Grim Hollow Transformed Player’s Guide Review (D&D 2024)

Is the Grim Hollow Player’s Guide worth buying?

What exactly is Grim Hollow Transformed?

Grim Hollow is a 3rd party setting created by Ghostfire Gaming. It’s set in the land of Etharis, a dark fantasy world where characters strive to survive the loathsome creatures of the world. It’s more akin to the Witcher in tone, with monsters, curses and blood magic in abundance (it even has its own unique class called the monster hunter, which is not dissimilar from a Witcher).

You should expect character options that reflect this darkness. You won’t find any dance bards or life domain clerics in this line up. Instead, your character options tend to lean a little more towards the gritty, unsavoury and sometimes, downright evil side of morality. There’ll be plenty of blood magic, daemonologists, mutations and highwaymen as well as extra options (known as transformations) that let you become some of the monsters you fight. This includes things like hags, werewolves and fiends.

The original Grim Hollow Player’s Guide was released back in 2021 for the 2014 version of D&D 5e. It was smaller back then and less streamlined. The Grim Hollow Player’s Guide Transformed completely updates this guide for the 2024 rules adding loads of new options and updating all the previous options for the new rules.

For comparisons sake, the original Player’s Guide was 152 pages long, it’s now a whopping 268 pages! Within that is a brand new class, an extra 16 subclasses, 11 new races (with a whole new heritage system), 3 new transformations and a whole host of other extras too. Even if you had the original Grim Hollow Player’s Guide, there’s a lot of extra material in here, and that doesn’t even account for the improvements and updating to the 2024 rules that the book has undergone

What’s in the book?

This is mostly a book dedicated to the players of Grim Hollow, with character options in abundance (in fact, it’s perhaps one of the most heavily stacked D&D supplements I’ve ever seen)! Here’s what you get:

Contents	Amount
New classes	1
New subclasses	40
Species (known as heritages)	17
Backgrounds	25
Feats	41
Spells	92
Curses	10
Transformations	12
Items	82

It’s a lot of content and more than you might normally expect from this kind of book. But while the sheer volume of stuff is a real positive, it’s the quality of this that I’m going to focus most of the rest of my review on.

Character options

Heritages make a flexible, but overpowered alternative to species

Grim Hollow Transformed reimagines the species system a bit to make something really modular. There are 17 heritages to choose from and each is given 8 traits, but you can choose to ignore these entirely and use the custom heritage trait system instead. This allows you to pick from over 100 traits to create the kind of character you want. You can even pick the same trait twice to enhance that trait.

In terms of customisability, this is a great system and means you can easily pick the flavour of heritage you want, without being tied to the traits you don’t.

However, there is an issue. The problem is that not all traits are made equally. Some are almost brokenly good with things like out of phase that causes disadvantage on all attacks against you for a minute, or draining attacks, which is basically a free supply of temporary hit points. It’s a little hard to ignore these overpowered options and they could seriously imbalance encounters.

Even then, there are some traits that are just better than others, leading to players probably stacking on powerful options over underpowered ones. I think this could have been overcome through a points system too. A heritage could have 8 points to pick from, but some traits will cost 1, 2 or 3 points. This would mean you could have at most, 2 of the most powerful traits and prevent players overdoing it on the best traits.

It’s also worth pointing out that heritages are considerably more powerful than their vanilla counterparts in the Player’s Handbook and other official supplements. As such, I’d suggest sticking to either the heritage system or the standard species system, but I wouldn’t mix and match both.

If you want to know exactly which heritages are included in the book, I’ve listed those below. They’re divided by common, rare and exotic heritages, but any is viable for a Grim Hollow campaign.

Common heritages

• Dragonborn
• Dwarves
• Elves
• Gnomes
• Halflings
• Humans

Rare Heritages

• Dreamers
• Grudgels
• Laneshi
• Ogresh

Eldritch Heritages

• Accursed
• Arisen
• Dhampir
• Disembodied
• Downcast
• Wechselkind
• Wulven

Ultimately, if you want more flexibility with your species, and don’t mind the power creep, with a couple of minor adjustments to traits, the heritage system is actually really fun and unique, especially with everyone using the same system.

You can check out my guide to know more about the heritages of Grim Hollow.

The monster hunter is a solid new class

If you’re looking for a new class to dive into, Grim Hollow gives us the monster hunter. It’s most closely related to a spell-less ranger or Matt Mercer’s 3rd party blood hunter, with specialisms fighting certain creature types and an adeptness in the wilderness.

It’s an intelligence-based martial that utilises reactions more than any other class. It excels in tier 1 and roughly keeps pace beyond this in terms of power.

It also has 4 subclasses; the carver, devourer, occultist and trapper. They’re all nicely unique and capable in their own ways.

It’s a solid class in my opinion, but I do have a couple of issues.

First, studied response is a bit too powerful for level 2 in my opinion. It quickly balances out, but a reaction attack most turns that can be retaken on a miss if opportunity allows is quite strong. It’s not broken, and by level 5, feels more balanced, but beware of some early progression power creep.

My other issue is that it brings back the ranger’s favoured enemy issue from the 2014 rules. If you don’t fight a monster from your monster grimoire, then you’re missing out on one of your best features. It does slightly better at this than the ranger just by giving you one extra monster option, but for me, it’s still a design flaw, even if it fits thematically.

Largely though, I think the monster hunter is a pretty solid martial class and one I’d happily include in my own campaigns.

Most of the 40 subclasses are pretty good, but beware of power creep

We get a whopping 40 subclasses in the Grim Hollow Player’s Guide Transformed. It’s a lot and there’s a load to choose from.

In terms of quality, it’s mostly pretty good. Features are generally unique and fit the theme of the subclass and it introduced a lot of new ideas that aren’t really touched on in official subclasses. This includes things like fuelling sangromancy through hit point dice, abilities that get stronger as you take more damage, features that borrow from other classes and loads more. I like a lot of these subclasses and their features, but there are a few things to be aware of:

1. These subclasses lean on the powerful side: Many are more powerful than your average subclass (usually only be a little), so there may be a bit of power creep when playing alongside official subclasses.
2. Thematically, many of these subclasses lean on the evil side of things: That’s not to say that using these subclasses means that you must be evil, but it’s hard to consider a paladin with the oath of slaughter anything other than pure evil, for example. I think this makes some of these subclasses a big challenge to play in terms of flavour (unless you want to embrace the dark side), and many others, a smaller challenge to play (like the vermin lord).
3. Some subclasses are a so powerful that they’re broken: Having reviewed them all, these are the subclasses I think are broken and should be outright banned from your table; oath of pestilence paladin, vermin lord ranger and apocalypse sorcery sorcerer. Some others are certainly more powerful, but not in a broken way.

But largely, I think that these are well designed and fun subclasses that are quite different from the capabilities of most official subclasses. There’s definitely plenty to enjoy here, even if a few subclasses fall short.

You can see all the subclasses available below as well as my guides on each of them:

• Barbarian: Paths of the fractured, primal spirit and wrathful dead
• Bard: Colleges of adventurers, fools and requiems
• Cleric: Eldritch, inquisition and purification domains
• Druid: Circles of blood, entropy and mutation
• Fighter: Bulwark warrior, living crucible and nightwatcher
• Monk: Warrior of leaden crown, pride and regret
• Monster hunter: Carver, devourer, occultist and trapper guilds
• Paladin: Paths of pestilence, slaughter and zeal
• Ranger: Grim reaper, primordial archer and vermin lord
• Rogue: Highway rider, misfortune bringer and sanguine thief
• Sorcerer: Apocalypse, haunted and wretched bloodline sorcery
• Warlock: Pacts of the coven, first vampire and parasite
• Wizard: Daemonologist, plague doctor and sangromancer

Transformations are flexible, but a bit unbalancing

Many players have asked what happens if they’re afflicted with vampirism or lycanthropy or some other accursed transformation. Wizards of the Coast haven’t provided a satisfactory answer to this, and while there have been some rules for lycanthropy, they lack scalability.

Grim Hollow goes big on transformations. It applies increasingly potent boons as your character levels up while also accumulating flaws to “balance” things out.

It’s a detailed and interesting system and certainly gives players the opportunity to become a monster themselves. However, I don’t think it quite sticks the landing. Mostly, this comes down to balance that swings a little wildly.

On the one hand, the boons can be quite potent and a really big enhancement for characters. But the flaws can be quite problematic too. This is part of the reasons Wizards got rid of the sunlight sensitivity that drow have; it got in the way of the fun by creating a constant, but uninteresting problem for the character to grapple with.

Some of the flaws have problems mechanically too. Like the hag’s flaw that they might gain a level of exhaustion if they see their reflection. This feels harsh when enforced, but then meaningless if not enforced. And it really requires the DM to track your abilities.

With all of this comes an unbalancing effect between players that do and don’t have transformations. Those with transformations will undoubtedly be more powerful than those that don’t. It’s not an insurmountable difference, but with balance swings in other places too (like heritages) it can build into something more profound.

These aren’t insurmountable challenges and while I probably won’t use Grim Hollow’s transformations at my table, I can see DMs choosing to and that could still be great fun. If you are keen on the transformations, these are the ones that are available:

• Aberrant horror
• Fey
• Fiend
• Hag
• Lich
• Lycanthrope
• Ooze
• Primordial
• Seraph
• Shadowsteel Ghoul
• Spectre
• Vampire

Feats bring a lot of new ideas, with varying degrees of success

I didn’t feel very inspired by the choices available for origin feats, but the general feats are a lot more interesting. Expanded grip gives you more damage with versatile weapons you wield one handed, hulking figure gives extra damage on unarmed strikes and lightning caster let’s you target an extra creature with a cantrip using a bonus action.

As we’ve seen with other character options, power creep is an issue here too. Hulking figure on a monk or fighter could be a big damage boost, especially as you collect more attacks. Double cantrips is a big boost at higher levels too. Especially if you have a class/subclass that enhances cantrips, like a warlock with agonising blast.

I felt the fighting styles were more middling with some interesting options for handling the prone condition or enhanced damage for reaction attacks (which feels made for monster hunters). Others felt a little uninspiring though too.

The epic boons are largely about aiding those with transformations, letting them grab an extra transformation boon and remove a flaw. This feels like a nice reward for reaching level 19.

Lots of interesting spells, but curses feel like a lot of work

With 91 new spells and 10 curses, there’s plenty for spellcasters to choose from. As with everything else about Grim Hollow, there’s loads of variety and it manages to differentiate itself from official material with plenty of new ideas. Some fall a bit flat, a few others feel wildly unbalanced (like dark sacrament), but most are either decent or really good (like crimson lash) and some (like bloat) just seem very fun.

Most spells are perfectly serviceable, though there are a few I’d outright ban. These include; dark sacrament, vicious sheath, red rain (more because it’s a hassle than because it’s overpowered) and wipe face.

You might set your bar lower than me, and some spells feel like they have the power levels of 2 spells rolled into one (like arcane aegis). I didn’t consider them broken, but they do feel overpowered and you may want to ban those too. Check out my Grim Hollow spell guide for more details on which of these spells may seem overpowered.

As we’ve seen elsewhere with Grim Hollow, some spells are also perversely evil. So much so that it’s hard to see many characters feeling they can justify actually performing the spell. Consume mind is one of those. A great spell, but I struggle to imagine many characters eating something’s brain to attempt to recall it’s memories.

When it comes to curses though, I just felt like these were too convoluted and easy to lack impact, especially as they affect those that the party can’t see (usually). Unless the DM is clever and weaves the curse into the campaign, they can easily just flop. On the other side of things, curses on players can feel frustrating and require considerable effort to remove. It’s nice that these curses grow in potency, but this again means something else to track which isn’t ideal. For me, curses are a bit of a miss.

Great setting and lore for dark fantasy fans

A setting and it’s lore should inspire ideas of adventures that can occur there. On this criteria, it absolutely does. For example, there’s the dreadful despair of the Ostuyan Empire, a land that is now ruled by vampires and whose realm is burgeoning with undead. It’s a pitiful place and one steeped in terror, and feels like a great place to set an adventure.

If you’re looking for a dark fantasy setting, Grim Hollow is a good choice, and is one that possesses variety and a deep lore.

Easy to read design with artwork that embodies the setting

When it comes to the design of the book, not only is everything neatly laid out and easy to find, the artwork mostly looks great. That is a mostly though. The artwork does vary in quality. Some depict epid beheadings of monsters or elaborate rituals, but others look a bit awkward, like the devourer monster hunter which doesn’t look great (and I don’t mean just because he’s mutating into a monster).

The artwork does look fittingly grim though and naturally communicates the world and the character options players can choose. Jumping to the lore section, this becomes particularly apparent with artwork that easily encapsulates the vibes of different locations in Etharis in unique ways. From zombie drawn carriages to monsters stalking characters through the mists, you quickly gain a sense of the setting.

Overview

Ultimately, Grim Hollow is a good 3rd party option for players and DMs that want to explore a dark fantasy setting. The sheer volume of extra options is enticing, but how much of it you’ll want to use will determine your mileage here.

The monster hunter is solid and there’s plenty of good subclasses here. The heritage system is interesting and flexible, as are the transformations and there’s enough great spells in here to be worth exploring.

The biggest challenge you’ll face with this book though, is power creep. Some subclasses are overpowered, monster hunters can edge that way at early levels, transformations can imbalance the game and some spells are outright broken (in fact, so are a few subclasses and heritage traits too).

I didn’t love the curse system if I’m honest, and I don’t think I’d use transformations in their current format (though both are a workable systems and other players may like them). The book also requires some curation as I think some options need outright banning or updating (in fact I’ve tried to indicate which options these are in the review to save you time).

The need for DM curation is always a bit of a shame as it just adds more burden on the DM, but balance is always a design challenge, and in trying to make character options unique and appealing, this can easily creep in sadly. Occasionally I did feel that with a little more time and playtesting, that some of these issues might have been picked up and resolved.

This is a harsh criticism though, as largely, the mechanics are well designed, if a tad powerful. But it’s worth being aware that some caution may be needed on certain options.

When it comes to lore and presentation, it’s a top product though, and it’s obvious that a lot of care has gone into these aspects of the book.

Ultimately, I do recommend Grim Hollow, but it’s not for everyone. If you like your fantasy cute and cuddly, you should absolutely avoid. But if you don’t mind playing some morally grey (or outright evil) characters in a dark fantasy world, then despite its flaws, I think there’s a lot to love about the Grim Hollow Player’s Guide Transformed.

3.5/5

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