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Open Post - September Release - The Nuclear Option
🕑 Added 2025-09-03 13:04:14 +0000 UTCTier Release Links
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Hey Critical Crew!
This month's release takes us deep into a wasteland born from the ashes of the Mages’ War, where fallout lingers not only in the soil but in the very fabric of reality. Radiation seeps into every shadow - warping flesh, twisting magic, and leaving behind scars that will never heal. Fractures in time bleed strange echoes into the world, and artifacts from forgotten eras that were never meant to be touched stir with forbidden power . What unfolds here is not the end itself, but the sparks that set the destruction into motion - the choices and horrors of this age are what will one day give rise to the nuclear wasteland future. For those who walk here, survival is not measured in battles won, but in how long one can endure the slow decay of the world itself....
.STL's
This month brings our latest .STL for our Apprentice and Loremaster tiers - the mutated Radioactive Owlbear! This .STL file comes presupported and ready to print.
As always - STL's are NOT backlogged, so be sure to download it locally this month!
Adventure
This release also features our latest 20 page Adventure, "Uncovering the Augur Nexus"!
In this dungeon crawl, your players uncover the truth behind the once-peaceful town of Whas - now little more than a mass grave carved by the hands of the Arcanuum Archaists. These zealotous mages have uncovered the Augur Nexus, an out-of-place artifact from a long-forgotten age that is capable of detecting magic and granting unfathomable power to those who operate it. To guard their secret, the archaists enslaved and executed the townsfolk, leaving only ruins and whispers of what lies below. Now the adventurers must brave the excavation site, face the archaists, and decide what becomes of the Nexus - before its power reshapes the world forever.
Stat Blocks
You get 5 brand new monster stat blocks of various challenge ratings and our latest TWO Monster Templates - the Radioactive template (allowing you to reskin existing monsters and create horrifying mutated variants!) and the Gray template (for creating paradoxical monsters and characters from alternate realities! Grays are creatures devoid of color and thus... YOU NEVER HAVE TO PAINT A MINI AGAIN! Just apply the gray template!)
Stalk the wastelands with the Radioactive Owlbear, a mutated predator warped by fallout; face down the hulking Radium Golem, a construct whose very existence poisons the land; and survive the endless swarms of the Radiuroach, vermin that thrive where nothing else can live. Cross paths with the secretive Arcanuum Archaists, mages who enslave whole cities in their pursuit of forbidden relics, and beware the Grays, colorless echoes from fractured timelines that never should have touched our own. Together, these monsters embody the ruin of fallout, paradox, and mutation - threats that we guarantee your players won’t soon forget!
Player Options
This release also introduces our latest subclass for our metal-bending original player class, the Ferromancer (first unveiled in our “Metal Magic” release) – the Study of Radium! Radiumancers bend not just metal, but the unstable power of radioactive elements themselves, channeling decay and fallout as weapons. Practitioners can unleash searing bursts of radiation, shroud battlefields in toxic auras, and even wield irradiated constructs as extensions of their will. Going hand-in-hand with our new game mechanics for Radition and the Irraditated condition, Radiumancers are all about embracing the volatility of the atom - turning corrosion, mutation, and collapse into destructive strength, while risking contamination with every spell cast.
You also get ourlatest player race – the Mnemos! Survivors from a timeline shattered by the nuclear holocaust caused by the eternal struggle of The Mages' War, the mnemos have been cast back into the present in a desperate attempt to prevent the future they remember all too clearly. Shaped by radiation and paradox, they carry both the scars of fallout and the echoes of a ruined tomorrow. Each mnemos bears a Title, a mantle that marks their unique role within the mission - the Archivist, the Beacon, the Requitor, or the Silencer to name a few - and together, they work in secret to redirect history away from catastrophe. Their minds are fractured with visions of what must never come to pass, granting them strange powers over time itself, even as the weight of paradox threatens to unravel them. Haunted yet resolute, the mnemos walk the present day not as natives, but as heralds of a war still to come - driven by the hope that they might rewrite the end of the world...
Items
You will also find our 5 latest Items - protect yourselves with the Hazmat Suit, remove irradiation with RAD-B-Gone or hurl Irradiation Grenades at your enemies - to both help set the theme for the setting and reward your characters for their roleplaying! And what release would be complete without a new game mechanic to introduce to your table? Prepare your table for Out-of-Place Artifacts - relics dislodged from the natural flow of time, space, or reality itself. Neither wholly magical nor wholly mechanical, they radiate power that was never meant to exist in this world. Feared as much as they are coveted, these artifacts bend the rules of reality for those who wield them, but always at a terrible cost. "The Nuclear Option" kicks it off with the Augur Nexus - a towering construct that can seek out spellcasters and amplify the magic of those who operate it. To control the Nexus is to hold a weapon capable of shaping the flow of magic itself - an ability the Arcanuum Archaists will kill to protect and the Order of the Blank will stop at no means to destroy. But every moment spent within its grasp drowns the mind in visions of power and ruin, leaving behind more questions than answers....
And lastly this release brings our 5 latest sigils (magical runes that can be applied to items and equipment to bestow magical features to them)!
Spells
This release also brings our 5 latest magic spells to help your players (and the monsters!) to infect and destroy their enemies with radiation damage and our new irradiated condition, as well as new rules for creating your own ferromancy spells! With spells like Gamma Ray and Irradiate Object, as well as our latest epic cast spell "The Nuclear Option" (splitting a nucleus and literally creating a magical nuke), your players are sure to be in for a devastating treat.
Maps
We've also got 12 total battle maps (gridded and gridless variations) - ready for the included adventure (or just as easily used as standalone maps).
Tokens
And lastly, we are bringing you 21 VTT-ready tokens for all of your online needs!
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As always, we have to share some love with the folks in the Hivemind for helping us brainstorm and fine tune the content in this release! If you have yet to join the Critical Crafting discord community and get involved, you're missing out!
Are your players ready to fight the future and change history?
- Dillon, Cameron, Connor, and Sarah
