Banshees are spirits, in D&D of dead elves, always female. They are created at death when they lament something that have not completed, generally this is some sort of guilt or vengeance, but it drives their spirit to remain. Known for their cries or wailing, a Banshees cry can cause the strongest of adventurers to grow faint.

In D&D terms they are a fair challenging creature to deal with but not that high a challenge rating. For a group of four third level characters, this is a hard encounter just as a solo monster. Now, if it isn’t able to use it’s wail effectively, it won’t be nearly as difficult. The ability isn’t the toughest to avoid, but it’s a good one for hitting the whole part, the banshee wails and everyone who can hear it makes a constitution saving throw, of 13, so not that high. But if they fail, they immediately drop to 0 health, otherwise 3D6 damage. At third level, there’s a chance that a banshee could take down a whole party if they roll poorly.

But let’s talk about how to use them in a game and if they could be a BBEG (Big Bad Evil Guy).

For me, they are probably the catalyst for characters becoming adventurers at the start of a campaign, at least one of the ways. You have the players face off against a Banshee that is haunting their town and defeat it and that’s how they start getting jobs. This works especially well since it’s third level and that’s when players generally get their specialization for their class. So simplest would be they are all from the same town, they team up to save the town.

But, I think a more interesting thing to do would be to create a coven of banshee. Like it was a coven of hags who were killed and now have become a coven of banshee. I’m not giving them magical powers, but four banshee for a group of level 10 is considered a hard encounter. And a wail can be used by each of the banshee once per day. That’s 4 chances for failed saving throws and if they do that all in round one, you got a slight chance of a party wipe, but it’s also possible, if the party is fast enough they can get out ahead of it.

Now, finally, I think you could homebrew banshee’s some if you wanted to build off of my coven idea above. Have the players first take down a group of hags, seems like that solves the problem, and while the hags were a problem, they also were warning of a potential larger disaster. That’d be the main BBEG or event for the story that you’re playing. Then, because they can’t be at rest, the hags are back as banshee, and you give them some innate casting abilities. Grab some spells, not all, but maybe one higher level spell from the hags as another once per day ability. Now, not only is there the banshee wail that the players need to worry about and the flaws that do necrotic damage, but there can be some impressive spells being flung around, or at least something else that the players might not be prepared for.

Those are just some ways that I think you could use a banshee to make it interesting, and the first one is a good way to kick off a game, and the last one can really heavily tie into a story.

Have you used a Banshee in your game? How have you used them if you have?

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Warlocks get by far less spell slots, and they only get spell slots at a single level. If you need a refresher on what spell slots are, you can check out the article I wrote here on casting spells. Whereas every other class gets spell slots of different levels, a Warlock never has more than four. That might seem like not that much, and they never get higher than 5th level, which is what half-casters max out at, but a Warlock plays like a full caster, so how does that work?

Firstly, even though you don’t have that many spell slots or high level spells, the Warlock’s spell slots refresh differently. For the most part, if you play a Wizard, Sorcerer, or other caster, you have you spell slots and you use them throughout a day, then, when you long rest, you get them back. With the Warlock, you get them back after a short rest, so if you’ve used them all and you can take a couple of short rests throughout the day, you could cast, at level 20, 16 fifth level spells.

That jumps us into the next thing, when you cast a spell, you cast it at the highest level available to you. So when you have four spell slots at 20th level, all of them are fifth level slots, you don’t have any first level slots or anything like that. Now, that doesn’t mean that you can’t cast first level spells, it means what when you do, you cast them at a higher level. Compare this to the Wizard who only, at 20th level, has three fifth level spell slots. Now they also have a ninth and an eighth level slot as well as two of sixth and seventh level, but compare that, again to the count of spells that a Warlock can cast with a couple of rests, the Warlock can cast 16 fifth level spells, and the Wizard can do nine at fifth level or higher. So you get a unique casting trade off that way.

Along with this, you still get cantrips, including a very important one, which is Eldritch Blast. The thing with Eldritch Blast is that it scales nicely, but beyond that, as a Warlock, you get invocations which can make it much better. While an Eldritch Blast does 1D10 on a hit, which isn’t bad, you can take an invocation that will make it add in your charisma modifier as damage, and when you start to be able to shoot several blasts in a single round at long range, a Warlock can take down enemies quite quickly. In fact, the spell slots that you do have, you won’t always be using them a ton in combat, because with fully maxed Charisma, which is the Warlock’s casting stat, at a higher level, you’ll have a +9 to +11 to hit, be shooting three or four bolts and dealing 1D10 + 5 (again your charisma modifier) to an enemy. And that’s at a good range of 120 feet, plus you can possibly even increase that if you so desire or push them. So while all classes do rely some on cantrips once they have run out of spell slots, a Warlock can really focus in on a cantrip only.

Now, I’ve said that I think that Warlock can be a harder spell casting class to play. The primary reason for that is because how spell slots level up to a certain level, even though you’re casting a lower level spell, I think that can confuse some people. I also think that everything that a single Eldritch Blast can do also can cause issues. Once you get down what an Eldritch Blast can do and understand that you won’t be casting many other spells, the Warlock is quite easy to play. You simply launch a volley of Eldritch Blasts over and over again until the enemy is close enough for someone else to start hitting them as well. So, is the Warlock actually a hard spell casting class to play, not really, but I think people already have an idea of how casting works, from video games and other places, so the Warlock feels different in how it handles them.

That’s a brief primer on how the spell casting for a Warlock works. They are, as I think I called them before, a little bit more than a half-caster for me, but they also aren’t a full caster because they don’t get access to ninth level spells. And I can see how they’d be a lot of fun to play in a game as a caster with your ability to blast away with an Eldritch Blast and the role play possibilities for them.

Have you played a Warlock before? Was it hard to wrap your head around mainly casting Eldritch Blast?

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Since Dungeons and Dragons is a fantasy setting, you have magic in the same, I don’t think that’s a surprise to anyone. How much magic you have to vary a lot. Some worlds in D&D have a ton of magic with lots of people being able to use small spells and little things, like curing a small wound are going to be magically done or lighting a fire, magic might be faster. There are going to be other fantasy worlds where magic is extremely rare. If you have magic, you have way more value to the nations because of what you can do. In either of them, the PC’s (Player characters) who have magic are going to end up being more powerful than most other casters, because, otherwise, those characters would be saving the world, and you’d still be a farmer.

But within magic, there are a number of different ways that you can get magic or use magic. Which, mechanically speaking, are represented by the different classes you can be. A Cleric and Paladin get their magic from their gods whereas a Druid gets it through nature, a Sorcerer just has it, and a Wizard needs to learn it. That doesn’t even touch on the bard who signs theirs (but just kind of have it) and the Warlock who has made a deal for it. If you know you want to be a magic user, picking your class can help determine what sort of background you have because of how you got the magic.

Bard – This magical mischief maker generally gets their spells from their ability to weave word or song in such a way to alter the world around them either for attack or entertainment. A bard is generally going to be someone who has been trained, but not to improve their magic, but their performance ability. I think that the bard is a class that can be generally used for most backstories.

Cleric – The first of our magical classes that gets their magic from the divine. The god that they are worshiping is giving them the powers and has chosen them as special. In particular, they are giving them powers to help people, and while combat might not be their strong point, but healing and aiding other characters is what that character is going to be the best at. With a cleric, your backstory can be anything but you might want to focus more on a religious background and have it something you’ve been a part of for a while, not something that you just picked up.

Druid – The hippy of the magical classes, the druid is all about nature and their attunement to nature. In some ways, I would say that a Druid is a bit like the Cleric in that they get their magic from the divine, but for the Druid their divine is their connection to nature. The Druid is going to be the caster who has the most connections to nature and natural changes in the world. The outlander or hermit backgrounds actually make a lot of sense for a background for the Druid, because you need that strong connection with nature that makes most sense to be gotten on your own. The trick can be connecting back into the group.

Paladin – Our second divine caster, the Paladin is what is know as a half-caster. What that means is that they have a more limited spell selection and a smaller number of spell slots with which to cast spells. What the Paladin does get is some of the healing abilities of the Cleric but much better punching power with their ability to handle weapons. They also get the ability to channel their divine magic into even more damage, at the cost of casting spells, but I still feel like it’s a spell like affect and is part of their magic. For a Paladin, your background can be much more open, because while they do have that divine magic from a god, their devotion to their religion is less strictly guided like a Cleric’s feels, though, they do need to maintain that collection.

Ranger – Another and last half caster, the Ranger pulls a little bit like the Paladin does from the Cleric, but for the Ranger it’s from the Druid. They get some of the connections to nature that the Druid has, but also then gets more focus in their magic for hunting down their enemies. Unlike the Paladin who has extra abilities they can do with their magic, the Ranger is more focused on just using their spells as spells. Their background is generally going to be fairly open, being a scout in the military or being a hermit all make sense, and even some of the more scholarly ones can make sense.

Sorcerer – The natural of the magic world, the bard might just use music, but the Sorcerer just gets magic. And they get amazing control over their magic. The Sorcerer is an interesting class in that they get things called meta-magics and meta-magic points that they can use to improve their spells. This might mean that they can cast them farther or do so silently so it can’t be countered. This allows a player to specialize their character so that their Sorcerer feels different from others. The Sorcerer definitely can come from any sort of background since their magic can be something that just newly manifested. It’s the magic class that you do if you don’t want to be beholden to anyone or anything.

Warlock – If the Sorcerer isn’t beholden to anyone or anything, the Warlock 100% is. They’ve made a pact with some powerful being, fey, elder god, or demon that is giving them their powers. And the Warlocks magic works differently than everyone else’s. They aren’t a half caster, but they aren’t really a full caster. They get invocations that can really make their cantrips much better so they don’t need as many high level spells, which is good, because they don’t get many spell slots. But when they cast a spell it’s always at the highest spot possible. I don’t know that they are that much harder to play than other casters, but how they work makes less sense. They, because they can have just gotten their magic, do have it in common with the Sorcerer that most any background works.

Wizard – Final one and definitely the most iconic. The Wizard has learned magic. You could say that Bard might be considered a bit of that if you consider them learning their craft of storytelling and performance, but for a Wizard, there are Wizard schools and you study and you need a spellbook to be able to prepare spells for the day. But, as a Wizard, you have access to more spells than any other class. Their specializations also makes it easier for them to learn more spells in certain areas, and while other classes can be capped on how spells they know, a Wizard can always add in more spells if they have the time and money to transcribe them into their spell book. A wizard, the Sage background makes the most sense because they’ve spent at least some of their life in school, but that might not be the defining feature for them.

That’s a lot just looking at the classes and how they use magic, I’m going to spend some time coming up here going into more topics on magic such as spell slots and spells known or high or low magic worlds that I touched on that the top of the article. Some of them will be more player focused and others more dungeon master focused. Is there a certain type of caster that you gravitate to?

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