Caldera + Volcano Cavern (James' RPG Art Collab)

Greetings adventurers!

While some view nature’s fury with natural reverence and respect, there will always be those that aim to bend nature to their will, no matter how extreme the environs. One such forgemaster set out to make a helm that would encompass the full furor of a volcano into his work. It seems he was successful in the end, but so vengeful was he in his fervor that many grew to fear him. After his demise, this helm was locked away deep in the very place it was forged where few would dare to travel.

We’ve very excited to bring you something special in addition to our usual content this time around. Our good friend James’ RPG Art reached out to us about a potential collab and we knew we had to make something spicy. I’m extremely excited to say that you’ll be getting not just the item this week, but a beautifully rendered scene by James as well. He has created numerous amazing illustrated scenes and we heavily recommend you check out some of his work and give a look at his Patreon.

James' RPG Art makes animated scenes to help players visualise environments and add immersion and tone to your games.

He has created over 300 scenes from official WotC adventures and many unique locations that are often found in a D&D adventure.

He releases 4 new locations each month for his patrons.

Visit his Website and Patreon for more information!

Our patrons get early access to all of these items as well as additional formats that are easily usable in both physical and online play for D&D and Pathfinder 2E. Additionally they get high-res art exports, easy to use text exports, behind the scenes updates, and a lot more.

If that strikes your fancy, consider becoming a Patron

Design notes from Matthew:

I love designing things for Barbarians. It’s one of my favorite classes to work around because I find the rage mechanic so interesting. You might think that there isn’t much depth to it, but the reality of having to attack every round or lose it really put in some interesting things you have to play around. It creates an opportunity cost. Rather than fully altering how rage works, I wanted to make something that played around it.

The randomized mechanic that I included on the 5E version was a nod to the unpredictable nature of a volcano. That didn’t work so well when we’re talking about a much tighter action economy in PF2E so I went for a direct action there. I think it’s important when designing for multiple systems that you really take into consideration how the games function at the table and this one one of the instances where that’s highly important.

One of the hardest aspects of developing this was actually the heat vision. I want to go for something like the Predator, but that’s a remarkable difficult thing to find the words to describe. Older editions of D&D had this built in actually, but they scrapped it and rolled the rules into darkvision due to the overly complex nature of how it could interact with magical effects. My solution was to make it a slightly surface level change, but extend the range. It functions like an enhanced darkvision, but adds a few more of its own benefits rather than trying to invent something new. I always tell folks when designing their own items, you don’t have to reinvent the wheel, you can just change it a bit.

We’re so very excited to complete another collab with a creator that we have a lot of respect for. James’ work is legendary and he has created some extremely iconic visualizations of scenes for me. I know I have used his work in a number of my CoS games. We hope you enjoy this bonus content for you all. You can grab it from the master posts below.

We highly encourage you to join our Discord server where you’ll get access to exclusive channels that have sneak peeks, behind the scenes chatter, and more.

Rewards for Patrons!

Kraken's Kohorts ($3 tier)

Kraken's Kompanions ($6 tier)

Kraken's Kollaborators ($10 Tier)

Don’t blow your top!

- Fernando & Matthew