D&D 5E using a revenant

[pukunui]

Cool. I'm just saying, there's probably enough cruel and unjust deaths in a world to make Revenants not super rare.

Maybe. Maybe not. It's too bad WotC didn't use the same ranking system for monsters that they used for magic items. Then you could have common and uncommon monsters, along with rares and very rares. Anything with legendary actions would obviously be a legendary monster.

 

[jrowland]

Maybe. Maybe not. It's too bad WotC didn't use the same ranking system for monsters that they used for magic items. Then you could have common and uncommon monsters, along with rares and very rares. Anything with legendary actions would obviously be a legendary monster.

Does this mean creatures with Awesome actions would be legen...wait for it...dary?

 

[Chaosmancer]

This whole situation is amazing and I can't wait to hear how it all turns out.

As for how many days of downtime... here's how I would probably run it.

3 days gets them a check, probably investigation if they are researching in a library. That accounts for the time to find a book on the subject that they can actually read. Obviously finding out Revenant is easier than Revenants come back in other bodies and can't be stopped. I hadn't heard the 1 year limit, but I skim a lot of monster entries if they aren't major focuses.

5 days gets them a check with advantage.

7-10 days they probably just find everything available.

Now, this is assuming a city or temple library with a large selection of tomes and not terribly well organized beyond "undead monstrosities in the back, horrific beasts are second to the left". If you go to a temple of a knowledge god or goddess whose priests would be better organized, perhaps cut a day from each category.

I'm kind of curious about the half-ogre though, being a "not evil" priest of a god described as "evil first, stupid second" leads me to think he was more fleshed out, perhaps had an important backstory. I ask mostly because I love details like that but also because who they were in life could inform a lot of things about how the revenant interacts. For example, did the diety assist them in coming back?

 

[pukunui]

This whole situation is amazing and I can't wait to hear how it all turns out.

Thanks!

3 days gets them a check, probably investigation if they are researching in a library. That accounts for the time to find a book on the subject that they can actually read. Obviously finding out Revenant is easier than Revenants come back in other bodies and can't be stopped. I hadn't heard the 1 year limit, but I skim a lot of monster entries if they aren't major focuses.

5 days gets them a check with advantage.

7-10 days they probably just find everything available.

Now, this is assuming a city or temple library with a large selection of tomes and not terribly well organized beyond "undead monstrosities in the back, horrific beasts are second to the left". If you go to a temple of a knowledge god or goddess whose priests would be better organized, perhaps cut a day from each category.

This could work. Thanks!

I'm kind of curious about the half-ogre though, being a "not evil" priest of a god described as "evil first, stupid second" leads me to think he was more fleshed out, perhaps had an important backstory. I ask mostly because I love details like that but also because who they were in life could inform a lot of things about how the revenant interacts. For example, did the diety assist them in coming back?

Oops. My bad. The adventure ("Iriandel", from Dungeon 83) presents him as a chaotic neutral adept with no specific deity. His superior is a more powerful half-ogre adept, though, and I was thinking more about him when I chose Grolantor as their patron deity. It does seem a bit incongruous, now that I think about it. Perhaps the half-ogre was beginning to have doubts? Or maybe he only paid lip service to Grolantor in order to keep his superior off his back but in truth worshipped a different deity?

 

[Quartz]

By becoming Undead, surely he's turned Evil?

 

[pukunui]

By becoming Undead, surely he's turned Evil?

According to the MM entry, revenants are neutral.


As an aside, I've decided I'll go with this:

*checks = passive Investigation or Persuasion, depending on whether you're looking through books or talking to people

*3 days = your passive check result
*5 days = your passive check with +5 from advantage
*10 days = all the info with no check required

From what my players have told me, it sounds like their PCs are each performing their own research, rather than doing it together. The dwarf has gone to talk with the local priests of the dominant religion, who've pointed him in the direction of a bigger temple in one of the nearby cities. The half-orc, on the other hand, being a follower of the "Old Faith", has decided to seek out a fellow priest or sage devoted to one of the old gods of the dead. Neither of them has a particularly good passive Investigation or Persuasion score, so I've told them that they basically will have to spend 10 downtime days each (along with the associated costs), but at least they'll be able to learn everything without having to make a check (and, of course, those are 10 downtime days that can't be put towards something else, like the suit of armor the dwarf wants to make himself).