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The Path of the Lich in the latest UA provides an unparalleled power to players at level 4: through the Soul Siphon ability associated with the Lich Initiate feat, you have the ability to consume the soul of a humanoid. D&D doesn’t mess with souls much (I talk briefly about soul-language in...

Exploring Eberron has been re-released with updated options on D&D beyond. Exploring Eberron Sourcebook Relaunches on D&D Beyond Character options include new subclasses and new and updated species. Here's a quick and dirty review of species options, giving grades not for raw power, but for...

I'm reading a 1968 Charlton Hercules comic, and Hera casts a "type six" spell (with the implication this is pretty powerful). There's no previous context in the series for this sort of talk -- is there something in pop culture? What previous fiction used numbered spell power-levels that this...

While there is more information in PHB 2024 about Illusions thanin 2014, there still isn’t enough, and problems persist in play. What follows is my trying to make sense of the rules so that illusions remain effective but are not game-breaking. Thoughts welcome. I am trying to get playable rules...

Not all species are created equal, and scoring where the imbalances exist offers one way to assess and quantify these differences. In my judgement, the ten PHB 2024 species score between 7 and 12 points. That’s a fair range, and suggests that the designers value some of these features...

I don't see a thread on this yet, so I bring weird news! PETA (yes, PETA) has released three subclasses that are animal-themed, available for download here. Circle of Empathy (Druids) Oath of Animal Liberation (Paladin) Warden of the Wild (Ranger). They are keyed to the 2014 rules, not the...

Three videos have dropped in the past 2 days spilling the goods on the 2024 Warlock. Treantmonk on Invocations Treantmonk on the Class and Subclasses Dungeon Dudes Here are my major takeaways: “more invocations than ever before”: technically true, but given that the pact is rolled into this...

Prompted by this video from Treantmonk, I’m starting this thread about the background system. I’ve seen a lot of complaints, but I think it might be pretty great: with the limited selection of backgrounds, players have to make much more constrained choices than they did before, balancing skills...

My hypothesis is no, they don’t. Certainly, I have not played in a game (or run one, tbh) in which the rules for perception have been followed as written. (I cannot think of a single time I have rolled Perception with disadvantage due to light levels alone.) The rules I am thinking about...

VIdeo: New rules for tools. Cool. (Actually about gear, tools, and crafting.) Very short -- this is a tease rather than a preview. OVERVIEW Every tool has something to do with the Utilize action. "Hey, what's a Utilize action?" (a question not asked) Artisans tools each have a list of...

On hiatus from the reveals of the classes, today we get Spells! We saw new spells throughout the Playtest UA documents: Stuff from PT 8 and 9 mostly made the cut (cantrips, healing, conjure). Stuff from PT 4 and 5 (class-specific spells, familiar, Phantom Steed, etc.) not mentioned here...

"More than any other class, the ranger is a new class." It has been a year (less a day) since we last saw the Ranger in UA Playtest 6. There still could be a lot of change. My sense is that they are more or less happy with three of the subclasses (Fey Wanderer, Beastmaster, and Gloom...

"The paramount collector of spells." Open your spellbooks, everybody. Today we get a Wizard video. The last version of the class was in the UA Playtest 7 package (PT7). It's not clear how much they'll say here. Of the base class, I am hoping that they have recanted the level 5 ability...

Druid video today. Where will wildshape land? We saw three druids in the playtest, and each was meaningfully different. The most recent look at the class was in PT8 (UA Playtest document 8); with the Moon Druid in PT8, and Land Druid and Sea Druid in PT6, with the Stars Druid in Tasha's. What...

"The character builder's paradise". We last saw the Warlock in Playtest 7, with a lot of features from 2014 restored from the previous version. Still, a lot of questions (for me) remain: here's my list from before the video ran: (Happily, many of these questions were indeed answered in the...

"Even tricksier than it was before". New Rogue video -- The last version of the rogue we saw as in the UA Playtest 6, last September. There's not many changes being announced here, the biggest being that the Soulknife gets to use Psychic Blades on opportunity attacks (so you don't need to...

New Barbarian video! We last saw the Barbarian with the World Tree subclass in the UA Playtest 8 (=PT8), with other subclasses (Zealot, Wild Heart, and Berserker) in PT7. There's a fair number of new things since we've last seen the class, noted below. OVERVIEW weapon mastery at 1 RAGE...

"the paladin who, if they were in a movie, would ... have impossibly white teeth". New Paladin preview: here are some notes, focusing on what's new and changes from the playtest materials. Last time we saw the Paladin was in Playtest 6 [=PT6 below]. See also this comparison at D&D Beyond (by...

"The Fighter is now the weapon master equivalent of the Wizard" (with respect to versatility). OVERVIEW The Fighter seems to have been mostly set in Playtest 7. Most of the features described carry over from there, though Brawler has gone and is replaced by Psi Warrior form Tasha's. Ranger...

New video just dropped. After choosing class, you go to the Character Origins chapter. Species and Background combine to give game capabilities. There is a sidebar on how to use backgrounds/species from previous books. Background gives much more than in 2014. Backgrounds "determine ability...