WotC State of the Game, Darklords of Ravenloft

[Remathilis]

If the change aspect isn’t there, I think a big aspect of what makes the concept horror is missed. But, I also think this is why we haven’t had a really good werewolf class or species option yet: creating an ability that has a disadvantage or drawback is kind of an anti-pattern now, particularly if there’s a loss of player control aspect to it.

Spoilers for D&D Encounters

The D&D Encounters Shadows of Sithicus gives rules for having a character be infected with wereraven lycanthropy. The rules are below:
You have gained the curse of lycanthropy. For the rest of this event and the four additional weeks of this D&D Encounters season, you can use a Bonus Action to take on the hybrid form of a wereraven for 1 minute. You regain the use of this ability when you finish a Short or Long Rest. While in this hybrid form, you gain the following:

Fly. As a Bonus Action, you can sprout a pair of wings. For 1 minute, you have a Fly Speed of 50 feet.
Beak. You have a Beak attack, Melee Attack Roll: +6, reach 5 ft. Hit: 13 (2d8 + 4) Piercing damage. This attack does not spread the curse.
Dark Urges. At the start of each of your turns while in hybrid form, you must succeed on a DC 10 Wisdom saving throw. On a failed check, you must use your action to make a Beak attack against the nearest creature. Once you succeed on this saving throw, you do not have to make it until the next time you use a Bonus Action to take on the hybrid form.

They MAY include something like this for other lycanthropes in THW.

Or you may have to get creative. Maybe the Second Skin dark gift is fixed to actually give a decent benefit like a hybrid form? Alternatively, you could probably use beast barbarian, hollow warden ranger or moon druid to simulate beast modes.

 

[SothFan]

Spoilers

Not really a spoiler as it happened in Episode 6 of the actual play last week. Exactly as you wrote it, it was described when it happened to Crem.

 

[VashVet]

Spoilers for D&D Encounters

The D&D Encounters Shadows of Sithicus gives rules for having a character be infected with wereraven lycanthropy. The rules are below:
You have gained the curse of lycanthropy. For the rest of this event and the four additional weeks of this D&D Encounters season, you can use a Bonus Action to take on the hybrid form of a wereraven for 1 minute. You regain the use of this ability when you finish a Short or Long Rest. While in this hybrid form, you gain the following:

Fly. As a Bonus Action, you can sprout a pair of wings. For 1 minute, you have a Fly Speed of 50 feet.
Beak. You have a Beak attack, Melee Attack Roll: +6, reach 5 ft. Hit: 13 (2d8 + 4) Piercing damage. This attack does not spread the curse.
Dark Urges. At the start of each of your turns while in hybrid form, you must succeed on a DC 10 Wisdom saving throw. On a failed check, you must use your action to make a Beak attack against the nearest creature. Once you succeed on this saving throw, you do not have to make it until the next time you use a Bonus Action to take on the hybrid form.

They MAY include something like this for other lycanthropes in THW.

Or you may have to get creative. Maybe the Second Skin dark gift is fixed to actually give a decent benefit like a hybrid form? Alternatively, you could probably use beast barbarian, hollow warden ranger or moon druid to simulate beast modes.

I’m glad that they are considering the fiction that it’s a blessing and a curse and building some of that into the rules.

 

[Remathilis]

Not really a spoiler as it happened in Episode 6 of the actual play last week. Exactly as you wrote it, it was described when it happened to Crem.

Not everyone has had a chance to play the adventure or watch the livestream, so rather than have people get angry, I opted for the spoilers.

Remember, spoilers aren't real, they can't hurt you. Only wereravens can hurt you.

 

[Remathilis]

I’m glad that they are considering the fiction that it’s a blessing and a curse and building some of that into the rules.

If they don't include this in THW, I'm absolutely making my own versions using this as a template.

 

[SothFan]

What would you have named this one?

State of the Season: [season title]

In this case it would have been Horrors, next might be Champions, or whatever the roadmap had in the order. This would keep it consistent with how Dan Ayoub set up the seasons environment.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

If the change aspect isn’t there, I think a big aspect of what makes the concept horror is missed. But, I also think this is why we haven’t had a really good werewolf class or species option yet: creating an ability that has a disadvantage or drawback is kind of an anti-pattern now, particularly if there’s a loss of player control aspect to it.

Honestly, the best way to represent werewolves on the player side in 5E might be with a barbarian subclass, making it an aspect of rage. I'm sure the people who want to play werewolf wizards or something would be disappointed, but I think most people who want to play werewolves want to kill some folks with claws and teeth.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Wereravens are grandfathered in at this point, but they've always been a strange lycanthrope to me.

"Oh no, I'm cursed to be an intelligent good-aligned creature who can fly and speak."

The werehorse is fully out of the barn at this point, but if I were in charge of D&D, I'd make lycanthropes only be creatures that would genuinely be scary to turn into. Other stuff, like werebears, could be other sorts of shapechangers instead.

 

[Selas]

Or, like Remathilis said, they do include rules in the book like the ones he posted previously. I think part of the reason that they took them away is that they were very strong options with negligible consequences, so they needed to be reworked (at least, I'm hoping so).

 

[Selas]

Is it just me or does Wes sould like the man from Family Guy that was always trying to catch Chris Griffin's attention. Quagmire? It has been to long since I watched that show.

Wes was too much. He acted like he thought "First Edition" were going to flock to this product. Working on it since 2004, there was 22 years to come up with nthing new, as the first question suggested. Just a copy and pasted of everything that has been done before, he admitted.

It was 2 years; Wes misspoke and it was edited in the video above his camera view. And he specifically said it's NOT a copy paste, but more focused on the darklords. Was he defensive? Yes, mostly out of annoyance, because I suspect he genuinely didn't expect to be asked that.
I do expect things to carry over from VGR that needed a rework because Van Richten's was rather tame due to "sensitivities" at the time it was developed.

Makenzie(?) flat out says this is just Universal monsters in D&D: wolfman, vampire, Frankenstein, hollow man/invisible man. Only thing I did not hear was the mummy.

It kinda is; many players want to be able to play those species tropes, and Ravenloft provides it. Grim Hollow--a third party product for DnD--also does the same thing. Ravenloft has evolved from just the setting into a catch all for all things horror as DnD moved through editions.

AJ was just the art director?

Wes also ignored the things mention in the actual play discussion from James Lowder, author of the book that placed Soth in Ravenloft, and undermined Mr. Lowder's work and effort to preserve and protect Soth.

Did he? All he said was that Soth has a history with Ravenloft and it's up to the DM/players on whether to include him. They're giving us the choice to follow his Ravenloft story or not, because they know there are folks out there who don't like that he is in Ravenloft (yourself included), but they're including him because there are others that want him there. You may not like their choice, but it is a fair choice, and it's up to us to act on it.

All 3 had "designer" in their titles, but seemed none really designed anything. They only copied what someone else did. Maybe not Van Ricten's guide or Curse of Strahd, but created nothing new at all. What did they design?

The same people working on this book worked on Van Richten's. Just because their work is derivative of what others made in the past doesn't mean they're not designers; Derivative design is still design. They're also in charge of designing content for the DnD game, hence the title. Is it so hard to grasp?

46 minute commercial that did less to tell what was in the product tham the previous text promotionsl material that listed the "contents".

For you, it may very well be, but for most of us it provided context to some of the promotional text, and that's valuable.