5e: Five Vampiric-themed Magic Items

These five items are perfect for any campaign where vampires and their servants play a large role, or to give to any character with a personal interest in vampires or dark magic.

Adamantine Fangtips

Wondrous item, rare (requires attunement)

These dark silver accessories can be worn over the fangs of an attuned creature which has a bite attack. While worn, the adamantine fangtips allow the creature to make particularly deadly and bloody bite wounds. The attuned creatures roll an additional die of piercing damage when they use their bite. If the wearer is also a vampire, they add their bite's piercing damage to the number of hit points they recover.

Bloodcharm

Wondrous Item, uncommon (requires attunement)

This ominous talisman is set with a large ruby that pulses with an eerie light while the bloodcharm remains unused.

A creature attuned to the bloodcharm can feed some of their blood to it as an Action, expending a Hit Die. The bloodcharm converts each Hit Die into blood magic, and can contain up to five points of blood magic. When the attuned creature fails at a Strength, Dexterity, or Constitution ability check, they may spend one point of blood magic to succeed instead. When they fail at a Strength, Dexterity, or Constitution saving throw, they may spend two points of blood magic to succeed instead.

Bloodline Blade

Rapier, rare (requires attunement)

A gleaming rapier of red-tinted steel, etched with runes of archaic common that spell out the name of its creator's proud bloodline. 

The bloodline blade grants a +2 bonus to attack rolls, damage rolls, and initiative checks. In addition, it deals 1d8 additional damage to vampires or vampire spawn that are not of the same vampiric bloodline as the blade's creator. 

Curse. A non-vampire who attunes to the bloodline blade begins to experience unsettling dreams that are equal parts disturbing and tempting, luring them to acts of imitated vampirism. Each night, the attuned creature must make a DC 15 Wisdom saving throw. On a failed save, you rise from your sleep and attempt to bite the nearest available humanoid. You use whatever means are at your disposal to reach the creature, preferring quiet and stealthy approaches where possible. Your bite deals 1d4 piercing damage, plus an additional 1 bleeding damage each turn until the flow of blood is stopped. 

Until the curse is broken with remove curse or similar magic, you are unwilling to part with the bloodline blade, keeping it within reach at all times.

Cloak of Mists

Wondrous, rare (requires attunement)

This silvery-sheened cloak has a single charge. When an attuned creature wearing the cloak would drop to 0 hit points the cloak's charge is expended and the wearer instead drops to 1 hit point and transforms into a cloud of mist for up to ten minutes. The cloak cannot spend its charge while the wearer is in sunlight or running water. If the wearer can’t transform, they falls unconscious as normal.

While in mist form, the attuned creature can’t take any actions, speak, or manipulate objects. It is weightless, has a flying speed of 20 feet, can hover, and can enter a hostile creature’s space and stop there. In addition, if air can pass through a space, the mist can do so without squeezing, and it can’t pass through water or sunlight. It has advantage on Strength, Dexterity, and Constitution saving throws, and it is immune to all nonmagical damage.

The wearer can't revert to its original form as an bonus action, or they revert automatically once the duration has passed.

The cloak recharges at dusk. 

Goblet of Vitality

Wondrous item, very rare (requires attunement by up to ten creatures)

This is a wooden cup, unassuming other than the dark stain on its interior left by blood absorbed into the wood.

The blood of any creature can be let into the goblet, which can hold up to 50 hit points worth of blood. The blood of volunteers is best: if no blood is taken by force, the goblet gains a number of vitality points equal to the number of hit points worth of blood. If even a single drop of blood taken by force taints the blood within the cup, it has vitality points equal to half the hit points worth of blood.

Any attuned creature can spend vitality from the goblet while they are within 300 feet of it, in any of the following ways:

• Spend 2 or more vitality as a reaction to add a bonus to any ability check, attack roll, or saving throw equal to half the vitality spent.
• Spend 1 or more vitality as a reaction to recover hit points equal to the vitality spent. 

Introducing Ramshackle!

As one journey ends, so another begins. This next journey take us far from the wasteland of an alternate Earth, to another more fantastical world and a city that floats on the ocean: Ramshackle!

Ramshackle mock cover.
Includes stock art © Anthony Cournoyer & © Daniel Comerci,
used with permission.

I've been working on Ramshackle for a little while now, and I've been teasing lore on twitter, so some of you will already be familiar. I'm excited to share this fantasy city setting with the rest of you!

Founded by pirates and smugglers, Ramshackle is constructed on the backs of sailing vessels and built-for-purpose platforms somewhere on the ocean roughly between continents, making it the perfect place for inter-continental trade (legal or otherwise). Under the stewardship of a council of commodores and magistrates led by the immortal admiral Antana "Firemane" Lecheq, Ramshackle has become a powerful city state in its own right. The city refuses to police the crimes its citizens might commit outside of its own waters and thus remains a thriving haven of corsairs and illegal trade. Ramshackle's dedication to neutrality also makes it a natural destination for exiles and those whose work would be seen as immoral or unethical in their homeland. All come together in a glorious multicultural melting pot. In spite of the city's infamous acceptance of all comers, citizens feel safe because Ramshackle's guiding principle of law is straightforward: do no harm to another citizen or a visitor to the city.

I'm writing a guide to the city which will include lots of setting lore as well as substantial appendices full of Fifth Edition-compatible game content that even those who don't want to use the city itself will find useful! These appendices include new monsters and new character options like archetypes, backgrounds, and feats!

Once I've got most of the writing done, the intention is to finance this project via crowdfunding/kickstarter so it can be professionally edited and filled with awesome art! A shorter player's guide will also be made available for free. In fact, information that will end up on the pages of the player's guide is also being added to Ramshackle's WorldAnvil pages, which you can visit right now!

Fifth Edition Fallout News - Journey's End

The official Fallout RPGs, and what it means for Fifth Edition Fallout

You're probably already aware that Modiphius announced not one but two official Fallout RPGs. The first will expand the miniatures wargame Wasteland Warfare, while a second more traditional RPG using a variation of their 2d20 system will follow (2d20 powers their other licensed games, such as Conan and Star Trek). This honestly came as no surprise to me: I've been convinced this day would come ever since they announced Wasteland Warfare in late 2017. It literally seemed a no-brainer, and the moment I read that news I knew the clock was ticking. It was no coincidence that after feverish development up to that point, last year I began scaling down the amount of new content I was making.

At this time, Fifth Edition Fallout fans shouldn't expect new updates. I might add a handful of new equipment or creature statblocks if the mood ever strikes me, but nothing substantial. There's a few reasons for this as I'm sure you can imagine: yes, I think most people will probably prefer to play the official RPG over Fifth Edition Fallout, and yes I am considering the increased possibility of receiving a cease and desist (I think such a measure on their part would be unwarranted, but I can't rule it out). But more than anything, I'm glad to say that the immense amount of work I already put in means that Fifth Edition Fallout is actually pretty complete! It might be missing a few creature statblocks or some obscurer weapons from the original games, and it doesn't include anything from Fallout 76 either, but that's nothing an enterprising DM can't homebrew for themselves. The truth is there's absolutely loads of great content already in the game, including hundreds of statblocks: 355 to be precise, easily enough to run a campaign from levels 1-20.

This is bittersweet, of course. I'm extremely proud of what I've accomplished, while also sad that this journey is at its natural end. I'm a fan of Modiphius and I'm looking forward to seeing their take on a Fallout RPG in action, but Fifth Edition Fallout isn't going anywhere unless it becomes a legal issue (so go download a copy of the PDF while you can, just in case). I hope some of you will still play it, and maybe even prefer it! Fans should also keep an eye out for further post-apocalyptic products in the Wasteland Worlds line, too: I still want to complete the set with Wasteland Woes and Wasteland Wheels!

This is my stop, but that doesn't have to mean the end of the road: anyone who wishes to develop additional content compatible with Fifth Edition Fallout is welcome to do so. There's rich homebrewing possibility in a Fallout 76 expansion, for instance! If you do create any new content, let me know where you're hosting it and I'll add a link from the wiki!

No More Content Hub

The news of an official RPG on the horizon has also caused me to reevaluate the way Fifth Edition Fallout is presented, and I've made the decision to remove content from this blog and migrate it to the wiki.

Ultimately, this blog is my brand. It's the face of "Spilled Ale Studios". The original articles that became Fifth Edition Fallout were, in my opinion, on brand: When I first started posting the articles, Fallout was simply an example, used to demonstrate the thought processes involved in hacking a game and the rules changes that evolve out of that process. It might be inspired by someone else's IP, but because it was used for the purpose of example I felt comfortable with these articles under the "Spilled Ale Studios" banner.

I feel that when I started developing Fifth Edition Fallout from the original ideas in that article is when the hack crossed an ill-defined line and became a personal project. As the hack became more and more polished and complete, it began to feel a little weird hosting the content on this blog, under the auspices of my brand. I've always been careful to make clear that the hack is a fan work and I have no claim to the IP, but the fan in question is me as an individual, not my brand.

It's past time to resolve that, so from now on no Fifth Edition Fallout content will be hosted here (you can still find the original articles in which the hack had its infancy, if you wish). The content hub that used to exist here has been taken offline and the Fifth Edition Fallout wiki is now your only source for all things Fifth Edition Fallout. However, you can still use the hub's url wherever you find it: it'll simply redirect you to to the wiki.