Heroes and Foes - VoidBorn Series 5e DnD Compatible

A Story Engine

Most character books give you a name, a role, and a statblock.

Heroes & Foes gives you people: contradictions, desires, pressure points, secrets, and relationships that actively push play forward. Use them as player characters when you want a deeper narrative foundation to build on—or when you want to break out of roleplaying “the same voice” every time. Or drop them into your world as NPCs: allies, enemies, patrons, rivals, tragic mirrors of the party, or future problems waiting to happen.

These characters are written to create play fast: clear motives you can exploit, hooks you can deploy in seconds, and connections that naturally generate tension. Use one as a one-scene catalyst… or as the spine of a long-term arc.

About the stats: each entry includes a Level 1 sample statblock as a starting point. That’s intentional. The numerical side is simple to rebuild if your campaign needs a different level. What you’re really getting here is an in-depth exploration of fully realized characters, written as roleplay challenges for your players and as campaign-shaping NPCs for your world.

Inside, you’ll find:

• 50 fully developed characters you can use as PCs or NPCs in 5e-compatible play
• 50 optional character-bound relics — one tied to each character
• Hooks, motives, and relationship fuel that create real session momentum
• Clear desires, fears, and flaws you can push at the table

Free Sample (3 Characters)

See the book before you back it. Download a free PDF sample with three complete characters for 5e-compatible play. This is a real slice of Heroes & Foes, built to show you how the bios, hooks, relationships, character-bound relics, and sample stats work at the table.

Get the free sample: https://oneman-rpg-studio.com/voidborn/
(No email required -> Two clicks, direct PDF download)

Orvyn Halzareth (Human Sorcerer)

Orvyn has a near-ritual need to name everything, as if words could pin reality in place. His eyes are blood-red, his presence unsettles strangers, and his relic scepter hides stormbound power that keeps waking up at the worst possible moments.

Roshka Ironfang (Half-Orc Paladin)

Roshka is obsessed with the art of forging, and her devotion cuts like steel. Worse, she swore an oath she cannot escape: she must never refuse a duel, even when it is a trap, even when it will ruin everything she is trying to protect.

Dimbyl Tiddlewick (Gnome Bard)

Dimbyl lives for applause and the rush of a crowd, yet what he craves most is absolute silence. He hides a suffocating fear of enclosed spaces behind jokes and songs, and his flute can echo emotions so vividly they feel like borrowed memories.

What's Inside the Book

1) Built by Class, Opened with Story with a Narrative Opening

Heroes & Foes is structured by class, so you can find the type of character you need quickly. But each chapter also opens with a short in-world narrative passage: an excerpt from the Chronicles of the Bard Lazarus Durn-Vhur, written to set tone, mood, and theme before the characters appear.

These openings are not decorative lore. They plant names, places, factions, mysteries, and unfinished threads you can define yourself, connect to your own campaign, or leave as evocative fragments at the edge of the world.

Dimbly received with inordinate astonishment the news that his ancient Aunt Mivra—recently deceased—had left him a melodic testament. The box of purified bone, exquisitely crafted, combined the most meticulous carving artistry with the utmost mechanical precision his kin were capable of. He couldn’t resist: the moment he opened it, the delicate mechanism—almost imperceptible—played back for him an ancient and storied melody, composed centuries past by a celebrated bard of his own bloodline, a fellow Glimmervyn. Her musical legacy had not only proved indispensable for the generations of his lineage, but had also become a touchstone piece across all of Brilthwyn...

Kyrastra’s expedition to Azharel-Ka, the Sepulcher of the Ember Kings, was undertaken with no undue or inordinate expectation of any kind whatsoever. Still, it stirred in her a most puerile excitement. When she finally neared the place, after days of punishing travel across the desert, what rose before her outstripped even the utmost reach of her imagination. Though ruined, the proportions of that ancient metropolis —long since fallen from grace— loomed in disproportionate relief amid the vast barren and hostile waste. Towering pillars still standing; colossal statues, some decapitated, others half-buried in sand; niches that might once have held sacred relics, emblems of noble lineages, or the heraldry of heroes from forgotten wars; broken obelisks; stoppled walkways and sagging balconies she imagined once overgrown with luxuriant growth; stairways seemingly left incomplete; dry canals now choked with sand, dust, and rubble; magnificent domes torn open to the sky; crumbled altars once raised to deified effigies of gods long since abandoned...

She had heard of the baroque hermeticism of Nyth’Varel, but when she at last obtained a safe-conduct to find the city beyond the enchanted mist, she had never imagined a place where words and deeds would be measured with such exacting precision. Appearance and strategy always concealed intentions very difficult indeed to unravel. Anyone would say such an environment would be perfect for someone like her, and more so given the stigma that weighs on demonic heritage. But no. TThat dark dance of sharpened words, accentuated by the somber, opaque climate—its stone-and-rain grayness—condemned to immobility: a corset that hindered all movement, a knot worked by the powerful Elven Great Houses, nearly palpable in its very tension, like a physical barrier that could be touched, even breathed in...

2) Character Biographies Built for Play

Each character is presented through a biography designed to generate scenes, choices, and consequences. The goal is not to hand you an optimized “finished build”. It is to give you a person with pressure points you can push at the table.

About the stats: every entry includes a Level 1 sample statblock as a starting point. That’s intentional. The numerical side is mechanical and easy to rebuild: if the Level 1 sample is not right for your campaign, you can adapt the character to the level you need using standard 5e progression.

The real focus of the book is elsewhere: deep, story-forward characters you can use as roleplay challenges for your players, recurring NPCs, unstable allies, personal rivals, future enemies, or campaign-shaping figures.

Here’s what each biography section gives you:

History
A concise origin and formative events, with specific details you can turn into future hooks: past choices, unresolved ties, old wounds, debts, loyalties, and the kind of “before the campaign” baggage that creates immediate momentum.

Personality
A playable voice: how they speak, what they value, what they hide, and what pushes them into conflict. “On Others” adds sharp opinions about other races or classes—admiration, distrust, contempt, fascination, rivalry—giving you instant fuel for table tension, alliances, and difficult conversations.

Motivation
What they are actively pursuing right now. Use it to decide what they do under pressure, what they will risk, what they refuse to abandon, and what kind of offer would actually move them.

Desire / Passion
The recurring obsession, hunger, ideal, or private need that keeps resurfacing. This is the character’s emotional accelerator: the thing that makes them predictable in a useful way, and dangerous when the wrong person learns how to push it.

Weakness
The crack in the armor: a flaw, condition, secret, pact, fear, addiction, enemy, curse, or unfinished debt. It is written to create complications, hard choices, and pressure at the table, and often includes a simple mechanical angle you can use, modify, or ignore.

Relationships — One Suggested, One Established
Each character includes two relationship hooks. One is suggested and open-ended, easy to reskin into your own world. The other is an established link to another character in the book, creating an internal web of loyalties, debts, rivalries, betrayals, uneasy alliances, and chain reactions you can exploit in play.

Gear: Character-Bound Relics -> Optional, DM-Driven
Each character has a signature item presented as a CBR: a character-bound relic tied to the biography and designed to reinforce the character’s past, theme, conflict, or role in the story.

These relics are not just generic magical gear. They can become quest rewards, personal complications, symbols of status, inherited burdens, dangerous temptations, or reasons for other people to hunt the character down.

CBRs are optional and DM-driven. They are designed to emphasize theme and story first, and they do not follow the official 5e magic item creation guidelines. Some may be too strong or too disruptive for certain campaigns. Use them as written, tone them down, turn them into rewards, change their properties, or leave them out entirely. The DM decides.

(CBRs aren’t limited to weapons)

Rewards

PDF Only - 16 USD

The complete 130-page Heroes & Foes digital PDF for 5e-compatible play: 50 fully developed characters with biographies, hooks, relationships, sample Level 1 stats, and optional character-bound relics. Includes any unlocked stretch-goal characters as additional digital PDF bonus content.

PDF & Name in Credits - 19 USD

The complete Heroes & Foes digital PDF, plus your name included in the book’s credits section. A simple way to support the project and leave your mark on the final release.

PDF + Print [POD] - 20 USD

The complete digital PDF, plus access to the Print-on-Demand edition through DriveThruRPG. After the campaign, you’ll receive the PDF and a POD discount code to order the printed book.

PDF + Print [POD] & Name in Credits - 23 USD

The complete digital PDF, access to the Print-on-Demand edition, and your name included in the book’s credits section.

Stretch Goals

Each stretch goal unlocks one additional character as a digital PDF bonus: one more biography, one more set of hooks, one more character-bound relic, and one more tool you can bring into your campaign.

These unlocked characters will not be included in the physical print editions of Heroes & Foes. They will be delivered to backers as part of the digital files.

Once a goal is reached, I will complete the full character entry — biography and CBR properties — and include it in the final digital delivery.

Since this bonus content is not fully finished yet, it may undergo changes during development.

VoidBorn Series

Heroes & Foes is part of the VoidBorn Series: a modular 5e-compatible library built to expand your campaign with plug-in content that can stand alone, but also connect across future releases.

This book is designed to work on its own. You can use its characters, relics, hooks, and references immediately, without needing any other volume.

But if you like connected worlds, there is more beneath the surface. Across the biographies — with key references highlighted in gold — and the narrative passages that open each class chapter, you’ll spot recurring names, half-glimpsed places, factions, deities, locations, creatures, and one-line references that feel bigger than the page.

That’s not an oversight. It’s an invitation: a door left ajar for the DM and players to step through.

If you like filling in blanks, you’ll find fertile ground here. If you prefer clearer references and direct connections, future VoidBorn Series releases will give many of these elements real shape through deeper entries, timelines, and structured relationships.

I’ll also be gradually publishing (I hope) a short public glossary on oneman-rpg-studio.com so these references are easy to track and reuse at your table.

The Studio

I’m Francisco Bravo, a writer and creative writing instructor, and One Man [RPG] <studio> is exactly what it sounds like: a one-person studio.

I write, design, and lay out the books, and I also run the website, marketing, and community myself. That means each project has a single creative direction from concept to final page: writing, structure, visual tone, layout, and presentation all passing through the same hands.

Alongside my commercial releases, I also publish a growing hub of free 5e-compatible resources for Dungeon Masters: practical DM tips, compact plug-in subsystems, quick D12 random tables, weird trinkets and common gear, and Narrative Layers packs such as Visceral Combat, Signature Magic, Social Veneers, and Living Landscapes.

Everything is designed to be table-ready, easy to plug into any 5e game, and focused on improving feel, tone, and usability without rewriting your campaign.

Visit my 5e Free hub here: https://oneman-rpg-studio.com/dnd-5e-free/

Format and Delivery

Heroes & Foes is a 130-page PDF designed for 5e-compatible play. Digital delivery and print fulfillment will be handled through DriveThruRPG, so backers can claim the files easily and order print-on-demand copies through a reliable RPG platform.

Digital Delivery — PDF via DriveThruRPG

After the campaign, backers will receive a DriveThruRPG redemption link to claim the PDF and any included digital files directly in their DriveThruRPG library.

• Delivered via: DriveThruRPG claim / redemption link
• Digital files included: Main PDF + any unlocked stretch-goal characters as additional digital PDF bonus content
• Required account: a free DriveThruRPG account is needed to add the files to your library

Print Editions — DriveThruRPG Print-on-Demand

If you back a print edition, you will receive a discount code after the campaign. You will then place your print-on-demand order on DriveThruRPG using that code.

• Fulfillment method: DriveThruRPG Print-on-Demand
• Print format: Softcover or Hardcover, depending on your tier
• PDF included with print tiers: Yes
• Stretch-goal characters: digital PDF bonuses only; not included in Softcover or Hardcover print editions

Digital files will be prepared and delivered first. Print-on-demand codes may follow shortly after, depending on DriveThruRPG file approval and print setup.

After the Campaign

Once fulfillment is complete, Heroes & Foes will remain available for purchase on DriveThruRPG for anyone who missed the Kickstarter, at its regular price of $19.

Updates

You’ll receive regular progress updates during final edits, layout, file preparation, and DriveThruRPG setup. If any dates shift, I’ll communicate it clearly with revised estimates.