Villainous Mookbook: The Necrodancer

Howdy! I'm feeling kind of emotional as I write this. The final installment of my Villainous Cookbook. I'm kind of afraid, truth to be told. Can I ever start writing these articles again? Will they ever be of such high quality? What if my well of creativity has run dry completely?

Well, while I'll search for these answers, it's time to do this. While I was working out this one, I've come to realize that it's... actually resembling a boss fight from a videogame I really enjoy, Crypt of the Necrodancer. In order to honor this game, I decided to name this villain after its boss, the Necrodancer. The series has gone full circle, beginning just the way it ended... with a necromancer.

Preface

• My goal is to make an interesting villain using the player options found in the official and homebrew rules of D&D 5th edition.
• The goal is not to make a villain who deals the highest amount of damage. This is not the right place for that discussion.
• I will leave some details out to let the DMs adjust the villain to their preferences. Ability scores are one of them.
• To emulate character development, I will only make character builds at levels 4, 10, 16, and 20. Players should be at best equal to the villain's tier, optimally at a lower tier.
• Limitations breed creativity. But I will bend the rules if it makes the villain more interesting.
• If it seems overpowered, it could be because of rulebending (see the point above), or because I'm mixing homebrews that were not balanced with each other in mind.

The Necrodancer

"My pulse is beating like a drum, but my blood is running cold. I came here with a question and I'm going to find the answer."

― Cadence, Crypt of the Necrodancer

"You can love somebody without it being like that. You keep them a stranger, a stranger who's a friend."

― Truman Capote

Ingredients List

• Magnis race (Travelers' Homebrew Original)
• Bard 15: College of Whispers (Xanathar's Guide to Everything)
• Cleric 1: Civilization Domain (CaelReader Homebrew)
• Sorcerer 1: Imperial Birthright (CaelReader Homebrew)
• Warlock 3: Perfect Chord (CoFS:A)

Race

Since I haven't had the time to write out lore for this race in order to publish it properly, I'll write out the racial traits as part of this article. Consider it a sneak-peek into one of my possible future projects. The concept for this race is that it's an Alfallen race one could become during their life, based on idolizing another person for a long time. You are now an echo of what you used to be. When it comes to the original race, you can choose to go with anything. My personal bias says elf because then this could be a possible elvish impersonator.

Magnis Traits

Each magnis is unique, but they generally share these traits.

Ability Score Increase. Choose either Dexterity or Charisma. That ability score increases by two, while the other score increases by one.

Age. Magnis can live as long as others of their origin race.

Size. Your size is determined by your origin race.

Speed. Your speed is determined by your origin race.

Languages. Magnis are fluent in Common and in the language of their racial origin.

Booming Voice. You have a great amount of control over your voice. You can choose to make your voice up to three times as loud as normal requiring no action. Additionally, you can use your action or bonus action to throw your voice, making it seem like it originates from a point of your choice within 30 feet of you that you can see.

Thunder Adapted. You are immune to the deafened condition, and you gain resistance to thunder damage. If you would also gain this resistance from a class feature, your inner power awakens, granting you the ability to cast the thunderclap cantrip. Charisma is your spellcasting ability for this cantrip.

Yestermuse. You can use your bonus action to create an illusion of yourself. This illusion moves and produces the same sounds as you did last turn. Doing this will also recreate all of the illusions of yourself you've created using this feature in your previous turn.

Tier 1

First, we need to make them loud and annoying fast. We begin by investing three levels into warlock, and one level into the cleric. The warlock might seem fitting, considering it's a perfect chord, the most musically-themed warlock I know of, but you might wonder why do we need the civilization cleric. Let me resolve that first.

Bonus Proficiencies
(1st-level Civilization Domain feature)
At 1st level, you gain proficiency with martial weapons, as well as two tools of your choice. You also gain proficiency in one of the following skills of your choice: History, Investigation, or Persuasion.

Divine Consul
(1st-level Civilization Domain feature)
Starting at 1st level, you are able to sense the presence of civilization itself. By spending 1 minute in meditation, you can discern the direction, distance, and name of the nearest settlement within 100 miles. You also learn the name and title of the ruler of that settlement, as well as the name and title of their liege, if they have one. Additionally, you learn the majority race and culture, as well as the general size and description of the settlement, such as "port city" or "farming town".

Now, martial weapons are just a neat thing to have, and the tool proficiencies could be used for literally anything that's not a musical instrument. Extra skill is a nice thing that we could use, but the most important part is Divine Consul. If our Necrodancer ever gets lost in the wilderness, they can focus for one minute to find where the biggest nearby cities are. That means audience, and audience means potential undead servants.

Now then, from the warlock we'll want multiple things, so let's have a look at those. We're assuming Pact of the Tome here, by the way, but I won't talk much about spell choices in this article since I believe you guys can figure them out yourselves. For now, what we need a lot is thaumaturgy.

Seeker of the Sound
(1st-level Perfect Chord feature)
At 1st level, your heartbeat is tuned to the Perfect Chord. You gain proficiency in the Performance skill and with all musical instruments. You can use a musical instrument as a spellcasting focus for your warlock spells, and can play it in place of using a verbal spellcasting component.
When you cast a spell that has only a verbal and somatic component, you can choose to cast it as though it only had a verbal component.
When you cast a spell of 1st level or higher that only has a verbal component, including those modified by this feature, you gain temporary hit points equal to your Charisma modifier that last for one minute.

Composition of the Masters
Prerequisites: Perfect Chord patron, Pact of the Tome feature
You can ignore the effects of the silence spell and of magical effects that would produce a similar area of magical silence, enabling you to speak and cast spells normally. You also become immune to the deafened condition. 

Barred Mind
Whenever you make a Wisdom saving throw and succeed, your mind locks shut. If the same creature or effect forces you to make another Wisdom saving throw before the end of your next turn, that saving throw is made with advantage.

So what does this mean? We have an outspoken musician who can sing really loudly and play any instrument too. I think we could have them sing and play instruments instead of just playing an instrument, but whatever floats your boats. Onto the next Tier!

Tier 2

Six levels of bard. I mean, we did want them to be a necromancer too, right? May as well start getting to that. Now you might be thinking "what, are we gonna add animate dead to the bardic spell list? Of course not, silly! Bards get magical secrets. At... level 10. Well, be patient. We'll get there when the time is right. In the meantime, check out this neat feature!

Mantle of Whispers
(6th-level College of Whispers feature)
At 6th level, you gain the ability to adopt a humanoid's persona. When a humanoid dies within 30 feet of you, you can magically capture its shadow using your reaction. You retain this shadow until you use it or you finish a long rest.
You can use the shadow as an action. When you do so, it vanishes, magically transforming into a disguise that appears on you. You now look like the dead person, but healthy and alive. This disguise lasts for 1 hour or until you end it as a bonus action.
While you're in the disguise, you gain access to all information that the humanoid would freely share with a casual acquaintance. Such information includes general details on its background and personal life, but doesn't include secrets. The information is enough that you can pass yourself off as the person by drawing on its memories.
Another creature can see through this disguise by succeeding on a Wisdom (Insight) check contested by your Charisma (Deception) check. You gain a +5 bonus to your check.
Once you capture a shadow with this feature, you can't capture another one with it until you finish a short or long rest..

With this, our Necrodancer will be capable of impersonating people they get rid of, which is just absolutely lovely to have for infiltrating big cities and collecting bodies secretly. Let's get to Tier 3 right away!

Tier 3

Five levels of bard will get us the animate dead that we've wanted for so long. I'm pretty sure you've by now noticed what's been going on here. We get them expertise with Performance, which you should have picked up by now, they get proficiency in all musical instruments, they can make themselves three times as loud using thaumaturgy, and three times more thanks to Booming Voice from the Magnis race. We're making someone who's annoyingly loud. Who can always find themselves a place to perform. And who keeps gathering bodies while pretending to be this extraordinarily charming redheaded musician. Or was the hair brown? Who can tell.

Anyways, with that out of the way, let's add some juice to this with one level of sorcerer for this cool ability.

Commanding Voice
(1st-level Imperial Birthright feature)
Your bloodline has granted you a voice fit for a ruler, one that makes your enemies tremble and puts fire into the hearts of your allies. At 1st level, you gain proficiency in your choice of Intimidation, Performance, or Persuasion.

Additionally you learn the command spell, which counts as a sorcerer spell for you, and does not count against your number of spells known. You can cast command without expending a spell slot. Once you cast the spell in this way, you can't do so again until you finish a long rest, though you can still cast it normally using an available spell slot.

Also, whenever you cast a spell of 1st level or higher that has verbal components, you can grant temporary hitpoints equal to your Charisma modifier to a friendly creature within 30 feet of you, which last for 1 minute.

... what's that? Feats? Look, you can put there whatever you want, okay? Yes, I am taking this seriously, stop asking me silly questions and let me get to Tier 4 without looking like I'm rushing to some imaginary punchline.

Tier 4

Four levels of bard. Yep, it's that simple.

Shadow Lore
(17th-level Soulknife feature) 

At 14th level, you gain the ability to weave dark magic into your words and tap into a creature's deepest fears.

As an action, you magically whisper a phrase that only one creature of your choice within 30 feet of you can hear. The target must make a Wisdom saving throw against your spell save DC. It automatically succeeds if it doesn't share a language with you or if it can't hear you. On a successful saving throw, your whisper sounds like unintelligible mumbling and has no effect.

On a failed saving throw, the target is charmed by you for the next 8 hours or until you or your allies attack it, damage it, or force it to make a saving throw. It interprets the whispers as a description of its most mortifying secret. You gain no knowledge of this secret, but the target is convinced you know it.

The charmed creature obeys your commands for fear that you will reveal its secret. It won't risk its life for you or fight for you, unless it was already inclined to do so. It grants you favors and gifts it would offer to a close friend.

When the effect ends, the creature has no understanding of why it held you in such fear.

Once you use this feature, you can't use it again until you finish a long rest.

Oh wow, would you look at that! Now the bard can, uh... go into a city. And manipulate a person. To get them to lead people to the bard so that he could kill them secretly to convert them for his necromantic army or something.

Sigh.

Alright, no way to evade it anymore. It's time for... the Truth.

The Truth

That's right, all of this was just an elaborate Rick Roll!

Alright, now that the cat is out of the bag, it's time to tell the truth. This isn't the final Villainous Cookbook I'll ever write. In fact, I have the actual final article planned and in the works, I hope I'll be done with it by the end of April, but I can't promise it. Seeing how it's way more elaborate than a standard Villainous Cookbook, I feel like it would be fine if I published it by the end of May, or possibly later (but at that point even I would feel bad about delaying it so much). In the meantime, I have a bunch of article ideas that I hope I'll have time to publish too, either about Runehack or about random game-mastering advice. I even think I'm on my way towards breaking through my D&D burnout at last! Before that comes about though, I hope you've enjoyed reading my April Fools' article, and I wish you a nice day! :)

Divtech, Faith-Powered Technology

The other day, I've had a casual chat on the discord with Klaustrix and multiple other people about a magic system. He was looking for inspiration regarding divine magical technology, so we worked something out. I thought you might enjoy reading it, so here is my version of that.

This isn't related to Runehack, I could see it maybe growing into a world of its own though. I'll just have to feel inspired enough to develop this further.

The look of the future. LI's ABSTRACT - Cube Tiles, by Laticis Imagery 

Divtech

If you have some surface-level knowledge about quantum theory, you might have heard of superpositions, true randomness, and possibly some stuff to do with light. I don't know what exactly all of that is about, since I'm not a quantum physicist, but I can surely borrow some of it as a source of inspiration.

Constructing the most basic component of divtech is fairly common knowledge. It's a specific scheme of mirrors made out of a special material, that fairly randomly determines whether it reflects light, or lets it pass through it. All of this is enclosed within a cube, half of its neighboring sides is painted black (for the receivers), and the other half white (for the emitters), with the receivers/emitters in the center of each side. These components are called "faith cubes", and they are the most basic component of the divtech. How big are the faith cubes depends on how far the technology has developed - originally each cube could maybe be held in the palm of a hand on its own, but maybe as the divtech develops better and better methods of making smaller faith cubes, they could go below the size of 1 inch. I'm thinking they'd have magnets at their corners so that they could stick to one another, and so that you could only attach a receiver to an emitter instead of receiver/receiver or emitter/emitter.

You see, what people don't know is that the mirrors are not completely random. They work based on faith. Visualize it as each faith cube containing every possible arrangement of logical gates, that could be based on the three inputs output any possible combination of outputs determined by which mirrors do/don't let the light through. They could serve as simple carriers of signals, negating gates, AND gates, OR gates, and anything else, depending on what's needed.

In order to filter the device from outputting random noise, there are "focus filter" cubes between the faith cubes and output components. These function basically as an AND gate, giving output only when they're receiving an input from one direction, and at the same time when someone is focusing on the device.

How is such a device used and constructed? Well, you just stack as many of these cubes together as you can, and then focus on the device, thinking of the problem you wish to resolve, and you'll receive an answer if you believe you will get the answer. These devices are usually constructed by either studying the problem you're trying to solve a lot and meticulously putting together cubes in a perfect arrangement, testing it until you get the right answer, or by putting as many of these cubes together as possible and removing them bit by bit until you're left with only the necessary cubes for getting an answer. Once the proper structure is figured out, maybe one could make a more permanent version of the device by removing the sides of cubes that are attached to each other and welding the overall structure together instead of relying on magnets.

When it comes to the output devices, there could be literally anything. Rotors, light emitters, hard light 3D printers, and quite possibly more. Maybe you could even put the device into a chassis of sorts and have it move around on its own, however, you will it to move.

How the faith cube could in theory look on the inside. Just imagine the red lights to be centered on each side. Panopticum, by Michail Mavronas

Why Cubes?

No, it's not because of Minecraft. Long story short, it's the only way to perfectly "tile" a 3D space using one regular 3D. For more information on that, check out this article.

If you don't want to use cubes, truncated octahedrons can be used to tile the 3D space too, and each of them has 14 faces, which means it could receive 7 possible inputs and emit 7 possible outputs for each shape. I just made it cubes in this article, because it was the original shape, and it's the easiest one to imagine.

Divtech Art

Of course, there's some skill to constructing the divtech, so there's definitely some art based on it. Something that's not practical but a show of art or skill is flat divtech devices, with cubes arranged into a 2D shape. Another possibility is making screens that display anything one believes they should display using layers of faith cubes, filters, and display cubes.

Weaknesses

One important condition for the faith cubes to work is to keep them closed. If you know all of the facts, you can't have faith. Thus, each of the faith cubes is a closed system that can't be reverse-engineered when used in practice. That's what the biggest weakness of the divtech is - you will get your answer, but you must know how to formulate your question, and you can never use it to tell you how it gave you this answer. Kinda like asking your nerdy classmate for the homework solution without asking them for the process.

The next major factor is that these devices are rather inflexible. In our world, we use electricity that can be run through a flexible wire. But these cubes are not flexible. They must stick to each other in order to work. At least, until someone would create something that could bend the light. Maybe optic wires? Either way, the components themselves would be inflexible.

Of course, there's the factor of how much "special material" is there for the creation of faith cubes' mirrors. But material requirements are a part of all technology.

The greatest downside I can think of is the user's own bias. If you use a divtech calculator to, for example, "calculate 2+2 because I think it's 5", the device will find a way to calculate 2+2 in a way that results in 5. In order to use the divtech properly, one must clear their mind of any preconceptions of the possible answers. Afterall, these devices are black boxes, that will give you the answer you want.

---

Anyway, that's about it for today. Just a little neat idea I had that I wanted to share. I could maybe try to develop it further in the future, but for now I think it's cool enough to share.

Thank you for reading, and have a nice day!

Villainous Cookbook: The Psycho Killer

Howdy! I'm afraid this is one of my last articles when it comes to the villainous cookbook series. I can't make promises of more than one article in the future, but if I'll ever get more good ideas, I'm going to make sure to write it out here.

As for some other plans, my work on the foundations of Runehack's worldbuilding is nearly done, and I'm working out some interesting cities to describe. I've also been working on my own RPG for one of the Runehack's cities, and on getting back into DMing (yes, I'm still burned out). Honestly, depending on how much time and energy I'll have these next few weeks and what I'll feel like writing, the next article could be anything: my final planned villain, first of the Runehack's cities, a more finalized first version of the Runehack's RPG, possibly a theoretical article on non-violent RPGs, or an article on something completely unexpected.

But until that's going to happen, I really hope you will enjoy this next villain. Their focus is more towards efficient murder, but their aim is to do so with little to no trace.

Preface

• My goal is to make an interesting villain using the player options found in the official and homebrew rules of D&D 5th edition.
• The goal is not to make a villain who deals the highest amount of damage. This is not the right place for that discussion.
• I will leave some details out to let the DMs adjust the villain to their preferences. Ability scores are one of them.
• To emulate character development, I will only make character builds at levels 4, 10, 16, and 20. Players should be at best equal to the villain's tier, optimally at a lower tier.
• Limitations breed creativity. But I will bend the rules if it makes the villain more interesting.
• If it seems overpowered, it could be because of rulebending (see the point above), or because I'm mixing homebrews that were not balanced with each other in mind.

Let's get to the article itself!

The Psycho Killer

"If you’re gonna be two-faced at least make one of them pretty."

― Marilyn Monroe

"God has given you one face, and you make yourself another."

― William Shakespeare

Who would have thought, it's surprisingly difficult to find images of soulknife-wielding betrayers online, so I guess for this article I'm going with general pics about betrayal.
Love and War, by a user named qissus. (No link, because the original deviantart account has been deactivated)

Ingredients List

• Faceless race (Travelers' Homebrew)
• Rogue 17: Soulknife (Tasha's Cauldron of Everything)
  
• Warlock 3: Ashen Choker (Travelers' Homebrew)

Tier 1

Psycho Killer is a rather simple build that relies on killing people without leaving a trace. According to a video published by DnDBeyond, that's possible with the soulknife rogue, and while they're not Wizards of the Coast, I'll take their word for it and roll with it.

We'll begin this build with 3 levels of rogue, and 1 level of warlock for a good start. While the psionic abilities themselves are useful for the build, I don't want to bloat this article, so I'll focus only on the essentials to keep this short. Just know that if the killer needs to use psionic dice, they're a d6, increasing by one step in each Tier (up to d12 in Tier 4), and they have a number of these psionic dice equal to two times their proficiency bonus.

Psychic Blades
(3rd-level Soulknife feature)
You can manifest your psionic power as shimmering blades of psychic energy. Whenever you take the Attack action, you can manifest a psychic blade from your free hand and make the attack with that blade. This magic blade is a simple melee weapon with the finesse and thrown properties. It has a normal range of 60 feet and no long range, and on a hit, it deals psychic damage equal to 1d6 plus the ability modifier you used for the attack roll. The blade vanishes immediately after it hits or misses its target, and it leaves no mark on its target if it deals damage.
After you attack with the blade, you can make a melee or ranged weapon attack with a second psychic blade as a bonus action on the same turn, provided your other hand is free to create it. The damage die of this bonus attack is 1d4, instead of 1d6.

Cursed Gift of the Choker
(1st-level Ashen Choker feature)
At 1st level, fire and ashes are easier to control as you feel slight pressure around your neck. After you deal fire damage to a creature with a warlock spell of 1st level or higher, you can force the target creature to make a Constitution saving throw against your warlock spell save DC. On failure, its throat is burned and it can't speak or use Verbal component to cast spells. On success, it's immune to this effect for 24 hours. The burned throat lasts until the creature regains HP in some way, for example by using healing magic or by resting.

These, along with the shapeshifting and hex spell give us a foundation for our build. Fire-themed cantrips are optional, but not necessary since the Ashen Choker's gift requires a spell slot to work. We don't have everything we need just yet. As usual, right now we assume our villain to be still training, someplace in the background.

Tier 2

In order to make this work, we'll get the elements we need by investing 6 more levels into rogue.

Soul Blades
(9th-level Soulknife feature)
Your Psychic Blades are now an expression of your psi-suffused soul, giving you these powers that use your Psionic Energy dice:

[...] 

Psychic Teleportation. As a bonus action, you manifest one of your Psychic Blades, expend one Psionic Energy die and roll it, and throw the blade at an unoccupied space you can see, up to a number of feet away equal to 10 times the number rolled. You then teleport to that space, and the blade vanishes.

This time I'm making an exception and including the feats in the Tier descriptions since they're vital to making this build work. We should begin with the Metamagic Adept and Mark of the Perfect Chord feats. With the metamagic feat, I would recommend choosing Subtle Spell and Quickened Spell metamagics, but you can swap them for others if you feel like it.

Metamagic Adept
Prerequisites: Spellcasting or Pact Magic feature
You've learned how to exert your will on your spells to alter how they function:

• You learn two Metamagic options of your choice from the sorcerer class. You can use only one Metamagic option on a spell when you cast it, unless the option says otherwise. Whenever you reach a level that grants the Ability Score Improvement feature, you can replace one of these Metamagic options with another one from the sorcerer class.
• You gain 2 sorcery points to spend on Metamagic (these points are added to any sorcery points you have from another source but can be used only on Metamagic). You regain all spent sorcery points when you finish a long rest.

Mark of the Perfect Chord
You are blessed by the eternal song of the Perfect Chord, for it has marked your soul. You gain the following benefits:

• Whenever you cast a spell, you can choose a 5-foot cube within 30 feet of you. Until the start of your next turn, the area within that cube is magically silenced.
• You can cast shatter once without expending a spell slot. Charisma is your spellcasting ability for this spell. You can't do so again until you finish a short or long rest.

That's about it for Tier 2, at this point we have someone who's quite capable of murdering. But... we can do better than this.

Tier 3

Let's give them 6 more levels of rogue, which puts them at 15 levels of rogue and 1 level of warlock. Besides boosting their Sneak Attack damage, it also gives them space for two more feats. Mark of the Ashen Wolf and Elemental Adept feats will finally get the build right where we wanted it to be. Finally, an extra ability that will prove to be very useful is Psychic Veil.

Psychic Veil
(13th-level Soulknife feature)
You can weave a veil of psychic static to mask yourself. As an action, you can magically become invisible, along with anything you are wearing or carrying, for 1 hour or until you dismiss this effect (no action required). This invisibility ends early immediately after you deal damage to a creature or you force a creature to make a saving throw.
Once you use this feature, you can't do so again until you finish a long rest, unless you expend a Psionic Energy die to use this feature again.

Mark of the Ashen Wolf
You have been scarred by the power of the Ashen Wolf, and its fiery might burns within your soul. You gain the following benefits:

• Whenever you cast a spell that deals damage, you can choose to have it deal fire damage instead of the normal type.
• You can cast hunter's pace* once as a 2nd-level spell without expending a spell slot. Charisma is your spellcasting ability for this spell. You can't do so again until you finish a short or long rest.

Elemental Adept
Prerequisites: Spellcasting or Pact Magic feature
When you gain this feat, choose one of the following damage types: acid, cold, fire, lightning, or thunder.
Spells you cast ignore resistance to damage of the chosen type. In addition, when you roll damage for a spell you cast that deals damage of that type, you can treat any 1 on a damage die as a 2.
You can select this feat multiple times. Each time you do so, you must choose a different damage types.

All of this goes right into the strategy this killer follows during their kills. They begin by casting hex on their target subtly, choosing Wisdom as a score that is affected by the hex in order to make them more susceptible to the killer. With the Mark of the Perfect Chord, they can also choose to magically silence the space the target occupies. They approach, shapeshifted into someone who is familiar to the target. Upon striking with their psionic blades (optimally from the back so that the target can't say anything about the murder even if they were asked through a speak with dead spell or similar), the target takes extra damage from hex, damage of which is changed through the Mark of the Ashen Wolf into fire. Due to this, the Gift of the Ashen Choker activates, causing the target to make a Constitution saving throw. If they fail, they won't be able to speak until healed some way. Whether they're alive or unconscious, the assassin makes one extra attack with a bonus action, either to help the target fall unconscious, or to give them some failed death saves (assuming you track those).

If the target is unconscious at the start of the next round, the killer can turn invisible with their action, and with bonus action get a head start by teleporting away in the easiest way possible. If they're not unconscious yet, repeat the first round, maybe replacing the off-hand attack with a teleport.

Tier 4

Now the Killer only gets some extras that will help them out in doing their job. Their final levels are rogue 17 and warlock 3. Recommended spell choice would be earthbind, and possibly suggestion (plus one extra of your choice). Recommended invocations are Devil's Sight for seeing in the dark, and one other invocation of your choice. Final feat is Mark of the Storm Lord, most important bit of that being that after casting a spell as an action, you get the benefits of the Dash action, as well as 1/SR feather fall cast. Finally, there's a treat to top the cake off, the final psionic ability that could make the murder even easier.

Rend Mind
(17th-level Soulknife feature)
You can sweep your Psychic Blades directly through a creature's mind. When you use your Psychic Blades to deal Sneak Attack damage to a creature, you can force that target to make a Wisdom saving throw (DC equal to 8 + your proficiency bonus + your Dexterity modifier). If the save fails, the target is stunned for 1 minute. The stunned target can repeat the saving throw at the end of each of its turns, ending the effect on itself on a success.
Once you use this feature, you can't do so again until you finish a long rest, unless you expend three Psionic Energy dice to use it again.

That's everything we could wish for when it comes to the assassin. They can get in, they can make their way to the target, and disappear just as quickly. No wounds besides some burn marks inside of the throat are visible, and the crime is already pinned on someone else who's now extremely suspicious, even more so once the corpse is interrogated with magic.

Leave No Trace

If you think that's not good enough because they leave behind a corpse and could be revived, I can offer you a brief alternative: Black Flame Zealot. While most of the features of this subclass I don't find quite as appealing, there's one that stands out at 3rd level that I would wholeheartedly swap out for the telepathy: Burnt Offerings. Here's the feature, with some small changes I would personally make to it to make it fit the subclass:

Burnt Offerings
(3rd-level feature)
Starting at 3rd level, any creature killed by your flaming psychic blades turns to black ashes before it hits the ground. A suitable offering to your hungry god.

Consider the motivations of your assassin. Are they taking slow steps towards taking power over the lands, or to tactically get someone to move up in their ranks? Can they be hired, or do they kill only those who they perceive as unjust, or wrong in another way? How would they react when approached by a party of investigators? How are they when off-duty? Do they leave any clues to their identity behind, or is the burnt throat good enough?

Or you could do it the old fashioned way and leave the body behind. Like I said, only a small scorch mark inside of the throat would be a clue. No pools of blood
Gwent - Assassination, by Ala Kapustka

Well, this was difficult to write, but at the very least it's out! It feels so far like the most underwhelming of the villains, which is part of why I plan to end the series soon. Like I've said in the second of these articles, I've set the bar for myself too high and I can't really fulfill it every time. May the Psycho Killer serve you well, and I'm looking forward to writing the final installment of the Villainous Cookbook! In the meantime, whenever you read this or think of it, have a nice day!

Villainous Cookbook: The Truth Bringer

Howdy! I've decided that maybe I should write out the Villainous Cookbook in a bit more professional format, and I might rework some of my previous villains to work in this sort of framework too if possible. Instead of just talking about the features that they will feature, I think it might be better to list them out here for the context so that the DM doesn't need to look through multiple PDFs to know what the villain can actually do.

In this installment, we're going to create a character specialized in following the breadcrumbs of truth that the party leaves behind, putting them together, and presenting them to the public. Nothing should stop the truth, not even the death itself.

Preface

• My goal is to make an interesting villain using the player options found in the official and homebrew rules of D&D 5th edition.
• The goal is not to make a villain who deals the highest amount of damage. This is not the right place for that discussion.
• I will leave some details out to let the DMs adjust the villain to their preferences. Ability scores are one of them.
• To emulate character development, I will only make character builds at levels 4, 10, 16, and 20. Players should be at best equal to the villain's tier, optimally at a lower tier.
• Limitations breed creativity. But I will bend the rules if it makes the villain more interesting.
• If it seems overpowered, it could be because of rulebending (see the point above), or because I'm mixing homebrews that were not balanced with each other in mind.

Let's get to the article itself!

The Truth Bringer

"In a time of deceit telling the truth is a revolutionary act."

― George Orwell

"Tell the truth, or someone will tell it for you."

― Stephanie Klein

When the slander is your job, you could use a mask. And a way of coming back too while at it.
Faeries, by Taras Susak

Ingredients List

• Autumn Sylvicine race (Genuine Fantasy Press)
• Cleric 17: Secrets Domain (Yorviing's Homebrew)
  
• Druid 2: Circle of the Cloud (Manual of the Ancient Internet)
• Warlock 1: Gray Portrait (CoFS:A)

Tier 1

The Truth Bringer is a rather simple one to pull off. In Tier 1, we take 2 levels of druid, 1 level of warlock, and 1 level of cleric. With this, our character is already capable of "back-ups" that let them overcome death with little to no troubles. I'd personally give them an Acolyte background, or a different one that grants them free services.

Bound to the Portrait
(1st-level Gray Portrait feature)
At 1st level, you create and magically bind yourself to your Gray Portrait. The Gray Portrait is a Small or Medium object that weighs at least 15 pounds, has AC 15, hit points equal to four times your warlock level, resistance to all damage, and uses your statistics for saving throws. It can be repaired at a rate of 1 hit point per minute. You can choose to see through the Portrait’s eyes at any time and are always aware of its current state. If your portrait is destroyed, you tirelessly construct another during your next long rest, and you gain no benefit from that long rest.
If a spell has the sole effect of restoring you to life, such as revivify, the caster can cast the spell on the portrait as though it were your whole corpse without using material components, causing you to step forth from your portrait. However, if your portrait is destroyed and you are dead, you can’t be revived without the use of the wish spell.
You can use your action to cure yourself of any effect that is causing you to be poisoned, diseased, cursed, blinded, or deafened, sending the affliction to appear on your portrait. You can’t do this if it is destroyed.

Backed Up
(2nd-level Circle of the Cloud feature)
Also at 2nd level, if you are restored to life (but not undeath) by a spell such as raise dead, all of the equipment that you were wearing, carrying and holding at the moment of your death is teleported onto your person, to the exact same places where they were at the moment of your death.

With this combination of features, the bringer can be revived for free, even being brought back with all of their equipment. With the free services provided by the temple that they serve, say... the temple of your preferred god of truth, this means that they can be revived any number of times, as long as there's a priest capable of reviving who lives there, and they got a spell slot for the revival. Determining whether they're alive or in need of revival could be told possibly by the portrait itself, or some homebrew common magical item.

As a sylvicine, they gain the benefits of Fey Ancestry, which translates to an advantage on saving throws against being charmed, as well as the Candor.

Candor. You can choose to tell the truth even when an effect, spell, or other mental compulsion would cause you to speak a lie.

This curious ability allows them to spread the actual unaltered truth, regardless of the magic and effects that they're affected by. After checking with Genuine though, he said that this doesn't work when the target is affected by modify memory spell, and believes what they're saying is true. That's a shame, so let's hope their memories won't get overwritten in the future.

A small extra worth mentioning is the knowledge of Druidic language, as well as Anonymous feature: a Wild Shape alteration that lets the bringer take on a form of someone they have seen within last month, mostly for investigation purposes but also possibly for benefiting from their racial boons.

Anonymous
(2nd-level Circle of the Cloud feature)
Starting at 2nd level, you can use your action while you're not underground or indoors to expend a use of your Wild Shape feature and take on the appearance of another humanoid that you've seen within the last month as per the alter self spell. You gain a number of temporary hit points equal to two times your druid level, and all of the racial benefits of the target short of the ability score increases.
You can choose to envelop your equipment in illusory magic, altering it to fit your new form. Any such piece of illusory equipment holds up to physical inspection, provides no new mechanical benefits, and disappears if it is more than 5 feet away from you at the end of your turn.
Finally, if the creature you've transformed into is alive, it must succeed on a Wisdom saving throw. On a failure, you know the distance to and direction of this creature while transformed, unless it is on another plane of existence.
These benefits last until you lose all of the temporary hit points, until you use your Wild Shape again, or for a number of hours equal to half your druid level (rounded down).

I'm gonna skip the other details for now because the gist of this build isn't so important that I must mention them. However, do make sure to get Insight and Perception proficiencies one way or another.

As usual, in this phase the bringer is in the background, gathering details and training. No need to even bring them up in the game itself.

Tier 2

Seven levels of cleric get us several spells, as well as the Channel Divinity: Uncover and Clandestine Casting features. Uncover is rather useful for finding out stuff about the people who the bringer is interacting with at the moment, and Clandestine Casting is awesome for 

Channel Divinity: Uncover
(2nd-level Secrets Domain feature)
At 2nd level, you can use your Channel Divinity as an action to uncover one's deepest secrets. One creature of your choice that you can see within 30 feet of you must make a Charisma saving throw. A creature immune to being charmed automatically succeeds on its save. On a failed save, you magically learn one fact or secret about the target, choosing one of the following:

• Something that angers it.
• Something that frightens it.
• The target's greatest desire.
• The GM provides you with one secret about the target, or one that the target knows, related to a recent event that looms large in your mind.

Regardless of whether it succeeds or fails, the creature is unaware of your attempt to unveil one of its secrets. Once you learn one of the creature's secrets, or if the creature succeeds in its initial saving throw against this effect, you can't use this feature on that creature again until you finish a long rest.

Clandestine Casting
(6th-level Secrets Domain feature)
By 6th level, your skills in subtlety have advanced such that even your magic can be done in secret. When you cast a spell, you can use your bonus action to attempt to pass the casting off unnoticed. Make a Dexterity (Stealth) check opposed by the passive Wisdom (Perception) score of each creature that can see or hear you. A creature can use its reaction to instead oppose your check with its own Wisdom (Perception) check. Each creature you succeed against doesn't notice you performing the spell's components. If you are hidden from a creature and succeed against it, you remain hidden from it after casting the spell.

Not much else to say here other than spells, and I'd like to skip those for now.

Tier 3

Divine Intervention, and adding Wisdom modifier to cantrips' damage. Both of these are neat, but I won't bother you with details here, let's get to something more exciting.

Tier 4

We reach the capstone by hitting the 17th level of cleric. And let me tell you, this would make the truth bringer quite a foe for a party that would try to seek it or hide from it.

Sub Rosa
(17-th level Secrets Domain feature)
By 17th level, nothing is hidden from you, and you have mastered the art of secrecy. You gain truesight out to a range of 30 feet, and your thoughts can't be read by telepathy or other means, unless you allow it. You also can't be targeted by divination magic, perceived through magical scrying sensors, or detected by abilities that can sense creatures.

So in a nutshell, we get immunity to mind-reading, divination magic, ... and a 30 ft. range truesight. Well then, isn't that lovely! Truesight is actually something that's extremely useful for someone who seeks truths, and the rest is just perks from the job.

Spells, Feats, and the One Weakness

When it comes to the spells, what you're looking for are tools that make you better at finding information, spreading it, and avoiding conflict.

• Information gathering is easily done with detect magic, detect thoughts, zone of truth, suggestion, speak with dead, legend lore, commune, locate object and locate creature, tongues, hex, and possibly more.
• Spreading the information can be done with sending, skywrite, message, enthrall, and more.
• Avoid the conflict using spells like misty step or dimension door for escape, or calm emotions or sanctuary for stopping the attackers.

Some of these spells are not on the cleric's spell list, or level 1 druid/warlock spells, so you could make up other ways of getting them. Most importantly, though, remember that the bringer is here not to fight. They're here to find the truth, and to spread it.

How about the feats? Ritual Caster would be nice since the bringer has plenty of time for research. Observant is amazing for raising your passive Perception/Investigation through the roof, and so is Skill Expert. Some of the eldritch invocations like Eyes of the Rune Keeper or Beast Speech could be useful, so Eldritch Adept is on the table. Keen Mind could be a nice flavorful thing to have, while Linguist could be something that I'd even give out for free (after all, maybe they're learning languages during all that traveling they're doing while tracking their targets and searching for the dirt to dig up). For the last thing on our list, we might want to pick up one of the psionic feats from Tasha's Cauldron of Everything, but that depends on whether you want to get rid of their biggest weakness.

The Truth Bringer is rather good at searching for the facts and sharing them. But what if they are manipulated into remaining silent? What if their memories get changed? It might be a good idea to find some way to make them immune against being charmed. While you could make up a homebrew item, there's an official one that could work. Greater Silver Sword (found in Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes, page 89) requires attunement by a person with psionics. While they hold the sword, they gain immunity against being charmed, as well as advantage on all Intelligence, Wisdom, and Charisma saving throws. A little extra on top is a resistance to psychic damage. Then there's something with cutting silver cords and instakilling others, but let that be a surprise for the player who gains the sword later. For the purposes of just keeping this villain sensible, I'd say that it's fine if they keep the sword in its sheath and just hold its handle to gain the benefits, interrogations while pointing the blade at a person wouldn't come off as exactly friendly. Of course, this whole step is up to you. After all, maybe you do want your players to find out about this one weak spot that the villain has.

To Reveal the Facts

One of the people whom I secretly consider my GM mentors has taught me an important lesson. You see, the world of your game doesn't have to exist only when you're running it. It can develop and evolve on its own, even outside of players' sight. This is exactly what the truth bringer needs in order to function properly.

The truth bringer is someone who's ordered to find a target, and spread truthful rumors of their wrongdoings. Whether it's a measly group of adventurers, a priest of opposing faith, a revolutionary group, an inventor who wants to change the world for the better, an artist who's nasty to others, or even a king himself, this person will search for any clues as to what bad things they could have done, and announce them publicly to everyone, possibly even while pretending to be that person if they wish to go that far.

One of the first things you should consider when involving the truth bringer in your world is: When and where do they start with their search? They'll try their best to follow the players' footsteps, learning about them more information and filtering it to paint the worst picture of them wherever they go. Consider how fast they could be. Surely they could afford a mount of some kind if the players have one. When they lose track of the players, maybe they could use one of their information-gathering spells to seek them. Along the way, they'll seed the nasty facts about the party, thus turning the people there against the players if they ever decide to come back.

Why are they doing this? Is it their faith telling them that truth is the only way and that people should be punished for sins they do not apologize for? Does their religious order pick their targets, their deity, or do they choose one themselves? What would it take for the bringer to stop following the players? Death doesn't stop them, quite contrary—if the players dare to kill the truth bringer while they're surrounded by people, this will only prove them right and paint the players as bad people who kill people they find unpleasant.

Chances are that the truth bringer isn't all that interested in moral justice either. Maybe they just have someone who's an actual enemy of the party who wished to smear their name by a professional.
Gleaming Regalia, by Iain McCaig

I hope you've enjoyed this installment of the Villainous Cookbook, I've had a lot of fun formulating it over the months and it was nice to see the concept evolve over time. I wish you a nice day!

Rule of Dice

Here's a quick little post to talk about my personal rule for all of the dice-using RPGs I've GMed so far, that I have developed over years through trial and error:

Rule of Dice: If it's impossible or guaranteed in the available time, you shouldn't have to roll for it.

Let's break down what this means:

• If what a character is trying to do is impossible, they shouldn't even get to roll.
• If a character would definitely succeed in something, they don't even have to roll.
• If it's only a question of rolling high enough and there's nothing stopping the character from rolling over and over again, they get to succeed automatically.
• "[...], you shouldn't have to roll for it." This is the most important bit to me. It means that the DM shouldn't just have the player roll their die pointlessly if they can't succeed, or can't fail. Because if they roll a 20, and they fail anyway, that sucks. I personally as a DM communicate this to my players when it's relevant, for example "You don't need to roll the die to try to kick the troll to the moon, you automatically fail because I know your bonus to the roll is too low" (of course, not this verbose every time it occurs). If a player really insists on rolling, well then they can go ahead, but they already know my answer without even involving a die.

What does this rule do:

• Removes unneeded die rolls, saving time.
• Removes some cases of unfulfilled expectations.
• Keeps the game a little more grounded.

D&D Role play crit fail 20, by Blanca Vidal

At the end of the day though, you should play the game how you want. If your table likes moments like when a dwarf rolling down a hill rolls a natural 20 multiple times in a row and begins to fly against all known laws of aviation, or you all enjoy the sound of math rocks going click-clack (I know I like the sound), then I say go for it! I'm just here to formulate this into a proper rule to help anyone who was searching for it.

Whether you agree or disagree, I hope you'll have a good day! :)

Runehack: World Primer

I'm afraid I'm burned out on tabletop RPGs in general at the moment. I've tried multiple things, but nothing really satisfies me at the moment. That's why I think I'll change the pace a little bit for the near future: I'll try to keep up the Villainous Cookbooks and maybe work on one other RPG idea I had, but at the same time, I've decided I'll write up further details on my setting of Runehack. If it sounds familiar, that's because more than a year ago, I've made the first concept of it public by writing an article about it. It's time for me to start combing through my ideas and making a more unified image of that world.

Font name: Black and White

Premise

I should begin with a starting premise of this setting for a clear vision of what I go for.

Runehack is a fantasy cyberpunk/post-cyberpunk world filled with technology, city-states, and massive monsters. What was originally a classical fantasy world has been one day invaded by the Apex Predators — massive monstrosities with an unknown origin. Due to the mortal threats outside, the civilizations were forced to create walled-off city-states, and to invent solutions for their problems using the power of runes. Centuries later, they came up with intricate rune-powered mechanisms that allow them to communicate, travel, and do many other things. The two richest corporations have bought small companies, big companies, and eventually even the whole city-states. Only a few independent kingdoms remain, and it's only the kingdoms that have a resource that lets them generate enough income to be able to refuse being bought. But a new problem is brewing out of the public eye: great evils are making their way into the world, bestowing people with magic that works mysteriously without runes.

 

Possible and Unknown

Due to the runes powering the world, it's worth listing things they're capable of. I'll add to this list the one made-up ore present in this world.

• Detection: detecting inputs perceivable by humanoid senses* (and detecting the state of other detection runes),
• Illusions: producing illusory sensations perceivable by humanoid senses*, either on an individual basis or everyone and everything equally,
• Telekinesis: moving matter,
• Encryption: concealing information from anyone who hasn't read, heard, or spoken the password,
• and volerite, an ore that's not powered or related in any way to runes, and it's known for its property of falling upwards.

* The humanoid senses are the following: sight, hearing, smell and taste, temperature, touch, and time. Smell and taste, due to how interconnected they are, are treated as one and the same within this system. Time is at the moment known only for the purposes of detection.

What's been made using the above principles:

• Runebooks and runecards, which are basically computers and smartphones respectively, except the interfaces are illusory and no extra hardware is necessary. Runecards have smaller memory and slightly worse components. One doesn't even need to interact with it by opening or holding it, since the illusion of an interface is not restricted in any way to the surface of the device, which is why it usually surrounds the person. They can be controlled to an extent with gestures and voice commands too.
• Volerite vehicles. Friction is a mess that slows things down, so the engineers have figured out a way to make vehicles that are not restricted to moving on the ground. In combination with the telekinesis runes, the vehicle can keep a constant altitude up to a certain carrying capacity, and within those boundaries, it can also move up and down, as well as be driven like a regular vehicle. However, riding too high up without a proper license is considered a crime in most cities.
• Mistweb and wireless communication. Pretty much the internet of the world thanks to the fact that an illusion from one rune could be detected by another, and there's virtually no maximum distance to them. The domain names are stored within the Tower present in each city.
• Runebots. A fully mechanical humanoid that's one of the races present in the world. Some of them barely register as sentient, others are fully self-aware. The exact process in which they have been created as they are is unknown to most.
• Nexus. Pretty much the default virtual reality within the world. 

What's not widely known but possible:

• Electric machinery. The people of this world are aware of the bolts of lightning, and roughly how they work, but they never saw the need to develop the technology based on them.
• Mind-reading. Runes that detect touch can detect electricity, and since the brain sends electrical signals around, someone who develops algorithms for learning how to understand humanoid thoughts could in fact read minds when calibrated.
• Time illusions. The biggest issue with the time illusions is that they share little similarity to the time detection runes and that they only change how you perceive time. Unless you employ the use of telekinetic runes, you would also move slower, think slower, etc. There is a way to speed up your body to apparently not change in relation to the illusion of slower time you're experiencing, but it will put a huge strain on your muscles and mind, likely causing harm.
• Eldritch magic. One example of the power provided by the great evils from beyond this world is shapeshifting. One would suspect it's an illusion, but it's actual reality. Even after the shapeshifter dies, the new form persists, and it holds up to any physical inspections in any regard other than the brain. Any other kinds of magic are for now not fully defined, so I'll keep them to myself.
• Runetech implants. Due to the electricity and mind-reading being largely unknown, any implants at the moment would have to be controlled with voice commands, gestures, or different means, being thus rather impractical. Once the mind-reading technology would get good enough though, the biotechnological revolution could begin.

The races of humanoids present in this world are dwarf, elf, fairy, goblin, human, orc, and previously mentioned inorganic runebot. I'll be honest, at the moment I don't know how many differences will there be between these races when it comes to their biology, with the exception of fairy (minuscule winged humanoid) and runebot for obvious reasons.

So, what do I need to do next? Before I start rewriting my novel, I should figure out some more details of the world itself. At the moment, I don't have a world map. I only have a couple of city-state names, the megacorporations, some smaller factions present in one way or another in the city-states, I've got some inventions and a bigger threat that comes from outside the world. I think it would be best to write out stuff I make up here on my blog as I keep on going, and once I think I've dealt with all of the shortcomings of Runehack, I can rewrite the draft, and possibly start my search for a publisher.

I hope you've enjoyed reading all of this, and that you find Runehack interesting. Thank you, and I wish you a very nice day!

Villainous Cookbook: The Dreamfiend Master

Howdy! Cults are a big part of D&D's lore, which is why I've tried my hand at making an ideal cult leader in the fantasy context for today's article. It's actually one of the earlier concepts for villains, conceived roughly around the same time as the Superb Exemplar. One big thing that I wanted to wait with this one for, though, was Tasha's Cauldron of Everything, an exciting new sourcebook you've surely heard of. I don't really use it too much in this build in particular, but one never knows how much stuff can be found in it. I can tell already that TCE has created at least two of my next builds, and changed up some stuff too. Let's see where this build goes!

Also, while at it, I decided to shorten the Preface section to raise the chances of people reading it.

Preface

• My goal is to make an interesting villain using the player options found in the official rules of D&D 5th edition, oftentimes also using homebrew options.
• The goal is not to make a villain who deals the highest amount of damage. This is not the right place for that discussion.
• I will leave some details out to let the DMs adjust the villain to their preferences. Ability scores are one of them.
• To emulate character development, I will only make character builds at levels 4, 10, 16, and 20. Players should be at best equal to the villain's tier, optimally at a lower tier.
• Limitations breed creativity. But I will bend the rules if it makes the villain more interesting.
• If it seems overpowered, it could be because of rulebending (see the point above), or because I'm mixing homebrews that were not balanced with each other in mind.

Great, let's get into it!

The Dreamfiend Master

“There are many who don't wish to sleep for fear of nightmares. Sadly, there are many who don't wish to wake for the same fear.”

― Richelle Goodrich, Dandelions: The Disappearance of Annabelle Fancher

Fun fact: You can't kill a nightmare.
Nightmare, by nakanoart

Ingredients List

• Scourge Aasimar race (Volo's Guide to Monsters)
• Bard 18: College of Glamour (Xanathar's Guide to Everything)
• Cleric 2: Secrets Domain (Yorviing's Homebrew)
  

Tier 1

The beginning of this one is rather simple since at the moment they can't do things we really want them to do. The aasimar should be flavored as a good one, at least until the transformation happens, which should only happen when they get desperate, or overly confident they can't be found out. One of our levels goes into the cleric, choosing the Secrets domain. With this domain, we get two extra skills to start with, as well as an ability to detect hidden creatures, concealed objects, and secret codes or messages, at least as long as the master is not blinded or deafened. Extra nice is the fact that they get disguise self and illusory script as automatically prepared. Another very useful thing for us is Wisdom and Charisma saving throw proficiencies. Of course, assume that the spellcasting ability for the cleric is Charisma instead of Wisdom within this build to get the maximum usage out of your stats.

The other three levels will go into bard, giving us one extra skill proficiency, ability to boost other people's stats, roll well with all skills the master is not proficient in, and of course spells, as well as the first features of the Glamorous bard. Enthralling Performance could be reflavored as giving an inspiring speech regarding putting a stop to the Dreamfiend, at least once it actually comes into the existence. Mantle of Inspiration is ideal for motivating your followers into action.

Sidenote: While we're on the topic of cleric and Secrets, let's allow them to cast all of their spells, both cleric and bardic ones, with the divine symbol. If you choose to play them as a follower of some deity, the deity should be something neutral that's both about secrets, but also about protecting others, justice, or healing in general. You could also have them worship no deity, and instead flavor them as someone wholeheartedly dedicated to stopping the Dreamfiend. At least, once it shows up. But the point is: casting with a divine symbol instead of a musical instrument will make them look more serious, and also more legitimate to the players. They won't guess that this person is a villain to be made.

As always, assume the Master will stay in the background, for now, gathering information and potential targets to take down, as well as their possible body parts, hairs, and other things that could assist in the spellcasting.

Tier 2

Time to bring in the main subject of this build, but not before another sweet treat. With six levels of bard, the master Mantle of Majesty. With this ability, the master can cast command as a bonus action for 10 turns in a row, once per long rest. This is awesome, especially if they had some roguish follower that they could charm in order to command them to Attack every turn while threatened to effectively double their Sneak Attack.

Now then, time for the Dreamfiend! Some of you might have figured this out already, but I'll begin with a small description just to cue the rest in. Dreamfiend is a monster that visits the poor innocent people, and occasionally even powerful not-so-innocent people, in their nightmares. It terrorizes them for a lengthy time, and can't really be tracked or fought off. Strangely, it will not visit elves, or other creatures that don't dream, such as the kalashtar.

In order to work properly, the Dreamfiend Master needs to choose the spell dream. Every night, while somewhere private (rope trick magical secret maybe?), the master will cast this spell to terrorize their target of choice. Due to the way the Dreamfiend works, they won't gain the benefits of a long rest from this sleep. And if a creature goes too long without gaining these benefits, they'll gain one level of exhaustion. If this doesn't stop, the Dreamfiend will invade their dreams over and over, forcing them to slowly wither until dead, unless... it joins the Dreamfiend Master's cult.

I leave it up to you how this organization presents itself to others. Personally, however, I would try to make it into a positive society. Not one of fear and hopelessness despite the fact Dreamfiend literally can't be killed. Instead, it's a society that seeks justice in its defeat, helps those who need help (possibly with the master using their healing hands too), and learning as much as they can about the Dreamfiend.

This might also be a good time to consider picking up nondetection. The longer you'll do this, the more likely you are to draw attention, so you better be ready to hide.

Tier 3

Alright! Time to get our last level of cleric, and five more levels of bard. Doing this lets us pick up the Unbreakable Majesty, a powerful defensive ability that forces creatures who want to attack you to make a Charisma saving throw. On a failure, it must attack someone else, on a success, it gets to make an attack, but also has disadvantage on the next saving throw against a spell the master casts. It lasts only for one minute though and can be used once per short rest, so understandably it's only for times of emergency.

With the one level of cleric, we get our Channel Divinity. With a failed Charisma saving throw, it lets you learn about one thing that angers or frightens the creature, one thing it wants, or one secret of its that's relevant to you in some way. It doesn't work on creatures immune to being charmed, but luckily the creature won't be aware of it regardless of whether it fails or succeeds on the save.

Tier 4

Four more levels of bard let us pick up further spells and magical secrets, and increases the size of the master's bardic inspiration to its maximum size. Just to quickly list some spells that could be interesting, Mordenkainen's magnificent mansion could provide a hiding place, as well as food for up to one hundred people, letting you have a massive cult (even better considering the fact that since this is multiclass of fullcasters, the master can cast this spell even twice per day), project image keeps a distance between the master and any pesky adventurers, and resurrection means the party might hesitate about suspecting the Dreamfiend Master, even better if they're willing to provide them for a small fee, as long as they also provide the necessary material component. Glibness is an essential spell for anyone who wants to make a cult in the world of D&D, and it's also brutally useful within combat since it lets the master basically automatically succeed on ability checks as part of the counterspell. Mind blank makes them seem less suspicious, demiplane makes an actual secret hideout, and most of the 9th level spells speak for themselves.

Feats

The master gets to pick two feats during Tier 2, one feat during Tier 3, and one feat during Tier 4. One of the key things to consider is how fast can they react in combat. Plenty of their options require the master to start early, so I'd recommend picking up Alert feat. Eldritch and Metamagic Adept are both very nice choices that you might want to consider picking up since they provide plenty of options I don't even feel like describing here. Magic Initiate is free spells, Fey Touched means free escape button, and Inspiring Leader is cool for anyone with followers. Lucky is self-explanatory, and finally, Telekinetic and Telepathic are both neat, but not necessary.

The Power of the Cult

The Dreamfiend Master, unlike any of the previous villains, is explicitly stated to be a type that gathers the following. Managing those is simple enough really, just make them cultists, but I wanted to give one more suggestion. What if those who reach a high enough rank of power could be bestowed a supernatural ability by the Master without even knowing? While this isn't anything a player by default could achieve, I'm including it as a homebrew extra that would add extra juice and danger to the master.

Dreamfiend Proxy (Recharges after a Long Rest). Whenever this creature begins a long rest, it casts the dream spell. When cast this way, the spell targets one creature that doesn't belong to the cult that this creature dislikes the most, the messenger can only appear monstrous, and it can't converse with the target. The spell uses the Dreamfiend Master's spell attack bonus and save DC, and the spell treats the creature who released it as the caster for all other purposes.

Powerful? Absolutely. But bear in mind this is not something to be handed just to anyone who asks for it, this is the kind of power reserved only for the most loyal. Neither is this something that the follower knows about.

The more the following of this organization grows, the more influence it can hold over the world. This boon just makes it easier.

"Every face you can see in your dreams is the face of someone you've seen before. Anyone who shows their face to others puts them to risk. Please, join us if you wish to stop the Dreamfiend and save lives."
Endless Legend provides a couple artworks for a more unsettling depiction of the cultists that I just had to show here. Also, I swear this being a metaphor for the virus is unintentional. This image and an alternative depiction was just an afterthought.
Cultists Quest step1 1, by A-u-R-e-L

Thank you for reading my article about another villain, as well as their cult. I hope you've enjoyed it, that this was inspiring, and I wish you a nice day!

Roamer, v1.0

 Howdy! Yesterday I posted my first homebrew of 2021, and I almost forgot to repost it here, so... time to fix that!

Roamer is my attempt at a biker artificer that's part of my updated version of Manual of the Ancient Internet. The idea for this subclass started as a joke, where I figured that since artificers can use artisan tools for spellcasting, maybe they could also use vehicles. While the logic of it is silly, more and more I saw people demanding it, so I tried to patch over any remaining flaws, and posted it to Reddit. Not 24 hours have passed, and the post has become my highest rated homebrew posted to Reddit. I did not expect this kind of response at all, so I'm thankful to everyone who liked the first iteration. That being said, the iteration was far from perfect.

So the big question is, how to improve this? Sadly, I'm afraid I'll have to overhaul most of it.

• I'll have to swap out phantom steed, sleet storm, and Rary's telepathic bond for different spells. Hopefully, I'll find something more fitting for a biker theme.
• It seems that it might be for the best to convert the drifter from an object into a creature. It would work much better with mounted combat, it would probably also be easier to target with spells and effects, and hey maybe I could even fit an ability to talk in there so that any potential dreams of a Knight Rider could be realized easier.
• One possibility would be to merge Roadkill into Drifter with toned down damage, and then come up with something new for Roadkill. I do have some ideas, but I'll see.
• The drifter needs to be faster than an average human that takes the Dash action.

I'll see when I get to fix it. It's playable at the moment, just not really compatible with the mounted combat and not as exciting as other artificer subclasses due to a rather underwhelming 3rd level. Before I really get to fixing it, I'll need to finish my work on the other content to be included in the Manual of the Ancient Internet:

• Artificer Specialization: Roamer
• Bardic College: ???
• Martial Archetype: Virtual Guardian
• Iconic Archetype: ???
• Monastic Tradition: Way of the Hand and Eye
• Sacred Oath: ???
• Ranger Archetype: ???
• Otherworldly Patron: ???
• and finally, updated rules for creation and piloting of your own mecha.

Some of these names I'll keep to myself for now, since they're not certain just yet, and a bit of a surprise for now. I have also considered writing up a section on custom spells, as well as feats and maybe extra lore, possibly some monsters, but I don't think I have enough content to write up with those in mind just yet so don't expect them to show up in the next version.

Until then, I should get back to working on the Villainous Cookbook. Thank you for reading, and have a nice day!