D&D 5E (2024) Ravenloft: The Horrors Within preorder page lists the book's contents

TravDoc42 said:

View attachment 434539
I'm willing to bet that this art is for the Relentless Killers, actually!

Click to expand...

I found an even larger image, and yeah, I'm gonna say that if this isn't the Relentless Killer art, I'll eat my britches.

Maybe I missed something, if so sorry for the silly question: so no horror or terror checks?

Muso said:

Maybe I missed something, if so sorry for the silly question: so no horror or terror checks?

Click to expand...

No. It does have advice on how to instil those emotions in your players.

Parmandur said:

Yeah, I wonder if these Dark Gifts will keep the curse aspect for the flavor?

Click to expand...

Some would have to be toned down at least. Some are mostly curse and minimal benefit (Echoing Soul, Gathered Whispers), and so no one would ever take them as a feats. Or maybe the bad ones will be quietly dropped and replaced with different dark gifts.

On the other hand, Living Shadow and Touch of Death are rather strong.

Paul Farquhar said:

No. It does have advice on how to instil those emotions in your players.

Click to expand...

When those "players" have a PC with Super-hero(ic) OP MC anime isekai class power & durability that makes trolls look sickly & infirm it very much does not accomplish that outside of the hypothetical white room of reading the book & imagining how cool it could be to run it for hypothetical imaginary players.

Absent structured rules to actually change the theme tone & power level to genre-appropriate levels that "advice" is of minimal use actual players in actual play at a real world or online vtt table.

tetrasodium said:

When those "players" have a PC with Super-hero(ic) OP MC anime isekai class power & durability that makes trolls look sickly & infirm it very much does not accomplish that outside of the hypothetical white room of reading the book & imagining how cool it could be to run it for hypothetical imaginary players.

Absent structured rules to actually change the theme tone & power level to genre-appropriate levels that "advice" is of minimal use actual players in actual play at a real world or online vtt table.

Click to expand...

No one fears character death - computer games for small children feature their character dying over and over. It's just not scary. Thus, making the PCs weak and pathetic is a pointless exercise. If you want to frighten the audience - the point of horror - you need to do it by building atmosphere and narrative tricks. No mechanics can do the storyteller's job for them.

tetrasodium said:

When those "players" have a PC with Super-hero(ic) OP MC anime isekai class power & durability that makes trolls look sickly & infirm it very much does not accomplish that outside of the hypothetical white room of reading the book & imagining how cool it could be to run it for hypothetical imaginary players.

Absent structured rules to actually change the theme tone & power level to genre-appropriate levels that "advice" is of minimal use actual players in actual play at a real world or online vtt table.

Click to expand...

The opposite on the other hand was what 2e presented, where your characters were being taken out of the player's hands and being spooked by stuff that was laughably mild. It just leads to frustration

Fear checks were straight taken from a game with an entirely different set of assumptions, and they clashed hard with the default D&D ones. You say some OP class, I'd argue the things didn't even work for your average fighter/cleric/wizard/rogue party in 2E's day

Paul Farquhar said:

No one fears character death - computer games for small children feature their character dying over and over. It's just not scary. Thus, making the PCs weak and pathetic is a pointless exercise. If you want to frighten the audience - the point of horror - you need to do it by building atmosphere and narrative tricks. No mechanics can do the storyteller's job for them.

Click to expand...

This preaching from on high trying to invoke video games is silly. You had to use video games and death because 5e won't even let you conceptualize risks that actual players could fear because 5e removed them from the realm of plausible concern in the process of cranking the super-hero dial past 11 & ripping it out of the ruleset. Past editions had a wide range of things that could be put under meaningful threat and plausible risk. That segment of "players" who only read the books and imagine playing can certainly imagine a whole bunch or risks, but at the table in actual play the rules of 5e don't support the gm with any meaningful risks that the players are still capable of being scared of risking. A third 5e ravenloft book is absolutely the place to start including rules revisions that would support the GM, yet none of the hype even hints at those sorts of revisions.

Mecheon said:

The opposite on the other hand was what 2e presented, where your characters were being taken out of the player's hands and being spooked by stuff that was laughably mild. It just leads to frustration

Fear checks were straight taken from a game with an entirely different set of assumptions, and they clashed hard with the default D&D ones. You say some OP class, I'd argue the things didn't even work for your average fighter/cleric/wizard/rogue party in 2E's day

Click to expand...

I started with ad&d2e and have no idea what you are talking about because this whole post doesn't sound like the way that 2e was actually played. In fact the dmg itself has multiple sections talking about the whole concept of players not having control & they tend to be very much in conflict with your claims
Like This One:
Or This One:


Also... They were called "Morale checks" in that & the relevant rules are on page 99 of the dmg. It too drastically contradicts your analysis of how 2e worked even before getting to the mechanics

You'll notice that players making those checks is not even mentioned and that the example is very much roleplaying a scenario players staged, That kind of thing was absolutely normal typical & frequently successful player driven gameplay back in the day. The low bar for significant risk is what paved the road for players to proactively engage in that kind of thing. You don't have to take my word for it though, take an example like caves of chaos from keep on the borderlands where you had two different rival orc clans the players could attempt to play against each other.

tetrasodium said:

I started with ad&d2e and have no idea what you are talking about because this whole post doesn't sound like the way that 2e was actually played. In fact the dmg itself has multiple sections talking about the whole concept of players not having control & they tend to be very much in conflict with your claims

Click to expand...

Check Ravenloft's box set.

If you want to see it bad? Ravenloft Monstrous Compendium 2. Don't even need to go far into it

tetrasodium said:

Also... They were called "Morale checks" in that & the relevant rules are on page 99 of the dmg. It too drastically contradicts your analysis of how 2e worked even before getting to the mechanics

Click to expand...

No, they're Fear and Horror checks. They're page 21 of the Ravenloft box set.

Morale died years ago and was worth it, and Fear and Horror checks were a mistake from day 1. You can't just port in mechanics from games where you're Just Some Guy and expect them to work in a game where you're a dragon-slaying knight

tetrasodium said:

You'll notice that players making those checks is not even mentioned and that the example is very much roleplaying a scenario players staged, That kind of thing was absolutely normal typical & frequently successful player driven gameplay back in the day. The low bar for significant risk is what paved the road for players to proactively engage in that kind of thing. You don't have to take my word for it though, take an example like caves of chaos from keep on the borderlands where you had two different rival orc clans the players could attempt to play against each other.

Click to expand...

You're looking at the wrong thing. We're talking the Fear and Horror checks that Ravenloft peppered creatures with. The dumbest of these of course being the special one that's just for the living brain.

Speaking of the 2e Fear and Horror checks, I remember playing with those rules in an ongoing 2e campaign that started in Forgotten Realms and shifted to Ravenloft for the Castles Forlorn adventure. I think we dropped the checks pretty quickly because narratively they didn’t line up with what our characters had already encountered in terms of danger time and again while they were on Faerun, and they were proving to simply be an arbitrary penalty that was a hassle to shoehorn into fights.

I know that Ravenloft back then was designed as a “weekend of terror” away from normal campaigns, but always found that to be the worst application of the setting.