It’s to distract people from his missing moustache.Just also noticed something else - why is Soth wearing a crown in the cover picture? He was only a knight, never any sort of ruler to my knowledge.
I'm mostly sure that's supposed to be him wearing a helmet.Edit: Ariakus is here too, and looks quite different:
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Well, moreso the color - he is the Red Dragonlord (Overlord), after all. The red helmet (and presumably red armor) seems a better fit than him being in the bluish/black armor.I'm mostly sure that's supposed to be him wearing a helmet.
He was the ruler of Sithicus...Just also noticed something else - why is Soth wearing a crown in the cover picture? He was only a knight, never any sort of ruler to my knowledge.
He was also the ruler of his domain in Krynn.He was the ruler of Sithicus...
Not in 1987 he wasn't.He was the ruler of Sithicus...
I don't know the specifics you are talking about regarding the Domains of Dread and there Dark Lords, but Frankenstein's monster is a tragic figure and the tale is morally complex. So it seems to me the "grey" you are talking about is right in line with that source material.I'm glad that the artwork that they've revealed so far is more... "dark"? Has a slight more "edge" than previous 5e releases? Hard to explain. I admit that I was a bit disappointed with the current Ravenloft offerings.
I also was not a fan of changing the Dread Lords into being somewhat more sympathetic or "grey". There's a REASON why their flaws drew them to these places. They were BAD people, not Disney half-villain retcons. Horror works better with clearly evil villains, tragic pasts or not, whether the monsters themselves or a human antagonist who makes things worse (eg the Ghost might not actually be bad, but the cruel priest / investigator sure is).
The Frankenstein stand-in, for example, doesn't work for me in a literary sense when gender-swapped the way that they did it. I think it could've been done far better, but stretching the mass-appeal PG-13 target WotC's going for. But that's the very problem with Horror; it HAS to stretch those boundaries. There are better ways to run kid-friendly Scooby Doo or Ghostbusters campaigns, right? Or maybe not.
Whatever.

(Dungeons & Dragons)
Rulebook featuring "high magic" options, including a host of new spells.