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

You can now pre-order preorder Ravenloft: The Horrors Within over on D&D Beyond--the ultimate bundle costs $149.99, while the book alone comes in at $59.00. There are pages for the new DM screen, map pack, and Tarokka cards as well. The pre-order page lists the book's contents.

• 16 Domains of Dread, including the new cosmic horror domain Innsmouth.
• 17 Darklords for your party to face or flee from, equipped with challenging stat blocks.
• 7 subclasses (including the new Reanimator and Hollow Warden), 4 species, 4 backgrounds, 2 Origin feats, and 9 Dark Gifts for building tortured protagonists.
• 10 genres of horror from gothic to dark fantasy.
• A bestiary of 41 monstrosities and 10 domain denizens for your party to encounter.
• 47 maps and 28 digital quickplay maps for Maps VTT.
• Digital Pre-order Bonus: the Mists of Ravenloft Digital Dice Set, Ravenloft Play-Along Pack, and D&D Encounters: Shadows of Sithicus mini-adventure.

Tonight, your party’s greatest nightmare... is the one you create.

Bring fear to the table with the Ravenloft: The Horrors Within Ultimate Bundle, the complete horror toolkit with everything you need to create a personalized horror campaign – and strike fear into the hearts of your players.

The Ultimate Bundle includes:

• Physical and digital versions of Ravenloft: The Horrors Within, containing 16 Domains of Dread, 17 Darklords, 7 subclasses, 4 species, 4 backgrounds, 11 feats, 68 monsters and 47 maps including 28 digital quickplay maps for Maps VTT.
• Physical Ravenloft: The Horrors Within Tarokka Deck for weaving terrifying twists into your campaign with 54 fully illustrated cards.
• Physical Ravenloft: The Horrors Within Dungeon Master’s Screen for keeping your plans enshrouded in mystery.
• Physical and digital versions of the Ravenloft: The Horrors Within Map Pack for plotting out eerie encounters for your party.
• Digital Pre-order Bonus: the Mists of Ravenloft Digital Dice Set, Ravenloft Play-Along Pack, and D&D Encounters: Shadows of Sithicus mini-adventure.

 

[Selas]

rules for fear, stress and Survivor PCs are gone

Probably because they got rewritten and repackaged in the DMG, so it's not necessary for the book. The DMG rules are kinda a mix of the old fear rules and VGR ones.

 

[Remathilis]

Probably because they got rewritten and repackaged in the DMG, so it's not necessary for the book. The DMG rules are kinda a mix of the old fear rules and VGR ones.

Fear and stress I agree, and survivors were basically dead space anyway, but I figured I'd include it for completeness.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I don't see the rules for using the Tarokka deck to create adventures or make a new domain. Are those coming with the cards instead of this book?

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Very evocative art.

View attachment 438775

I really don't like this illustration, but the book isn't afraid to use a wide variety of styles, which means that given the subjective nature of art, everyone will be able to find something they hate!

 

[Paul Farquhar]

There is a huge demand for a mechanical PC ancestry. If it's not the warforged, WotC will eventually be making another one to fill the niche. Personally, I think the warforged's design is so good -- hammered out over decades of revisions -- that it would be a shame if they felt the need to reinvent the wheel on that score.

Kalashtar don't seem to have the same widespread appeal and kender are just halflings on meth.

Yeah, I've seen plenty of "warforged" outside of Eberron. It's just the best way to make a robot/construct PC, and there is plenty of demand for that. Refluffing shifters works for PC lycanthropes too, but I can see why they wouldn't want to reprint them so quickly.

No one plays Kalashtar, even in Eberron! Species beginning with "K" are all kursed.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

If we are using this thread for spoilers, would someone like to spill on the new Dark Gift?

Edit: Never mind, I've found it, 15' blindsight is very strong!

Touch of Death (which was OP) got a major nerf, Watchers (which was almost entirely drawback) gets a significant buff.

 

[Henadic Theologian]

So I've had a chance to read my copy briefly and noticed a number of things.

• There is a LOT more nods to old Ravenloft, even going so far as to suggest the option of assembling a Core, using islands of terror, or even a shout-out to Gothic Earth!
• Adam is back in Lamordia, though he's just a bit player for now.
• Innsmouth was NOT what I was expecting.
• Speaking of which: how did the Dark Powers capture Cthulhu? He was weakened and the Stars were right. But his cults are trying to rebuild his power to allow him to break free.
• The give you a bunch of options to explain Soth in Dragonlance and in Ravenloft, from joint custody to getting trapped again as part of his torment.
• The damn book is gorgeous. The Beyond version doesn't do it justice. It's absolutely amazing to look at.
• That said, I'm going to say a lot of VRGR is repeated in different ways. The two books do maintain a lot of separate elements, but there are parts that feel lifted from one and put in the other.
• The bastion rules are great if you like those.
• You can, with DM permission, take Dark Gifts whenever you would take an origin feat. Humans and warlocks rejoice.
• Most of the Dark Gifts are similar, but Mist Walker and Touch of Death got nerfed hard.
• Reading Shadowlands really explained why they wanted hexblade for this book.

What's missing from VGR: the domains themselves get more detail. Four domains got demoted and rules for fear, stress and Survivor PCs are gone, as is the House of Lament.

Final Thought: they really did try to make VGR+, and they mostly succeeded. If you own CoS and VGR, this is gonna repeat id say 50% of what you have. But the remaining 50% is great and the whole package is great.

If Forge of the Artificer feels like a patch for Rising from the Last War, The Horror Within feels like a remaster of Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft.

I was shockingly disappointed by Innsmouth Domain, its like it was done by folks who don't actually understand Lovecraftian horror at all. Like they have all these Lovecraftian monsters get added to the book and there is ZERO effort put into weaving them properly into the Domain infavour of miss using cultists. There is no understanding that the Domain should have had a fascade of normalcy to constast with the Cosmic horror. The whole thing is just a mess of weird looking stuff. Its just look we have cultists and tentacles and stuff.

I can think of so many better ways to do Innsmouth, it uses almost no Lovecraftian lore at all, but just random weird stuff, but not interesting weird stuff. Including elemental cultists that don't fit at all.

The cosmic horror shouldn't be in your face all the time.

For Lovecraftian Horror, your better off using Darkon, Dementlieu, Har'Akir, or Hazlan, but have Cthulu still warp peoples dreams, and the lovecraftian species manipulating things from the shadows.

Like it'd be easy to use Dementlieu as an Arkham stand in, then have Cthulu using his dream spell to mess with the Darklords of Dementlieu and Scaena minds among others. I'd have Yithin and other Lovecraftian horrors starting to inflitrate Dementlieu. I'd have Cthulu messing with the dreams of the population of Har'Akir, as if they were getting actual visions from their Gods, to the point where even the Darklord of the domain starts wondering if he somehow had made them real. I'd have Cthulu manipulating the dreams of the Wizard's of Hazlan pushing their experiments in a more Cosmic horror direction. I like the idea of instead of focusing on Cthulu's domain directly, which is just not a well designed Domain, using him to manipulate various Darklords and others to various ends and not just to free him either, but more alien agendas as well.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

No one plays Kalashtar, even in Eberron! Species beginning with "K" are all kursed.

Kobolds mutter obscenely in Draconic.

 

[plecostomus]

Can anyone with access to the book tell me the lowest CR among the Darklords? I've been trying to figure out a ghost boss for a quest, and I realized I could maybe reskin one of them, but I don't have the book until the 16th so I can't check if there's one that's low enough.

 

[Thommy H-H]

Can anyone with access to the book tell me the lowest CR among the Darklords? I've been trying to figure out a ghost boss for a quest, and I realized I could maybe reskin one of them, but I don't have the book until the 16th so I can't check if there's one that's low enough.

Ivana and Ivan are both CR 5 (and feature the first appearance of fewer than three Legendary Actions per round in 5E!), which are the lowest I think. Wilfred Godefroy, who handily for you is a ghost, is only CR 6. Saidra d'Honaire is a sort-of-wraith and her CR is 9, but her abilities might be too specific for reskinning.