Way, way back in January, thousands of tabletop gamers voted in EnWorld’s annual ‘Most Anticipated TTRPG‘ survey, revealing their hopes and dreams for the year’s releases; ‘Deathbringer‘ didn’t just win the poll, it destroyed the competition, with three times the votes of the game in second place. This fast and bloody fantasy RPG system began life as a wildly successful PDF supplement for D&D 5e – but a standalone version launches on Backerkit today, July 14.
Deathbringer is a joint creation by Dan DeFazio – best known as ProfessorDM of the YouTube channel Dungeon Craft – and publisher Roll For Combat. The first version of Deathbringer was a mod kit for D&D 5e that made sweeping rules changes to ramp up the lethality of players and monsters alike – the new version turns it into a whole game system compatible with Shadowdark and other OSR games.
So what did the pamphlet version of Deathbringer to D&D 5e that people liked so much, turning it into an Adamantine best seller on Drive Thru RPG? Well, it strips away a lot of systems, speeding up the game while bringing back the lethality that made combat so risky in the earlier DnD editions. Then it adds in Deathbringer Dice, a pool of D6s the player can spend to deal damage, try to pass failed checks, or survive enemy attacks, giving the players way more in combat than they ever did in OD&D.
If OD&D was one of Robert E. Howard’s Conan the Barbarian novels – and remember that if book Conan had a D&D class, it would most likely be Rogue – then Deathbringer is more like a Frank Frazetta painting, complete with bulging muscles and bodacious babes. Speaking of whom, Frazetta’s influence is obvious in the artwork for Deathbringer’s classes – eight have been revealed, which include a Deathbringer (of course), but also a Bounty Hunter, Plague Doctor, and Battle Nun, for some Darkest Dungeon vibes.
The Backerkit page for the game reveals another revised system that’s going to encourage you to get stuck into the fight. Falling to 0HP the first time will knock your character out, and have them return with a scar and a Prestige Talent as they learn from their mistake. Getting sent to 0HP for a second time costs more – an eye, a limb, maybe even a level, but it comes with another Prestige Talent. Three strikes and the character is done for, but you get to make one final action with them, automatically achieving a critical success and dying in a blaze of glory.
As for challenges to pit those heroes against, pledging on Backerkit will get you a stack of adventures from many creators, including Kelsey Dionne, creator of Shadowdark, Daniel Fox, creator of ZWEIHÄNDER, and YouTubers like Luke Hart of The DM Lair and Bob World Builder.
You can learn more about the Deathbringer RPG from this panel at Gen Con 2025, filmed by Roll For Combat:
All told I’m not surprised there’s hype for this game. Deathbringer is a well-playtested effort to realise a fantasy many people have about old school D&D that the game itself never fully supported; Shadowdark swept the Ennies in 2024 and is considered one of the best tabletop RPGs of recent years, and it has a similar ethos on simple old school rules without covering exactly the same territory. Seems like a smart pairing.
Have you played D&D using the Deathbringer mod? Or did you take part in the beta playtest for the standalone version? We’d love to hear what you thought in the Wargamer Discord community!
Source: Wargamer
