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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Guest&nbsp; 85555" data-source="post: 8210207">you could certainly try that. It is actually kind of what I did when I made a horror game and wanted some of that Ravenloft feel (I just had characters never increase in health and have pretty low wounds, so monsters can easily kill them...and it worked). That is probably pretty involved surgery for D&D though The black box, red box and Domains of Dread (as well as other books in the line do account for this a bit). It is still D&D, but Ravenloft had rules for changes to special abilities, spells, magic items. it was also meant to be a setting where things like magical items were not as prevalent. But more importantly, monsters were unique and highly customizable. There were many avenues for exploring this. But the dark lord is the model. Dark lords are simply the most extreme examples of people who have succumbed to evil, but other people are corrupted in similar ways, become monstrous and powerful, and simply don't achieve dark lord status. Such individuals make ideal threats for the players because powers checks can warp them into virtually anything, and give them powers of all kinds. Also specific types of monsters were similar. The van richten books really explore this, where you have tools for making monsters unique. The guide to the created for example had all kinds of tools for making individualized flesh golems with different abilities. The guide to vampires provided rules for vampires who gained powers as they aged, with lists of powers to choose from, and ways of making vampires have unique immunities. You often couldn't defeat such foes with brawn and magic alone: you needed to investigate and research them. This worked really well in my experience for still making the game scary with higher level characters (though obviously at a certain level in D&D things can still be tricky)</blockquote>

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