Allies in the Mist: The Weathermay-Foxgrove Twins

 One of the really cool things in Ravenloft: Horrors Within is that, in addition to the stat blocks for Darklords, we also get bespoke stat blocks for a number of potential allies in our travels across the Mists. While we don't have Alanik Ray and Arthur Sedgwick, and we may or may not have the appropriate stat block for Firan Zal'honen (depending on what you think the version of that character the party might meet is, we get a few of the Mist Wanderers.

While Ravenloft is a setting that operates on full nightmare logic, it's not without its own friendly faces. The PCs might take it upon themselves to face the terrors of the Mists, but they're not the only ones fighting back.

In most D&D campaigns, you have a number of friendly NPCs who can help the party out - often they simply serve as quest-givers or as people who have some knowledge that can help the party out. But sometimes, they can accompany a party and aid them as, essentially, NPC party members. And I think that's where these stat blocks becomes really useful.

Gennifer and Laurie Weathermay-Foxgrove are the twin apprentices of Rudolph Van Richten's. They hail from Mordent, and are relatively young but established monster-hunters.

Gennifer has a sort of Druid/Cleric set of abilities, with a little bit of healing and radiant damage she can dish out. At CR 3, Gennifer is a formidable ally to a tier 1 party, and the extra healing and damage she can deal can be a real asset.

However, Gennifer comes with a major downside: unbeknownst to everyone, she is actually already cursed with a werewolf bite. Thus, if she ever drops to 0 HP, she will transform into a werewolf.

I believe that, rules as written, that means she is permanently changed and also becomes chaotic evil. DMs can choose to be a little less bleak and allow the party to subdue her and even maybe cure her with a Remove Curse spell.

But I will say, if you're willing to go dark (and this is Ravenloft,) you might make the transformation truly permanent, and force the party to either kill her, imprison her, or risk her stalking the party for the rest of the adventure.

Gennifer has been suppressing her curse, so she seems to be aware of it, but I think it's implied that she's keeping this a secret, even from her sister. If a party member learns of this through insight, or perhaps investigation or even medicine checks, you might have her play the trope of "don't tell my sister - I don't want to upset her." Indeed, learning of her affliction before she gets transformed will lend to the tension that builds with her - it forces the party to do whatever they can to prevent her from going to 0 HP, an extra challenge that can make combat more difficult and really raise the stakes of any encounter that involves her.

Even if the party convinces her to step back from her monster-hunting activities, two things will happen: first, the party is down a character who can heal and do some pretty potent magical effects and spells. Second, just because she is sitting back at home in Mordent doesn't mean that she's safe - what even is a "safe" place in Ravenloft?

This transformation will be especially upsetting because her twin sister, Laurie, is likely to be there with her when it happens.

Laurie is also CR 3, and ultimately has a bit of a simpler stat block. She's basically a straightforward fighter-like character, though she has a reaction that can protect either herself or a nearby ally. This does mean that if the twins stick together, Gennifer will be a little safer thanks to this.

There's plenty of human drama to mine from the secret Gennifer keeps from Laurie, and I'd lean into that, as horror often works best when you get into the specifics of the characters.

Bringing two CR 3 character to aid the party could potentially balance combat quite a bit in the party's favor. Gennifer can be a liability, of course, but until she goes down, she's going to have a lot of powerful stuff she can do to help.

There's no strict guidance on adding NPCs to a combat encounter - my simple rule is just to add the NPCs' XP amounts to the total encounter budget. The twins might help the party face down a monster they'd normally not be ready to face, but this can start to warp the balance - even if the XP balances out, a Strigoi is still going to insta-kill lower-level characters. Thus, I'd instead err on the side of more monsters of the CR that the party was already going to face.

I'd also err on keeping these NPCs in supporting roles. Consider letting the players direct how the characters will act on the adventure - asking them to do things like Investigation or Religion checks (maybe phrased more like, in-character, asking them "What do you think of this symbol?") In combat, I might even recommend handing over control of the NPCs to the players, though if the Suppressed Lycanthropy element of Gennifer isn't common knowledge, you might instead just run both of them.

Allied NPCs can be a lot of fun, but I'd also generally not run them with the party for an entire campaign. Sure, there's precedence for this (Balnor from NADDPOD comes to mind, as well as Essek for the latter part of Critical Role's Mighty Nein campagin) but without a lot of engineering on your part, the twins won't scale up as the party levels up.

In tier 1, the twins will be very formidable allies, but by the time the party gets into tier 2, the PCs will start to outstrip the Twins as powerful monster hunters, so you might have them settle back into Support NPCs by then.

Demonic Sorcery (v2)

 Sorcerous powers can come from all sorts of places. If you get your power from the Abyss, you're... in for a rough ride (unless, I guess, you're into that, which makes sense for a Villainous subclass).

Let's check it out.

Demonic Spells:

1st: Bane, Dissonant Whispers

2nd: Spike Growth, Web

3rd: Bestow Curse, Dispel Magic

4th: Giant Insect, Hallucinatory Terrain

5th: Contact Other Plane, Modify Memory

    Some really powerful 2nd level spells here - if you can get some forced movement, Spike Growth can do a ton of damage, and of course Web is a classic.

Level 3:

When you use Innate Sorcery, you create a rupture into the Abyss, which fills a 10-foot radius sphere centered on a point within 30 feet of you. When you activate Innate Sorcery and as a bonus action while IS is active, you can choose one of the following options. Also, you can move the center of the sphere to a point within 30 feet of yourself at the start of each of your turns.

    Real quick: I think this means we could use it twice on the turn we activate Innate Sorcery. Not sure if that's intended. Also, nice that no matter how fast you go, you can always put the sphere need you (though less great if you want it farther away from you).

Demonic Lash: Make a melee spell attack against a target within 5 feet of the rupture. On a hit, the target takes 1d8 slashing damage and if it's Large or smaller, you can pull it up to 10 feet toward the center of the sphere.

    This pairs nicely with Spike Growth, and can also yoink monsters attacking you away from you.

Terrifying Screams: Each creature within the rupture must succeed on a Wisdom saving throw or take 1d4 psychic damage.

    That's a pretty tiny amount of damage. Honestly, not sure we need a saving throw against it. Maybe it should be just "equal to your Cha modifier." I think that Demonic Lash would be the one I use most of the time.

Level 6:

Abyssal Realm:

When you spend at least 1 Sorcery Point as part of a Magic Action or Bonus Action on your turn, you can pull influence from the Abyss. You create a 10-foot emanation around you or fill your Abyssal Rupture sphere with magic, taking magic from one of three layers of the Abyss.

    Sorcerer do love spending SP, so you'll probably get these effects quite often.

Gaping Maw's Frenzy: Designate a direction horizontal to you. Each creature in the area that fails a Charisma saving throw must use as much of its movement as possible to move in that direction at the start of its next turn, taking the safest route.

    This will never be a huge area, but again, it can potentially get attackers to run away from you.

Maze of Azzatar: Each creature in the area makes an Intelligence saving throw. On a failure, you gain the Invisible condition against the target until the start of your next turn.

    This is cool, though thanks to Innate Sorcery, we'll already have advantage on our attacks. Still, this can keep them from targeting us with spells and makes it harder for them to attack us - certainly useful. (And Int saves are often a good one to target).

Slime Pits' Haze: Each creature in the area makes a Con save. On a failed save, they have the Charmed or Poisoned condition until the start of your next turn.

    Con is a harder thing to target, typically, than Charisma or Intelligence, but these conditions can be quite powerful, and more broadly useful.

Level 14:

Abyssal Conduit:

You gain the following:

Rupture Expansion: The size of your Abyssal Rupture is now a 30-foot radius sphere, and it's difficult terrain for you enemies.

    A 30-foot sphere is gigantic, and will cover a huge swath of the battlefield. This is going to let you potentially hit far more targets with its effects, and the difficult terrain can really give you more control over the battlefield.

Fiendish Servant: You always have the Summon Fiend spell prepared. When you cast the spell, you can modify it to not require Concentration, but its spell duration becomes 1 minute for that casting, and you must use the Demon form for the summoned fiend. Additionally, the Fiend has advantage on attack rolls while within your Abyssal Rupture.

    Well, the rupture's enormous now, so it will probably get that pretty easily. Notably, I think you can still summon a Yugoloth or Devil if you cast this normally, which is nice if you want a ranged or at least more mobile minion. I also think the advantage should apply to it regardless of its form. Also, you could cast multiple Summon Fiends this way (there's no "it ends if you cast the spell again" rider). That's going to take a lot of high-level spell slots, but you could theoretically have one at 6th level and another at 8th, giving you 7 fiend attacks per turn, likely all at advantage.

Level 18:

Abyssal Explosion:

As a magic action, you fill a 30-foot radius sphere with an explosion of Abyssal energy. Each creature in the sphere makes a Con save. On a failure, if the creature is not a fiend, they take 8d6 force damage and are incapacitated until the start of your next turn. You can use this once per long rest, or you can spend 7 SP to restore your use of it.

    I think it must be an error that it doesn't say where you can place the sphere. I doubt this is intended to allow you to drop this in a secret fortress in Pandemonium while you're having tea in Waterdeep. This is a save for none ability, but the effect of a failure is quite powerful. The damage is fine, though low for the equivalent of a 7th level spell, but the main benefit is the incapacitation effect, which I think is well worth it.

Overall Thoughts:

    The only real challenge for this subclass is that you'll be managing a lot of pieces. The Abyssal Rupture, a Summoned Fiend, and yourself. But I think you can do some cool stuff here. It is very reliant on Innate Sorcery, but by level 7, you'll have Sorcery Incarnate, which means you'll probably not find yourself running out of uses of IS very often.

    The Abyssal Rupture is going to be small and require a lot of management until level 14, but at least it's fairly easy to orient.

That's it for the subclasses in this UA. We will, though, get some new feats to look at.

Hell Knight Fighter (v2)

 So, my recollection of the previous version was that it was a solid and interesting design (as I recall, this was my general impression of all the villainous subclasses). Here, you're a warrior for the Nine Hells, whether forced into it via a bargain or doing it for infernal rewards. Primarily, it's built around Infernal wounds, which is an interesting mechanic we'll get into.

Level 3:

Diabolical Gift:

You gain the following benefits:

Devil's Sight: Like the Warlock invocation, 120 feet of regular sight in dim light and darkness, magical or otherwise (technically not Darkvision, so I think you can see colors).

Devil's Talents: You know Infernal, or if you already know it, you can choose another language to learn. You also gain your choice of proficiency in Deception, Performance, or Sleight of Hand.

    These are both perfectly nice to have, and particularly if you're in a party with a Shadow Monk, Shadow Sorcerer, and a Warlock with Devil's Sight, you could pull off some fun shenanigans.

Hell-Forged Weapon:

When you take the attack action, you can imbue each weapon you're holding with hellfire, making it a Hell-Forged Weapon, which lasts until you go unconscious or the weapon is 5 feet away from you for more than a minute, or you choose to end it. While wielding a Hell-Forged Weapon, you shed dim light in a 5-foot radius and you can deal your choice of Cold, Fire, or Necrotic damage instead of its regular damage (you choose the damage type when you imbue the weapon.)

    Notably, this is no action required, so you can easily have this up all the time. It doesn't do a ton on its own (and might make it harder to sneak around, though given this subclass encourages you to use heavy armor, you probably aren't sneaking anyway).

Infernal Wound:

You have an infernal wound die, which is a d6.

When you hit a creature with a Hell-Forged Weapon, you can deal extra damage equal to the infernal wound die, which is the same damage type as the one chosen for the weapon. Additionally, you can inflict the target with an infernal wound.

While wounded, the target takes damage of the chosen type equal to one roll of the infernal wound die at the start of each of its turns. The wound lasts for 1 minute, or until the target regains hit points, or the target or a creature within 5 feet of it takes an action to stanch the wound.

You can do this Con times per short or long rest (minimum 1).

    This is really the central mechanic of the subclass. It does mean you will need to invest in Con, but Fighters can often afford to do that - I'd certainly try to start with a +3 if I could. Unless the monsters are healing each other or going around stanching wounds for one another, you're probably going to get at least 2d6 damage out of this each time, and you can choose to use this on a crit to get an extra d6 in there. It's not enormous, but if combat lasts a while and they don't deal with the wound, the overall damage could build up. I'd probably err on the side of using this just once per combat, at least at this level, unless I knew that a rest was coming soon.

Level 7:

Advanced Wounds:

When you roll your Infernal Wounds Die, you can apply one of the following effects. If you roll a 6 on said die, you get to add the additional Devil's Luck bonus on each of the effects. Once you use this feature, you can't use it again until the start of your next turn.

    So, as a note, this can happen immediately when you first use the Infernal Wound, or you can have it happen when they take the wound damage at the start of their turns.

Purulence of Minauros: Caustic pus erupts from the wound. Each enemy in a 5-foot emanation from the target takes Acid damage equal to your Con modifier and is poisoned until the end of its next turn. Devil's Luck: Each creature that takes this acid damage also has a -1 penalty to their AC until the end of your next turn.

    For elegance's sake I might prefer that the AC penalty and the poisoned condition end at the same time, but I guess we want to make sure we benefit from the AC thing. Note that unless stated otherwise, emanations don't include the source of the emanation, so this only helps if the enemy is next to one of its allies.

Rupture of Cania: The wound ruptures with arcane energy. The target takes Force damage equal to your Con modifier. Devil's Luck: The target also subtracts 1d6 from the next saving throw it makes before the end of your turn.

    Pretty simple single-target option here, and the Devil's Luck element can help out our allies.

Stygian Gangrene: Infernal rime spreads from the wound. The target takes Cold damage equal to your Con modifier and can't take reactions until the start of its next turn. Devil's Luck: The target's speed is halved until the end of its next turn.

    This could help you set up an ally to escape from a scary monster. Indeed, this is better than Rupture of Cania unless the target is resistant or immune to cold, though the Devil's Luck feature complicates that.

    Overall, these are cool little effects. The damage isn't terribly huge, but I think the damage is somewhat secondary to the other effects. And I like the Devil's Luck elements.

Infernal Equipment:

You gain the following:

Infernal Resilience: When you finish a short or long rest, you can choose a damage type from Cold, Fire, or Necrotic. While wearing Heavy armor or wielding a shield, you gain resistance to that damage type until you choose a different one with this feature.

    This is akin to a Fiend Warlock feature, though more limited. Notably, this can help if you're traveling across areas with extreme temperatures.

Unholy Power: When you roll your infernal wound die, you can treat a 1 as a 6.

    So, this is exciting: first off, it increases the average damage of the die (4.33 up from 3.5) but it also means that the Devil's Luck bonus on your wounds now happens 1/3 of the time rather than 1/6. It's nearly as good as upgrading it to a d8, but without lowering the chance you get that bonus.

Level 10:

Hellfire Surge:

When you use your Action Surge when holding a Hell-Forged Weapon, you erupt in hellfire in a 20-foot emanation that lasts until the end of your next turn. When a creature suffering from an infernal wound starts its turn in the emanation, it takes damage equal to two rolls of your Infernal Wound die instead of one.

    So, this does require burning your action surge, which is still pretty precious, though you will be using it regularly. Naturally, this makes the wound do an average of 8.67, which is starting to feel like real damage, but it also means that our chance of getting Devil's Luck goes up to about 56%

Level 15:

Devil's Misfortune:

When a creature with an infernal wound hits you with an attack roll, you can take a reaction to roll your Infernal Wound die and reduce the damage taken by the amount rolled. On a roll of a 6, you can roll again (to a maximum of 6 rolls), reducing the damage by the total of all the rolls. In addition, when you do this, if the attack is a critical hit, it becomes a normal hit.

    The crit immunity is nice - not as much need for adamantine plate - but let's figure out what your average damage reduction is. Again, we treat 1s as 6s, and I assume this applies here as well for both the damage reduction and the exploding die. So, one die reduces it by 4.33 on average. Then, we have a 1/3 chance to reduce it by another 4.33. And then we have a 1/9 chance to reduce it by another 4.33. So, I think we're looking at an average damage reduction of 6.26ish. It does take our reaction, so it's not quite as good as Heavy Armor Master, but it works on all damage and isn't mutually exclusive with HAM.

Level 18:

Infernal Bargain:

When you roll a 6 on your Infernal Wound die three or more times before the start of your next turn, you gain Heroic Inspiration. You can use Heroic Inspiration in the following way:

Infernal Inspiration: If a creature you can see within 120 feet rolls a d20 test, you can expend your Heroic Inspiration to force the target to reroll the d20. If the number rolled causes the target to succeed on the d20 test, you regain an expended use of Indomitable or Second Wind (your choice). If the target fails the d20 test, you lose HP equal to 3d6 plus your Fighter level.

    Figures they'd fit a devil's bargain into the devil fighter subclass. There are a lot of means to roll infernal wound dice, so you could technically get Heroic Inspiration from a single monster if you first hit them with the initial wound (roll 1) and then they took the wound damage on their turn (roll 2) and then they attacked you and you used Devil's Misfortune. But this is going to be a 1/27 chance. It can get better if you have multiple wounded targets, but I don't see this happening a lot.

    However, if you play a Human, you'll have Heroic Inspiration quite often (and DMs should still hand them out for good roleplay). In this case, I think that the Infernal Inspiration feature could be really clutch - you just need to be ready and willing to take a bunch of damage to make that monster fail their save.

Overall Thoughts:

    Any Fighter subclass, in my opinion, has to work hard to justify going with it instead of a Battle Master or Eldritch Knight. A lot of them fail to do so. But I think that this one has a unique enough hook that it might do it.

    Power-wise, I really don't know if I have a sense of how actually good this is. But there's a really solid concept to it and a really consistent mechanical theme. And while it's built on a limited-used feature, you at least get a few uses that come back on a short rest, so I think you can probably manage to use this at least once in any significant fight.

Circle of Titans (v2)

 The previous Unearthed Arcana gave us several "villainous" subclasses and character options. They've now come back with a revision to a few of these.

We'll start with the Druid's Circle of Titans. In the "One D&D" playtest, they briefly experimented with the idea of having the Circle of the Moon use three broad templates (similar to the stat blocks for the Beast Master Ranger's pets) rather than having you search through beast stat blocks. I actually far preferred this as a design idea, because it made the subclass more consistent, but the problem was that the templates sucked. A lot of people also didn't like the lack of versatility. But I think they abandoned the idea too quickly. Thankfully, the Circle of Titans revisits this concept. And while the previous UA version of it replicated some of the same mistakes (the Insectoid form more or less capped its AC at 13) the new one seems poised to fix these problems and then some.

Indeed, on first glance, I'm excited for this version of the subclass, but is it too powerful?

Let's do a full preview.

Circle Spells:

Cantrip: Thaumaturgy

1st: Thunderwave

2nd: Enlarge/Reduce

3rd: Fear

4th: Fire Shield

5th: Destructive Wave

    Notably, you can cast these spells while in your Titan Form. I think these are pretty solid spell options - Fear is a great crowd control spell, and while you can buff your own attacks with Enlarge/Reduce, you might start getting absurdly big.

Level 3:

Titan Form:

When you use Wild Shape, you can adopt a Titan Form, choosing from Behemoth, Leviathan, or Insectoid stat blocks. You can only stay in a Titan Form for up to 10 minutes.

Each Titan Form gains new abilities and features as you gain Druid levels. Broadly, each one uses your spell attack modifier for its attack rolls, gets Extra Attack at level 5, has Strength and Dexterity equal to your Wisdom scores (other stats remain the same,) has a 40 foot speed and a 40-foot alternate speed depending on the form. Each has an AC equal to 13+ your Wisdom modifier, Darkvision out to 60 feet, and grants Temp HP equal to 4 times your Druid level. Also, each form is a Siege Monster, dealing double damage to objects and structures.

    Notably, that's now more temp HP than Moon Druids get, but the form is also, of course, much more limited in duration. Basically, it'll be like a Barbarian's Rage, certainly usable in a whole combat, but maybe not two fights.

Lastly, each form's Rend attack (its primary melee attack) deals 1d8+Wisdom damage - slashing, bludgeoning, and piercing damage for the Behemoth, Leviathan, and Insectoid respectively. This damage scales up as you level up, going to 2d8 at level 6 and 3d8 at level 12. (Also, Rend has a 10-foot reach.)

    That's actually a pretty big deal - you effectively have a somewhat better Vicious weapon (adding 2d8 rather than 2d6) automatically by level 12, and you can still benefit from magic items that boost your spell attack modifier.

Here are specific things each form gets:

Behemoth:

This one gets a climb speed. Incandescent Breath lets you, as an action, expend a spell slot to do a big 60-foot line breath weapon attack. This deals 2d10 radiant damage per spell level, with a Dex save for half. As a bonus action, Rampager (which requires level 10) lets you expend a spell slot to move up to half your speed without provoking opportunity attacks. When you enter the space of an enemy at least two sizes smaller than you for the first time on a turn, that creature has to make a Strength saving throw or be knocked prone, and if they're already prone, they take 1d10 bludgeoning per spell level expended.

    Compared to, say, a Lightning Bolt, a 3rd level Incandescent Breath would deal 6d10, or about 33 damage, which is more than the 28 you get on average for Lightning Bolt (though a shorter line). And it scales better with upcasting. Rampager is one I suspect I'd rarely upcast, as I'd mainly want it to knock targets prone.

Leviathan:

This one has a swim speed and Amphibious, to let you breathe underwater. Toxic Deluge (requires level 10) lets you expend a spell slot as a bonus action, forcing each creature of your choice in a 10-foot emanation to make a Con save, taking 2d4 poison damage per spell level and becoming Poisoned until the start of your next turn on a failure.

    The emanation does get bigger the bigger you get, but I'm less excited by this - 5 average damage per spell level and save for none. Still, in a crowd it could do a lot, and given how big we get, we can often occupy the same spaces as other creatures. Once again, though, I think that the aquatic form is probably only going to be used when you're fighting underwater.

Insectoid:

This one has a fly speed. At level 10, it get Flyby. Energizing Pollen lets you, as an action, expend a spell slot to move up to half your speed without provoking opportunity attacks, and when you move within 5 feet of a creature during this movement, you can restore HP to them equal to 2d6 per spell slot expended. (They can only receive this once per use of this feature).

    So, Flyby is going to be pretty helpful given that you can still only attack in melee. Energizing Pollen isn't going to keep pace with a Cure Wounds, but it can potentially hit a few of your allies, so the better point of comparison is something like Mass Cure Wounds. At 5th level, Mass Cure Wounds heals for 5d8+Wisdom (we'd guess 4 if you're 9th level) so around 27.5. This would do 10d6 when used at 5th level, so 35 average - but it'd be harder to hit your entire party with it.

Level 6:

Oh right, there are more features.

Dire Impact:

You gain the following benefits:

Elemental Rend: When you hit with your Titan Form's Rend, you can cause it to deal Acid, Cold, Fire, Lightning, or Thunder damage rather than its normal damage type.

    This is a standard level 6 feature for any subclass that has special/built-in weapons. Less important with the reduction in resistance/immunity to physical damage, but not a bad thing to have.

Shock Wave: Once per turn, immediately after you move at least half your speed, youc an create a shockwave in a 10 foot emanation around you. Each creature in the emanation makes a Con save, falling prone on a failure.

    My first thought was that this was redundant with a Behemoth's Rampager, but it's actually more synergistic with it. Indeed, this is actually kind of crazy, because this just happens if you happen to move on your turn, requiring nothing like a bonus action or anything like that.

Level 10:

Primal Havoc:

You gain the following benefits:

Huge Size: You can choose to become Huge when assuming your Titan Form if there's enough space.

    The reasons to do this (other than because it's freaking awesome) are that it can increase the size of your emanations, and also you can potentially grapple Gargantuan monsters.

Toughened Hide: Immediately after you assume a Huge or larger Titan Form, you can expend a spell slot. While in the form, you gain a bonus to your AC equal to half the expended spell slot's level (rounded up).

    Ok, so this is interesting. By 10 I figure you either have a +4 or +5 to Wisdom, meaning you're at a 17 or 18 AC. If you want to go whole-hog, you could expend a 5th level spell slot to add 3 to that. I'm not sure what, exactly, the ideal expenditure here is, but certainly when you hit a point where you're barely ever using your lower-level spell slots, getting a +1 bonus from a 1st level slot or a +2 bonus from a 3rd level slot is... decent, I guess? Depends a bit on what you're expecting to fight. Probably always want to use an odd-numbered slot for this, thanks to the way it rounds.

Above It All: When you are Huge or larger in your Titan form, difficult terrain caused by heavy snow, ice, rubble, or undergrowth doesn't cost you extra movement.

    Weirdly specific, but there's a logic to it.

Level 14:

Monstrous Appetite:

You gain the following:

Gargantuan Size: You can choose to become Gargantuan when you assume your Titan form if there's space.

    Mainly this is just very cool, fulfilling the promise of the subclass.

Grappling Rend: Once per turn, when you are Huge or larger and hit a creature with your Rend attack, you can grapple the target (escape DC is your spell save DC). You can only have one creature grappled this way at a time.

    Notably, this is a way for a player to get a no-save Grapple on a target. Lots of monsters do this, but typically if a PC wants to do this, the target gets a saving throw even when the grapple is initiated.

Swallow: As a bonus action when you are Gargantuan, you can choose a Large or smaller creature you are grappling. The target makes a Strength saving throw. On a failure, the creature is no longer Grappled but is instead Restrained and Blinded, has total cover against attacks outside your stomach, and takes Acid damage at the start of each of your turns - the damage is a number of d12s equal to your Wisdom modifier.

You can have a number of creatures swallowed up to your Wisdom modifier (minimum 1) at a time. You must maintain concentration to hold a swallowed creature in your stomach. If you lose concentration, you regurgitate all swallowed creatures in a space within 10 feet of you, and each has the prone condition.

    Ok, so let's consider this: While there are two d20 tests that need to go your way for this to work, this is pretty powerful crowd control and damage over time. At this level, it's probably 5d12 damage per turn (or around 33.5) to up to 5 creatures. Sure, you'll really need to protect your concentration somehow. But there's no resource expenditure (other than Wild Shape,) and just takes a bonus action.

Overall Thoughts:

    I want to play this subclass. This fulfills such a great fantasy. Is it too powerful? It might be. I think some of the scaling on the spell-like effects the forms get might be too high. But I think this could just be insanely cool to play.

I think that this is something people would eagerly pick as their subclass, and so the only real problem I could see arising is that people might not want to do Circle of the Moon anymore. That is a problem - power creep isn't good for modular games.

But broadly, I think that the design here has the right idea, and now it's just a matter of trimming things back without breaking the thing. Truly, the Druid subclass I'd be most eager to play.

Adjustments to the Inner Shadow Barbarian

 So, iteration is always important in design.

Generally speaking, I think that good design in something out of D&D is when you get something cool and new but it's rendered in the simplest, most elegant way.

The Inner Shadow Barbarian is my design for a character I'd want to play. It's pretty important, though, for me, to make it balanced and also coherent. So often, I think, 3rd party and/or homebrew design can veer into wish fulfillment, being either overpowered or trying to force a scenario that could potentially play out in other ways.

I presented this in an earlier post, but I had two goals for this subclass:

First, to make a viable Barbarian subclass focused on Unarmed Strikes. Second, to make a subclass that flavored Rage as more of a transformation.

Since getting into the games from Remedy, specifically the Alan Wake series, I've been really interesting in the Jungian idea of the Shadow. Jung, of course, studied with Freud, who came up with the idea of a threefold psyche composed of the Ego, Superego, and Id. The Id (whose potency as an idea is really aided by its simple two-letter spelling) is the impulse and unchecked drive and desire, which I think relates well to the idea of Rage - a kind of submission to the Id and the abandonment of any of the checks or restraints the Ego and Superego place upon the Id.

Jung's idea of the Shadow is not really the same, but they could be related - it's basically the aspects of our selves that we aren't aware of - an unconscious self-perception or desire that might even contradict the image we have of ourselves.

So, the concept here is that Rage unleashes a suppressed or even just unconscious part of the Barbarian's psyche as a separate persona.

Now, I'll concede here that the connection between that and the mechanical theming of an unarmed Barbarian isn't inherent to the concept. But I do think we need a good unarmed Barbarian subclass, and I think that this fits with multiple Barbarian character concepts I've had. Given how much Gothic Horror is about that Jungian shadow (describing it before he defined it in the 20th century,) I think both the folklore of the Werewolf and also the Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde story both sort of fit with this idea. I had really wanted to make a werewolf Barbarian, but the Path of the Beast didn't really do it for me (I'll concede that at least on a conceptual level, there's certainly overlap here).

But later, I had a more elaborate character concept of a man who becomes trapped in the Shadowfell for several years (yes, like Alan Wake getting trapped in the Dark Place) and manifests this shadowy persona called "Mr. Teeth" in order to survive there, though he erroneously (or I guess it'd be up to my DM) thinks that Mr. Teeth is a separate being who terrorized him (but also just happened to slaughter anyone who threatened him in the Shadowfell). Having returned to the Material Plane, he's brought Mr. Teeth along with him, and becomes the monster when he needs to protect himself.

But all that preamble aside, what changes have I made since that first post? And what other changes might be called for? For reference, here's a link to the initial post.

First off: damage scaling.

I think one of the things we have to do with any unarmed-focused subclass is not step on anyone's toes. It sucks when one class is better at doing the thing that another class is entirely built around. Thus, I've changed the scaling of the Inner Shadow's Unarmed Strike damage to be at best equal to an equivalent-level Monk, never better than it. Thus, when you get the subclass at level 3, your unarmed strikes deal 1d6 damage. At level 6, a level after Monks get their first upgrade, your unarmed strikes go up to a d8. Finally, at level 14 (three levels after Monks get this) you go up to a d10, and that's where it stops. A d10 is fine - it's the equivalent of a Glaive or Halberd. Thanks to the Wraps of Unarmed Prowess, unarmed strikes will at least be able to get the most basic scaling with items (though I do think we need some items that let you add extra dice to your unarmed strikes, like a Vicious Weapon).

Next, we look at the Flurry of Claws element of Monstrous Claws (which is now Monstrous Swipes). This is a buff primarily to avoid some awkwardness - your bonus action unarmed strike still gets to add your Strength to it. Mainly, this felt necessary if we were going to let your unarmed strikes benefit from Graze - why should you get to add your Strength only if you miss?

We're going to come back to Shadow Manifestation, which I think might need a redesign for clarity.

Vicious Swipes (the new Nightmare Claws because we're saving the "Nightmare" term for later, and also swipes allows for non-slashing damage) is unchanged.

Ok, now, Raging Hurl was cool, but we were trying too hard to do what we can already kind of handle with Shoves. So, we replaced it (as I already mentioned in the subsequent post) with Enraged Manipulation, which gives foes disadvantage on their saving throws against Shoves and Grapples if we're raging. The intent here is to recreate the benefits that Rage gave to these actions in 5.0, essentially, when they took an Athletics check.

Vicious Claws got renamed to Nightmare Swipes, because "nightmare" feels like it should be more powerful than "vicious." I will say that I'm now wondering if we should get a once-a-turn Fear effect on our attacks, like an Undead Warlock. I also bumped it to level 14 to make it fair to Monks, and as mentioned before, it bumps you to a d10 rather than 2d6.

Secrets of the Id was a feature I liked, but it also felt potentially like not enough for your level 10 features (especially when putting Nightmare Swipes at level 14). I didn't want to directly replicate anything from another Barbarian subclass, so you don't get full immunity to Charm and Fear, but you get advantage on saves against them while raging. It's strictly worse, of course, than Mindless Rage for Berserkers, but I think we have enough unique stuff going on here that it's probably ok. You still get those extra skills with Primal Knowledge.

Metamorphic Manifestation is unchanged.

    So, let's come back to Shadow Manifestation.

The real problem I have here is just wording it clearly. The idea is that if you're raging and you get hit with any damage, you deal a bit of extra damage on any attacks until the end of your next turn. But while this idea isn't hard to communicate, it's surprisingly hard to put into strict and clear language. I considered saying "when you take damage, you enter a state of shadowy fury. While in this state, your Rage bonus damage to your attacks is doubled." That's a bit awkward, but the older phrasing "when you take damage your rage bonus is doubled until the end of your next turn" could lead people to think this is exponential - get hit three times at level 10 and you're dealing 24 extra damage per hit. That's obviously not the intent.

So, we could keep hunting for a new way to phrase this, or we could just come up with a different mechanic for Shadow Manifestation.

I still have this design in my "version 3" document, but I do think there's a reasonably similar feature: we could just say that "when a creature within 30 feet of you deals damage to you while you are raging, they take Force damage (could be psychic) equal to your Rage bonus." This could give us more or less damage depending on how many times they hit us. But one thing I like that's kind of elegant here is that it's not rolled, just a flat amount, which means that it can be shouted out easily during combat without pausing much.

If we go with this, maybe when we hit level 10 (which still feels a little thin) we might get to start to add our Strength modifier to this, helping it scale better into higher levels.

It's admittedly maybe an imperfect design - Barbarians usually don't disincentivize monsters from attacking them because it's better for them to get attacked than their allies - but it could still be good.

Staff-And-Board Eldritch Knight Build

 So, there are a couple things that I hadn't really considered until recently.

First off: as an Eldritch Knight, you have an odd conundrum. You can use an Arcane Focus for your spells, which is great, but you don't get to use your weapons as arcane foci. It seems like an insane oversight that in 2024, the updated EK didn't change War Bond to let you use the bonded weapon as a spell focus. The feature is almost never relevant.

Why do we need an arcane focus? Well, if you have any kind of set-up where you've got both hands occupied, you technically can't perform the somatic components of spells. As such, my old Dragonborn EK Jax would constantly have to drop his +1 Battleaxe when he wanted to cast Shield, and then pick it up on his next turn.

There is some ambiguity over whether you can still use somatic components in a hand that is holding a spell focus when the spell itself doesn't have a material component, but I think the reasonable common-sense reading is that you could.

And so, we come to the Staff - an Arcane Focus option. It costs more than a Quarterstaff (5 gold rather than 2 silver) but it also pretty explicitly states that the Staff can also be used as a Quarterstaff.

And that solves Jax's problem.

Despite their size, Quarterstaffs (quarterstaves?) are one-handed weapons. You can bump them up to a d8 damage die if you wield them with two hands, but you don't have to.

The second thing I realized is that, 99% of the time when I think about the Polearm Master feat, I imagine using it with a Heavy Reach weapon - the Halberd, Glaive, Lance, or Pike. But it actually works fine with both Spears and Quarterstaffs - both its Pole Strike and Reactive Strike features can work with those weapons as well. (Screw Tridents, I guess).

So, I thought I'd try a build that uses this to allow the Fighter to focus on feats that boost Strength and doesn't need to worry about picking up War Caster. Notably, using a two-handed weapon actually also makes this less of an issue because we have a hand free when we're not in the middle of an attack. But if we truly wanted to never have to worry about material components or somatic components at all, or we wanted to go for a "sword"-and-board build, this does work for us.

And while we won't be hitting as hard with a Quarterstaff as we would with a Glaive (and more importantly miss out on Graze,) the addition of that Pole Strike attack could make this do pretty decent damage. I think.

    Now, I've been doing a lot of calculations for these builds when fighting a Death Knight, which feels like a pretty epic final boss of a campaign that ends at level 10. But I think the Death Knight's super-high armor, damage immunities, and other things might be skewing some of my results a little.

As such, I'm going to calculate this against a more typical enemy. The key takeaway is that we shouldn't compare this damage output with the various builds we've been doing for the last month. This is going to be higher than it would be against a Death Knight.

What monster to fight, though? Well, a level 10 character accounts for an XP budget of 1600, 2300, or 3100 xp in a low, medium, or high difficulty encounter, respectively. That'd be a CR 6 monster at medium difficulty. Chimeras, Wyverns, and Medusas all fit in that CR range, though I think probably the former and latter are more likely to be encountered on their own, so we'll use Wyverns, which feel like pretty standard fantasy monsters that can fit in tons of campaigns.

So, that's what we'll use for our standard monster example (they all have similar ACs, which is encouraging).

Now, the build!

    Weapons:

I think I laid this out pretty clearly - we're using a Staff in our main hand and a shield in our off hand. This will deal 1d6 damage and has the topple mastery (which could be amazing if we're fighting the monster mid-air, but we'll assume we're on the ground).

    Spells:

Naturally, as an Eldritch Knight, we're going to want Booming Blade and Green-Flame Blade. If the Wyvern has a rider, GFB is a great option here, but we're going to focus on the primary target.

Once again, I think the only really clear spell to boost our damage at this level (I did say we were level 10, right?) is going to be Enlarge/Reduce, making us big to add a d4 to each attack. We can burn our Action Surge to cast it and then get our normal attacks.

Beyond that, I'd probably save spells for Shield and such.

    Feats:

Ok, because we've got our spell focus in hand, we don't need to grab War Caster (the advantage on concentration saves would be great, as would the opp attack spells, but we can afford to delay it).

So, to start off, for our Fighting Style we'll grab Dueling. Yeah, maybe if we're going sword-and-board we'd want to go Defensive for ourselves or Interception for our friends, but I think we can stand to push a little more into damage (and this will help mitigate the low damage of the quarterstaff as well). If we want to leave the option open to go for a two-handed weapon, we could take something like Defensive or Blind Fighting, or again, Interception. but for the purposes of this build, we'll assume Dueling.

Then, we grab Polearm Master at level 4, boosting Strength to 18 and giving us mainly our Pole Strike bonus action (Reactive Strike can be all well and good, but we're not going to factor it into our calculations). This lets us just make a bonus action d4 attack every turn as long as we're attacking, which is nearly as much damage as the quarterstaff normally gets.

For level 6, I'd grab Mage Slayer, which feels like it should be a martial staple from now on, though it doesn't increase our damage.

At level 8, if we want to fully commit to sword-and-board for the rest of our career, we could go Shield Master. Alternatively, if we want a bit more survivability, we could grab Heavy Armor Master. Sentinel might be the better option, and gets better if we want to keep open the option that we might use a two-handed polearm instead (though Dueling doesn't really work with that) but is still great for us as-is. So, I think we'll stick to Sentinel.

    Game Plan:

So, pretty simple: we Enlarge ourselves and then whack them with the staff twice, weaving in Booming Blade or Green-Flame Blade as appropriate.

There is one nuance we need to address, though:

If we knock them prone with the Topple Mastery, we can assume they'll spend half their movement to stand up. But does this count as moving to trigger Booming Blade? Thanks to Tactical Master, we can always swap our mastery to something else if we've already knocked them prone, so we could force that thunder damage if they want to get up and attack us again. There'll be some weird math to take into account, but the main thing is we can assume our first attack doesn't get advantage one way or another because they'll have stood up by the time it comes back to our turn.

As such, we'll save Booming Blade for our second attack.

Ok, so first attack is simple:

We have a +5 to Strength, and thus we have a +9 to hit with our attacks. Against the Wyvern's AC of 14, that means that we're going to be hitting 80% of the time. A hit deals 1d6+1d4+7 damage, or 13 on average, with an extra 6 on a crit. So, that's 10.4 plus .65 for a total of 11.05 average on this first attack.

Now:

If we do hit, the Wyvern needs to make a Con save against our Topple DC. That's going to be 17 at this level. With a +3 to Con saves, the Wyvern has to roll a 14 or higher to avoid falling prone. Thus, that's a 65% chance that they do fall prone. However, that only happens if we hit, which is 80%, meaning the total chance that the target is prone and thus giving us advantage on our next attack is 80%x65%, or 52%.

Now, I believe your Pole Strike has to come after your Attack Action, so we'll say the Booming Blade attack comes next.

If we don't have advantage, we'll have the same 80% chance to hit. This hit will, however, deal 1d6+1d8+1d4+7, or an average of 17.5, and an extra 10.5 on a crit. So, when we don't have advantage, we'll deal 17.5x80% plus 10.5x5%, which gives us 14 plus .525. That's pretty easy to add together. However, this only happens 48% of the time (which is fine because it'll be higher when we add the advantage version) so this contributes 14.525x48%, or 6.972.

If we do have advantage, that 80% chance becomes 96%, and the crit chance becomes 9.75%, so 17.5x96% is 16.8 and 10.5x9.75% is about 1.02375, so we're looking at about 17.82. This, then, is going to be 52% of the time, so it's roughly 9.3 damage.

Thus, our Booming Blade attack does about 16.3 damage on average.

(For future stuff here, we'll need to also figure out the average chance Booming Blade hits, which is 80%x48% plus 96%x52%, which gives us 38.4% plus 49.92%, or a total of 88.32%. We'll just hold onto this).

Now, our bonus action Pole Strike is where this gets more complicated.

If we successfully knocked the Wyvern prone on our first attack, we'd just swap to something like Sap on the Booming Blade attack. But if we hadn't, we'll still try to knock them prone. I actually think this winds up just being the same as if we were figuring out if they fell on either of two attacks - we don't need to consider how getting advantage on the second attack would have affected this because, well, we wouldn't have had it. So I think this becomes the inverse of 48% squared. Thus, we wind up with a roughly 77% chance to have them prone by the time we make our Pole Strike.

For the Pole Strike, we're going to use Tactical Master now to swap to Push, in an effort to trigger Booming Blade's extra damage.

Once again, we're looking at 80%/5% and 96%/9.75% for hits/crits, just in different ultimate proportions.

Our hits are less, though, here. On a hit, we deal 2d4+7, or 12 average, and 5 extra on a crit.

Without advantage, that's 12x80%, or 9.6, plus .25 for crits, so 9.85 overall. However, we only don't have advantage 23% of the time, so this contributes roughly 2.27.

With advantage, it's 12x96%, or 11.52, plus 5x9.75%, which is .4875, so we get almost exactly 12. And this happens 77% of the time, so it contributes 9.24.

Thus, the Pole Strike gives us an average of 11.51 damage.

Ok! So! On our turn, we should thus do 38.86 damage (this looks incredible compared to the Death Knight builds, but remember that this is a way lower AC monster).

However, there are two other things to consider:

Reaction strikes and Booming Blade bonus damage.

A few things have to happen for Booming Blade's extra damage to go off. We'll assume that if we do push the Wyvern that we're going to push them out of reach of us and any of our allies, and that they will need to move in some way. I think it's reasonable to say that "standing up" doesn't trigger Booming Blade's extra damage, so we're really just seeing if we A: hit with Booming Blade and B: successfully push the Wyvern away.

We figured out the chance to hit with Booming Blade earlier, which is 88.32%. Great. But we only get that damage if the Wyvern moves (on its own,) so we also need to land the Push attack with our Pole Strike.

23% of the time, we have an 80% chance to have advantage, and 77% of the time, we have a 96% chance to hit. Thankfully, there's no save versus Push. So, 80%x23% is 18.4%, and 96%x77% is 73.92%, so this winds up being a 92.32% chance we've been able to push them.

Oh no.

See, hitting them with the Booming Blade is also part of the math on determining if we topple them.

Uh, screw it, I'm going to keep going. I don't know how much that would change the math here, but it's probably not huge.

Actually, wait, no, it's fine, because we're going to try to push them anyway to get a reactive strike, so we'll be doing this whether or not the Booming Blade hit.

So, basically, we get the 2d8 (9 average) thunder damage from Booming Blade's secondary damage if we hit first with Booming Blade and then again with Pole Strike, so it's 88.32% times 92.32%, or about 81.54%. So, we add 9x81.54% to our total damage per round, giving us about 7.34 more damage.

That brings us up to 46.2 damage per round.

Lastly, we have our reaction strike.

Now, thanks to Sentinel and Polearm Master, there are a lot of ways for us to get a reaction attack. It is a bit dependent on enemy behavior. The worst case is if we fail to push them and they just attack us, which means no attack. But if they go after a nearby ally (we'll be out of range if we did push them, though) or if they do come back toward us after we push them, we can nail them with an attack.

There are too many factors at play here to get a strict probability, but for our "white room" scenario here, we'll assume that if our Push landed, we'll get to make this attack. We'll also assume they're not crawling toward us, so we won't have advantage.

Thus, it's our normal 80%/5% chance. In fact, I think all the math is the same as our first attack, so we can just add 11.05 damage - but only if we did get to Push them, which, as we determined earlier, is a 92.32%. Thus, this adds about 10.2 damage per round.

And that gives us an average of 56.4 damage per round.

Once again, I need to emphasize that we can't compare this to the earlier builds because the hit chance is so much higher than all our "vs Death Knight" ones.

Still, I'm inclined to think that this is pretty good.

The Mystery of Azalin Rex (And How to Use Him)

 The Domains of Dread are perfect prisons. The Darklords find themselves in positions of unrivaled power, not realizing that the domains are actually their cages.

Azalin Rex, though, is an exception. More than any other Darklord, he sought to understand the nature of the Mists, and somehow wrenched his mind away from the soporific influence of the Dark Powers that causes the Darklords (and many other inhabitants of Ravenloft) to rationalize the incongruities of their nightmare reality.

Azalin has, it seems, escaped from Ravenloft.

Now, there is precedence. Vecna, the ancient Lich who even succeeded in becoming a deity (if perhaps a lesser one,) was able to escape his domain and even attempt a ritual at becoming a greater deity within the city of Sigil (which is not supposed to be possible given the Lady of Pain). Liches, after all, must acquire immense arcane knowledge.

Still, Azalin's story is somewhat surprising. Metanarratively, I believe he was introduced specifically for the Ravenloft setting, and so figures like Vecna or Lord Soth, who came from the Greyhawk and Dragonlance settings, respectively, sort of "had other places to be," which is why it makes sense that WotC (and I think WotC did own D&D by the time that Die, Vecna, Die! came out) allowed them to escape (well, it was also a bit of a rights issue for Lord Soth). (Actually, no, scratch all this: Azalin's from Greyhawk originally.)

But it's interesting: while you could just run an adventure (or a whole campaign) in Darkon with Azalin back there before the Hour of Acension, I think that an Azalin-focused campaign is one that might go outside the traditional claustrophobic horror genre and veer more into traditional heroic D&D fantasy.

Let's talk about his stat block:

To a great extent, Azalin's stats are similar to that of a Lich, which makes sense given that he is a Lich. He's CR 23 (up from 21). He loses the At Will 5th level Fireball, but gets a 2/day Modify Memory. He's got more HP and while he can't cast Shield, his Counterspell lets him cast the spells that he counters. Also, his legendary actions are a little different.

But I think to a large extent, he's just a slightly tougher Lich, which is fine - Liches got way easier to run in 5.5 and also have enough HP to actually stick around for a few rounds.

One of the funny things, though, about both Liches and Darklords is that both have a thing that causes them to come back if slain. In Azalin's case, he's got multiple spirit jars, one that is outside of Darkon and one that is his old throne back in the ruins of Castle Avernus, which he'll default to if his preferred jar is destroyed.

If you're doing a story pre-Hour of Ascension, you could just have him respawn at the castle.

But yeah, let's talk about Azalin in a post-Hour of Ascension role.

First off, I think he might just not be in the Domains of Dread anymore at all. Perhaps he's in the broader Shadowfell, or he's back on the Prime Material Plane.

The possibilities for these scenarios are endless: a powerful ancient Lich unleashed upon the world. Now, I think you could have some fun with the fact that no one outside of the Domains of Dread has likely heard of him (though I guess some people do escape the Mists). I think that in this case, you might have some of the elements of Ravenloft kind of cling to him as he journeys across the multiverse.

One broad scenario could be that the Dark Powers reach out to the party to give them the campaign-spanning quest of capturing Azalin and delivering him back to Darkon. Perhaps as an alternative, and even an option for the players to consider aiding him, would be that Azalin, having finally escaped and thus escaped his inability to learn new magic (I think he and Hazlik have similar torments,) he has now figured out a plan that could unravel the Demiplane of Dread in its entirety. This would result in every living soul in Ravenloft dying, but Azalin might dismiss this concern and claim he's doing them a mercy, even if his main motivation is to never be trapped there again.

Now, one of the oddities of the 5E Ravenloft books is the presence of Firan Zal'honen. Presented as an evil-but-potentially-friendly archmage in Van Richten's, those with familiarity with the old lore (or who can connect some elements even in Van Richten's itself, like the name of his imp familiar) will know that this is actually Azalin's real, mortal name.

Horrors Within isn't coy about this, but adds some wrinkles - that Azalin may have been shattered or sealed away, and that this Firan could either be him in disguise or a fragment of him.

Since Van Richten's came out, I've had a concept in which Azalin's plan required the creation of a double to distract or appease the Dark Powers and let him escape, a sacrifice, essentially. But this copy, the living Firan Zal'Honen, assumes himself to be the real Azalin, and that the plan was only a partial success, getting him out of Darkon but leaving him still trapped in Ravenloft, unaware that his fate was always part of the plan. (The campaign would probably conclude with the Dark Powers offering the party a similar option: that a copy of each of them be made, and then one of the two versions of them would be allowed to escape while the other would remain trapped, and there would be no way of knowing which was which).

Azalin as an adversary in combat is powerful, so a low-level party would have a very hard time fighting him. But beyond simply his CR, I also think that, as the one guy who really understands the Domains of Dread (Strahd strives toward this, but my interpretation is that he gets distracted by his obsession over Tatyana, and probably forgets the nature of his torment and imprisonment periodically) he's the villain (whether antagonist or not) that really lends himself to a higher-level campaign that deals with the more metaphysical aspects of the setting, and therefore suits higher-level, more powerful PCs.