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:
Mushroom Menace & Backerkit Surveys
about 2 years 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
about 2 years 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 [email protected] 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.
about 2 years 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 !
about 2 years 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.
We can’t wait to bring you even more cool things in the future!
Thanks again
Mo (JessJackdaw, Max, and Hit Point Press!)
$1.3m goal (and Secret goal!) - New Goal: Food Glorious Food!
about 2 years ago
– Fri, Jul 02, 2021 at 07:17:41 PM
Hi folks,
I took a day off this weekend and y'all went and hit another stretch goal. Thanks! Sorry this update is delayed :p
We need a necromancer to raise our godzilla!
We've hit the $1.3m goal which means a new subclass for the Tamer will be added to the book - the Necromancer. Make an army of low-maintenance companions today! Well... in January 2022.
SECRET GOAL!?
Some of you know that the publisher, Hit Point Press, has been acting as our Kickstarter advisors for this campaign. This time last year they had their most successful ever kickstarter - The Deck of Many Animated Spells, Tarot, and More, raising $1,310,509. Sometime in the wee hours of Sunday (UK time) webeatthat!
As a thank you for being part of us beating that, and as an homage to that kickstarter, we're adding the dire bunny card to the animated familiar cards we're crafting. If you've bought the add-on, or are getting the deluxe box, this card will be in there :)
Here's an early Work in Progress:
Awh Cuu- aRGHHJGJKKHKLH
Next Goal - $1.4m: Food Glorious Food
If we hit $1.4m (which... we're already close to xD) we'll add 11 more food recipes to the book, bringing the total to ~35 :) Food acts like potions, but takes 10 minutes to eat, and you can only benefit from one at a time.
More exploration! Mo and I spitballed a post-magic-apocalyptic setting (and still might do it), but Web DM look to have made their own, stellar, weird and wild wasteland. They have a hoard of player options in addition to their exploration rules, locations, factions, and GM toolkit so it's great addition for players and game masters alike. There's little overlap with Heliana's guide so we think it'd make a good companion book :)
Imagine alchemical sumps, arcane battlefields, and sites of divine retribution clouded in supernatural weather, surrounded by harsh deserts and wilderness. Magic or other apocalyptic events have fundamentally changed these places and local inhabitants. In this book you will find locations, items, GM tools, adventure hooks, subclasses, and a brand-new custom class that is sorely missing—the psion.
