Big Errata/Patch for D&D 2024

 Wizards of the Coast released a sizable Errata for the 2024 Core Rulebooks. In this digital age, where I mainly use my D&D Beyond copies of those books, this will come in automatically, but it's worth noting how things are changing.

For those obsessives who really pay attention to the nitty-gritty, the least surprising change was a nerf to Conjure Minor Elementals. The spell is still very powerful (I think a Valor/Swords Bard or Bladesinger Wizard is going to make the best use of it) but its scaling was toned down (though not as much as I've seen some suggest it should be).

Let's take a look at things. For changes that are purely or almost purely wording, I'll skip them. You can look at the full list here.

A lot of these changes are fairly minor - Goliaths getting advantage on ability checks rather than saving throws to escape being grappled (good, given that you don't do saving throws to escape grapples).

More impactful, some spells have been straight-up nerfed - typically in their spell-level scaling.

Of course, the spell everyone identified as being the primary candidate for this is Conjure Minor Elementals. This 4th level Conjuration spell was radically transformed in 2024, now acting as a buff to your attack damage. The spell still adds 2d8 of elemental damage (the usual suspects of things like acid, cold, fire, lightning, etc.) when you hit a creature with an attack while that creature is within your 10 foot emanation, but now when you upcast it, the damage only increases by 1d8, rather than 2d8 for each level. That still means that you can get this up to 7d8 on every attack if you cast it at 9th level, meaning it'll still likely be a mainstay for Valor Bards and Bladesinger Wizards (it's not bad for Eldritch Knights, or Bladelocks of any stripe, but won't scale up the same way).

Other spells that scaled with two dice per spell level are also getting nerfed: Conjure Elemental, Conjure Fey.

Some of these changes, again, are likely clarifications, though they could be seen as nerfs, like Giant Insect gaining HP based on spell level above 4 rather than just raw spell level (which would seem to lose them 40 HP).

The Monster Manual actually got several changes, and these straight-up appear to be for balance in many cases, though there are some common-sense ones (like a Carrion Crawler's Paralyzing Tentacles calling for a Con save instead of a Dex save).

Most of the changes to monsters I'm seeing are actually making them tougher, with higher ACs or attack bonuses.

    Again, I'm just touching on some of the broad and big changes.

As someone who has been playing WoW for nearly 20 years, I'm no stranger to patch notes. But I imagine if you're in the emphatically non-digital world of physical books and paper character sheets, I wonder how you'll receive these. This is a pretty big chunk of errata, and while there's precedent for big things like this, it's clear that this isn't all just "oops, we had a typo here." Some of this was really balance adjustment.

I'm kind of fine with it, but I can imagine being philosophically unhappy with it.

The digital, online world where games can be rebalanced whenever the people controlling the game want to do so is one that creates certain vulnerabilities. I like to retain my physical books (the only one I have digital-only is the Book of Many Things, just because it was so profoundly cheaper than getting the giant set with the actual cards) and feel some comfort in the sense that if Wizards of the Coast vanished or were taken over by some far-right asshole who wants to purge the existence of anything "woke" like queer and/or non-white people just fucking existing from the game, I'd have what I have to continue using without the fear of things being swept away.

But I'm also someone who feels very comfortable using digital tools - being able to keep open multiple tabs on the three or four monsters I'm using in a fight while DM'ing or having a digital character sheet is all really convenient. I like these digital tools. And I hope that they continue to be useful.

Building Conrad

 It's a weird time as a D&D fan. With only a few exceptions, I've been a big fan of the 50th-anniversary revamp to the D&D rules (again, I foresee some future book doing with Background what Tasha's did with Races - namely de-coupling specific ability score bonuses from them). But between all the ways that WotC and its parent company Hasbro has repeatedly made your classic "greedy corporate" decisions that have really hurt good will toward the game, and also the recently-announced departures of both Chris Perkins and Jeremy Crawford, and then a bunch of backlash against the "5.5" edition (which was inevitable,) it's all just a bit foggy.

When I first cracked open the Player's Handbook in 2015, the class that most inspired in me the desire to play a character (it wouldn't be until 2018 that I actually got to play a PC) was the Warlock. I just felt that the inherent story behind the premise of the class was really exciting.

And it was the Great Old One patron whose flavor spoke to me the most. Naturally the most "obvious" default subclass for a Warlock is probably the Fiend, with its faustian bargains and such, somehow the class has always felt most fitting for a Great Old One, bargaining not necessarily with something malevolent but just truly alien.

Way back when, I wrote a character backstory for Conrad Nightfire, a young duke's son who was given a book on his sixteenth birthday that, in reading it, put his mind in contact with an alien entity known as the Shattering Tower. The madness that this inflicted upon Conrad led to a tragic accident that killed his father, but even as he rightfully should have assumed the role of Duke, he was sent off to a remote sanitarium. Initially benefitting from both the doctor who treated him and a friend he made at the asylum, things turned when his old doctor went missing and a new, cruel doctor took his place, imposing torturous "treatments" on the patients. This ultimately came to a point in which the Shattering Tower reached out to Conrad through his lobotomized friend (if indeed that's what happened - I'd leave a lot of the specifics up to the DM) and granted him his magical powers to escape the asylum.

Conrad suffers a lot of lost time, finding himself in places without knowing how he got there, and is on a quest to discover what all of this means, while fearing returning home to face the role he played in his father's death, not to mention the responsibilities he has now that he is the rightful duke.

So:

What we have, generally, is the following details: Conrad is a human, with the Noble background, and he's a Warlock with the Great Old One patron.

Part of his backstory involves his inheriting of the old journal that his friend, Old Delgado, from the asylum had been secretly keeping and hiding from the doctors. The journal (which I picture as one of those composition notebooks with the black-and-white static-like pattern on the front, though really whatever is the more period/genre-appropriate version) would be the basis of his Pact of the Tome.

I see him being a "Blastlock," and not going Pact of the Blade. The latter is, admittedly, something I think would be a lot of fun to play at some point (though I think it's hard to straight-class as a Bladelock, if only because a single Fighter or Paladin level solves a ton of their problems).

Naturally, as a Warlock, you aren't going to have the giant box of tools that a Wizard has. So, the primary job in combat, for old Conrad here is going to be to blast away with Eldritch Blast. That's honestly true for most Warlocks, but I guess the question becomes how we want to build things out.

As a Charisma-based character as well as someone with the potential for a lot of social connections (though at least to start off with, a refusal to invoke said connections,) I think we'd want to play as something of a "face" character. This could impact some of the Eldritch Invocations we pick up, along with some of the Feats we take.

If we wanted to go full combat-mode, the obvious thing would be to start off taking Agonizing Blast and Repelling Blast (both of which require level 2, but we could easily get Tome at 1 and then these two. Spell Sniper would also probably be an obvious feat to pick up.

But let's go level-by-level.

Currently, I'm mostly concerned with building to the level my most-played character is at, and my Wizard just hit level 8, so we're going to be there. So, let's just break this down level-by-level.

I think the hope here is to be capable in combat (as that's a factor in nearly every D&D game) but also try to be capable in social interactions as well.

Level 1:

With the Noble background, we can boost our choice of Charisma, Strength, or Intelligence. I think if I were going Bladelock and, for example, trying to hit the minimum 13 for Great Weapon Master, I'd give my +1 to Strength, but as our guy is really going to be more of a magic-focused warlock, I'm thinking we take +2 to Charisma and +1 to Intelligence.

If we're just assuming Point Buy, I'd get that 15 in Charisma, meaning with our background it's 17 to start off, and we'd get to 18 (+4) with a General Feat at level 4.

Now, given that Warlocks only get light armor and aren't a dex-based class, we're kind of going to have terrible AC no matter what we do. I think the goal will be to just stay away from attackers as best we can (party composition could be a major factor here - my Wizard almost never gets hit with melee attacks simply because we have two paladins and a fighter all there to tank for me). So, Con is more important to me than Dex, though I want both to be high.

If we wind up getting something akin to the Standard Array, we're probably talking 15 Charisma, 14 Con, 13 Dex (which could leave us open for Moderately Armored at some point,) 12 Intelligence, 10 Wisdom, and 8 Strength. I suppose we could dip down that Int to 11 (as it will go up to 12 with our Noble stuff) and then maybe get Dex to 14 (I think we can do that?)

Now, as a human, we also get an additional Origin Feat and an additional Skill proficiency. We're also getting Skilled for our Noble background. Magic Initiate of various kinds could be good here - we're already going to have a ton of cantrips, but we're going to be very flexible in which cantrips we can pick up anyway. It might be good to go MI: Wizard, and thus pick up the Shield spell. Thus, in the hopefully-rare cases where we do get attacked, we can potentially pop that AC up to something respectable.

As for cantrips, we're already getting Eldritch Blast and probably Prestidigitation from Pact Magic, then Pact of the Tome will get us several others. Let's say from our feat we'll get True Strike (giving us a good melee option before we get Spell Sniper) and Mage Hand, then Tome could give us Mending, Minor Illusion, and, oh, Spare the Dying I guess? (Message we don't really need because we can use our Awakened Mind at level 3). Then, for ritual spells, I guess we can pick up Find Familiar (we won't get a cool Chain-pact option, but it's still pretty cool) and Identify or Detect Magic (ritual spells are a little rough for a warlock during the levels where they want to concentrate on Hex).

Skill-wise, we're getting History and Persuasion from our background, but also three more from Skilled (as well as, I guess, potentially some tool proficiencies - but given that tools work in tandem with skills, I'm going to focus on those instead). Perception is always good to have. Insight would also be good for social situations. And then, I think Athletics could help balance out our terrible Strength (as a skill that is often called for). As a Warlock, I feel like Arcana and Intimidation (I could also imagine going Deception here - which might be a better choice if we want to really lean into things like the Actor feat and Mask of Many Faces) would be good options here, and perhaps with our Human bonus skill, maybe we grab Stealth. That's 8 skill proficiencies!

For our initial spells, Hex is actually plenty good at early levels, and I like Armor of Agathys as a way to weaponize our crap AC.

At level 2, we get Magical Cunning, (not to mention a second spell slot,) which will make us capable of casting spells a bit more frequently. We also learn a third spell. Charm Person, interestingly, is not concentration, but tons of creatures that were once humanoid are no longer. Still, on a more social-focused campaign, it probably would come up a fair amount - and when we get our Psychic Spells next level, we can even do this without alerting anyone to our casting of it.

We also get two more eldritch invocations, allowing us to pick up Agonizing Blast and Repelling Blast Agonizing Blast is, I think, the really mandatory one (and one I'd be tempted to take even on Bladelocks) but Repelling is also quite good, and lets us really lean into the "magic martial" identity of the Warlock.

At level 3, we get our Great Old One subclass. This includes learning Detect Thoughts, Dissonant Whispers, Phantasmal Force, and Tasha's Hideous Laughter (and our two spell slots level up). We can use Awakened Mind to create a two-way telepathic link with a creature within 30 feet of us. Psychic spells allows us to turn the damage of our spells to Psychic damage (which will not likely come up with our main damage spell, Eldritch Blast, as Force is usually better than Psychic) but more excitingly, we can cast Illusion and Enchantment spells without Verbal or Somatic components (still will need material components - though we have a few patron spells that don't require those). We also learn another spell, with 2nd level options now available. It's hard for me to not take Misty Step on any character I can, and while it won't scale in level, I think I'll still grab it.

At 4, we have our first feat. And this one's a real big choice: Warcaster is a really good feat for Warlocks, who really don't want to drop concentration on the spell they spent one of their precious spell slots on. Spell Sniper allows us to use Eldritch Blast in any combat situation. And then, the Actor feat is going to make us better at lying when disguised. I like this social-focused build idea, but I think I'd expect to have combat a bit more consistently. The truth is that we could eventually pick up all of these (and there's a good chance we would) but I'm going to focus on being more combat-capable to start with. And I think that, without a Con save proficiency, Warcaster will be probably the best call. (We could also combo True Strike with Dissonant Whispers!)

And, once again, another spell. Now, we need not pick a natively 2nd-level spell. Unlike a Wizard, who saves serious money (and most time, though my Scribe wizard copies things so quickly that he doesn't need downtime to copy spells) by picking the highest-level spells they can on level-up, a Warlock does fine by picking a well-scaling low-level spell. Cloud of Daggers (which is 2nd level) could play fairly well with our Repelling Blast invocation. I also like Suggestion.

Ah, right, we also get another cantrip. Minor Illusion, I guess!

At level 5, we're getting 3rd level spells, including Clairvoyance and Hunger of Hadar. We also get two more Eldritch Invocations. We can start building toward our social infiltrator stuff by picking up Mask of Many Faces. Then, especially now that we have Hunger of Hadar, Devil's Sight will help make up for our weak human eyes and allow us to see all the tentacle-weirdness that assaults our foes when we cast that spell (though, on an aesthetic level, I think of Conrad's patron as being less slimy tentacle stuff and more dusty white stone and giant geometric shapes in the hazy distance).

For our new spell at this level, Tongues could help us play the team diplomat. Fear is also very good and strong. Bit of a judgment call based on what kind of campaign we've had so far.

At 6, we get Clairvoyant Combatant. This allows us to weaponize our Awakened Mind, though this also requires us to get within 30 feet of a foe, when we usually want to stay farther away. That said, if we start 45 feet from them and just dip in and out, we can maintain a safe distance while using this.

And we have another spell. Dispel Magic is probably a solid option. Remove Curse might also be good, depending on how frequently we see people getting cursed.

At 7, we get 4th level spells, which means Confusion and Summon Aberration. The latter is going to probably be the main thing we use in combat, though we'll need a 400g material component for it. For our level-up spell, Banishment can be clutch.

We also get another Eldritch Invocation. We've honestly got a lot of the ones that make our build work. I'd certainly consider dipping into some of the old-rules ones (Grasp of Hadar with Repelling Blast can be very fun - while we don't get Spike Growth, if we have a druid pal we can do some nasty cheese-grating). Tomb of Levistus can be a literal lifesaver. If we want to stick to 2024 options, Gift of the Depths would be very nice in a campaign with significant underwater portions, though it's certainly situational - arguably Master of Myriad forms is the better choice, as we can give ourselves that Aquatic Adaptation, but also potentially get a way to disguise ourselves that will isn't illusion. Otherworldly Leap is also potentially good given how much better the Jump spell is now. And, we could, of course, pick one of the other Pact Boon invocations - while we already have Find Familiar, we could now get an exotic one (given his pursuit of arcane secrets, I think a Sphinx of Wonder feels like the right familiar for our character). I'd hope that my DM would allow me to swap out the Pact of the Tome Find Familiar if I did this one.

Finally, at 8, we get another feat, and another spell.

We could, of course, just push our Charisma to 20 at this point - this would make room in tier 3 to pick up things like Moderately Armored. Alternatively, though, if we're willing to wait until level 12 to max out our Charisma, we could pick up one of the feats we left behind at level 4. By this point, hopefully we have a good sense of the balance of social versus combat encounters we have in this campaign (I do find, as a DM, that I have a bit of a harder time making a social encounter feel like something with truly variable outcomes. Partially is that I have campaigns planned out perhaps too well.) In a more social campaign, I think Actor could be very good here. Otherwise, I'm probably taking Spell Sniper, though unless I really don't think Actor will help in the long run, I'll probably take it at level 12.

Now, for our spell at this level: Charm Monster is worth considering, given that as you get into higher levels, you're facing fewer and fewer humanoids. We could dip back to Mirror Image to give us a little more survivability, though I think its lack of scaling makes me question whether preventing 3 hits is worth one of our spell slots - ideally we're not even in a position to be getting attacked (the new Mirror Image is incredible on a heavily-armored Eldritch Knight). Fly is also good utility (hitting two targets at this level) and Dispel Magic is broadly useful.

    So, how do we think Conrad will do?

As I see it, the standard operating procedure by this level will rely a lot on Summon Aberration as our concentration spell (the nuances and vagaries of Create Thrall can wait for another 6 levels). While Hex will stay up for a good chunk of the day, Summon Aberration is going to be very good damage for an hour as long as we can keep our guy alive.

Given the changes to the 2025 Monster Manual, the Slaad option for this spell is actually quite a bit better than it was - there are still monsters with resistance to slashing damage, but with the removal of the idea of "magic" damage, I think there are very, very few that have full immunity (I think the Ochre Jelly?) so our Slaad buddy could be quite effective. The Beholderkin does have the benefit of being ranged, though, as well as flying, which means it's very easy to keep them out of the fray (as long as the monsters are largely melee-limited, which is less common these days). One reason I think the Slaad looks very good right now is that they have health regeneration - as long as they survive combat, you can more or less assume that they're back at full health by the time another fight breaks out. They regen 5 HP per turn, so that's just 48 seconds to go from 1 HP to their (4th level casting) max of 40. The Slaad also does do more damage than the other two.

The Mind Flayer (which was the Star Spawn in Tasha's) is a bit more fragile in that regard, and does the same damage as the Beholderkin, but in melee. But it also has its Whispering Aura, which can potentially do a bunch of AoE damage. There are some downsides here, though: the Mind Flayer will damage allies (it doesn't hurt us, but we're going to be staying the hell away from the bad guys) and the Aura is a save for none. Now, it is our saving throw DC, which by this level, with a 19 Charisma, we're talking a DC of 15. If this works have the time, it's effectively 3.5 extra damage multiplied by how many monsters it can get near (the aura is 5 feet, so they have to be right up against it).

Of course, we can determine the options situationally. The Slaad could be very nice against a regenerating monster (which there are fewer of with the changes to Vampires). Probably best to assume Beholderkin as a default, though.

So, our first round of combat (or, if possible, before - because our Summoned Aberration does last an hour. In fact, it'd probably be reasonable to cast it before we start a short rest if we can) we spend an action to summon the Aberration. If we're near our target, we can also try a Clairvoyant Combatant to get inside the most prominent enemy's head (we're probably built to focus down the biggest threat).

The Beholderkin then makes two attacks for 1d8+7, or 11.5 on average, meaning two hits should average 23 damage.

Then, on subsequent turns, we join the Beholderkin with Eldritch Blasts, making two that deal 1d10+4, or 9.5, meaning 19 average damage.

That's 42 damage per round (obviously, this is before we account for hit chance).

Ok, let's assume we're fighting something with a, say, 17 AC (not unreasonable for a tough bad guy at level 8).

We have only a +7 to hit at this level (assuming we haven't gotten a Rod of the Pact Keeper or similar item). So, we need to roll a 10 or higher to hit, giving us a 55% hit chance. Our Aberration has the same attack bonus, which keeps this simple.

Beholderkin:

11.5x55%, or 6.325, plus 4.5x5%, or .225, so 6.55 damage per attack, meaning 13.1 damage per round.

Eldritch Blast:

9.5x55%, or 5.225, plus 5.5x5%, or .275, so 5.5 average damage per attack, and thus 11 damage per round.

Meaning we're pulling 24.1 damage per round.

It's not amazing damage, but it'll do better with enemies at lower ACs, and we're also bringing a fair amount of utility, with our giant catalogue of cantrips and also our various other Warlock spells.

Revisiting Super Mario RPG

 The very first RPG I ever played was Super Mario RPG: The Legend of the Seven Stars. Yes, that rather bulky title is usually shrunk down to "Mario RPG," but it was my first entrypoint into a genre that I am quite fond of - and in the last decade, branched out into the original tabletop version of the genre.

Made by Squaresoft at a time when Square was primarily making games for Nintendo (it would shift to Sony with Final Fantasy VII,) Mario RPG feels in a lot of ways like "baby's first Final Fantasy," which is fine because I was only 11 when I played it. Leveling and gaining skills is simple, and there are a lot of ways the game becomes fairly forgiving - like sometimes giving you back "freebies" when you use an item or letting you block attacks and reduce their damage significantly (though this requires careful timing).

The Switch remake for the game is mostly extremely faithful, upgrading the graphics (I believe the original's 3D models were effectively just pre-rendered sprites, while this of course can render things in-game). There are a couple new features - you build up a gauge as you string more and more timed hits (and blocks, etc.) together, which both creates a passive buff to everyone in the party (different characters getting different buffs) and filling up to 100% to allow you to unleash a big triple-attack that changes depending on who's in the party (because Mario always has to be one of your 3 active party members, there are six of these big group-attacks, which have a flashy pre-rendered animation when they go off.

However, what's delightful about this game is the way that, because it's so faithful a remake, you get some of that really weird 1990s video game aesthetic, both with bizarre creature designs that never made it into other Mario games (because this was Squaresoft doing Mario, rather than Nintendo doing Squaresoft) as well as some of the weirdness of the 45-degree isometric perspective - which does make platforming a pain, but hits me right in the nostalgia.

Of course, being 38 (pretty soon 39) and with a lot more RPGs under my belt, the challenge level is near the floor. Indeed, I think very much in that early video game era, there are some aspects that are trivial - like most combat - and then some aspects that are near-impossible (I never got the 30 jumps in a row challenge back in the day).

Nintendo's next foray into Mario-themed RPGs was Paper Mario on the N64, which became its own sub-series. I don't have anything against those games but I'm a little sad that this Nintendo/Square collaboration didn't spawn its own follow-ups.

Given how big a part of my life D&D has become, I have to give credit to this game for introducing me to the RPG genre (even if it would be 18 years between my playing this the first time and getting into D&D). So, yeah, it's been a fun trip down memory lane.

Switch 2 Release Date, With Games I'm Excited About

 I've had every Nintendo home console since the Super Nintendo, so it's more a matter of when rather than if I get a Switch 2. However, looking at the line-up of games that is coming, I'm thinking it's probably going to be sooner rather than later.

The console launches on June 5th (a few days before my birthday) and looks to largely try to repeat the successful formula of the original Switch's mobile/home console hybrid approach.

Of course, any console is only as good as its game library, so what do we have to look forward to? There are a lot of games coming out - many are ports and remasters, of course, and as someone who has a PS5 as well, in a lot of cases I already have them: it's awesome that Nintendo-exclusive players will be able to play Final Fantasy VII Remake (evidently not yet Rebirth, though I imagine that's down the pipeline) and Elden Ring (which at this point is probably the game I've put more hours in than any game other than World of Warcraft,) but here are the games I'm eager to get my hands on:

Donkey Kong: Bananza (get it? Bonanza and Banana?) looks to be a 3D platformer with a whole lot of destructible environments - we see DK smashing through the earth, digging tunnels and finding gems and gold. Interestingly, DK's visual design has been changed from the version we've been familiar with since Donkey Kong Country, with a look that seems more in line with the even older design from those old Donkey Kong arcade cabinets (that I actually think I've never seen in person).

Mario Kart World is a brand-new Mario Kart game (which I don't think we've gotten since Mario Kart 8, which released originally on the Wii U). There seems to be some sense that the tracks will be a lot more open.

The Duskbloods is the game that most surprised me, which is a FromSoft game led by Hidetaka Miyazaki, which seems to be a vampiric, gothic-themed game in a setting that looks a lot like Yharnam from Bloodborne if the city had undergone the Industrial Revolution, complete with trains and steampunk jetpacks. Given that Bloodborne is a Sony exclusive, this might more or less be the unofficial Bloodborne sequel we've all been wanting for a decade, so I'm hyped as hell. (This one doesn't come out until 2026).

Naturally, we also have Metroid Prime 4: Beyond, which is another one of these games we've been waiting for for a long, long time.

So, cool stuff. I hope that the Switch 2 is as good as the Switch has been, and may it have a vast and high-quality library!

Shadow Dragons!

 Of the canonical D&D settings, Planescape is probably the one that I am most drawn to, conceptually. But it's in hard competition with Ravenloft. Both of these were introduced in the early days of the game, both (I think) formally introduced as full settings in 2nd Edition, in the late 80s and early 90s. Ravenloft was initially it's own kind of thing (actually, it might have been part of the Ethereal Plane,) but as of 5th Edition, it was made into a kind of demiplane or cluster of demiplanes that were in the Shadowfell.

The Shadowfell is actually quite new to D&D, only introduced officially in 4th Edition (there was a "Plane of Shadow" before then, to be fair). While the majority of Shadowfell stuff we've gotten in 5E, we don't tend to see a lot of the "greater Shadowfell," which is a more direct mirror of the Prime Material Plane.

And it's this plane that I think might be my favorite of them.

Yes, since a kid, when my favorite holiday was Halloween, I've always enjoyed a kind of spooky, gothic aesthetic (I did grow up in a creaky Victorian house,) and that kind of "Dark World" has always felt like a great place for adventures. What is heroism but being the light within a world of darkness, after all?

No monster is more synonymous with the fantasy genre than the Dragon, and it's right there in the name of the game, so it's fitting that there's a variant on dragons that has been touched by the Shadowfell.

My homebrew setting has a fairly well-fleshed-out Shadowfell and Feywild version, and the most memorable adventure of my original campaign was a journey across a region of the Shadowfell called Red Scar Plains. In it, the party needed to face off against a psychotic Fire Giant who ruled over the realm of Red Scar Plains (the region where the party was trapped). Their ally, a silver dragon named Sirkazan (or Sirk for short) had been captured by the giant, and was being kept there to allow shadow energy to gradually corrupt him (when they escaped, getting Sirk cured allowed me to come up with one of the coolest, grossest ideas I've had - they met a Nagpa who offered to cure Sirk if she were allowed to consume the shadow essence within him, which involved her cutting open his veins and pulling it out like strings of oil congealing into something like plastic, while the party fended off a band of rampaging orcs intent on attacking the Nagpa's lair).

Anyway, while Sirk avoided becoming a Shadow Dragon thanks to the party's rescue, the second-in-command of Red Scar Plains, and direct servant of the demigod emperor of the larger "Dire Kingdom" of which the Plains were just one territory, was an Adult Black Shadow Dragon named Kormod. The intent was never to let them actually fight Kormod, but they schemed with his daughter after killing off some of his younger wyrmling offspring to spring Sirk.

Shadow Dragons in 2014 were designed as a template - you would take a normal Chromatic or Metallic Dragon and change some of their features.

In 2025, Shadow Dragons now have two dedicated stat blocks.

The upside is that they're ready to use from the word go. The downside is that there's not any official guidance on homebrewing more powerful ones. The Juvenile Shadow Dragon stat block is Medium sized, and CR 4. That's on par with Red Dragon Wyrmlings, which are the toughest of the wrymlings.

The full-grown Shadow Dragon is either Large or Huge, but its hit dice are d12s, so it seems more "by default" Huge, and thus on par with Adult Dragons. At CR 13, it's actually on par with an Adult White Dragon, which is the least powerful of the Chromatic ones. Basically, if a Shadow Dragon is "Young," (Large-sized) it's more powerful than any other kind, but if it's an Adult (Huge-sized) it's near the bottom of the hierarchy - at least in terms of CR.

The truly terrifying thing about both Shadow Dragons is that their breath weapon will auto-kill a creature it reduces to 0 hit points - no death saves, just full-on dead and on top of that, spawns a Shadow to fight you.

Now, at the level when you're fighting a Shadow Dragon (level 9 probably at the earliest for a group of 4) a Shadow is going to be scary but not that scary, and easily killed very quickly. However, because you could potentially face off against a Juvenile as early as level 3 (a High difficulty encounter for 4 level 3 players would have a max of 1,200, and CR 4 is worth 1,100,) before you have access to things like Revivify, and when a Shadow is still quite a menace, these can be truly nasty encounters.

I'll admit I'd have liked to see a Dracolich and Shadow Dragon that rivals or even exceeds the most powerful of normal dragons, but admittedly, in both cases they're kind of curses.

A Shadow Dragon doesn't have the inherent magic that most adult-and-older dragons in the Monster Manual do. However, they are kind of the Rogues of dragons, able to hide as a bonus action while in dim light and darkness. Notably, a Shadow Dragon's lair (which only the adult version would get) actually reduces the effect of any magic that would shed bright light to dim light, so within their lair they should always have the opportunity to hide. Now, to be clear: the Shadow Stealth bonus action does not actually confer anything like cover or invisibility, so they will still need to do something like Disengage and get behind obscurement if they're not in total darkness. However, it does have Blindsense, so having magical darkness fill the Shadow Dragon's lair could be very helpful to them.

Generally speaking, I think the tactics with a Dragon are usually to stay at range, using the breath weapon when it recharges and then getting either out of range or behind cover. A Shadow Dragon is probably hiding on turns they can't use the breath weapon.

Now, how would we use one of these in a story?

If your campaigns are really locked to the Prime Material Plane, a Shadow Dragon could be in a place where there's some bleed from the Shadowfell, or, as the Monster Manual suggests, they could be in the Underdark (which tends to be, you know, dark thanks to the fact that it's underground).

Notably, this isn't a natural thing: Shadow Dragons are changed and corrupted by the shadow. So, a Shadow Dragon could have started off as a perfectly benevolent being.

Generally, when I think about the influence of the Shadowfell, I think it's a kind of deadening of emotions. The kind of ennui, depression, and the obsessiveness that comes more from feeling a compulsion to do something rather than genuine excitement about it. Dragons, of course, hoard things, but a Shadow Dragon might be consumed with a kind of hopeless, joyless type of hoarding, and perhaps what they actually hoard are the souls of the dead, trapped as Shadows like themselves.

In a sense, a Shadow Dragon is a pitiable creature, but no less dangerous for this fact.

While the Shadowfell isn't exclusively Ravenloft, and Ravenloft isn't exclusively Gothic Horror, I think you could play on those Gothic tropes, particularly Poe-style characters who behave in gruesome ways because of a kind of deadened sense of empathy - the two of his stories that stick the most with me are The Casque of Amontillado and The Tell-Tale Heart. In both stories, the narrator confesses to murdering someone on a kind of whim - in the former, there's an almost dismissive mention of a perceived insult, and in the latter, it's basically because the narrator is weirded out by his victim's blind, whitened eye.

A Shadow Dragon, I think, could represent a kind of faded majesty. While officially in the rules, only Metallic Dragons can polymorph themselves to look like humanoids, I 100% extend this ability to all dragons (at least those of adult age and older, though I think even a Wyrmling could do it if it fits the story). And I think a Shadow Dragon could present themselves as a regal lord, but one who has probably fallen into a brooding depression. Perhaps their lair - maybe a great castle - has fallen into ruin.

This character could present themselves initially as a friend, but turn more sinister over time. Admittedly, you could more or less use the same RP playbook as a classic vampire.

The other option is that the players hear about some great and powerful dragon, only to discover that their realm has fallen to darkness and despair. Now, the few remaining people living nearby speak of armies of shadows drifting across the land, and a greater shadow that blots out the moon with its wings.

A Juvenile Shadow Dragon could be a menace to a community that turns out to be more intelligent than initially believed. Signs of their activity could be hard to identify - a patch of grass in the woods that very suddenly rotted, or lurking shadow monsters growing in number of late.

Building an encounter with one of these, I'd very much design a map with lots of places to hide. It's always kind of difficult to build verticality into a battle map, especially if you don't have 3D stuff to use for it (I'd love to have Dimension 20's set-building team, but I do not believe I have the budget for it!), but flying monsters are always going to feel like more of a threat if they can, you know, fly.

In my mind, I'm imagining the ruined hall of some grand manor house - a massive staircase leading up to a landing on the second floor, with wide hallways leading off on both the first and second floors. The Shadow Dragon could then use the floor of the second floor/ceiling of the first floor as a way to hide and forcing mostly ground-bound characters to have to chase them.

Now, death from their Shadow Breath does automatically happen if you reduce a character to 0 HP, even if it's a successful save. At the levels where you're fighting the adult version, I'd hope you have at least one character that can Revivify (at level 9, even half-casters can,) but throwing a Juvenile one of these at a tier 1 party is going to be rough. Make sure that your players are bought-in for truly deadly monsters, and if not, make sure that there's some way for them to resurrect characters such as friendly NPCs or remote holy shrines or the like.

Rebuilding Jax: Comparing Sword-and-Board to GWM in my One Particular Instance of an Eldritch Knight

Before my Triton Wizard overtook him, my longest-played D&D character was an Eldritch Knight Fighter. The campaign sadly fell apart when one of our players had to step away (for happy reasons, though: he became a dad!) and our DM had built much of the plot to hinge on his character.

It's a character I really loved to play, and even though I know I really ought to try some new subclasses and concepts, the changes to Fighters and Eldritch Knights, and even Dragonborn, in the 2024 rules have all made me really eager to play an updated version of the character.

But how much of an update?

My default character in an RPG is a heavily-armored character with access to spellcasting. While this often means playing something like a Paladin, the Eldritch Knight gets about as close as one can to my ideal "Battlemage" archetype as I've seen in any game.

My character, Jax (which I didn't realize was an actual name at the time, and figured it was a cool and draconic-sounding fantasy name) was built kind of around the following concept: having the highest AC possible. Our one-shot adventure that turned into a campaign saw us finding a +1 Shield that Jax received, so on top of his Defensive fighting style and eventually getting his hands on some Adamantine Plate, he ultimately had an AC of 22, which could be pushed to 27 with the Shield spell, which was the main thing he cast with his spell slots.

Now, I've done some math on what a heavy-armor-wearer's AC does for damage reduction compared with what you can get with the lower AC of a Barbarian but who gets the damage reduction from raging, and generally it's actually not nearly as good as the damage resistance. I might run such simulations on the assumption that the Fighter also has the Shield spell and see what it looks like, because basically I was almost never actually hit unless I was crit (which gave me, in retrospect, a sense that I was cursed with getting crit more frequently. Might have just been confirmation bias).

Still, at a very basic level, using a shield is a sacrifice of damage for a martial character. I wasn't dual-wielding or using a big two-handed weapon. The question, though, is how much of a sacrifice it was.

See, I've suspected that if I were to return to this character, I might change the way that I had built him to be lighter on defense and heavier on offense. Even without any shield or the defensive fighting style (though given how crap Great Weapon Fighting is, I might still take defensive,) Plate armor plus the Shield spell means pushing your AC to 23, which is pretty good. And, of course, if our damage is significantly higher, we might embrace the penalty to our un-hittableness because enemies that are dead can't hit us anyway.

So, I wanted to go reconstruct Jax's build a bit in both ways, and see how much more powerful a GWM build would be.

Jax was 12 level when the campaign sputtered to an end, meaning he had three attacks per Attack action. The buff to War Magic (allowing us to replace an attack with one of our cantrips rather than letting us make a single bonus action attack after we cast a cantrip) might actually wind up smoothing out some of our damage differences a little.

We will also be continuing to use Booming Blade and Green-Flame Blade, because there's no really decent replacement for them in the 2024 rules (I'm honestly a little bummed they didn't make them it into the new PHB, as they're so ideal for this subclass).

Now, let's talk about the basics:

Jax is a Blue Dragonborn. His species means that he will get a Breath Weapon he can use PB times per day - in his case 4. The Breath Weapon can replace one of his attacks (kind of perfect for a Fighter, who has so many) and does 3d10 lightning damage to any creature in a 30-foot line or a 15-foot cone (he now gets to choose, and boy will it be nice to have the cone option). The DC is going to be based on his Con, but this is a save-for-half feature, so it's guaranteed damage.

He has the Sage background, which is actually a problem if we're using the new Sage, because this fails to boost his Strength in any way. Ideally, we'd be able to use the old version of the background and just pick up the Magic Initiate: Wizard feat to go with it. Jax had actually not rolled any stat above a 14, but used his Dragonborn ability bonuses to get that to 16 at level 1, and just pumped up Strength and Con with ASIs until he took Tough at level 12.

Given the way General Feats work now, I'd probably do things a bit differently. If we just went to Point Buy, I'd probably go for a 15 in Strength and get +2 to that from the Background, and then shoot for at least a 14 in Con. I had overestimated the need for a good Intelligence modifier when I first built him, so he actually started off with a +2 to Int and only a +1 to Con. At the very least I'd flip that, though I also always intended to find him a Headband of Intellect (in years of playing, he never had any attunement magic items).

Thanks to how many feats he can get as he levels up, if I could start him off with a 17 Strength, I'd probably then just pick up a General feat at 4, 6, 8, and 12, three of which would be Strength-based ones, and the other being War Caster (Booming Blade as an Opportunity Attack feels really nasty, but it also solves the issue of having to drop your weapon if you need to cast Shield - something that the GWM build is not as worried about because they only need both hands on their weapon when they're attacking with it).

For cantrips, we're obviously using Green-Flame Blade and Booming Blade - the former just when we have a secondary target to hit and the latter in all other situations.

Now, weapon choice of course depends on whether we're going for the Sword-and-Board build or GWM. In terms of aesthetic, I love a Battlemage with a Maul, and perhaps because it's so optimal, I'd almost hope that my DM wouldn't give me a magic Greatsword. But in terms of figuring out the actual damage potential, it's pretty clear that Graze is just by far the most powerful damage mastery for any Great Weapon, so we're going to assume we have that.

For our sword-and-board build, it's a more open question. We basically want to ensure we're using a one-handed d8 weapon, which means picking between Battleaxes, Flails, Longswords, Morningstars, Rapiers, Tridents, Warhammers, and War Picks. Just as a special note, Tridents are actually kind of ideal for an Eldritch Knight because they're the only d8 weapon with the Thrown property (can we get to d10 if we throw it two-handed?) and thanks to Weapon Bond, we can get it back with a bonus action after throwing it - it's fitting that the official Eldritch Knight art depicts one with a Trident). What this really comes down to is the Topple, Sap, Vex, and Push masteries. However, because we by this level have Tactical Master, effectively every weapon we use already has the Push, Sap, and Slow masteries. Thus, we're sort of leaving some options on the table if we don't pick up one that has either Topple or Vex. So, we'll want to grab a Battleaxe, Rapier, or Trident.

I imagine that in terms of damage potential, the Rapier, which has Vex, is almost certainly the right choice. Topple can potentially also give us advantage on attacks, but requires a creature to fail a Con save. So, perhaps this is ignoring a significant bit of damage potential, but I'm going to say we're going with a Trident for this build and furthermore, we're actually going to ignore the Topple Mastery, making an assumption that the monsters we're fighting at level 12 have beefy Con (though boy does the Trident having the Thrown property and also Topple make it feel awesome for downing flying enemies). I'm tempted to, in the interest of fairness, ignore Graze when calculating the damage potential of a GWM build. Actually, given how Graze is in most instances more powerful than Topple, we're for sure going to do that.

Phew, almost there.

Feats!

Naturally, our GWM build is going to start off at level 4 picking up Great Weapon Master. While there are some redundancies, Polearm Master is a good pairing with this (swapping out a Greatsword for a Glaive) but I think I'm going to turn it down, instead getting Mage Slayer (on both builds,) which is so dang good (between that and the new Indomitable, Jax's mind is going to be hard to mess with). Both will also pick up War Caster (while the GWM build will already have a free hand for spellcasting, the advantage on Concentration saves and especially the cast-a-spell-as-an-opportunity-attack features are very nice). That leaves one more feat for GWM and two more for S&B, which will need to be a Strength feat in order to get our Strength to 20.

Now, of course, we could pick up Polearm Master for our GWM build. And it would probably be plenty good, even if the Pole Strike aspect of it would be slightly diluted by our several attacks. Here, though, I might just make an aesthetic decision and say we want to be using a Buster Sword-sized Greatsword. Now, Sentinel is an obvious choice here, but we have the following downside - our Warcaster opportunity attacks will not work as well when doing our Booming Blade trick. That being said, the language of War Caster means that we aren't technically making an Opportunity attack, so Booming Blade would't actually reduce their speed to 0. Then again, we really want to keep our Reactions open for Shield. It's a tough call.

I think in part for consistency's sake, we're going to go with a defensive feat (that still boosts Strength) in the form of Heavy Armor Master. Now, in those rare cases where we do get hit, we can reduce incoming bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing damage by 4 (and I think this goes up to 5 at the next level). It's not going to be Barbarian-level damage reduction, and of course doesn't help with other damage types, but melee attacks still mostly do these types of damage (and even if it's a mix of, say, piercing and poison, that 4 still subtracts from the overall total).

This leaves what the final feat for our S&B build is using. Shield Master is certainly tempting - it's a little unclear to me whether you get to use your Reaction before or after knowing if you would succeed on your saving throw with Interposing Shield (as written it looks like before, which means we couldn't use, like, Absorb Elements if we got hit by a Fireball and got a 5 on our saving throw) but it does seem to interact well with Indomitable. And honestly, at this point there aren't a ton of feats left to choose from. So, yeah, we'll go with that.

So, to recap, we're going with War Caster, Mage Slayer, Heavy Armor Master, and then either Shield Master or Great Weapon Master (not necessarily in that order, but we're starting off at level 12, so we can have all four).

In terms of spells, I'm going to keep this simple for the sake of my sanity: we're using Booming Blade in single-target situations, and our spell slots are being reserved for Shield, Absorb Elements, or Misty Step.

Ok, finally, let's get those damage calculations!

Because we're essentially ignoring weapon masteries, I think we don't really need to worry about hit chance. We will still generally have a 5% crit chance, which will activate GWM's Hew attack. Again, between our Trident and Shield Master for the S&B build, we can probably actually knock enemies prone frequently, but I'm going to just have to ignore this again for the sake of sanity.

So, we're basically comparing damage on hits, which makes this a lot easier.

S&B:

Starting off with the build closest to our original one, we've got a +5 to Strength and +4 PB. While I had a +1 weapon in the original campaign, assuming some kind of big reset, I'll just act as if it's all mundane equipment.

Thus, our Trident hits are going to be 1d8+5. Booming Blade at this level adds 2d8 Thunder damage on the initial hit and an additional 3d8 if they move, but we'll assume we're both planting our feet.

Thus, on our turn, as the Attack Action, we are doing one attack for 3d8+5 (18.5 damage). Now, regarding our Breath Weapon, we will probably only use this when we can catch multiple targets in it - 3d10 is 16.5 average damage, which is quite good, but it's limited to 4 per day. If we want to go all out, we'll use this every turn, and this will of course dilute the distinction between the builds a bit. But let's assume some conservatism and say that on a single target, we're just sticking to our regular attacks.

Thus, our S&B build is going to hit with 3d8+5 + 1d8+5 + 1d8+5, or ultimately 5d8+15, which comes out to 37.5 damage. Again, this is assuming all hits, so we shouldn't look at this and think it's some really impressive DPR.

GWM:

Our GWM build is going to hit for 2d6+2d8+9 on our Booming Blade attack, and then 2d6+9 on the second and third hits, or a total of 6d6+2d8+27, which comes to 57 damage. If any of our three attacks as part of our Attack action crit, we get another Hew attack as a bonus action. With three attacks, we've got a roughly 14% chance to get a crit on our turn, which only deals 2d6+5 (we don't get to add our PB to this damage). 14%x12 is 1.68, so our 57 goes up to 58.68.

In other words, we're only doing about 64% of our damage with Sword & Board as we would be with GWM.

Now, the GWM build is built far more for raw damage. The many Topples we could do with our S&B build could potentially be very useful in some fights, and I think that the higher our AC, the more impactful even higher AC can be. A 23 AC is impressive, but perhaps not quite as much as a 27 that I was able to pull with my old build, where a creature that had a +7 or lower to attack needed to crit me.

Still, I think I'd be inclined to move more toward this damage-output focus, which would speed up combat. Also, we haven't talked about how awesome Graze is for a Fighter with Tactical Mastery - as a weapon mastery that only actually does something if we miss, this means we can always pick Sap, Push, or Slow when we do connect without sacrificing anything.

Ah, it'd be fun to play that character again.

Can We Build an Unarmed Barbarian?

 Among the changes in the 2024 PHB, one that was kind of interesting was the change to allow Barbarians to get their Rage bonus on Unarmed Strikes as well as Weapon Attacks. Now, this could be a help in a situation where the Barbarian is unarmed, like if their weapon is hit with a Heat Metal spell or stolen or something.

The real question is this: can we actually build a Barbarian that actually does decent damage with unarmed strikes?

Obviously, the Monk is the unarmed strike master, built entirely around them. And while I generally abhor multiclassing, it can sometimes be a last resort to make a build work (I think a Bladelock, for example, gets so much benefit from taking a level of Fighter that it's kind of hard not to).

Let me explain why I'd be looking at this conceptually:

I have a premise for a character that's kind of the first real Barbarian character I've actually felt excited to play. Loosely inspired by the Alan Wake games (particularly II,) he's a horror novelist who finds himself trapped in the Shadowfell for over a decade, desperately trying to stay alive in an ongoing nightmare. Whether it's an actual outside presence or just a persona he comes up with to help him survive (and people with D.I.D. often develop these other personae as a response to trauma,) the character manifests an alter-ego known as Mr. Teeth, who takes over when he goes into a Rage. The idea would be that at early levels, Mr. Teeth would just be a change in posture, expression, and tone of voice, but eventually he'd manifest as a kind of shadow over the character, the appearance of which I'd describe as looking like if someone had gone into the film stock and colored over him with a black marker in each frame - despite the fact that this would be in "reality" as he and the people around him knew it.

Now, if I ever play this character, I'll probably wind up just giving him weapons, because the class is clearly built for that. But I wanted to know if I could make something that at least worked decently.

Thematically, the subclass I'd wind up taking is Berserker, which, despite being kind of the "vanilla" Barbarian, has a few features that feel very appropriate. Berserkers are a more offense-focused subclass thanks to the new version of Frenzy. Mindless Rage feels particularly appropriate, as Mr. Teeth kind of manifested to help the character endure the terrors of the Shadowfell. And even the capstone, Intimidating Presence, is kind of perfect because he's become a scarier monster than the ones that terrorized him.

Why do we want unarmed strikes? Well, it's primarily an aesthetic thing. Most monsters don't really need weapons because they have claws and teeth and such. It would also mean that, when not raging, the character can look like they're just some normal guy.

I'd probably also have the character be Human. While I'm just waiting for the other shoe to drop and for us to get the equivalent of Tasha's "customize your species" equivalent for backgrounds, being Human will allow us to grab any Origin Feat we want, which is nice.

Now, let's talk about Unarmed Strikes.

By default, we do 1 plus our Strength modifier (and also our Rage bonus) with an Unarmed Strike. This "d1" damage die is going to lower our damage by a lot - if we start off with a +3 to Strength, comparing this even with a Dagger is a difference between 6 damage when raging and 7.5. Compared with a Greatsword, we're looking at 6 versus 12, which is fully half as much damage before we even get into the fact that we're losing the Graze mastery, which is so good.

So, it's an uphill battle, and one that I doubt we're going to actually be able to win. But let's give it the old college try!

The Tavern Brawler feat is pretty good for unarmed strikes. It upgrades them to a d4 (meaning we're now at least doing as much damage as we would with a dagger, light hammer, sickle, or club) and allows us to reroll that damage die if we roll a 1. Thus, the typical 2.5 damage from a d4 becomes a 2.875. Eh, that's... better I guess? We also get proficiency with improvised weapons and can, once per turn, push a target 5 feet from us when we hit them as part of the attack action.

Ok, so this is definitely better - doing 7.875 damage on our hits rather than 6.

Still, we're pretty far behind.

Broadly speaking, Barbarians (and most melee builds) divide into what I'd call three broad categories: Sword-and-Board, Dual-wielding, and Great Weapons. The latter of these does also include polearm builds. Sword-and-Board can be very good, but sacrifices damage in the name of survivability. We're not really going for that so much, so we want instead to focus on damage output.

Now, our unarmed strikes are not going to be competitive with a great weapon's damage. But they do start to approach the damage of a dual-wielder's weapons. However, we run into the following problem: dual-wielders are built around just that - dual-wielding. Their attacks deal less damage, but they get to make more of them.

I'd love to build a "pugilist" feat that allows you to effectively dual-wield your own fists - one of the ironies of D&D's design is that someone wielding Light weapons can effectively attack faster with them than with their own empty fists.

In a lot of ways, the Monk's bonus action attack kind of corrects for this. And here, we do really need to start considering whether a dip into Monk is going to solve a ton of our problems.

Being a Monk will be a bit challenging, though, given that both Dex and Wisdom are considered their Primary Abilities, so you'll need at least a 13 in both. Going Point Buy or Standard Array will mean you're pretty spread-out, and you'll need to be somewhat lucky with rolled stats to get this. That said, talk with your DM and see if they will waive this for you.

Let's take a look at the Monk's Martial Arts feature.

We get two major benefits here: the first is that you get a d6 hit die for your Unarmed Strikes (and Monk weapons). This brings your punches (or kicks, headbutts, bites, etc.) in line with the damage of a Shortsword or Handaxe.

The next big benefit is that we get to make an Unarmed Strike as a bonus action. Because this doesn't involve the Light property, that attack gets the full benefit of our Strength and Rage.

While Monks can use Dexterity in place of Strength for unarmed strikes and monk weapons, it doesn't say you have to.

Now, I will say that if you eventually take this build all the way to level 20, you might sadly miss out on the amazing capstones for each class. But given how few campaigns actually go that far, it might not actually be that bad. The more bitter pill is that you'll be delaying Extra Attack, which is rough.

Still, just one Monk level now gives us a bonus action attack (which, to be fair, won't come up until round two, after we've Raged).

In terms of which class we start off with, I think Barbarian's probably wise, giving us Con save proficiency. Then, maybe just at level 2 we pick up our Monk level and then stick to Barbarian for the foreseeable future.

Now, as much as I enjoy the introduction of Weapon Masteries, it makes calculating damage a lot harder (depending on the mastery). Given that a dual-wielder is likely using a Handaxe or Shortsword, both of which use Vex, I kind of dread calculating it. But we could compare this with a Greatsword-wielding Graze build.

We'll take a look at this at level 4, allowing our unarmed Barbarian to become a Berserker, while our Greatsword character is going to be picking up Great Weapon Master.

Again, the assumption here is that the GWM build is going to be doing more damage. But it's a question of how far ahead they are:

Ok: Assumptions:

This is still tier 1, so the AC of our target is probably not super high - maybe a 15.

We need to account for the ramp-up time here (which to be fair would be true for a dual-wielder who has the Dual Wielder feat as well - though the Nick mastery is nicer to Barbarians than how things used to be). Thus, we'll take the damage over a course of three rounds. Again, this is going to favor our GWM build because they'll be at full speed from the get-go.

We'll assume that we started with a 17 in Strength (though given the lack of feats to really support this, we might have gone only 16 on our unarmed Barbarian, both to help us get our Dex, Wis, and Con to decent levels and because we're probably just going to be taking ASIs) and so our GWM now has a +4 while our unarmed guy only has a +3 to Strength.

So, let's try it out!

GWM:

With +4 to Strength, we're looking at a +6 to hit. Against an AC of 15, that means we're hitting on a 9 or higher, meaning we have a 60% hit chance. GWM is also going to add our PB to the damage when we hit.

Our damage on a hit is 2d6+8, or 15 on average.

With Graze, we also deal some damage on a hit, so that's 4 on those misses.

Finally, our crits, 5% of the time, give us an extra 2d6 (or 7) damage.

Thus, we have: 15x60%, or 9, plus 4x40%, or 1.6, plus 7x5%, or .35, giving us a total damage per attack (and thus per turn because this is tier 1) of 10.95 damage.

Over three turns, this becomes 32.85

Unarmed:

We only have a +3 Strength, which means our attack bonus is +5, so we're going to hit on a roll of 10 or higher, or 55% of the time.

Our hit damage is 1d6+5, or 8.5. And a crit adds 3.5 damage. Now, that said, if we took the Tavern Brawler feat, this is actually false: instead, our d6s are going to do an average of 3.917 (ish, it's actually .9166666, etc.) So, our hits are 8.917 and our crits add 3.917.

Thus: we get 8.917x55%, or 4.934 (ish) plus 3.917x5%, or .196(ish) for a total damage of 5.13.

However, after the first turn (when we're using our Bonus Action to Rage) we will get to do this twice per turn. In other words, over three rounds, when the GWM gets three such attacks, we're effectively getting 5 attacks.

Thus, over three turns, our Unarmed Build does 25.65 damage.

So, we're doing about 80% of what the GWM character is doing.

Sadly, I think that the math does not favor us as we get to higher levels - GWM scales remarkably well, and when they get Extra Attack, our solitary Unarmed Strike bonus attack is a bit deprecated in value in comparison.

A dual-wield build will likely fare better, thanks in large part to Weapon Mastery (with the Dual-Wielder Feat, we can get four attacks in per turn after the first once we have Extra Attack) though because Barbarians don't get Fighting Style feats for free, you'll be losing out on your Light weapon attack's damage as well.

Essentially, I think this build can work in the broadest sense, and I don't think people are obligated to play optimally, but I think that if I ever play this character, he's probably going to have some kind of big weapon to fight with.