The 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Dungeons & Dragons community's general attitude towards 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Wizards of the Coast's official manuals is 'anything you can do, I can do better'. And, mostly, they're right. The D&D community is teeming with 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:homebrew characters, cl🏅asses, adventures - even some subclasses base💧d on the biggest pop stars of💯 their age, I hear - not to mention the dozens of rules each table reinterprets in a be𓄧tter, friction-f🍨ree version of their intent.
However, the work Wizards does is still crucial. While all this additional material exists, it can only build on the frameworks provided, and most new players are going to stick to the digestible, official rules instead of figuring out how to play as Sabrina Carpenter (seriously, 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:I ꧙hear these subcl🍨asses are just the business!). Going by the adage of 'anythꦛing you can do'꧙, it also means that when Wizards raises the bar, it's merely offering an even higher platform for the rest of us to stand on as we try to leap higher. Recently, that bar was raised in the Monster Manual by the Haunting Revenant.
Haunting Revenant Is A Haunted House... But Not In The Way You Think
I'm yet to get my hands on the new Monster Manual for myself, but my colleague Joe Parlock has gotten his mitts on it, and ✨his impression that it's a tool for players as much as DMs excites me. Partially for the reasons Joe lists, that it shows each character in their habitat and contextualises them, offering more reading potential to the book and appealing to fans beyond the selection of stat blocks it was previously. But also 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:from a DM's view, more artwork means more inဣspiration, and one of the beasts seems to have struck gold.
As those of you who read the second paragraph will know, said beast is the Haunting Revenant. Put simply, it's a haunted house. Wait, maybe I didn't explain that correctly. It's a haunted house. If you think of a mimic as a haunted chest, this is a haunt♋ed house. Is it going in yet? Should I switch to some other vocabulary? This is not ꦉa house that, when you go inside, ghosts appear or paintings move their eyes. It's not a house that has hauntings inside of it. It is a house that is itself possessed ie haunted.
This is not, I grant, an entirely original idea. The Hell House in 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Final Fantasy 7 (which returned with aplomb in Remake) offers the same thrill of the Haunting Revenant - it lets you fight against a house. However, unlike the Hell House, the Haunting Revenant is capable of posing as a real house, meaning you could be inside when the fight begins, hence the comparison to mimics. It also has a move (Invitation) which can force players inside if they fail a roll. One of the big things I wanted D&D to improve with the 2024 rules was 168澳洲幸运5开奖♏网:variety in combat over meatsack-whittling, and this feels like part of that philosophy c🐼oming true.
D&D's New Monster Manual Is A Storytelling Dream
It's also especially interesting given the final major update ahead of the rules rollout were basඣtions, which emphasised owning a homestead, castle, or base as a party. The idea is you may return here between adventures, and you might even have allies, family, or servants working for you. Slaves would⛎ also be a darker twist on this idea. And speaking of dark twists, what if you suddenly realised your bastion had been a Haunting Revenant the whole time, and now all your possessions, loved ones, and of course, yourself were trapped in its splintered maw?
Elsewhere, it seems like the Haunting Revenant also represents a streamlined change I've noticed in the few stat blocks we've seen from the Monster Manual. Aside from Invitation, it only has one other move (Object Slam) and that's all it does. While some previous beasts were unwieldy with the amount of attacks they had - and others still may be, especially as future modules roll out - it seems like this time around, most are highly restricted. You can flavour them, but given players always have so many moves at their disposal, monsters who can only do a couple of things are often much harder to make inte🌌resting.
However, that's the only real complaint I have about the Haunting Revenant, which otherwise underlines my optimism for the sort of future the rules refresh can bring. It's a haunted house (and let's not go through that again) that offers a huge variety of potential for adventures, and if everything in the Mo♚nster Manual is even half as creative, the community will have a field day.
- Created by
- ꧃ 🏅 E. Gary Gygax, Dave Arneson
- Latest Film
- Dun♓geons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves
- First TV Show
- ไ Dungeo🍎ns and Dragons
- First Episode Air Date
- 🧸 September 17, 1983
- Video Game(s)
- Baldur's Gate, Baldur's Gate II: Shadows of Amn, Baldur's Gate 3, Neverwinter, Icewind Dale, Dungeons and Dragons: Dark Alliance
