Ravenloft dark lords how to#
Although the book does provide a walkthrough on how to better customize a statblock to meet a campaign's needs, a lot of DMs (especially those with limited time) aren't going to be satisfied with how the book approaches monsters and combat in general. Players who have been trained to want to fight these Darklords and DMs are going to have to do a lot of work to either temper player expectations or cobble together a statblock that satisfies their players' desires. However, given that the one full-length Ravenloft adventure (and frankly, every campaign Wizards of the Coast has produced for Fifth Edition) features a Darklord who is very much a "big bad" meant to be confronted in combat, it feels like Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft doesn't necessarily do enough to support the adventure style it wants players to explore in the game. On a thematic level, this justification is great and it really sets the tone that the Darklords aren't a problem the players can solve with stabbing. None of the book's Darklords are given updated statblocks, with the justification being that the Darklords are in Ravenloft for their actions as opposed to any special abilities they might have. My biggest criticism of Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft is how the book mechanically approaches its Darklords and how that relates to the general ethos of these campaign-setting books. Although these changes will likely be the most talked about part of the book in some circles, these changes seem to have occurred naturally during the course of updating Ravenloft to reflect more diverse horror genres and to make the domains conform to Ravenloft's internal laws. Finally, much of the misogynistic, colonialist, or racist elements have been purged out of this new iteration of Ravenloft. The domains also now include a variety of different horror genres rather than a fixation on gothic horror. The revised domains are usually a better utilization of the ironic intent that flavors the immortal prisons of Ravenloft.
Many of the original Ravenloft domains featured strange punishments that didn't necessarily fit the crime of the Darklord. First and foremost, the domains all now function as originally intended: prisons meant to torture specific souls. Initially, the patchwork nature of how Dungeons & Dragons approached their updates to Ravenloft feels odd, but it's obvious that most of these changes are designed to streamline the nature of the Domains of Ravenloft. Darkon is now a Domain in decline after the disappearance of the iconic lich Azalin, while Valachan's new Darklord Chakuna actually replaced the previous Darklord after a gory ritual that resulted in Urik von Kharkov's death. Curiously, other Domains keep their original lore but are advanced in other ways. Other Domains keep most of their original lore intact - the realm of Mordent, for example, is mostly unchanged save for some minor tweaks to untangle it from the saga of Strahd. In Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft, the region is now ruled by Viktra Mordenheim, a mad scientist tormented by her inability to replicate the Unbreakable Heart device that keeps her reborn lover Elise alive, even as Elise flees from her at every turn. For instance, the Domain of Lamordia was originally ruled by Adam, a flesh golem-like creature created by Doctor Victor Mordenheim. Some Domains and their respective Darklords are given wholesale revisions. The most visible change in Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft is how the book approaches the lore of Ravenloft itself. The book ends with a mini-bestiary with 32 new monster statblocks that can be used in any campaign. The fourth chapter contains a brief adventure - The House of Lament - as well as a mix of guidance for DMs when running a horror campaign (including real-world safety mechanisms for players) and new mechanics for Curses, Fear and Stress, Haunted Traps, and Survivors. The third chapter is its longest - a gazetteer of sorts that provides detailed multi-page listings for 17 Domains of Dread, brief descriptions of another 22 Domains, and biographies of about a dozen NPCs that could be recurring characters in a Ravenloft campaign.
The second section is a chapter on creating a custom Domain of Dread that serves as laying the groundwork for how the world of Ravenloft works.
The first chapter is all about character creation and contains two new subclasses, three new lineages, new backgrounds and trinkets, and a new Dark Gift mechanic that provides players with optional abilities that come at a thematic or mechanical cost. The book is split into five parts, each of which contains different tools to help bring Ravenloft to life at the table. Now, the rest of Ravenloft is "reborn" in Fifth Edition in Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft, a campaign-setting book that provides major updates to several popular Domains of Dread in addition to providing new player options and tools for DMs.
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