Finding the Hacks That Allow Multiple Leveled Spells Per Turn

 The rules for spellcasting in D&D are changing.

In the 2014 rules, you might be surprised to find out that the actual limitations on how many leveled spells you could cast on a turn were really baked in specifically to spells with a casting time of a bonus action.

But the new rules are simpler: you can only cast one spell that uses a spell slot on each of your turns. The rest of the action economy is basically taken care of because you only have one reaction, though it's important to note that this will, in fact, prevent the old countering-the-counterspell mage battles of yore. Indeed, if you try to cast a spell and then run away from a foe, you won't be able to cast Shield if they hit you with an opportunity attack.

Now, cantrips are, of course, still an exception here. You can still cast Hex and Eldritch Blast on your opening turn as a Warlock.

However, because the restriction is not "a spell of 1st level or higher," but rather "a spell that costs a spell slot," there are actually all manner of shenanigans that might come up.

Many subclasses (and at least one class) have means of casting spells without using spell slots. Paladins' Divine Smite is now both a spell and a bonus action to cast, but they do get one free use of it per day - which means that if you have a reaction spell you need to use on your turn, you can do so.

Likewise, the newly-redesigned Archfey Warlock will be able to cast Misty Step several times for free each day. Because this isn't taking a spell slot, you can now bamf out of danger and then maybe leave a Summoned Fey in your place.

I think one of the biggest winners here will be the Aberrant Sorcerer. Sorcerers, of course, are a class that is hit particularly hard by the old spell restrictions. But thanks to Psionic Sorcery, not only do they get to cast spells without any components, but they are also using Sorcery Points to do so (in fact, given that you can convert a spell slot you'd need to cast the spell regularly into the same number of sorcery points you're spending, I think unless you desperately need to keep your bonus action that turn, you should pretty much always cast Psionic Spells in this manner). This means, then, that you can Quicken any other spell you like to cast alongside the Psionic Spell. Pop out those Evard's Black Tentacles to restrain your foes, and then quicken a Fireball to drop on top of them!

Reflecting on the Evoker as They Join the Death Knight, Monk, and Demon Hunter as a Veteran Class

 The Evoker is maybe the weirdest class they've added to the game.

Kind of.

In a few ways, the class broke precedents. In now just about 20 years of World of Warcraft, there has only ever been two ranged DPS specs added to the game, and both are Evokers.

Evokers are also the only class to be released that is mutually exclusive with its playable race - one cannot make an Evoker who is not a Dracthyr, but likewise one cannot make a Dracthyr who is not an Evoker (though this latter stipulation is one I can imagine changing in the future).

It also is the only class to have a full additional spec added in the middle of an expansion, with Augmentation not available until the second raid came out.

Furthermore, it's the only class to have a "support DPS" spec, which strongly emphasizes buffing allies' damage rather than maximizing their own (while some specs, like Enhancement Shamans, have long had powerful ally-buffs, the balance of the spec is still meant to allow them to bring a comparable amount of damage as pure-dps specs).

Finally, it's the only class built around "mid-range," requiring not quite as careful positioning as a melee character, but more careful positioning than a full-range character.

Because of the mutual exclusivity, it can be hard to talk about Evokers without talking about Dracthyr. Indeed, at least the last time I checked, the Evoker talent tree actually has some talents that affect Dracthyr racial abilities.

I've been playing a Devastation Evoker through Dragonflight. I think I pushed up his priority in the alt list due to his novelty, but I think he's likely to remain in kind of the middle of the pack. When Augmentation came out, I tried it for a bit - I love its aesthetics, which focus on the Black and Bronze dragonflights (the Bronze flight has always been my favorite by far, but that shouldn't come as a surprise given my obsession with time travel and chronomancy). However, the maintenance-based gameplay, which mirrors in some ways Breath of Sindragosa-based Frost Death Knights, stresses me out a bit (admittedly there's a similar mechanic in Dragonwrath for Devastation, but this is a rather short window and in my experience can only really have its duration extended twice - first immediately after you cast it and then when it's about 75% complete is when I tend to be able to use my empowered spells again to extend it further - but once that's over, I consider myself satisfactorily done). (Oh, and also, for some reason back when Shadow Priests were all built around Void Form, I think during Legion, I didn't mind that style of gameplay - perhaps because it was trivial to build up the Insanity required to return to it, so if you messed up one Void Form phase you could get back on your feet pretty easily.)

I'll also confess that there's a certain satisfaction in seeing your numbers on the damage meters rise, and Augmentation is built to expect you're significantly behind others in damage (indeed, you're inflating theirs, which is kind of the whole point!)

Devastation is a spec that can feel a little odd when soloing - the rotation makes the most sense when you have long-living enemies. Fire Breath is a bit counter-intuitive, because you need to spend longer empowering it in order to do a quicker burst of damage. Sometimes, especially when in groups, I find myself doing the longer-burn low empowerment simply in order to get the cast off before my allies kill the target. Perhaps it would be best to just save the ability in such cases?

Indeed, through much of Dragonflight, I found myself surprised at how good my DPS was with a rotation that was new and unfamiliar. I think in large part this is just that it's actually a simpler rotation than most, so executing it well is not terribly difficult. I do wonder if the class was also allowed to be a little more powerful in order to encourage players to try it out - which would likely mean a slight nerf moving forward.

It's funny, because other than the Death Knight, every new class added to the game has had mobility as a theme. Monks were rolling around, Demon Hunters have their Fel Rushes, and Evokers have Hover, which honestly feels a bit more unique of an ability.

On an aesthetic level, I have beef with the class/race.

It is infuriating that you can collect these new class sets, often with really cool design, but they're only on display when you're in your visage form (other than the shoulders and I believe belt). The customization options for the actual Drathyr appearance are cool, but they feel like something from a different game. I'd happily have every Dracthyr's "unarmored" appearance just be a naked reptilian dragon-person (well, with underwear) if it meant allowing our actual armor pieces to fit on our actual bodies.

This is a problem with the Druid class as well, but at least one of the Druid's four specs gets to use their primary form. Evokers just cannot show off their nice duds.

I also might have liked to see a beefier version of the Dracthyr - I realize that there's a certain adolescent boyishness to needing always to have hulking muscle-bound characters, and especially given that the Dracthyr are all basically spellcasters, it kind of makes sense. I guess I had just thought that if we were going to get WoW's take on D&D's Dragonborn, we'd get something more akin to the Drakonid, who of course got an updated model in Dragonflight (and unlike a lot of model updates, this one looks like it was rebuilt from the ground up).

Now, that said, I'm very happy with the change to their racial ability, Soar, that now lets them simply fly with all the same mechanics as normal Skyriding. My Dracthyr looks very cool when he's flying around on his own wings. And while the ability does have a 10-second cooldown, it's one that I barely ever even notice because I think the cooldown starts not when you land, but when you first take off.

Looking again at Devastation, I am curious to see if we'll see some complications added to the rotation. Even counting their Dragonwrath cooldown, there's only like 8 buttons to push (ok, 9 if we add Deep Breath, which feels only worth using on big packs of enemies) in the core rotation - with all other abilities being situational. This... honestly might be fine. There are some specs (Enhancement, for example) that sometimes feel like they have too many buttons to worry about (it's difficult when I have both Crash Lightning and Ice Strike in the same build because I've historically put them on the same keybind).

While I still hold out hope that Demon Hunters could eventually become available to other races (though I'm not holding my breath, and honestly I'm attached enough to my Night Elf DH that I wouldn't want to change him) I really cannot imagine Evokers ever being available to any other race, which makes them even more exclusive than the Vanilla-to-Wrath Druids (interestingly, Paladins were also only available to two races in vanilla, but that got doubled in BC with Blood Elves and Draenei, the former also introducing the class to the Horde for the first time. What did Horde groups do when they found intellect on plate back in the day? I mean, I know that all the stats did something for every class back then, but intellect was still only very marginally useful, helping your weapon and armor skills level up faster - a concept that must sound utterly alien to anyone who started playing WoW in the last decade).

I have not been keeping up nearly at all with any of the War Within beta stuff, so I don't know how Hero Talents will affect the class, but I'm eager to see how the class will evolve. The Death Knight underwent some huge changes after its first introduction (when initially pitched, Frost was actually presented as the tanking spec, Blood being a sort of PvE DPS spec, and Unholy was the utility/pvp spec. Then, during Wrath, all three specs could be built as both tanks and DPS. As a relic of the original intent, the "tank stance," was Frost Presence. By the end of Wrath, most DK tanks were going Blood and Frost was considered better at DPS, so you ironically had a lot of Blood DKs in Frost Presence and Frost DKs in Blood Presence. It was in Cataclysm that they killed Frost and Unholy tanking and Blood DPS. Also, you had specific types of runes - two blood, two frost, and two unholy, which would be used for different abilities. They massively simplified the class in... I want to say Legion?)

Mathing Out the New Great Weapon Master

 Great Weapon Master has long been considered one of the strongest feats in 5E. It gives you two bonuses - being able to get an extra bonus action attack if you get a crit or kill an enemy, but more famously, it allows you to take a -5 penalty to your attack roll with a heavy melee weapon in order to get a +10 to the damage if you land it.

The new version is a bit different:

Like all general feats, you get a +1 bonus to an ability score (Strength in this case) and there are some other subtle changes like that this now works with Heavy ranged weapons (though I'd probably be hesitant to take it on an actual ranged character).

The big thing is that the -5/+10 mechanic is totally gone. In its place, however, you can now simply add your Proficiency Bonus to the damage of any attack with a Heavy weapon made during the Attack Action.

So, we no longer risk having a lower chance to hit with the weapon, but the damage bonus is significantly lower. But damage-wise, how does it work out?

I'm going to do some of my usual napkin math. We're going to be making some assumptions and ignoring a few things to just boil down the change to this central part of the feat. We're going to ignore the +1 to Strength, and we're going to just play with a character using a Maul or Greatsword (and without the Great Weapon Fighting Style, which I've come around to feeling is just not very good - but it also makes the average damage a pleasantly whole number). No magic weapon here, either. And we'll assume that the character is starting with a +3 to Strength and won't be able to bump it up at level 4 (say our new character only started with a 16 and needs a second feat to bump their Strength up to 18).

Our enemy, I think, will maybe not be a full boss-monster. Let's say in our tier 1 example, we'll have an AC of 14.

So, the earliest we can get this feat is level 4. So let's look at this level.

At level 4 with a +3 to Strength, we're looking at a +5 to hit. Thus, we're going to be hitting our target on a roll of 9 or higher, which is 60% of the time.

Old Version:

We drop our entire attack bonus, so we now need to roll a 14 to hit, giving us a 35% chance to hit. Our damage is, on average, 7+3+10, or 20.

Thus, before accounting for crits, we're looking at 7 damage per attack. We then add .35 for the potential crit damage, thus getting 7.35.

New version:

Our average damage here is 7+3+2, or 12, which we get 60% of the time. That's 7.2, and then adding the .35 on crits for 7.55.

    So, wow! With a relatively modest AC and the absolute lowest bonus of from our PB, we're still out-performing the old version.

For fun, let's give the old version its best-case scenario, namely hitting a zombie. Zombies have one of the lowest ACs in the game (actually, I think a Gelatinous Cube has lower) which makes it all the more likely your GWM character will hit them.

With an AC of 8, or old version is going to need to roll an 8 on the die, meaning they have a 65% chance to hit. Our new version only needs to roll a 3, giving them a 90% chance to hit.

Old: 20x.65, which is 13, plus .35 for crits, so we get 13.35.

New: 12x.9, or 10.8, plus .35, so we get 11.15.

    Ok, fair enough: here the math favors the old version. But I would say that a 14 AC is not terribly uncommon in a tier 1 situation, and will be pretty low at higher levels. Let's visit a different level.

At level 8, if we're playing a Fighter with their extra feat at level 6, we could reasonably assume a character to get to 20 Strength along with Great Weapon Master. By this level, it's also not unreasonable to assume that they get a +1 weapon.

I might guess we're facing somewhat better-armored enemies, though - we might say that we'll see 16 AC monsters with some frequency, so we'll use that as a baseline.

Here, our total attack bonus is +9 to hit. Thus, our typical chance to hit is on a 7 or higher, or 70% of the time. The old GWM will only get a +4, meaning they have to roll a 12 or higher, meaning a 45% chance to hit.

Old: damage is 7+5+1+10, or 23 damage on average (yes, it's twice a turn here, but it is in both cases so this difference cancels itself out). Thus, we're looking at 23x.45, which comes to 10.35, plus our extra .35 for crits, which brings us to 10.7 average damage.

New: damage is now 7+5+1+3, or 16 on average. 16x.7 is 11.2, then our .35 for crits gets us to 11.55.

    Extrapolating from here, I'd guess that because the bonus damage from the new GWM goes up over time, while the old version's bonus remains static, means that especially at higher levels, this new version of the feat will outperform the old one.

The surprising thing here is that this is the case even at lower levels. The +2 bonus from a tier 1 PB seems so minuscule compared to the +10 damage of the old version, but it really goes to show you how important being able to actually hit with your attacks is.

When you consider that a standard Goblin (at least the 2014 version) has an AC of 15, the new version of the feat will apparently be better against even monsters that are classically the very first creatures that a PC is likely to fight (and of course, given that you won't be getting this until level 4 at least, you could very likely find yourself fighting tougher enemies).

I will say that as someone who has always felt a certain discomfort with the riskiness of the old Great Weapon Master, even if I know the math favors it most of the time, it's somewhat heartening to know that this version is usually going to be better, without making you take any penalties. For those who like the gambling aspect of it, this might be disappointing. But if you were worried that melee was now going to struggle to be viable, I think this should put those fears to rest.

Witch Bolt Becomes Not Terrible

 One of the golden opportunities for the 2024 Player's Handbook is to take certain options that were severely underpowered in the 2014 version and make them viable. I've already gone over how True Strike has gone from a laughably useless cantrip to becoming actually one of the best options, but let's talk about another "Trap" spell that has seen big changes.

Yep, we're talking Witch Bolt.

Infamously, in the 2014 PHB, Warlocks are encouraged to pick Witch Bolt along with Hex as their starting spells in the "quick build" guidance. And Witch Bolt looks, on paper, like it's pretty good - once you hit with the initial attack, you can keep pumping in damage each turn automatically. That sounds really effecient.

But it has some problems:

First, I think the benefits of the spell look better before you understand how enormous a round in D&D combat is. In my longrunning Ravnica campaign, one of the two Storm Sorcerers tries to make this spell work (largely to get the lightning damage) but two things usually get in the way of its being effecting. The first is that monsters often die pretty quickly. When you imagine this working wonderfully is if you have a really long combat where you get 3, 4, 5 rounds of witchy goodness crackling away on the target. However, unless you're dealing with a boss monster (and even then, not so often) the monster is probably going to be dead before you get more than two rounds out of this spell.

The second issue is that it's just so easy for a monster to break out of it. The range on 2014 Witch Bolt is only 30 feet - meaning you have to be within most creature's walking speed of the target to cast it. And that means that they can almost always move out of that range with a single movement.

We can also talk about how the damage is pretty low - 1d12 for a leveled spell... basically I think any time you expend a spell slot on a spell, you should be doing more than one die of damage if that's what the spell is meant to do. This is barely more damage than a cantrip like Fire Bolt.

But we all know Witch Bolt is bad. The question, then, is: has it been fixed?

The first major change is that its range has been doubled. With a 60-foot range, you can now target a creature that won't be able to simply use its movement speed to get out of the radius. Would I have maybe bumped this up to more, like 90 or 120 feet? Perhaps. But 60 feet will usually cover a pretty big chunk of the map (Roll 20's default map size is 25x25 squares, or 125 feet, meaning if you're in the center of the map, you'll basically cover the entire thing).

The second change is that its initial damage is now 2d12 - essentially, the spell has been automatically upcast compared to its 2014 version. A Warlock casting this at 5th level when they're level 9+ will deal 6d12 damage with it, or about 39 on average.

However, probably the biggest change is the third one - on subsequent turns, you can use a Bonus Action to deal 1d12 Lightning damage to the target automatically, without rolling to hit, even if the initial attack missed. The spell ends early if the target is outside its range or gets behind Total Cover.

So, this is the potential game changer. The previous version forced you to use your Action to continue to deal the damage, and if you missed the initial attack, the spell had no effect.

Does this fix the spell?

Well, I think the spell has perhaps graduated from terrible to moderately decent. It will depend heavily on whether you want to use your bonus action for something or not. My Wizard, for example, only tends to use his bonus action if he needs to Misty Step or to direct his Manifest Mind (Scribe Wizard feature) around the battlefield. If you find yourself often not needing to use a bonus action, there's little opportunity cost in tacking on an extra 6.5 lightning damage each turn.

The other thing is that it's guaranteed damage. Not a ton, mind you, but still, particularly at low levels, that extra d12 can potentially be significant.

All this being said, I don't think this spell is worth upcasting - only the initial damage gets buffed when you do, and I think that there are plenty of better spells to use. The spell also still takes your concentration, which you might want to use for higher-level, more impactful things. But if you have a very elusive target - some heavily-armored monster at levels when you don't have the attack bonus to consistently overcome their AC - this can be nice.

I will also say that if you're fighting a foe that is concentrating on a spell, having consistent damage coming at them to force saves can be helpful.

I have to say that, personally, I'm still not convinced this is an amazing spell now - there might be some odd combos that could amp it up into something really impressive, but as it stands I think they've mostly ameliorated, rather than eliminated some of the spell's biggest flaws.

However, I think that I'll be less inclined to steer new players away from Witch Bolt - it feels like it now has a place as an offbeat, fun spell, rather than just being a pure "bad choice" option.

Building Darsino in Draw Steel

 For nearly eighteen years, I've played an Undead Rogue in World of Warcraft. While he isn't my main character, and has honestly fallen behind a bit as new classes like the Death Knight and Demon Hunter pushed him down in my alt priority list, I've always had a soft spot for him - he was the first character I got to level 70 (back in Burning Crusade. Funnily enough he's level 70 again now thanks to the Shadowlands level squish) and I always had a strong sense of personality and vibe to him.

He is, essentially, the master spy. He's got a taste for luxury despite having been raised in a rather modest (though not poor) family, but he got embroiled in some kind of deadly intrigue when the undead Scourge came to Lordaeron (my story for him is that he was infected by the plague of undeath right before he was hanged for high crimes after getting on the wrong side of his foes, but the plague brought him back, now decrepit and robbed of his dashing looks, and he has become a bitter, but ruthlessly effective spy and assassin.)

Naturally, a game of Draw Steel would likely use a different setting, but the elements are as follows: Darsino is undead, a master spy, and has a nigh-supernatural (or perhaps just plain supernatural) ability to blend into the shadows. In WoW, his specialization is Subtlety, which leans the heaviest into the stealthiness and unexpected bursts of damage.

Luckily, Draw Steel actually has a core Ancestry that is actually an undead being. So, I thought we'd go down the list and figure out how exactly we'd build this guy.

Ancestry: Revenant

    This one's pretty easy. Revenants are beings reanimated by a need for vengeance. Revenants get a fairly extensive list of Ancestry benefits. Darsino will have the size and weight of a human (size 1, weight 4) and a speed of 5 (which appears standard) and a reach of 1 (also standard).

    He'll also get Driving Vengeance, which allows him to place a magic sigil on a creature within 10 squares as a maneuver. While this sigil is on the creature, he'll know the direction and exact location of the creature if they're on the same plane of existence. He can mark a number of creatures equal to his level (so 1 for now). And he can detonate the sigil as an action, dealing a bit of damage and sliding the target (which I believe means moving them in any horizontal direction,) which can also be done at a range of 10.

    Finally, he has the Tough but Withered benefit, which grants cold, corruption, lighting, and poison immunity 5 (I believe this subtracts 5 from any instance of damage of those types that he takes) and fire vulnerability 5 (which adds to this type of damage). He doesn't need to breathe, eat, or drink. Additionally, when his Stamina is equal to the negative of his winded value (I believe this is 50%) he becomes inert rather than dying, and he can continue to observe his surroundings but can't speak or move. Taking fire damage in this state will kill him, but otherwise he'll regain one of his recovery's worth of Stamina after 12 hours. (Here I'm slightly confused, as a Recovery is worth 1/3 of your maximum stamina, meaning that if you're at negative 50% of your stamina, you'll still be at negative 1/6 of your total stamina after this goes off. I suppose this does still allow you to act and move, but you won't be able to Catch Breath to spend recoveries and heal back past 0. Ok, maybe this works all right).

Culture:

    Culture is built up of various elements: the language, environment, organization, and uprbinging. Language is fairly straightforward.

    For Environment, I think he and his brother (another of my WoW characters, who is actually my main) were orphaned during the First War, and lived in Lordaeron City when they were young, so I'll give him the Urban environment, which allows him to choose one skill from the Interpersonal or Intrigue list.

    For Organization, I think Darsino was recruited into a royal intelligence service at a young age. While his work was in the shadows, it was all rather formalized, and he served as an intelligence officer. So we're going to go with Bureaucratic organization, which allows a choice of a skill from the intrigue or lore skill groups.

    Finally, for Upbringing, we've got to go with Illegal, as while his conduct was under orders from the government, the actual acts he performed were not strictly in keeping with the general law, including theft, breaking and entering, forgeries, and perhaps even murders. What do you know? Another skill from the intrigue group.

Career:

    Among the options here, I see two ways we could go: Criminal feels fairly straightforward, but I want to distinguish his background a little - he's not just working for some gang or group of bandits. He was an intelligence officer. Without a Spy option (which would be ideal,) I'm tempted to go with Soldier.

    This grants him two skills - one from the exploration group and one from the intrigue group. Next, he gets two additional languages. He also begins with Renown 1 (giving him a bit of a boost in status when dealing with others, such as during negotiations). Finally, he get a Title - Versatile Warrior, which allows him to perform two respite activities per rest, as long as one of them is changing his kit.

Class:

    Now we get to the meat of it. Naturally, we're going with a Shadow.

    So, to start with, we automatically get an Agility and a Presence of 2. For our other attributes, I think Darsino is a well-rounded enough character that he shouldn't really be bad at anything, which means we'll take the 1, 0, 0 option. I think we'll grant him his 1 in Intuition, as he should be good at reading people and tracking their movements. This leaves his Might and Reason at a 0. I could also imagine him taking a -1 to Might and a 1 to Reason... in fact, let's do that. So:

Might -1, Agility 2, Reason 1, Intuition 1, Presence 2.

    At 1st level, he has 18 Stamina (though we'll check in on this again when we get to our Kit) And he has 12 recoveries (each healing for 6, as I understand it).

    Then, he gets the Hide and Sneak skills, plus any five from Criminal Underworld (a lore skill) or the exploration, interpersonal, or intrigue skill groups.

    Let's pick those skills, actually:

Hide, Sneak, Disguise (from Illegal Upbringing,) Society (from Bureaucratic Organization,) Alertness (from Urban Environment,) Navigate (from Soldier career,) Search (also from Soldier,) and then Eavesdrop, Track, Sabotage, Read Person, and Interrogate for the class. (That's 12 skills overall).

    Now, we'll pick our Shadow College. While my WoW Rogue has the Alchemy profession, he's subtly, not assassination, and thus focuses less on poisons than bamfing around the battlefield and striking from the shadows. Thus, I think the Black Ash College feels like the obvious choice.

    This grants the Black Ash Teleport maneuver, which allows him to teleport up to 5 squares, and allows him to use the Hide maneuver even if he's observed if he teleports in concealment or cover (and he can spend Insight to move additional squares equal to the Insight spent).

    It also grants the Triggered Action: In All This Confusion - when he's damaged, he can take this triggered action to teleport up to 4 squares and halve the damage he took, and doesn't suffer any additional effects from the triggering damage. And he can spend Insight to increase the number of squares he teleports (at a 1-to-1 ratio).

    As a Shadow, he also gets Hesitation is Weakness, which is a free triggered action that allows him to spend 1 Insight to take his turn immediately after another hero (in other words, another player - in Draw Steel, heroes and monsters alternate turns, with the Director (GM) picking between their monsters or monster squads, and the party picking between each of their characters. Each character gets one turn per round, and the round ends when everyone has moved. Normally, thus, there'd usually be a monster turn between player turns, but this lets you skip ahead.)

    Next, we're going to pick his abilities. At this level, he'll get his signature ability, and then a 3-Insight Heroic ability and a 5-Insight Heroic ability.

    For his signature ability, there are several enticing options, but I think Darsino wants to maximize his range to ensure ultimate slipperiness - so he'll take Shot and Step, which has a range of 5 and deals a little damage, to a single target, but allows him to Shift 1 square before or after the attack. Thus, while it's a Ranged attack, he can move out of reach (hopefully) of his target safely before he attacks, avoiding the bane on the roll. The damage here is lower, but it really preserves his mobility.

    Next, for his 3-Insight ability, he'll take Two Throats at Once, which allows him to hit two creatures within a range of 5 (or within melee reach - given the kit I expect him to take, he should be equally comfortable hitting with a melee attack) for perhaps a little lower damage to any single target, but overall more damage total.

    Finally, for his 5-Insight ability, I'd be tempted to go with Assassinate, but that's a pure melee ability, and we want to keep him at range. So we'll use Impairing Shot, which has a range of 5 and gives others an Edge when attacking the target (in addition to some damage). I think this plays into how he'd apply his spymaster skills to helping the party - he's there to debilitate the foe and set them up to be taken down.

Kit:

    Now, with class features settled, we want to pick a kit. There are plenty of options here - actually as far as I can tell, there's not really any limit to which he can choose. But let's stick with the thematic ones. We're leaning pretty hard into ranged attacks (very unlike a WoW Rogue) so we'll want something that buffs those. That leaves us with the Rapid Fire, Ranger, and Cloak and Dagger kits.

    Thing is - especially given his origins as a WoW character, I don't see him going around shooting people with a bow. Darsino should be walking around with dozens of knives in his cloak, and like, obviously we're going Cloak and Dagger.

    So, what do we get? Well, our Speed is increased by 2 (total of 7 now,) our Stamina increases by 3 (for a total of 21, and thus I believe our Recoveries increase to 7 per pop). Both our Melee and Ranged weapons get a +1 bonus at all three tiers of success. Perhaps most exciting, we get a +5 bonus to our Weapon Distance, meaning that all of these abilities that normally have a range of 5 now have a range of 10. We also get an ability called Mobility - when an enemy ends their turn adjacent to us, Darisno can shift up to 2 squares as a free triggered action.

    Finally, we get our Kit Signature Ability, which is Fade. This allows us to deal a bit of damage in either melee or at a range of 10 (I assume this incorporates the Kit's distance bonus? Otherwise it becomes 15) and then can shift squares equal to the tier of the result.

    Putting it all together:

Darsino, built this way, is going to be an absolute ghost on the battlefield. With multiple ways to teleport and shift around, he's going to be highly adept at striking from the shadows and very easily opening up distance between him and his foes. If I were to make some adjustments, I might actually lean into more melee abilities, such as Assassinate, given that I'd be able to escape melee range pretty easily. 

Ideally, he's the character who a healer really won't need to worry about much - when he takes the rare actual hit, he'll be able to vanish and hide from his attacker. I might also see if I can play up his "setting up targets for failure" capabilities, like Impairing Shot. I might be tempted to take Wounding Strike instead of Two Throats at Once (though the original choice has a really cool flavor to it, especially if he's whipping a dagger from each hand at two different targets). Given how mobile he already is, taking something like Distracting Pain instead of Shot and Step might lean further into his enemy-debilitation vibe.

Draw Steel Classes, Heroic Resources, and The Overall Shape of Character Building

 Draw Steel's fundamental approach to classes isn't all to dissimilar to how it works in most RPGs. Your class represents the broad archetype and style of play for your character, though with many choices after this initial one that will allow you to tailor it to your particular goals.

Draw Steel does not use multiclassing - when you pick a class, that's what you'll be playing from level 1 to level 10. Given the way that heroic resources work, this is probably for the best. All that being said, while the playtest packet does hint at future features, we're still only able to play things at level 1, so it's not like you'd be able to multiclass anyway.

Each class has a Heroic Resource. This is a special resource that only your class has, and which you will build up over the course of a combat encounter, and then spend on various powers and abilities. Draw Steel encourages adventurers to keep pressing ahead, and this is largely done by a system called Victories. When you vanquish a group of monsters, or you succeed in a high-stakes negotiation, or you survive a deadly trap, or otherwise accomplish something of note, each member of the party gets a Victory. Your victories accumulate until you decide to retreat and take a Respite, at which point Victories convert into Experience. (Notably, leveling up takes far fewer experience points than in most games - in the ballpark of 15 or so between most levels).

However, while your Victories remain Victories, any time you begin a combat encounter, you'll gain an amount of your Heroic Resource equal to the Victories you have - meaning that the longer you push forward through an adventure, the more resources you'll start each encounter with. Thus, while early in the adventure it might take a few turns in combat before you can unleash your most powerful abilities, by the end of it you'll be able to pop off as soon as everyone draws steel.

Heroic Resources work differently depending on the class. The Conduit (Draw Steel's divine spellcaster class), for example, simply gains two Piety (their resource) at the start of each turn, and has a maneuver (a kind of secondary action you can do in addition to your regular action, a bit like a bonus action in D&D) called Prayer that can generate additional Piety. The Shadow (the game's sneaky assassin/ninja class) gains 2 Insight (its resource) at the start of its turn as well, but also gains an additional Insight when they get a tier 3 result on an attack, but a Shadow loses all their Insight when combat ends.

    (As a reminder, Draw Steel is built on the Power Roll - you roll 2d10 and potentially add a relevant modifier, such as a Shadow's Agility, which begins at a +2. You then see if the value is 11 or less, which is a tier 1 result, 12-16, which is a tier 2 result, or 17 or higher, which is a tier 3 result. Each kind of attack will have varying effects based on the result of the roll).

Each class has a number of subclasses. For example, the Fury (Draw Steel's raging primal warrior) can choose between the Berserker, the Reaver, or the Stormwright. Each subclass comes with various features, including passive benefits, triggered actions, and attacks.

However, in addition to these, you'll also pick some other abilities.

You'll typically pick a single Signature Ability. This is an ability you can use that does not consume any of your Heroic Resource, typically doing less damage or having a less dramatic effect, but being always there and reliable. The Fury, for example, can pick between Brutal Slam, which deals damage and knocks foes back (pushing father the better the power roll,) Hit and Run, which allows them to "shift" (moving without provoking opportunity attacks) and potentially slowing the target, or Humiliating Strike, where you can elect to deal a bit of extra damage while giving the target an edge on their next attack against you, encouraging them to come after you instead of your allies. Finally, Impaling Strike will damage the target and then usually grab them, allowing you to drag them around and damage them as you do.

    (Another reminder: Power Rolls can be affected by Edges and Banes. A single Edge adds +2 to the result, and a single Bane subtracts a -2. Edges and Banes cancel each other out, but if the end result leaves two instances of an Edge, you instead get a Double Edge, which, rather than changing the numerical result, simply pushes the result to the next tier of success up. Similarly, a Double Bane forces the result to be one lower than its initial result. In other words, with a Double Edge, you can only get a tier 2 or 3 result, and with a Double Bane, you can only get a tier 1 or 2 result.)

In addition to Signature abilities, you also pick from various Heroic Abilities. These are abilities that spend your Heroic Resource and should have a bigger impact. Depending on your class and your level, you'll be able to pick a certain number of heroic abilities at certain cost levels. The Fury gets one Signature ability, one 3-Rage (Rage being their resource) ability, and one 5-Rage ability. In contrast, the Elementalist will get, at level 1, a Signature ability, a 1-Essence (their resource) ability, a 3-Essence ability, and a 5-Essence ability.

So, how does this all come together?

Well, I haven't played the game yet, but here's how I see it going:

You're going to have a lot of choices to make during character creation, picking your subclass, your signature abilities, your other abilities, your kit, etc. However, when you're in combat and ready for your turn, your suite of abilities to pick from is relatively narrow: two signature abilities, one chosen with your class and another with your kit, and then 2 or 3 Heroic abilities, then just a triggered action (I think generally just one) and perhaps a melee and a ranged free triggered action (which will probably only be for opportunity attacks or if an ally has an ability that lets you use it.)

In other words, you'll have a choice of probably five or fewer things you can do on each of your turns at level 1, and especially in your first combat, you might not even be able to do anything other than your Signature abilities on the first round.

I'm intending to eventually go through the five classes presented in the playtest packet: the Conduit, Elementalist, Fury, Shadow, and Tactician. One strong note for the game is that the complexity level seems fairly balanced across all the classes. Unlike D&D, where the nature of spellcasting inherently makes casters more complex, Draw Steel's class abilities are all unique to their classes, and so a Tactician will have just as many options for the kind of attacks and battlefield commands they use as an Elementalist has spells to choose from.

Starfinder 2e is Apparently Fully Compatible with Pathfinder 2e

 I still haven't had a chance to run a game of Starfinder - as I've written about a lot on this blog, most of my players are pretty familiar with D&D 5E, and generally are more interested in trying out simpler RPGs rather than crunchier ones - Starfinder, I'd argue, is probably a little crunchier but not to an absurd degree, but I understand the friction.

I've never actually played Pathfinder - back before 5E came out, some friends had been talking about potentially getting a Pathfinder game together (warning us that D&D wasn't so good anymore - I think in the last decade 4E has gained some love, but it was pretty widely decried back in the day) - but this game never game about.

Starfinder came out in 2017, three years after 5E had seen D&D return to prominence as the big fantasy RPG. Starfinder was built on the bones of Pathfinder, which itself was built on the bones of 3rd Edition using the OGL.

Still, structurally, it was pretty different, as far as I can tell - Starfinder, for example, has a two-tiered health system.  You have Stamina Points, which are relatively easy to get back, and are depleted first, and then Hit Points, which take a lot longer to recover. Losing the former is the kind of ding or graze that your character can laugh off, while losing hit points is when you start sustaining real injuries.

What's curious about the second edition is that the intent is now to allow Starfinder and Pathfinder to be fully compatible with one another - meaning that you should be able to take classes, ancestries, and monsters from one game and use them in the other.

I'm really curious to see how this works, even if I don't know that I'll have the mental bandwidth to really get invested enough to understand how it all works. But it does look like pretty much everything from the Starfinder core rulebook will be there - I believe every race (probably called ancestries now) and class will return (along with the Witchwarper class, which showed up in later supplements).

To me, as someone far more familiar with 5E, I was really hoping for a harder commitment to science-fantasy with the Spelljammer setting. Starfinder hits that balance quite well, but it's just an unfamiliar rules system.

I think Paizo is probably making a really good decision in allowing "cross-play" between the systems, though I also wonder how Pathfinder itself is doing in this era where so many other fantasy RPGs are cropping up.