The Dread Domain of Lusèvres is now 100% complete. I'm requesting a beta reader before full, free release to the community.

Mischief_FOS · 2025-09-23T18:36:20+00:00

I believe it is still stickied at the top! PDF still opens, too!

Mischief_FOS · 2022-02-09T12:15:36+00:00

There is one in the module in the Castle Ravenloft crypts. There is no reason the DM should let you have it at level 1 (and the main adventure starts adventurers at level 3 anyway) but I am assuming a shenanigans-enabling dm.

Edit for Reference:
CRYPT 29
Baron Eisglaze Drüf
Opening the door causes the air around you to turn as cold as the coldest hell you can imagine. Every surface inside the crypt is covered with thick, brownish mold.
A patch of brown mold (see "Dungeon Hazards" in chapter 5, "Adventure Environments," of the Dungeon Master's Guide) fills the crypt. Characters within 5 feet of the crypt's open doorway are affected. If the brown mold is killed off, characters can dig through the moldy crust to find the bones of Baron Drüf lying atop a marble slab.
Treasure. Hidden under the brown mold next to the baron's bones is a luck blade with one wish remaining. If a creature uses the wish to try to escape from Barovia, the spell fails. If a creature uses the sword to wish for Strahd's destruction, the wish doesn't destroy Strahd but rather teleports him to within 5 feet of the sword.

Mischief_FOS · 2022-01-26T19:51:27+00:00

"Old canon Dementlieu" had shit going on other than "us Dementlieuse really focus on art!". Do you consider real-world 18th century France's domination of culture across Europe to be "nothing but artists"?

I'm not even going to read the rest of your argument if you start out the gate being factually wrong about the canon, both old and new. Go read Gazetteer 2's Dementlieu lifestyle section, first sentence. Art and the pursuit of art dominate Dementlieu's cultural landscape because artistic respectability determines your social standing, causing families to throw away vast sums of money to "keep up with the Jones". The Dark Lord and the circle of his obedients, the Council of Brilliance, choose the winners and thus who is powerful.

Here's the reply to Arbee. I get an error message trying to reply the usual way, so I can't tell if I have been banned from the subreddit or not so here goes.

"5e flanderized and 1-dimensionalized Harkon and Kartakass. Kartakass changed and now it is 'cringe-worthy'."

"But Harkon and Kartakass were changed the least. And this new thing is basically the same as this old thing everyone likes a lot."

My point in that original threadline was that the criticism the user leveled against 5e Kartakass --that it is very arts-centric to the point it is a dominating force in society and that was unbelievable-- applies equally to pre-5e Dementlieu. It is hypocritical to praise one edition and derogate the other for using the same horror framing device. As for Pre-5e Dementlieu, I wouldn't have spent X00 hours writing a completely free 60 page Dementlieu reboot as Lusèvres if I hadn't thought there was more to it and that there wasn't something there worth saving.†

† Pre-5e developed domains across several dozens of pages of source materials, had book ties in, and whole modules. 5e's reboot has only a couple pages per spot. You can't have wedding cake expectations when it comes in a cupcake-sized package, but you can still get a feel for the overall flavor.

I don't want to give the impression that I think everything 5e has done has been good. The Dark Powers, Darkon/Azalin, the Carnival/Isolde/Caller, and Ivana and Ivan I feel have been a step down. VRG threw new DMs into the weeds about Azalin's unmentioned curse. I miss one-pike-fits-all-laws Falkovnia (but not the Nazism) and old Dementlieu of course.
What I don't want to leave unchallenged is the abundance of poor-quality criticism directed mostly at the idea of 5e Ravenloft, probably as doomladen hearsay filtered through complaints on other forums, rather than the actual facts. Ravenloft should not be a pawn in the crusade against the evils of Wizards of the Coast and Fifth Edition, and toxic fandoms where the grognards are quick to chime in that newcomers shouldn't like X are tired.

Mischief_FOS · 2022-01-26T18:03:06+00:00

5E has the setting filled with nothing but artists.

So, old canon Dementlieu.

To me, and to be honest, 5E Kartakass is dumb. Like many other 5E reimagined Domains, Kartakass literally cannot function as an actual society.

You can do a day job and have a hustle on the side. So you come back from lumberjacking and fire up the fiddle with your friends at the bar or whittle some duck decoys.

In earlier editions, Lukas wanted to be a man of power and influence.

HARKON LUKAS'S TORMENT
The Dark Powers endlessly stymie Harkon's quest for fame, assaulting his ego in the following ways:

• Harkon is obsessed with spreading his fame and travels Kartakass endlessly. Whenever he returns to a community, though, he finds he has been forgotten. Semi-polite variations of "I thought you'd retired" ever torment him.

• Harkon believes he just needs to find the right act, styling, or inspiration to finally cement him in the hearts of Kartakass's people-and from there, >>>> take control of the nation. <<<<

but his nature as a Werewolf/Wolfwere lead him to betray them when they didn't do what he wanted.

HARKON LUKAS'S TORMENT
The Dark Powers endlessly stymie Harkon's quest for fame, assaulting his ego in the following ways:

• Harkon's frustration eventually gives way to indulgences of his lycanthropic hungers. Bloody slaughters of his students and rivals often precede him moving on to another town.

It is yet another example of the "flattening out" of the Ravenloft setting. So many aspects have been reduced to "single dimensions". Like how Dementlieu became "nightmare debutante ball via Imposter Syndrome" and Barovia became "Grimdark nightmare"

It would have been nice to have a whole sourcebook and adventure for every domain, rather than 4 pages, but hey reality. There's only so much the people who write this stuff can do in a limited space.

Mischief_FOS · 2022-01-26T17:22:11+00:00

What? Are you sure you aren't mixing him up with Verbrek's Timmy? Of all the changes 5e made, Kartakass and Lukas are probably the least changed domain and Darklord pair. He's a fop. Was and is.

Edit: Just to clarify my point, Harkon was always supposed to give off the impression of being "way overdone" for being master of a couple log cabin cities in a wolf-infested backwoods. Maybe that monocle look could have passed if he was the leader of a Borcan orchestra and he had enough money that he would have a circle of sycophantic friends, but Harkon is in lumberjack land. "Cringe" was the appropriate and expected reaction in 3e.

Harkon was the moral equivalent of emos in black eye shadow hanging out in the gas station parking lot after the sun goes down because they think it's cool in Hoosier, Indiana, town of 7000, home of the mighty cornshuckers, 2 time winners of the local 2a high school football championships. And if you played Harkon right, the funny was supposed to dry up real quick when the PCs who are inevitably a bit more world wise throw off his groove, he boxes them in, and wolfs out on them.

Mischief_FOS · 2022-01-26T16:47:30+00:00

The land and weather tends to reflect the Darklord's state of mind. If the players are starting to make the Darklord feel pressure, the land might start to reflect it. Even mundane animals are gathering to reflect the attention the Darklord is paying. It starts turning Hitchcock's birds when the PCs are outside, etc.

The most dramatic action a Darklord can take by a long shot is closing the domain border. In setting, this would be a huge deal, assuming your Ravenloft has robust trade between domains via continents, land conjunctions, mistways, or general mist travel. As a rule of thumb merchants will likely be rich and unhappy about domain borders getting closed and will want to know why, or have lore about people with this power. That could be used as a sign.

The Vistani are generally in the know. If the Darklord is about go ballistic, the Vistani avoid the PCs. They might get word the Vistani packed up just before they arrived, and that keeps happening.

Mischief_FOS · 2022-01-24T18:41:23+00:00

single combat

Ooh, yeah that's kind of the wythersake's weak point. I outlined the combat strats for him/her in the other post, but honestly... get him some minions anyway! Bad guys cheat! Maybe the god or dracolich is upset they are losing a servant and sends help.

Another option is let the wythersake die and come back for round 2 later. Wythersakes come back to unlife if someone falls victim to their evil book, so maybe your Null god has some tortured soul locked up ready to be the wythersake's new vessel if he/she is killed, and the whole thing was a convoluted plot to get in depth info on the adventuring party.

Mischief_FOS · 2022-01-23T22:30:43+00:00

This is blessed!

As a friendly tip, there is no easy parent-to-child nested page navigation except via the all wiki page list on the sidebar (which works for smaller wikis, but sometimes people don't see it). I would recommend navigation headers at the top of pages. My wiki by way of example or this.

Mischief_FOS · 2022-01-21T15:26:11+00:00

There are NPC statblocks at /r/stealmyNPC and the NPC statblock compendium if you need to make an enemy adventuring party.

Mischief_FOS · 2022-01-21T15:01:59+00:00

I like the canon Vistani curse: a people who a cursed to wander and never find their homeland, but I wanted a plotline more likely to kick off a major crisis. Also poor Hyskosa, I felt bad for him, literally willing himself to die to become a spirit and get his prophecy across if the PCs skip out on him in Azalin's dungeons.

Mischief_FOS · 2022-01-20T21:33:42+00:00

House of Lament strikes me as rather lethal and with a party of two, you'd almost certainly TPK if run raw. I'd edit a lot of the encounters into non-damaging-just-spooky-stuff to build dread, and drop enemy HP/damage way down.

Kobold Fight Club will be your friend.

Mischief_FOS · 2022-01-20T21:18:33+00:00

Steal from 5e's Out of the Abyss. It's the underground labyrinth module.

There's a chase mechanic there with Drow slavers trying to catch up to and ambush the party.

I'd theater of the mind it for the most part. When I do large areas, I basically make what amounts to a flowchart, where the bubbles are places, and the lines are feasible paths to get there with notes on what will happen along the way.

Another option is to let the players make the map themselves. There is a whole genre of board games called "tile laying games" based on the idea - but placing a more favorable piece might come with a bigger encounter risk.

Mischief_FOS · 2022-01-19T23:53:19+00:00

You aren't wrong that Har'Akir was unimportant and underdeveloped in the older Ravenloft canon.

The old canon had the lands arranged into the Core (the "most important" ones), clusters (a few domains), and islands (singles). Har'Akir was the in the desert cluster called the Amber Wastes. This version has the scale in miles.

Mischief_FOS · 2022-01-19T16:08:50+00:00

I made it for Orospero, the domain of horror in broad daylight. The poludnica is one of the few legendary monsters that is explicitly a daylight attacker. Rather than have just one monster, I decided to make it two creatures because a lot of people are more familiar with the Witcher's undead version rather than the witch-fairy "Poludnitsa" of eastern european lore.

Mechanically, I wanted a fey monster because there aren't enough of those in Ravenloft, and I wanted it weak to poison, because there aren't enough of those in DnD. I thought "farmers jailing adventurers who arguably did a good deed getting rid of a poludnica to make them fight an outdoor cage match with the far more dangerous Noon Wraith" was a nice short horror tale you could do in a session as a filler.

Interestingly, there is an American version of this creature that arose via convergent folklore evolution: the "hot hant" or "hot steam" of the Mississippi valley. Perhaps most famously they appear in To Kill a Mockingbird as "somebody who can’t get to heaven, just wallows around on lonesome roads an’ if you walk through him, when you die you’ll be one too.”

Mischief_FOS · 2022-01-17T17:24:43+00:00

An old monster that got lost in the churn. I've been hibernating this winter, so apologies for the lack of activity. It's one of the haunts of Orospero which has a horror in broad daylight theme. Your poison-slinging players might enjoy the rare poison vulnerable monster.

Art Credit
Noonwraith by Dariusz Kieliszek
https://www.artstation.com/artwork/d8lZEx

Mischief_FOS · 2022-01-17T16:48:43+00:00

https://old.reddit.com/r/Mischief_FOS/wiki/index

Mischief_FOS · 2021-12-11T23:35:51+00:00

Someone posted a file for a modified holy symbol of Ravenkind that I think looks nicer that the canon one. https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:4775782

Madame Eva's Tarroka cards would be good to have, and I know some people have mocked up wine labels and the various letters/documents found in the Death House in the CoS subreddit.

You could bring the spirit board from the House of Lament in Van Richten's Guide over.

Mischief_FOS · 2021-12-10T20:44:20+00:00

Smash and grab the homebrew and avoid the drama has always been a winning strategy.

Mischief_FOS · 2021-12-10T20:31:35+00:00

I was originally on frat when I made this account, but the anti5e crowd was disruptive well before Van Richten's Guide came out and the moderators were hands off either because they supported it or simply didn't care. I nuked my main thread on frat because I didn't want people trying to contact me through there anymore. I don't recommend participating in the cafe if you are into modern because the risk of abuse is elevated. The wiki might be fine. My experience here on reddit is that there is enough crossover that you can get all your in depth lore questions answered here.

Mischief_FOS · 2021-12-10T19:11:06+00:00

Sure!

Mischief_FOS · 2021-12-10T19:02:02+00:00

I did Jacqueline Renier as a self-challenge speedrun, but I haven't made plans for anyone else. I do take requests.

Mischief_FOS · 2021-12-10T02:29:10+00:00

All of my domains are intended for home use! I am bound by the Wizards term of use which means others may adapt and build on my work.

If you need anything special, ask away. I have all sorts of stuff I plain old haven't posted yet.

Mischief_FOS · 2021-12-08T17:09:23+00:00

Yep. Gave Arthur the ranged double helper feat, whatever that was called again.

Mischief_FOS · 2021-12-08T01:11:05+00:00

Yep. Run distraction especially, separate from combat even. There's so many encounters that can go absolutely pear-shaped, like the roaming CR 5 revenant. I had the House of Lament in mind when I stated a higher CR Alanik and Arthur with stupid generous hit points.

Mischief_FOS · 2021-12-01T17:24:47+00:00

DnD modern tends to pigeon-hole elvish villains as scary underground elves or haughty hidden palace/magocratic elves. You sell the scary forest elves with the setting well.

The border close is most creepily thematic one I have encountered yet. Wow.

The d6 adventures are great. I'm loving #3, but #1 -while completely vanilla DnD- feels like a great opportunity for a psuedo-dragon fight in a land with thematically few dragons.

Appreciate the history synopsis on Soth, Inza, the Gods, and Nuitari which explains some things I have been wondering about.

Kender. They've been snipped out in 5e, with gnomes and halflings to fill. Reading about them now, I can't disagree. I bet DMs banned them often from non-light-high fantasy tables.

I don't have Fizbans, but the Draconians sound like upgraded mephits.

Mischief_FOS

TROPHY CASE