It's barely been two weeks since the last update, so I won't include too many details about exact progress metrics in this update (not a ton has changed there - progress continues apace), but I do have some exciting stuff to share and an important question for you all (poll at the end of the update).
Ritual Overcharge System
First up: In between monster design over the last couple of weeks, I took some time to flesh out the Ritual Overcharge System a bit more. The more I thought about it, the less I wanted it to actually be a system, as it were. Rather than adding complexity on top of the existing ritual enchanting rules, it seemed best to make it a simple extension. Here's how it works:
When you prepare a ritual, you can also prepare for it to be an Overcharged Ritual. Doing this the first time doesn't add any cost - every character can basically get one done for free. Every time you try to add an Overcharge Effect to a ritual being applied to a character after that, the cost of the ritual increases by 10% per effect they already have and you have to succeed on an extra Ritual check to successfully apply the ritual. So you eventually hit a sort of soft limit of what's actually possible. If you ever want to remove an overcharge effect, you can do that as part of applying a new one.
At first, I wanted to make a table of overcharge effects that could be generically applied to boons and charms in the book. However, the more I tried to do this, the less possible it felt. Instead, I've opted to create a single effect for each of the 300 boons and charms, some of which scale with the boon or charm's rarity for those with rarity variants (which is quite a few of them). I'll also have a guidance note for making your own (essentially, you want the power gained to be about on par with the drawback applied by the effect).
Organizational Question about Boons and Charms
That brings us to my question for you! With the additions I've been making to the boons and charms - adding overcharge effects and, in many cases, one or two rarity variants for when the boon/charm is crafted using components from a more or less powerful version of a monster, the boons and charms are taking up a lot more space in the book!
A test layout page with the Voidwyrm's boons and charms. I wanted to see how much space each creature was going to take up in the book. Turns out the answer is about 3.5-4 on average unless we find ways to save space somewhere. By including the boons and charms with their monsters rather than in their own section, we lose about 1/8 to 1/4 of a page for each monster - a considerable amount when you consider that there are 100 of them!
With how much space the added stat blocks and expansion of the boons and charms are taking up in the book, it's become necessary to find ways to reduce space (while still trying to maintain quality of life in using the book). One improvement to space is probably going to be that the Recipe section you see in the above layout (and that I had in the preview sample) is going to go away, being replaced with just a listed component. All of the other information in the Recipe is fully redundant with the information in the tables in Chapter 1 (rules for ritual enchantment), and with the addition of the rarity variants it's less useful to provide the information for just one of the rarities. While I'd love to keep it as a potential quality of life bonus (saves you from looking up most of the information in the tables all the time), the amount of redundant information across all the boons means it ends up being a lot of wasted space. 12-1500 lines translates to quite a few pages!
Another improvement - to both space and quality of life, I think - is to move the boons and charms to their own chapters, separate from the monsters. Not only does this take better advantage of space in layout, but it also gives the book separated "player" and "GM" sections, allowing GMs to let their players flip through the "menu" of boon and charm options without revealing all of the monsters' secrets to them (although the boons and charms are similar to abilities the monsters possess, so would still have some spoilers). Like the monsters, and similarly to the first book, boons and charms will be organized by entity type (so split into sections based on whether they're of aberrant, celestial, fey, primal, or unholy origin).
Of course, this leads to an important question: Within those sections, should they simply be organized alphabetically (probably with a subsection for boons and another for charms within each entity type) or should they remain linked to the monsters they're crafted from (in which case they'd remain grouped like they are now, just not with the monsters)? I lean towards alphabetical (the monster's name will still be in the component listed for enchanting the boon/charm after all), but I wanted to hear from you to see if I'm totally off on that before making a unilateral decision there. Let me know what you think by voting in the poll below! If it ends up being alphabetical, I might include a list of rituals that can be conducted under the harvestable components tables for each monster section to help people find them after defeating a monster.
Back with a regular progress update today. Nothing super special to share other than that progress proceeds apace.
Writing Progress
The freelance writers I've been working with have been hard at work making some really fantastic creatures that I've been very excited to design. 98% of monsters have now been named, with probably 95% of those being lore-complete (or very close. I still have some a final edit pass to make on a number of them). 66% of all monsters also have at least 1 stat block done, and 139 total stat blocks have been written so far (the final number will be slightly over 300). Here's what the current spread of CRs in the book is looking like:
I'll be aiming to even out the lower end a bit more as it seems I've subconsciously preferred certain CRs as I've worked through the first half of these creatures, although there's some small amount of skew from certain groups like Mephit Swarms (which are going to have multiple sets of stat blocks - 3 stat blocks for 3 types of swarms this case), so you'll likely see counts for <1, 1, 4, 5, 8, 11 increasing to better fill out the curve.
Astral Briar Wolf, by Marco Morales
Art Progress
23% of illustrations are complete (meaning I've sent final payment), but another 12% are very close to done and another 12 should be going out for commission this week. Overall progress has been a little slower than I'd hoped, but the quality is fantastic and I'm willing to let the process take a little longer to make sure the book looks as good as it can in the end!
Corpulent Collector, by Marco Morales. Background likely to be changed to something more celestial in nature
Overall Timeline
Overall, I think we're still on track for a December PDF release, depending on how long editing and layout end up taking. My expectation is that balance checks on monsters can begin in the near future, somewhat in parallel with me finishing up the remaining 50-ish stat blocks, but since I'm at the heart of every process anything that requires my feedback does slow down the rate at which I can work through the stat blocks.
VTT conversions and physical production can only really get started after the PDF is fully complete, so getting everything to the point where I no longer have design work to do will be my top focus for the next month or two.
Miniature Voting
Once I have a bit more art to share, I'll be putting together a list of my favorite creatures that I think would be a good fit for turning into miniatures, and then we'll put it to a vote to pick out our extra unlocked minis (probably sometime around next month's update, maybe a little after).
I've got kind of a long update today, with results from the 2014 vs 2024 poll, writing and art progress updates, and another question for you at the end of the update.
Origins Game Fair
I'll be at Origins Game Fair this week! If you're there, come visit me at Booth 104. I'll have copies of all my products, plus some free bookmarks with art from Tome of Intangible Treasures II!
2014 vs 2024 Poll Results
The vote was very close, but ended in favor of including 2014 stat blocks in the book. I think this will be the right decision to follow for a few reasons:
Many people running the 2024 rules likely already use 2014 content in their game due to the vast amount of existing 2014 content.
This is the edition I am most familiar with writing and balancing for.
This is the edition my balance editor will be most familiar with.
That said, it was a very close vote! While there's no way there's space in the book to include both stat blocks (I'm looking at a page count that might easily push past 320 pages with the 3 CR variants for each creature that we unlocked - more on that below), I will for sure be including some guidelines on converting the stat blocks to the 2024 design. If I have time, and the time cost for the conversion isn't too high, I will also look into providing a text-only conversion of all the stat blocks in the 2024 format. It won't look nearly as pretty, but it would be usable.
Tonguetacle, by Marco Morales (Based on lore by Spencer Hibnick)
Monster Writing Progress
I have some fun details to share about the direction I've been taking with the CR variant stat blocks, but before that: this wouldn't be much of a progress update if I didn't share what kind of progress I've been making! With the help of a team of about 10 freelance writers, almost every monster that will be in the book has been named, and more than 50% of them have lore written. At least 45% of monsters also have a stat block (though some have a stat block and no lore, and vice versa), and probably around 10% of monsters have more than one stat block drafted. In most cases, a monster that has at least one stat block it also has the associated boons and charms written as well, although it's not fully 1:1 at this stage.
Ok, progress update out of the way, let's talk about where these CR variant stat blocks are going. As I've been them, and as I've been getting writing commissions in for lore for new monsters, I've found that I've been tending to not just create CR variants of the monsters by simply changing numbers, but also by changing features or even turning them into an entire creature group.
A celestial ox (final name TBD), by Gibbs Santos
As one of the more extreme examples, Duriel's Divine Devices (lore written by Andie of MargoMods) ended up with each CR variant being an entirely different device. These devices are ancient constructs made long ago, and reclaimed by a somewhat lazy archangel. One device sifts souls and sorts them into their afterlife (or reincarnation) pathway, another strips souls of their impurities (and sometimes much more than that), and a third seeds these recovered souls back into new vessels.
Each variant, for the most part, should feel at least a bit like a new creature. So if you plan a longer adventure, or even a campaign, around some of these creatures, you should have good opportunities to introduce the party to their weaker versions as you build toward a higher level encounter with a stronger variant. This probably won't be the case for 100% of the creatures, but it's definitely a change that I think adds a lot of quality to the book's content (even if it's a bit more work).
Art Progress
Illustrations are well underway as well! Out of the 100 total monster illustrations that will be in the book, 33 have been commissioned, and more than 20 are complete.
A Memory Thief gloats over its prey, by Marco Morales
Monster Organization Question (Poll)
Finally, I wanted to ask you all about how you'd prefer monster groups to be organized as there are probably two or three ways that make sense given that each group will have at least 3 stat blocks.
The first option would be to present the "original" first, then its CR variants from low to high.
By "original" I mean the CR that the creature's stat block most closely matched to the lore is at. For example, if the lore presents a tier 3 creature description, but I've also made tier 2 and tier 4 variants of the creature, this organizational method would place the tiers in order of Tier 3, Tier 2, Tier 4.
This comes with the advantage of having the intended stat block presented first, but the disadvantage of the organization potentially making slightly less sense up front.
The other option that makes a lot of sense is to simply sort all groups by or CR lowest to highest.
The advantage of this is that the creatures are organized in a uniform way.
The disadvantage of this is that, especially for creatures whose "original" stat block was of a high CR, you might see related creatures rather than the creature the lore talks about first. For example, one of the powerful celestial creatures is the Origami Lord. This is a legendary, high CR creature. Its CR variants will be similar in theme, but won't necessarily be direct mechanical variants of the Origami Lord itself (for example, the low CR version will be a Paper Archon, as opposed to something like a "Lesser Origami Lord")
And of course we could also sort highest to lowest.
The advantages here are uniform organization, and creatures like the Origami Lord will show up first.
The disadvantage is that creatures that are originally low CR like the Cyclops Beetle Swarm will have their high CR variant (e.g., Apocalyptic Cyclops Beetle Swarm) show up first.
I'm leaning toward one of options 2 or 3, but I wanted to hear your thoughts on what would be most useful to you when pulling creatures from the book during your game or during session prep, so answer the poll below and let me know!
It's a long weekend for a lot of us in the US, so I'm taking some extra time to work on stat blocks. More on that with the poll at the bottom of the update!
Surveys Sent
The smoke test went pretty much without a hitch, so I sent out the rest of the surveys Friday morning. About 60% of you have responded already, which is great!
For anyone that missed the campaign, you can also place a late pledge via the pre-order store. Speaking of pre-orders, I mentioned during the campaign that I'd be continuing the stretch goal for environmental backgrounds for each monster illustration into pre-orders for a bit. We've currently reached around 66k total out of the 80k that we'd need to meet that stretch goal before layout begins.
Also, here's the finished "Inscrutible Sphinx" (working name), by Gibbs Santos
PDFs for Released Books
PDFs for Injuries and Vile Deeds and Tome of Intangible Treasures (Vol. 1) have been sent out via the pledge manger to all backers who pledged for a copy as an add-on during the campaign! If you're one of those backers, you should have gotten an email notifying you of your downloads. You may need to complete your survey first to be able to access the download.
Important Poll
With the release of SRD 5.2 for 5e 2024, I now officially have the option to natively support 2024 stat blocks in the book. The book will support both 5e 2014 and 5e 2024, but in order to best do that I need your feedback on which version you'd like to see actually present in the book!
Personally, I like the clarity of the new stat block formatting (the way abilities are written with targets and effects is often cleaner and more concise) but 2024 monsters also tend to be a bit stronger, with a "medium" difficulty encounter actually providing a moderate challenge to players rather than the cakewalk they tended to be in 2014, so there is a different balance to them. 2024 monsters often also have automatic on-hit effects rather than hit+save to avoid effects (when present).
Which 'edition' would you rather see the stat blocks balanced and formatted for? A section providing guidance on using 2014 stat blocks in 2024 or vice versa will be provided to support using stat blocks for the edition not chosen. My understanding from talking to people I know who've used stat blocks from one edition with the other is that it's not too hard to do, it just takes some minor adjustments with how you treat their CR (but definitely let me know if your experience is different!)
The poll will run for 2 weeks to make sure everyone gets a chance to vote, after which I'll use the results to make sure that all my stat block design effort is going toward the correct edition.
I've just sent out the smoke test for surveys! This means about 5% of backers in each tier will get their survey to fill out today.
Assuming that goes smoothly, surveys will go out to everyone else in a couple days! While you can always go back and edit your survey later, I highly encourage you to fill out your survey as soon as you can. The only reason any of my backers have ever not received their pledge items is due to them not completing their survey and making sure that any remaining payment (e.g. shipping and taxes) goes through.
Injuries and Vile Deeds, Tome of Intangible Treasures (Vol. 1) PDFs
Those of you who purchased Injuries and Vile Deeds or Tome of Intangible Treasures (Vol. 1) during the campaign will have your copy of the PDF(s) added as a download in the pledge manager. You might need to fill out your survey before you can access them, but I'll be distributing the download this weekend after surveys are sent and you should get an email from BackerKit notifying you of a new download when I do.
Later, after the PDF from the new volume is available, I will also send these out via DriveThruRPG for those who like having copies there.
Initial Progress
The last two weeks have already been busy! I've assembled a team of freelance writers to help me flesh out lore and add monsters to the book, and work on new illustrations has begun (see below for some color sketches). I've also been writing up new stat blocks for some of these creatures and making plans for the higher/lower CR variants we unlocked during the campaign.
Color sketch of a fey fungus taking command of an insectoid soldier
Color sketch of a demonic gorilla
Color sketch of an aquatic aberration
Color sketch of a celestial sphinx
Miniature Selection
Once the monsters are more or less complete (probably sometime in July/August), I'll be posting a poll for you all to vote on which creatures you want to see included in the miniatures bundles.
