Critical Role Announces Campaign 4, With Some Big Changes

 After ten years of Critical Role and three epic campaigns taking place in the expansive world of Exandria, we've been left for the past few months wondering what comes next for the massive actual play franchise.

Well, at the recent live show, we got our answer: Campaign Four is coming on October 2nd of 2025. While I won't go into specific spoilers, Critical Role's third campaign felt very much like a culmination of what had come before, with the adventurers of the first and second campaigns joining in the epic fight against the big bad. The very nature of Exandria is changed by the end of it, and while there's tons of potential for future stories in that post-campaign-3 world, it also felt like a good opportunity to close out the story of Exandria, at least for now.

Ten years is a long time for a creative, performance project, and so I was among many who speculated that we might see a real shake-up for Critical Role's fourth campaign. The announcement has confirmed that speculation:

Campaign four will be set in a new world. On top of that, it's also going to have a new game master, though anyone who pays any attention to the world of Actual Play will already know his name: yes, it's Brennan Lee Mulligan, the primary DM of Dimension 20, and basically tied as "most beloved actual play DM" with Critical Role's Matt Mercer. Mulligan has already done several projects with Critical Role, including DMing the Calamity triad of mini-campaigns, EXUs Calamity, Downfall, and Divergence, the middle of which actually formed a crucial interlude within Campaign 3.

We also know that the players are going to be a mix of returning faces and new players. The only confirmed player, though, is Matt Mercer himself. Mercer has appeared as a player with Mulligan as the DM in both Divergence and Dimension 20's Escape from the Blood Keep.

Now, we have some unanswered questions:

Who else is playing? I would assume some of the main Critical Role cast will be joining along with Mercer, but as of now, we don't know who. The Venn diagram of players who often play with Mulligan and who have appeared on Critical Role is fairly broad (of Dimension 20's core "Intrepid Heroes" cast, three have appeared in various Critical Role shows).

Next, what system are they using? Critical Role's publishing arm, Darrington Press, just released their Daggerheart system, and then swept up longtime D&D designer legends Jeremy Crawford and Chris Perkins, so I would not be shocked to see them using their own in-house system rather than D&D. That said, I also could imagine they'd keep up good relations with the folks at WotC by continuing to use D&D, and perhaps avoid alienating audiences who are more familiar with that system.

Anyway, I kept up with Critical Role's second and third campaigns from their very start, and so I'm very eager to see what comes next for them.

Draw Steel and the Delian Tomb

 Draw Steel is officially out!

Between the 2024 revamp to 5E, Daggerheart, and now this, there's a lot of new fantasy TTRPG rules for me to internalize. Having now played D&D for almost ten years, there's a certain inertia that a popular RPG system creates - you spend so much time learning the system that people (even me!) are resistant to figuring out and trying out a new one. Even D&D 5.5, which is a fairly modest update to the existing system that is compatible with older content, is something I've had trouble coaxing some of my friends to try.

Both Daggerheart and Draw Steel are quite different from 5E - neither even uses a d20 as its central die!

And so, while I've seen several D&D Starter Sets come around and never been particularly curious to try them simply because I already know how to play and run 5E (though some have good adventures, like Lost Mines of Phandelver,) I'm really struck by how the folks at MCDM have built their starting adventure.

The Delian Tomb is a simple dungeon. Goblins led by the villainous Queen Bargnot have broken into it in an effort to recover a magical artifact that they believe will turn them into super-soldiers, and have kidnapped the local blacksmith's daughter to use her as a sacrifice in a ritual meant to open one of the magical barriers in the tomb. This draws the attention of the heroes, who go to rescue the young woman and put a stop to this plot.

What's remarkable is how the adventure is structured to tutorialize the game's systems.

Each Pregen character (which are given classes, subclasses, ancestries, etc., but are not given names so that players can pick their own vibe and personalities) has a character sheet that is broken up into phases.

The first combat, against a group of a single kind of goblin outside the tomb's entrance, gives the players only the very most basic abilities: just their Signature Abilities, which don't require any resources to use. Here, the combat simply shows the players the fundamentals of combat: the Power Roll, the way that movement and maneuvers can work, and the basic passive elements of each class (while they don't spend resources, they do generate it because some classes, like Nulls and Furies, get passive bonuses as their resources get higher.)

Once into the tomb, they get a bigger fight, and more of their character sheet unlocks: Heroic Abilities now become available (these being the ones that spend resources,) but also, the Director now gets some greater complexity as well: they now have two groups of minions, which are built so that you can use a huge number of them. Also, they now start generating Malice, the Director's "Villainous Resource," which monsters can spend on more powerful abilities. Also, the idea of Potency is introduced (the mechanic where your abilities might impose a condition on creatures whose characteristic the potency targets is lower than the potency).

There's then a non-combat moment that reinforces the idea of checks, with a trap to disarm.

Then, combat three unlocks 5-resource heroic abilities (which at level 1 are essentially your "ultimates") while also introducing a fight where there's a kind of "alternate win condition," involving a large sigil on the floor that can be destroyed to immediately de-animate the undead monsters attacking the party.

The final combat of part 1 is more of a summation, adding very little other than the potential to surprise the foes.

The adventure continues, but these four encounters are expected to be your first session (depending on how quickly your players grasp the ideas and the pace at which they like to play).

Notably, the adventure also gives a lot of guidance for the Director, suggesting tactics the monsters might use (like which abilities to spend Malice on, and how Vorgosh, the bugbear who serves as the adventure's first mini-boss, might use her abilities to drag foes onto the harmful barrier over the stairs down into the tomb).

This kind of gradual build-up of a character's abilities feels like a good, tried-and-true method of tutorializing a game's mechanics - it's something we see all the time in video games (thinking back to Expedition 33, you don't get Gradient Attacks until you get Monoco, which is a pretty serious chunk into the game).

If there's one thing that makes TTRPGs daunting, it's that there tend to be a ton of mechanics to internalize. In a video game, most of them would be automated, but here you need to be aware of every last detail.

I'd initially wanted to try out Draw Steel with my own original adventure, but honestly? This feels like a really solid choice for how to familiarize your players with the game while also getting a sense of how to run it. There's a pre-gen character for every class in the Heroes book (sadly, the Summoner didn't make the cut, but will probably come out in some later supplement,) so players who are excited about one concept or the other should have an opportunity to try it out.

Trying Out Diablo IV

 I didn't grow up playing Diablo or Diablo II - as a kid, I was pretty averse to any grim, ultra-violent games, and for certain my parents were (I remember when I was twelve having to persuade my mom that the then-upcoming The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time wasn't too violent despite the fact that the player character wields a sword). So, my experience with the franchise began with Diablo III, born out of the good will that Blizzard had earned with me after playing World of Warcraft for a few years at that point.

However, despite Blizzard starting out as a Mac OS game developer, the release of Overwatch and eventually Diablo IV on PCs only left me out in the cold.

I had barely cared to finish Diablo III's campaign initially, but the game underwent some serious refinements with its Reaper of Souls expansion.

I actually played quite a lot of that - I got characters of every class a full class set and had a build where I could mow down waves upon waves of demons at the highest Torment difficulties.

Here's the thing: Diablo, and honestly a lot of Blizzard games (WoW included) are built to be perpetual treadmills - ever higher power and ever higher challenge.

And as I make my way through Diablo IV, I'm confronted with the fact that such things aren't quite as appealing to me as they once were.

I like the aesthetic of the game - while I don't want to wallow in it for every game I play, there's something compelling about the extreme-dark fantasy of the world of Sanctuary. Indeed, Diablo IV's opening sets a tone in a way that few games do: the first town you come across, while worrying about freezing to death in the wilderness (not that this is a danger mechanically,) sends you on a pretty standard sort of quest to go fight some monsters in a nearby dungeon. In lieu of gold as a reward, however, they give you dinner and party with you, only for it to be revealed that they've drugged you, apparently seeking to sacrifice you to Lilith, the game's demonic big bad (also, I believe this breaks from the tradition of it always turning out to be the titular Diablo as the game's final boss).

I also really like the take the game has on its various character classes - I've primarily played a necromancer, but I also started a Druid (which wasn't an option in D3).

But I think that the combat is just not really doing it for me. Diablo combat is all about fighting absurd numbers of monsters, where enemy density becomes a positive thing because of the chain-reaction way that a lot of character abilities work.

It is, perhaps, the polar opposite of Dark Souls-style combat, in which each attack and dodge is something that you have to carefully consider in the moment. I don't mean to say there's zero thought that you have to put into what you do in Diablo, but I find that even without a bunch of legendary items and on high difficulty settings, the most important thing is to make sure you're using everything at your disposal as frequently as possible.

To be clear: this is a matter of taste, not of quality. But I do think that the purpose of a game like Diablo is to get a kind of zen calm in clearing out waves upon waves of enemies.

But for me, the enemies themselves kind of blur together into an undifferentiated mass.

The story is grim as ever - even the angelic church that would seem to protect the world from the demons is a deeply repressive and unforgiving one - at one point, a friendly NPC who admittedly screwed up big time by taking a bribe to let someone get in somewhere they shouldn't have is forced to wear a suit of "Penitent Armor," which is one part mech suit and one part Iron Maiden, so he dies after coming to our aid. That's just one example.

One thing that's maybe a little disappointing is that the story doesn't really follow up on the revelations of Diablo III. 50 years have passed, but the only real direct reference to that is that Lorath, the young Horadrim apprentice who befriends us in Reaper of Souls, is now a bitter old man with tons of regrets (though he does seem to serve as our primary ally through the game - and is voiced by Ralph Ineson, whose voice is always fun to hear). But the implications of the Nephalem reawakening their god-like power seems to have been just kind of tossed to the side, at least for now (I'm I think in Act IV - I'm in Kejistan).

Actually, one thing that's funny is that the Butcher, who was the Act One boss in Diablo III, has been returned to his old role from previous games of being a randomly-spawning nightmare boss that just zeroes in on your character (even if you're a poor Necromancer whose skeletons and golem are supposed to tank for you) and murders you. Having gotten used to the Butcher as an easy kill on my super-powered D3 characters, this is a brutal wake-up call.

Anyway, I feel weird complaining about the game because it's just being what Diablo has always been. And yet, there's a part of me that might better enjoy playing through this story in just a different game system.

Dan's (First Draft) Revised Necromancer

 In the previous post, I did a kind of loose brainstorm of how I'd like the Wizard's Necromancer subclass to be redesigned. The design turns the subclass into a pet subclass like the Beast Master Ranger or Battle Smith Artificer.

The primary idea here is that, in order to fulfill the Necromancer class fantasy of having a real army of undead minions rather than a single powerful monster, but also to avoid bogging down combat by forcing the player to move tons of creatures on the battlefield, we take advantage of the already-existing Swarm "technology" that has been part of 5E since the beginning.

The subclass is built around its pet, the Undead Horde, which is a Large (and later Huge) Swarm of Medium Undead.

Before I get into all of its features, I'll toss out a few problems I think it might have.

First, I think nearly all the features are related to the pet. This isn't as much of a problem as, say, building a subclass around a single concentration spell, but it does mean that if you are put in a position where you lose the pet and can't revive it, you might be sort of without a subclass until your next long rest.

The next is that the Horde's purpose is very damage-focused. On one hand, Wizards are generally built more around powerful utility than necessarily damage output. On the other, next to maybe Evocation, Necromancy feels like a thematically appropriate school to focus on damage.

Third, while part of the intent of this redesign was to put a greater emphasis on the "raising undead minions" part of Necromancy than I feel the 2014 or recent UA versions have done, but one might argue that this design too greatly shifts things away from the "manipulating life energy" element (though I think the level 10 feature hits that pretty hard).

(EDIT): Fourth, I realized that there's some cheese in the way that you can use Draw Essence to take a ton of Temp HP out of the Horde, but rather than forcing you to deal some serious necrotic damage to the horde to revive it, you could just expend a 1st level spell slot to get it up from 0 to full HP. We'd either need to limit this in some other way, or make it more costly to get the Horde back if it drops to 0. (Also, in a very strict RAW reading of the Undead Horde feature, we can't actually revive it with all its HP because the Swarm feature only lets it regain HP via Necrotic Absorption).

Anyway, enough preamble: let's get to my design. Again, this is a first draft and has not undergone any playtesting, but take a look:

Necromancer Wizard

Necromancers apply their arcane knowledge to the cosmic forces of life and death. Drawing spirits from the other side of the veil of death, Necromancers practice their magic with the protection of a horde of undead minions.

While many see Necromancers as wicked and menacing, not all Necromancers are evil, and touch these dark forces for myriad reasons.

Level 3: Necromancy Savant

Choose two Wizard spells from the Necromancy school, each of which must be no higher than level 2, and add them to your spellbook for free.

In addition, whenever you gain access to a new level of spell slots in this class, you can add one Wizard spell from the Necromancy school to your spellbook for free. The chosen spell must be of a level for which you have spell slots.

Level 3: Undead Horde

You magically call forth a horde of undead minions, which uses the Undead Horde statblock (see below). The horde is a swarm of undead creatures under your command, which can be skeletal, spectral, decaying corpses, or any other kind of undead creature. Whatever type of undead they are, they use the same game statistics.

The horde is Friendly to you and your allies and obeys your commands. It vanishes if you die.

The Horde in Combat. In combat, the horde acts during your turn. It can move and use its Reaction on its own, but the only action it takes is the Dodge action unless you take a bonus action to command it to take an action in its stat block or some other action. If you have the Incapacitated condition, the horde acts on its own and isn’t limited to the Dodge action.

Restoring or Replacing the Horde. If the horde has died within the last hour, you can take a Magic action to touch it and expend a spell slot. The horde returns to life after 1 minute with all its Hit Points restored.

Whenever you finish a Long Rest, you can summon a different horde, which appears in an unoccupied space within 5 feet of you. You choose its appearance. If you already have a horde from this feature, the old one vanishes when the new one appears.

UNDEAD HORDE

Large Swarm of Medium Undead, Neutral

AC 12 plus your Intelligence modifier

HP 5 plus six times your Wizard level (the horde has a number of Hit Dice [d10s] equal to your Wizard level)

Speed: 30 feet.

STR: 14 (+2/+2)

DEX 10 (+0/+0)

CON 15 (+2/+2)

INT 6 (-2/-2)

WIS 8 (-1/-1)

CHA 5 (-3/-3)

Resistances: Necrotic

Immunities: Poison, Exhaustion, Poisoned

Senses: Darkvision 60 ft., Passive Perception 9

Languages: Understands the languages its master knows but can’t speak.

Traits:

Master’s Bond. Add your Proficiency Bonus to any ability check or saving throw the horde makes.

Swarm. The swarm can occupy another creature’s space and vice versa, and the swarm can move through any opening large enough for a Medium creature. The swarm can’t regain Hit Points or gain Temporary Hit Points, except via the Necrotic Absorption feature.

Actions:

Claw of the Grave. Melee Attack Roll: Bonus equals your spell attack modifier, reach 5 ft. Hit: 2d4+2 plus your Intelligence modifier Bludgeoning, Piercing, or Slashing damage (your choice when you summon the swarm).

Level 6: Necrotic Surge

You have developed a way to channel deathly power into your undead horde’s strikes. You gain the following benefits:

Spirit Strikes: When the horde hits with an attack roll and deals damage, it can deal your choice of Force damage or its normal damage type.

Mortal Infusion: When the horde hits with an attack roll, you can expend a spell slot to empower its attack with necrotic energy. Roll a number of d8s equal to the level of the spell slot that was expended. The attack deals additional Necrotic damage equal to the total rolled.

Level 10: Draw Essence

Your mastery over your horde has allowed you to draw upon its animating essence in order to bolster yourself. As an action, you can deal Force damage equal to three times your Wizard level to your Undead Horde. This damage cannot be reduced or prevented in any way. You then gain that many Temporary Hit Points.

Level 10: Necrotic Absorption

Your connection to the power of necromancy has granted you greater resilience in the face of its power. You have resistance to Necrotic damage, and your Undead Horde now has immunity to Necrotic damage.

If a spell you have cast using a spell slot would deal Necrotic damage to your Undead Horde, the Horde instead gains Hit Points equal to the damage it would have taken.

Level 14: Army of the Dead

Your undead forces have grown in number and in power. Your Undead Horde grows to Huge size (it can still pass through a space large enough for a Medium creature).

Additionally, when you command your Undead Horde to take the Claw of the Grave action, the swarm can use it twice.

Diablo-izing the D&D Necromancer

 While a late addition to Diablo III, that series' Necromancer class has now established itself as one of the staples, appearing in II, III, and IV. A fully separate class from Wizards or Sorcerers, in the lore of Diablo, Necromancers are priests of Rathma, the first of the Nephalem (the offspring of angels and demons, whose descendants became humanity) and are committed to maintaining cosmic balance.

That lore is very cool, and the Necromancer fits well with the series' grimdark aesthetic. But I think one of the things that the class does really well is really make you feel the class fantasy - you are (nearly) always followed by a group of undead minions that automatically fight for you, and you use corpses left behind by monsters as a resource.

The fast-paced action-RPG (heavy on the action) gameplay of Diablo is very different from that of D&D, but I do think that one of the challenges that D&D has always had vis a vis the Necromancer is how to let you live out that fantasy of summoning an army of undead.

In D&D's 2024 update, one of the major efforts WotC made was to reduce the ability for players to flood the battlefield with several new creatures. Animate Dead, however, remained more or less unchanged (though buffed slightly because Skeletons are a little deadlier than they used to be).

The recent UA for Arcane subclasses (ironically not in the "horror subclass" one) gave us another look at the Necromancer, but amongst its changes was swapping out Animate Dead as the spell granted by Undead Thralls at level 6 for Summon Undead. I fully expected this to happen - the Summon spells, originally published in Tasha's, are designed to make summoning creatures less disruptive by giving you one big creature instead of several small ones.

However, one of the critiques that the revamp to the Necromancer got was that it felt unfocused and poor at enabling the (sub)class fantasy, in large part because it seemed just as focused on granting temporary hit points as it did summoning up undead minions.

In fairness, this was intended to be a non-disruptive update to the 2014 version.

But I think we can do better.

And I think the answer is obvious: the Necromancer should be a pet subclass.

There's some precedence for this, of course. The Beast Master and Drakewarden Rangers are built around fighting alongside a pet, and the Battle Smith Artificer is as well. There's also the upcoming Purple Dragon Knight revamp (which, dear lord thank you, because the SCAG version of that made me, like, angry with how crappy it was,) which now has you fight alongside a... purple dragon (which, yes, is a departure from the lore, but screw it).

While "Necromancy" has historically sometimes meant just "dark" or "evil" magic, the iconic fantasy image is, well, kind of the Diablo version - a slightly-emaciated, pale person who is followed around by skeletons, zombies, or spectral ghosts that serve them.

D&D Necromancers have historically raised the undead only through temporary spells - actually, Animate Dead and Create Undead technically raise the undead indefinitely, but you lose control over them if you don't cast the spell again.

But I think if we're going to be a true Necromancer, perhaps we shouldn't be so limited. I think a true master of Necromancy should be able to hold onto some minions.

So: to begin with, let's get the obvious out of the way:

The primary feature Necromancers should get at level 3 is some kind of pet in the vein of a Beast Master's (the updated version). That means a stat block that scales as we level up (in Wizard,) and probably has a single attack that uses our spell attack modifier as its attack modifier. You'd be able to re-summon it for free on a long rest, and maybe expend a spell slot of any level as an action (or a minute) to get it back if it dies.

Players could customize their minion's appearance - make it skeletal, make it spectral, make it a zombie, whatever brings you joy.

Now, you might be pointing out that the Reanimator Artificer is already doing something like this - though I'll also note that WotC has not been shy about sharing concepts between classes before, like the Drakewarden and Purple Dragon Knight, or the Rune Knight Fighter and Giant Barbarian.

But it's also fine, because I'm going to propose something very unorthodox. And I will say, this might be a deal-breaker. But bear with me (I'll also note that this shares a lot of ideas with what MCDM has proposed for their Summoner class).

In this version of the Necromancer, you get a number of minions equal to the tier of play. That means 1 minion at levels 3 and 4, 2 at levels 5-10, 3 at levels 11-16, and 4 at levels 17-20.

But won't that gum up initiative? No. Because no matter how many minions you have, they only have one action between them, and one pool of HP.

The minions have something like "linked essence," which means that they act as one, and they draw on the same pool of unlife energy to keep them animate. Where this might get tricky is Conditions - if one is subjected to a condition, they're all affected.

The damage will probably scale up as each minion is added. I envision it being like 1d6 plus your Intelligence modifier (or maybe a flat 3) at level 4, and then just adding a d6 each time there's a new minion (but the modifier remains flat).

I'll confess, as I think about this, there are some logistical issues that arise: among them being how they're all attacking a target if only some of them are within melee range. Also, while the action is simple, you could still get bogged down in positioning and movement, which can sometimes be the most time-consuming part of a player's turn.

So, let's make a radical shift mid-proposal:

D&D actually already has a mechanic for representing a large group of creatures that act as one: Swarms.

Truthfully, this actually solves a lot of our issues while still maintaining the iconic image. It's just a single stat block, with just one action and just one position on the map.

And I think we can have a lot of fun with how it works that plays on the themes of being a swarm.

First off, let's take a look at the existing pet classes' minions, specifically the Beast Master and the Battle Smith. Both use the PC's spell attack modifier as their attack modifier, so we'll stick with that idea.

The Beast Master has three options for pets, which do different damage. Beast of the Land hits for 1d8+2+the Ranger's Wisdom. The Sea Beast hits for 1d6+2+Wis, and the Air Beast does 1d4+3+wis. So, basically 6.5+Wis or 5.5+Wis. Notably, also, the Beast Master eventually lets the pet attack twice on a single bonus action activation. Also, these attacks can impose conditions as well.

The Battle Smith's Steel Defender does 1d8+PB damage, which means that it scales a little, but certainly doesn't do so as much as the Beast Master's pet (lacking the extra attack upgrade).

I'm inclined to believe that the Necromancer, who will have plenty of power as a Wizard, can probably stand to have a less powerful-hitting minion. The exact damage would be determined by playtesting, of course, but I'd propose something like 2d4+Int (the multiple dice because it's multiple creatures). 

Next question: do we want to give the Necromancer multiple options for the kind of minions they get? I'm inclined, actually, to say no, given that there are other spells they can use to summon undead minions. This subclass feature should play a specific role, and that role is to protect the Necromancer and attack their foes.

Now: what makes our swarm of minions special?

First off, let's talk size: I think a Large Swarm of Medium and Small Undead is how it should be described. But because it's a swarm, we'll say that it can pass through any space large enough for a medium creature without issue.

Oh, and here's a fun thing: our 14th level feature should let us make it a Huge swarm of Medium and Small Undead.

That's partially an aesthetic thing, but I think we can also lean into the size of the swarm being a benefit:

Being a Swarm, it can occupy the same space as other creatures. And I think we would say that either the Necromancer, or even just any friendly creature who is entirely inside the swarm will get some benefits - perhaps just half cover.

Now, one downside is that the Swarm trait found on creatures also always says that the swarm cannot regain hit points or get temporary hit points. But this feels like something the Necromancer should get around. And we all know how: When a creature is reduced to 0 HP within 30 feet of the swarm, the swarm regains some amount of HP, ignoring its Swarm trait. Let's put a pin in this: we might just alter the Swarm trait on this one for our purposes.

The swarm of minions (perhaps called your "Undead Horde") would be upgraded as you got new subclass features. Let me toss out a few ideas:

At level 6, the first thing I'd say is that our Undead Horde, which was previously doing probably Bludgeoning damage, can now instead deal Necrotic damage. But... hm, that's all well and good, but certainly not enough to feel like a full level's feature. The Horde already has immunity to poison, surely, but maybe we give it immunity to necrotic damage as well, and likely the Necromancer gets resistance to it.

This might be too powerful, but it feels thematic: the Horde gets advantage on attacks against creatures whose space it occupies. Or maybe it's not powerful enough, given that the Horde isn't actually hitting that hard.

Another proposal: When the Horde hits with its Claws of the Dead attack (what I might call its primary attack,) the Necromancer can expend a spell slot to suffuse its strikes with magic power. The necromancer rolls a number of d6s equal to the level of the expended spell slot, and the Horde deals additional necrotic damage equal to the amount rolled. (Again, might need to adjust the damage here - it's clearly less than Divine Smite, but we're also not Paladins).

Ok, that might actually be enough for a 6th level feature.

For a level 10 feature, I think something a little defensive would be helpful: perhaps it's here that we do something along the lines of Grim Harvest, but perhaps a little more powerful given that we have to wait longer to get it.

I'd initially wanted to do something like allowing you to absorb health from any fallen foe, but you run into the Bag of Rats problem. So here's the alternative:

As an action, you can siphon animating energy from your Undead Horde. The Horde takes 30 Force damage. This damage cannot be reduced or prevented in any way. You then gain 30 temporary hit points.

That's the first half, but here's the second half:

If the Undead Horde would take necrotic damage from a spell you cast using a spell slot of 1st level or higher, it instead regains hit points equal to half the necrotic damage it would have taken.

And that feels like plenty for level 10 - it's defensive and thematic.

Now, the capstone:

At level 14, I think it's here that our Horde becomes Huge sized. But what else? Well, perhaps we boost its AC. I think we perhaps made it hit too weakly early on, but maybe it's at this level that we let the thing get two attacks, or we can boost the damage when we infuse it with spell slots.

    So, this is all a big mess because it's my own brainstorm. Does the subclass encourage casting Necromancy spells enough? And is that a problem? I might work on a more formal set of features now that I've got the brainstorm done.

Sacred Weapon vs Vow of Enmity

 Of the four Paladin subclasses in the new Player's Handbook, the two that appeal to me the most are two of the most "basic" ones - Oath of Devotion and Oath of Vengeance. While I was tempted by the Oath of the Watchers in Tasha's, I've generally not been all that impressed by the subclasses that came out in the various supplements (Oath of Glory might be my least favorite, and I was kind of disappointed to see it in the PHB instead of something off-beat like Oath of Conquest).

Paladins get a lot of amazing features as base class features, so I think, honestly, that any Paladin can be quite good. But both of these subclasses grant you a Channel Divinity option that aids in your ability to hit targets.

In 2014, these two features had very different action-economy costs. Vengeance's Vow of Enmity cost a bonus action to activate, which allowed you to pretty easily use it on your first turn and then unload on your target. And Smites didn't take any action, so you could come right out the gate with a smite on two attacks made at advantage.

Sacred Weapon, however, was a bit frustrating - it took your full action to activate, meaning that even though you were now more likely to hit, you'd spent a turn just gearing up. If you could get this off before a fight, it was quite good, but with only a single minute duration, you really needed to be quick on the draw and have a generous DM.

Now, however, the action economy of both features works the same - neither takes any action, and can just be activated when you take the Attack action (which is when you'd want it anyway). Let's get specific on how they work:

Sacred Weapon allows you, when you take the Attack action, to expend a use of Channel Divinity to supercharge the weapon you're holding with positive energy. While charged this way, you can add your Charisma modifier to attack rolls made with the weapon, and if you want, the weapon can deal Radiant damage instead of its normal damage. The weapon also glows, shedding bright light for 20 feet and dim light another 20. And you can end this effect early whenever you want (it also ends if you aren't holding the weapon anymore).

Vow of Enmity allows you, when you take the Attack action, to expend a use of Channel Divinity to utter a vow of enmity against a creature you can see within 30 feet, which lasts for 1 minute. While under the effects of the vow, you get advantage on attacks against that creature. If the creature drops to 0 HP while under the vow, you can transfer the vow to another target within 30 feet.

So, before we get into the math, let's make a few observations: The first is that Sacred Weapon lasts ten times as long as Vow of Enmity, and while ten minutes isn't a lot of time, it's possible that you could get use of it through multiple combat encounters - though probably only occasionally unless you're in true old-school dungeon-crawl mode. Another consideration that favors Sacred Weapon is that the effect is on your weapon, and so it will remain there for the full duration regardless of how many enemies are nearby. One point away from it is that if there is an enemy that can disarm you, the effect can end early.

But let's talk about the damage potential of each.

General wisdom for 5.5e is that it's far easier to get advantage on attacks than it used to be, which might devalue Vow of Enmity a little.

However, if we look at this in a relative vacuum, we should figure out the extent to which this will increase our damage.

Generally, my assumption for most Strength-based characters is that if they want to deal the most damage, they're going to do a Great Weapon Master build, favoring a Greatsword, and possibly switching to a Glaive if they pair it with Polearm Master, because these weapons have the Graze property. Admittedly, we're looking at features that make us miss less often, which devalues Graze, but I still think it's nigh-unbeatable for damage potential among weapon masteries (though Vex and Nick are also strong contenders).

I'm going to run this simulation at level 8. Granted, Paladins get a serious damage boost at level 11, but 8 is where my current longest-played character is at, and also feels like a good level for "meat and potatoes" D&D.

We'll assume Point Buy and a background that has allowed us to start with a 17 in Strength and 16 in Charisma. At level 4, we've taken Great Weapon Master, and at 8, I think we probably have taken Mage Slayer - meaning we're at 19 Strength, and thus a +4 to Strength and +3 to Charisma.

Now, what AC are we dealing with? While Channel Divinity is not that hard to get back, I'm going to assume a slightly tougher foe. And surely there are few better foes for a Paladin than a Death Knight. Now, a Death Knight proper is a bit high-CR for a level 8 party - they can work as a boss at the end of tier 2 for 10th level characters, but this might be a bit much. Luckily, we've got a lower-powered Death Knight in the Aspirant, which could be a scary but ultimately manageable powerful foe. And both have an AC of 20.

Generally, I've done a lot of my calculations here of late assuming only mundane weapons. I do think that by level 8 I'd hope your DM would have given you a +1 weapon at least. I'm not entirely sure how this would change the math. Still, it's easier to just assume mundane and move on from there.

Now, here's another complication: a Paladin, especially fighting an undead or fiend target, is probably going to burn their bonus action on a Divine Smite if they land a critical hit. Thus, we might actually ignore the Hew element of Great Weapon Master (they still might use the Hew attack when downing a lesser foe).

Initially, we'll ignore Divine Smite. This is likely to favor Vow of Enmity, as it increases our chance to crit, so only if Sacred Weapon does better will we take it into consideration.

Baseline, our Paladin has a +7 to hit. Sacred Weapon will boost this to +10. Thus, the Vengeance Paladin (before accounting for advantage) has a 40% chance to hit. The Devotion Paladin has a 55% chance to hit.

Damage on a hit is 2d6+7 (getting an extra 3 from Great Weapon Master), for an average of 14

Crit bonus damage is 2d6, or 7.

Thanks to Graze, we also do 4 damage on a miss. What this actually means is that we can subtract the 4 from the hit damage and just add a raw 4 to the average we get in the end. Thus, we can ignore misses when calculating the chances and just treat hits like 2d6+3, or 10.

We'll start with Devotion.

10x55%, or 5.5, plus 7x5%, or .35, gives us 5.85. We then add in that 4 damage we get 100% of the time, giving us 9.85. Double that and we get 19.7

Now Vengeance.

Thanks to advantage, our hit and crit chances are a little different. With a 40% chance to hit on any given die, that gives us a 64% chance to hit (and already, our question might be answered, with caveats). We also have a 9.75% to crit.

Thus, we take that same 10x64%, giving us 6.4, plus 7x9.75%, or .6825, for a total of 7.0825. We then add in that 4 from Strength, giving us 11.0825, and double it to 22.165 for our two attacks.

Rather than continue, it becomes pretty clear that Vengeance has the edge, and will further expand that edge thanks to more opportunities to crit-smite or get off Hew attacks.

And yet...

This is all under the assumption that the Paladin cannot get advantage in some other way. If an ally gets off Faerie Fire, or the foe can be repeatedly knocked prone, Vow of Enmity loses its value, while Sacred Weapon will continue to increase your hit chance in all scenarios.

The... Oh, Crap, I Guess the Title I Was Intending Would be a Spoiler. Um... Stuff About Clair Obscur: Expedition 33

 I've been living with Expedition 33 in my head since its release a couple months ago. It was one of those experiences where you find yourself experiencing a work of art and think: "this will be discussed for years and years to come."

It was huge enough to actually distract me from appreciating the game I'd played immediately prior, Lies of P, which was less revolutionary but still an excellent game.

It's actually kind of fascinating: Lies of P takes the Souls-like genre of action RPGs and infuses it with a more personal, emotional sense of stakes. I love FromSoft games (see like a third of the posts on this blog) but I do find that my engagement with them is far more cerebral than emotional, my analysis more an exercise in parsing what story it is we're receiving than necessarily processing my emotional response to them.

Lies of P has its own cryptic lore, but also delves down into the themes of what it means to be human with a story filled with tragedy, grief, and regret.

But dear lord, I don't know that I've ever felt more emotionally gut-punched by a game than Expedition 33. There were moments in Alan Wake II that might have matched it, but its biggest such moment was subverted with a twist. Expedition 33's twists are the twist of a knife. There are profound philosophical questions raised by the story, but I think that this game encourages you to engage with them on a deeply emotional level.

While it's a turn-based RPG - a genre whose fading from prominence over the last 25 years or so has been a strange thing as someone who remembers an era when that's what an RPG was - Expedition 33 does have some elements that resemble Souls-likes games - its resetting of most monsters when resting, its regenerating items (rather than having you stock up on consumables,) and its challenging dodge and parry mechanics (which, to be fair, are at least as old as Super Mario RPG, though the fact that these fully avoid damage makes it feel more like the high-stakes dodging of a Dark Souls game).

What I'm sort of curious about, though, is to what extent there is an underlying hidden plot behind the main story.

In fairness, I don't know of any other games that get quite as conspiracy-board-complex with their hidden backstories as those from FromSoft. I actually think that the Remedy Universe (currently just Control and Alan Wake II, and retroactively the first Alan Wake) gets close. I've even seen some interesting videos suggesting there's a lot of hidden story within the Zelda games.

But the explicit story of Expedition 33 is already so grand and truly original that it almost feels like it would be kind of redundant to seed so much of a subtly implied one.

And yet, there's clearly something there.

Ok, that's plenty of preamble. Let's get into spoiler territory.