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Nerdarchy > Dungeons & Dragons  > Treasures of the Tundra for 5E D&D Await Your Discovery

Treasures of the Tundra for 5E D&D Await Your Discovery

San-Tac-Laus Delivers Randomized Beholder Cheer for the Holidays
Holiday Season, First Edition Dungeons & Dragons Style

Salutations, nerds! I’m going to take a break here to talk to you about January’s Patreon reward content, aptly named Treasures of the Tundra. The idea this time around was to pull together content all about the players for fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons, and I feel like we’ve done a pretty excellent job of this if I do say so myself. Within you will find 17 new magic items, two beast mounts I affectionately refer to as the Big Woolly and the Small Woolly. Additionally, you’ll find 10 new poisons specifically geared to cold climate play, and a new playable race, the yaska (or, so the more irreverent folks might say, miniature yeti). You’ll also find four new playable subclasses for 5E D&D play.

5E D&D arctic tundra beast

Concept art for the lanacap, or big woolly, a gentle bipedal creature with wool so thick a grown human can sink their arm into the elbow before hitting flesh. [Art by Nelson Vieira]

Arctic themes for players and Dungeon Masters

Each of the four new subclasses are tundra or arctic themed for 5E D&D. Suitable for any environment, these subclasses take their cues from the harsh cold and biting winds. Adding these new subclasses to your game can be a worldbuilding tool or adventure hook for characters. Introducing new content to a campaign, whether it’s from the DM or players who discover something cool like these subclasses, there’s an opportunity to collaborate on exploring new areas of the setting or creating engaging new stories together at the gaming table.

The College of Rime Bard College centers around manipulation of movement and owning the darkness of the long night around you. When you are ice, you are everywhere.

“Even in a cold and unforgiving place news must travel, and the best way to make it memorable is in verse. As a messenger it is always important to get the news around in a timely fashion, through rain or sleet or snow, and you have studied how to best do this to an extent most never master. You know how to move in the cold and dark, and they can no more stop you than they can stop the weather itself.”

The Way of the Northern Wind Monastic Tradition is all about learning to adapt to the dark and the cold and the fear of winter. When you are the North Wind, there is nothing for you to fear from your glacial surroundings.

“You have trained in the highest peaks of the mountains and learned to bite without teeth and whisper without a voice. The monastery where you received your training is a difficult place to reach, and in order to arrive there unscathed you had to prove you have the tenacity of the wind, and upon arrival you were welcomed — provided you cause no trouble for the monks there. Your training at the Temple of the Northern Wind often involves fighting on unstable ground or sparring with blindfolds on. You were taught to adapt to adverse conditions.”

The Froststrider Ranger is a trophy collector who can use the life force still lingering in the horns and fangs and talons they accumulate to augment their performance and aid allies in the frozen tundra.

“Trained in the harsh climates of the far north where resources are few, you have learned to harness the power of the large beasts you hunt for further use. By taking trophies from the bodies of the fallen you know how to save some of the life force of your kill and put it to work for you to make yourself a more lethal hunter.”

Finally, the Iceborne Sorcerer is an elemental savant who controls the area around them, turning any locale they happen to be standing in to the middle of winter with a mere thought.

“Spirits of the tundra are fickle beasts. Sometimes they will grace the newly born with fair weather, and sometimes with storms. And sometimes, once in a rare while, a child will be hailed into the world with a blizzard so fierce it leaves rime thick on windows and the unlucky and exposed freeze to death. It is said a child born under these conditions is almost certain to be cold-hearted, as the killing frost leaves a hard sliver of ice within them that can never be melted. Although that much cannot be proven, one thing is certain; you were born under these conditions and emerged with certain powers, as if marked by the blizzard itself.”

Magic item sets

For another teaser, here is the cloak of black ice and robe of woven snow, just two of the 17 new magic items created in Treasures of the Tundra. In the collection, both these items are part of attunement pairs. If you are attuned to the both items in a set, the pair of items only counts as one item for attunement. The cloak is paired with armor of black ice and the robe with boots of woven snow.

If you’ve been holding off because you’ve been wanting playable content you don’t have to be the Dungeon Master to make use of, this is going to be a good month to sign on, and if you already are, the Iceborne Sorcerer pairs well with some of the winter spells from December’s Winter Court Soiree set. We share every monthly reward as a post on the Patreon page, so new supporters have access to all previous monthly rewards. You’ll have to do some scrolling down to get them all but they’re there! In addition to these rewards featuring full color art and new content you can drop right into your games, our Patreon supporters are automatically entered into our monthly giveaways, become eligible for monthly fan games, receive special access to our Discord server and our weekly live chats. Check out our Patreon here.

As always, I hope you all have as much fun playing with it as I did writing it!

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Robin Miller

Speculative fiction writer and part-time Dungeon Master Robin Miller lives in southern Ohio where they keep mostly nocturnal hours and enjoys life’s quiet moments. They have a deep love for occult things, antiques, herbalism, big floppy hats and the wonders of the small world (such as insects and arachnids), and they are happy to be owned by the beloved ghost of a black cat. Their fiction, such as The Chronicles of Drasule and the Nimbus Mysteries, can be found on Amazon.

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