A Take on Darsino for D&D

 I love my undead Rogue, Darsino. The first character I got to the then-level cap back in Burning Crusade (I started playing in September of 2006, during Vanilla, but leveling took a long time, and so I think my highest-level character by the time the first expansion came out was only in the 30s - I was also already a big altoholic; see the name of the blog).

Anyway, except for a brief stint focusing on Assassination around I think Warlords of Draenor, he's always been primarily a Subtlety Rogue, a subclass that seems to finally, after like two decades, be having a day in the limelight as one of the top DPS specs (not that it matters much given that I'm almost purely a solo player these days).

I was always drawn, when it comes to the Rogue, to the notion of being an unseen shadow, a blade in the dark striking out and taking down foes without being seen, and the Subtelty specialization really leans into at least the flavor of Stealth.

But here's my issue: after playing a Rogue for around a year in a campaign that eventually fell apart due to a busy DM, I don't love the Rogue as a class in D&D. I think it's got a lot of potential, but I've always wanted it to be more of a martial glass cannon that needs to be evasive and sneaky to survive, but hits like a freight train. We get the former, but it tends to come up short on the latter, instead focusing a bit more on being a skill monkey.

I've always had running concepts of what my World of Warcraft characters might be like in D&D, but with the WoW sourcebook coming out in two months, that potential feels closer to reality. So, how would I do it?

Truthfully, the only character option I'm sure doesn't yet exist but will is going to be the Forsaken playable species. In WoW, the official term for the playable race is just "Undead," which is also a creature type that Undead player characters... are not. Even more than in D&D, every player character in WoW counts as humanoid (with rare exceptions like the Death Knight's Lichborne ability temporarily making them count as undead, among other benefits).

The justification for this, though, is that while the playable Undead are, yes, former humans who died and rose again, they had their souls returned to them. So, they're sentient and sapient, with their normal free will and minds, but in decayed and rotten bodies that look like zombies. Originally raised into undeath as part of the Undead Scourge, this faction that regained their souls came to be known as The Forsaken, and eventually were brought into the Horde by the Tauren, who sympathized with their plight and sought to find some way to cure them and restore them to true life (though given that the living humans distrusted the Forsaken and tried to wipe them out along with the Scourge, it also made sense to align themselves with a faction that could realistically oppose the Alliance).

Anyway, I had some thoughts on how to replicate the actual feel of playing Darsino in WoW, and I came to an interesting conclusion:

He's going to be mostly a Fighter.

In WoW, the Warrior is the rough equivalent to the Fighter (I'd argue that the Fury Warrior is more Barbarian, though interestingly, the book seems to be positioning the Barbarian as the Shaman equivalent, which is funny given that Shamans in WoW all have a fair amount of spellcasting, even if one is still a melee/magic hybrid).

But in D&D, Fighters can take on many forms, and one can be a light (or medium) armored, dexterity-focused character.

Fighters are also the gold standard on actually being good at dealing a lot of damage with weapons (while the Paladin is arguably a stronger class overall, that's more because of their spells and support features, like Aura of Protection).

Now, Subtlety Rogues have a few abilities that allow shadowy clones of them to appear and strike at targets before vanishing. It's actually not unlike the Shadow in Draw Steel, which gets a similar feature at high levels (truly I think its Black Ash subclass for Shadows is about as close to a WoW Sub Rogue as you can get in a TTRPG). While this theme only emerged in the last couple expansions, I think it's one I'm going to lean into, in part because it aligns us with one of the coolest Fighter subclasses in the game: the Echo Knight.

The Echo Knight was from Explorer's Guide to Wildemount, and as Critical Role gets sort of less entangled with Wizards of the Coast in an official capacity (though they did choose to stick with D&D for campaign 4 rather than going to their in-house game, Daggerheart,) I highly doubt we'll be seeing the Echo Knight reprinted in 5.5.

But that means it's going to still be the super powerful subclass it always has been.

The crux of the Echo Knight is that you can summon an echo of yourself (flavored as an alternate timeline variant of yourself, though this is pretty flexible) nearby with a bonus action, and you can effectively attack from its position or yours, choosing on each attack. The echo is fragile, with only 1 HP, but you can endlessly resummon it. You can also use a bonus action to swap places with it, giving it actually a ton of out-of-combat utility (summon it up on a high ledge and then swap places, for instance).

A number of times equal to your Con modifier, you can make one extra attack as part of the Attack action, but this has to be from your Echo's space.

For gearing, I'd build this around dual-wielding. While the Subtlety Rogue fights exclusively with daggers in WoW, that's not quite as viable in D&D. I think we'd probably instead go with a Shortsword and either a Scimitar or Dagger. The Scimitar does slightly better damage, 1d6 versus 1d4, but the Dagger has the advantage of the thrown property, and if we ever decide to take the Piercer feat, we could make all of our weapons piercing (even if we carry a Shortbow for ranged fighting when we need to).

Fighters get an insane number of weapon masteries, so there's no fear that we'll have any weapon we're using covered. We'll attack with our Shortsword for most of our attacks, and just get our off-hand with the Dagger. Thankfully, Nick makes this part of the attack action, leaving our bonus action open.

Depending on the level we start at, we might eschew stealth and go for bulky medium armor like Scale Mail. Once we cap our Dexterity, though, we will probably want to stick with Studded Leather, as this will give us the highest potential AC and no disadvantage on Stealth checks (we could get higher AC if we got Medium Armor Master, but this no longer removes the stealth disadvantage from Half Plate). If we can get a Breastplate very early, it'll be decent, but by level 4, when we should have a +4 to Dex, Studded Leather will do us fine.

Now, we want to get 6 levels of Fighter before we multiclass into Rogue. We want to get Extra attack at level 5, and then the Fighter's bonus feat at level 6. In fact, I believe that if we put 10 levels into Rogue and 10 into Fighter, we'll eventually have 6 general feats (though getting 11 levels in Fighter for our third attack might be a better investment - oh well, this build is only going to level 10).

Indeed, actually, by the time we hit level 10, if we have Fighter 6 and Rogue 4, that means 3 general feats, which is what a straight Fighter or straight Rogue would get at that level anyway.

Rogue subclass is a less obvious choice. Subtlety Rogues in particular in WoW have a bit of a "shadow magic" theme to them, though only lightly. I was even tempted to go Shadow Monk, but I think the choice here is probably just Arcane Trickster, generally seen as the best Rogue subclass because, well, magic.

Unlike many ATs, though, I don't think I'd grab Booming Blade, because that's really great if we only want to make a single attack. Darsino is going to be making three attacks by this point with each attack action (2x shortsword and 1x dagger). So, spells would primarily be for utility. We'd likely grab Disguise Self and things like Message, Minor Illusion, and maybe Prestidigitation (just because I always like having that). We get Mage Hand automatically.

For other 1st level spells (and we will only have 1st level spells for a long time,) Shield is obviously always good to have, and then perhaps getting Jump could be another way to make us more nimble, jumping across rooftops and such.

Now, feats: we will actually have plenty of feats to choose from.

For our fighting styles, I'm grabbing Two Weapon Fighting. This is one of the best fighting style feats in terms of how much damage you can add to your output each turn.

I actually think I won't be taking Dual Wielder. We're going to have a lot of uses for our bonus action, between our Echo and our Cunning Actions, and I just don't think that we can afford the feat for a somewhat weak attack once per turn. Yes, Rogues really benefit from having tons of opportunities to land Sneak Attack, but we're already getting three per turn.

Instead, I think Mage Slayer is a great gimme option, mostly for the pseudo legendary resistance.

Then, and sure, this feat isn't necessarily the best, but it feels really on-theme, I'm going for Skulker. This gives advantage on Stealth checks to hide mid-combat, gives us blindsight (which Rogues eventually get but we might be able to given our fighter levels) and prevents us from losing the Hidden condition if we miss with a ranged attack.

Finally, we could grab Piercer, which is ok. But again, perhaps less optimal but something I might just like, I kind of want to go Skill Expert. This will grant us one extra skill (making up for the one fewer skill we got for not starting as a Rogue - we do still get one extra skill when we multiclass into it, but Rogues normally get two extra) and one extra expertise.

The full list I grabbed was Acrobatics, Deception, Insight, Investigation, Perception, Sleight of Hand, and Stealth (using the Criminal background reskinned as Spy, which is how I've always conceived of Darsino, as basically one of the top intelligence agents of the Deathstalkers). Expertise is put into Stealth, Perception, and Deception (the latter of which makes up for dumping Charisma).

As mentioned above, the Criminal background grants Alert, which feels like a solid feat choice especially for a character who prefers to get the drop on his foes.

So, by level 10, with 6 levels of fighter and 4 of rogue, he will have his Dexterity capped at 20.

Ok, so here we are:

How much damage do we do versus a Wyvern?

Sadly, this is a build that uses Vex weapons, which vex me when it comes to figuring out the actual chances of having advantage on our attacks.

Our echo is not a creature (it actually doesn't specify that it's an object either, but that's how I'd treat it in game terms) so we won't be able to flank with it (though flanking isn't even mentioned in the 5.5 core rules, and I think it's actually reasonable to disallow it).

But, we're very sneaky. So, I'm going to skew things here a little: let's just assume we have advantage on all of our attacks. That might inflate our damage output a little bit, but I don't know that it's even that unrealistic. And it just makes my life far easier.

Ok, so, we have a +9 to hit with all of our attacks. Each turn we make two Shortsword attacks and one Dagger attack. If we hit on any of them, we will get our Sneak Attack bonus, which is 2d6 at this rogue level. If we go all out, we can use Unleash Incarnation to make one additional attack with our Echo. Our bonus action will be used to summon/position our echo, or use Cunning Action to hide or otherwise survive the fight better.

So, Shortswords with advantage: against an AC of 14, we're talking hitting on a 5 or higher, so that's an 80% chance to hit normally, which becomes a 96% chance to hit with advantage. With advantage we have a 9.75% chance to crit. We deal 1d6+5 damage on a hit, or 8.5, and 3.5 extra on a crit.

Thus, 8.5x96% is 8.16 and 3.5x9.75% is roughly .34, so we're looking at 8.5 average damage per shortsword attack, and thus doubled to 17.

Our dagger does 1d4+5 damage, or 7.5 on a hit, and 2.5 more on a crit, with the same hit and crit chances, so 7.5x96% is 7.2 and 2.5x9.75% is roughly .24, so we're looking at 7.44, bringing our total damage up to 25.44

Now, our sneak attack. With all this assumed advantage, we can probably guess that we'll be getting this if we hit. Our chance to actually land a hit on one of our three attacks is basically one minus 4% (our miss chance) cubed. So, 4% cubed is .0064%, meaning we are more or less guaranteed to get our sneak attack - literally the chance we miss on all three attacks is so low that I'd typically round it off.

However, we might crit. So, I'm going to basically treat the damage here as 100% plus 9.75%. 2d6 is 7 on average, so 7x109.75% is about 7.7.

Thus, the damage becomes 33.14.

We can only use Unleash Incarnation a couple times per long rest (our Con isn't enormous given the background we chose and the desire to put a little more into Intelligence and Wisdom, which are pretty important Spy stats,) so I think we can only really assume we're using this once in this fight, unless we really want to go all out.

This simply adds another Shortsword attack, so we get to toss in an extra 8.5, bringing turn 1 up to 41.14.

It's not amazing damage, to be frank. But I do think we'll be extremely slippery, between Cunning Action and swapping with our Echo. We can even play it really safe and send our Echo out to make all of our attacks if we want, striking against some dangerous foe while we're running for cover, so I think this could be very fun to play.

At higher levels, I think we'd probably want to put at least two more levels into Fighter (grabbing another feat, but also getting our level 7 subclass feature, which gives us some more utility). Then, four more levels into Rogue would boost our Sneak attack, give us another feat, get us 2nd level spells, and also give us Reliable Talent and Evasion, Cunning Strikes, Uncanny Dodge, and more Expertise. By that point we'd be level 16, but if we were pushing into tier 4, I think probably we put our last 4 levels into Fighter, getting a third attack by level 19 and another feat at level 20, plus, like Indomitable and Tactical Master (though our Vex and Nick properties are probably going to be what we want to stick with most of the time) and our level 10 Echo Knight feature, Shadow Martyr.

Alternatively, if we only went to Fighter 8 and did Rogue 12, we'd actually wind up with 7 total General feats, our Sneak Attack would eventually grow to 6d6, and we'd get more Arcane Trickster stuff including Magical Ambush and some more spells. For 2nd level spells, Invisibility feels like a classic one, and I love a good Misty Step (very much like Shadow Step from WoW).

Conjuring with the Conjurer

 The Conjurer Wizard has a special place for me because my best friend in the first D&D game I ran (years before I ever got to play as a PC) made a High Elf School of Conjuration Wizard. It's a character I'd love him to bring back in a future campaign, and I think we'd both be happy with him updating to this new 5.5 version.

A lot of classes have what I'd consider the "quintessential" subclass - your Berserker Barbarians, your Devotion Paladins, your Open Fist Monks. Wizards, though... I don't know that they really have one. However, if you forced me to pick one, yeah, I might say Evoker, but Conjurers, even if they didn't show up in the new PHB, feel kind of like the classic Wizard archetype. After all, isn't it a fantasy trope for the king to have a "Court Conjurer?"

One of the funny things about Conjuration magic is that it focuses on two conceptually related but still very distinct things: one is teleportation magic, and the other is summoning magic.

Again, conceptually, I get that summoning things is like teleporting them (perhaps across planes,) so it does kind of fit together.

As far as I can tell, there weren't a ton of changes between the last UA with the revised arcane subclasses and the final version out of Arcana Unleashed, so I'm not really going to go in deep on every feature. I'm also... a little burned out on all my hypothetical "vs. Wyvern" calculations.

But I figure we can talk about this subclass a bit. I'm not going to give it a "tier ranking" but I did figure we could look at what you can do with it.

First off, Benign Transposition remains your main low-level feature. From 3-5, it is now basically a better Misty Step you can do Int times per day. While you can easily get Misty Step, especially with Conjuration Savant, there's actually a decent argument to not even grab it on level-ups, because you'll have access to this.

Here are the ways in which it's better to use this over Misty Step: First off, it's not a spell that costs a spell slot, so you can do this even if you took an action to cast a spell with a spell slot. Second, it can swap you with an ally. This is especially good if a monster broke off from a melee character to attack you - you can get away from the monster and then get your Barbarian friend in its face immediately.

Finally, at level 6, the range increases to 60 feet, making it twice the distance of Misty Step. Also, at 6 you can recharge its uses with 3rd or higher level spell slots. Now, Misty Step is only a 2nd level spell, so you've got to ask yourself if the extra distance, ability to swap with a friend, and the fact that it's not a spell (can't be countered, for example) is worth a higher level slot.

That being said, while Misty Step can be absolutely clutch when needed, I don't often cast it more than once or maybe twice a day. So I honestly don't think we will need to really worry about the spell slot cost to recharge.

But it's at 6 that the thematic focus of the subclass starts to shift over from the teleportation stuff to the summoning stuff.

Durable Summons is good. Quite good. Let's pick a Summon spell. We'll say Summon Fey, which is one of the better ones (Summon Undead, interestingly, will not work with this feature, as it's the only "Summon X" spell that is from the Necromancy rather than Conjuration school). While I'd generally advise always casting these spells at even levels, given that we get this feature at level 6, we'll look at it cast at base level.

Our Fey spirit would have 30 HP. With Durable Summons, they get 12 Temp HP, which is 40% more. Already pretty good. But that 12 THP also confers resistance to everything except Force, Necrotic, Psychic, and Radiant damage. That's admittedly a wide spread of damage types, but especially if you know what kind of threats you're likely to face, you can pick foes that are unlikely to do any of those.

An interesting rules question, though: does all the damage happen as a single instance, or do we only halve it up to the point that there's Temp HP? In other words, let's say a monster hits this thing for a crushing 30 bludgeoning damage.

Does that fully get halved to 15 total, meaning our Fey Spirit now has 27 HP? Or do we say that 24 of that damage gets halved by the Temp HP and then the remaining 6 carry over without resistance to lower the Spirit to 24 HP?

I think I'd be inclined to rule it more simply: that even if it breaks through the Temp HP, it's still all halved, and it's just subsequent hits that will no longer be reduced by resistance.

The point of this, though, is that while the Temp HP is only half our Wizard level, because it's also granting resistance, it's really (in most situations) effectively more like 4 times our Wizard level. That's quite good scaling - by level 20, our summons could take an extra 80 damage.

Indeed, I think that the main big risk of any sort of summoning spell is that there are multiple ways for foes to end it early: they can break your concentration, they can kill the summon, or they can dispel it. This one really helps you avoid or at least delay scenario number 2.

Then, at level 10, problem number 1 is more or less solved. Very simply, you can't lose concentration from taking damage.

Now, we can take feats and such to make it far harder to lose concentration. War Caster paired with Resilient: Constitution (or getting Con save proficiency some other way) is great in the majority of cases, but if you get hit with a dragon's breath at high levels that does something like 90 damage, there is no way you're ever going to make the Concentration save (though Absorb Elements can certainly help). But here, as long as they don't fully knock you out, or stun/incapacitate you, that spell isn't going anywhere.

(Note that this will help with any Conjuration spell, so if you're in "empty the tank" mode combining Conjure Minor Elementals and Scorching Ray, this will make that much safer to do so.)

Finally, at level 14, there's Split Summons. Here, when you cast a Summon spell (or any Conjuration spell that creates a creature that has a stat block in the spell - very specific here, so we're excluding things like Summon Greater Demon from Xanathar's) you can instead summon two creatures, but they each have half their usual Hit Points.

Here's the fun trick, though: they should each gain the Temp HP from Durable Summons.

So, let's say you cast Summon Fiend at 6th level, getting a pair of yugoloths (while Summon spells give you three options for what kind of thing you're summoning, I think the specification that they be the "same kind" here means you can't mix, say, a Demon and a Yugoloth).

Yugoloths created with Summon Fiend have 60 HP (the highest of the three options). That means two of them will each have 30 HP. But at level 14, we're going to be giving each 28 Temp HP. That means even before we take resistances into account, we're nearly at the same number of points of damage that the conjured creatures can take (and if we had chosen Demons, they'd only have 25 HP a piece, or if they were Devils, only 20, so they'd actually have higher HP+THP than they'd typically have without any of these subclass features). Obviously, with the resistance from Durable Summons, they wind up being significantly more resilient than a single one would be summoned by anyone else.

And then, you know, effectively double the damage of the spell.

Indeed, if we look at double Yugoloths vs. a Wyvern, assuming a +10 spell attack modifier, we're looking at hitting on a 4 or higher (85% hit chance). Each Yugoloth is making three attacks, and each is hitting for 1d8+9 (13.5 on a hit, 4.5 extra on a crit). That's 11.7 per attack and six attacks, so we're looking at 70.2 damage per turn.

Now, of course, we shouldn't compare this with our other "vs Wyvern" things because this would be four levels later, but it's clear that this feature can give us a real bombardment of attacks (the Yugoloth is one of the lighter-hitting summons, even).

    Now, how you flavor a Conjurer could come in a whole lot of different varieties. Indeed, are you more excited about traveling to other planes or across great distances? Perhaps you're a bright-eyed explorer, and your summons are more about the fantastical creatures you've seen.

Alternatively, I think you can play this subclass in a more antiheroic manner. Indeed, I think when many of us think of Warlocks, we think of a practitioner of dark magic, who might conjure forth demons and other foul beings to do their bidding. Frankly, I think that the Conjurer is a better fit for that "Demonologist" or "Diabolist" archetype (it's why I thought that I might actually make my World of Warcraft Warlock a Wizard in D&D terms). While I hate to lend credibility to the Satanic Panic, doesn't it feel like we need some lower-level fiend-summoning spells in 5E?

Of course, summoning creatures need not be dark and antiheroic. Wizards get access to most of the Summon spells, and I think Fey, Constructs, Elementals, and Dragons all make for perfectly morally neutral summoning options, while Aberrations and Fiends (and Shadowspawn if we're going into 5.0 spells) give you a darker edge (and again, Undead, though that's a Necromancy spell).

Conjurers can still make ample use of the Conjure spells (though only two in the PHB are available to Wizards - Conjure Minor Elementals and Conjure Elemental,) but this subclass does really seem built around the "put a new creature on the board" options.

The new Battle Familiar spell could work ok with this subclass, but with some odd caveates: If you already have a familiar, you might not actually get the benefits of Durable Summons, as this triggers when you "summon or create" a creature with a Conjuration spell that costs a spell slot. If your DM is really  strict, they might argue that because you're altering your familiar rather than conjuring them anew, they wouldn't benefit.

Also, the strict wording on how Battle Familiar interacts with Split Summons is interesting: first off, the subclass feature says you can use it when you cast a spell that summons a spirit that is included in the stat block. It does specify "spirit," which is how all the Summon spells describe their conjured creatures, even if it's not in an obvious creature type line (they're all instead titled "Aberrant Spirit" or "Elemental Spirit.") So, I think the intent is for you to use this only with "Summon" spells.

But if we are allowed to use this with Battle Familiar, we run into another interesting rules question: Battle Familiar stipulates a "one familiar at a time" rule, which means you can't cast the spell over and over to have a bunch of concentration-free familiar pets. Specifically, it says that "if you cast this spell while you already have a familiar from this spell, that familiar is replaced with the new one," and then goes on to explain how it temporarily buffs and alters an existing familiar from the Find Familiar spell.

But in theory, if we could apply Split Summons, we could cast Battle Familiar while we have zero familiar, and then immediately get two. Neither is being conjured by a new spell when we already have a Familiar.

Honestly, though, I think the specificity that Split Summons only works on spells that summon Spirits means we probably can't use it on Battle Familiar anyway. It's still a spell worth considering, as we could have yet another body on the field doing a few attacks.

    Overall, though, I think that the subclass seems like a lot of fun, and one I'd be tempted to play if I hadn't spent the last four or five years (and still going) playing a Wizard already.

Vestige Lock vs. Wyvern

 The Vestige Patron for Warlocks is one of the most buzz-generating subclasses to come out of Arcana Unleashed. Your patron is a dying god, who manifests as a companion pet that fights alongside you in battle. It's a really interesting inversion of the usual patron/warlock dynamic, and while I think you could certainly flavor it more as your patron manifesting an avatar to serve you, the biggest deal, I think, is that it's a Warlock pet subclass.

As someone whose first class-based RPG was World of Warcraft, Warlocks and Hunters (er, Rangers) have always felt natural as pet classes. And indeed, we'll be able to come with many flavors of pet, as the vestige can be undead, celestial, or fiend, with slightly different abilities depending on your choice.

So, how do we want to build this thing? While Pact of the Blade can be a higher damage option, I think here we're going to go the classic Blastlock route. Admittedly, if you play with Flanking (which appears nowhere in the 5.5 official rules, by the way) you might be inclined more toward Pact of the Blade, but I think my general assumption is that most Warlocks prefer to stay at range.

Unlike other pet subclasses, our companion can actually make ranged attacks as well, so if we want to keep both ourselves and our friend at a safe distance, we'll just hang back and lob attacks from afar.

Because we're building to level 10, we'll be skipping out on the 14th level feature (which is actually pretty great - eventually giving you essentially an extra 9th level slot to cast a Summon spell).

Ok, let's get into it:

As usual, we'll be looking to use a good concentration spell, and one that won't take up our bonus action, as we'll need that for the companion. I'll note as well that we might consider picking up Battle Familiar, which is available to Warlocks and doesn't require concentration. Like the Summon spells we get, it's fire-and-forget. Pact of the Chain is all well and good, but it's usually not worth sacrificing one of your attacks for the familiar's attack (and if we're using Eldritch Blast, we aren't taking the attack action anyway).

At 5th level, our Battle Familiar will be making two attacks that deal 12.5 force damage per hit. We might go with the Flyer to let them dodge in and out of melee range - they only have a 30 foot fly speed, so the safest bet is to fly 15 feet above a target and then dive-bomb them.

But that leaves a concentration slot open. I actually really like the utility that Summon Undead gives, but the math on whether, say, the Putrid one actually poisons and then paralyzes the target can get pretty messy. We might instead choose the Skeletal version to just do some pure damage, and again, at range where we and our vestige will be hanging out.

Essentially, once we have all of this up and running, we can have four creatures (us, our familiar, our skeleton, and our vestige) all bombarding the target with ranged attacks. There are two rounds of set up required, but both Battle Familiar and Summon Undead last an hour, so we could get this running if we know we're going into a fight.

Mind you, we choose one of the Domain Spell lists from the PHB, which function as our patron spells for this subclass. While Crusader's Mantle from the War Domain could be great, our pets aren't using weapons (technically the Battle Familiar would be considered to be making natural weapon attacks, at least in 5.0, but it's a little less clear in 5.5). Thus, I think we stick with these. That's going to take both of our spell slots at level 10, so this is an all-out option, but again, at an hour duration for both spells, we might be able to keep it up through multiple fights.

For invocations, we're obviously grabbing Agonizing Blast. I think that's the only one that's going to directly improve our damage output, but grabbing things like Repelling Blast, maybe even Gift of the Protectors to keep our minions alive, could be good.

Note that if we are casting both Battle Familiar and Summon Undead, we're going to be unable to use Vestige Recovery mid-combat, but again, we're staying at range, so hopefully our buddy isn't going to be getting hit.

    Now, feats:

As usual, I'd generally say grab War Caster and then, as a Charisma-based character, we can pick up Inspiring Leader. The tough thing here is that we probably won't be able to buff our Undead and Battle Familiar with this because it takes a short rest, which will eat up the hour that they last.

Anyway, if we're willing to delay capping Charisma, we should have a Charisma of 19 at level 10, for a +4.

So, let's do the damage calculation!

First, our Eldritch Blasts:

We have a +8 to hit, and we deal 1d10+4, or 9.5 average, on each of two hits, adding 1d10, or 5.5 average, on a crit. Thus, against the Wyvern's we hit on a 6 or higher, meaning a 75% hit chance. So, 75% of 9.5 is 7.125 and 5.5x5% is .275, so we get 7.4 average damage per blast, and thus 14.8 from this cantrip.

Next, our Vestige. We use a bonus action to command it to attack once. It also has a +8 to hit, and deals 1d6+7 on a hit (average 10.5) and an extra 3.5 average on a crit. 75%x10.5 is 7.875 and 5%x3.5 is .175, so we get 8.05 from the Vestige.

Then, we have our Battle Familiar, which does 2 attacks that hit for 1d8+8 per hit (12.5 average) and 4.5 extra on a crit. 75%x12.5 is 9.375, and 4.5x5% is .225, so we get 9.6 average per hit, and thus 19.2 average damage per turn from the spell.

Finally, we've got Summon Undead. The skeletal form does 2d4+8 damage on a hit (13 average) and 5 extra average on a crit. 75%x13 is 9.75, and 5x5% is .25, so that's a nice clean 10 damage per attack, and with two attacks, we've got 20.

Add it all up, and we're looking at 62.05 damage per round. Hey, when you're making seven attacks a turn, it adds up!

Now, if we get caught unaware, and still want to commit to this strategy, we basically need to layer things in the following way:

Turn 1: Cast Summon Undead and then bonus action command the Vestige. This means 28.05 damage on the first turn.

Turn 2: Cast Battle Familiar and then bonus action command the Vestige, which brings us to 47.25 damage on the second turn.

Turn 3: Eldritch Blast away and then command the vestige, doing our full 62.05.

    Now, the subclass, I think, is mainly giving us utility. That 8.05 extra damage isn't nothing: it brings this up to "really good" instead of just "pretty good" damage. But you can pull this off with other subclasses and do quite well. I'll also say that you might consider Summon Fey instead of Undead if you're going for maximized damage.

Still, it goes to show you that you can put out some big numbers here.

Class Spell Lists? Who Needs Them? The Adept Feats

 In the campaign where I play a Wizard, we did no conferring with one another when making characters, which gives us a weird party: we have two Wizards, two Paladins, and a Fighter. Now, we're level 11 now and one of the Paladins has multiclassed into Warlock while the Fighter now has levels in Rogue, so we do actually have 5 classes between our five PCs.

But you'll note that the only people in the party who can cast healing spells are the Paladins, and the straight-paladin (though the character is certainly not straight in that sense - in my games, it's always the paladins, not the bards, who are the horniest) still won't get Mass Cure Wounds or Greater Restoration unless/until we hit tier 4.

Now, my character's family back home has a few artificers in it - his father and twin sister both working as engineers at Port Damali's airship docks (did I write that into my backstory to try to get us some airship adventures? Yes. Have we had any? No. And we now have teleportation magic, so it's unlikely we will). And so, I've considered taking the old Tasha's feat Artificer Adept. Unlike modern general feats, there's no ability score bonus, but if I take Resilient: Constitution at level 12, I'll have already capped Intelligence and have an 18 Con (we rolled stats and I rolled well). But this would give me access to Cure Wounds, at least.

But I have a much better idea now.

There are eight "Adept" general feats in Arcana Unleashed. Their only prerequisite is that you have Spellcasting or the Pact Magic feature.

And each gives you five spells (one for each spell level up to 5) always prepared. And that means that any spellcaster can have access to a lot of spells that were previously locked behind certain class spell lists.

Each also gives an additional feature, so we'll go through them one by one. Naturally, as General feats, they give you an ability score bonus, bumping Intelligence, Wisdom, or Charisma.

But let's go through them:

Abjuration Adept:

Spells: Shield, Lesser Restoration, Protection from Energy, Banishment, Mass Cure Wounds.

    Holy crap! I mean, holy crap. Shield on any spellcaster now! Mass Cure Wounds! Banishment! These are some amazing spells. I'm seriously tempted to take this even though I already have Shield on my Wizard, mainly so that I can do really significant amounts of healing despite being the class that's "never supposed to be able to do that."

On top of this, when you cast an Abjuration spell using a spell slot, you can grant a creature within 30 feet you can see Temp HP equal to twice the level of the spell slot.

    This isn't going to do a ton when you're casting Shield, but a bonus 10 Temp HP on top of Mass Cure Wounds is going to be a bit of extra sauce. But again, the spell list here is incredible.

Conjuration Adept:

Spells: Entangle, Misty Step, Conjure Animals, Dimension Door, Conjure Elemental

    Yeah, we don't have the infamous Conjure Minor Elementals here, but this is not bad. If you were taking Fey Touched mainly for Misty Step, this is going to be probably the better option.

Additionally, when concentrating on a Conjuration spell, you get a bonus to your Con saves to maintain concentration equal to the ability score increased by the feat.

    That's quite nice, and makes up for things if your class doesn't have proficiency in Con saves. And this will work on any Conjuration spells, so if you're using CME or a Summon spell or the like, you'll be more likely to keep it going.

Divination Adept:

Spells: Detect Evil and Good, Mind Spike, Clairvoyance, Divination, Scrying.

    Ok, some good spells that are not very combat-focused (though there's Mind Spike, which is situational).

You also can use a reaction to grand a creature you can see within 60 feet of you Advantage or Disadvantage on a D20 Test. You can do this once per long rest, but recharge the ability when you cast a Divination spell using a spell slot.

    I think this is ok, but you'll need to make sure you're casting a lot of divination spells over the course of a day to get good use of it.

Enchantment Adept:

Spells: Dissonant Whispers, Enthrall, Hold Person, Dominate Beast, Modify Memory

    Pretty campaign-dependent, as Hold Person gets less useful when you're fighting fiends or undead. Dominate Beast is... I doubt very useful in any campaign to be honest. Modify Memory could be really great in Deadfall, actually, and any sort of intrigue-focused campaign.

Additionally, when you cast an Enchantment spell using a spell slot, you can ignore all components except for material components that have a specified cost or are consumed.

    Ah, ok, yes. This is where the power of this feat comes from. If you want to cast Suggestion without making it obvious that you cast Suggestion? Basically, if you want Enchantment spells to work the way they feel like they should? This is going to be really powerful in any intrigue-focused campaign where you want your magic to be less noticeable. Campaign-dependent, sure, but also very good in the right campaign.

Evocation Adept:

Spells: Chromatic Orb, Shatter, Fireball, Vitriolic Sphere, Wall of Force

    Fireball for the masses! That's right, you get a fireball, and you get a fireball, and you get a fireball. You all get a fireball! Seriously, though, this is huge. Fireball might not be the most powerful spell in the game, but it's probably the best AoE damage spell at its weight class. And Chromatic Orb can become downright silly when upcast, while Wall of Force is situational but quite good.

Also, once per turn, if you cast an Evocation spell and deal damage, you can roll up to two unexpended hit dice and expend them, adding the total to one of the spell's damage rolls.

    This is kind of like the Evoker's Overcharge feature, ish. Mainly, this will depend a lot on what counts as "one roll." Obviously, it'll be nice in AoE spells, where a Wizard or Sorcerer would effectively be able to upcast Fireball by two levels with this. If you rule that Magic Missile requires only a single d4 roll and all the missiles do the same damage, this could be enormous (on your Armorer Artificer, going from (1d4+1) x 3 to (2d8+1d4+1) x 3 would be huge. That's going from 10.5 average damage to 37.5 average damage).

Illusion Adept:

Spells: Silent Image, Phantasmal Force, Major Image, Hallucinatory Terrain, Seeming

    Some solid ones, again, less combat-oriented, but really quite good options here.

When you cast an Illusion spell with a spell slot, you can do so without components except material components with a specified cost and/or that are consumed. Additionally, creatures have Disadvantage on investigation checks to discern the illusory nature of your spells.

    Like Enchantment, this is going to let your Illusion spells work the way you want them to in an intrigue-filled campaign. I think the spell choices here are a little more broadly applicable.

Necromancy Adept:

Spells: Inflict Wounds, Ray of Enfeeblement, Vampiric Touch, Blight, Raise Dead

    Ok, some of these spells are bad. Blight does way less damage than it should for a single-target spell, and the same is true for Inflict Wounds (which was better when it was an attack roll in 5.0). I think the number one reason to grab this (at least for spells) is to get a resurrection spell if your party doesn't otherwise have one.

Also, if you cast a Necromancy spell using a spell slot, you can roll two of your unexpended hit dice and regain HP equal to the total rolled plus the spell's level, expending the dice.

    In a pinch, this could be very nice: cast Summon Undead at 4th level as a Wizard and you could heal for 2d6+4. But I don't know how often this will come up.

Transmutation Adept:

Spells: Jump, Spider Climb, Slow, Polymorph, Animate Objects

    There are some real bangers here. Slow is interesting as it's the only big 3rd level crowd control spell that no creature is immune to. Polymorph is extremely versatile and can be a great way to keep a nearly-downed ally in the fight. And Jump is actually quite good in 5.5.

Also, on your turn when you cast a Transmutation spell with a spell slot, your speed increases by 5 feet times the spell's level until the end of your turn.

    That's fun. Cast Polymorph and suddenly you've got an extra 20 feet of movement? That's fun.

Overall Thoughts:

    Again, I think the most exciting (and possibly game-breaking?) part of these feats is letting you grab spells you'd normally not have access to based on your class. Letting anyone be a healer, or letting anyone use Fireball, is going to potentially unlock a lot of new character concepts, and might help shore up parties that aren't built for balance.

    Clearly not all of these are created equal, but I do think that a lot of these feats are going to be quite attractive, even if they don't give you free castings or anything like that.

Going Full Pokemon Trainer with Familiar Feats

 Do you like having a familiar in D&D? Find Familiar, as a spell, is basically a spell that lets you have a pet, which can be a really fun bit of characterization and an opportunity to add a beloved mascot to your adventuring party. And while it's a little expensive to keep summoning them back, it's also a spell that lets you avoid the anxiety real-world pet owners have because your familiar can never permanently die.

But given that, do you wish that they could be more central to how your character plays? Well, Arcana Unleashed really leans into this with a number of feats that support a Familiar-focused playstyle.

To start, we have the Origin Feat, Familiar Friend. This comes with the Familiar Trainer background, a background that grants Con, Int, and Wis as its ability score increases, well-suited for Wizards, Artificers, (Psions eventually,) Druids, and Clerics.

The feat gives you the Find Familiar spell as an always-prepared spell, and lets you cast it once per long rest for free and without material components. So, already, this is going to make things a little more convenient.

Next, your familiar will have higher HP, getting higher current and max HP equal to twice your character level. Given that most familiar stat blocks have 1 HP, that's going to mean tripling it even at level 1, and while it'll take a while before it can truly take a hit, even by level 5 or so, it should be able to survive incidental scratch damage.

Finally, the feat will allow the familiar to grant you advantage on any ability check using a skill you have proficiency with if they're within 5 feet of you, no action required on their part, though they can do this only PB times per long rest.

    This last one is kind of interesting, as in the 5.0 rules, you could give the help action on any check, as could a familiar. To avoid just having all checks get advantage, I instituted a house rule that you have to be proficient in the skill they're using to help, which they then made official in 5.5. Familiars rarely have a whole lot of proficiencies (though they might have Stealth and/or Perception,) meaning their previous role of giving advantage outside of combat isn't really what it used to be. This feat restores some of that functionality, albeit in a limited way.

Now, though, let's talk General Feats. As with all General Feats, you can increase an ability score by 1, to a max of 20. It seems for these it allows any ability. However, these feats do require that you have the Familiar Friend feat, so it's kind of a feat path.

Elemental Familiar lets you imbue your familiar with elemental power when you summon them by casting Find Familiar. You pick Acid, Cold, Fire, Lightning, or Thunder. The familiar gets resistance to the chosen damage type.

Then, as a bonus action, you can command the familiar to use a reaction to burst forth with its elemental energy, forcing all creatures in a 5-foot emanation to make a Dex save, taking 2d4 of that damage type on a failure and getting knocked prone.

    So... this is not great. It's a pretty tiny amount of damage that doesn't scale and is a save for half. That being said, to its credit, you're probably there more for the ability to knock foes prone, and actually, now that I've said that, I think this might not be so bad after all. It's especially powerful if you can get your familiar up to a flying creature. The timing, however, is tricky: technically the familiar is supposed to go on its own initiative, so getting them into place and then having them wait there (fully open to attack) until your turn so you can use your bonus action is... a bit rough. Even if you house-rule that familiars go immediately after the controller's turn, it's still a bit awkward. The only way this really works smoothly is if you let the turns happen simultaneously, which stretches the rules a bit, though I think is within reason.

Otherworldly Familiar lets you imbue the familiar with otherworldly energies, picking between Necrotic, Poison, Psychic, Radiant, or Thunder (huh, Thunder can be from both!)

Like the prior feat, this gives resistance to the chosen damage type. Then, your familiar can move through other creatures and objects as if they were difficult terrain, and if they end a turn inside an object, they're shunted to the last unoccupied space they were in.

    Obviously, this is less of a combat-oriented feat. But if you like to use a familiar as a scout, this is going to make it a lot easier for them to get into places. I'm not convinced this is worth spending a whole feat on. Actually, I think it's not. But if you're really leaning into the theme here, and your DM doesn't have NPCs and monsters instantly kill a tiny spider if it starts walking around their lair, this could be pretty cool.

Soothing Familiar causes your familiar to create a soothing aura in a 5-foot emanation around them. When you or an ally rolls a die to determine the number of hit points restored to a healer, you treat rolls of 1 or 2 as 3s.

    Generally, I don't think these "replace 1s and 2s with 3s" features are good. Now, this will work on any healing, whether it be from spells, potions, or even just spending hit dice on a short rest. This will turn the average roll of a d4 from 2.5 to 3.25, a d6 from 3.5 to 4, and a d8 from 4.5 to 4.875 (are there healing spells that use d10s or d12s? Maybe Conjure Celestial?) Anyway, at best, this is increasing the dice healing of a Healing Word by 30%, though it's really less than that because it does nothing to the flat modifier. Again, I'm just not convinced this is worth a General Feat.

Warlike Familiar gives you the Battle Familiar spell, making it always prepared, and lets you cast it once for free per long rest. Also, while a creature within 5 feet of your familiar is hit with an attack, the familiar cna take a reaction to add a bonus to that creature's AC against the attack equal to your PB.

    So, this is interesting. I did a post about Battle Familiar yesterday, and it's a pretty solid spell, and especially if you're a Cleric, Artificer, or Psion who can' t normally get it, this could be nice. The reaction is also pretty good, though again limited to just one hit per turn. But it could come in clutch, and there's no limit on uses.

Overall thoughts?

    Well, in terms of power, I really think probably Warlike Familiar is the only general feat amongst these worth taking, and even then, it's mainly adding just a little functionality to a spell that you might be able to get anyway.

    There are for sure some very powerful feats in this book, but I'm inclined to think that this stuff is more about building a character around a fun and silly theme than being the most powerful adventurer you could be. It could be very fun to play with these, and again, there are situations where these feats could actually prove really useful. But again, I'm not inclined to think that these are parts of the next big brokenly powerful build.

Battle Familiar!

 I thought I'd go into a deep dive on Battle Familiar, an interesting new spell in Arcana Unleashed.

Between backgrounds, origin feats, and general feats, Arcana Unleashed is going to make anyone who really wants to have a familiar happy. Indeed, I think we'll need to go over some of the frankly crazy feats that have been added, but for now, let's talk about this spell.

Battle Familiar is similar to, but different from, the Summon Spells that first appeared in Tasha's and then got revised and reprinted in the 2024 PHB. There are actually two new Summon spells for "primal" spellcasters (sadly, my Wizard can't summon a dinosaur, as that's Druid-only) but Battle Familiar uses a similar format while being, well, again, quite different.

Ok, here's how it works:

This is a 2nd level conjuration spell available to Druids, Warlocks, and Wizards. It takes an action to cast, requires a 25+ gold diamond (which is actually quite cheap - consider that the component for Summon Beast at the same level is 200 gold) and lasts one hour.

No concentration.

You can summon a brand-new creature with this, but if you have a familiar already via Find Familiar, your regular familiar transforms into this one, but with the template's HP as temp HP on top of your familiar's regular HP. Given that most familiars have 1 HP, it's more or less the same, and Battle Familiar ends if the creature's Temp HP goes away, so it's honestly kind of just flavor. The usual restrictions on its actions are lifted, so the familiar can now attack. It also retains its creature type.

This last bit, I think, is mainly for necromancers. While we can pick Celestial, Fiend, or Fey for the Battle Familiar similar to how we can for Find Familiar, Necromancers can pick Skeletons or Zombies for their familiar, and can let them retain their undead creature type, which helps with some of their other subclass features.

Like the Summon spells, we can pick one of three kinds of battle familiar (in addition to picking their creature type, which doesn't have any inherent alterations to the battle familiar's abilities). These choicse are Brute, Flyer, and Stalker.

By default, the Battle Familiar has an AC of 11 + the spell's level, 20 HP, a 40 foot movement speed and 30 foot swim speed. They add 5 HP for each level beyond 2nd that the spell is cast at.

They have a feature called Talented, where they can add half the spell's level (rounded down) to their ability checks and saving throws. They have the standard Summon multiattack, where it's also a number of Rend attacks equal to half the spell's level rounded down.

Rend deals 1d8 + 3 + the spell's level in Force damage, using your spell attack modifier.

Brutes add 10 HP and 2 to their AC.

Flyers get a 30 foot fly speed with hover, as well as Flyby.

And Stalkers get to replace one of their attacks with Prowl, where they can move up to half their speed without provoking opportunity attacks and hide at the end of that movement.

In terms of damage, this is, I think, on the low end compared to Summon spells, but it is Force damage, which is the most reliable in the game. The HP scaling is also a little worse, as most of those spells get 10 extra HP per spell level (this is closer to Summon Beast).

Notably, like the Familiar, officially, the Battle Familiar rolls its own initiative, at least officially. If you're at my table, that thing is going immediately after your turn.

Ok, so why is this different from the Summon spells? Why would we use this over, say, Summon Fey, Summon Undead, or any of the other ones?

Did I mention it's non-concentration?

That, in a word, is huge. While we can't cast this multiple times, given that we can only have one familiar at a time, this pairs really well with, well, any other concentration spell. But, for example, let's say that you want to put more creatures on the board. Well, use this spell in conjunction with a Summon spell.

Like, say you cast this at 4th level and then cast Summon Fey at 4th level as well. Now, between the two of them, they're making 4 attacks that are dealing 11.5 and 14 per hit. While the familiar can still get knocked out of the fight, you never have to worry about getting some crap roll on concentration and losing this.

Now, how is the Familiar as a, you know, Familiar? Well, the stat block doesn't actually have any skills, so you might want to keep your familiar untransformed if you want to make use of their Stealth or Perception when sending them to spy.

I'll be curious to look into the various Familiar-focused feats and see how they play with this. But it does seem like a pretty solid option.

Deadfall Impressions

 Well, I blazed through Arcana Unleashed: Deadfall, reading the whole adventure once it became available on early access on D&D Beyond.

After finishing season two of Andor, my mind buzzed with the idea of a D&D campaign all about spycraft and underground rebellions. Who'd have thought that the folks at WotC were thinking the same thing? Yes, Deadfall is an adventure in which the party has to work clandestinely to subvert the tyrannical and mass-murdering schemes of Szass Tam, the once and would-be future tyrant of Thay.

It might be apocryphal, but I think the initial concept of Thay was birthed when Ed Greenwood wanted to prevent players from exploring farther east in his map of Faerun - a nation of all Archmages who were super evil and would just kill you on sight.

Naturally, it's been fleshed out a little more, and while Thay is still explicitly defined as a fascist state, its people are not 100% evil, nor 100% archmages. Indeed, much like Zenk in the D&D movie from a couple years ago, there are some from Thay who would like to see the place cease to be an evil, totalitarian regime. And then there's Szass Tam, who would like it to be a more evil, more totalitarian regime under his thumb (ideally in which most of the populace is his own undead minions).

While I've suggested that a game of spycraft seems suited for lower levels, this takes the opposite approach, and I can kind of see why: assuming you build a party for this adventure rather than carrying over a party that did some 1-10 adventure, you can really lean into a lot of classes and subclasses that are ideal for subterfuge. Truly, this is an adventure where I think Knowledge Clerics, Eloquence Bards (ok, they're kind of good in any campaign,) and Rogues of all sorts will probably thrive.

Admittedly, the spycraft stuff does eventually give way to more traditional high-octane action by the end of it, but the earlier part of the adventure does incentivize social skills, maintaining cover and ensuring that you're doing things discreetly.

I will say, I think if I ran this I'd want to lean into players' paranoia. While there's no point in which the adventure says that Szass Tam's agents are scrying on the party or anything like that, I'd lean into what your players throw out there: if they feel that they need to be running spells like Nondetection, for example, have little moments where such spells pay off.

While Thay is not all archmages, the NPCs in this adventure are of quite high CRs. If you haven't had a chance to use any of those CR 10-12ish humanoid NPCs from the 5.5 Monster Manual, well, get ready to see a whole lot of them. I didn't sit down and calculate the difficulty of combat encounters in this, but I suspect that they tend to the high side, with plenty of high-CR demons and undead as well as Bandit Crime Lords, Archmages, Archpriests, etc.

The book is written in a way to really get you from one plot point to the next with alacrity, but it might be useful as a bit of inspiration to build a more complex underground resistance if your players are willing to play a fairly long campaign.

But yes, by making this a tier 3-4 adventure, you're going to have players that are using and relying on powerful Expertise, things like Reliable Talent and high-level spells. It's levels like this where having a DC 18 Persuasion check shouldn't be that difficult if you have a character who leans into such things.

It is interesting to see Thay fleshed out as more of a setting rather than a big "don't go here, it's bad" sign. Red Wizards are infamous as the most monstrous humanoids in the Forgotten Realms, and yet there are a number of good-aligned Red Wizards in this (including the effective group patron, who is very highly positioned in Thayan government).

Again, I think I'd lean into the John LeCarre of it all, and maybe even play some of the party's allies more morally grey. I'm far from the first to say it, but Stellan Skarsgard's character Luthen Rael from Andor is a fantastic example of a person who is working for the greater good but uses very dark methods to accomplish this. I think this adventure can certainly use antiheroes of this sort.

Anyway, there's a lot to look at with the Arcana Unleashed package. Admittedly, I've already written a fair amount about the character options, but I will say that the hit-to-miss ratio for subclasses here is a lot better than it has been in other 5.5 books (though to be fair, that's comparing it to like, just the Faerun and Ravenloft books, and actually both had some nice hits, but here I think the worst subclasses are like a B, and there are a ton of really fantastic ones. I think that the Mystic Arts Monk is almost certainly the most powerful Monk subclass in all of 5E).