Revenge! It's one of the easiest character motivations to make. It's a bit of a fake motivation though, because what will they want after the revenge? I never got to figure that part out for Wilson due to his early death. My headcanon is that after his death, he has turned into a revenant. Unfortunately, it's been years since Wilson's death, so nothing can be done now to save him.
Revenants
Where I'm going with this is this: Revenants are cool. They're undead reanimated corpses seeking the revenge that their soul demands. Their hit points regenerate, they're immune to being turned, they never get exhausted, charmed, or frightened, and of course—they're always on the move. Approaching. Tracking. At all times. There's also another detail that most people miss at a glance—it has no negative modifiers. Pretty cool, right?There are downsides too, of course. Revenant's CR is 5. This means that once the players become high enough level, that revenant who's still tracking them becomes nothing more than a nuisance. Their +7 to hit and average 25 damage against their main target could come off as a bit underwhelming. And since the revenant is assumed to be on the move without any company, it's either gonna be a super easy encounter, or an extra that the players will not find interesting. And that's not even mentioning stuff like planar travel!
In other words, I feel like a revenant could get... boring. Let's try to change that today, now that the long intro is out of the way!
Why though?
Before we give this creature its boost, we need to answer an important question: why are we doing this to our players? Well, there could be a couple of answers. A backstory from a player, a challenging enemy they make, ... or something far more sinister.There's a type of player that plenty of Dungeon Masters (and possibly even other players) doesn't like, and it's understandable why. The "murderhobo", for the purposes of this article, is a player who kills creatures that are innocent. For the sake of simplicity, an innocent creature is one that the DM did not expect players to fight because there is no real reason to fight it. I've spent some time with such players in my party, and it can break the immersion. Thus, it could be reasoned that a DM could use the revenant as a sort of justice for the murder of innocent creatures.
Warning: the revenant is a nasty creature already, and what I list below is completely untested. I have actually got no clue as to how one could make a revenant interesting, I've run a revenant only twice in my games ever. I just wanted to write up some cool things for DMs who want to add some extra spice to their revenant to make them a bit more effective. But as it goes with any spice, do not overdo it! A meal with too many spices in it is gonna be a mess. Choose which of these you want to do, and leave the rest be.
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| Number 1 way of making a revenant scarier: give it a gun. Seriously though, a ranged attack of some sort would be a really good thing to have. Revenant, by Zak Foreman |
Inevitable
The revenant has got one year to get its revenge. So let's find some way of making them better!- Every time the revenant dies, its CR increases by 1. We don't really need to be precise with the system—each point of CR increase increases its hit points maximum by 17 (2d8+8), and both its regular damage and the extra damage against sworn targets by 1d6 each. For every 3 points of CR, its AC, attack bonus, and DC increase by 1. These numbers are not perfect, but they are good enough to make it scary.
- Every time the revenant dies, it gains one level in a class of your choice. Don't bother with hit points, just add 9 for every level up. Don't bother writing down their proficiencies with toolsets, weapons, armors, or whatever—just say that they have this or that, ignore unnecessary clutter! Focus on combat stuff. If you want them to do magic, give them warlock spell slot progression with doubled spell slots (but still single Mystic Arcanum uses) to make DMing them easier.
Survivor
Alright, we got the aspect of it being defeated nailed down. How about making it remaining alive scarier?
- For every day the revenant remains alive, its speed increases by 5 ft. When it dies, its speed resets to default.
- For every week the revenant remains alive, one of its scores increases by 1 permanently. The maximum is 30.
Escapist
The revenant is cool and all, but what if it gets... stuck? Like, what if it has no way of getting to its sworn targets?
- If there are no sworn creatures of revenant's revenge on the same plane of existence as the revenant for 24 hours, the revenant teleports within one day of travel of the creature it's tracking. At the same time, if it gets trapped someplace like a coffin buried twenty feet under, for example, it will always find a way out within 24 hours. If it doesn't, fate itself will help him out. Literally deus ex machina.
Economist
Action economy, am I right? Players will sooner or later have too big of an advantage when fighting a lone traveling revenant. So let's fix that!
- The easiest solution is to give it 3 legendary actions every round. Making one Fist attack is a good start, as well as moving up to its movement speed. The third could be the Vengeful Glare or anything else cool you could come up with. If it's too good, make it cost 2 actions.
- Now this is a nasty trick that could get rid of your murderhobo problem if you have one, but I have to warn you—this is a force to be reckoned with. Every time your players kill an innocent creature (as defined above), it doesn't turn into a revenant. Instead, it's going to inevitably join the revenant, as an eternal companion. Its shadow. With each shadow, the revenant's actual shadow gets darker and darker, until it's just inky blackness. When the revenant finds the targets they seek revenge against, all of the shadows emerge and assist them in the fight. This is more than lethal, and could result not only in a TPK, but also at the end of the world due to the way shadows work, so... apply at your own caution.
Terrifying
"But Proph," I hear you say, "all this stuff is nice and all, but... it's just mechanics. It doesn't really make them scarier." Well then, let me introduce you to a renewed revenant description. Consider this something to describe.
Whenever the target of its vengeance looks in the direction in which the revenant is, they see the revenant's glowing eyes. These eyes can be seen regardless of distance, as long as the two are on the same plane of existence and the revenant is in the direction in which the target is looking. They are visible regardless of any obstacles in the way—trees, buildings, creatures, even your own eyelids.
Furthermore, whenever you would normally dream, you instead get a first-person view from the revenant's perspective. Whatever it's doing, you see it as if you were doing it. It's always on the move, and you are aware of it the more time you spend sleeping. For every 6 hours you sleep, the revenant comes roughly 40 miles closer (assuming we didn't use the speeding up rule above). Do you really need that long rest? Does your party even want you around if you keep getting attacked by this thing? How many days has it been? How many days until its one-year lifespan ends?
(Both of these I stole from the worldbuilding subreddit. I don't remember who wrote them or what discussion was the comment posted on, but if you are out there, please contact me now and I'll link your profile in this article!)
(Both of these I stole from the worldbuilding subreddit. I don't remember who wrote them or what discussion was the comment posted on, but if you are out there, please contact me now and I'll link your profile in this article!)
"Thirteenth day of Icemelt. Ever since I successfully assassinated my target and got attacked by that ugly thing, I've been on the run. Whenever I look back, I see the yellow glow, the same glow that its eyes radiated. I tried so many things, but no heroes want to help me. So I got rid of them. What's more, I don't have enough money or time to research a solution for this. I've started to sleep only every other night because of this thing. My paranoid mind dreams of its movement increasing in speed, as its inky black shadow follows it everywhere. Yesterday, I saw another yellow light on the horizon. They're next to each other, moving in unison. I did not kill anyone else though! Is it... its other eye? If you find this diary, know that this monster has murdered me!"
Thank you for reading, I hope I have provided you with some new inspiration, and I wish you all a nice day!
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