The Dungeons & Dragons community’s general attitude towards Wizards of the Coast’s official manuals is ‘anything you can do, I can do better’. And, mostly, they’re right. The D&D community is teeming with homebrew characters, classes, adventures – even some subclasses based on the biggest pop stars of their age, I hear – not to mention the dozens of rules each table reinterprets in a better, friction-free version of their intent.
However, the work Wizards does is still crucial. While all this additional material exists, it can only build on the frameworks provided, and most new players are going to stick to the digestible, official rules instead of figuring out how to play as Sabrina Carpenter (seriously, I hear these subclasses are just the business!). Going by the adage of ‘anything you can do’, it also means that when Wizards raises the bar, it’s merely offering an even higher platform for the rest of us to stand on as we try to leap higher. Recently, that bar was raised in the Monster Manual by the Haunting Revenant.
Haunting Revenant Is A Haunted House… But Not In The Way You Think
I’m yet to get my hands on the new Monster Manual for myself, but my colleague Joe Parlock has gotten his mitts on it, and his impression that it’s a tool for players as much as DMs excites me. Partially for the reasons Joe lists, that it shows each character in their habitat and contextualises them, offering more reading potential to the book and appealing to fans beyond the selection of stat blocks it was previously. But also from a DM’s view, more artwork means more inspiration, and one of the beasts seems to have struck gold.
As those of you who read the second paragraph will know, said beast is the Haunting Revenant. Put simply, it’s a haunted house. Wait, maybe I didn’t explain that correctly. It’s a haunted house. If you think of a mimic as a haunted chest, this is a haunted house. Is it going in yet? Should I switch to some other vocabulary? This is not a house that, when you go inside, ghosts appear or paintings move their eyes. It’s not a house that has hauntings inside of it. It is a house that is itself possessed ie haunted.
This is not, I grant, an entirely original idea. The Hell House in Final Fantasy 7 (which returned with aplomb in Remake) offers the same thrill of the Haunting Revenant – it lets you fight against a house. However, unlike the Hell House, the Haunting Revenant is capable of posing as a real house, meaning you could be inside when the fight begins, hence the comparison to mimics. It also has a move (Invitation) which can force players inside if they fail a roll. One of the big things I wanted D&D to improve with the 2024 rules was variety in combat over meatsack-whittling, and this feels like part of that philosophy coming true.
D&D’s New Monster Manual Is A Storytelling Dream
It’s also especially interesting given the final major update ahead of the rules rollout were bastions, which emphasised owning a homestead, castle, or base as a party. The idea is you may return here between adventures, and you might even have allies, family, or servants working for you. Slaves would also be a darker twist on this idea. And speaking of dark twists, what if you suddenly realised your bastion had been a Haunting Revenant the whole time, and now all your possessions, loved ones, and of course, yourself were trapped in its splintered maw?
Elsewhere, it seems like the Haunting Revenant also represents a streamlined change I’ve noticed in the few stat blocks we’ve seen from the Monster Manual. Aside from Invitation, it only has one other move (Object Slam) and that’s all it does. While some previous beasts were unwieldy with the amount of attacks they had – and others still may be, especially as future modules roll out – it seems like this time around, most are highly restricted. You can flavour them, but given players always have so many moves at their disposal, monsters who can only do a couple of things are often much harder to make interesting.
However, that’s the only real complaint I have about the Haunting Revenant, which otherwise underlines my optimism for the sort of future the rules refresh can bring. It’s a haunted house (and let’s not go through that again) that offers a huge variety of potential for adventures, and if everything in the Monster Manual is even half as creative, the community will have a field day.
Dungeons & Dragons
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E. Gary Gygax, Dave Arneson
