The Book of Iron

Lore book for my Ptolus campaign...

This book is made of forged iron plates, joined by rings into a spined book. Its symbols glow with a mysterious white light, similar to the light of the moon. It is the writings of a monk named Sister Ilathira. She writes the tragic story of Mima Goldentongue, and of how her husband, Kedar Goldentongue fought the Disciples of Karcius to attempt to save her. The dark cultists kidnapped her from their inn—the Golden Boar. They sought to sacrifice her to summon their dark lord Karcius from the beyond.

Kedar Goldentongue died defending his inn from the cultists, but was unable to save his wife. However, the ritual failed, and Lord Karcius remains in the Hells. Sister Ilathira speculates that the sacrifice of the husband and wife compelled the gods to prevent the return of dread Karcius. She further notes that the cultists of Karcius are pursuing her, and seek to prevent her from recording this history.

This particular lore book was a crucial clue in an arc involving the party preventing an an over zealous order and inquisitor from exorcising the titular Ghostly Minstrel from the inn of the same name in Monte Cook’s Ptolus setting.

En5ider Issue 5 Release!

En5ider Magazine, Issue 5, image by EN Publishing

I had another awesome experience recently working on Draconic Finds, a collection of original 5e dragon-themed magic items that you can check out from EN Publishing. Researching when coming up with the concept for this piece I realized how few items in 5e across many sources are only tangentially related to dragons and the lack of both draconic motifs or items crafted from dragons. It was also a great opportunity to practice my design skills and once again getting to work with veteran editor Mike Myler. 

There’s also some amazing work from the other authors here including a villain, dragonettes, and more for your 5e game!

The Lament of Karcius

This dark tome tells of the rise and fall of Lord Karcius, said to be one of the "blessed of demons." The book purports to be the visions of those events recorded by a prophet of the "Potentates Abysmal" named Zecharn. 

Zecharn writes: "First a fiend of the tiniest variety came to me, calling itself Farnasoth. This being extracted greater and greater demands from me for the taste of forbidden knowledge." Finally a being called Jakozark, said to be "of terrible visage, horned and trailing chains with the scent of sulfur and brimstone on the air" dictated the words of Karcius after his death. Now blessed as a "dreadknight of the dark potentates" Karcius awaits his faithfuls' efforts to open a way back to the world for him to reap terrible doom against the hated followers of the Nine.

5e Table Aid: List of Approved Familars

I have a multitude of interesting monster and sourcebooks that have lots of cool options for familiars for spellcasters. However, it’s difficult to provide players a consolidated list of their options when making spellcasters. Thus this page.

First, the section below provides the text of the spell Find Familiar from the SRD.

Find Familiar Spell

1st-level conjuration (ritual)

Casting Time: 1 hour
Range: 10 feet
Components: V, S, M (10 gp worth of charcoal, incense, and herbs that must be consumed by fire in a brass brazier)
Duration: Instantaneous

You gain the service of a familiar, a spirit that takes an animal form you choose: bat, cat, crab, frog (toad), hawk, lizard, octopus, owl, poisonous snake, fish (quipper), rat, raven, sea horse, spider, or weasel. Appearing in an unoccupied space within range, the familiar has the statistics of the chosen form, though it is a celestial, fey, or fiend (your choice) instead of a beast.

Your familiar acts independently of you, but it always obeys your commands. In combat, it rolls its own initiative and acts on its own turn. A familiar can’t attack, but it can take other actions as normal.

When the familiar drops to 0 hit points, it disappears, leaving behind no physical form. It reappears after you cast this spell again. As an action, you can temporarily dismiss your familiar to a pocket dimension. Alternatively, you can dismiss it forever. As an action while it is temporarily dismissed, you can cause it to reappear in any unoccupied space within 30 feet of you. Whenever the familiar drops to 0 hit points or disappears into the pocket dimension, it leaves behind in its space anything it was wearing or carrying.

While your familiar is within 100 feet of you, you can communicate with it telepathically. Additionally, as an action, you can see through your familiar’s eyes and hear what it hears until the start of your next turn, gaining the benefits of any special senses that the familiar has. During this time, you are deaf and blind with regard to your own senses.

You can’t have more than one familiar at a time. If you cast this spell while you already have a familiar, you instead cause it to adopt a new form. Choose one of the forms from the above list. Your familiar transforms into the chosen creature.

Finally, when you cast a spell with a range of touch, your familiar can deliver the spell as if it had cast the spell. Your familiar must be within 100 feet of you, and it must use its reaction to deliver the spell when you cast it. If the spell requires an attack roll, you use your attack modifier for the roll.

Gaining a Familiar 

Additional ways to gain a familiar include finding one. Typically this should involve discussion between a player and a GM, so that such an opportunity can be provided, and an appropriate familiar that doesn’t impact the play experience negatively can be selected. These types of familiars normally can choose to leave the spellcasters at anytime should they act in a way that is negative or perhaps as a dramatic story element.

Options that can be used in this way include the traditional animal familiars, along with those in the other familiars section below.

Other Familiars

Faerie Dragon (Monstrous Menagerie, pg 205)

Flumph Familiar (Monstrous Menagerie, pg 207)

Psuedodragon (Monstrous Menagerie, pg 363)

Imp (Monstrous Menagerie, pg 85)

Quasit (Monstrous Menagerie, pg 74)

Alkonost (Creature Codex, pg 12)

Kuunganisha (Creature Codex, pg 245)

Leonine (Creature Codex, pg 250)

Living Shadow (Creature Codex, pg 255)

Wolpertinger (Creature Codex, pg 382)

Stryx (Tome of Beasts, pg 369)

Library Automaton (Tome of Beasts, pg 273)

Witchlight (Tome of Beasts, pg 409)

Lymarien (Tome of Beasts 2, pg 248)

Wicked Skull (Tome of Beasts 2, pg 368)

Aviere (Tome of Beasts 2, pg 36)

Blood Imp (Tome of Beasts 2, pg 103)

Keyhole Dragonette (Tome of Beasts 2, pg 118)

Light Drake (Tome of Beasts 2, pg 125)

Barnyard Dragonette (Tome of Beasts 3, pg 148)

Sedge Dragonette (Tome of Beasts 3, pg 149)

Shovel Dragonette (Tome of Beasts 3, pg 150)

Light Eater (Tome of Beasts 3, pg 262)

Rock Salamander (Tome of Beasts 3, pg 333)

Sunflower Sprite (Tome of Beasts 3, pg 358)

Torch Mimic (Tome of Beasts 3, pg 370)

Catterball (Tome of Beasts 3, pg 76)

Tomegrub (Monstrous Menagerie II, pg 245)

En5ider Reactions Issue 17

Image is property of En5ider magazine

Issue 16 of EN5IDER merits its own post due to longer length and it being a pretty cool stand alone adventure. This is your spoiler warning.

Titled Don't Wake Dretchlor, this adventure is by Kiel Chenier, designed for characters of 5-7 level. It's a unique and creative scenario which employs a couple different spins on the typical dungeon crawl, while maintaining the ease of use of that structure. The transitioning into a defensive "cat and mouse" game as it describes itself, as players work to defeat and slow down the advance of a bound demon they unleashed from its wards during their exploration.

The adventure features a forgotten mansion as the dungeon, and provides just enough detail about a nearby settlement and the history of the site that you can run with it and flesh it out further, and easily modify it to fit into whatever setting you are playing in. The description of the village of Sacred Bend is particularly good, detailing the basic services of the settlement, a named tavern, and the healing services of the local priest in a brief paragraph!

The structure also adds relics, or small sites/objects within the house that can be destroyed to weaken the demon. These make great secondary objectives to break up the simple combat loop of D&D, yet containing the action to the bounded space of the dungeon. 

The adventure synopsis is another impressively organized, concise, and well written portion, effectively providing a roadmap of all the relevant high level details of the scenario to the GM. Many adventures miss this, burying critical plot info deep in a room's descriptive text.

Overall, I think this is a great adventure to insert into a campaign or even use as a contained one-shot.

En5ider Author Debut: Falkenburg Times-Pale Moon Consortium

I can't begin to convey how excited I am to announce the publication of my first effort as a freelance RPG author in EN Publishing's En5ider Magazine #4! As announced by EN Publishing earlier this year, En5ider, which has run for over ten years, has been relaunched in a monthly magazine format. I had the amazing privilege of having my article on the Pale Moon Consortium, and intriguing organization specializing in smuggling magical items and other illicit goods in and around the town of Falkenburg in EN Publishing's Elissar setting.

I had an outstanding time working through this new experience with veteran editor and creator Mike Myler and hope for future opportunities to collaborate with the amazing team at EN Publishing. If you'd like to check out the article, along with access to over 600 past En5ider articles, please consider subscribing to their Patreon!

En5ider 16 Reactions

By Mark A. Hart, King and Country in En5ider 16, outlines the idea of using nationality as a background. This is in contrast to the typical approach in 2014 5e of basing backgrounds on occupation. It provides a list of fourteen nationality background themes, and provides the tools to create custom backgrounds, along with a couple examples of fleshed out ones.

Overall I like the approach this article takes. Equating background with nationality could be a problematic topic, leaning into negative stereotypes. However, this treatment does a good job of showing how various fantasy tropes can be tied into a player character’s background about an interesting place. As a practical matter, it is a great guide to how to develop custom backgrounds in general, breaking down the pieces into a more step-by-step process.

Looking forward to future En5ider articles!

Ptolus: Doctrine of Ghul Review

Spoilers follow for the Doctrine of Ghul...

An adventure for Monte Cook's Ptolus city setting, Doctrine of Ghul, provides some awesome dungeon design for adventurers to explore, but makes a few major missteps with its overall plot and adventure hooks.

The Doctrine of Ghul, like many Ptolus adventures, involves investigating another of the many (oh so many) chaos cults the city is afflicted with. However, it doesn't provide a very strong investigative structure to lead into finding the first dungeon, nor does it provide any clues for a GM to use. You have to come up with those yourself. I would also argue that it lacks strong motivation and direction on what to accomplish with the adventure hooks. 

Instead the party needs to be guided to the point when they can read the eponymous doctrine, which then railroads them into the plot of seeking additional pieces of the text to avoid being pulled into "Ghul's Utterdark." The adventure, and frankly the Ptolus sourcebook are also pretty unclear on what that means too, meaning that should the party fail to complete the adventure on the generous timeline provided, the GM may also need to generate their own consequence. There is also a bit of a snub section providing a rival adventuring party, but it lacks much assistance in how to utilize the rival party in the adventure, and doesn't provide any specific encounters or vignettes to guide those interactions, especially in the dungeons.

The three dungeons are the best part of the adventure. They are amazing in terms of cool ambient effects and generally just being different from normal dungeon fare. They aren't perfect thought. One problem with the Frozen Crypt is that if the players don’t touch anything and aren’t aggressive in their investigations then nothing happens. They can largely walk through the dungeon except for the ambient cold effects. 

While I love the concept of the Breeding Pits of Formless Hunger, and really enjoyed the fact that the characters could generate oozes due to the environment, the dungeon didn't work completely for my playthrough. I think this is because it is based on a couple of assumptions—one that characters will climb down into gross pits, and two that the GM will use fiat to have the Formless Hunger shove characters into random pits throughout the dungeon. My issue too with the tentacle of the Formless Hunger is that it plays a bit of a deus-ex-machina role. Shuffling the characters around or herding them seems to be the intention. There also isn't really any fleshed out discussion of whether you are able to make opportunity attacks against it as it slams through the doors of the dungeon and even down the long passage to the secret shrine almost instantaneously.

Galchutt Cyst is a really cool and well crafted dungeon, just hurt by some unclear layout of information placing essential bits in different portions of the text, making referencing it difficult to do quickly. The musical puzzle is evocative and cool, and my players really seemed to enjoy it, although one disliked the GM fiat in calling for saving throws against the ambient noise generated in the Cyst.

As an overall comment on the plot, it seemed completely out of left field for a wizard from the Inverted Pyramid to be behind everything. Nor did it make much sense for that individual to 1) be interested in promulgating the Doctrine of Ghul, or 2) to appear at the end to fight the party themselves. The adventure also leaves an escape for this appearance though, as it implies the wizard does not appear if they leave his magical dark blot which is a lens for scrying into the Galchutt Cyst's shrine. My characters did nothing to damage this magic effect, although they found it unnerving, so I never had the mage appear. Perhaps he'll make his appearance known later, if I can make the plot make sense. 

Lacking a player who speaks Abyssal or with comprehend languages makes finishing the questline of reading the doctrine difficult. As mentioned above, the consequences of being pulled into “Ghul’s Utterdark” are also not well defined. What does that mean? Is it GM fiat where I make a player character disappear like the Void card from the Deck of Many Things?

A final critique, perhaps localized to my particular game and group of players. My players never engaged with the Chaositech devices causing the effects in each of the shrines, which was a disappointment. I described them in such a way that I think any other group would have investigated further. However, they may need to return to the shrines, as their own actions have not stopped the effects of the doctrine by breaking the chain.

To recap, the dungeons of Doctrine of Ghul are generally amazing, and well worth playing through. The overall plot is a bit take it or leave it. If you can work in either a current or fallen BBEG who experiments with weird magic, then these dungeons would make great drop in pieces for any campaign.

Arcadia 7 Reactions

Image is copyright MCDM Productions 

The question is whether it’s a human skull surrounded by tiny fey, or a giant skull surrounded by large fey? It does remind me of the location of Giant’s Rest, which Matt Colville used in his Dusk campaign, and featured a giant skull. Regardless, the cover by Ian Ameling is very cool. Reminds me of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. 

The editor’s note by James Introcaso focuses on the common theme of nature in this issue’s articles. 

The first is The Pickling Guild, by Sharang Biswas. In my previous glances at this issue I’ve skipped over this article due to the title, but this time I took a closer look—and I’m glad I did! I was missing out! While the guild masquerades as a group of food aficionados focused on pickling and fermentation, it really is a front for an inner circle that seeks to heal the sick and prevent terrible diseases and poisons from being unleashed on the world. The article offers plenty of adventure seeds to introduce the guild and a number of interesting NPCs with their own quest hooks to add to a campaign. Additionally, membership in the guild provides some fun benefits including privileged access to information, weapons, and facilities. I may introduce them in my Ptolus campaign. Finally, I was in error in my last observation on the Grim Accord—this article also provides an NPC domain for the Pickling Guild—meaning there is a little more support for domain play from Kingdoms & Warfare.

The next article is Wonders From the Wild, by Hannah Rose, which focuses on new nature themed magic items and spells. It’s noted that these are primarily intended for druids and rangers. This is a very mechanically dense article, with lots of interesting things to potentially add to your game. This includes no less than fifteen magic items, all of which are unique and very well suited to nature themed characters. One of my personal favorites is the Cloak of the Grove Guardian, a legendary item allowing a druid to animate two trees, giving them non-intelligent treant stats. This feels exactly like the type of thing a druid should be capable of at high levels. The various magic staffs are also great and very thematic, even including story hooks providing options of ways to inject them into your story, like the Staff of Granite Peaks being in its bridge form across a chasm (super cool, right?) and the command word appearing in the player who will gain its mind when they touch the handrail (the illustration of this is also a beautiful piece by Kent Davis Jr.). Other, less interesting items essentially remove the spell slot and preparation tax of taking speak with animals and other similar spells. These aren’t game breaking, and give druids and rangers more story opportunities to highlight their connections to nature and living creatures. 

The spells also seem well designed, and perhaps modeled on other spells with more appropriate flavoring for nature-based descriptions. They are primarily battlefield control spells from my read through, but I’m sure creative players could find interesting applications.

Aethelfaer, by Sara Thompson, is the final article of this issue. This is a unique article, detailing one specific NPC rather than a group, and providing an encounter (really a mini-adventure scenario) to introduce him. The titular character is Aethelfaer, which when broken into the component parts, aethel and faer, seems to mean "noble" or "princely" "traveler" according to the often incorrect internet. This meaning does seem to hit the character's traits on the nose though. Aethelfaer is characterized as a wood elf, who is a defender and respecter of nature. The intro paragraph of character fiction depicts him hunting a deer, which he kills quickly and cleanly with an arrow, then does a ritual to thank the creature for it's sacrifice to nourish him and confirm that he will not waste any part of it. Aethelfaer was also born with meromelia, a condition that causes the absence of limbs. He makes use of some very cool prosthetics (said to be made of "red elm and owlbear teeth" in place of a right arm and foot. I appreciate both a discussion of how Aethelfaer uses and views his prosthetics, which I think helps both accurately and sensitively portray these in gameplay. I also like the discussion of how players might also use prosthetics, from the standpoint of inclusion and providing an awesome opportunity to roleplay a different life experience.

The artwork of Aethelfaer is by Grace Cheung, MCDM's on-staff artist, and is an outstanding piece. In the article is also include a d12 table of plot hooks to include Aethelfaer, some of which are very fleshed out and detailed. The stat block isn't anything crazy, with Aethelfaer having ranger traits and abilities. The interesting details are tied to a vial of poison he hides in his prosthetic arm, along with a once per day Deflect feature, allowing him to reduce a ranged weapon's attack damage with his arm, or to catch the object and hurl it back if the damage is reduced to zero. The other cool inclusion is "Common Signs" as a language, which is presented in a sidebar as a universal language amongst disabled communities. A cool bit of inclusive worldbuilding that could be pulled into other scenarios and games (for instance, a cleric in my Empire of the Ghouls game spent a downtime attempting to learn sign language to be able to communicate silently with his teammates).

On to Arcadia 8!

Arcadia Reactions Page

Arcadia 6 Reactions

 

Image is copyright MCDM Productions

Arcadia 6–very psionic themed cover from Nephelomancer. The intro letter from James Introcaso focuses on how this issues provides lots of interesting villains. Developing villains so that the party has a named and real adversary to oppose over several sessions or more is one particular aspect of Gaming that I want to develop further in myself. Hopefully this will be a helpful issue on that front.

The first article is from perhaps my personal favorite RPG creator and author, Mike Shea, or Sly Flourish. In this article, Mike outlines the Grim Accord, a party of rival, villainous adventurers to oppose a player party. These NPCs are all CR 4, making them optimal for use against a level seven or eight party. The article even includes a brief description of a lair and various mini plots for the Grim Accord. Finally it includes a sheet showing the group as an NPC domain for use with Kingdoms & Warfare. To my knowledge, except for the unit cards in the Talent product, this is the only additional MCDM product support for the domains portion of that book. Which frankly is a darn shame.

The next article is the Armor of Zevellon, by Gabe Hicks. It outlines a unique set of magic items with an interesting plot hooks—essentially an elf warlord sought to become a god, achieving demigod status. Before death they transferred their life force into the titular armor. I really dig the story, and actually think it would be really easy to convert into a relic of Valeresh, the head of the Midgard elven gods, in my Empire of the Ghouls game.

The armor is extremely powerful individually and a bit bonkers together. The catch is you can’t remove it once worn. It also compels you to “seek out the remaining pieces at all cost.” There’s also a nice adventure included to introduce the item—this is a great touch, as the largest difficulty of adding an interesting item into your narrative is taken care of.

The final article is Spelunking! by H.H. Carlan. The maps included in this longer adventure are beautifully done if simple in structure and provide some interesting encounters. Overall, the adventure isn’t totally to my taste. The main plot is rescuing a group of kids from the haunted caves near a small town. Reminds me of Scooby-Doo rather than the usual heavier vibe I go for in my RPG products. However, it is a well written and developed scenario worth taking a look at, particularly as a scenario for kids or teenagers playing 5e.

That’s it for Arcadia 6!

Arcadia Reactions Page

South-Western Marches of the Blood Kingdom Random Encounter/Tool Tables

These encounters are designed to be used in conjunction with the keyed hex map for the South-Western Marches of the Blood Kingdom used in my Empire of the Ghouls campaign. These encounters are optimized for Tier 2-3 play.

Cartography by Faxfire

These are random tables I created to support the hex map and key detailed in last week's post. This was a really interesting and helpful exercise, and also got me deep in my monster and setting books. Some of the tables basically don't end on nice, easy, regular dice numbers—so instead use this die roller from Sly Flourish to input a custom end number. For monster stats, all from the Monstrous Menagerie are released by EN Publishing under a Creative Commons License. The monsters from the various Kobold Press books are for the most part release under the OGL and can be found at Open 5e. For monsters from WOTC, you’ll need to pick up the referenced source or omit them. 

Factions List

1 Band of the Twice Damned

2 Krakovar Rebels - Loyal to Queen in Kariessen

3 Spearmaidens of Sif (Order of the Spear)

4 Dwarves of Grisal/Black Fortress

5 Grand Duchy of Dornig

6 Ghoul Imperium

7 Night Cauldron of Chernobog

8 Followers of Lady Illmalad

9 Red Sisters

10 Roll twice more and combine the results

Deities

1 Marena

2 The Hunter

3 Chernobog

4 Valeresh

5 Khors

6 Thor/Perun (Donar in Dornig)

7 Mavros

8 Vardesain

9 Volund (Veyland to Elves, also the Armorer of Valeresh)

10 Holda

11 Heid or Gullveig in North (Sarastra)

12 Hod (Charun)

13 Anu-Akma 

14 Loki

15 Sif (Grajava to Dwarves)

16 Jormungandr (Ouroboros in the Crossroads)

17 Boreas

18 St Whiteskull of Bratislor (Midgard Worldbook, pg 388)

19 Goat of the Woods

20 Mammon 

21 Chemosh, Demon Lord of Conquest (Creature Codex, pg 75)

22 Chttr’k’k, Demon Lord of Rats (Creature Codex, pg 76)

23 Rangda, Demon Queen of Witches (Creature Codex, pg 78)

Haunted Lands Encounters (1d140)

1 Soldier Squad

2  2 or 3 griffons (Monstrous Menagerie, pg 255)

3 Owlbear

4 Zombie Knight

5 Zombie Horde

6 Ghast

7 Ghoul

8 Skeleton Horde

9 Specter

10 Band of the Twice Damned Member

11  2 Ettins; or ettin with 1 or 2 Ogres; or ettin with 1d4 death dogs (Monsterous Menagerie, pg 197)

12 Banshee (Monstrous Menagerie, pg 29)

13 Flesh Guardian 

14 1d10 + 10 Grimlocks (Monstrous Menagerie, pg 257) 

15 Ogre Mage

16 Red Sister

17 Spirit Naga (Monstrous Menagerie, pg 342)

18 Werewolf 

19 Bandit Captain with 1d10 + 5 bandits (Monstrous Menagerie, pg 470)

20 Revenant

21 Night Hag

22 Rot Grubs

23 Blackguard riding griffon, nightmare, warhorse, or winter wolf; or blackguard with 1d5 + 5 soldiers, skeletons, or zombies (Monstrous Menagerie, pg 475)

24 Troll

25 Dread Troll

26 Zombie Dragon

27 Warrior Band (Monstrous Menagerie, pg 499)

28 Ogrekin

29 Knight (Monstrous Menagerie, pg 476)

30 Shadow

31 3-5 Ettercaps (Monstrous Menagerie, pg 195)

32 Cutthroat (Monstrous Menagerie, pg. 468)

33 Hill Giant

34 Basilisk and 1d4 + 1 cockatrices (Monstrous Menagerie, pg 31, 54)

35 Wereboar

36 Wyvern

37 Dead Man's Fingers (Monstrous Menagerie, pg 211)

38 Fomorian

39 Malcubus

40 Guard Squad (Monstrous Menagerie, pg 493)

41 Scarecrow

42 Holy Knight - Roll on deities table (Monstrous Menagerie, pg 476)

43  1-2 Wraiths (Monstrous Menagerie, pg 427)

44 Rakshasa

45 Cyclops

46 Chimera

47 Bulette

48 Ogre Flesh Heap (Monstrous Menagerie, pg 436)

49 Bodytaker Plant (Von Richten’s Guide to Ravenloft, pg 227)

50 Boneless (Von Richten’s Guide to Ravenloft, pg 228)

51  1-2 Carrion Stalkers (Von Richten’s Guide to Ravenloft, pg 230)

52  Death’s Heads Tree - an awakened tree with 2d6 death’s heads dangling from it (Von Richten’s Guide to Ravenloft, pg 232)

53  1-2 Hellwardens (Book of Fiends, pg 163)

54  1-2 Soulsniffers (Book of Fiends, pg 177)

55 Dullahan riding a nightmare; maybe be accompanied by 1d4 + 3 skeletons (Von Richten’s Guide to Ravenloft, pg 233)

56 Gallows Speaker (Von Richten’s Guide to Ravenloft, pg 234)

57 Gremishka (Von Richten’s Guide to Ravenloft, pg 235)

58 Jiangshi (Von Richten’s Guide to Ravenloft, pg 236)

59 Loup Garou (Von Richten’s Guide to Ravenloft, pg 237)

60 Relentless Killer and 1d4 guards (Von Richten’s Guide to Ravenloft, pg 242)

61  1-2 Strigoi with 1d4 stirges (Von Richten’s Guide to Ravenloft, pg 246)

62 1d8 corpses containing 1d4 swarms of maggots (Von Richten’s Guide to Ravenloft, pg 247)

63 Inquisitor of the Red Goddess with 1d4 acolytes - reskin Ulmist Inquisitors as followers of Marena - 1d3 to determine type (Inquistor of the Mind Fire, Inquisitor of the Sword, Inquisitor of the Tome) (Von Richten’s Guide to Ravenloft, pg 248-249)

64 Wereraven (Von Richten’s Guide to Ravenloft, pg 253)

65 Unspeakable Horror (Von Richten’s Guide to Ravenloft, pg 250)

66  1d8 Swarms of Zombie Limbs (Von Richten’s Guide to Ravenloft, pg 254)

67 Zombie Clot (Von Richten’s Guide to Ravenloft, pg 255)

68 1-2 Zombie plague spreaders (Von Richten’s Guide to Ravenloft, pg 255)

69 Arborcyte (Creature Codex, pg 40)

70  2-3 Bloody Bones (Creature Codex, pg 54)

71 Boot Grabber (Creature Codex, pg 56)

72 Chuhaister (Creature Codex, pg 62)

73  1d8 + 3 Chupacabra (Creature Codex, pg 63)

74 Corpse Thief (Creature Codex, pg 66)

75 Crimson Mist (Creature Codex, pg 67)

76 Dark Father (Creature Codex, pg 71)

77 Dark Folk - Roll 1d3 to determine type (1-2 Dark Eye, 1d4 + 2 Dark Servants, or Dark Voice) (Creature Codex, pg 72-73)

78 Neophron demon (Creature Codex, pg 86)

79 Alnaar demon (Creature Codex, pg 82)

80  1d4 + 2 Bilwis (Creature Codex, pg 53)

81  1d4 Giant Vampire Bats (Creature Codex, pg 50)

82  1-2 Pishacha demon (Creature Codex, pg 88)

83  1-3 Plaresh demon 1-2 Pishacha demon (Creature Codex, pg 89)

84 Spree demon (Creature Codex, pg 91)

85 Vellso demon (Creature Codex, pg 92)

86  1-3 Yek demon; or 1 Alpha Yek (Creature Codex, pg 95)

87 1d4 dhampir (Creature Codex, pg 106)

88 Dhampir commander with 1d4 + 2 guards (Creature Codex, pg 90)

89 Skull drake (Creature Codex, pg 132)

90 Dream Wraith (Creature Codex, pg 135)

91  1-2 Blood Elemental (Creature Codex, pg 138)

92  1-2 Elophar (Creature Codex, pg 149)

93  1d4 Fear Liath - only in mountainous regions (Creature Codex, pg 152)

94 Fey Lady Berchta (Creature Codex, pg 153)

95 Flame-Scourged Scion (Creature Codex, pg 159)

96  1d8 + 4 Flesh Reaver (Creature Codex, pg 160)

97  1-3 Ghost Boar; or 1 Elder Ghost Boar (Creature Codex, pg 169)

98 Ghost Dragon (Creature Codex, pg 170)

99 Ghost Dwarf and 1d4 zombies (Creature Codex, pg 171)

100 Darakhul Shadowmancer; maybe on a Ghoulsteed (Creature Codex, pg 173, 177)

101 Darakhul High Priestess; maybe on a Ghoulsteed (Creature Codex, pg 172, 177)

102 Necrophage Ghast Ghoul; maybe on a Ghoulsteed (Creature Codex, pg 175, 177)

103  1-2 Tar Ghoul (Creature Codex, pg 176)

104 Haunted Giant (Creature Codex, pg 183)

105 1-2 Bone Golem (Creature Codex, pg 195)

106 Goliath Longlegs (Creature Codex, pg 206)

107 1d10 + 6 Goreling - 50% chance they are rotten gorleings (Creature Codex, pg 207)

108 Grave Behemoth (Creature Codex, pg 208)

109 Gumienniki 1d10 + 6 Goreling (Creature Codex, pg 213)

110 Gaki Hungry Ghost (Creature Codex, pg 222)

111 Ijiraq (Creature Codex, pg 225)

112 Karakura (Creature Codex, pg 235)

113 Lady in White (Creature Codex, pg 246)

114 Living Shade - one per character (Creature Codex, pg 255)

115 Mandriano and 1d6 + 2 zombies; or ancient Mandriano (Creature Codex, pg 261)

116 Moon Nymph (Creature Codex, pg 269)

117 Nachzehrer (Creature Codex, pg 272)

118 Nalusa Falaya (Creature Codex, pg 274)

119  1d4 zombies with necrotic ticks (Creature Codex, pg 275)

120 Blood Ooze (Creature Codex, pg 282)

121  2-3 Shadow Oozes (Creature Codex, pg 287)

122  1d4 suppurating oozes (Creature Codex, pg 288)

123 Phantom (Creature Codex, pg 296)

124 Devil Bough (Creature Codex, pg 302)

125 Shadow Blight (Creature Codex, pg 326)

126 Skull Lantern (Creature Codex, pg 343)

127 Sleipnir (Creature Codex, pg 344)

128 Spawn of Chernobog (Creature Codex, pg 346)

129  1d6 + 1 Crypt Spider (Creature Codex, pg 348)

130 Spirit Lamp (Creature Codex, pg 349)

131  2d4 + 2 Terror Bird (Creature Codex, pg 352)

132 Tulpa (Creature Codex, pg 358)

133 Tveirherjar (Creature Codex, pg 359)

134 Undead Phoenix (Creature Codex, pg 361)

135 Vampire Patrician (Creature Codex, pg 365)

136 Vampire Priestess (Creature Codex, pg 367)

137 Vampire Knight (Creature Codex, pg 369)

138 Vines of Nemthyr (Creature Codex, pg 371)

139 Albino Death Weasel (Creature Codex, pg 374)

140 Wendigo (Creature Codex, pg 377)

Swamps (1d29)

1 Black Pudding

2 Guardian Naga (Monstrous Menagerie, pg 341)

3 Otyugh

4 Dead Man's Fingers (Monstrous Menagerie, pg 211)

5 Night Hag

6  3-5 Ettercaps (Monstrous Menagerie, pg 195)

7 Constrictor Snake

8 Swarm of Insects

9 Swarm of Poisonous Snakes

10 Dryad

11 Shambling Mound

12 Revenant

13 Ghost

14 Ghoul

15 Ogre

16 Boggard sovereign with 1d10 + 4 boggards (Monstrous Menagerie, pg. 35)

17 Giant Toad (Monstrous Menagerie, pg 450)

18 Cipactli demon (Creature Codex, pg 83)

19 Wind demon (Creature Codex, pg 93)

20 Kryt (Creature Codex, pg 243)

21 Kulmking (Creature Codex, pg 244)

22 Lou Carcolh (Creature Codex, pg 257)

23 Mandriano and 1d6 + 2 zombies; or ancient Mandriano  (Creature Codex, pg 261)

24 Foxfire Ooze (Creature Codex, pg 283)

25  2-3 Shadow Oozes (Creature Codex, pg 287)

26 Devil Bough (Creature Codex, pg 302)

27 1d8 + 4 Execrable Shrub (Creature Codex, pg 304)

28 Shadow River Lord (Creature Codex, pg 327)

29 Venom Maw Hydra (Creature Codex, pg 370)

Arcadia 5 Reactions

Image is copyright MCDM Productions

Another beautiful piece of cover art from Sean Andrew Murray depicting some sort of great siege engine. I love it.

Introcaso’s editor’s note focuses on asking logical questions about the fantastic details of our D&D worlds and carrying them to their conclusions. Certainly good advice for world building and reflected in this issue.

The first article is Long-Term Curses by Leon Barillaro. This provides six curses immune to the Remove Curse spell. These all seem to be less mechanical than narrative elements. The Curse of the Betrayed is interesting narratively, but seems like it would be difficult to do in practice. The Curse of Cassandra, paying homage to the Iliad, seems like it would be easier to roleplay. It’s harder to keep control of a group that is actively undermining one another and lying because it creates greater opportunities for problematic player behavior. While the prophecy curse provides an interesting narrative component that is easier to implement (the other characters simply need to act as though they don’t believe the prophecy, which is the curse, exactly as portrayed in the source material). 

The Curse of the Living Dead is distinct in not really being character focused. Instead it provides the idea of a town infected by necromatic energy that causes the dead to rise at midnight, meaning that their corpses are destroyed and removed from the immediate area before they arise as zombies. Instead this is an interesting narrative element that you can insert as a quest line in almost any campaign. I may use it to describe a town in Krakovar in my Midgard campaign, defiled by the magic of the ghouls and Blood Kingdom. The characters would need to break the curse as part of their work as rebels.

The last three curses are similarly interesting narrative devices, but my favorite is the Curse of the Watchers, which slowly adds to a folk of ravens who follow an adventurer who stole a seemingly mundane item of the GM’s choice from a dungeon until the swarm attacks. This would also be a great tie in to the Grove of Crows in the Path of the Planebreaker. The Grove is essentially a horror themed demiplane with similar vibes and esthetic. Just reskin the ravens as crows.

The next article is the Goldmonger Subclasses, by Carlos Cisco. I love these subclasses, like the unique and nuanced take on avarice as a divine domain. You don’t have to be evil to be greedy or a voracious collector of valuable magic items. The article is also very well written in my opinion. 

There’s a flavorful but brief description of Pta’u as a god of deals before launching into the cleric subclass. It has some powerful features, like the ability to duplicate a domain spell effect on yourself or an object you are touching after casting it on another creature or object. That means you can cast haste on your martial friend and yourself, or a number of other decent spells. Additionally there are other interesting abilities that add up to having a degree of battlefield control. Overall probably a middling subclass in terms of power, so it shouldn’t break your game.

The next is the Circle of the Gilded Druid, focusing on guarding natural resources of gold and gems from those who would take them. So I imagine they hate miners (not a subclass for Lost Mines of Phandelver perhaps). I’d need to test out the subclass to see how it performs, but largely it tries to boost the melee capabilities of the Druid with a ranged attack boost late at level ten. You’d still have the core controller and support spells of the Druid, but this certainly seems geared towards your character primarily relying on primal savagery for most of your attacks. A small boost to AC and resistance occurs at sixth level, meaning like most druids it would be advantageous to pick an ancestry that provides earlier buffs to AC if you plan to spells any significant amount of time in melee. So some cool abilities, but limited utility as far as their use. Probably another subclass that won’t break the game.

Next is the Paladin Oath of Acquisitions. The flavor on this one immediately makes me think about running an Acquisitions Incorporated game. It would definitely be a good addition thematically. It seems a little overtuned, with several abilities allowing you to impose disadvantage on enemy attacks. The aura allows this on any enemy within 10 feet, which seems like it could do a number on a boss encounter. 

The final article is Alabaster’s Almanac, by Sam Mannell. This article details nine new spells for arcane casters. They are all generally balanced, if sometimes a little too specific in their use cases. There is an odd ninth level spell that lets you turn illusions into real objects or creatures (but not magic items). Much like the other spell offerings, potentially useful to inject on a case-by-case basis, or give to an NPC or villain in your campaign.

That’s it for Arcadia 5!

Arcadia Reactions Page

Arcadia Reactions 6

En5ider Reactions Issue 15

Party of One: Rewards of the One-on-One Campaign is by Matt Click. This article doesn’t provide any new mechanics or assistance for running one-one-campaigns, instead dedicating its word count to attempting to persuade the reader of the virtues of this type of play.

The article isn’t bad, but doesn’t really grab me the same way that others which offer more concrete tools for this type of play do. For instance, Arcadia Issue 22 provides Heroic Champions: Powerful New Classes for Parties of One by Bill Doyle, a bold and creative idea to actually allow a game master to use a normal amount of monsters with a fun challenge level for encounters in a one-on-one game. I’ll write more on this particular idea, which I tried out in my session on Hurkaz the Mighty.

Although this article disappoints, it did remind me of my preferred one above. It would certainly be fun to run some published adventures that it’s more difficult to get a group together for due to time constraints as one-on-one adventures.

En5ider Reactions Issues 12-14

Issue 12 of En5ider is titled Fantastic Times & Librams, by Russ Morrissey. A d100 list of titles of books, with authors, physical description and an optional rarity, price, and page count. I really love this article because I love books and it provides an easy way to include mundane books in adventures as loot or flavor. Not much else to the article than this, but the books are creative.

Image is property of ENWorld Publishing

Fire of the Mind, in Issue 13, is by James Abendroth. 

I am including a content warning for discussions of trauma and mental disorders for this discussion of the article.

This article discusses real world mental disorders and their potential applications for a 5e game. The discussion is generally understanding and treats those who suffer from these disorders in the real world with respect. However, I personally don't see a great need to gamify elements of mental disorders. The proposed player options mostly focus on roleplaying (like most mental effects in 5e). There are some mechanical suggestions for penalties or impacted skills, which could be used if you are playing with the optional sanity mechanics for 5e. However, I largely don't see a need to have player characters use this type of material in the 5e system. The GM advise is slightly more helpful in providing options of how to incorporate some of the behaviors descripted into their adventures through NPCs. Some care is needed to make sure to be sensitive in the course of gameplay though. Overall, it doesn’t break much new ground and it’s not likely that I’ll personally use this particular article.

Issue 14 is Strands of Life, by Giltônio Santos is an interesting article. It reminds me of the style and tone of articles I've seen in old issues of Dragon Magazine. The article includes a brief discussion of different classes capable of healing in 5e. Then various strategies of healing or preserving allies hit points are outlined. These are quite interesting. This includes a brief discussion of damage mitigation spells, direct healing, and noting that gradual healing spells are lacking in 5e compared to previous editions. Then it proceeds to address this and the gaps in healing capabilities in 5e. These spells aren't all worth including in your game, but I might test a few out with the Life Cleric in my current Ptolus campaign.

En5ider Reactions Issues 9-11

In issue 9, Circles of Power, by Mark Kernow, provides three druid subclasses. The first is the Circle of the Birds and Beasts. This class is similar in theme to the circle of the shepherd, but focuses on controlling animals in it's powers. They are very utility focused, but not necessarily combat effective. Not my favorite subclass, and reflective of some very early and quirky 5e design.

The next subclass, the Circle of the Elements, reminds me of a bender from Avatar the Last Airbender. Again, kind of odd design. The final class, the Circle of Life, has similar oddities, including a change to spellslot recovery that references the wizard's arcane recovery feature. Referencing another class or ability generally strikes me as bad design because it requires consulting another source rather than making the subclass ability standalone.  Overall, not my top article from En5ider.

Issue 10, by Carl Heyl, focuses on creating puzzles for your game that are actually fun. This brings up an issue I've often had with puzzles—challenging the players, instead of their characters, can be frustrating for them rather than a fun game experience. Additionally, there’s an inherent danger in putting anything important behind a puzzle because your players may not figure it out. While interesting, this article still didn’t quite crack the nut for me on this subject.

Issue 11, Winterheart, is a brief adventure by Esper. Spoilers from here out. And content warnings for self-harm, familial death, racism, and sexual assault. I'd recommend you just pass on this adventure if these concern you.

It contains some problematic tropes that diminished my interest at the beginning. It begins as a bit of a Romeo and Juliet story, but rapidly we find that Juliet (named Katina in this case) dies with her father while fleeing her lover's family. Her younger sister is captured and given to the Romeo character (named Aldric Sangellion) as a "war trophy" by his father. The objectification of this character (her name is Chryssa) bothers me. If I were to run this adventure, I'd treat her as a prisoner, rather than using the language of implied enslavement and elements of potential sexual assault currently conveyed. There is certainly enough material to turn Chryssa into a non-helpless captive too, as the core tension of the story (there are a few too many plot threads) seems to be that if she remains captured, the trauma of losing her family will drive her to commit suicide and unleash her nascent winter magic to create an eternal winter (a la super dark version of Frozen, and thus the title of the adventure). As is, Chryssa's depiction follows the trope of the young maid in the tower (and the room she is in is noted to be Aldric's bedchambers--which further reinforces the negative and potential sexual violence mentioned above). There's also some elements of motivation for the two families, driving their conflict, which involves a magic tree, and the racial tension from one faction being humans and the other elves.

You might be able to rectify some of the problematic elements by removing the more problematic language used to describe Chryssa's capture and imprisonment. The old tropes and other problematic themes could also be broken up by gender swapping characters, and not grounding the conflict in a racial difference. 

The dark, tragedy elements of the story are compelling to me, and I think provide reason not to toss out the whole thing. There's also a lovely little regional map that I think is a good tool to facilitate an adventure. But as I mentioned above, I certainly understand completely passing on this adventure. It's interesting to see how much EN Publishing has adjusted its content (similar to others like Kobold Press) to reflect a more inclusive view of the hobby. It's just unfortunate that it's really only been the past four or five years. I imagine there may be other adventures with these themes in the next several dozen issues.

Lore Book: Battle of the Field of Blood

This lore book was written for my ongoing Ptolus game, but also establishes some of the lore regarding the mortal understanding of fiends in my own setting.

This battered, black leather book relates both a series of lists of commanders and troops in a battle said to have been waged “upon the fields of blood in the circle of envy.” The unnamed author’s descriptions decline in clarity until the latter pages which descent into utter gibberish—perhaps the last ravings of a broken mind.

The initial entries praise the “lords of the entropic hosts,” lauding the “great vision and glory” of their commander, the “cambion son of the great ascended Gnasher of Endless Bones,” a balor said to have slain “a thousand devas of the ill-begotten chorus of wailers.” 

The account of the battle lists “a hundred war chiefs of a thousand legions of the blessed hosts of chaos” arrayed against “the ill favored armies of the infernal pit.” The fallen angel, Dalferion, is noted as the head of this force, with the hell knights “Flegthas, Naras, and the dread knight Karcius” as her lieutenants at the head of these “endless, ant like hordes.”

Lore Book: The Ebon Binding

The following lore book was written for the players in my ongoing Ptolus campaign to provide some in-game lore to the players on the cult of the Ebon Hand, one of the chaos cults operating in Ptolus. 

This large tome of battered leather, with metal reinforced corners and spine seems to contain the book of scripture of the “Ebon Prince.” It speaks of an ancient ritual undertaken to “bring the Ebon one into the world that the darkness might blot out the light” and that the “holy tenebrous city might be exalted once more with tithes of blood and skulls.”

The hand of the Ebon Prince is said to have been cut off when the portal to the “realm beyond understanding” was shut by “the Iron Spike.” The only further mention of this person or entity is a reference to them being placed upon a black spike on the walls of the “desolate city thrown down in lasting shame.”

Scrawling in the last few blank pages of the book includes the words “Crimson Coil” and “Tolling Bell.” The rest is indecipherable.

Review: The Book of Fiends

Today we’ll be discussing one of my favorite bestiaries, and one of the earliest books I acquired for 5e. The Book of Fiends, from Green Ronin Publishing. Written by Robert Schwalb, in collaboration with Aaron Loeb, Erik Mona, and Chris Pramas. The original Book of Fiends was published for 3e, and contains much of the same lore, but this review will focus on the most recent version of the book.

Content Warning: Please note that this product is for mature readers and deals with themes including death, violence, and other topics that may not be comfortable or appropriate for all readers.

Coming from the same author who designed the roleplaying game Shadow of the Demon Lord, this tome features vivid description, interesting stories, and beautiful—but at times gruesome or genuinely disturbing artwork. For those who choose to read it, the book offers a variety of fiends, beings of true evil from the lower planes where true evil lives. Beyond just the monsters, the are dozens of fiends of legend, such as demon or devil lords, each of which has its own description that include information on their cultists and their evil portfolio. Each of these entities could almost be spun out into their own campaign, or if you are looking at an adventure with plenty of intrigue about evil cults and their struggles to bring about their own apocalyptic vision of the future (like in Night of Dissolution) each of these could be used as a distinct cult to be investigated and fought.

One of the amazing things about this book is that the monster stat blocks in its second chapter and the rules in the third chapter (the character options) are designated as open content under the OGL. 

Now for a few warts, like some of the creatures within. One major criticism I have is the organization of the Book of Fiends. It has three chapter, which makes sense. The first chapter outlines the three major lower planes. It outlines them in alphabetical order: first the Abyss, then Gehenna, and finally the Hells. Then chapter two orders its topics alphabetically by type of fiend, with daemons, demon, and devils last. Perhaps this is a personal thing,  but I found it extremely confusing on my first read through that the locales were not presented in the same order as their denizens. If I were to offer advice, I’d say to nest the monsters under the location descriptions for easier reference and better flow.

Overall though, I highly recommend checking out the Book of Fiends if it sounds interesting and you can fit it in the budget. It is an outstanding resource for 5e monsters, along with plot points you could tie into any TTRPG campaign.