Darklords of Ravenloft

 We're now a little over a month (though less, I think, for people with D&D Beyond subscriptions) from the release of Ravenloft: Horrors Within.

I've said many-a-time here on my blog that Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft is my favorite 5E book. It's kind of the last of the big, beefy campaign setting books - we would later get the disappointing Spelljammer and Planescape box sets, the latter of which was not as bad, but still not nearly as comprehensive as I had hoped.

But Ravenloft is also kind of tied with Planescape as my favorite D&D setting - I guess because I think I'm too good for just a normal fantasy world with kingdoms and castles and stuff.

I know that there are some, especially old school D&D players, who really disliked Van Richten's. Many of the reasons they cite are things I just flat-out disagree with: core amongst them (pun intended) is the excision of the idea of "The Core," which in the original Ravenloft placed each domain of dread in geographical relation to one another. For example, Borca was just northwest of Barovia, and there was a road that led from Krezk in Barovia to Levkarest in Borca. The Mists could become an impenetrable border if either of the Darklords of these respective domains decided to make them so, but that was the geographic relationship.

Now, this could be just what I was first exposed to, but my first brush with Barovia was Curse of Strahd, the very first adventure module I bought for the game after getting the core books (and maybe Volo's Guide to Monsters, if that was out yet) but starting in that beloved adventure, Barovia and the domains of dread in general were presented, as they are in Van Richten's, as being demiplanar bubbles afloat within the Mists. Spatially, they were cut off from one another, meaning that travel between domains was not a matter of getting on the correct road but instead of getting your hands on the right Mist Talisman - a magically-charged artifact from that domain that could act as a lodestone to guide you there.

Likewise, as presented in Curse of Strahd as well as in Van Richten's, the domains function on nightmare logic - even if you get a map of the Svalich Woods, the woods can shift and stretch according to the will (conscious or not) of Strahd in order to terrorize those passing through it. I think the hazy isolation of free-floating domains fits that idea better.

I will concede, though, that if you want to play Ravenloft less as a series of nightmare-prisons and more as a contentious land of evil powers seeking to undermine and defeat one another, this geographical connection makes more sense. It is more conventional, as a D&D setting. If you want to send your party on a quest that requires them go from Barovia to Lamordia, they'll likely have to pass through Borca and Falkovnia along the way.

That being said, I think that you could also do this in the free-floating 5E Ravenloft, where you only get Mist Talismans that allow for travel to the "in-between" domains of your choice.

Another change, of course, that was somewhat controversial, was the changing of some Darklords. In some cases, the change itself was canonical, where you had Valachan's Ulrik von Kharkov overthrown by Chakuna. Others were more like retcons - Viktor Mordenheim was reimagined as Viktra Mordenheim, and her relationship with her flesh golem creation was also changed significantly - Viktor's Adam was a pretty direct parallel with the Frankenstein story with an absentee father and wrathful son, whereas Viktra's relationship with her creation, Elise, was one of a lover desperate to re-create her lost love.

I do think that some of these changes were really important to give the Darklords more distinctive characters - Vlad Drakov was kind of vaguely just "another vampire," inspired more by the historical Vlad Tsepes more than the literary Count Dracula, while Vladeska Drakov is a tyrant warrior who has brought disaster upon herself and her kingdom (and also gives us the "zombie apocalypse" domain).

So, again, I get that the book was controversial, even if I freaking loved it. My love for it was also less about the specific details and more about the structure of the book - its discussion of horror as a genre and the way that it was more about presenting ideas for adventures than strictly laying out how things would have to be.

But one thing I will concede is that it would have been cool to get bespoke stat blocks for the Darklords.

In the case of Harkon Lukas, his stat block was in the book, though presented as a general Loup-Garou that could represent other characters. And while I do think it's fun to give Strahd his own specific features and abilities (as we saw in both Curse of Strahd and Vecna: Eve of Ruin) it's also kind of fitting that, as the first vampire in the D&D cosmos, he should have the standard CR 13 legendary vampire stat block - almost as if to invite players, when looking at that block in the Monster Manual, to consider that any use of a vampire statblock should aspire at least to have a character as rich and thought-out as Strahd.

But then you have something like Viktra Mordenheim, and the suggested stat block for them is a Spy, which is a CR 1, non-legendary creature that also, you know, doesn't really have any of the kind of mad-scientist abilities that you'd expect someone like Mordenheim to have.

Now, I understand the ethos of having low-CR Darklords. A Darklord need not always be the final boss at the end of a big dungeon like Strahd is for Castle Ravenloft (though again, even he need not serve that function). But I think tossing them all these generic stat blocks (I think Spy is used for several of them) puts a lot of burden on the DM to ensure that an encounter with them is, well, interesting. A Spy just has a +1 to Intelligence, and surely Mordenheim would be smarter than that? Again, even if she's not meant to be much of a fighter, couldn't she at least have some kind of lightning-weapon, or the ability to summon, say, a Flesh Golem to defend her?

Like, I think that a "Viktra Mordenheim boss fight" is probably one in which she's behind some impenetrable barrier overseeing a workshop/factory of flesh golems and other constructs as they attack the party that must be defeated before we can gain access to her control room, after which taking out the good doctor is a formality.

But I do still think that it's more fun if the villains can play that "final boss" role.

Now, I'm given to understand that this is one of the issues that Horrors Within intends to address - I've seen a screenshot from the digital Maps assets from the book that include a Wilfred Godefroy that appears to be CR 6 (unlike the CR 4 Ghost he's presented as in Van Richten's) and Saidra d'Honaire as CR 7 or something (in Van Richten's, she's a Wraith, though also one with an effectively unlimited Disintegrate spell with a crazy high CR of 18, which I'd think would bump her up a fair bit from a Wraith's normal CR 5).

Thus, I suspect that we're getting a bunch of Darklord statblocks (we've already seen on for Cthulhu).

I do wonder, though, if they intend to roll back any of the controversial changes from Van Richten's - I hope not, as I'm very happy with the way that the setting is presented in that book - but we'll see.