Shadowdark Home Brew

INTELLIGENCE-EATER (Player Ancestry)

You are not what you appear to be, you are actually a small 3 pound brain with 4 legs who likes to consume the brains and inhabit the bodies of bi-pedals.

You know Common and Primordial.

Transient Mind. Upon death of your host body, you can escape and take over another body. You loose the ancestry feature of the host body and it is replaced with Transient Mind.

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INTELLIGENCE-EATER (Monster)

A small creature resembling a brain with four legs who likes to consume the brains and inhabit the bodies of bi-pedals. Brain-Eater’s love the experience’s provided by the host body such as eating, drinking, and adrenaline induced excitement, they tend to be hedonistic while inhabiting a host.

AC 12, HP 10, ATK 2 Claw +2 (1d4) and Mind Bite +2 (1d6),

MV near, S -2, D +2, C +1, I +2, W +0, Ch +0, AL L, LV 3

Empathy. 1/day the Brain-Eater can detect any living creature with an Intelligence of 3 or greater within double near distance for 3 rounds.

Mind Bite. The Brain-Eater can target a single creature within near distance with a mental attack, roll 1d20+2 with a DC of 12 to succeed. On a successful roll, the target takes 1d6 damage.

Transient Mind. The Brain-Eater may take control of the body of a corpse that has not been dead for longer than 10 minutes. The Brain-Eater consumes the brain of the corpse, crawling inside, taking its place and restoring the body to life with 1 HP. The Brain-Eater takes on attributes, memories and personality of the new host. The Brain-Eater looses the ancestry features of the host body and it is replaced with Transient Mind feature, but looses Empathy and Mind Bite while it inhabits the host.

“I am not your brother, I am the thing that killed him.” - Indrid Grimm

Shadowdark House rule

One of the big complaints I have had with many old school style RPG's is wasted levels, where the character really only gets some extra hit points. In Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition, this has been dealt with very nicely. Unfortunately Shadowdark fell into the same hole these other RPG's fell into. In Shadowdark, on each odd level your character receives a class talent. So, in the name of getting a little something each level, on each even level your character receives a roll on the general talent table. The following table is my first draft of this table.

Nothing on this table particularly breaks the game and most of them are already on other tables. I think the biggest thing about this table, is it allows characters to gain abilities from other classes. If the campaign goes all the way to 10th level, the player will get 5 rolls on this table, with half the rolls being concentrated in the 8-12 range, a quarter of the rolls will be 3-7 and a quarter will be 13-18. Realistically that would translate to 3 rolls in the middle and 2 rolls either on the low or high side.


I was considering an alternate table based on 2d6 rather than 3d6, with 5 options rather than 16 options. This would be more akin to the class talent tables, but I think this gives a wider range of possibilities and therefore more interesting for the players.