Heliana's Guide to Monster Hunting - A 5e Supplement
Created by Loot Tavern
Level up your game with epic monster hunts, harvesting, and crafting.
Latest Updates from Our Project:
Biomenaces, Manufacturing, & Free 3D STLs
over 1 year ago
– Thu, Sep 16, 2021 at 12:56:53 AM
Hey pals,
Comin at ya with another update on progress. We’ve got a lil look at the biomancy wizard, an update on manufacturing, and some freebies from our friends at Cobra Mode. First off, a lovely timelapse from our main man, Jess Jackdaw. Meet a new race, the Lotl:
We got this art recently from one of our freelance artists, Denis Zhbankov. It’s AWESOME. We gave him a list of possible ideas for the school of biomancy wizard subclass, like surgical tools, organs in bottles, and extra arms (a subclass feature). I think he managed to use them all haha. Check it out here:
Biomancy Fancy Pants - Denis Zhbankov
The biomancer is all about self-improvement, in a very literal sense. They can enhance themselves in a manner similar to the transmutation subclass, gaining camouflaging skin, extra appendages, or springy, cricket-like legs. Around half of the new spells in the book are biomancy, and we also have an optional rule to convert some spells from other schools to biomancy (like alter self, stoneskin, and cure wounds).
An array of biomancer sketches - Denis Zhbankov
Questions for you! Biomancy is all about manipulating living matter - what spells would you include in the School of Biomancy for this optional rule? Do you have any biomancy-esque spell ideas you'd like to see?
Manufacture & Timeline
This project got really big, both in terms of additional content, and in terms of the number of backers. Long story short, it’s gona take us longer to get it into your hands than we originally hoped!
We think the timeline for getting the PDF finalised will slip by a couple of months. In addition to that, our manufacturer has given us a much-longer estimate of 5 months from finalisation of designs to arrival of the freight containers at regional distribution centres. Their factory is at capacity, which isn’t surprising - they’re communicative, competitive, and produce good products; that's why we want to use them. In addition, thanks to a conjunction of pandemic, environmental, and political factors, shipping is slow. In total, that means we're looking at early summer for delivery.
Logistics, am I right?
We hope this doesn't mess up any of your gaming plans, but one thing all three of us are passionate about is quality; we want to playtest all the content, touch all the products, and take the time to make sure everything is worthy of a gift to a golden dragon. That takes time, and that time is worth it. What we’re making isn’t a throwaway magazine, it’s a tome. This book is gonna be on your shelves until you pass it onto your kids, downsize your life into a van, or have to give a tithe of your most valuable possessions to a marauding dragon.
Now check this out:
FREE 3D Mini STLs
EDIT: Our website is down! We think you might have broken it haha. You can't click the link; hold tight while we sort this out!
So… we did a lil collab with our brilliant pals over at Cobramode, the talented 3D monster sculptors. They’ve been kind enough to share the fruits of their labours with you folks, our backers, for free!
Well… almost free, we’re actually trying to gauge how much interest y’all have in us doing a line of minis in the future. To that end, here’s how you get them: simply hit this link (removed as website went down) and give us your email address. That shows us you’re interested, sends you an email with a link to the minis, and gives us a way to contact you if we ever do minis in the future.
Website down, link to be reinstated in another update.
Cobramode create a fascinating and fantastical array of wild creatures, bases, and scatter objects every month, complete with STL, stats, and lore. All their files are pre-supported, so you can just download, and hit print, or send them to your printer of choice! They’re also really cool people that deserve support following their dream career :) Check ‘em out here :). This month they bring you Kung Fu Yetis! Imagine your friends' (lol - I almost wrote 'fiends' there) faces if you whipped one of these out!
Our friends over at Mage Hand Press are releasing a new 5E expansion called Valda’s Spire of Secrets. Somehow, they’ve crammed 10 base classes, 150+ subclasses, 130+ spells, and a lot more into this behemoth of a book. You can play a teddy bear with an obviously evil sword. Check it out!
Mage Hand Press have a track record of delivering quality content time and again through KS. They even helped us on our campaign. We really like them. Go check out their project!
More from us in October! As ever, if you've any questions hit up the comments (and answer our Q about biomancy spells) and the Discord. Also if you want to be involved in playtesting the monster tamer and other subclasses, come to the Hump's Wares discord :)
Thanks,
Max (and Mo and Jess!) xx
Mushroom Menace & Backerkit Surveys
over 1 year ago
– Thu, Aug 19, 2021 at 02:30:02 AM
Hey friends!
Boy have we been busy bees. Artists are being commissioned, monster tamers playtested, and a book is being crafted!! In this month’s update we have some sneak peaks of our underground adventure, the Veiled Lady, and some info on Backerkit :)
Mushroom Menace
There’s some real fun guys under the sewers of Aramachi. Pack lightly! There’s not mush room down there; it’s gona be a squeeze! Here’s a little vid Jess whipped together of his artistic process (your speakers aren't broken - there's no sound)!
The Veiled Lady is the mouthpiece of a sentient fungal hive mind, belonging to a race known as Hyphans. Usually, such colonies reside in The Low, a vast expanse of subterranean caverns, feeding on the paltry biomass that passing ankhegs and kobolds have to offer. However, one such colony has appeared in the sewers beneath Aramachi and threatens to destroy this year’s harvest unless it can be found and... reasoned with.
Profile sketch of the Veiled Lady - Jess Jackdaw
Combat & Tactics. The Veiled Lady does not deal a lot of direct damage (at least, not until its mythic stage). Instead, it uses its Shackles of Pain action to link itself to one of the party members. While linked in this way, half of all damage the Lady receives is dealt to that party member as psychic damage. The Lady then debilitates enemies by poisoning them with its halluciwhip and using its Fungal Infection action to cause up to six types of new, debuffing mushrooms to grow on them.
Meanwhile, the swarm spawner fungus births swarms of pufflings, the real damage dealers. These tiny fungi waddle towards the players before exploding in a cloud of necrotic spores. If the players don’t focus on these mushroom factories before targeting the Veiled Lady, they’re in for a much tougher fight!
Oh—there’s also a final catch: if any creature has all six of the Fungal Infection’s mushrooms growing on them at once, they become dominated by the fungal hive mind, and end up looking like this guy:
It’s good to drop hints about how the players can get infected before the fight commences, so that your players know what’s at stake! This clue (of ex-adventurer, Gus Fushrum) helps illustrate that.
Backerkit Surveys
Almost 17,000 of you have completed the surveys! Thank you! However we still have 1981 backers whose information we don’t have. If you have received your email from Backerkit, please click the link and give us your details. If you haven’t received this email, it was sent to the address you used when you signed up to Kickstarter. Please check the junk mail of that email address. If you still can’t find it, please contact backer support.
Locking. Next week, we will begin locking orders. This means you won’t be able to change any details on them unless you contact us directly to ask for your order to be unlocked. We need to do this so we know how much stuff to order. Although we will be ordering some extra stock, the only way to guarantee that you get what you want is to fill out your Backerkit survey. Do it. Do it, do it, do it.
Charging. We will be charging cards for shipping and addons purchased through Backerkit towards the end of September. We have not yet charged anyone’s cards yet. You will get an email mid-September to remind you that in 1 week's time (from when we send the email), you will be charged.
Dungeon scribe has been one of my favourite 5e item artists for a while now! They’re offering three tasty decks of 50 extra-large tarot cards (even bigger than ours!), as well as resin and gemstone dice for you dice goblins, and expanded handouts for their artifact level items. That's 150items with more to be unlocked!
They’re a lovely person, and Mo had a hand in helping design the Kickstarter page (you might see some similarities haha). Check it out - it looks really good!
Never Ending Dungeon lets you set key parameters, such as how many traps, monsters, dungeon size, dungeon setting etc., and then auto generates a dungeon for your players to explore. Once generated, you can go in and modify each component to get just the right feel. It has options to export to VTT or live-play on a battlemap-TV screen. My favourite feature is the first person perspective, to help you get some real immersion. Check it out here.
We'll have another update for you early September!
Love you all!
Max (and Mo and Jess) x
Surveys, Shipping, & Eldritch Foundry Winner
over 1 year ago
– Wed, Jul 21, 2021 at 02:11:41 AM
Hello folks!
Mo, Jess, and I have been busy getting more details on freighting, setting up Backerkit, and taking a little post-KS break! Jess has a little personal message from him (and us) to you.
So, without further ado:
BackerkitSurveys
Backerkit is the pledge management platform we use to track all your shipping addresses, pledge levels, addons, and payments. There are options to add more addons, upgrade books from core to deluxe (except for Core Box backers), and change/add your shipping details.
In order to make sure we've set up Backerkit properly, we're doing what is called a 'smoke test'. This is where a random 10% of the backers get the survey from Backerkit. Once a good portion of you smoke testers have fulfilled the surveys, and we've resolved any issues, the rest of you will receive your surveys!
If all goes well we'll have the smoke tests out today, and the full survey out later this week.
The surveys will be sent to your Kickstarter email addresses, so make sure to check the junk folder in those if you can't find it! Backerkit support will be on hand if you have any questions, and they'll forward anything they can't answer to us. Please check the FAQ before contacting support :)
FreightShipping
Cargo shipping has gone kind of crazy over the past year. Demand has increased and older, more polluting cargo ships are being scrapped (which is great for the environment! But less great for us...) Talking with our fulfilment partners and getting quotes on freighting, it is looking increasingly unlikely that we'll hit physical distribution by January. Getting all our orders in in November means we're competing with Christmas shipping and Chinese new year.
We'll be updating our timeline and will have more info for you soon, but we just wanted to keep you totally abreast of everything we're looking at. When we know, you'll know!
Eldritch Foundry
We have a winner! There were loads of brilliant entries. We really loved some of you attention to detail: The thicc orc body, the big ol' 1-handed hammer, the injured right arm, the barbarian furs, Heliana's notebook, and the cute lil dire bunny rabbit. We could tell some of you spent ages refining the pose and they gave us a chuckle!
At the end of the day, we thought that Tarot LeBlanc's entry ticked most of these boxes, so congrats Tarot! Please send an email to humperdinkswares@gmail.com with you mailing address and Kickstarter email and we'll get your model sent out to you! Check out their submission here: https://eldritch-foundry.com/share/1625182786609
I took the liberty of conglomerating all the best bits from the submissions in a mini. Then Jess made it way better. Feel free to order this one as the "official" mini (don't forget to use code HELIANA35 for that sweet 35% discount!): https://gallery.eldritch-foundry.com/share/1626634522773
Our friends at Hit Point Press have released their new Kickstarter - Cubeamajigs. This neat storage boxes are covered in gorgeous, original art, and let you create reusable booster packs for drafts, cubes, and more!
$1.5m Goal Annihilated — Freebies! Backer-only update.
over 1 year ago
– Sat, Jul 03, 2021 at 01:48:40 AM
This post is for backers only. Please visit Kickstarter.com and log in to read.
The HUNT Has Ended, But Now we carve, craft and FEAST !
over 1 year ago
– Sat, Jul 03, 2021 at 01:18:08 AM
WOW! We’re so grateful to our backers, contributors, and monster lovers who made the campaign a wild and incredible success! Thank you all so much for the hype and wholesomeness throughout the month
We’re so excited to see you on the hunting grounds!
What’s Next?
Kickstarter processes pledges
Kickstarter is going to begin to process payments for this campaign and the process can take anywhere from 2-3 weeks. When we get confirmation from them that this step is complete, we’ll send out BackerKit surveys!
BackerKit surveys go out!
Surveys will then be sent out to collect your shipping details along with your pledge and add-ons. You’ll be able to upgrade your pledge or add additional add-ons with the survey as well! This will be open until we start fulfilling but to guarantee your order we suggest filling out the survey as soon as possible.
Digital Rewards
We will be sending you the digital files through BackerKit as rewards are completed. The PDF of the campaign setting has an estimated release date of late 2021!
Did you or a friend miss out on backing the campaign? It’s not too late to join the hunt !
We will be accepting late pledges for the books, box set and add-ons sometime next week! Everything that's been unlocked (excluding Kickstarter exclusives) will be available for preorder.
