Hoard Golem

Monster

Comments from the Finger: The terrible lich Valda takes great pride in how many adventurers he has slain, so much so that he has constructed an assistant made entirely out of magic items. If you like what you see, go support Valda's Spire of Secrets on Kickstarter today!

Also, I'm experimenting with a new square format of PDFs. Let me know what you think!

Hoard Golem

Sequestered in his Spire of Secrets, the mad lich Valda has devised the ultimate minion: the Hoard Golem, made entirely from discarded magic items. Nothing is more singularly valuable or deadly to adventures.

Magical Blades and Baubles. Seasoned adventuring companies have sought out the Spire of Secrets for centuries, which is rumored to be a stockpile of priceless treasures. Unbeknownst to most of them, the tower is a sinister death trap constructed by the lich Valda from which no one ever returns. Those who would perish inside the tower’s walls are even petrified in solid marble, so that its victims can’t be resurrected. Valda is perhaps single-handedly responsible for more slain adventurers than any other individual, a fact which delights him greatly.

However, as marble adventurers began to crowd the Spire’s multi-planar floors, the lich realized that the heroes brought more magic items than they could even carry. Their bags of holding, dancing swords, and spare suits of magical armor just piled up near the entrance. That wouldn’t do! Ever resourceful, the lich realized that he could thwart intruding heroes and clean up their mess in one fell swoop. Thus, the first ever Hoard Golem, which Valda dubbed “Dross,” was constructed.

Necromantic Construction. Even beyond its exotic and magical materials, the design of Dross is unique among golems. The hulking mountain of magic items is as much an enormous phylactery as it is a mechanical magical servant. As such, it can absorb spells wholesale, store them like a battery, and unleash them back at unwary spellcasters. 

Pledge Today! Spire of Secrets

In the flurry of the last couple days, I neglected to update our blog! 

Valda's Spire of Secrets is live! Go pledge!

Spire of Secrets | One Week Away!

The recent lack of posts are because I'm hard at work getting ready for the Valda's Spire of Secrets Kickstarter, which launches in about a week on the 31st! In this post, I'm going to tell you everything there is to know about the book itself, with a separate post letting you know about everything else in the Kickstarter later in the week. 

Click here and press the "Notify Me on Launch" button!

Valda's Spire of Secrets is a definitive expansion for DnD 5e. Coming in at 384 pages long, it contains 10 of our base classes, over 150 subclasses, and a ton of other stuff you'd expect from us at this point, including 130+ spells, dozens of feats, a mountain of exotic weapons and magic items, and a lot more.

If you're a regular around here, this is a chance to get the very best Mage Hand Press stuff in print in one place, so you can point at it and say "this is canon" at your table. If all of this is new to you, I'll break down the classes we're including in more detail.

Way of the Flagellant

Monastic Tradition

Comments from the Finger: If this looks familiar, it's because it's a redux of Way of the Wheel! And this will probably be the last redux post for a while, as our new book,

Valda's Spire of Secrets

is finally done! We're launching a Kickstarter for it starting on August 31st. Save the date, tell your friends. This is the Mage Hand Press Player's Handbook you've all been waiting for. We'll talk about it more in the coming weeks, but here's the elevator pitch: 380 pages, 10 base classes, 150+ subclasses. Get hyped.

Way of the Flagellant

The Way of the Flagellant teaches an extreme, sometimes heretical, view of asceticism: peace comes through suffering, purity through pain. Its practitioners shun all indulgences and embrace pain to harness their ki and isolate themselves further from the material world. As such, these monks often carry their eponymous flails and whips, both to use on themselves and their foes. Their pain is a mortal penitence and an act of focusing, letting them block out all else and manipulate their ki with expert intent.

Bone Knight Redux 2.0

Martial Archetype

Comments from the Finger: It's not deja vu! Thanks to some comprehensive feedback, we've decided to swiftly revisit the Bone Knight with yet another redux. Fingers crossed this one is flawless!

Bone Knight

A bone knight, or an osteoth, is a warrior that has undergone an agonizing transmutation ritual, granting them the ability to fully control their bones. Naturally, this power is hideous and disfiguring, but allows them to grow bone protrusions for weapons and armor, changing their skeleton’s size and shape at will. Mastering this ability is a feat of endurance and creativity, but results in a fighter whose most powerful weapon is not sheathed at their side, but sheathed within their flesh.

Many fighters believe the osteoth ritual is a mere myth, a flight of fancy traded around campfires, but the process is indeed real, preserved among moldering tomes and in the minds of deranged wizards. With some resourcefulness, the procedure can be replicated with the contents of any alchemist’s lab, with a generous fatality rate of nearly half.

Gastromancer

Arcane Tradition

Comments from the Finger: Before anyone asks, this is why I don't write subclasses on an empty stomach. Also, I'm actively trying to figure out how to make Flavor Blast a little more appealing as an option. Let me know if you have any ideas!

School of Gastromancy

Gastromancy, the oft-satirized subschool of food-related magic, is rarely taught to wizardly apprentices, for even masters of transmutation can be terrible at cuisine. However, gastromancy is a truly nourishing magic which spans all cultures, and is more akin to an art than an arcane tradition. Stereotypical gastromancers are thought of as monstrously fat and held aloft by magic, like great balloons in robes, but this is mostly a myth; wizards of this school are usually healthier than their contemporaries, owing to a healthy and balanced magical diet.