot of references to that game that will sail over my head (I assume that REC is the equivalent of Monarch or whatever the big organization in that game is). I am aware that Quantum Break does end or at least hit a dramatic moment in which Jack (Shawn Ashmore's character, and also the main player character) promises to come back and save Beth Wilder (Courtney Hope's character) after she's frozen in time (and killed in another timeline).

Not knowing that much more about Quantum Break, though, I don't know if Time Breaker's premise - that Mr. Door is hunting down the variant Shawn Ashmore characters across multiple parallel universes - actually ties in anyway to that game (I know there are "Shifters," but what they are exactly I'm not totally clear on - are they just that game's equivalent of the Taken or the Hiss?)

But I think the real question is whether the proposal of Mr. Door's origin is actually real: Variant Jesse describes him as someone who encountered some crazy alien power that destroyed all other universes' versions of him and allowed him to... take their places? Weirdly, this reminds me of a Jet Li movie from 2001 called The One, in which Jet Li is being hunted by his own alternate universe self, the latter of whom intends to become some kind of godlike entity by wiping out his variants.

    As a side note, I'll just mention that I'm not super crazy about the push for this style of multiverse narrative - the "road not taken" version. Admittedly, Remedy is going farther afield, where the lives of these different variants is far more different than what we're seeing in, say, the MCU. (While I only know the comics version from wikis like TVTropes, the comic version of Kang the Conqueror seems way more interesting to me than all the parallel variants version. As I understand it, the different versions of Kang in the comics aren't from alternate universes, but instead different periods in the life of the same individual who happens to be both a time traveler and extremely long-lived, so that we're actually just seeing different periods of a single lived life that can cross over with one another thanks to time travel.) I don't know that I necessarily want it to be Remedy canon that Jesse Faden and Beth Wilder are truly the same person from different universes. On the other hand, Remedy is clearly now happy smashing the fourth wall into microscopic shards, so perhaps this was inevitable.

Ironically, if Quantum Break were to be allowed into the Remedy canon (through some negotiation to get the rights back from Microsoft) it would actually raise an interesting contradiction, as Mr. Hatch and Mr. Door are almost certainly variants of one another - Mr. Hatch explicitly said he wouldn't take on a name as grandiose as Door (obviously they're also played by different actors, but the real-life loss of Lance Reddick necessitated that change. And hey, David Harewood and Melanie Liburd are both Brits doing American accents, both of which slip occasionally. Like father like daughter!)

One thing to note here is that in the first two episodes, neither Rose nor Jesse are explicitly named. While the player characters in both episodes is very clearly modeled on these known characters, the way their stories go down are obviously outside of the "canon" story of Alan Wake II (and Control). And likewise, it's explicitly not Tim Breaker that we play as in Time Breaker.

Mr. Door is obviously playing an antagonistic role toward Shawn in the third episode, but there are two wrinkles to that:

The first is that Mr. Door is the host of this version of Night Springs, and thus has a certain omniscience and perhaps omnipotence within it that suggests that he can't truly wish to kill the player character in this episode. Indeed, I got the impression in the base game that Mr. Door's abduction of Tim in the morgue and Tim's stranding in the Dark Place might not be out of malice. I almost got the sense that Mr. Door intends to take Tim on as a protege (something I believe is parallel to Mr. Hatch's intentions toward Jack Joyce in Quantum Break).

The other wrinkle is, of course, that the Master of Many Worlds that Shawn finally finds isn't Mr. Door, but is Alan Wake instead. Naturally, when we hear the term used earlier in the episode, and given how episodes 1 and 2 ended, we know to expect Alan there.

And isn't it curious, then, that when Alan and Door have their final confrontation in "Masks" in the main game, Door angrily demands that Alan play his "part," while mentioned off-hand "our Night Springs" - a reference that feels unexplained in the main game (and honestly still a little unclear now - hence this paragraph of speculation)?  How much of everything we see in these games is "real" and how much of it is the story-writing-to-fix-reality. Is Alan truly the Master of Many Worlds by the end of the Final Draft? Or is he just playing a part?

There's some speculation, for example, that the origin story proposed at the end of the game for the Dark Presence - that it erupts out of Alan's head, born in the moment of his self destruction and thus beginning the loop cycle once again - is a new story imposed on an existing thing. After all, this is nothing like what the Dark Presence is in the first game. But if we think of the Dark Presence playing a part, forced to do so by the story, then that could also imply that Alan's assumption of the role of Master of Many Worlds may or may not be the truth of his situation, but it is the truth of the story into which he has written himself. (The idea of playing roles is introduced early, with Alan "taking on the role of the detective" when Alex Casey gets killed inside the Dark Place the first time - that we witness at least.)

Indeed, this idea of roles make the presence of literal actor Shawn Ashmore, but also character-who-is-an-actor Shawn Ashmore kind of a clever archetype to add into the story.

Is this all just some fun that re-uses a bunch of assets from the main game? Maybe. Or it could be a big key to understanding the plot of the game and the larger Remedy universe.

We'll have several months at least before The Lake House comes out. I expect to have a lot more mysteries to explore when we get that.

A Really Fun, Complex Fight

 In D&D, you run into a balancing issue in combat - not difficulty, but excitement. A single scary monster can be a lot of fun, but often as a DM, you run into issues where a single status ailment trivializes the fight. I'm running a campaign that has hit tier 4, so every spell (of the players' classes) is on the table. Even with legendary resistances, there are things that can bypass that, such as Otto's Irresistible Dance or simply grappling them.

So, the answer would seem to be to use a greater number of less powerful monsters. But you can also run into an issue where if you go too low, the monsters don't have the power to meaningfully threaten the party, even en masse.

I like big, chaotic battles with lots of moving parts, but they can be a real slog, with a lot of the DM kind of playing against themselves while the players just sit there.

Tonight, I found a possible solution.

The party is hunting down an evil Ancient Wasteland Dragon who, unbeknownst to them, is being manipulated by a disguised Mind Flayer posing as a Simic Biomancer. The Guildmaster of the Gruul Clans was attacked with a dangerous curse, and his majordomo, a Fire Giant Dreadnought, worries that his honor and standing in the guild has been damaged by allowing this to happen. So, Dazhed, the giant, has offered to accompany the party, and is bringing with him two Ogre lieutenants and "The Wrecking Crew," twelve Gruul Anarchs who are the kind of Mad Max-style madmen who would leap off a speeding vehicle to take down their foe.

The key is: I divided the NPCs amongst the players - each player had control of either three of the twelve anarchs or one of the ogres (using the Flee, Mortals! version that has more fun abilities). They control these in addition to their own characters.

It's honestly pretty manageable, and I only have to run the Fire Giant and the monsters, which in this combat is simply an Elemental Locus (Tome of Beasts) and a Mist Hulk and Cinder Hulk (both from Bigby's).

We only got through one round of combat tonight (starting halfway through our 4-hour session) but I think people really enjoyed it - the Anarchs are simple, but fast, and the Ogres have a really fun "human bowling" ability that is meant to be used on players when the ogre is hostile, but in this case one of the Anarchs voluntarily got thrown, which knocked the Elemental Locus prone (doing a grand total of 1 damage, but prone!)

The fight is chaotic and unhinged and fun, and while it's not, like, quick, it seemed the players were really having a good time.