Steinhardt's GM Cheatbook (PDF)

What is Steinhardt's Guide?

Steinhardt's Guide to the Eldritch Hunt is a 491 page grimoire fusing Soulsborne and Lovecraftian inspirations for 5th-edition DnD.

Enhance your 5E game with nightmarish monsters, eldritch moons, and the ever-looming threat of madness. Create an unforgettable narrative as you lay waste to eldritch spawn with an arsenal of trick weapons, blasphemous magic, and twisted player options.

Entrance your players as they unravel the mystery of the ravaged First Hunters, the zealous Radiant Church, and the erudite Obitus Scholare in this victorian-flavored, grimdark setting. Luyarnha is a city on the brink. With a ready-made cast of characters and an unending list of trials, your players will find ample opportunity to become the heroes these soiled streets need or die trying.

Alter the world around your players with a single die roll; the fires of a scorching moon can turn Luyarnha’s streets into an inferno, while a sanguine moon’s bloody malice can incense even the calmest of pacifists into furious feats of passion.  Create an unpredictable and ever-changing landscape usingSteinhardt’sMoon Phases mechanic. Theeight eldritch moons’ distorting influence begets a new chaos and calamity with each cycle.

Watch as your players descend into an otherworldly insanity using the revamped madness system.

Steinhardt’s Guide integrates madness as a core mechanic in the monsters you fight, the traps you trigger, and the bewildering moons upon which you gaze. Embrace the beneficial, detrimental, and entirely obscene madness effects that more than 10x the number of options from the base 5E rules.

Play as Scourgeborne, beings who never fully succumbed to the plague, Manikin, porcelain marionettes with a nervous system of gold, or any of the other dozen race options. Evolve your characters using the extracted essence of the eldritch scourge you vanquish! However, beware sacrificing too much of your dwindling humanity lest you become like your fallen comrades, men-turned-beasts.

Weave gunpowder and the arcane with the Pact of the Trigger Warlock, turn bones into playthings as an Osteomancer Wizard, and marshall the maddening moons’ powers as a Ranger of the Lunar Conclave.

Trick Weapons are a shape-changing arsenal of armaments that enhance your hunters’ versatility. Fire yourmeat hookshot, latch onto the enemy, pull yourself to point blank range, then blow off their face as you switch your weapon to a blunderbuss, one of several revamped firearms.