Unearthed Arcana Subclasses - What I Want to See Made Official

 With the possibility of a new sourcebook (from Tasha/Iggwilv's perspective) I have high hopes for new subclasses to be made official content for D&D. While we've gotten new subclasses in Guildmaster's Guide to Ravnica, Explorer's Guide to Wildemount, and Mythic Odysseys of Theros, not to mention the entire Artificer class in Eberron: Rising from the Last War, each of these has been linked to particular settings - so while I'd certainly allow any of them for use in my home game, we haven't gotten truly universal new subclasses since Xanathar's.

So I'm going to attempt to do something crazy and go through every subclass they've opened for testing on UA and figure out which I'd most like to see made official.

A note: I'm going to be grading these mostly in terms of flavor and concept, rather than specific mechanics, unless I'm particularly tickled by something. I'm also going to be more dismissive of subclasses that seem really tied to a particular setting that just didn't make it into the book - for instance, the Druid Circle of Stars was clearly meant for Theros, and some of its features were worked into the Nyxborn supernatural gift, so it's likely dead in the water.

Naturally, anything that did get official published (like the Circle of Spores) I'm just going to skip.

Also, spoilers, I'm going to be saying yes to most of these, given that when you actually break it down, there's not a ton per class, and most concepts have at least some potential.

Anyway, let's begin.

Fighter: Brute (No)

This was clearly meant as part of the Ravnica project, and I assume was meant to appeal to the Gruul Clans and possibly the Cult of Rakdos. This subclass was really low on the flavor scale.

Wizard: School of Invention (No)

While very cool, this subclass more or less became the Mizzium Apparatus item that members of the Izzet League could get in Ravnica.

Sorcerer: Giant Soul (Maybe)

The fun thing about this is the way that it's sort of several subclasses in one. The idea of a beefy sorcerer is also a kind of fun departure.

Barbarian: Path of the Wild Soul (Yes)

The notion of a highly magical Barbarian is a really cool concept, and the notion of the Feywild as a world ruled by emotion really works well with Barbarian rage. Plus, there's a random table to roll on for a regular effect.

Monk: Way of the Astral Self (Maybe)

This is a highly mystical monk, with big, magical effects. You essentially conjure a magical projection of your astral body while you fight, which could be cool. I guess I'd prefer a more psionic/psychic version of this flavor of Monk.

Sorcerer: Aberrant Mind (Yes)

This one I think was very popular when it came out. Not only do I think this is a good way to explore how weird sorcerer magic could get, I've also got to confess that I'll always enjoy a little more cosmic horror in my D&D.

Warlock: Lurker in the Deep (Maybe)

Ok, while this is very popular, and has a lot of cool stuff going for it, I feel like there's some potential for confusion here, similar to the Undying - is the Lurker explicitly some kind of Ctuhlu-like Great Old One, or might it just be some relatively mundane Kraken? (Yes, I realize that as a primordial Titan, a Kraken is, arguably, a Cthulu-like monster.) Basically, how Eldritch is this patron?

Cleric: Twilight Domain (Yes)

I think the idea of playing with light and darkness is a sort of unexplored realm, and the visuals of a cleric like this are really enticing.

Druid: Circle of Wildfire (Yes)

Probably my favorite Druid circle, I love two things about this: one, embracing the more elemental side of the class (like Shamans in WoW) and two, that this would be the perfect subclass for an evil druid like someone from the Wicker Man.

Wizard: School of Onomancy (Yes)

There's something really mythic about the idea of names having power, and this subclass more or less creates sidequests for the party, where you can spend a great deal of time researching your foes and learning their true names. I'm a big fan of any class or class option that comes with its own story hook, and this one is rich in that regard.

Fighter: Rune Knight (Yes)

I'm always a fan of subclasses that give non-magic classes some kind of magical capability, and the customization options here are really cool.

Ranger: Swarmkeeper (Yes)

This is so freaking weird and potentially creepy. It's unlike any other Ranger subclass, and so it wins in my book.

Rogue: The Revived (No)

While the idea of being a character who has come back from death is really interesting, and there is something flavorful about being a rogue who did that, this feels more like a level 1 Supernatural Gift than a subclass for a particular class.

Fighter: Psychic Warrior (Yes)

The first of three psionics-based subclasses, I think there's a lot of potential in this concept, and Fighters can always use something interesting beyond hitting things.

Rogue: Soulknife (Yes)

Maybe my favorite of the Psionic subclasses, the notion of summoning blades with your mind is, well, super awesome. Like the Fighter, Rogues can always use something a little extra to give them some flash, and this accomplishes that.

Wizard: Psionics (Maybe)

I think this is always going to struggle with having to represent "pure" psionics. Seems cool, but I'm torn on whether it needs more specificity or if it's perfect as a way to treat Psionics like its own grand school of magic like Evocation or Conjuration.

Barbarian: Path of the Beast (Yes)

I've often thought about RPing a Barbarian as just a straight-up werewolf - transforming when I go into a rage. This is basically that. So yes.

Monk: Way of Mercy (Yes)

Creepy monks? With creepy masks? 100% yes. I think also that letting Monks have some method to heal is a pretty cool idea (bonus points for being a creepy healer.)

Paladin: Oath of the Watchers (Yes)

I like the idea of a hardened, rough-necked Paladin who's not about being a role model or anything, but is just there to get the job done. I also feel like this is an Oath that could be used by an Inquisitor-like character, which is pretty cool in my book.

Warlock: Noble Genie Patron (Maybe)

The lack of a major elemental patron (not to mention dragons) feels like an oversight. This subclass focuses more on the weirdly greedy and capricious nature of genies, though. I'm on the fence.

Bard: College of Creation (Maybe)

I do like the sort of Bedknobs and Broomsticks nature of this subclass. I don't know how well it fits with the Bard's flavor of manipulating minds, though.

Cleric: Unity Domain (No)

I just find the flavor of this a bit thin.

Sorcerer: Clockwork Soul (Yes)

I think anything that focuses on aspects of the Outer Planes that aren't Fiends (and to a lesser extent Celestials) is really cool. And I'm a real sucker for anything clockpunk/steampunk in my fantasy games.

Artificer: Armorer (Maybe)

Holy crap, an Artificer subclass! This is basically the Iron Man subclass, and honestly, that's the only reason I'm dinging it - it's too much of a direct pop culture reference. But it's also freaking awesome, and embracing the Artificer as a full member of the 5E class club (hopefully publishing it in a setting-agnostic book) by giving it new subclasses is a big thumbs up from me.

Druid: Circle of the Stars (Maybe)

The main reason I'm saying this is unlikely is, as stated above, I think this was being considered for the Theros book. That being said, a more cosmic druid is a pretty cool idea (makes me think of Balance Druids from WoW.)

Ranger: Fey Wanderer (Yes)

Giving Rangers a planar theme is a good call, given how they're supposed to be explorers and such. Also, one of my fellow players in one of my D&D games has a backstory that would fit this exactly, so for his sake, I'm saying yes.

Rogue: Phantom (Yes)

This was a rework of the Revived, and I think it solves a lot of its problems.

Warlock: The Genie (Yes)

Again, this refines the Noble Genie and balances their elemental nature with their classic Genie traits in a way I find much more compelling.

Wizard: Order of Scribes (Maybe)

Reworking the Artificer Archivist subclass, this is fairly whimsical, which it gets points for, but it's also insanely complicated.

Bard: College of Spirits (Yes)

Dripping with flavor, this might need some tweaking (I think someone figured out that at level 14 you have infinite healing if you just keep rolling your d6 and use it each time you get a 3) I am 100% on board with this.

Warlock: Undead Patron (Yes)

Ok, this has one major hurdle - it more or less overwrites the Undying. But this is what the Undying should have been from the start, and I love it and please make it a thing. I realize that the extra d10 on every damage roll from the 6th level feature might be overpowered (making every Eldritch Blast crit, effecitvely) but I think this could be tweaked down slightly (maybe make it a d8 or a d6?) but it's a beautiful, flavorful subclass and I want it.

Whew!

So that's everything. Let's tally up each class.

Artificer: Armorer

Barbarians: Path of the Wild Soul, Path of the Beast

Bard: College of Creation, College of Spirits

Cleric: Twilight Domain, Unity Domain

Druid: Circle of Wildfire, Circle of the Stars

Fighter: Brute, Rune Knight, Psychic Warrior

Monk: Way of the Astral Self, Way of Mercy

Paladin: Oath of the Watchers

Ranger: Swarmkeeper, Fey Wanderer

Rogue: The Revived, Soulknife, Phantom

Sorcerer: Giant Soul, Aberrant Mind, Clockwork Soul

Warlock: Lurker in the Deep, Noble Genie, Genie, Undead

Wizard: School of Invention, Psionics, Onomancy, Order of Scribes

So, actually, once you tally them up, this is a pretty appropriate number of subclasses per class, with some exceptions. Naturally, the Revived and the Noble Genie would be dropped in favor of their revisions. Paladins could use an additional oath. I could imagine Artificers might be reprinted whole-cloth in a new book, and so just adding a single new subclass would bring that to four in that one book.

While reprints can be disappointing, it might be good to see some of the setting-specific subclasses (Circle of Spores, College of Eloquence, maybe the Chronurgist or Graivturgist) added into a setting-agnostic sourcebook. I know a lot of Adventurer's League players would be really into that, assuming that the new book were AL-legal.

I'd previously thought there might be too many subclasses open for testing to fit in a book, but frankly, 2-4 new subclasses is about what we got with Xanathar's. So just a new one or two for Paladins and maybe Artificers, and you've got some real content for a new book.

Spooky Laughter and a New D&D Book Being Teased

 Well, it's about time that we'd be getting a new general sourcebook for D&D, and it's possible that this is what has been hinted at with their official Discord, where a strange audio file labeled "Feather and Tarts" was posted.

The audio is that of a female character laughing with some odd magical sounds in the background (and possibly some monster vocalizing - maybe even laughing.)

That's about it, but, as speculated by Nerd Immersion in a recent video, these scant details do seem to tie things to one Tasha/Iggwilv - a canonical character of D&D past.

The spell Tasha's Hideous Laughter has tiny tarts and a feather as spell components, so one might wonder if the spooky laughing could be Tasha herself.

Tasha goes by many names - the Demonomicon of Iggwilv is linked to another one of her sobriquets, and my understanding is that she's one of D&D's classic, long-running villains, created by Gary Gygax himself.

Given the convention in 5E of having general sourcebooks named after famous D&D figures - Volo, Xanathar, and Mordenkainen - it seems likely, then, that this could be hinting at another book written from Tasha's perspective.

What, then, would be the nature of this book?

Personally, I'm hoping for another Xanathar-like book that gives us new class options and spells. There have been many, many new subclasses tested on Unearthed Arcana over the past couple years, and I'm sure that at this point, they could narrow those down to two or three per class to make official.

In fact, I think I'll make a separate post going through the UAs of the past couple years and see which ones I'd most like to have put into the game.

Anyway, we have nothing but this very obscure hint. D&D has published a few books in 2020 - two campaign setting guides with Wildemount and Theros, and upcoming we've got Rime of the Frostmaiden. As a big homebrewer, I'm always most excited for the general mix-and-match books.

Mordenkainen's had a theme of ancient, ongoing conflicts, with the Githzerai and Githyanki, Elves and Drow, Demons and Devils, and Dwarves and Duergar. There was something of a lightly planar theme to that book as well, though I'd be curious to see more about the planes that aren't the Nine Hells or the Abyss.

While Volo's did introduce a fair number of Fey creatures, I think a tour of the Inner Planes could also be fruitful (I'm kind of obsessed with the Shadowfell.)

Anyway, keep an eye out, as I suspect we'll get an official announcement relatively soon.

In the Beta! But Also, A Big Bug!

 Well, I was hoping to happily post about checking out the Shadowlands after I got my invite to the beta today, but as fate would have it, there seems to currently be a bug that is preventing me from leaving Boralus via any sort of loading-screen-inducing travel (such as portals, hearthstones, etc.)

So while I've got my Death Knight now once again wielding a two-handed weapon in Frost and tricked out with a cool beard (it's so nice that Draenei have a full beard facial option now) I haven't really been able to do anything I wasn't already doing on the PTR (actually, I've been able to do less.)

Anyway, I'm hoping that this will change soon. I'd pretty much resigned myself to not getting beta access given that in the previous four betas, the only one I didn't get into was Legion, which was the one I was most excited to see (and hey, that expansion turned out to be awesome!)

So, superstitiously, does my beta access mean this expansion won't be as good?

I know a lot of people cite Mists of Pandaria as their favorite expansion, though I ding it a bit for the breaking of valor points (and thus the elimination of dungeons as a viable daily gameplay thing) and, honestly, its focus on Alliance/Horde conflict - though I think it comes in a solid third behind Legion and Wrath of the Lich King.

While I'm skeptical about the rumors of a "team A" and "team B" that work on each expansion, I definitely agree that we tend to have a sort of quality swing back and forth between really good expansions and sort of let-downs. Wrath was great, Cataclysm was disappointing, Mists was surprisingly good, Warlords was a travesty, Legion was superlative, and Battle for Azeroth was hamstrung by broken systems and, more subjectively, a struggle to make its two major conflicts - A vs. H and Everyone vs. N'zoth - feel all that connected thematically and narratively (the fact that there was, in fact, a shadowy supernatural manipulator behind the scenes but it wasn't N'zoth feels wrong.)

However, if the alternating quality cycle is real, that would make Shadowlands likely to be one of the good ones.

As I see it, there are the following promising and worrying things about it:

The setting, with its surreal and otherworldly nature, is great. I think WoW does really well when it goes for high-concept, deeply magical, alien locations, especially after we spent our leveling (and most of our world questing) in BFA in relatively mundane locales (obviously Nazjatar was pretty different, but as a middle patch zone, it's probably the place we spent the least time.) The Shadowlands look super cool, and I'm eager to absorb their various vibes.

The Covenant system is really balanced on the edge of a knife - is it going to be cool, flavorful, and fun like Artifact weapons? Or is it going to be a joyless numbers game that requires constant re-farming of things like Azerite armor? I'm honestly kind of hoping that what comes after Shadowlands lets gear just be gear once more, and ditches other forms of character progression - having new systems be alternate ways to acquire gear, rather than a system on top of gear.

I'm a little of two minds on the way that classes are being changed. I'm sure a lot of my unease is just about getting used to new rotations and such (Shamans are really different.) But I think probably overall giving players back a bunch of abilities, even if they won't necessarily use them, is for the best.

One of the other patterns with expansions is that every other one in the past would bring us a new class. Shadowlands is the first odd X.0 patch that isn't bringing a new class (1.0 brought 9!) While they've done a lot to streamline the leveling and creation of new characters, there's no real incentive for veteran players to create new characters. I guess after adding ten new races in BFA, they figure we can have a break. But I do sort of regret that we didn't get Necromancers as a hybrid ranged caster and healer.

Anyway, I have high hopes for this expansion. Aesthetically I'm on board, and I'm really eager to see how much the cosmos of Warcraft expands and gets fleshed out as a result of this journey.

And hopefully I'll be able to help beta test it effectively soon!

Returning to Dominaria

 Right before the big Ravnican year with Guilds of Ravnica, Ravnica Allegiance, and War of the Spark, MTG traveled back to the beginning - the original setting for the game, Dominaria.

This was a bit of a nostalgic move, motivated in part by the fact that the game was then a quarter of a century old (making me feel ancient!) This was the first time they'd set things there since the Time Spiral block, which came out my junior year of college (and was the last block I played much of in my MTGO days.) But despite the 11 year absence from the game, Dominaria still leads any other plane for number of sets taking place there, with over twenty, compared to Ravnica, which I believe is in second place at only 9 (and this is before we count core sets like Alpha.)

The challenge that WotC faced when making the Dominaria set in 2018 was that the plane's very ubiquitousness meant that it basically didn't have an identity.

While early sets sometimes had some sort of light themes - like Fallen Empires' intra-color conflicts (Icatia vs. the Farrelites, Merfolk vs. Homarids, The Ebon Hand vs. their Thrulls, Dwarves vs. Orcs, and Elves vs. Thallids) and arguably a light tribal theme, most of the game's early design was just about interesting mechanics, sometimes bringing in new keywords, but rarely having a super strong set identity.

I believe that according to lead designer Mark Rosewater, the first set to truly have a theme was Invasion, and the Invasion block had a major theme of playing multicolor decks. From that set onward, every block came with a strong mechanical identity - Onslaught was the graveyard block, Onslaught was the tribal creature block, Mirrodin was the artifact block, Kamigawa was the legends block, and Ravnica was the first where they took a different tack with an existing theme (what if it was a multicolor block, but they encouraged to play with smallest possible multicolor combination, i.e. 2?)

Not every block was built with a mechanical focus in mind. Innistrad was a famously successful experiment in top-down design - building cards as well as mechanics around existing tropes in a genre (in this case Gothic Horror.) Throne of Eldraine, which I think has also been quite popular (I like it) is built in a similar manner.

The thing is, when making Dominaria, they had two problems:

One: Dominaria has had so many different sets and blocks that there's no real single mechanical identity to the plane. Hell, even the continent of Otaria, which hadn't really been a focus until after the apocalypse, had two blocks with totally different mechanical themes.

Two: but also, given how long they'd spent there, and how many different regions and time periods they'd visited, it wasn't as if there were a uniting story theme to it either. Dominaria was, essentially, the "fantasy" plane, which... is also true of every other Magic plane.

So what they decided to focus on was the very historic nature of the setting.

I've written about how I really enjoy running a D&D campaign set in Ravnica. But as a friend of mine and I have been going through Explorer's Guide to Wildemount, I've been able to put into words an issue that I have with most Magic settings.

Magic worlds are high concept. They're filled with really big, flashy, concepts. But whether the two are mutually exclusive or not, they don't really feel lived in. Wildemount - a continent in Matt Mercer's Exandria setting, which is where the Critical Role games he DMs are set, is bursting with details about individual characters, with towns and factions and history. There's amazing detail to be found there, and a wealth of fodder for DMs to use.

Ravnica, while I adore it, doesn't really have that. Indeed, the color-pie-induced stasis of the ten guilds makes it hard to even think about shaking up the balance of power there. I think Guildmaster's Guide to Ravnica does a really good job of getting the ball rolling on making the world feel a little more real, but it's still a bit tough. Like, it's all well and good to depict all the crazy psychos of the Rakdos doing their thing on cards, but how does a world in which about 5% of the entire population is dedicated to this cult (assuming roughly equal distribution between the guilds and that half the world's population belongs to a guild, which I think the book says is the ratio) even work?

In Dominaria, they decided that the mechanical theme of the set was going to be a focus on its history. We got Sagas and a focus on legendary spells. And I suspect that, moving forward, any return to Dominaria will probably have a similar focus.

Bridging things with D&D, though, I really do feel that Dominaria would make a lot of sense as a crossover like Ravnica and Theros. With a history dating back to 1993, Dominaria has been around longer than Eberron (or Exandria, of course,) and there's lore a-plenty to work with.

In some ways, I feel like a D&D sourcebook could be great for the setting too, giving us a chance to really explore the world in a way that Magic sets can only really just hint at.

While Magic settings thrive on a certain degree of mechanical and thematic focus, D&D worlds all need to have a fairly broad variety of locations, themes, and creatures to fill out a whole campaign.

Dominaria has that in spades.

Ok, I honestly didn't know if this was going to be more of an MTG post or a D&D one. It's super late and in L.A. it's finally cool now it's 3 in the morning.

I Put Ugin, The Spirit Dragon in a Deck and I Feel Like a Criminal

 Weighing in at 8 mana, Ugin, the Spirit Dragon, is not to be trifled with. The colorless planeswalker (I think Karn's the only other one) is one of the profoundly ancient elder dragons (even if he didn't show up in Legends like his twin brother Nicol Bolas) and is one of the most powerful entities in Magic lore.

And when he shows up on your opponent's side of the battlefield, you're going to have a bad time.

Ugin, in this version of him, is a truly nasty lock-down card for control decks. He starts with a whopping 7 loyalty. His first ability is +2: Deal 3 damage to target creature or player. A free lightning bolt (at sorcery speed) every turn and it charges him up? And you get two loyalty? Not bad.

His next ability is the real kicker: -X: exile every permanent with converted mana cost X or less that has at least one color.

So you won't be nuking lands, some artifacts, or Ugin himself, but most other things get swept away.

And remember, he starts at 7 loyalty. So chances are, you're going to be able to more or less erase the board if you want to.

I crafted two copies to toss into my Standard 2021 version of Sultai Ramp (I never really had the original, as I only had one Hydroid Krasis and with Ravnica rotating out of standard, I wasn't about to craft more) and just played against a sort of Boros version of white lifegain, with folks like Heliod and Daxos and a strictly-worse version of Ajani's Pridemate (a human cleric, I believe, that costs the same and works the same but starts at 1/1) and Outlaw's Merriment.

Because it's got black and green and I apparently still want to make Garruk, Cursed Huntsman happen (I happen to have three copies) the initial game was the opponent trying to get past my 2 wolves a turn to take out Garruk before he could get his ultimate (which I never actually wound up doing.) I actually wound up losing the first Garruk, only to play him again after some judicious Extinction Events.

Having more or less stabilized, I eventually got enough mana to cast Ugin, and dear lord did I feel guilty. Setting X to 5 to take out his Baneslayer Angel, I also got Heliod, Outlaw's Merriment, and I think some other, lesser creatures. (My surviving Garruk, at 6, was the only other nonland permanent to survive the slaughter.)

After one more turn of my opponent figuring out how screwed they were, as I had four Garruk wolves and an Escaped Uro, Titan of Nature's Wrath, they eventually conceded.

So, Ugin.

Generally, when I see this card come out, I just concede. It might not be a literal "I win" card, but it comes damn close. That late in the game, most decks are pretty committed to the Battlefield - you're probably not holding back your central cards by the time people are at 8 mana. And given that you can wipe out nearly every non-land permanent with a cost of 6 or less and still have Ugin up to punch for 3 damage a turn (which then makes it easy for him to do his board-wiping move yet again - I haven't even touched on his ultimate, but do I even need to?) building up at all to recover from that wipe is nearly impossible.

There's not much you can do to stop Ugin - unless you can counter him, he's going to come into play and the player with him can just wipe things. If you have a direct planeswalker killer, it's too late to prevent them from using him once. It's a tool that says that aggro decks basically have 8 turns max to win.

Is it broken? I'm not sure.

In highly competitive Magic, an aggro deck that hasn't won by turn 8 isn't really an aggro deck. But this does seem to really hamstring any kind of midrange deck. Having been on the receiving end of Ugin, I can tell you it doesn't feel great for your entire strategy to be wiped out by a single card.

While Throne of Eldraine had a fair number of artifacts, the growing trend of colorful artifacts means that even an artifact-based deck wouldn't necessarily be able to get around Ugin. (I don't know if or when we're likely to get another artifact-centric set - New Phyrexia seems like a real major event that likely wouldn't come this shortly after War of the Spark, though Kaladesh seems potent enough for a revisit.)

Still, it seems Ugin doesn't hit Oko-levels of insanity, and that 8-mana price tag is pretty rough (though the fact that it's all generic mana means that Ugin can fit in any control deck.) I think this might be just a case of a really powerful character being represented by a very powerful effect.

The Raven Man, and Possible Connections to Seriously Old School MTG Lore

 One of the things that's kind of fascinating about MTG lore in its early days is that, rather than starting in a contemporary "now" before delving into backstory, the game really started with its ancient history, in Antiquities and Legends. (Yes, there is plenty of pre-Urza lore, but the principle stands.)

The original Alpha/Beta/Unlimited release was pretty light on story, and the first expansion set, Arabian Nights, was drawn directly from existing real-world folklore. But it was Antiquities (which, you know, refers to a very ancient time,) Magic's second expansion set, that detailed the story of the Brothers' War, giving us a bit more background on cards that mentioned Urza and such.

The end of said war, the detonation of the Golgothian Sylex, then led to a few sets that were either around the same time as the Brothers' War (Legends) or dealing with the gradual aftermath and the sort of nuclear winter that descended upon Dominaria following the blast. The Dark was a period in which the plane literally grew dark as dust was thrown into the sky, and then Fallen Empires details how the lowering temperatures caused the various civilizations of Sarpadia to collapse (though I guess the Vodalians got their shit together).

This, then, led to the first of Magic's true blocks - sets thematically linked to one another that follow an ongoing story. This was Ice Age, which was about the frigid period caused by the Dark, itself caused by the Sylex blast.

This first block was actually kind of botched - we got two sets, Ice Age and Alliances, and the third chapter of the story didn't come until Cold Snap in 2006 (a whole decade later) following the conclusion of the first Ravnica block. Instead, in the middle of Ice Age and Alliances, we got Homelands, the first set (apart from the retconned Arabian Nights) to take place on a different plane, and one that was sort of hastily approved after being designed by fans who, while I'm sure well-meaning, didn't really put together the most successful set.

Anyway, at 8 years old, I started playing Magic in 1994, meaning Ice Age came out right as I was getting into the game. And while I think I must not have invested much in it (naturally, I was getting a pack at a time, usually bought by my mom, and usually the cheaper Fallen Empires packs, which my local store sold for less than half of what some of the other sets were going for) given that I never even got a Snow-Covered Land, but there were names and images that stuck with me from that time, like Leshrac and Lim-Dûl.

Cut to a lot later. I stopped playing the game in 7th grade after coming back from a year spent in California (where I live now) and none of my friends were still into the game (and I'd mostly moved on to video games, to be frank.) In college, I played a bit during the Kamigawa, Ravnica, and Time Spiral blocks, but I once again set the game aside (actually, WoW might have been the culprit this time.)

So I missed the boat on the introduction of planeswalker cards, and only recently have I started to catch up on their lore.

Ever since I opened a Royal Assassin in my first Revised Edition 60-card pack, I've had a soft spot for Black, and so naturally I'm curious about the story of Liliana Vess. And then, looking into her story, I found out about the Raven Man.

The Raven Man seems to be like the G-Man (Half-Life) of Magic: the Gathering. He's a massive enigma, never (as far as I know) represented on a card, but he's a great focus for player speculation, and plays a major role in Liliana Vess' backstory...well, and ongoing story.

Liliana was a young woman studying to be a priest in Dominaria (I think eventually revealed to be from Benalia, another old-school name that dates back to the beginning.) When her brother, Josu, was dying of some illness, she went looking for a cure, and began to dabble in necromancy in her desperation. While searching for a particular herb she needs, a mysterious figure meets her in the forest, and he encourages her to use her necromantic magic to bring the dead specimen of the root she needs back to life to use on her brother.

Doing so, she instead curses him with murderous rage, and she's forced to zombify some of her now-dead household staff to restrain Josu - the trauma of which causes her spark to ignite and take her to Innistrad - as if things weren't creepy enough for her already.

The Raven Man's identity is a mystery, and his motivations are extremely suspect. Is he a Planeswalker? Is he a figment of her imagination? Is he an illusion or a projection of some other entity? (One theory that seemed plausible except that it never came up in the War of the Spark narrative was that he was a projection of Nicol Bolas, again, another old-school character dating back to Legends, who became a lot more prominent in Magic's story in 2009's Alara block, and was the Big Bad in the War of the Spark story.)

The linked theory on MTG Salvation posits a few possible candidates, but the author's favorite is one I find goosebump-inducingly cool: which is that it's Lim-Dûl.

Lim-Dûl was a necromancer and major player in the Ice Age story. A major villain who struggled under the domination of the powerful planeswalkers Tevesh Szat and Leshrac, Lim-Dûl managed to travel to a different plane, Shandalar, despite not being a planeswalker himself, and in fact manipulated events to nearly conquer the entire plane after turning the two god-like planeswalkers against one another.

Shandalar is sort of interesting in how generic it is - basically, Dominaria has such a dense history and so much lore had built up on it that its whole post-apocalyptic and artifice-centric history had made Dominaria too distinct compared to the old-school fantasy tropes that they wanted a setting to embody. Taking it from some obscure Microprose games in the late 90s, Shandalar was fleshed out a bit more to be the sort of standard fantasy setting.

But in building Liliana's backstory, Shandalar played a key role, which is that her most powerful weapon, the Chain Veil, has its origins among the enlightened ogres of the Onakke civilization there. Basically, the civilization was wiped out and all of their souls became trapped in this spooky veil.

Given that Lim-Dûl's story has his spirit bound to an unnamed artifact on Shandalar, it seems possible that Lim-Dûl might have somehow cursed the Onakke to take his place within the Veil. The Raven Man seems to have witnessed the deadly magical meteor swarm that wiped out the Onakke. So it doesn't seem that hard to imagine that this Raven Man is actually Lim-Dûl himself (the article I linked also shows some rather persuasive arguments about artistic motifs that hint at this connection.)

While I was never deeply into the lore as a kid, the imagery and names from Magic have had a really big influence on me, and sort of formed the foundation of my taste for fantasy (hell, there are characters in my Otherworld setting who are more or less planeswalkers.)

But it does sometimes feel like the Magic stories of my youth were sort of dropped in favor of the new figures introduced as planeswalkers following the Mending. I'm happy to see Karn and Teferi show up again, but there's a ton of stuff that connects with me on a really deep, primal level.

I was absolutely tickled to discover that the Elder Dragon Legend (this was before Legendary was a supertype) I'd bought off a friend of a friend in 6th grade (the Chronicles version, though, which is worth like 2 bucks) happened to turn out to be the biggest big bad of the game since Yawgmoth. (Actually, the return of all the Elder Dragon Legends in new cards in Core Set 19 was a total nostalgia-blast. I remember looking with wide eyes at the original cards in my local store's display case, knowing that these were "the best creatures in the game.")

I know that we're extremely unlikely to see Urza represented with a new card, and while the Phyrexians are definitely back, I'm almost hesitant to approve of another grand epic showdown against them, after their defeat in Invasion Block was sort of the antecedent to last year's War of the Spark. There's certainly something to be said for letting characters whose stories are done lie - it would be really underwhelming for Nicol Bolas to emerge a couple years from now, as much a threat as he ever was.

But a figure like Lim-Dûl is, I think, the perfect sort of character to bring out that tons of players wouldn't even have been alive yet to see his original influence (oddly, he didn't actually get a card until Time Spiral - but while I'm an increasingly feeling like an old man and consider 2006 not that long ago, even that's pretty ancient history for many MTG fans.)

Like, I don't think that this is a guy anyone's had a chance to get sick of yet.

I also think there's a lot of story potential in having non-planeswalkers seeking ways to get around the strictness of the post-Mending multiverse. Nicol Bolas was pissed off that he wasn't a god anymore, but he could still travel the planes. Having powerful but plane-bound figures like Heliod, Niv-Mizzet, Elesh Norn, or Lim-Dûl trying to find some exemption that would allow them to journey to other planes could be the cause of massive conflict (especially given that the only other canonical interplanar travelers are either lazotep-covered zombies or the freaking Eldrazi, which these folks might be willing to try to court to get around their travel limitations) as well as allowing non-planeswalking cards and characters to be part of Magic's ongoing, plane-hopping story.

Anyway, one of the great pleasures of long-lasting properties like MTG is that the lore is profoundly deep, and you can give your audience a real rush by making some distant callbacks. I wonder if the Raven Man might, eventually, be revealed as such.

Class Tweaks I'd Want to See in 5.5 or 6th Edition - Warlock and Ranger

 I've only ever played 5th Edition D&D, as opposed to other editions. The edition has been the most popular format of the long-standing tabletop RPG that's ever come out, and while an expanding nerdy fanbase is going through growing pains (possessive gatekeepers resisting re-thinking things like race, gender roles, accessibility, etc.) overall I'm the sort of nerd who's always happy to have new perspectives and experiences at the table, joining in the activity I enjoy (I realize I just said I started in 5th Edition, making me a relative D&D noob, but let me extend that to just, you know, all of gaming, which has been a lifelong thing for me.)

Naturally, there are two major cultural shifts we're looking forward to in future D&D - one is the deconstruction (and perhaps reconstruction) of race as a game system. Long story short, among humans, race is an entirely artificial construct, which is why there's no weird genetic issues for people of mixed-race backgrounds (while my ancestors on both sides are, at least today, considered white, there was a time when Ashkenazi Jew and North/Western European were considered very different ethnic groups.) Race in D&D is thus built on an older and, well, more racist understanding of the world. But I think that there are attempts to remedy this, in part by moving toward removing ability score alterations from races (there's no reason an Orc shouldn't be smart) and also, importantly, moving away from the notion that some races are just plane evil (though not free of its own problematic racial issues, the Warcraft notion that Orcs' misdeeds were part of a toxic cultural movement and not inherent to their identity is one method, though I like even better a notion that "evil" races' portrayal is just due to a misinformed perspective.) I'd love to see more mixed-race characters in D&D, which admittedly is easier for, like, Dwarves and Halflings than it is for Vedalken and Warforged (Warforged might just be a special case here.)

The other shift, which I think WotC is more likely to drag its heels on, is the better incorporation of diverse staff - not just as contractors, but as core members of the D&D team. I know that Mike Mearls has drawn some justifiable ire for backing up an abusive collaborator over the voices of those whom he abused - this kind of corporate house-cleaning is fraught and difficult, and other writers have much more intelligent things to say about it than I do.

But this post is not really about the cultural changes. While D&D's story and lore are crucial to enjoying it (well, for me at least,) the game mechanics are also a big deal.

5th Edition has some really fun classes to play, but I do think that two of them have a couple of glaring issues, and I figured I'd approach them first.

We'll start with the Warlock.

Warlocks are, actually, to my mind, a pretty sound and effective class. The problem is that their mechanics, while powerful, often don't really match up with the fantasy players expect from them.

Essentially, Warlocks, I'd say, are like a Magic version of the Fighter. Your weapon is Eldritch Blast, and you can trick out said weapon with a lot of really effective spells and invocations that make it great.

The high-level spellcasting that you get as a Warlock is less central to the class, and is more like some extra power on top of things - big blowout abilities that you can use in a limited way.

This conflicts, I think, with the expectation - which is that Warlocks should sit amongst Wizards and Sorcerers as a versatile class with a great deal of magical ability, only with a unique origin for their power.

Broadly speaking, the small number of spell slots recharging on a short rest actually feels, flavorfully, more like what you'd expect a sorcerer to have.

The thing is, if you get rid of that, and just have Warlocks use standard spellcasting, does that remove the whole identity of the Warlock?

To me, the absolute most interesting element to the Warlock class from a mechanical perspective is Eldritch Invocations. It makes them the most customizable class in the game. So you'd definitely want to keep those, just changing existing ones to fit with any other major changes you make to the system.

Pact Boons are a cool idea, and I think that linking them to various Eldritch Invocations makes the relatively mild bonus you get at 3rd level feel more like a significant investment - a sort of subclass on top of your patron subclass.

Among the pact boons, I think that some of the Hexblade features need to be rolled into Pact of the Blade. First of all, using Charisma for your attacks will make you feel like you're still a capable spellcaster. I might also incorporate the Medium Armor proficiency into this as well - Bladelocks could then all get away with a +2 Dexterity and wear armor that makes it reasonable that they can survive in melee combat. Meanwhile the Hex Warrior bonuses that are more or less useless to a Hexblade Warlock who doesn't go for melee are now being distributed to those who really need it.

On the subject of Eldritch Blast, I see two options - either they make another Warlock cantrip with invocations to make it competitive with EB, or they just make every Warlock learn Eldritch Blast, because right now it just feels like a trap not to take it.

I think keeping the Pact Boons, the Invocations, and Eldritch Blast would be enough for the Warlock identity to survive a conversion to standard pure-caster spell slots. I might also broaden the spells a Warlock can cast - most of their stuff is available to Wizards, and so it seems there should be more "forbidden" magic that you need some powerful patron to grant to you. I'm also tempted to say that any Pact of the Tome warlock should automatically be able to cast ritual spells, as there's little more spooky and warlocky than beseeching your patron for some dark gift over the course of several minutes.

Moving on, let's talk Ranger:

What does a Ranger get that a Dex-based Fighter doesn't?

Well, you get favored terrain, favored enemies, and some spellcasting. Rangers, to be fair, are not as underpowered as their reputation holds them to be, but I do think there are some features that feel, well, underwhelming.

Favored Enemies and Terrain are, first of all, bonuses that are either off or on, and that means that you're entirely reliant on the DM and their choices for whether these rather class-defining features actually do anything for you.

Also, because of this all or nothing element to them, they're kind of diluted so that they aren't too powerful when they're on, which then makes them feel just slightly more useful than not at all.

To me, the fantasy of a Ranger is someone who scouts and prepares - they know a lot about the monsters they're fighting and tracking, and they go into every fight ready for what's coming.

So I would change favored enemy to, instead, be something like "Preparing the Hunt," i.e., at the end of a long rest, you can choose a creature type, and then you get bonuses when fighting that sort of creature.

I also think that said bonus should involve significant damage bonuses. Currently, at level 20, you can add damage equal to your Wisdom modifier to one hit against your favored enemy per turn. One hit. That means that even if you're hasted, the absolute maximum you can add is 5 damage (and that's assuming you can max out your Wisdom by level 20.)

So I'd change that to be a level... 6 or something ability, and it should be that you add your Wisdom to every hit you make against your favored enemy - which, recall, you're basically switching each day.

The class should reward careful tracking and knowing the land and its creatures.

So these are just some ideas to get the ball rolling. It's not that I am champing at the bit for a new edition, but it's clear that there are some design tweaks that could be very welcome. I'm curious to see if, with the Undead Patron, we might see underwhelming subclasses given upgraded "sequels" like the Undead is for the Undying (I'd love to see the Great Old One Warlock given a little more spice, for instance.)