A massive new supplement updates the Shadowfell and the Domains of Dread for Fifth Edition play.
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The Domains of Dread have existed in some form or another in Dungeons & Dragons since the early 1980s, when Ravenloft first emerged as a popular gothic horror-themed adventure. Over time, Ravenloft expanded to include other darklords and terrible monsters imprisoned in their own dark kingdom. Eventually, Ravenloft and the other Domains of Dread were merged into the Shadowfell, a new plane that also served as the home of the Raven Queen and her shadar-kai followers. The Shadowfell continues to exist within the Dungeons & Dragons cosmology, but it hasn’t really been explored in Fifth Edition rules outside of Curse of Strahd, which returned adventurers to Ravenloft.
Earlier this week, Marching Modron Press released Ulraunt’s Guide to the Planes: The Shadowfell, a 250 page supplement released on the DMs Guild. The tome is a massive campaign setting publication that revisits the Shadowfell in exquisite detail, covering everything from Gloomwrought to Har’Akir and Sunderheart. Most of the settings and characters mentioned in Ulraunt’s Guide to the Planes already exist in D&D lore, but Marc Alfuldisch and his team have updated many of these monsters for 5th edition play. Classic arch-foes like Vecna, Kas, and Kezef the Chaos Hound all appear with the pages of Ulraunt’s Guide to the Planes, complete with recaps of their history and updated stats. Marching Modron Press also included a ton of fantastic artwork, bringing the Shadowfell to life in great detail.
The book also contains four new races (the dhampyr, hagspawn, krinth, and a variant non-elven version of shadar-kai) and subclasses for players who want some more horrifying options while exploring the Shadowfell. There’s also several new spells, most of which have some sort of horror or shadow theme to them.
The one caveat to Ulraunt’s Guide of the Planes is that the book uses Marching Modron’s “epic level play,” a variant ruleset that allows players to advance all the way up to Level 30. Because of this, some of the monsters that appear in the book have CRs as high as CR 40, with abilities that make it impossible for a player to defeat if you’re using standard D&D rules. If you want to use Ulraunt’s Guide to the Plane‘s version of Vecna but don’t want to bring your players all the way up to Level 30, you’ll have to make some tweaks to make Vecna a bit less invulnerable. The bulk of the book’s monsters can still be used within a regular campaign with few tweaks, but I personally would have liked variant statblocks to accommodate those of us not interested in epic play.
Ulraunt’s Guide to the Planes contains an almost overwhelming amount of lore and information about the Shadowfell. It’s a fantastic resource, one perfect for lore nerds, D&D players wanting more spell and subclass options, or DMs who want to drag their parties through the Mists and into a world of shadow and despair.
Ulraunt’s Guide to the Planes: The Shadowfell is available to purchase for $24.99 on the DMs Guild.
