Porting from Grim Hollow to Ravenloft 5e?

[Hell_Born]

Grim Hollow is a 3rd party "Dark Fantasy" setting for D&D 5th edition with a unique "High Dark Fantasy" theme - much closer to Castlevania, Dark Souls or Bloodborne than it is to Ravenloft. Currently, there's two books released; a campaign guide and a player's handbook, and the latter has me very impressed, since it's rare to find a Dark Fantasy setting that isn't also a Low Fantasy one. But it made me curious if ay of the material from it might be usable in a 5e Ravenloft game, so I figured why not ask the masters?

The Player's Guide contains five new exotic races, who I feel are probably too high fantasy for most Ravenlofters, and two dozen subclasses - two for each of the official classes.


Exotic Races:
Wechselkind are the one race that I think might actually slot into Ravenloft without too much hassle. Wechselkind are faerie constructs created when a fey being wishes to take a changeling in the traditional sense - they craft an artificial child from wood, clay and ceramic, bring it to life with fey magic, cloak it as a living being, and then swap it for a human toddler. Wechselkind are living constructs, similarly to warforged, and possess full intelligence and emotional range. However, they are cursed in that not only are they literally tools of wickedness, but as child-shaped constructs, they will remain forever in the guise of children. Most live isolated lives as nomads, begging for charity and then moving on before others can realize their true unaging nature.

Laneshi are sea-dwelling mystics who embrace the line between life and death, fearing not the end of their own lives and relying on the spirits for guidance. Their people are divided into two castes; single-born laneshi become warriors, who govern all things relating to the living. Laneshi born as twins have one twin ritually sacrificed to become a spirit guide and guardian, and these make up the mystics, who govern all things relating to the dead.

Ogresh are a strange race that may be connected to giants in some way. They possess voracious appetites, and whilst they can reach up to 7ft tall, they are invariably monstrously rotund creatures; an adult ogresh can weigh between 700 and 800 pounds! To compensate for this rapacious appetite, they are naturally solitary creatures, but unlike the typical giant, they are both highly intelligent and natural social manipulators, with subtle and overt mystical abilities that allow them to be masters of social interaction.

The Downcast are Grim Hollow's fallen angels, the remnants of angels who survived the catastrophic civil war that killed the gods, only for the death of the divinities and the subsequent dwindling of divine magic to strip them of much of their power, resulting in their being trapped on the mortal world.

The Dreamers are the survivors of an ancient civilization that existed long before dwarves and elves, the last remnants of a race that, faced with imminent annihilation, hid themselves in an underground fortress deep below a mountain. There, they slept away the centuries as the rest of their civilization was destroyed, only to be woken from their eons of slumber when the dwarves dug too deep and breached their tomb-city.

Finally, the Disembodied are the survivors of a magocratic city that was seemingly destroyed by a catastrophically failed ritual to create a permanent portal to the Etheral Plane. Instead, it sucked the entire city through, and left its survivors trapped in a strange limbo, halfway between the two planes.


Subclasses:
The Path of the Fractured is a Barbarian who practices esoteric psychological techniques, allowing them to split the rage off from the rest of their psyche and attain unusual abilities as a result. Essentially, you use this subclass to emulate Dr. Jekyll. It gives you distinct raging and non-raging bonuses, and also makes you impossible to recognize when you're in the middle of a rage.

The Path of the Primal Spirit is a Barbarian who wants to be a beastmaster. These variant totem warriors have forged a unique companionship with their totem animal spirit, causing it to manifest in the material world as an ally.

The College of Adventurers is a Bard who specializes in telling sagas of heroes and stories of great champions - and also in learning from their library of examples. Basically, this subclass lets you double-down on the bard's memetic "jack of all trades" role by letting you pick up increased skills and also a number of lesser versions of other classes' core mechanics - lesser versions of channel divinity, primal rage, wild shape and martial arts, low-level metamagic or invocations, etc.

The College of Requiems is the Necromancer Bard, who uses dark, morbid music to control the dead... seriously, when did this archetype enter D&D? I'm pretty sure it was as the Dirgist PRC in 3e's Libris Mortis, but I dunno. Either way, I think we can all agree it's a pretty obvious Dark Fantasy Bard Subclass(tm). I expected this subclass to show up in VRGTR, but instead we got a knock-off of Pathfinder's Occultist.

The Eldritch Domain is a Cleric who worships the strange, enigmatic beings that lurk beyond the realms we know... y'know, it's the Mythosian magus domain. It gets assorted powers relating to shrugging off psychic damage and dishing it out in turn.

The Inquisition Domain is a Cleric who has devoted themselves to membership in a clerical order dedicated to hunting down and defeating arcane magic users. This gives them particular powers to battle spellcasters.

The Circle of Blood is a Druid who focuses on blood magic, using sangromantic spells and with a grab-bag of features that all theme back to blood magic in some way... it's kind of hard to really elaborate on this withough going into mechanical detail, because it's kind of a "what you see is what you get" subclass.

The Circle of Mutation is a Druid who believes in evolution... specifically, they believe nature needs a helping hand to compete with, and ultimately surpass, the unnatural world. They're essentially fleshcrafters, with features that allow them to tinker with their Wild Shape and customize it into monstrous new forms.

The Bulwark Warrior is a Fighter specialized in defense. That's literally all there is to say about this guy. He's the guy in full plate and a shield who specializes in just being absolutely impossible to kill, distracting the enemy and holding the line so the rest of the party can take them down.

The Living Crucible is a Fighter who has turned to alchemy as a way to achieve greater power, cooking up all manner of fantastical combat drugs to make them faster, stronger, harder, better. This is the core around which all their mechanics are based.

The Way of the Leaden Crown is... well, basically it's a way to bring back the old psion class. Lore-wise, these are Monks who seek to unlock the hidden powers of their mind so they can better battle against the supernatural denizens of realms beyond the mortal world - in their eyes, humanoids have suffered too much and too long at the hands of fiends and angels alike, and now it's time to strike back.

The Way of Pride is a Monk subclass that... well, it's hard for me to describe without reverting to tropese, personally. If you're familiar with the cocky, arrogant "my skills are superior and thus I am superior" antagonist from martial arts movies and anime? This subclass lets you play that guy.

The Oath of Pestilence is a Paladin who is... basically a knock-off Champion of Nurgle. Paladins of Pestilence believe in the principles of "survival of the fittest" and "might makes right", embracing the powers of disease and decay to cull the weak and destroy that which has lingered for too long. Their Tenets are simple: Strength in Resilience, All Things Must Pass, and Might Makes Right.

The Oath of Zeal is a Paladin devoted to the destruction of those they view as evil above all else. They're basically the more fanatical counterparts to the Oath of Vengeance Paladin from the corebook. I think their Tenets speak for themselves: Uncover Corruption, Purge the Heretics, No Mercy, By Any Means Necessary.

The Green Reaper is a Ranger who has turned to the arts of assassination, using their knowledge of the natural world to cultivate the deadliest poisons in nature and wield them to slay their chosen targets.

The Vermin Lord is a variant Beastmaster Ranger who specializes in leading great swarms of rats (and other vermin, theoretically, but the mechanics focus on the rat-master angle) instead of a singular larger beast.

The Highway Rider is a Rogue who specializes in raiding across the highways and byways, even getting its own personal mount like the paladin does.

The Misfortune Bringer is a Rogue who has developed the mystical ability to steal luck, wielding curses, jinxes and a baleful evil eye to bedevil enemies and make them easier prey.

The Haunted is a Sorcerer whose powers stem from the fact that they are the living fetter for a ghost. More than just a simple Sorcerer with necromancy spells, the Haunted begins play with a spectre familiar, and gains increasing deathly abilities as it levels up.

The Wretched Bloodline is a Sorcerer whose family line was cursed by some magical malefactor, but who has learned to tap into this lingering dark magic and twist it into a source of power.

The First Vampire Patron grants Warlocks necromantic powers that allow them to emulate the patron. Basically, you can probably already picture this warlock in your head.

The Parasite Patron is a more... fleshy... alternative to the Great Old One Patron for Warlocks. Warlocks sworn to some cosmic consumer learn to emulate its powers to feed on the world around them to grant themselves strength, and at their peak can even cheat death by assuming the mantle of a parasite and stealing a new body.

The Plague Doctor is a Wizard who has turned to the unique ways in which arcane magic, medicine, herbalism and alchemy can be mixed together to heal - or harm.

The School of Sangromancy is the school of blood magic, and Wizards specialized in its study are freakishly hardy as a result.