Runehack: New Prista

After several weeks of chipping away inbetween my daily job, I think it's finally ready for publishing. I'm glad that it's now finally ready to be shown. In this series, I wish to show off the various cities of Runehack. I want to write about strange cities that are within this world, mainly because most of the cities all feel kind of same. However, it's hard to describe what's outside of the norm without describing the norm every now and then, which is why I'm starting with the first city I developed within this world: New Prista. While this city is exceptional in some ways, it's close enough to be a good start to ease you into this world before I get to my stranger city ideas. It's the setting of the story I wrote back in November (and haven't rewritten yet), so it could also help out by introducing the potential readers to the city generally, as well as help me out in solidifying it for the purposes of the story. I'll make the next city weirder.

This is likely not the final version of the article. I have yet to settle on naming schemes for my in-world characters, which is why there are so few named characters in the article. After my first attempt at rewriting the initial story, I'll likely find out what parts of this article need updates.

New Prista

After the discovery of a new continent, some of the Old World's people wished for a fresh start. A group of settlers has set sail from their old home in Prista Vista and started their new lives on the coast of the unknown world. To honor their old home beyond the horizon, they've named this place New Prista Vista, which eventually evolved into just New Prista.

Geography

New Prista is a large coastal city surrounded by deciduous forests and a sea, partially built on a hill littered with caverns. Some of it is built on a peninsula, with a gateway that used to protect the inner port from the outside invaders before the seaborne districts were built. Like any city, New Prista expands at all times. Unlike other cities, however, it expanded itself out into the sea as well as the land.

Beyond the standard production of vegetables and tending to chicken and sheeplets, New Prista is known for its fishing industry, retrieval, and production of seaweed and pearls, and production of fruit and wood, both through the expansion of the city, but also with multiple districts that farm trees. A large system of interconnected mines created underneath the city's hill provides materials used for some of the construction of its walls and buildings, some amber for the drawing of runes, and silver for lining the newly made walls.

History

Although the city has been founded 180 years before the era of monsters began, evidence of archeological research suggests that there was a small tribe of elves populating its general vicinity almost two thousand years before its discovery. By the time the settlers from Prista Vista arrived, the ruins have long been buried deep underground, only found well over a century later.

After the discovery of the vast amber, volerite, and silver sources underground, the trend of runemancy began, and people have become obsessed with experimentation using the runes. Multiple companies have started at this time, and branched into other cities too, including New Prista.

When the runic revolution came about, the city has developed a way of creating new walls through an elaborate system, which is even to this day used in expanding the city. Years after Nexuspace acquired New Prista and built the first two new districts, the first groups of Loyalists started to emerge, challenging the corporate rulers of the city due to their mistrust about the way they create the new laws. After an unsuccessful attempt at overthrowing them, many of the original Loyalists have left the city on stolen hovertrains, traveling away to an unknown independent kingdom.

The Acumen have emerged within the city once the Mistweb was developed and commonly used by people all over the world. Unknown to the public, they've found some of the ancient elven ruins buried underneath the city, and use them as a private space for organizing their operations.

Structure

New Prista is divided into 11 main districts, 3 of which are built completely on top of the sea. While districts are traditionally divided by the walls that were former borders of the city-state before expansion, these walls are actively removed in order to be reused for the new expansion.

Fort district is the oldest district, where the old fortress from the era before the monsters was built. This castle-like building surrounds the houses of the Nexuspace's president, ministers, and their families reside. It borders the Miner, North, Portside, Central, and Upper West districts.

Central district used to be the city built outside of the fortress, but within the old city walls along with the Upper West district. It's where the majority of the businesses are located in the present, along with some residential areas. Its neighbors are Fort, Portside, Groven, Red Street, and the Upper West district.

North district was another district that used to be part of the original city before it expanded, though its purpose was more aimed at farming rather than as a residential area. Nowadays, plenty of vertical farms, as well as some ranches, are found here. It borders the Miner, Fort, and Portside districts.

Upper West district is one of the two districts that have access to the mines, and thus also houses many craftsmen, factories, and businesses. Due to being built on the hill, most of its streets are sloped, earning the district half of its name. Its neighbor, Miner district, is relatively flat in comparison and holds the highest population of goblins out of the whole city, but it's very similar otherwise. Both of the districts border the Fort and Central districts, but while Miner district is located next to the North district, Upper West is connected to the Red Street district.

Portside district is the longest district of the city, connecting the waterborne districts to the landlocked parts of the city. The entirety of the inner port, as well as the outer shore of the city, are considered parts of this district, despite some of it historically belonging to the Fort district. The bordering districts are Groven, Central, Fort, North, Fisher, and Backsalt district.

Fisher district, Backsalt district, and Deep Blue district are interconnected districts that float entirely on top of the water, built on underwater pillars. Most of it is dedicated to residential areas and small businesses of people, who specialize in fishing and gathering resources from the sea below. Portside is the only district that borders these, with the exception of the Deep Blue district.

Red Street district is named after the fact, that it used to be a shantytown outside of the city walls when the era of monsters began. Since not everyone made it within the walled-off city when the era started, the many casualties of the terrible times are forever remembered by those who call it their home nowadays. A commonly shared stereotype within New Prista about these people is that they're either dwarves, orcs, or prone to violence. The rumor is based on the fact, that plenty of butchers, hunters, and soldiers of the New Prista are likely to have their roots in this region. Its neighboring districts are Upper West, Central, and Groven district.

Groven district is the newest district within the city that used to be a forest, but nowadays it's a district where many of the plant farms are, as well as a few of the residences. Curiously, it contains within it the closest place to a "fairytown" that the New Prista has, along with a fairly high population of elves. It neighbors the Red Street, Central, and Portside districts.

Culture

The majority of the population in New Prista is composed of humans and elves, and the least represented race within the city is goblins. New Prista's level of technology is on the same level as most of the known cities connected to the Mistweb. Most of the population within the city doesn't practice any religions, and out of the rest majority practices the Žofaism (ž pronounced as zh), with about 5% of people actively scorning the Pantheon of Misfortune.

When it comes to the common political beliefs within the New Prista, it's considered to be a globalist nation that supports the ideals of progress, security, and equality of opportunity. Besides the Nexuspace, the city is also populated with a small branch of Acumen and a significant amount of Loyalists. The Acumen is a secretive but known group attempting to expose the truth about Nexuspace and Lifestock. While their manners of operating range from morally dubious to outright illegal, their goal is a genuine desire for transparency. The Loyalists wish to return the New Prista, as well as all other city-states, back to the monarchies they once were by getting rid of the influence of corporations. Their biggest ideal is returning back from progress and security to traditions and freedom that the citizens of kingdoms once had, at least in comparison to the present day.

The city has sister locations for several of the companies owned by Nexuspace. Nexuspace itself actually began with the production of VR headrings, which have grown in popularity enough to give them enough capital for acquiring other companies that nowadays belong to them. Tomorrowkind is a prominent company that was actually based in New Prista. It was initially focused on the runebots and eventually pivoted to drones. OWR (Old World Reports) is a news station that's also owned by Nexuspace and has one of its branches in New Prista. Nexuspace hoped to create a branch of Volemotors within New Prista, a company specializing in the production of vehicles, but this plan was fruitless due to wrong timing in relation to the events that were occurring within the city back then. The city also has sister locations of TAI (Therefore A.I.) and Otherworld, both of which are at the current time owned by Lifestock, yet they helped companies owned by Nexuspace in growing. TAI is a company that at first focused on the development of machine learning, which eventually evolved into the creation of the many kinds of commercially used artificial intelligence. Otherworld is a company that is responsible for augmented reality, and the Mistweb of things—an elaborate system for controlling common runetech appliances through the Mistweb using apps installed on the runecards. Despite their location being within the territory of their competitors, Otherworld and TAI are both allowed to continue their activity within New Prista due to their past contributions to its success. Beyond these, smaller companies are located in New Prista too, though those are not worth mentioning.

The two most unique customs of New Prista are the Winter Solstice Hymn and The Pearlhunt. After midnight of the longest night of the year, regardless of whether it did or didn't snow this year, the people gather on the largest squares in New Prista to celebrate the past year and expect the first signs of a new one. They usually feast on mutton served in various easy-to-hold forms, and drink hot fruit tea, while catching up with people they meet after a long time on the square by chance. Roughly thirty minutes before the first sunrise after the winter solstice, the people begin to sign the hymns that supposedly encouraged the Sun to grace the city for a longer time with its light. While these days nobody believes in this myth, the overall experience is considered to be worth doing just for its own sake.

Celebration of The Pearlhunt starts precisely three weeks after the summer solstice, and it lasts for one week. For every day of this week, people are encouraged to come to the Fisher and Backsalt districts wearing their swimwear and possibly some extra clothes, in order to participate in the yearly pearlhunt. The goal is to swim deep underneath the waters within the walls and to find as many pearls as possible before running out of breath. Ever since the unfortunate incident 21 years ago, runebots are prohibited from participating in the competition due to the fact that they do not breathe. Every day ends by announcing the winner—a person that found the highest number of pearls while not passing out—and as a prize, the first four places get to keep one pearl of their choice. Any participant gets a symbolic monetary sum for every pearl they found, which is doubled if they managed to get back to the surface without passing out. The celebration started as a showcase of one's determination, but also awareness of their limits.

Subculture Showcase: Corporate Lifestyle

Note: This section is not meant to imply that the presented subculture is in any way unique to or most represented within this city. It is just a subculture I chose to present because it felt most thematically fitting and it wasn't introduced yet.

Examples of regular formalwear worn mainly by the staff of the corporations, but also anyone who wishes to appear official. Variations do exist.
Art kindly provided by Arell, a friend of mine.

Art Curiosities: Due to baldness, the depicted man decided to brandish an illusory hairstyle. The screen in front of the woman is how the interface of runecards and most other runetech appears. Those who wish to draw attention or just appear exotic wear illusory glasses that are actually just an image anyone but them can see.

Those who live a Corporate Lifestyle work for the megacorporations that rule most of the cities in the world. One of the stereotypical views on them is that they're mindless drones who serve as the cogs for world-spanning machines, but the truth is that their productivity is the reason for them earning and keeping their job. Perseverance, adaptability, and reliability are the characteristics held above all others by the corporate staff. Spending large amounts of time working, sometimes even working overtime, earns these employees enough money to live a much higher class life in their free time.

The corporate ladder within the Nexuspace and Lifestock is identical, with the only difference being some of the title names in the language commonly used in Runehack. However, their meaning is synonymous enough to not require a different name in English.

1. Chairman is the owner of the entire megacorporation. The Vice-Chairman is the substitute of the Chairman in case of need but otherwise doesn't hold executive powers, following their orders.
2. President is the ruler of the megacorporation on the scale of an individual city and follows the orders given by the Chairman. The Vice-President is the substitute of the President in case of need but otherwise doesn't hold executive powers, following their orders.
3. Minister manages a certain ministry within a city and follows the orders given by the President. The Vice-Minister is the substitute of the Minister in case of need but otherwise doesn't hold executive powers, following their orders.
4. District Manager oversees a specific city district and follows the orders given by the Minister as well as President.
5. Teams Manager oversees a group of Team Leaders and follows the orders given by the District manager.
6. Team Leader oversees a group of Team Members and follows the orders given by the Teams Manager.
7. Team Member follows the orders given by the Team Leader.

Some of the phrases and traditions practiced by those who live a Corporate Lifestyle include:

• "Work early, home early." A saying that means that those who begin their work earlier get to end the work and partake in activities of their choice earlier.
• "Persevere, and you'll make the step." This saying refers to the determination required in order to ascend the corporate ladder.
• Paper War Welcome is a spontaneous event, which is meant to greet a Teams Manager, Team Leader, or Team Member who has returned from taking some time off work by pelleting them with paper balls shot from paper-fed railguns upon their arrival to the office. If the colleagues are close, they can pretend that it's a form of punishment for "slacking off" in a friendly humorous way.
• If someone gets a promotion, it's expected of them to enjoy that night through a party, whether private or with those who matter to them, and to take the next day off. If they're still a Teams Manager or someone lower on the corporate ladder, this day off is followed by a Paper War Welcome.

Relations

As one could expect, New Prista has largely positive relationships with almost all other cities owned by the Nexuspace, generally neutral to negative relations with the cities owned by Lifestock, and neutral relations to the kingdoms.

Due to the lack of development of these other cities, I will skip the rest of this section for now. I would much rather update it later.

Curiosities

There are multiple points of interest within the walls of New Prista. Among the most interesting tourist attractions are:

• Pristine Fort, found in the eponymous Fort district, is one of the oldest structures within the city. The royal family used to live here for generations before Nexuspace bought the city. Within 10 years of Nexuspace buying the city, the royal family went through a mysterious string of deaths due to accidental circumstances. In the present day, no members of the royal family are known to be alive.
• Hymn Square is the largest square of New Prista located in the Central district. It's named after the celebration of Winter Solstice Hymn that supposedly began here. It's littered with advertisements and became iconic to New Prista.
• Twintall Tower is a building found on the border of the Backsalt and Deep Blue district, and it's infamous for being a "skyscraper that scrapes both ways". The building has 103 stories above sea level, as well as 103 stories below sea level. Many of the floors are owned by various smaller companies, owned for the most part by Nexuspace, but the most floors owned above sea level belong to Tomorrowkind. Underwater floors, on the other hand, are where the TAI has started to move in.
• Grandfoot Monument is a statue of the last dwarven king of New Prista. It was raised by the Nexuspace once it has acquired the ownership of this city, to commemorate the times of the old monarchy. It's found on the hill of Upper West district where it's visible from multiple places within the city.
• Auditorium of Agony is a religious building within the Red Street district used for the scorn of the Pantheon of the Misfortune. This round dome is by design submerged halfway underground, with a podium in the middle for the speeches. While people like to joke that the speakers there only scream for hours at a time, the truth is that their lectures are meant to improve people's lives and teach them how to treat the pain in their lives.

The Faceless

The greatest curiosity, and the focal point of my planned story, is the Blood Season. It's named that due to its severely increased number of murders with an unknown motive. Those who were familiar with the motivation that drove it would more likely call it an Assassin Game.

A great unknowable being from beyond this world has contacted hundreds of people through strange incomprehensible means, offering them with Absolution, a power to go beyond the laws of nature in some way. In this case, it was the Absolution from Form—a power to change one's appearance. At first, it comes with limitations, but every Absolution can be enhanced further by appeasing the being to grant these powers. Those who possess the Absolution from Form refer to themselves with several terms, most commonly as the "faceless", but sometimes also as "ashwalkers" due to the curious fact, that whenever they use this power, they leave behind a visible amount of ashes and soot.

As it goes for any supernatural power, however, it comes at a cost. The unknowable being has started the greatest Assassin Game, wishing only for the survival of the fittest. Each of the participating faceless receives an item that points at one target that they must eliminate. When the target dies, their hunter inherits their target. The being that grants these powers is willing to enhance each participant's powers the more of their opponents they eliminate. Due to the fact that all of the participants are shapechangers, the greatest cost to these powers is psychological trauma caused by the contest, in which someone who can look any way they want could at any moment pursue you in an attempt to kill you. Even if one were to avoid this contest and not murder anyone, sooner or later they would be targeted, and possibly eliminated, by a different faceless. There is also another cost to this power, but that's something I would consider a spoiler, so it should remain hidden for now.

Important People

A few examples of the important people from New Prista:

• Zaxon Skybank, elf, male; the current President of New Prista.
• Sallice Redleaf, fairy, female; internationally popular singer, actress.
• Quincenza Freecraft, human, female; inventor, Teams Manager for TAI.
• Keven Steelhammer, dwarf, male; the current leader of the Loyalists, international Mistwebber.
• Stepharia Crownsong, elf, female; architect, visual arts producer.

Intimidating Revenants

My first D&D character was named Wilson. He was a gnome monk, who got shipwrecked when he was sailing once with his great-great-great-grandpa. What? I looked at the lifespan of the gnomes and drew conclusions. Either way, 20 people survived together on an island, and Wilson built a raft for him and his triple-G grandpa to go home on. Unfortunately, by the time he was done, his triple-G grandpa was murdered. Wilson left the island on his own, swearing vengeance for his relative. Yes, the backstory is silly, but then again it was my first character, and one for an Adventurer's League. During his short life, he managed to find exactly zero other survivors from that island, so his desire for revenge was unfulfilled. He died in a TPK to a group of wandering ghouls while our party was trying to rest in a dungeon.

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.

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!)

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"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!"

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Thank you for reading, I hope I have provided you with some new inspiration, and I wish you all a nice day!

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!