Welcome back to the weekly D&D and Tabletop Gaming thread!  Here’s a place where we can talk about Dungeons & Dragons or any other tabletop games that you nerds might be into.  Tell us about the games you’re playing, speculate about future expansions, recruit your fellow Avocados into new groups, whatever you want.

I think it’s about time we revisit the character classes in D&D 5e, only this time I’d like to go into a little more detail about each subclass.  With the new year, I’m starting a series of discussions about each of the various subclass options.  I’ll focus on one class/subclass in each post, cycling through the main classes as I go.  And since I went alphabetically last time, this time I’ll reverse the order and start with Wizards of the School of War Magic.

War Magic is a school that combines aspects of evocation and abjuration allowing a war mage to both empower their attack spells and boost their own defenses.  The war mage gets two features at level 2, Arcane Deflection and Tactical Wit.  Arcane Deflection allows the wizard to use a reaction on getting hit to increase their AC or get a bonus to a saving throw, but at a cost–it prevents you from using spells other than cantrips for a round.  Tactical Wit allows you to add your INT modifier to initiative rolls.  Notably, unlike all of the other schools, War wizards don’t get any cost reduction for copying spells into their spell books.

At 6th level, you get the Power Surge ability, which allows you to increase the damage of a spell.  You start with 1 power surge stored each day, and can store as many as your INT modifier.  You get more power surges by successfully casting Dispel Magic or Counterspell, or if you’re out of surges, you can get one back on a short rest.  The increased damage is equal to half your wizard level, and can only be used once per turn.

At level 10, Durable Magic grants a boost to your AC and all saving throws so long as you’re maintaining concentration on a spell, which should help prevent you from losing that concentration.  Combine this with the War Caster feat, and you should be making those concentration saves every time.

Finally, at level 14, the Deflecting Shroud ability gives your Arcane Deflection a boost in that when you use it, you can also deal a small amount of damage (again, half your wizard level) to three enemies within 60 feet of you.

I like the flavor of this subclass, but I think the mechanics are a little underwhelming, specifically the low damage potential for Power Surge and Deflecting Shroud.  Power Surge provides a good incentive to learn Dispel Magic and Counterspell, and make use of them as much as possible.  It’d be nice if those spells were added to your spellbook and/or list of prepared spells automatically, though.

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I’m currently running the group through The Sunless Citadel adventure, from Tales from the Yawning Portal.

My players are:

• Seraphina Lathander, an Aasimar Cleric (The Wasp)
• Oona Maku, a Half-Elf Ranger (Wafflicious)
• Gash the Furious, a Half-Orc Barbarian (Otto)
• Slowclap, a Kenku Monk (Josephus Brown)
• Finfizzy Tanglethump, a Gnome Warlock (The Hayes Code)

 

[spoiler title=”The Sunless Citadel”]

This is just the TL;DR version of the recap.

The party busted open the door to goblins’ main living space causing a mass panic among the goblin civilians.  They proceeded to kill all the guards, then moved on to the chambers of the hobgoblin chief.  The chief manged to decapitate Fin’s zombie, then Seraphina killed just about everyone in that room with one Channel Divinity, leaving only the hobgoblin chief alive.  He was severely wounded though, and was easily dispatched.  They found a key to a locked door, which held the kobolds’ stolen dragon wyrmling.  Meepo rushed into the room to reunite with the dragon, only to be blasted by the dragon’s ice breath and eaten.  The party hastily closed and relocked the door, and returned to the kobold leader for their reward.  The leader of the kobolds asked them to please recapture the dragon, and sent along some of her guards to help.  They worked out a plan to come at the dragon from two sides, and sent the kobolds in first.  The kobolds managed to do some serious damage to the dragon before being frozen to death themselves.  Gash decided to wrassle the baby dragon, succeeding in pinning it down for Slowclap to beat into unconsciousness.  As part of their reward from the kobolds, they received a key to a magically locked door they had passed by earlier in the cavern and went back to see what lay beyond.

Hopefully, I’ll have a full recap up later on.

[/spoiler]