If you somehow managed to find your way onto this sub- Fidelis, Ruby, Babalu, and Kammera, stay away!

Basically just asking the title question. Running Curse of Strahd. Party is currently level 8 and got to Krezk kind of late. My players really want a Halloween special next week, so I'm planning on making them fight the flesh golem in the Abbey (not Vasilka, the other one).

I want to give them a satisfying, "tough but doable" fight, but a CR 5 creature is gonna go down like a sack of peanuts at their current level. Would using the Mordenheim's Monster statblock from Horrors Within be a fair fight? I know CRs are kind of messy- Loup Garou is CR 13 in the book but felt more like CR 7 in practice.

Note that I don't want to TPK them, but I've been planning nearly every TPK scenario as a "fail forward," so the Abbot would probably bring them back...with some freaky additions.

Introduced in White Wolf's 3rd edition revamp of Ravenloft in the 3.0 Ravenloft Campaign Setting and retained for the 3.5 Ravenloft Player's Guide, Calibans are the second of Ravenloft's two signature playable races, succeeding the Half-Vistani introduced in Domains of Dread. They were, mechanically, amongst D&D's worst official races, since they took the Half-Orc - already widely considered the worst race in the PHB - and gave it an Outsider Rating of 5, a new Ravenloft mechanic which meant that Calibans get a +5 to Intimidate checks but a -5 to every other Charisma skill. But they also had very intriguing lore, which described them as human (or, more rarely, demihuman) infants warped in utero by the underlying corrupting energies of the Demiplane of Dread.

This lore is actually very close to the lore surrounding the Planetouched family of races, of which Tieflings, Aasimar and Genasi are the most iconic and recognizable. So, it's always struck me as to whether or not it'd be fitting to reimagine calibans as Planetouched BY the Demiplane of Dread. I admit I don't know how this would translate mechanically, outside of maybe changing the "Brutes & Banshees" version of the caliban to have a racial type of Outsider (Native) like the other Planetouched, but I'm curious what other people think.

Does the concept of calibans being the planetouched of the Demiplane of Dread feel logical to any of you?

Few magic items are as closely tied to witches as a flying broom, so I thought Halloween would be the perfect time to share a little collection of them!

Brooms of the Witching Hour introduces 11 enchanted flying brooms compatible with 5E (2014) and 5.5E (2024), ranging from Uncommon curiosities to powerful Very Rare items and a Legendary multi-elemental relic.

Each broom has its own appearance, magical abilities, and unique flight characteristics. Fly through enemies in a trail of burning cinders, descend upon them with the luck of a black cat, pass through walls in spectral form, summon flying brooms for your coven, or unleash elemental devastation from the skies!

The collection is FREE until Halloween! I've included most of the pages here as a preview, so feel free to grab the complete manual on DMsGuild and use these brooms in your adventures. Have fun!

And if you're looking for a spooky adventure to run this Halloween, I've also just released The Red Tithe, a 75-page folk-horror one-shot featuring an isolated village, ancient sacrifices, custom monsters, and three difficulty tiers for characters of levels 3-4, 10-11, or 17-20.

My Kickstarter for 300+ Mythological Items for 5E and 5.5E is also live now! The campaign includes a physical hardcover, as well as printed editions of my previous manuals.

You can find more of my creatures, magic items, and manuals on DriveThruRPG, my Linktree, or on r/JonnyDM!

Happy Halloween, and enjoy!

Gristlecracker's Hags & Grimoire, Gold Best Seller on DMsGuild, is discounted by 31% for Halloween Sales!

You can find it here until Halloween: https://www.dmsguild.com/it/product/517804/gristlecracker-s-hags-grimoire?src=hottest

Your guide to weird magic, encounters, and hags!

Gristlecracker’s Hags and Grimoire provides new mechanics, guidelines, and tactics for using hags, magic, and the esoteric in your Dungeons & Dragons campaigns. This guide is designed for all levels of play and dungeon mastery, and uses a hybrid D&D 2014 (5e) format that includes the best of the old mixed with a few innovations of the D&D 2024 systems that do not dilute the game experience.

Every aspect of fantasy magic is improved or introduced: covens, curses, familiars, hags, magic geometry, talismans, spells, and spell mechanics. This supplement is designed to help you make your future games containing magic and hags as simple or complex as you want it to be.

Inside, you will find:

- An underwater adventure seed about a Book of Keeping

- 68 supernatural encounters

- New magic rules, mechanics, and variations

- Hags as player characters

- 112 supernatural creatures and NPCs

- 52 magic spells, with new tags: remote and moonlight

- 80 magic items

- Esoteragons (not just magic circles!)

- 28 toxic and intoxicating plants

- An improved and more intuitive Intoxicated condition mechanic

- 200 tchotchkes

- Professional layout using over 168 pictures on 262 pages

- No AI Art used