2024 PHB CHaracter Changes, Pt. 4
Support Casters: Cleric, Druid, Bard, and a Quick Look At Level 20 Artificer
So far I’ve done:
Martial half casters and melee warlocks
For our last group, we’ve mainly got the non-arcane casters. Bard is tough to place and since this would only be two classes otherwise, I decided to place bard here as opposed to with the wizard and sorcerer.
As a reminder, here are the character creation rules:
Characters get to use the following magic items:
Level 1-4: 1 Uncommon and 1 Common
Level 5-10: Up to 3 Rare & Uncommon combined, more common
Level 11-16: Up to 6 Very Rare, Rare, and Uncommon combined
Level 17-20: Up to 10 items of any rarity.
All characters get a custom background with an origin feat, two skills, and a tool of their choice along with allocating ability scores. No character could use the limited starting backgrounds printed in the book. Also, I want to keep characters who have fun backgrounds like “Self Described Goblin Noble” and “Tourist Trap Operator”
The restrictions of "Exotic" languages and table of more common languages don’t make sense for the Forgotten Realms, where these characters are from. In the Forgotten Realms, Halfling is a Rare language restricted to Halfling cluture, not one of the world’s more common languages. As someone who studied sociolinguistics in graduate school, it’s clear that a game designer thought of a d12 table instead of what makes sense for the worlds of WotC’s published adventures over the last 10 years.
Part of why I put bard in with cleric and druid is these are some of the classes I’ve played the most over the last five years, and they are classes where I am least satisfied with the changes for various reasons.
Cleric
Clerics had some of the bigger changes, not always positive. Being able to choose heavy armor or skill boosts is good, but there were more skills to choose form in the first cleric playtest and this should have been maintained to give an idea of religious diversity. Spirit guardians now does some damage immediately, which is good, as long as it is clarified to do that damage only once per turn. Healing is buffed to no longer feel irrelevant. However, three of the cleric’s core unique spells are drastically weakened: spiritual weapon, heroes’ feast, and holy aura.
Clerics often had a weird spot in gaming groups. The rest of the party wants a cleric around to heal them. However, most cleric players get sick of the rest of the party looking at us as their big box of heals. We want to be able to do more things. I think this is where WotC insisting on a popular vote for feedback really hurt the game. All those players who wanted the cleric to heal them could outvote those of us who actually played clerics.
The result is a 2024 class that went from one of my favorites to one of my least favorites. They took away from the class' versatility and forced clerics into a pigeonholed healer role. Instead of trying to fulfill my fantasy as the person playing the cleric for versatility and a meaningful connection with my character’s god, designers cut down on versatility in many ways. They deleted all references to the gods, so a new player won’t have a clue about how to make that roleplay meaningful. The playtest feature to give the cleric commune for free was removed. Instead, they focused on other players’ fantasy of what they want the cleric to do: Heal!
This is particularly notable at higher levels, as clerics only have a few good higher level features and most were noticeably weakened, like removing bespoke uses for Divine Intervention. That’s all I ever saw it used for. Improved Blessed Strikes is largely a ribbon feature, particularly for spellcasters due to the change to spiritual weapon.
Part of why I grouped the cleric, druid, and bard together was cluelessness over how to design them for high level play.
Dani
Half-Elf Twilight Cleric 4
Dani is Driz'zt's illegitimate daughter. At least, that's what she told tourists as she offered to take them around Icewind Dale, exaggerating her prices as a guide as a way to raise more money for her town. She's a half-drow who worships Elilastree, the patron goddess of surface drow. She was raised by her mother, a human who hooked up with a random drow traveler.
2014 PHB Rating: 9. The unusual mishmash of character class and background went a long way to make Dani interesting. She’s a character first, mechanics second. Dani was one of my two go-to characters for low level games in game stores to have a healer around. I enjoy twilight cleric much more than I ever liked life cleric, since I get to be proactive in protecting people (and more effective at it). I don’t have to feel the same obligation of using my turns to heal a player who is nervous because they just took 10 damage at level 3. However, the twilight cleric is a bit more confusing for new players.
2024 PHB Rating: 8? Dani's character only makes sense as a half-elf, so there's a nerf. She could cover for it by switching to medium armor and Dexterity. Spiritual weapon being concentration isn't a huge loss at this level. The Alert feat fits her backstory better than Tough. Going with Medium armor and a more balanced set of ability scores helps. I thought my feeling for Dani under these new rules would plummet more than they did.
Evie (and Edward)
Shadar-Kai Arcana Cleric 20
Evie is a Cleric of Asmodeus who I have only played at level 20 at convention games. She sees Asmodeus as a force who wants to eliminate all forms of sexism, racism, and other inequality, replacing them with one true law. Whether she's lying to herself as well as others, no one knows. She veers between Lawful Neutral and Lawful Evil, depending on whether other convention players would be comfortable with a bit of evil. She also likes to genderbend, taking the form of a masculine elf Edward at times. When she wishes for a simulacrum, she often changes her sex the next day, or changes and then cast simulacrum before changing back.
2014 PHB Rating: 9. Evie heavily emphases support over damage, while her subclass gives considerable utility. In convention games where you can get a lot of highly specialized or eccentric characters, she fits in with any party. She has two 9th level spell slots and uses one in between adventures to cast simulacrum. The simulacrum then casts 2 mind blanks, 7th level aid and death ward on everyone along with possibly a heroes’ feast before making dinner. I've seen a random DM on the internet complain about this—there's always someone—but the main effect of all these buff spells is to reduce the gap between more and less optimized players at level 20 by helping the less optimized stay alive. It’s the polar opposite of other convention players, who use simulacrum to take an extra turn in combat and dramatically slow play.
Evie’s buff spells also have an effect of freeing up actions in combat to do things besides heal because I already gave 30 or 41 hit points to the party. While healing may be very useful, it is an incredibly boring action when other level 20 characters get to cast cool spells and the fighter gets four attacks but you just keep them alive.
2024 PHB Rating: TBD. Evie can take advantage of always being level 20 to add two feats, Inspiring Leader and Observant, while maintaining her Wisdom score. The Boon of Energy Resistance is close to a Warlock of the Fiend ability and feels right here. Arcana and Religion become Wisdom skills for her.
However, she becomes a worse spellcaster. So many of my good non-healing spells are concentration that I can’t keep spiritual weapon around anymore. Holy aura requires allies to stay within 30 feet of Evie, severely limiting her best high level spell that isn't healing. Summon celestial is a great spell now, but not exactly fitting for a cleric of Asmodeus. She also loses 4 spell preps, a large strain dramatically limiting utility options like tongues.
Improved Divine Inspiration is dramatically weakened if I have a good DM who would have let me use the feature to solve bespoke problems like stopping Orcus' ritual to animate undead giants. However, now I can cast hallow to lock down enemies or create a short rest as an action. I don't think the people who liked this feature in surveys ever played a 10th or higher level cleric. It is the first feature I am nerfing when I start my new campaign (Divine Intervention speeds up casting times by 10 but isn’t instant so no dropping hallow, planar binding, or prayer of healing in the middle of combat.)
Sera
Shadar-Kai Death Cleric 16
The Raven Queen sent Sera to observe strong emotions on Toril and channel them back. Adventurers are often the strongest source of emotion, as they are drawn to (or create) turmoil. Sera accompanies them, trying to maintain balance in the world. While she does not emote, her raven Marco changes color based on Sera's feelings. And he sings!
2014 PHB Rating: 10. It took a long time and a few rebuilds to hit on the right character for the death cleric but her final form was a real hit. The death cleric is only mechanically useful under a few specific circumstances, as DMs tend to have monsters not stand next to each other after their dual cantrip triggers once. It’s unique channel divinity usually relies on hitting with a melee weapon attack, but it doesn’t get any other reason to be in melee with one attack per round. I mainly used spiritual weapon to stay out of melee. (Others used scimitars of speed as those became more commonly available.) There are only a few times I can use vampiric touch to have the same effect, as it binds me to melee attack rolls for my action.
2024 PHB Rating: 2. I'm not going to fully list out the changes. For as much as the cleric was oddly weakened, it's still a functional class. Divine Order is like a 2/3 version of the Skilled feat and she could add Observant. The problem is she loses most of her identity in combat and most of her subclass. I might as well retire her because any other subclass is better. Oh, Sera loses 5 spell preps per day too, because the new book is oddly more restrictive on high level spellcasters.
Shaena Smoothhands
Stout Halfling Arcana Cleric 13 / Druid 1
Shaena insists she is an arcane healer. ARCANE! At a certain point Ilmater, the god of suffering and healing, took pity on the poor halfling and granted her divine power. She embodies much of what he stands for, even if she's in denial about being a cleric instead of a weird wizard. She took a level in druid for access to a wide range of utility spells and to bonk enemies with shillelagh plus booming blade.
2014 PHB Rating: 9. Shaena is one of the weirdest clerics I’ve ever seen, in part because she insists she’s not a cleric and makes the roleplay work, in part because of her unique multiclass schtick. She can use potent cantrips to bonk an enemy for 25-30 damage along with normal cleric moves. The druid level gives 8 spell preparations, covering a ton of useful first level spells. Shaena got to prepare a range of eccentric spells I’d normally have to pass up due to limited spell preparation. In most games, Shaena's just a cleric who does weird things and acts manic or a bit drunk, but those things often happen to be the right move at the right time.
2024 PHB Rating: 7 (after months of a 1 due to forced radical change). The basic point of Shaena was utility. She loses 8 spell preps and it is incredibly noticeable. I thought designers wanted spellcasters to go away from the tried and true spells to prepare a wider range of spells, but they just eliminated the best way to do that in 5th Edition rules!
Instead of being her old unique funky self, the only way I could see to remake Shaena as a utility cleric/druid with decent damage dealing was to remake her as a Stars Druid 13 / Cleric 1 and slash utility spellcasting to the bone. This way she can get the Magician and Thaumaturge features to maintain skills and Medium Armor proficiency, but I get a surplus of cantrips instead of actual utility spells. The Thaumaturge feature killed her old "I'm not a cleric" roleplay by forcing Religion knowledge on her, so I'm going to lean into her being a weird herbalist instead.
During the rebuild process, I drop her Wisdom by 2, adding the Observant and Resilient: Constitution feats instead.
To add more insult to injury, D&D Beyond completely deleted the Ghostwise Halfling and I don't want to be stuck with the oddly restrictive 2024 Halfling, so I need to find a new ancestry. Satyr fits the new vibe I'm going for. It is also a bit more powerful, but given all the nerfs to Shaena it is still a real loss. Once I get over all this sense of loss and can think of Shaena as a new character with a fresh start, I think I will be happy.
Other Character Ideas
I’m at a real crossroads here. Cleric was one of my favorite classes to play in level 11-16 convention games because they fit so well with most groups. They fit well because of their versatility and giving the group some healing, but healing was never the primary function. At this level, you need to be able to do enough proactive things to keep the damage from coming in. Every high level cleric gets worse at doing proactive things because they get fewer spell preparations.
I’ve also got a level 10 and level 15 twilight cleric. At higher levels, one of the twilight cleric’s go-to moves was to activate their Twilight Sanctuary and cast spiritual weapon turn 1, then a go-to spell turn 2. Now we can scratch bless, faerie fire, and moonbeam from that list. Circle of power and sunbeam are also out for the level 15 cleric. What this really means is spiritual weapon became a much worse spell, fundamentally limiting the cleric’s utility in combat. While most character classes got more power in the 2024 Players Handbook, clerics did not. There’s a reason that someone asked Jeremy Crawford “why do you hate clerics now?” in his GenCon press event going over the 2024 PHB.
For the foreseeable future, I think I will use both the Circle of Stars druid and Glamour bard for much of what I used clerics for over the last 4 years. Good job, good effort design team.
Druid
In my experience, druids have been great until level 11 or so. They are the most popular class in all the campaigns I have played or DMed, going through three groups who were otherwise very different. For the most part, people played Moon druids as their first druid before branching out. In a related story, WotC seems to have put as much effort into redesigning the moon druid as all other druid features combined.
Some of the new druid features are very cool, like always having Speak With Animals prepared. We got considerable use out of druids always having Commune With Nature prepared and I’m shocked that was removed. Being able to speak in Wild Shape is nice. Elemental Fury matters more for druids than clerics in my experience and is quite welcome.
Expending a spell slot for a use of wild shape means you can always use it unless you struggle to manage resources or play in a game with a very long time between rests, as druids tend to use spell slots more slowly. We’ll have to see if that makes a difference at higher levels. One of the biggest reasons that druid was mainly a level 1-10 class was because they have so few good 6th-9th level spells. WotC didn’t try to address this issue.
Unfortunately, all druids get a nerf in 2024, because they no longer get certain types of medium armor proficiency by default. It used to be that our druid friends would have to work to get nonmetallic medium amor, but eventually they all got it. Now there is a real opportunity cost. If a druid wants to keep their armor, they have to sacrifice the chance to add two skill proficiencies and a cantrip. Since the druid starts with fewer cantrips than the cleric or wizard and uses them more often, this is a real sacrifice.
I think part of the issue is WotC designers came across as if they had a narrow conception of the druid throughout the process. The first druid playtest gave the druid a bunch of Wild Shape features. I was playing in a home game with a druid who only wild shaped once all campaign at the time. Later on, Jeremy Crawford liked to call the druid a “nature wizard.” However, on of the key differences between druids and wizards is the lack of long range blasting spells, so they need to be closer to combat and are more likely to get hit. They should be compared to clerics, who have medium armor proficiency by default.
Jappa
Tortle Moon Druid 9
Jappa was my first druid. He had body dysmorphia and wanted to be in Wild Shape as a dinosaur as much as possible. He was a bit of a loner and outcast from his village, dreaming one day of going to a bigger city and being a renowned thief. Then he'd buy a bunch of sweet meats and share them with his favorite dinosaurs. After some adventures in Avernus, he made a hard swing from being a miscreant to a socialist freedom fighter.
2014 PHB Rating: 7.5. Moon druids were overpowered at low levels. Then they often got into a weird place as their beast forms weren't necessarily as powerful as what other players could do in a high magic campaign. I wanted to play as kind of a tank, but many DMs would just ignore me because I was too good at being a tank and didn’t deal enough damage as a beast. Eventually I went with the route of casting a high level concentration spell like call lightning or conjure animals (good riddance) then using it as my action while in Wild Shape.
2024 PHB Rating: TBD. WotC put far more effort into revising the moon druid than other druids. However, the biggest changes to Jappa occur out of beast form: I can use the Magician specialization to keep the skills I want, then drop Skilled as a starting feat and take Alert instead. I took taking Inspiring Leader and dropped my Constitution to 16. Added spell preps from the moon druid subclass cover key spells, giving considerable flexibility to add more. Like I said, the moon druid got a lot of love.
The big question is "how good is Wild Shape now?" Jappa gets 24 temporary hit points and can stay in Wild Shape after losing them instead of having the beast's 30-60 hit points. His AC stays at 19 in beast form. Offense in beast form will depend on the new spell fount of moonlight adding 2d6 damage per hit and having enough dangerous beasts with multiattack to take advantage. Otherwise, the boost to Constitution saving throws stacking with Resilient gives even more incentive to rely on call lightning and moonbeam. If there are only 1-2 beast forms with three attacks per round in the new Monster Manual, it will get boring, so there will be more Wild Shape to utilize moonbeam and mobility instead of beast attacks.
Sariel
Eladrin Wildfire Druid 10
Sariel spent some time around a cult, entertaining them by dancing around an open flame. When the cult was defeated by some heroes (as they often are) while she was gathering more firewood, one of those heroes started training her as a druid. She decided to embrace the Circle of Wildfire, then go off adventuring herself, often being a happy-go-lucky force that inspires others to do good deeds.
2014 PHB Rating: 7.5. Wildfire druids rely on certain small synergies and creative use of the wildfire spirit’s teleport action, making them harder to play than other druids. There's a lot of controlling enemy movement with plant growth. I’m not always in a headspace or the right party for that, but it's fun when it works. I think I’d love Sariel more if I got to play her more often so I could feel more comfortable with her sometimes complex combat decisions.
2024 PHB Rating: TBD. Sariel gives a major case of Druid FOMO. She plays in games that tend to be high in combat, so she needs her medium armor. Nonmetallic medium armor was harder to get but is available. Good DMs fixed this issue. But now she's got to forego bonuses to Arcana and Nature checks along with a cantrip to avoid a -3 to her Armor Class. The only other changes are being able to trade out Telekinetic for Elemental Adept (Fire) to reduce the cognitive load of playing her and adding 5 to cantrip damage.
After a month of shock and frustration over the FOMO, I think I’m going to give Sariel a level of Cleric. Let’s call it reformation and penance for her cult days. I lose the Cauterizing Flames feature but that might be a blessing in disguise with the cognitive load of playing Sariel. Now I can take the more thematically Magician Primal Order. Cleric adds 4 cantrips with Thaumaturge and 3 spell preps. With Thaumaturge and Magician stacking to give +10 in Arcana, I can remove that skill proficiency and put it in Deception for her background to be more well rounded.
Future Character Ideas
You’ll notice by now that a lot of the characters I have gone through in these posts are high level characters. Most of that is because I only get to play in conventions and game stores so much (I usually DM) so I haven’t made many bona fide new characters in a long time.
Meanwhile, my druids are level 9 and 10. Like I said, druids have a lot of issues with not getting cool things to do at higher levels in the same way other classes do. In my experience, even the widely feared level 20 Moon druid wasn’t a big concern for me as a DM. They didn’t do enough with their actions for me to worry. I just had smart monsters ignore their massive stack of hit points.
Playing druids past this level relies on their level 14 subclass abilities being a massive incentive. Fortunately, the Circle of the Sea and revised Circle of the Moon give stronger level 14 abilities which may do enough to address this. However, other druid subclasses need the same kind of upgrade.
Bard
There aren't a ton of changes to the bard beyond spending a spell slot to use bardic inspiration and magical secrets. Both seem cool but can cause real issues. Many bard subclasses have special uses of bardic inspiration that are much better than equivalent 1st level spells. A high level bard can cherry pick all of the game’s best spells. This feels particularly bad if you are a cleric or druid and only get one or two good high level spells.
Outside of certain new combinations that may open up with the Swords or Valor bard stealing damage boosting spells or using fount of moonlight, multiclassing with the bard to get some more reliable combat options was common for combat heavy games. Some of this has gotten more difficult.
Ellywick
Goblin Hexblade Warlock 2 / Glamour Bard 8
Ellywick hated the idea of being confined to a single physical form. A mask offered them the chance to take on multiple forms and they accepted. The mask was a magical item that offered a warlock pact. Ellywick followed this pact just long enough to learn Mask of Many Faces, then multiclassed to go on tour. Now they go on tour throughout the Realms, acting like a tourist while solving various problems.
2014 PHB Rating: 8 before level 10, 9 at level 10. Ellywick was my first genderfluid character, who I created to play around with different concepts of gender as I was questioning my gender. Being a hexblade warlock with a mask (of many faces) is completely integral to Ellywick’s story. The 8 levels of bard are necessary to get the Actor feat and +2 Charisma from another ASI to get five bardic dice. Mechanically, Hexblade mainly gives medium armor and shield proficiency so I can feel safe playing Ellywick in higher combat games if I want. This was critical for me using Ellywick to try and come out, because a high combat game meant less pressure to roleplay a genderfluid character for those moments when I wasn’t ready to be out there.
2024 PHB Rating: 2. Ellywick relies on five things to play well at convention games, which may be combat heavy. In order, they are:
Mask of Many Faces as a way to make being genderfluid work at tables where players or DMs may not otherwise be comfortable with it.
Medium armor and shield proficiency to survive higher combat games.
20 Charisma to have 5 Bardic Inspiration dice. This requires 8 levels of bard.
Being a glamour bard. I tried swords and it didn't fit Ellywick's personality or vibe but glamour support was excellent.
Eldritch Blast with Agonizing Blast for turns where I was too tired to think of a better plan.
It's impossible to get each of the top three things on the list so I am going to retire Ellywick. Instead, I'm going to create a new character who can do some of the same things:
"Elle" Eladrin Paladin 2 / Glamour Bard 8
It's easier to go with a Paladin when I know I don't want to make melee attacks, so I don't feel bad about changes to Divine Smite. I'm going to have to go from 8 Strength, 14 Dexterity to 15 Strength, 8 Dexterity which also means dropping Intelligence to 8. Or I bump DEX to 10 and drop WIS to 10. There’s some real pain here.
I'm making Elle part of a Signal Corps, a specialization of a solider using a combination of music and yelling to help organize an army and get them into battlefield formation. Elle's going to give a Fey Warlord kind of vibe. Skills change considerably as I drop Stealth and Deception, add Intimidation, Insight, and Athletics with an extra skill as Eladrin, and move an Expertise slot from Deception to Arcana. War Caster feels like a must to use a shield, and let's take the Protection fighting style since I don't attack much.
We're going to feel a bit like a cleric in combat, except with some bard control spells instead of cleric staples like spirit guardians. Mantle of Inspiration gives most if not all of the party 2d8 temporary hit points, which makes it and bless my go-to first level spells. The new mirror image, for free on the glamour bard, adds lots of tankiness with heavy armor and a shield. Damage output drops significantly without eldritch blast.
Varis
Half-Elf Warlock of the Great Old One 2 / Lore Bard 12.
Varis was my first character. I initially made a fiend warlock edgelord, then realized after a month losing the edgelord and being a bard would be more fun. I played Varis as a light-hearted character. He found a pop-up book in a dungeon describing dragons. He decided to keep adventuring to find more monsters and make pop-up books about what they could do. When he was semi-retired at level 9, I moved him to a different game with a much more heavy-hearted horror DM. That proved to be a bad fit so I retired him, but I'm going to unretired and change him with the new PHB
2014 PHB Rating: 9 when I started, 6 after I felt comfortable with roleplay. When I started D&D, I was terrible at roleplay ad noncombat situations. I needed skill and Expertise in Persuasion to have a chance to contribute. Of course, having that meant I got shoved on stage a lot as a party face. Not great! Warlock levels delayed my main class progression but being able to eldritch blast was a tremendous stress reducer and more than worth it. Lore bard was a good first choice but I wouldn't use it again.
2024 PHB Changes. We're going with a Valor bard, which gets very strong at high levels and is something I have never played. I'm also going to play a human for the first time to get both the Musician and Tough feats. I'm going down to 1 level of warlock so I can attack with Charisma and use that as my main attack roll option instead of Eldritch Blast. True Strike lets me add 2d6 damage to my first attack roll, doing an average of 30 damage per round with melee attacks. That's solid for a full caster and I can Tenser's Transformation once per day if needed. There are more explosive Valor bard builds for sure but I think this one will fit well at many tables as a bard who can melee, which is the goal here. I need more “not overpowered” characters to play with folks who don’t optimize as much.
Other Bard Ideas
I’m probably going to experiment with Elle a bit and might build a version of her in the level 11-16 range with Eldritch Blast and Agonizing Blast. It’s considerably easier at this level.
Artificer
The artificer is one of those classes I haven’t fully gotten a handle on outside of its absurd power at level 20. I’ve played Armorers at level 9, 10, 15, and 16 but their ability to lock targets down never quite felt right. I loved it with the Cavalier fighter and Ancestral Guardian barbarian but it didn’t work for me here. I may need more time with them.
Obviously, the artificer is not part of the 2024 Player’s Handbook. However, adjustments to feats with many giving +1 to Intelligence could have an impact.
Zinby
Shadar-kai Artificer 20
Zinby was raised in Sigil and able to travel many worlds as a researcher. He used his intelligence and mathematical skill to develop new inventions. Beyond that, his backstory and character is fairly vague. He mainly plays level 20 games where a certain high level of defense is needed so the DM can have a punching bag.
2014 PHB Rating: 9. Zinby has lots of toys! Staff of the magi, staff of power, a +3 spellcasting DC boosting item, +3 shield, and more. Because a level 20 artificer gets +1 to all their saving throw DCs per magic item attuned and can have 6 attunements, Zinby’s lowest saving throw modifier is +9. He’s got at least a +18 in the two most important saves (Constitution and Wisdom). Zinby also has a 27 Armor Class due to his shield, infused +2 half plate, staff of power, and a ring of protection as a spare infusion.
Zinby’s actions are mainly using a staff to throw out an upcast fireball, use telekinesis to help set up melee characters, or cast other support spells like wall of force. Then he makes 2 attacks from his force cannons at +20 to hit for 3d8 force damage each. Without all those items and charges, Zinby doesn’t do a whole lot for his actions, but the combination of actions plus bonus actions adds up.
Out of combat, Zinby has utility spells plus Flash of Genius to help with skill challenges. Adding +6 to a check 6 times per day can go a long way. And of course, if an adventure needs tools, Zinby is there!
Zinby breaks math. The name Zinby (pronounced Zin-BEE) comes from an advanced statistical model for outcomes where the overwhelmingly most common value is zero but some outcomes have exponential growth. For example, how often does the average Twitter post get retweeted. At least as of a few years ago, most posts didn’t get retweeted at all, but the things that went viral could see massive exposure.
A character like Zinby really tests how well everyone at the table will do with powerful PCs. You’d think that someone DMing a level 20 game would be used to shenanigans, but that’s not always the case. The most fun I’ve had with Zinby was in a game where the power gamer DM had some extremely deadly challenges. In one fight, dragons would grapple the party into a cloud of magical darkness that did 90 necrotic damage, DC 20 Constitution save for half. He grabbed Zinby and +1 to Acrobatics didn’t do much. I said OK, I take 22. Didn’t even have to pick up the dice. The DM, who knew me, just said OK and focused on me a bit instead of characters who couldn’t take the hits. There was also a game where the DM rolled with the punches as I spun Szass Tam around like a top with telekinesis. However, the DM who hated AC above 25 freaked out, even though in a high magic item setting there’s a good chance one level 20 PC will ahve an AC over 25.
2024 PHB Rating: 9. Obviously, not much changes. Zinby drops Lucky for the Boon of Energy Resistance. Because War Caster is a half feat, he can take Keen Mind to get Expertise in Arcana and make some skill checks as a bonus action. He also read a scrol of wish to give the party Fire resistance.