 Howdy how's it going? My name's Davy Chappie and I have Critical Role to think, in large part for me having a job right now. If it weren't for the immense popularity of Critical Role, along with other celebrities trying the game out, nerd culture as a whole going through a renaissance of mainstream popularity, Stranger Things creating hype for the game and 5e being far and away the most new player friendly edition of D&D that existed to date, D&D would never have reached the heights that it did and Hasbro might have decided that it was worth putting their greedy corporation mits on the franchise to turn everything into a rehash Hell, I've been approached by chads and heathers alike to teach them what all the loaded dice were about and it's eventually what influenced me to start up this whole YouTube channel, and we have all that to think in large part to this company of critters. So today I'm going to be talking about the newly released official book that covers the world of Critical Role, The Explorer's Guide to Wild Mount. I'm going to give my thoughts on the book, I'll talk about the three new subclasses presented within, and I'll give a brief overview of all the ways that the Critical Role team made this the best book ever. As always, keep in mind that a lot of this is just my opinion, so if you feel like it's not my turn to roll, feel free to play your games however you want. And real quick, I want to give a brief shout out to my patreons this month. Kale, Krista, Robert, Rhys, Rusty, Gear, Michael, Harkin, Lukas, Comer, Pale, Horseman, the 4th, Kale, Hefter, Zack, Bowl. Thank you so much for a pleasure to me, I'm Davy Chappie and I'm here to say, but with that out of the way, let's begin. So The Explorer's Guide to Wild Mount takes you through the main continent within the second campaign of the homebrew world that Critical Role takes place in and provides context and details for locations, myths, legends and patrons that the gang have run into during their two cripplingly long campaigns. It goes over the history of the continent of Wild Mount and reading it gives a sense of satisfaction to those who study it, whether you're a new washer of Critical Role that hears about locations that the cast are going to and you get giddy with excitement, or you're an avid fan that flips through the book to find all your favorite locations with all your favorite memories. And the back of the book even has a giant, tear away, blow up map of Wild Mount, just like how Eperon and Baldur's Gate had one, but this one is one-sided and way bigger and more detailed. I really appreciate that you can pick a location on the map, flip to its page, and then learn the population density, points of interest, and even get suggested story hooks to help push you towards adventuring in what would otherwise be a footnote of a town. It's a breath of fresh air for both fans and newcomers alike, but most importantly, unlike The Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide, it isn't boring as hell to read through. Beyond the Gazetteer, The Explorer's Guide to Wild Mount goes over how each race is treated within the main civilizations of Wild Mount, and for some reason it inexplicably comes with each and every single race in the entire game. Seriously, Genasi, Turtles, Tabaxi, Aracakras, everything, you want it, you got it. It printed out every single race and their stats from every book in 5e, except Ravnica, because fuck Ravnica. So if you were looking to buy Volos Guide to Monsters because you wanted a bunch of new races to play with, you can say fuck that and just pick up Explorer's Guide to Wild Mount, because Wild Mount even comes with its own mini-beastiary that doesn't really come with a lot of new monsters, but the ones that it does have are still super appreciated. It's like this book was tired of getting comments from fans saying, but what about my race that I like? Where does that fit in? Think for me, damn you! And you know what? I get that. Fuck those comments. Unfortunately, it doesn't really bring any new races of its own to the table, so you'll just have to enjoy all the reprints. But it does add new subraces in the form of the Pallid Elf, a pale elf that, unlike most elves, has only existed as a species for about a century and has natural fey-like magic, the Lotus Den Halfling, a fey-touched Halfling with natural druid magic, the Dragon Blood Dragonborn, a variant subtype of the normal dragonborn that is much more in tune with its draconic ancestry by having a naturally powerful and charismatic presence, and also ACTUALLY having tails, and the Ravenite Dragonborn, a once again tail-nudered dragonborn sub-race with a strong physique and a penchant for punching things. Both of these Dragonborn have dark vision, and both of these races are moderately better than the base version, which is saying so little that it's a bit depressing. I also got curious and checked on the Orc, and yep, they got rid of the Intelligence Negative, so maybe Matt watches my videos? Or he listens to, like, literally everyone else who said the same thing. But he couldn't keep his mitts unedified forever, as in a surprising move, Matt added his own take on the Revenant called the Hollow One, which is less of a race on its own and more of a template that you just layer on top of a recently deceased character to make them unrecently deceased through the sheer power of not wanting to die. Other miscellaneous bits of the book include new magic items like the ever-famous Luxon Beacon and potions of possibility, along with dozens of other really cool magical items, including usable vestiges of divergence, evil arms of the betrayers, but unfortunately, no gauntlets of Pumat Sol, which is a crying shame. The book also comes with a sort of backstory generator called a Heroic Chronicle, giving players all the powers of not needing Xanathar's guide to everything anymore because Wildmount is the only book daddy you will ever need. Unlike Xanathar's backstory generator, however, the Heroic Chronicle doesn't have you roll for literally every facet of your character's life, such as your age, number of siblings, what each sibling does for a living, your mother's maiden name, the last four digits of your social, but instead, the HC only concerns itself with aspects of your backstory that are likely to make a direct impact on your game. You can roll for where you lived, what your social status is, which members of your family you managed to piss off during your time being a tiny annoying child, whether or not you have predetermined allies or enemies, what fateful occurrence occurred to spin you into a world of adventure, what deep dark secrets your character keeps buried in their head, and it even gives you advice on how to craft a storyline for your character throughout the campaign, framing it as a sort of prophecy that your character seeks to fulfill. It's a neat little set of rollable tables that I can see myself using once or twice when I run out of ideas, but people who have no trouble making characters anyway aren't really going to have a lot of mileage here. But I think that this, paired with the backstory generator from Xanathars, will really be able to sculpt out a character for players who have a really hard time making stuff up. Finally, Wildemount comes with four, count them, four, different, fully scripted mini-adventures for your players to enjoy, taking you from the Menagerie Coast in the West to Hopperduke in Western Wynedere to the Biting North, and you get a nice ghostly adventure in Eastern Wynedere. Getting four different adventures in one book is crazy to think about, given that most world books barely even give one, and it shows how much dedication went into what I think is one of the best expansions of 5e to date, and no expansion would be complete without new archetypes, so the Explorers Guide to Wildemount comes packaged with three new subclasses for you to play, one for the Fighter and two for the Wizard, because Matt heard my pleas to stop making wizard subclasses and responded with What If I Do Anyway? All of these subclasses draw their power from Dunamis, a powerful force of existential power that behaves exactly like the weave from the Forgotten Realms, but where most spellcasters only scratch the surface of magic by manipulating the threads, Dunamancers push things further, splitting and collapsing Dunamis in every direction until they've created their own primal forces of magic. This grants them access to not only new subclasses, but also to over a dozen new spells created specifically and exclusively for practitioners of Dunamancy. These spells let Dunamancers harness both gravity powers and time powers, creating black holes, rifts in reality, and all sorts of time fuckery that make them the most dangerous spellcasters in all of existence. First up, the Echo Knight uses Dunamancy to summon forth a shadowy vestige of itself from an alternate timeline, and it fights along with this Echo, pulling more and more energy from other possible realities where that fighter chose to fight in a slightly different way. You can fight with your Echo, swap timelines and spaces with your Echo, focus on one particular timeline to send out an Echo and see through its eyes like a spy, pull up a timeline where you would have just happened to be standing right in front of an enemy attack so that your Echo body blocks it instead, absorb Echoes when they're destroyed to gain their power, and even summon two Echoes at once to turn yourself into a one fighter fighting force of fists and fuck. As a subclass, you now have the power to be twice the fighter you were before, kind of literally in fact. Playing this subclass doesn't change the way that you should approach being a fighter, it just means that instead of having to choose where you put yourself on the battlefield, you now get to make that choice twice and cover more ground. The only disadvantage is that your Echo will go down after literally anything hits it, but since you can just bring a new one out as a bonus action whenever you want, that's not really the biggest concern. You weren't using that bonus action anyway. Next up is my all-time favorite wizard archetype, the Cronergy Wizard, better known as the Time Wizard. Crafting strands of Dunamis to flow through multiple possible timelines, these wizards play the biggest game of Back to the Future, and they don't even have to make out with their mom. As a hero of time, you can reverse time in key moments to get a different result, you get a higher initiative because you read ahead in the campaign book so you know when all the combat encounters will happen, you can freeze people in time, freeze spells and time beads for use later, and you can pull together all of your mental forward-tude and exhaust yourself to completely decide the outcome of certain events. The thing that impresses me the most about this subclass is that it isn't a broken mess of overpowered time bullshit, it's a really well balanced school of magic that is perfect for those wizards who want to turn back the gears of fate and keep their party supported without forcing the DM to endure all of the BS that the Divination Wizard has. Finally, the last subclass is the Graviturgy Wizard, a mage with the power to control the top and bottom of any relationship, and if you don't understand the gravity of that power, then trust me, it's pretty heavy. As a Graviturgist, you can change the density of objects to make them either lighter or heavier, you can slide creatures around the battlefield when you hit them with a spell, you can speed up strikes to make them hit harder, slow people down to soften their fall, and you can emit a powerful wave of CHONK energy that'll crush your enemies with the mighty thunder thighs of your potent magic. The Graviturgy Wizard is a good choice for anybody looking to manipulate the speed of things, but honestly, I feel like the subclass features are a little lacking, especially since it only gets one feature at second level instead of the usual two. That being said, the Graviturgist is still worth picking up for its exclusive gravity spells, and with any luck, you'll still find plenty of enjoyment tricking ogres into thinking that they're really fat. Buuuut that'll about do it, I hope you enjoyed this video, leave a like, comment, subscribe, check out my social media in the description below, and maybe support me on Patreon so that I can take a vacation and catch up with like the 50 episodes of Critical Role that I'm behind on. But yeah, is it Thursday yet?