Café de Nuit

Bought and downloaded.
Review will follow in time. At the time, I will just skim it.

EDIT:
Saidra. I like what you did.
I liked the quiet effect of her legendary action and... I don't agree with her being able to sense disruptions to her domain / close borders only while in her palace. But... it makes her 'different' so I will keep it. I already warned you that your view would 'impose' itself on my view. As such, even if I make her different (I will probably alter her stats etc) I will have a nag in the back of my mind about those two things.
On the other hand, I don't like the "copied Port-a-Lucine" part. On the other hand the "you can travel between the real thing and the Poser's Dementlieu is soooo... attractive. And that Dominic's domain is losing food to Saidra's. Hilarious and effective. So. Do I like the "Copied P-a-L"? No. Will I use it if I ever use the domain. Ehh... probably.

alhoon wrote:Saidra. I like what you did.
I liked the quiet effect of her legendary action and...

I really wanted most darklords to have some unique lair actions, space willing. To make them more than their statblock.
Having an awkward hush fall over a room just as you're saying a faux pas just seemed perfect.

alhoon wrote:I don't agree with her being able to sense disruptions to her domain / close borders only while in her palace.

That was a design decision I kept from when I first started doing darklords.
I wanted there to be an action or cost for closing borders that wasn't in their statblock and folding it into lair actions seemed like a good idea at the time.

And I liked the idea of confronting and distracting a darklord to allow someone else to escape.

alhoon wrote:On the other hand, I don't like the "copied Port-a-Lucine" part. On the other hand the "you can travel between the real thing and the Poser's Dementlieu is soooo... attractive. And that Dominic's domain is losing food to Saidra's. Hilarious and effective. So. Do I like the "Copied P-a-L"? No. Will I use it if I ever use the domain. Ehh... probably.

That's solely there for someone wanting to use Saidra in Classic Ravenloft without having to alter the Core. I wanted to both give the stat blocks and encourage everyone to use them regardless of campaign. (And make VRGtR more usable for people who like the classic lore.)

And to explain where her food comes from. Because that bugged the eff out of me...

Jester of the FoS wrote:
And to explain where her food comes from. Because that bugged the eff out of me...

Well, I am certainly adding the surrounding area in her domain, Chateaufaux. It exists in my version. With noble villas of baron Something and Lord Somethingelse that have like 300 peasants (so they are like knights and not barons) but put up airs and have to be very creative to be able to maintain a residence in both the City and the countryside. I am also certainly adding bountiful sea and fishing.
And raiding Dementlieu's pantries. With fishing and good, fertile land (and a touch of magic from plant growth or spells to make farming easier), you need about 2 people in food production for 3 people in total with late middle ages / renaissance yields. Add a bit of pantry-raiding and a bit of trade with other domains and you could go half food production, half goods and services.

I would make the city about 1 square mile, 1.5 mile x 2/3 of a mile and have a surrounding country side large enough to support a city of that size (again, with fertile land, fishing, a touch of magic, trade and pantry-raiding). Similar to how the map shows it but more expanded.
100-150 square miles of land and 150-200 sq. miles for sea should be enough.

TL;DR: Fishing, Chateaufaux exists and it is fertile, trade and Dementlieu's / Borca's / Richemulot's granaries etc support the domain. Assuming that city would have like 30-35K people, 10K or so of which are involved in food production (fishing or working the farms close to the city) Chateaufaux has 15K people in villages and fishing towns.
A strip of land about 120 sq.miles (say 9 x 13 miles) and rich-in-fish sea about 180 sq. miles ( 14 x 13 miles) leaves a 'sustainable' domain of about 300 sq.miles where the land-bound villages are less than 10 miles from the city.
And going by "no Mongol hordes and clerics stop plagues" leaves the various threats (including Saidra) able to kill 400-500 people per year without depopulating the domain. Assuming half of these die in the balls we finally reach the main point of this post:

The main point of this post: Saidra can easily afford to disintegrate 1d6+1 poseurs per weekly ball if we add fishing and Chateaufax!

i bought it and you did a freaking good job. I have always such hard time to create stats blocks and i don't find any missing one from the 2nd era (beside the phantom lover and the headless horseman, but this one can come with the update for the 4th edition darklords).

When i try to create stats blocks, i'm hitting the white page syndrome so hat off for the work and the mythic parts are very good (strahd is soooo op ! )

Also slowly working on a massive update to Allies Against the Night.

Seven new classic NPCs, as well as two adventuring parties of NPCs. And I plan to add six or seven brand new NPCs created for the book, to highlight a few lesser seen races.

Also adding this classic character, tweaking their backstory:

https://www.dmsguild.com/product_info.p ... r_PoW_text

Call me biased, but from what I've seen, I prefer Jester's book.

alhoon wrote:https://www.dmsguild.com/product_info.p ... r_PoW_text

Call me biased, but from what I've seen, I prefer Jester's book.

That seems to be selling very, very well. I'm a little envious; I've never had a product hit #1 on the "most popular" chart.

And it does look great. They clearly invested time and money into art and layout. I've never done that. I'm more comfortable being a one-man-show rather than commissioning artists and delegating work.

Jester of the FoS wrote:

alhoon wrote:https://www.dmsguild.com/product_info.p ... r_PoW_text

Call me biased, but from what I've seen, I prefer Jester's book.

That seems to be selling very, very well. I'm a little envious; I've never had a product hit #1 on the "most popular" chart.

And it does look great. They clearly invested time and money into art and layout. I've never done that. I'm more comfortable being a one-man-show rather than commissioning artists and delegating work.

I still prefer yours and frankly that's because I like the grayed background and more ...throwback to the VRG look. That said, I haven't bought theirs. I am talking from what I saw from the quick pages. I like their idea of the varying CRs though. I already had 3 versions of Saidra (mainly adjusting damage, AC and hp) before I saw that from your block for whenever my PCs get there. I also "touched up" the ghouls to give them a mirage power to appear like calibans. Similar to disguise self but only one form allowed. I also tweaked their CR.
I.e. Saidra has 15-20 ghouls at her employ but their hp, AC, paralysis DC and damage are scalable. I gave the master cook and the butler an extra upgrade and minor spellcasting to create mini-bosses.

I may throw something together for the next QtR. Which brings us to the question: Do I have your permission to use some (well most) of your ideas for Saidra?

alhoon wrote:I may throw something together for the next QtR. Which brings us to the question: Do I have your permission to use some (well most) of your ideas for Saidra?

Of course.
I don't claim ownership. Happy to inspire others.

Jester of the FoS wrote:

alhoon wrote:I may throw something together for the next QtR. Which brings us to the question: Do I have your permission to use some (well most) of your ideas for Saidra?

Of course.
I don't claim ownership. Happy to inspire others.

You... don't claim ownership to an article you wrote? Well, you should.

And the big update of Allies Against the Night is now live.

https://www.dmsguild.com/product/337328 ... _id=369234

The book almost doubled in size...

Should do a bundle with it and Who's Doomed. Maybe with another small book if I can think of a third product...

If your going for a similar tone, organisations would be my suggestion. But you could also go for overveiw of the various domains so far covered