D&D 5E Van Richten’s Guide to Ravenloft Table of Contents

Parmandur · May 3, 2021

Some infor here:

Parmandur · May 3, 2021

It strikes me, people are bemoaning the lack of a Lycanthrope race, but...one of the Dark Gifts could easily be Lycanthropy, based on the example of Mythic Odysseys of Theros, where you had Supernatural Gifts such as being the Oracle of the Gods or an artificial construct.

Theros had 9 Supernatural Gifts in five pages, and the Dark Gifts section is 6-7 pages long. I could see possibly more than 9 here, given the lack of a Piety system equivalent which elongated a couple of the Supernatural Gifts.

Disgruntled Hobbit · May 3, 2021

Parmandur said:
It strikes me, people are bemoaning the lack of a Lycanthrope race, but...one of the Dark Gifts could easily be Lycanthropy, based on the example of Mythic Odysseys of Theros, where you had Supernatural Gifts such as being the Oracle of the Gods or an artificial construct.

Theros had 9 Supernatural Gifts in five pages, and the Dark Gifts section is 6-7 pages long. I could see possibly more than 9 here, given the lack of a Piety system equivalent which elongated a couple of the Supernatural Gifts.

Isn't that just a shifter?

Urriak Uruk · May 3, 2021

Parmandur said:
It strikes me, people are bemoaning the lack of a Lycanthrope race, but...one of the Dark Gifts could easily be Lycanthropy, based on the example of Mythic Odysseys of Theros, where you had Supernatural Gifts such as being the Oracle of the Gods or an artificial construct.

Theros had 9 Supernatural Gifts in five pages, and the Dark Gifts section is 6-7 pages long. I could see possibly more than 9 here, given the lack of a Piety system equivalent which elongated a couple of the Supernatural Gifts.

Honestly, Shifters are a great stand-in if anyone needs a Lycanthrope race, so I don't see why people need a separate thing.

Mecheon · May 3, 2021

Yeah, I was going to say, Shifters were designed as player-friendly lycanthropes from day 1, so I can't see them adding anything beyond that and not just going 'use shifter stats'

Its possible, sure, but I can't really see it happening,e specially given Ravenloft has never been the 'Play as a werewolf' setting

Tonguez · May 3, 2021

Faolyn said:
Unfortunately true (that nobody uses them as anything but werewolves). I honestly wouldn't mind Harkon being a jackalwere--they're not including Farelle so they wouldn't be stepping on that domain's toes--but the climate and terrain isn't quite right.

could just use the same stats and call it a Reynard Based on the European Fox trickster

Parmandur · May 3, 2021

Disgruntled Hobbit said:
Isn't that just a shifter?

I mean, there were already Warforged, published within a year earlier, and Theros still has the Anvil-Forged Supernatural Gift, which plays in the same conceptual space.

Also worth noting, the Supernatural Gifts are called out in the rules as being the exact equivalent of Feats ("Just take a Feat from the PHB instead"). Which means that one of the Supernatural Gifts could serve as the basis for a Race via the Custom Lineage option in Tasha's. So I wouldn't be surprised if that was also the case here.

overgeeked · May 3, 2021

Mecheon said:
Yeah, I was going to say, Shifters were designed as player-friendly lycanthropes from day 1, so I can't see them adding anything beyond that and not just going 'use shifter stats'

Its possible, sure, but I can't really see it happening,e specially given Ravenloft has never been the 'Play as a werewolf' setting

If a player wants all the lycanthrope action there is to have, they're a dhampir shifter path of the beast barbarian. Just reflavor the dhampir to werewolf and done.

Pauper · May 3, 2021

Curious that most of the 'big' domains get six pages of description, including Barovia. A couple come in at just four pages (Bluetspur and the Carnival), while a couple get eight pages (Borca, probably due to the presence of both Ivana Boritsi and Ivan Dilisniya as characters worthy of multi-page write-ups, and Kalakeri, the new hotness).

A couple of surprising inclusions:

Staunton Bluffs always seemed to me to be superfluous with Mordent around; they even duplicate the 'angry ghost darklord' trope. Curious to see what might exist to distinguish SB from Mordent.
Valachan was never one of my favorite domains, but its darklord had a suitably tragic backstory and was distinguishable enough from other major setting vampires that he didn't seem superfluous. No idea who Chakuna is or how the new character changes the 'role' of the domain.

A few other things I found curious:

Lots of collapsing of old 'clusters of terror' into single domain 'islands of terror'. The Amber Wastes (Har'Akir, Sebua, and Pharazia) is now just Har'Akir. The full Shadowlands cluster has been reduced to a less-than-one-page 'Shadowlands' domain; not clear how the domain changes in the new setting, though if Tergeron Manor and Shadowborn Manor become single-building domains (a la Scaena, see below), that might make sense. The old Zherisia cluster (Paridon, Timor) is now the domain of Zherisia.
Digging up obscurities like Risibilos and Tovag are interesting, but apparently at the expense of the Frozen Reaches (Sanguinia and Vorostokov); maybe Rime of the Frostmaiden was considered too recent a treatment of 'eternal winter as horror domain' to justify the Frozen Wastes?
The Nightmare Lands go from having an entire boxed set in 2E to being a less-than-one-page writeup in 5E.
A bunch of missing lesser domains, including the island domains of the Nocturnal Sea (Liffe, Todstein, Vechor, et al), and Rokushima Taiyoo. Vechor in particular is a curious cut, given the choice to include a different old Greyhawk-related domain in Tovag.

I can't say any of the major absences really surprise me, though:

Sithicus had developed beyond 'Dragonlance's Ravenloft domain', but given that Weis and Hickman were never fond of the domain (and particularly their pet villain Lord Soth's placement there originally), it doesn't surprise me that it's been basically swept under the rug.
For the same reason that you don't need six different vampire domains, you don't need multiple werewolf/shapechanger domains. If Kartakass is going to fill that function in 5E Ravenloft, then Verbrek is superfluous and can be cut.

Probably my favorite inclusion is Scaena, though -- the idea of a mobile domain whose darklord isn't actually confined to the domain itself (but still always returns, for curse-specific reasons) makes for a great mind-trippy domain to use on your PCs. Hopefully the writeup in the book will inspire me to dust off my notes and include an expanded Scaena in the DMs Guild; if used correctly, Scaena and its darklord can have your players wondering if they've ever actually left Ravenloft, or indeed ever can.

--
Pauper