Vampire Hunting | Three Magical Items, and on Playing Dead and Van Richten’s Guide to Ravenloft

Van Richten’s Guide to Ravenloft releases today, and it's been getting me pretty excited. While I'm not the fondest of the player content (that Undead Warlock wasn't the best in UA, and it hasn't improved that much) in the book, I love an opportunity to make gothic style homebrew! 

In addition to the three vampire hunting items, I've also been a part of a team making a new DMsguild product. The supplement is called Playing Dead and can be found here! You can find my contributions in the barbarian Variant Class Features, the Path of the Grave (a zombie themed barbarian set around the ideas of ripping off your own limbs to fight others!), the Martyr Greater Undead (they're like Prestige Classes) and some smaller miscellaneous things. Currently, we're #1 on the guild and have become a Copper bestseller!

Anyways, for the items, I think my favourite out of the three is the Wooden Stake. Mechanically, it's identical to the Vorpal Sword, but deals piercing instead of slashing and can kill undead even if they don't need the body part it takes away (in this case, it destroys the target's heart). Just like the Vorpal Sword, it's concept is part of a classic fantasy, and should feel just as gruesome.

Well, this was just a short advertising post, but I hope these items or something in Playing Dead can be useful for your campaign!

Path of the Chameleon | Barbarian Subclass, and a bit on barbarian subclass design

It's been a while since I've released anything, but I can promise there will be a whole bunch of content being released in the next couple days!

This subclass is a weird one. The concept is an elusive and charismatic barbarian, two things that aren't usually associated with barbarians. In addition to being weird thematically, it's also kind of weird mechanically. 

Now, barbarian structure is pretty simple—at 3rd level, you get a feature that augments you rage, alongside a potential secondary feature. Some examples of that feature are Totem Warrior getting rituals or Zealot getting a resurrection ribbon. Path of the Chameleon inverts that a bit. Skinshifter is the big feature, and it keys itself off of prof/lr uses, while the rage augment builds off of Skinshifter. The main combat feature allows you to move the target around the battlefield, making this a control barbarian (as opposed to defensive or damage), which I feel is the one that keys best into the ever-changing thematic. 

Didn't have much to say this time, but I hope you enjoy the path! This one is definitely one of my favourites, on virtue of just being so, so weird!