Now that the three Core Rulebooks have been released for the new Dungeons & Dragons (5th Edition), it seems a little strange that there is not more 3rd Party Published content out for this new version of the perennial RPG favorite. And yet, the majority of content one finds online is falls into the homebrew variety, with player generated content showing up on message boards and fan-sites.
But there are a few Third Party Publishers releasing content out on RPGNow, notably Rite Publishing, a publisher with a prolific track record of releasing Pathfinder RPG products over the years. Recently, Rite Publishing released a monster template, capable of turning nearly any humanoid creature into a ghoulish and terrifying fiend from beyond the grave!
Monster Templates: Headless Horseman
Monster Templates: Headless Horseman is a supplement for Dungeons & Dragons (5th Edition) Dungeon Masters to design a legendary Headless Horseman to terrify and bedevil heroes in their campaigns. The supplement comes with the Headless Horseman Monster Template, with an explanation of how to use it to create a horrible fiend. In addition, the PDF also contains an example of the template in use, with a frightening NPC villain already complete for use in almost any campaign. There are even a couple of new Feats which can be used to elevate the power and potency of a Headless Horseman creation to deadly levels.
Production Quality
The production quality of Monster Templates: Headless Horseman is quite good, with a lovely layout and excellent writing throughout the supplement. The layout is straightforward, but there’s some lovely use of fonts and border art which give it a very high quality feel overall.
Despite its few pages, the PDF is still accompanied by a full set of book marks for easy reference. Not surprisingly, there is no need for a table of contents given how short the page length is for this book.
The artwork and illustrations in Monster Templates: Headless Horseman is quite good, with a lush cover depicting what one might take to be Ichabod Crane fleeing the Headless Horseman. There are a couple of decent sketches of the headless horsemen in the interior – pretty decent pic-to-page ratio for a short supplement.
Be careful Constable… don’t lose your head!
Monster Templates: Headless Horseman is a bit quirky, given that WotC didn’t really introduce the use of templates for creating monsters in the 5th Edition D&D – not as yet, anyways! Nevertheless, this tried and true method for modifying monsters and beasts has been common in a few editions of D&D – not to mention for Pathfinder RPG - so it’s not surprising that it’s being tried out for this edition of D&D as well. In fact, this product is also available for Pathfinder RPG for the same price on RPGNow as the D&D 5e version.
The template itself is simple enough to apply, and increases a monster by CR+2 and recreates it as an undead. The powers and abilities of the Horseman are evocative of the villain from the Johnny Depp film Sleepy Hollow, complete with references to using hellfire weapons and lore and legends about these terrible undead creatures. Of course, the horseman would not be complete without a fearsome supernatural steed to hunt along with him – but template allows for some interesting versions of the classic “horseman”. Say, a headless orc on a fearsome hellish worg?
The supplement also provides a couple of Feats to add to a horseman to increase his damage or make him seem indestructible. Given the nature of the creature just with the template, the Feats night be a bit of overkill against some adventuring heroes.
Finally, the authors provide a concrete example of the template in use with a write-up of Harn the Headless Hero-Killer. Once a 10th Level Fighter, Harn is now a fearsome foe, sitting astride a Nightmare named Stygian. The authors provide background information on Harn, as well as some additional lore which can be revealed based upon a skill check, detailing more of the horseman and his history. There’s even an adventure seed in the supplement, with the head of the horseman being used to control him and wreak devastation upon the countryside unless the heroes can stop it!
Overall Score: 7.4 out of 10.0
Conclusions
Monster Templates: Headless Horseman turned out to be a very cool, albeit short, new Third Party product for D&D 5e. There’s a ton of good details about this template and the creature created from it, and the writing is solid, even if the powers are a bit derivative of a certain Hollywood spectacle. Overall, the template seems pretty balanced, although it could become quite lethal depending on the base class/race combination used to generate a horseman villain.
And for all the content, the price isn’t bad for a nice bit of DM material to use in a campaign. Fans of Ravenloft and other horror settings would likely find Rite Publishing’s Headless Horseman a surprising treat – at least until they lost their heads!
Editorial Note: This Reviewer purchased a copy of the product in PDF format from which this review was written.
Grade Card (Ratings 0 to 10)
Monster Templates: Headless Horseman
- Written by: Steven D. Russell & Ed Kabara
- Cover Art: John Quidor
- Interior Art: Bradley McDevitt, John Quidor, Public Domain
- Publisher: Rite Publishing
- Year: 2014
- Media: PDF (7 pages)
- Price: $2.95 (Available in PDF format from RPGNow!)
Monster Templates: Headless Horseman is a supplement for Dungeons & Dragons (5th Edition) Dungeon Masters to design a legendary Headless Horseman to terrify and bedevil heroes in their campaigns. The supplement comes with the Headless Horseman Monster Template, with an explanation of how to use it to create a horrible fiend. In addition, the PDF also contains an example of the template in use, with a frightening NPC villain already complete for use in almost any campaign. There are even a couple of new Feats which can be used to elevate the power and potency of a Headless Horseman creation to deadly levels.
Production Quality
The production quality of Monster Templates: Headless Horseman is quite good, with a lovely layout and excellent writing throughout the supplement. The layout is straightforward, but there’s some lovely use of fonts and border art which give it a very high quality feel overall.
Despite its few pages, the PDF is still accompanied by a full set of book marks for easy reference. Not surprisingly, there is no need for a table of contents given how short the page length is for this book.
The artwork and illustrations in Monster Templates: Headless Horseman is quite good, with a lush cover depicting what one might take to be Ichabod Crane fleeing the Headless Horseman. There are a couple of decent sketches of the headless horsemen in the interior – pretty decent pic-to-page ratio for a short supplement.
Be careful Constable… don’t lose your head!
Monster Templates: Headless Horseman is a bit quirky, given that WotC didn’t really introduce the use of templates for creating monsters in the 5th Edition D&D – not as yet, anyways! Nevertheless, this tried and true method for modifying monsters and beasts has been common in a few editions of D&D – not to mention for Pathfinder RPG - so it’s not surprising that it’s being tried out for this edition of D&D as well. In fact, this product is also available for Pathfinder RPG for the same price on RPGNow as the D&D 5e version.
The supplement also provides a couple of Feats to add to a horseman to increase his damage or make him seem indestructible. Given the nature of the creature just with the template, the Feats night be a bit of overkill against some adventuring heroes.
Finally, the authors provide a concrete example of the template in use with a write-up of Harn the Headless Hero-Killer. Once a 10th Level Fighter, Harn is now a fearsome foe, sitting astride a Nightmare named Stygian. The authors provide background information on Harn, as well as some additional lore which can be revealed based upon a skill check, detailing more of the horseman and his history. There’s even an adventure seed in the supplement, with the head of the horseman being used to control him and wreak devastation upon the countryside unless the heroes can stop it!
Overall Score: 7.4 out of 10.0
Conclusions
Monster Templates: Headless Horseman turned out to be a very cool, albeit short, new Third Party product for D&D 5e. There’s a ton of good details about this template and the creature created from it, and the writing is solid, even if the powers are a bit derivative of a certain Hollywood spectacle. Overall, the template seems pretty balanced, although it could become quite lethal depending on the base class/race combination used to generate a horseman villain.
And for all the content, the price isn’t bad for a nice bit of DM material to use in a campaign. Fans of Ravenloft and other horror settings would likely find Rite Publishing’s Headless Horseman a surprising treat – at least until they lost their heads!
Editorial Note: This Reviewer purchased a copy of the product in PDF format from which this review was written.
Grade Card (Ratings 0 to 10)
- Presentation: 7.0
- - Design: 8.0 (Solid writing; pretty layout; very user-friendly)
- - Illustrations: 6.0 (Decent artwork for the product’s size; a bit derivative of the classic tale)
- Content: 7.75
- - Crunch: 8.0 (Good mechanics; inventive use of a template)
- - Fluff: 7.5 (Lots of lore; admittedly a bit of rehashed Hollywood but still nicely done)
- Value: 7.5 (Great price for some fun content!)
