The following is a video transcript
Todd Kenreck: The Sorrowsworn are embodiments of extremely negative emotions, and they may have been created by either the Shadowfell, or by the Shadowfell influencing people in that plane of existence, and warping and twisting them. I talked to Adam Lee about what makes these creatures so disturbing.
Adam Lee: The Sorrowsworn, they are ... Well there is much debate about how Sorrowsworn are created. Some say that they coalesce out of the energies and misery that is in the Shadowfell. Others have posited that Sorrowsworn are people who have been in the Shadowfell for a long enough time, and they are slowly mutated. They are people who have terrible anger and rage, and as they stay in the Shadowfell, the energy of that realm mutates them and warps them into something like the Sorrowsworn the angry, or the Sorrowsworn the hungry.
Each one of these, the angry, the hungry, the lost, they're all manifestations of these heavy-duty emotions that are prevalent, and either the Shadowfell magnifies them and warps these people, or that the Shadowfell just spontaneously generates that from the energy that trickles down from the prime material plane into the Shadowfell. These creatures each manifest one of those emotions, or those appetites.
When you encounter a Sorrowsworn, you're encountering a relentless force. You're encountering something that is pure hunger, or pure anger, and in dealing with them, the DM can create some of these fun stories around them. Like the angry, if you don't attack it, you don't provoke further attacks from it. If you attack an angry, it will actually get advantage, and it will then ... You're playing into its hand.
A lost is wandering around, and it's trying to find its way, and it's desperately clawing at you to try to ... It's like a drowning man, it's going to cling to you and try to pull you down. Others like the wretched, which if you ever saw a Mordenkainen's Mayhem, I played Moloch, and Emmy played the Sibriex, which we'll talk about in a bit. As Moloch, I was attacked by a ton of the wretched.
The wretched are just basically these horrible life stealing monsters that attack in packs. They will cling to you and just suck your life force out. They can take down very large monsters as was evident in Mordenkainen's Mayhem. I'm still stinging from that defeat, but that being said, the wretched yes, a single wretched by themselves, wimpy, a little jerk. Lots of them together, they can devastate you.
The hungry, they're just these ravenous ... They just have endless hunger, and they're attracted by life force. If somebody's getting healed, or if you're in the Shadowfell and you're casting healing spells and things like that, you might be able to attract a hunger, one of these hungry Sorrowsworn. They'll come creeping after you, and then try to devour your life force. We were talking about the Shadowfell and just what it is as a plane. What created this plane?
It's this negative energy world, it's dark, it's filled with sorrow and sadness. One of the ideas we were playing with, is like the Feywild, Fey creatures, some of them are manifestations of emotions. We were like, well what if in the Shadowfell, what happens when hunger becomes an actual thing? The Shadar-kai became these gloomy, morose people, because of what happened to the Raven Queen. When the Raven Queen fell, the Shadar-kai fell with her.
Through her loss of the connection with the Elven pantheon, she was this really sad, sorrowful ... The Shadowfell was ... Whether she chose the Shadowfell, or the Shadowfell chose her, is up for debate, who knows? When we were thinking about the Shadowfell, it's just like, oh man, it's just such a heavy place, what if that heaviness coalesced actually into a physical being? What if, if you stay in the Shadowfell for a long enough time, do you actually begin to warp? Does the Shadowfell actually affect who you are?
For me personally, when I was thinking about it, it's like yeah, if I stay at a heavy mood too long, could it actually affect how I physically am? My shoulders get hunched, I get down, I feel like gray. If I was to take that to an extreme, then I could turn into a Sorrowsworn. It's like playing with that idea of consciousness and energy warping the physical being. Consciousness and energy generating something from nothing.
To me, the Shadowfell is a magical realm, it has the potency and potential to do something like that. When we were jamming on the Sorrowsworn, that was the cool thing that came out of that.
I'm using the Hungry in my playthrough of Curse of Strahd as a metaphor for one of the characters who has become a vampire.
Now I want to run a game with the shadowfell involved
I enjoy these monsters and have added them into my ToA group. The party encountered a figure, on the brink of death, in the jungle who warns them about the anger, the lost, the lonely, and the hunger before passing. It was a simple encounter that has my group debating if it is something or if it was a jungle crazed man telling them to stick together and bring rations. I plan on slowly bringing them in as the PCs level up.
Anyone else remember when the Sorrowsworn were the servants of the Raven Queen, and the first Sorrowsworn was referred to as the Raven Queen's son?
Yup, what happen to that storyline?
Once again, I find myself in need of learning to recreate monsters to be weaker. If I have a Shadow Sorcerer in my campaign roaming a border area between the material plane and the shadowfell, I would love for their potentially few emotions throughout the game to manifest themselves as these creatures and assault the party. I just don't wanna wait to a specific level to introduce a specific feeling, nor do I wanna have my party confront the inner struggles of a single party member in a way that might be TPK deadly... at least not the first time around.
In myth, the "dragon" of the story in need of slaying has almost always had symbolic meaning for some inner struggle. I would love to be more direct and use creatures from strange world as very clear representations (at least for those paying attention) of struggles the PCs must overcome and D&D just happens to be the most entertaining when resolving struggle through built in combat mechanics of the game.
"Potentially few emotions"
I feel ya 😉
Heck that's rly neat, I'd love to see one of these in action
Not irl thp thatd be terrifying
Reduce the monster's HP, AC, stats, attacks/round, and/or damage, then adjust everything else accordingly. See page 274 (I think it's that page) of the DM's Guide or here.
For example, if you wanted a CR 10 the Angry, you could drop its Strength to 16 (+3), its Constitution to 18 (+4), its Wisdom to 12 (+1), its HP to 170 (20d8 + 80), its AC to 16, and its Rising Anger damage to 13 (2d12). That would drop its proficiency bonus to +4, which would drop its attack bonus to +7 and its Perception to +5, which in turn would drop its passive Perception to 15.
If you wanted it to be CR 7, you could drop its Strength to 15 (+2), its Constitution to 17 (+3), its Dexterity to 9 (-1), its Intelligence to 7 (-2), its Wisdom to 10 (+0), its Charisma to 6 (-2), its HP to 150 (20d8 + 60), its AC to 15, its hook damage to 8 (1d12 + 2), and its Rising Anger damage to 13 (2d12). That would drop its proficiency bonus to +3, which would drop its attack bonus to +5 and its Perception to +3, which would drop its passive Perception to 13.
Yep. That was good stuff. This is also cool, but I don't understand why they needed to replace sorrowsworn with this, rather than making it a new thing.
Inexplicably lost because they thought this was more interesting and there couldn't just be both things, I guess?
In all, it's part of turning RQ into a dark being of malevolent (but somehow neutral) nature, who enjoys suffering and wants to trap people into cycles of reliving their worst moments for eternity, and erasing the cool story and nature of the figure and the creatures that surrounded her in 4e.
Because she couldn't be a non deific power, while still maintaining her basic nature as a being who guards the natural process of death, is on the helpful side of neutral, etc? idk
For my group, we'll keep using her as before, and I'll just avoid playing a character associated with her at all in campaigns that use her 5e lore.
Yeah, I should able to just modify the numbers and keep the abilities intact which is always my concern. I was working on a mystic one shot where the players had to escape a Mind Flayer colony. I liked keeping the option open of having them fight both a an Elderbrain and at least 2-3 Mind Flayer minions without being completely wrecked and without needing to be above 12th level. iirc, Mind Flayers can paralyze you with a single hit so even lowering the DC of that save by the recommended amount might not make up for there being multiple creatures capable of paralyzing your for brain extraction.
Are Sorrowsworn classified as Undead or Elemental? since they are formed from a non-sentient substance (i.e. Painful emotions and Negative Energy), I believe they would be an Elemental of pain, not standard elements, like fire or wind. Though they come from the Shadowfell, the main home for undead creatures, they could also be undead. I NEED AN EXPLANATION, SOMEONE PLEASE HELP!!
They're actually monstrosities. You'll notice that a lot of non-undead monsters found in the Shadowfell are monstrosities. Elementals are bound to the inner planes, specifically the elemental planes of fire, earth, air and water as is standard for western elemental mythologies (just take a look at classical Greek and Roman theories on the elements, recovered and reproduced by Medieval and Renaissance scholars). Monstrosities, as described in the Monster Manual:
"Monstrosities are monsters in the strictest sense — frightening creatures that are not ordinary, not truly natural, and almost never benign. Some are the results of magical experimentation gone awry (such as owlbears), and others are the product of terrible curses (including minotaurs and yuan-ti). They defy categorization, and in some sense serve as a catch-all category for creatures that don’t fit into any other type."
As stated here, creatures that don't truly fall into any other type are often monstrosities. However, in 4th Edition, they were classified as Fiends (Demons). I think the lore change in 5th Edition is because of the desire to create a truly unique type of monster, and also considering the fact that demons are from the Abyss and are chaotic evil, while sorrowsworn are from the Shadowfell and are neutral evil.
ah, okay. Thanks
just started a campaign with some friends and the entire adventure is based around all our backgrounds as well as other things and we are going to shadow fell at some point as am playing a shadar-kai who is the direct descendant of the raven queen and he wants to cure the shadow curse along with bringing the raven queen back to her original personallity as when she ascended he stopped ageing. but when we go to shadow fell as the DM told me we are, he said it is my fault that everyone will have to endure the entire plane as a whole along with the sorrow sworn, and at this point he is planning for most of us to have strong emotions causing them to appear more frequently.