Vecna is arguably the archetypical "boss character" in Dungeons & Dragons. For almost 40 years now, Vecna's machinations have endangered D&D's multiverse, only to be opposed and defeated but never permanently destroyed by groups of outmatched adventurers. In his last outing, Vecna: Eve of Ruin, Vecna is designed to be a unique threat who's capable of winning against a party of 20th-level adventurers.
On Azeroth, however, he'd just be another face in the crowd. Dungeons & Dragons: World of Warcraft is officially out in early access. Fans, pros, and content creators have had a few days to break it down, to dig out the winners and losers in Wizards of the Coast's adaptation of WoW's mechanics to D&D 5.5e rules. (The debate is still ongoing at time of writing, but the Discipline Priest currently seems like a hugely powerful subclass for Cleric.) One thing that isn't really up for debate, however, is that Wizards' writing team made WoW's signature characters into forces to be reckoned with.
Only a relative handful of Warcraft's big names got stat blocks in the D&D crossover, but all of them have been designed as major threats in ways that mark a departure from D&D's past design choices. D&D's World of Warcraft book is set roughly around the time of WoW's 10th expansion, The War Within, with a few nods towards the current expansion Midnight. If you haven't kept up with the story of WoW’s modern servers for a few years, there's a lot in D&D: WoW that may come as a mild shock.
This book only provides stats for the relative handful of major NPCs who are currently center stage, namely Alleria, Anduin, Jaina, and Thrall, as well as fan favorites Illidan and Sylvanas. Arthas snuck in due to being the primary antagonist of the Icecrown Citadel map pack, despite being one of the most thoroughly dead characters in WoW as of Shadowlands. At first glance, it may seem strange to the casual observer that all of these characters got stat blocks at all, given the ancient wisdom that you shouldn’t give stats to something if you aren’t willing to let the PCs fight and kill it.
However, this can be seen as a case of Wizards being faithful to their source material. If a character has a name in World of Warcraft, there's a better than even chance that they'll be a raid or dungeon boss someday. Every signature character in this book has been a loot piñata in WoW at some point.
Even Anduin fought players back in the Sepulcher of the First Ones raid, although he was mind-controlled into doing so. What's more unusual is that every signature character in the WoW book came uniquely loaded for bear. Their stated CRs sit between 20 (Anduin) and 25 (Arthas), but Wizards' team has made a few changes to their usual design approach that give the WoW crew some more gas in the tank than previous books' signature characters.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
