Haunting Dreams with the Relentless Nightmare

 Van Richten's gave us two interesting horror monsters - creatures designed to give you the equivalent of a horror-movie slasher - collectively called the Relentless Killers.

In Vecna: Eve of Ruin, the final major adventure book published for 5.0 (and the last "one big adventure" book we've gotten for D&D in a few years) the chapter that takes the party to Ravenloft has them enter the Death House (famed for its level 1-2 adventure in Curse of Strahd) stalked by a new variant that has an impaling spear.

I don't actually have my copy of Eve of Ruin here, so I don't know to what degree the Relentless Nightmare matches that creature, but we'll look at the Horrors Within version of it on its own terms.

All of these are considered fiends, though not necessarily because they are from the Lower Planes. We can probably assume they're primarily found in the Domains of Dread, and their fiendish nature is just to show that they are not undead, but are totally committed to cruelty and pain, no longer worthy of your sympathy.

The reason why they're inhuman might never be known - like Michael Myers, the evil might just be something inherent to them.

The Relentless Nightmare, I think, vaguely gestures toward another icon of the 1980s slasher movie, Freddy Kreuger. While they're not quite as versatile in the ways they can hunt their victims, Relentless Nightmares assault the mind as well as the body, and notably are very difficult to destroy permanently.

Sitting at CR 11, this puts them at just slightly less of a challenge than the Juggernaut (CR 12) and a bit higher than the Slasher (CR 8). For a 4-player party, they should be a high challenge for an 8th level party, a moderate challenge for a 9th level party, and a low challenge for an 11th-level party.

Given the story of these monsters, I don't think it's appropriate to ever have your party face more than one at a time (well, maybe if you want the "double Pyramid Head" boss fight from near the end of Silent Hill 2 you could have them fight two Juggernauts) but these are legendary creatures and I really think are meant to be solo monsters.

Naturally, it's hard to recreate horror as we see it in movies in D&D because player characters are all designed to be capable monster-hunters. We're generally expecting to run toward monsters rather than away from them.

But I think that the Relentless Nightmare has a combination of abilities that can potentially make them profoundly scary:

Each turn, they can use Exhausting Gaze, which can inflict some psychic damage and a level of Exhaustion on a target that fails a wisdom saving throw. Remember that 5.5's exhaustion reduces a creature's speed by 5 feet per level of exhaustion and also reduces the results of their D20 tests by 2 per exhaustion level. Thus, this penalty can compound as it becomes harder to hit the DC.

However, the second part of this one-two punch is that their Haunter's Spear will automatically curse anyone it hits. In addition to the piercing and psychic damage the spear does, the curse prevents the character from reducing their exhaustion by taking a Long Rest.

Now, unlike a Rakshasa, whose curse just prevents a Short or Long rest entirely (truly one of the nastiest monsters,) you do have some recourse here - taking a rest might not cure exhaustion, but you could still swap in a Remove Curse or Greater Restoration spell.

But there are some other factors at play as well:

First off, the Nightmare has a legendary action that allows it to automatically make a cursed creature within 120 feet fall unconscious and take some (light at the level they'd be facing one of these) psychic damage. There's no save against this - if you're cursed, they can just do this. And given that the curse only needs them to hit a target, this is very likely to be available to them.

I think the best use of this is to deal with a tank-like character. If the Nightmare can land a hit (and their other legendary action option allows them to teleport across any distance to a creature it can see and make its Haunter's Spear attack - which actually might make tanks less of a problem anyway) they can knock someone out.

Lastly, they're also very hard to kill permanently. In 1d10 days after they die, they can revive next to an unconscious creature bearing their curse.

Now, if they've only cursed members of the party, this might not be a factor, given that the players likely have figured out that they have a curse and taken steps to cleanse themselves of it. However, if you want to keep this monster around to torment the party, simply have them curse an NPC and leave them alive. They have an Intelligence of 13, so they're rational enough to plan ahead in this way.

If you want to play very strictly, you might say that they had to target a creature with at least 25 HP so that a single hit of their spear wouldn't outright kill them, but this is an area where I think some cutscene magic and a pulled punch could allow them to have struck, like, a child without dealing any damage, using the innocent to keep coming back. Maybe they've cursed tons of people.

I think the numbers we're looking at, and the real necessity to have at least Remove Curse in the party's arsenal, means that we'd for sure not want to deploy these until tier 2 - unless you want a fake-out TPK against a tier 1 party (even then I'd lean toward the later levels of tier 1 just to make sure that the spear attacks don't take people down outright).

But to keep the nightmare factor at play, I wouldn't wait too long to menace the party with one of these guys. Even fudging it a little to send them against a 6th- or 7th-level party (which technically puts it beyond the High Difficulty XP cap for a 4-player party) might be ok to really make them feel like an overwhelming threat. However, this first appearance might simply be to curse a target and then vanish (especially in Ravenloft I think you can feel free to pull some "invisible teleporting" BS to up the spooky factor). The curse might not even be apparent, especially if the characters don't have any levels of exhaustion left.

Indeed, this might be a good monster to deploy suddenly and briefly in a non-combat scene. Maybe the party is doing some general business in town (if it is Ravenloft, that might not necessarily be a place of safety and comfort, but even horror needs some moments of calm to reset the tension) and this thing emerges from some impossible space to jab at the character with their spear before vanishing (they could even use Dreamwalk to teleport to a passing crow or something if you wanted to strictly play by the book). Maybe they jab the target and then use the Narcotize legendary action to immediately cause the character to collapse unconscious, so their escape isn't witnessed.

I do think that probably all of the Relentless Killers are good options for disrupting Pursuer-type monsters, like Mr. X from Resident Evil 2 - if the party is in the middle of some slow dungeon crawl, having an over-leveled Relentless Killer show up can suddenly turn what had been a bunch of gradual exploration-focused rooms into a deadly obstacle course. The Relentless Nightmare can easily catch up with any PCs, so the players really cannot outpace them without blocking line of sight, meaning they're more likely to stand their ground.

If you are deploying the Nightmare against a lower-level party (again, probably not any lower than 6. Maybe, maybe 5 if you want to stretch it) I think you should think about the monster's motivation. Are they going there just to kill people? They certainly have the tools to do so, and the party will probably just fight back and stands a good chance of actually killing it as long as there are some folks with high ACs (it has a +9 to hit, so even with a high AC, the party might just get unlucky.

However, I think the monster might be more interesting if their motives are not to just immediately kill the party, but to disrupt them and separate them. A Relentless Nightmare can pretty quickly and with relative ease knock an entire party unconscious - they can literally do two PCs per round if they use Narcotize with two of their legendary actions, and can even set up to do more of them on a subsequent turn.

The strange thing in horror is that if you just slaughter everyone, it's not really scary anymore, because once all the PCs are irrevocably dead, there's no agency anymore and the player has to separate their feelings from their characters' fates. But if you use this to put them into new and more dangerous positions, that can up the terror.

Perhaps the Nightmare's goal is not to directly kill the party, but instead to knock everyone out and then drag their bodies to some deeper chamber of a dungeon, putting them in the way of other monsters or traps. The panic and desperation of a fight against a Nightmare should probably be built around watching your allies fall unconscious one by one, and forcing you to use your action to wake up an ally rather than put more damage on the monster.

The Nightmarish Restoration element here can make this a recurring threat - I'd be inclined to have them show up a little too early in an unrelated dungeon - maybe the party is going to some dilapidated hunting lodge in the woods, and it's a dungeon that's mostly just about exploration with maybe a few minor threats in it, but then, about halfway through, they look back to some room that they'd already explored, and this thing appears. There's zero explanation for what they are or why they are hunting the party, but after a desperate fight, either the Nightmare is slain or the party is all knocked out and mysteriously finds themselves in some earthen basement below the lodge.

The initial encounter being seemingly at random, the party might not see the thing for a while, until it shows up at some other location to attack them. Eventually, the party might start to learn more about the Nightmare, the folklore surrounding it and the rumors about how it works.

I actually don't think I'd build an entire campaign around one of these monsters, but instead have it be a major recurring threat - a kind of secondary plotline woven through a campaign. If you like to have elements of your campaigns based on your PCs' backstories, this could work very well as a throughline for such a plot.

As a note: while the Narcotize legendary action simply says that it gives the Unconscious condition, I'd interpret that as magically-induced sleep. Thus, if you have an Elf, Reborn, or Warforged member of the party (or any other character that doesn't sleep), you might consider granting them immunity at least to the unconsciousness. This will change the way the encounter works, but remember that you can always knock such characters unconscious simply through damage. Likewise, if you have a Kalashtar, who do sleep but don't dream, I might make it harder for the Nightmare to use its Nightmarish Restoration feature if they're forced to use a Kalshtar character to resurrect.

Inner Shadow Barbarian vs. Death Knight

 Yes, I'm doing a build/damage calculation for a homebrewed subclass!

As a note, I think that I'm already altering the design slightly: I love the flavor of Raging Hurl, the 6th level feature (see the previous post for a breakdown of the subclass as a whole,) but it's a little over-designed and fiddly.

Thus, I think I'm going to go with the alternative that I proposed in that previous post and switch it to something simpler:

Level 6: Enraged Manipulation:

While you are in a Rage, creatures have disadvantage on their saving throws against your attempts to Grapple or Shove them with an Unarmed Strike.

Now, that could make my life calculating damage a little harder, given that the Grappler feat gives us advantage on attacks against grappled targets, and so we would need to figure out how likely it is that the Death Knight gets grappled by us. Luckily, we have an out: we just use Reckless Attack every turn so that everything has advantage, whether we are grappling the Death Knight or not. Grappling would still have great utility, allowing us to keep the DK from our allies and even maybe drag them off of a steed, assuming they don't Legendary Resistance out of our grapples.

Still, we'll just assume we're hitting it with our unarmed strikes, and maybe making a grapple attempt one one attack each turn with the Grappler feat, but focusing more on damage.

    Stats:

This is simple: we start off with 17 in Strength and then whatever we need for good Dex and Con. We can even kind of dump Wisdom a bit if we just want to rely on Primal Knowledge for the big Wisdom checks.

    Feats:

Here's where we're going to need to be creative. Typical Barbarian feats like Great Weapon Master, Polearm Master, and even Dual Wielding don't work with this build. Now, the obvious one to take is Grappler. We could just cap Strength at level 8, and thus be able to boost our Dex and Con more at levels 12 and 16 if we go up that high later on, but I might instead take something like Mage Slayer and then figure out whether to split an ASI at 12 or find one last Strength-boosting feat. For the purposes of this white-room test, it'd be better to just cap things, but I'm going to say we go Mage Slayer as a more realistic choice in a long campaign. Sentinel could also be a good option as further control. That means only a +4 to Strength.

    Gameplan:

Very simple: we're going to rage and then we're going to do our best to pummel this Death Knight into next week. We'll use Reckless Attack, and I'm going to assume that we're taking at least a little damage each round and benefit from Shadow Manifestation. Notably, on round one, we aren't going to get our off-hand punch or that bonus because we A: need the bonus action to activate our rage and B: don't get the damage boost from taking damage until we are raging. If we can rage prior to combat, that's great, but we'll assume we can't.

So, turn one, it's rage-punch-punch, then turns two onward is punch-punch-punch.

    Damage:

Ok, let's get that first turn. Our attacks at this level deal 2d6+7, or 14 average damage on a hit (naturally something like Wraps of Unarmed Prowess would be good to have, but we have done all of these sans magic items unless we're an artificer who can make our own). We have a +8 to hit, which would normally give us a 45% chance to hit, but we're recklessly attacking, so it's actually a 69.75% chance, and a 9.75% chance to crit. Our bonus crit damage is 7 on average. So, we're looking at 9.765 plus .6825, or roughly 10.4 damage per attack, giving us 20.8 damage on average for our first turn.

Now, turn two, things accelerate:

First off, assuming we take some damage from the Death Knight (which feels likely but not guaranteed - though more likely if we can grapple them or lock them down if we take Sentinel) we'll be adding an additional 3 damage to each attacks, so it becomes 2d6+10, or 17 on a hit. The crit bonus is the same and just as likely, so we just find 69.75% of 17, or 11.8575, and then add in the .6825 extra damage for crits, and we get 12.54 damage for our main action attacks, or 25.08 damage.

However, we then get our "off-hand" attack, which lands for 2d6+6, or 13 on average, so, 69.75% of 13 is 9.0675, and adding the crit bonus gives us 9.75 damage.

Thus, we get a total damage of 34.83, which is very respectable but not insanely outside of the range of damage outputs we've seen before (I'm pretty sure it's behind our Wizard and Sorcerer builds).

However, I realized something: we forgot Brutal Strike.

So, going back, if we assume our first attack is going for a Brutal Strike, we need to drop one of our attacks. Given that our bonus action attack hits for less than our other strikes, it's actually probably ideal for that to be the one we risk having a lower hit chance for. We can't do that on turn one, though.

So, turn one, we drop the 10.4 damage from one of our action attacks and then find what we get without advantage but an additional d10. We have a 45% chance to hit with this and a 5% chance to crit. A hit deals 2d6+1d10+7 damage, which becomes 19.5 on a hit and an extra 9 damage on a crit. So, 19.5x45% is 8.775 and then 9x5% is .45, so that attack now deals 9.225 - which is a damage loss, actually. We might still want to do it for the chance at a Hamstring Blow.

On turn two, though, we can do this with our off-hand attack. Thus, we lose the 9.75 damage to do 2d6+1d10+6 damage without advantage, or 18.5. Given that that's less than the attack on turn one, I think losing advantage really does wind up being a damage loss even with the extra d10. Against a lower-AC target, I think that would change.

But thus, we can expect to deal 25.08 damage on average on our first turn and then a very healthy 34.83 damage on subsequent turns. I'm actually quite pleased with this result, which feels in-line with what other characters can do.

The Berserker build I did does better, and even winds up getting into the 40s if they can reliably get a Retaliation attack, so perhaps there are ways I could even soup this subclass up.

EDIT: Oh duh. I forgot Graze.

Now, I realize that there's a flaw here: our "off-hand" attack doesn't add our Strength, typically, but Graze is a mastery that allows us to do our Strength modifier in damage on a miss. Perhaps there's a reason that they don't put it on light weapons!

Turn one that issue shouldn't matter: we have a 30.25% chance to miss when we're attacking with advantage, so we can add 4x30.25% to each of those attacks, giving turn one's 10.4 damage per attack an extra 1.21 damage, bringing them up to 11.61, and thus the total damage on the first turn ought to be 23.22.

That extra 1.21 can be added as well to the two regular attacks on turn 2. But how do we square the off-hand attack?

Well, here's a place where we might just buff the subclass. Maybe our bonus action attack also gets to add the Strength modifier? After all, I think this is true for the d6 option for the Beast Barbarian (who kind of presaged the Nick property). Given that we dropped it in our earlier calculation, we can very easily just add a flat 4 to the damage of our off-hand unarmed strike. (Essentially, the other 69.75% of the damage is already accounted for in our Attack action attacks, adding up to 4 with that extra 1.21). So, now we're going to basically add 2.42+4 to the total damage done on turn 2+, or 6.42.

Thus, it becomes 41.25 damage on those subsequent turns, which is quite good. Is it too good? ...Maybe, but I also think that martial characters could stand to do more damage. And this is still contingent on taking damage each round.

Naturally, you might decide to take other Masteries than Graze, but for damage output, especially against a high-AC target like a Death Knight, it's the clear winner.

And yeah, I think I will drop the "don't add your Strength modifier" thing on the bonus action attacks, because not only does it make the subclass feel cooler, it's also simplifies it!

Homebrewing the Barbarian I Want to Play: Path of the Inner Shadow

 Barbarian is a class that I've often struggled to find a fun character hook for me to want to play one. I've only ever played one very briefly when the class was more or less assigned to me when we played basically a half-session of doing the first level of Dungeon of the Mad Mage, where I think we had one combat and even that I think I only got one turn in.

I've long wanted to play a werewolf Barbarian - Rage feels like a great way to represent a lycanthropic transformation. But the subclass that most suits that archetype is the Path of the Beast, which honestly has some design problems that make it a little underwhelming.

I've also, more recently, had the idea inspired by Scratch from Alan Wake II, of a kind of emergent shadow archetype that arises when a Barbarian rages - likely the character would be a pretty unassuming figure until they got covered in a silhouette of shadow (I've always visualized this like someone taking a Sharpie and blacking them out in every frame... except that you see this in person). While the Berserker, despite being ostensibly the "generic Barbarian" subclass, actually fits this surprisingly well, the one major downside is that you really still need to fight with a weapon.

There's no really great unarmed Barbarian. So I decided to make one.

Now, caveats: I do a fair amount of homebrewing of monsters, but I don't do as many with subclasses (let alone classes, though this is just a subclass,) and none of my homebrew subclasses have ever been playtested.

I'm very aware that as an amateur designer, there's a tendency to over-engineer things. I'm aware that the final version of this would have to be pared down a little. There might be one or two many bells-and-whistles to this thing. But I think the overall concept could be really cool.

I'll provide some commentary here like I would when commenting on a UA or recently published subclass, but to explain my reasonings and also concerns about the design. As usual, these will be marked by indenting before them.

Thus, let me present you with the first draft of...

Path of the Inner Shadow

Undergo a monstrous transformation, tearing foes apart with your bare hands.

All Barbarians channel their primal rage, but sometimes, the rage becomes too volatile to control. Rarely does a Barbarian choose to walk the Path of the Inner Shadow - the subconscious monster inside chooses it for them. As rage consumes you, your body shifts into a monstrous beast, becoming a whirling nightmare of blood and death.

Level 3: Monstrous Claws:

Empowered Fists: When you attack with an Unarmed Strike, you can now deal 1d6 damage plus your Strength modifier rather than the normal damage.

    This is achievable with something like the Unarmed Fighting style, but this ought to be baked into the subclass to make it clear this is "the unarmed Barbarian."

Flurry of Claws: When you make an Unarmed Strike as part of the Attack action and are not wielding a weapon or shield in either hand, you can make one additional Unarmed Strike as a bonus action. You do not add your Strength modifier to the damage of this attack.

    The intent here is to basically give your unarmed attacks the "light" property. This is one of the really odd things about the rules, that you can attack faster with some light weapons than you could with actually no weapons (and I think is comparable to the logic of giving Monks a free bonus action unarmed strike).

Practiced Rends: Choose Graze, Cleave, Push, or Topple. Your unarmed strikes benefit from the chosen mastery when you make an attack with them. When you finish a long rest, you can choose a different mastery for your unarmed strikes.

    One of the pitfalls of an unarmed Barbarian is that now that weapons have Masteries, you're really leaving a major part of your power on the table by choosing not to wield a weapon. The selection here might need some revisions - to bring it closer in line with light weapons you'd be using while dual-wielding, we might need to swap out something like Graze or Cleave for Vex, though I kind of like getting these heavy-weapon-only masteries here.

Level 3: Shadow Manifestation:

When your Rage is active, you take on a monstrous form. This might be a hulking, vaguely humanoid silhouette, a beastly hybrid creature, or a fiendish embodiment of chaos. When you take damage, your Rage damage bonus is doubled until the end of your next turn (the damage bonus cannot exceed twice your normal rage bonus).

    This is the real aesthetic headliner here - but I wanted to find a way to boost damage for the class in a different way than Berserkers or Zealots did. If we assume you're "dual-wielding your fists" you're probably making three attacks per round after level 5 (though only two on round 1 in order to go into a rage,) and assuming you do get hit (you are the Barbarian,) you'll thus be able to add 6, then 9, then 12 damage if you hit with all of them. By comparison, a Berserker will, once per turn, assuming they're always going Reckless, get 7, 10.5, and then 14 extra damage. So, this is slightly less and won't benefit from crits, but it might be ok because I think that the later benefits should make up for it. We could just change the values here to adjust it

Level 6: Nightmare Claws:

You can deal your choice of bludgeoning, piercing, slashing, psychic, or force damage when you deal damage with your unarmed strikes.

    This is a standard thing you get with subclass weapons and the like to ensure that you don't get screwed over if a monster is immune to normal physical damage (which is rarer in 5.5, but if you're facing monsters from 5.0, for example, this will help a lot, and there are still some creatures with resistance to those damage types). I decided to put in the other damage types to let you flavor your attacks in a way that feels right to your monstrous form (and if you wanted to pick up something like the Slasher or Piercer feat).

Level 6: Raging Hurl:

When you take the attack action, if you are grappling a creature that is your size or smaller, you can replace one of your attacks to hurl the creature a number of feet equal to ten times your Strength modifier. If the creature hits another creature or object, both must make a Dexterity saving throw with a DC equal to 8 + your Strength modifier + your proficiency bonus. On a failure, the creature takes 1d6 damage for every ten feet they traveled, or half as much on a success. If the creature is hurled upward and does not hit anything, they instead take falling damage as normal.

    Of all the features I have for this, this is maybe the most over-engineered one, and probably first on the chopping block if needed. I just really feel like it'd be a fun subclass feature to be able to throw monsters around. It's also there to subtly hint to you that, hey, you might want to really invest in grappling with this subclass. A possible alternative would be to give foes disadvantage on their saves against your grapple attempts if you're raging, which would kind of come back around to the way that Barbarians used to be great at shoving and grappling when it was an Athletics check, and thus they got advantage on it because of rage. We could make this work for both shoving and grappling, actually, which gives us some of the flavor of this but in a far simpler rule. Also, the damage might be too high.

Level 10: Vicious Claws:

The damage of your unarmed strikes is now 2d6, rather than 1d6.

    It's possible this is too much. But while Wraps of Unarmed Prowess finally give us a way to boost the attack and damage of unarmed strikes with a magic item, we still don't get something like a Vicious Weapon, which can be a real important damage boost to martial characters. Maybe we could tone this down a little, like making it a d10, but honestly, I think I'm fine with this (2d6 isn't that crazy).

Level 10: Secrets of the Id:

Grappling with your inner monster has given you greater understanding of your own and others' psychology. Your Primal Knowledge feature now allows you to apply its benefits to Insight and Persuasion checks.

    I think one of the best philosophical shifts in 5.5e was to give very combat-focused classes more out-of-combat utility. While Primal Knowledge isn't going to do as much as an entire spellbook full of Wizard spells, it's a feature with real utility and I think adding these skills to it (Insight in particular) feels very thematically right for the subclass. After all, confronting and integrating our Shadow can lead to greater empathy, and you could flavor this subclass as a healing journey.

Level 14: Metamorphic Manifestation:

When you enter a Rage, you can choose between a Creeping, Fathomless, or Juggernaut form, enhancing the monstrousness of your Shadow Manifestation.

    I think we need a splashy thing for our capstone, and I also really like giving players more flexibility. Indeed, these three forms kind of correspond with three of the modifications Reanimator Artificers can give their companions.

Creeping Form: You have a climb speed equal to your speed and can move on vertical surfaces and upside-down without an ability check and leaving your hands free. Additionally, the reach of your Unarmed Strikes is increased by 10 feet.

    I think this one is probably fine as-is. Maybe we'd nerf it to a 5-foot reach extension (bringing it down to just 10 feet total) but otherwise I think this isn't going to be game breaking (but still will be cool when we grapple a foe and then climb up a wall).

Fathomless Form: You have a swim speed equal to your speed and can breathe underwater. Additionally, creatures you are grappling cannot speak of perform the verbal components of spells.

    I actually don't think that the silence effect here is that powerful - after all, Silence is a 2nd level spell, and also, most spell-casting monsters have plenty of non-spell magical effects like Arcane Burst that this doesn't affect. It's no worse than a Wizard or Sorcerer keeping several spell slots in reserve for Counterspell. And it gives the the form utility outside of those rare underwater fights.

Juggernaut Form: Your size becomes Large when you rage, unless it is already larger. Your speed is not reduced by difficult terrain. You deal double damage to objects, and you can now choose a second Mastery option for your Unarmed Strikes. The second option must be either the Push or Topple Mastery.

    It's possible that the double mastery thing should be its own separate feature. But I think we needed just a little more utility for the form that doesn't get a new movement type. Is it too many things? Possibly. Maybe we remove the Siege Monster aspect, or, again, we separate out the bonus masteries. But I think this could probably work as is.

Overall Thoughts:

    I think this would naturally push players toward the Grappler feat, which I'm totally fine with. Arguably it might even need a little more of a damage boost given that you'll be missing out on major martial feats like Great Weapon Master, Polearm Master, and Dual Wielder.

    Most importantly, though, I think that this subclass could actually fulfill both of my Barbarian class fantasies better than any existing options. I think I'll do a "vs Death Knight" calculation to see how it actually compares to my Berserker build.

    Another note: perhaps it's odd not to really interact in any way with the Frightened condition. Here, I feel a little penned in by the Berserker's design, which gives both immunity to Charm and Fear, and also allows you to inflict Fear on foes at higher levels.

    That said, there are other subclasses that have overlapped in the past. I could see giving some kind of fear immunity (possibly at level 6) and then a way to inflict fear later on (likely one of the Metamorphic Manifestation options at 14). But for now, I'm going to stick with the design as I have it now.

The State of Things in the RCU as of Control Resonant

 So much of Control Resonant's plot is shrouded in mystery. According to one of the recent trailers, an aberrant resonance appeared in Manhattan two days before the lockdown of the Oldest House failed. That's curious.

Control ends in a strange place - arguably, Jesse hasn't really accomplished a whole lot. While she was able to shut down the Slide Projector and cleanse Dylan of the Hiss, the actual Hiss "infection" of the house isn't stopped, and Dylan is put in a coma that he doesn't awaken from until far later. As we see in the previews for Control Resonant, the Hiss does make it out of the Oldest House, and is claiming victims in Manhattan. But it doesn't seem to be the primary threat here.

It's interesting because both Alan Wake and Control take place during what the FBC would classify as AWEs, but both are somewhat contained. Alan Wake's metafictional nightmare is somewhat confined to Bright Falls and its environs. Even if the ripples of it go out across the whole world, the actual shadow monsters aren't appearing anywhere but Bright Falls. Likewise, the Hiss Invasion in Control is confined to the Oldest House.

But with Manhattan, the center of America's biggest city and economic capital, warped by all of this stuff, it's hard to imagine that the rest of the world is going to continue on unaware of such paranatural things.

That said, we don't know how the game will end, so perhaps there's going to be some kind of reset of the collective unconscious that makes people forget anything that happened.

I do think it's notable that Barry's emails to Alice Wake, found in the apartment during Alan's parts of AW2, see him saying that his new friend Chester Bless encouraged him to not be in New York because something was going to happen there. When we find the Wakes' apartment all packed up and moved-out-of, the cardboard boxes that Alice's things have been packed into have "Blessed" printed on them.

To this day, I maintain that the "organization" that helped Alice regain her suppressed memories wasn't the FBC, but the Blessed Organization - as far as I can tell, the entire online discourse other than myself seems to have a consensus that she's talking about the FBC. But given Barry's connection, and her use of the word "organization," I really think that this work was separate from her visit to the Oldest House that set off Hartman, and that Blessed would be seeking out someone with a connection to a major AWE like Bright Falls.

Given this foreknowledge about something going down in New York, I think it's very likely that Blessed acted as the catalyst for the events of Control Resonant, though their goals and motives remain pretty obscure.

There are also some interesting timeline questions to consider:

Both in the announcement trailer and when Estevez meets Dylan in the Lake House DLC for AW2, Dylan's hair has grown back but is trimmed short. But when he emerges from the Oldest House in what appears to be the beginning of the game, he's got long, unkempt hair (that he eventually ties back the same way that Jesse now has it). The growth of hair would suggest several months between his acquisition of the Aberrant and the fall of the Oldest House. So what, precisely, happened when Estevez saw him?

The Lake House takes place concurrently with the story of Alan Wake II - it's likely that she goes in there while Saga is dealing with Thornton and Mulligan in Watery - which means that it's happening in the Fall of 2023. I believe that Remedy tends to set their game contemporary to their releases, so presumably Control Resonant takes place in 2026. Now, it's also totally possible that Estevez glimpsed the future, but again, there's the issue of his hair growth.

Is it possible that Dylan actually woke up years before the fall of the Oldest House? Certainly, if his meeting with Estevez didn't involve time travel, he would have been up now for at least two and a half years. But it also looks like Jesse gives him the Aberrant while he's still in a coma.

We'll have to see - the timeline here might even be an intentional mystery to tease out over the course of the game.

Interestingly, Dylan does seem to interact with Jesse, suggesting to me that we might see her earlier in the game than expected. But it also might take place in the Gap, the mental space that Dylan can escape to (and I think serves a similar role to the Writer's Place/Mind Space in AW2), meaning that he might be able to connect with her on some mental level (or even just his own projection of her) but maybe still needs to look for her.

I'm eager to see how Dylan is portrayed. Our only interactions with him in the first game were when he was brainwashed by the Hiss, and the developers have talked about how he's struggling to reckon with the things that he did under their control, and also with the horrible abuse he suffered as "P6." There's talk about how his emergence from the Oldest House is his first time actually seeing the sun since he was 10, and he's immediately called upon to fight a bunch of monsters.

I Didn't Expect to Find the Shadowlands So Cool

 Mentioned in Van Richten as one of the "other domains," the Shadowlands is a realm of chivalric knights and an evil sword called Ebonbane.

We often talk about D&D as having a default tone of "medieval fantasy," but the truth is that there's a lot of haziness around what we mean by that. The Middle Ages, after all, were approximately a thousand years (I'm sure that some historians would have differing opinions, but I generally think of it as lasting between the fall of the Western Roman Empire and the discovery by Europeans of the Americas (not really counting the Vikings).

I think a lot of settings feel a little more like the Renaissance era, and certainly a lot of us (myself certainly included) like to mix in some anachronistically modern ideas that may not have cropped up until even the Industrial Revolution or later (Eberron, for instance, is meant to feel like the 1930s with all the Pulp Adventure stories told in that time).

But if we are to consider the foundations of the fantasy genre, while we certainly cannot forget things like Greek Myth, I'd say one of the most central influences is Arthurian Legend. There's something about the story of King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table that feels really fundamental to how we think of fantasy.

And the Shadowlands deliberately harkens to this particular bit of legend: Ebonbane is effectively the inverted, shadow archetype of Excalibur.

Now, there's a certain aesthetic that I associate with this kind of Arthurian fantasy - I can't say precisely where it comes from, but one of deep green forests, the ground covered with moss, the woods dark with a thick canopy, and a lone knight in armor on horseback venturing through it, bravely facing whatever dangers might lurk there. I don't know precisely what the source of it is - I have a vague sense of it being linked to movies from the 60s through the 80s, though it might also be partially inspired by Disney's Sleeping Beauty, which borrowed some of its aesthetics from Medieval illustrated manuscripts.

Ravenloft covers a lot of different vibes, but it tends toward Gothic Horror. The funny thing is that in some ways, the Gothic Aesthetic was built on those in the 19th century looking back on the ruins of centuries long past with a mix of fear and nostalgia. The novel Dracula takes place contemporaneously in the 1890s, at a period in which electrification and industrialization were in full swing, but Dracula emerges in that future-oriented world as this strange and forgotten relic of a brutal medieval past, living in a drafty castle, enriched by the spoils of ancient battles and wars.

What the Shadowlands presents us with is an opportunity to really live in that medieval world. But while a classic Arthurian realm would have brave knights who do oppose the evil of that domain, the Ravenloft twist is that the greatest potential source for good is the fanatical inquisitors under the command of Elena Faith-hold. Elena is not the Darklord of the domain, though should its lord fall, she'd likely be next in line.

Instead, the lord of the Shadowlands is Ebonbane, a sentient sword.

Unlike most Darklords, who began as mortals and then had a fall from grace, Ebonbane is pure evil. Forged by cultists who opposed the heroic knight Kateri Shadowborn, Ebonbane was made out of the essences of all the evils she had defeated, and ultimately it slew her after she had gotten old and slower, then possessed her body in the hopes of doing more evil, but was then swallowed by the Mists.

Incidentally, I actually think that this makes Ebonbane a little similar to Exdeath from Final Fantasy V - in that story, long ago, a whole bunch of evil spirits were sealed within a tree. Over time, they coalesced into a single ego, and then that tree kind of grew a tangle of thorns and branches into a dark suit of armor. You spend much of the game assuming that Exdeath is some kind of evil knight.

The problem for Ebonbane, though, is that outside of Shadowborn Manor, it cannot act unless it is carried by another.

There's a lot to work with here:

First off, you can definitely fake out your players with who the actual villain of a campaign is. Ebonbane is considered a Construct while in the Manor, and can fly around like a (far more powerful) animated sword, but to go elsewhere, it needs a wielder. This can include a corpse that the sword possesses, meaning that you could easily have a figure that looks for all intents and purposes like a Death Knight of some sort, wreaking havoc across the land, burning villages to the ground, etc.

What's interesting is that the corpse isn't even considered undead: it's basically an object that Ebonbane is wielding by having the corpse wield it. A subtle hint that the party might have that there's something odd going on is that a Divine Sense might show that that moldering corpse that's walking around doesn't actually show up as undead.

The party might even fell this figure (which would be a fight against Ebonbane, using the sword's statistics) and try to figure out what to do with the evil sword the villain was carrying.

Now, the mechanics here require a little DM finesse - technically it's still the sword that the players would need to attack. But I'd extend this possession to basically let the body stand in for Ebonbane. Slaying Ebonbane makes it a +3 Longsword until it revives through Darklord Restoration, but if you don't want 1d10 weeks to pass before the Darklord becomes a threat again, I might rule that while it's possessing a corpse, maybe it drops its possession when the 50 temp HP goes away or, if that's too soon, maybe when Ebonbane gets bloodied. Presumably not being in the Manor, it would drop to the ground and appear to just be a powerful magic item.

Ok, now, how do you convince your players to try to wield Ebonbane?

Well, I think this is where Elena Faith-hold can play an important role:

In the Shadowlands, the Circle is effectively the equivalent of the Knights of the Round Table, an order of chivalric champions who are supposed to defend the good and fight the wicked. There's literally a big round table in Shadowborn Manor. The symbolism of the round table, of course, is that the order is one of equals. Thus, while Elena is a very powerful and influential member of the order, she's not its "leader" because no such role exists.

Still, she has taken the "fight the wicked" half of her charge far more seriously than the "defend the good," and even does things like feeding innocents to a dracolich to prevent the common folk from learning that the evil dragon she'd slain isn't actually gone.

In other words, she's a hatable villain that could easily feel like a major threat to the party and play the role of primary antagonist for the better part of an adventure. And it is that kind of evil that Ebonbane might present itself as the key to defeating.

So, Ebonbane can act both as a major boss fight as well as a powerful magic item. It is, also, an actual appropriate candidate for a real Hexblade patron for a Warlock (though we'll have to see if the new version in Arcana Unleashed is actually appealing to anyone given its dismal showing in Unearthed Arcana).

While Elena Faith-hold is a monstrous hypocrite, the Circle itself as a faction is still I think meant to largely be a good one. PCs might find allies amongst the knights (or even be members). But given that this is Ravenloft, these knights will likely meet tragic ends. A former ally might die trying to warn the party of the evils of Ebonbane, only for them to show up as an animated corpse wielding the blade.

Anyway, I think this domain could be an interesting aesthetic change for a general Ravenloft campaign, and could let you go for a very classical "knights & dragons" fantasy vibe that we honestly don't see very much in D&D.

It's Alive! Using Viktra Mordenheim

 As Ravenloft's Frankenstein equivalent, Viktra Mordenheim is the crafter of Flesh Golems. With a backstory that changed pretty dramatically in Van Richten's (previously she was the male Viktor Mordenehim and had a story closer to the original Frankenstein novel,) I think the key to Mordenheim is the coldness reflected in the climate of her domain of Lamordia.

More or less inventing modern science fiction with her novel, Mary Shelley's callous doctor embodies heedless scientific ambition without consideration for the consequences, and then a failure to take responsibility for his actions, to tragic results.

(As a note, I like Guillermo Del Toro, and enjoyed his adaptation, but I also felt that his choice to make the creature utterly blameless robbed the story of some of its nuance - the tragedy of Frankenstein is that if "Adam" had been given the love and affection a nascent person needs, he likely would have turned out just fine and no one would have died. But Viktor's visceral perception of him as a monster becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.)

In the case of Viktra Mordenheim, her initial creation is not simply done for its own reasons, but to resurrect her lover Elise. It does muddy the waters a little bit - her desire to recover the Unbreakable Heart that serves as Elise's core would effectively undo the recovery of her late lover.

But I think we can then perhaps see the somewhat sympathetic motivation - getting Elise back - was merely a story she told herself to justify the murders she committed in order to achieve this scientific breakthrough.

Here's my take: I think that Viktra Mordenheim's technological ambitions slot well into the kind of anti-humanist attitudes we've started to hear coming out of the Tech Bros of Silicon Valley of late. Empathy and emotions, to her, are things to overcome with efficient machinery. I think her grand ambition would be to eventually phase out natural humanoids in favor of compliant machines.

Mordenheim could start off as a friendly NPCs - perhaps if the party has an Artificer or Wizard in the group, or someone else who is technologically-minded, she might wish to perform research with them. At the very least, I think that she would be an influential figure in the scientific community, perhaps first introduced as a featured lecturer at a conference or something like that.

What I don't think you'll ever get from her is any warmth. Emotion - probably both positive and negative emotion - is muted for her. Even when the party comes into conflict with her, she would see them as bugs to be worked out, problems to be solved. Again, like most Darklords, she's a narcissist, but I think in this case it's a kind of cold materialism - she probably doesn't even consider her own emotions worth considering (hence her willingness to effectively re-kill Elise if it means recovering the Unbreakable Heart).

Thankfully, in Horrors Within, she got beefed up to CR 7, meaning she can hold her own in combat, and also now has thematic abilities. But this is a Darklord that should basically never be fought on her own. Naturally, Flesh Golems and Mordenheim's Monsters are the best minions for her (in the latter case, the minion is a bigger threat than she is,) but really any Construct would work - you could reflavor a Clay Golem as being a more advanced Flesh Golem, or you could simply say that she's not limited to using flesh as her material - again, she has no sentimentality to any particular form. Also, a Shield Guardian is a very likely part of her arsenal.

Unlike your vampires, werewolves, and ghosts, the horror of Viktra Mordenheim is not about her lurking around a corner or peering from the shadows. Her horror is in well-lit laboratory rooms, where she shamelessly engages in monstrous activities. Callously killing people to use their physical materials for her constructs, for example. But I think that the real horror, the real Gothic horror element here, is that no matter what, she will not see what the problem is even if she's called out. After all, organic life as it stands is subject to the whims of evolution or the so-called gods, and she is merely trying to create a more perfect being. She would classify the success of a civilization in its power efficiency rather than its creation of art and culture.

If the party slays her, I think she's likely to react with curiosity rather than anger, though if her work is disrupted, she might betray a hint of frustration. (It could be fun to RP her as developing a subtle eye-twitch that a good insight check realizes is her equivalent of bellowing with rage.)

My read on Mordenheim is that, unlike Frankenstein, she's incapable of the sense of horror that he feels when he sees his creation come to life. If she seeks to manipulate or influence the party, she will probably do so in a very calculated manner. If the party seems powerful enough to oppose her, she might visit friendly NPCs and transform them into constructs, being long gone by the time the party arrives to find their friends changed.

Even if she is, actually, acting on her emotions, such as anger at the party, she doesn't have the self-insight to realize that's why she's doing it. (She has a +0 to Wisdom, with just expertise in Medicine to make up for this).

Now, in terms of encounters, I think that Mordenheim is not at all a "lead from the front" kind of villain. She's far more likely to be behind a pane of reinforced glass with some controls while the party faces a bunch of constructs on conveyer belts. By the time the party actually finds her to face her down, she's also probably going to be protected by a lot of construct minions and in an out-of-the-way location, perhaps shooting down with her Lightning Rod from 90 feet away or using her legendary Static Explosion. She can cast Animate Objects once a day as a bonus action, and keeping at least one construct within 5 feet of her at all times allows her to use Redirect Attack to avoid incoming damage.

If character close on her, her Syringe is going to be a major way she deals with them, probably with a one-two of Lighting Rod (to ensure that they can't make opportunity attacks and then an appropriate serum for the given situation - Corrosive if she fears being followed, Deadly if the target is low on HP and needs healing, or Mind-Altering if the attacker is concentrating on a spell. Basically, she should be slippery. At 123 HP for CR 7, she's not going to go down immediately, but she also can't take a lot of punishment, so she's going to play defensively.

I will also say that the Syringe ability is a good "reveal" moment, if she has started to suspect the party is not aligned with her, busting out her Syringe in the middle of a social encounter could be fun (I might also temporarily give her other serum options, like one that knocks the target out).

In Van Richten's, they suggested using a stat block similar to a Spy, which I always felt was a weird choice. With a CR under 1, you truly would have had to play her avoiding combat at all costs, but while her new CR 7 form can hold her own, I'd still play her as extremely slippery. Especially in Schloss Mordenheim, have her make use of elevation and other ways to separate the party from her, and give her escape routes. There is a partial map of Schloss Mordenheim in Horrors Within - a great location for a final confrontation with her would be the Laboratory Tower, with Mordenheim perched above on the roof level while the party has to enter from the lower level.

The Abuser Hiding Within: Using Harkon Lukas

 Harkon Lukas is Ravenloft's prominent werewolf (well, more Loup-Garou, but that's just a souped-up Werewolf) Darklord. Among the classic Universal horror monsters, werewolves have less of an iconic exemplar than, say, vampires with Dracula or even mummies with Imhotep. I can tell you that Lon Chaney played The Wolfman, but I could not tell you the character's name.

But werewolves are cool, and perhaps the most straightforward expression of the central idea of Gothic Horror - the idea of a monster lurking beneath the surface of humanity.

In the case of Harkon Lukas, that hidden monster is tied to the expression of art. A famed musician, Lukas seeks out recognition and adulation, and in the act that got the Dark Powers to take him, he enacted a political coup with the help of his devoted fans (remember that fan is short for fanatic!)

In his domain of Kartakass, though, he's cursed to perpetual obscurity, known at best as someone who used to be great, but isn't considered so now. To pursue his ambitions, Lukas preys upon others with talent and presence, seeking to insinuate himself into their success as a springboard to his own, but underneath this slick and manipulative behavior lies jealousy, resentment, and enraged frustration.

Sadly, the world of art and entertainment can be filled with abusers and exploiters. Humans love to express ourselves through art, and few things are as attractive (at least in theory) as being a famed artist who has inspired and dazzled their audiences. Not only does this draw a lot of people seeking credit for others' work, but it also allows abusers who can take advantage of the people who want so desperately to be in that world. We have, in the past decade, seen numerous famed people in the entertainment world revealed as quite monstrous individuals - I know a couple of artists I considered myself a fan of were unmasked in this way, forcing one to reckon with the positive emotions and nostalgia for their work and even the respect we had for them.

It's generally a good idea for any Darklord to have them start playing an active role in the story early on. For none is this more true than Harkon Lukas. But also more than any, he should initially appear as a friend to the party.

Now, a knowledgable group of players might just know him through meta-knowledge, and perhaps even in-universe knowledge. But I think that Lukas is going to roll out all of the charms he has available to him. For one thing, I don't think he sees himself as an abuser. If the party has someone who interests him (naturally a Bard would be a prime target, but it could be anyone else who seems particularly full of life, and probably younger and more naive) he'll do everything to earn their trust.

But (frankly like a lot of Darklords,) he's ultimately narcissistic. He will genuinely think that he likes the members of the party as long as he feels that they can do something for him, and offer real assistance without any explicit strings attached.

However, once the party, and particularly if there's a particular PC he's fixated on, starts to defy him (maybe they refuse to take his gifted necklace,) there will be a sudden change. I think that he will start off just by shutting the person out, disappearing and giving the silent treatment, playing the victim. If this strategy doesn't bring them back, it starts to get a bit more aggressive.

Indeed, I think that he might go out of his way to target other members of the party with violence, claiming that they're poisoning his fixation's mind, stopping them from fulfilling their full potential.

Now, at CR 14, Lukas can be a formidable threat even to a high-tier-2 party on his own. And I think that the real horror-turn here is when his possessiveness turns violent.

While part of his torment is his loneliness and obscurity, he would also have a pack of werewolves at his command. (I'd also suggest reskinning other lycanthropes if you wanted to vary their CR). I imagine that the people he curses with lycanthropy might share in his torment - perhaps promised with elevation to heights of fame, by hitching their wagon to Lukas', those he has turned are also struggling with their creative process and fame. The result is a pack of frustrated artists who resent others more than they engage with their own craft.

The prevalence of music in Kartakass, as well as Harkon's artistic design in the book, suggests to me that the whole vibe of Kartakass could take on a lot of Southern Gothic vibes - loud music, alcohol, and humid summer nights feel fitting for the setting. Like Strahd (though I only rarely see people actually play him this way,) the temptation should always be to empathize with Harkon Lukas, to feel like the pain and self-loathing suggests some inner moral core. But whatever truth of that inner life there might be, it's also being used as a performance to get people to let their guards down. As a born Northerner, I've got a deeply-ingrained distrust for Southern so-called Hospitality, and Lukas embodies more than anything a friendly smile shrouding a ravenous, murderous hunger.

Werewolves in 5.5E have had a bit of a redesign - the curse they inflict isn't necessarily going to turn you into a werewolf, but it makes  you susceptible to this happening. I'd check in with players to make sure they're ok with this kind of threat to them - rules as written, getting turned puts you permanently under the DM's control and thus effectively perma-kills your character, though you could treat this instead as the reason to take on a Dark Gift (or perhaps the Lycanthrope Transformation from Grim Hollow Player's Guide) to represent this change, and perhaps add in some kind of compulsion to obey Lukas that might need to be removed somehow.

You could actually take some inspiration from a pretty great bit of Southern Gothic media from last year that also won Best Picture at the Oscars - Sinners has a music club besieged by vampires who wish to possess a young musician with magical powers (honestly, the character is almost exactly a College of Spirits Bard). In a similar manner, Lukas could wind up leading a siege of werewolves on a club in a very similar way - even the way that werewolves work now would re-create the manner in which the vampires in that movie turn the club's guests.

If you really want to amp up the terror of that siege, having a bunch of low-CR NPCs there to serve as lycanthropic converts if the party fails to protect them would really up the challenge.

But while that is an encounter I might even save for tier 3 (making individual werewolves pretty small threats, but numbers being a real challenge,) having the party face him on his own would still be pretty scary at levels 8-10. He has health regeneration as long as he doesn't take radiant damage (which might not be obvious to the players given that other werewolves and even the standard Loup Garou now don't have that) and he also gets advantage on attacks if the target has taken any damage.

Lukas is also built to shift between his forms frequently during combat, giving him a mix of charm abilities and raw damage. Lean into the surrealness and horror of these sudden transformations. You can also have him menace the party in beast form while he's friendly to them in his humanoid form to up the paranoia. Maybe he's stalking them as they travel across his domain, but not necessarily going in to attack - instead, his motivation for following them is to ensure that he's in the right place to offer them help and ingratiate himself.

This is a Darklord that I think would be a real challenge to play - but it might be a really fun challenge for your acting skills to play the different subtle layers of his persona. He's also beefy enough and powerful enough that you can back up the menace hiding underneath the surface with stats that make him nearly as powerful a combatant as Strahd.