D&D: The Newest Book Is Van Richten’s Guide To Ravenloft
The newest D&D book will take you deep into the mists of Ravenloft to hunt monsters with Van Richten’s Guide to Ravenloft. Come see what’s inside.
Early this morning Amazon updated their product placeholder with a description and title for the upcoming D&D book just spotted yesterday. The next book will be Van Richten’s Guide to Ravenloft, and it’s a full on campaign setting guide to Ravenloft–all of it, so you’ll be going beyond Barovia and can check out the other Domains of Dread. Let’s dig in.
Terror stalks the nightmare realms of Ravenloft. No one knows this better than monster scholar Rudolph Van Richten. To arm a new generation against the creatures of the night, Van Richten has compiled his correspondence and case files into this tome of eerie tales and chilling truths.
- Travel (perhaps even by choice) to Ravenloft’s expanded Domains of Dread—each domain with its own unique flavor of horror, thrilling story hooks, and grisly cast of characters
- Craft your own D&D horror settings, add tension with optional rules, and get advice for running a game that’s ghastly in all the right ways
- Create characters with lineages tied to vampires, undead, and hags, horror-themed subclasses, the Investigator background, and “Dark Gifts” that may be a double-edged sword
- Unleash nightmarish monsters from an expanded bestiary, and browse a collection of mysterious trinkets
- Explore Ravenloft in the included Dungeons & Dragons adventure—play as a stand-alone adventure or drop it into your current game for a bit of sinister fun
What an exciting reveal–now we know that those Gothic Lineages have a home. If you enjoyed the Dhampir, Hexblood, or Reborn, you’ll find the full, finalized rules for these in the book. As well we’ll probably see the College of Spirit Bard and the Undead patron for Warlocks. As a reminder, both of these run on the post-Tasha’s Cauldron design principles.
Which mostly means that they offer improved flexibility compared to other subclasses, and their abilities will tend to be usable a number of times equal to your proficiency bonus. It makes enough of a difference that one wonders if the other classes might see a rebalance in comparison.
The College of Spirits is basically the occult medium subclass, which allows spirits to speak their magical stories through you creating variable effects that can give your allies powerful abilities or hamper your foes.
And the Undead warlock patron grants you powerful necromantic abilities like speak with dead, antilife shell, and so on. You can also shroud yourself in deathly power, giving you a battle transformation that makes your attacks cause fear.
For those of you hoping for more foes–this is a book penned by a monster hunter, so it looks like we’ve got some new creatures headed our way. All of this is due out May 18th, so you can expect to see the book on display at the next big Livestreaming event from WotC, which should also be around then. But the setting is here, and the first of the three upcoming ‘Classic settings’ is Ravenloft.
Happy Adventuring!
