#I. do not have a lot of single-target casters; what you see here is all the rest of the single-target casters I have

[writing-protocol]

Impossible Task

Shiro’s target is sitting on the roof of his own house, face turned upward to take in the sparkling night sky. This far from the nearest town’s light pollution, the stars shine bright against the backdrop of the Milky Way. Somewhere in the distance, critters scurry in the desert and a cool breeze rushes across the hardscrabble rock of the nearby flatland. A single, lone cactus sits idly near the porch; it’s probably been here longer than the single-story shack Red call home.

“Might as well come up,” calls a low, raspy voice. “Ladder’s on this side.”

The hunter walks around the side of the house, past a row of hardy flowers in planters, down a narrow, well-trodden path that circles around the small building. He gets a glimpse of the well-maintained external siding decorated with rows of grey-and-black sigils.

Far beyond standard protection wards, these symbols flow and writhe as Shiro passes, as if tracking his progress. On the back side, the shack has a small back door with a couple of steps leading down toward a secondary path, and there’s a ladder propped up against the bottom of the roof.

The older man takes a moment to gather himself before clambering up to join his query. He’d known from the beginning that he couldn’t possibly sneak up on the witch — Red is the most powerful spell caster of his generation, and this is his domain.

“Didn’t think you’d come so soon,” says the dark-haired young man once Shiro is safely standing on the roof. “Huh.”

By the meager light of the night sky, Shiro can make out few details. Red is skinny and tan, his black hair messy as it curls behind his ears. He’s dressed in loose pants and a thick sweater with sleeves long enough to cover his hands. The witch has legs for days and bright, piercing eyes that watch the hunter with suspicious calm.

“Huh?” Shiro asks.

“You’re not at all what I expected.”

“What were you expecting?”

Red shrugs and pats the blanket he’s sitting on. “One of the exorcists, maybe? Last time, the Garrison sent three at once.”

“I’m not with the Garrison.”

“Oh, really?”

Shiro shrugs and takes the offered seat. “They put out a bounty. Nearly a hundred thousand credits. I took the job.”

“And drove straight here?” the younger man asks with a note of surprise.

“Not exactly. I did my homework first.”

Red chuckles and sips from his thermos, gaze returning to the glimmering sky above. This close, Shiro can see a recently healed scar on the man’s face and the way his hands wrap around the thermos.

“When’d you know I was here?”

“When you crossed the boundary back at the crossroads.” The witch shrugs his narrow shoulders and closes his eyes. “I can feel it when people enter my domain.”

“That’s gotta be a useful skill.”

“It comes in handy when dealing with unwanted visitors. I’m surprised you came here at all. Most people wouldn’t think of challenging a witch on their land.”

Shiro knows he’s taking a risk by coming here, but he has a few tricks up his sleeve. “I guess I wanted to see for myself what all the fuss was about. The Garrison insisted I was dealing with a powerful and deranged madman hellbent on taking over the world.”

That gets a full-throated laugh out of Red. The man snorts and shakes his head in disbelief. “Is that what they think?”

“Are they wrong?”

“How much do you know about spell casting?”

“Enough,” Shiro answers quickly.

“It requires willpower and raw natural energy from the earth, a.k.a. magic. I have a lot of both, so yeah, I’m powerful. Deranged, though? And definitely, not hell-bent on anything.”

“I thought it was common knowledge that each witch has an agenda.”

“It’s called an impossible task. Every witch is born with one, something they must accomplish before they die or suffer the consequences. And yes, I have one of those.”

Shiro spent weeks scouring the old libraries and digging through newspaper clippings to better understand his target. The world knows Red’s pseudonym because he saved thousands of people once. From atop a mountain, he calmed the wrath of a volcano that had threatened the West Coast.

Then, he disappeared, and the Garrison took it upon themselves to capture the rogue witch. Magic might be legal, but the government loathes anything and anyone it can’t control.

“They say yours is to burn down the world.”

The quiet man behind him hums softly in answer. “Something like that.”

“They’ll never stop chasing you,” Shiro tells the witch, hands in his pockets. “If not me, then the next hunter. You can’t hide forever.”

“I know.” Red stands up and downs the rest of his drink. “I know they’ll stick me in the deepest hole they can dig and throw away the key. I’ve known my future for a long time now.”

“And yet here you sit.”

“The alternative was to live in fear, looking over my shoulder until the very end.” The man turns toward Shiro and there’s a wan half-smile on his lips. “At least this way I get to meet a handsome man.”

The hunter recoils as his cheeks grow warm. “Flattery won’t postpone the inevitable.”

“Doesn’t make it any less true.” The witch shrugs and kneels in front of Shiro. “My real name’s Keith. I thought you should know.”

Shiro’s heart is thumping hard in his chest. In his pocket is a sedative, a heavy dose of something that can fell a witch, and all he has to do is touch the beautiful, ethereal young man before him to activate the drug.

Keith watches him with eyes that glimmer in the dark. “It’ll be all right, you know. You can stay here afterward. I know you don’t call anywhere else home, so I tried my best to make this shack livable. The pantry’s stocked, and I’ve got year-round vegetables growing in the greenhouse. You can see for miles. No one will be able to sneak up on you here.”

“Why’re you doing this?” Shiro asks as his hands find Keith’s face and cup it, callused fingers pressing against the angles of the witch’s cheeks. “You could’ve fought back, surely.”

“Maybe. I might’ve even won. But time is like a river, and some events in it are immovable rocks. I tried to budge one, and it cost me dearly. I’ll be picking up those pieces for the rest of my life.” Keith’s eyes flutter shut. “Take care, Shiro.”

---

Shiro gingerly descends from the roof with his precious cargo pressed close to his pounding chest.

He walks into the house, Keith held in his arms like a sleeping bride, and places him with unparalleled care on the couch in the living room.

In the dim light of a corner lamp, the shorter man looks almost peaceful. His short hair spills around his head like a halo, and his dark clothes show off a gorgeous physique. Shiro slips a pillow under Keith’s head and covers him with a woven blanket.

Then he looks around the cozy home and can’t help feeling impressed. Here’s a home whose occupant cared deeply. It’s visible in every nook and cranny, from the way plants dot the windowsills to Keith’s favorite mug placed next to a coffee maker.

Shiro’s smile fades as he glances at his phone.

He has a choice to make.

Dial the number provided by the Garrison and wait for a retrieval crew to arrive, or run with his sleeping friend. Keith will awaken eventually, and they’ll need to cross state lines before dawn to stand a chance of escaping the Garrison.

Asleep, the witch looks so vulnerable and young, the sight breaks Shiro’s already fractured heart.

“Yeah, all right, all right,” he tells his conscience. “Shut it."

“Rest easy,” he whispers to the sleeper and then goes outside to prepare his truck.

It feels like shedding a lifetime of weight off his shoulders, this single moment. One moment, he’s someone’s hound, and the next, his own master. He chooses to escape, to save the raven-haired man from the horrors the Garrison has planned. The choice leaves him breathless and light.

He has a plan by the time he straps the sleeping man into the truck’s passenger seat. Or at least the beginning of one. Outrunning an organization whose tendrils touch nearly every aspect of society will be no easy task, but it’s a challenge Shiro is willing to face. He won't let Red - no, Keith - struggle to survive alone.

Keith doesn’t stir as they drive away from his home, and Shiro is glad he doesn’t have to explain himself. He will figure this out in time. For now, he’s just a lone hunter helping a person who might one day call him a friend.

Today, that will have to be enough.

#voltron #fanfiction #sheith #nopro writes #keith kogane #takashi shirogane #witch

[goldicthehedgefox]

here's my updated to-train list, including Nightmare, who I got earlier today (she's adorable, aaaaaaaaaaaa-)

#arknights #goldic's operations #I say; at like 4am so it's technically yesterday but bleh #I. do not have a lot of single-target casters; what you see here is all the rest of the single-target casters I have #what level they are doesn't mean anything I just chucked a bunch into the first 5 and then went 'fuck it only a few' for the rest #CC number 4 has been helping a lot with materials for Mountain and stuff #I just need more oriron clusters for the big gel towers and then I can focus on getting two more beeg guard chips for dualchips #I like making the dualchips all at once for one operator so I can promote the ones I want to promote more easily #since my track record of 'saving stuff for later' is pretty all over the place #keeps me from wasting stored materials on operators I might not even use #what's the point in E2ing an operator that's kinda hot garbage besides 'you like them a lot?' flexing. the point is flexing #but also half of these operators are here because I see them a lot in Kyo's guides and finally decided 'fuck it; get in' #'get in the fucking van; you're going to the training fields' #unrelated sidenote but I headcanon my dokutah to be a catboy; the feline species if you will #and he's hella gay but he keeps getting all these women from Headhunting and he's just like: 'I just want Jaye' #'I just want. ANY of the operators on this list' and he pulls out my operator wishlist of SA Thorns Jaye Phantom etc. #and Kalt'its's like 'Tough. Deal with it' as dokutah starts silently crying about it #Broca and Executor are the Comfort Operators that he goes to for cuddles and they're always confused as to why #Executor just kinda rolls with it but Broca's like: 'hold on who said you could suddenly start hugging me-' #and Amiya's like: 'don't worry Dokutah; we'll recruit them eventually' but it doesn't help at all as he just crys harder #and then my bro's dokutah walks in like: 'that's rough buddy. anyway-' #cuz like my bro has SA and Blaze; I forgot if he had Thorns or not but the point is he's usually chillin' compared to me #cuz he usually has the operators I need but don't have #speaking of my bro; he's saving literally all of his originum for Dust (whenever she comes to the ENG version) and wants nobody else #and I'm just like: bruh you could get- and he's like: no bait. only Dust #OH AND LET'S NOT FORGET MOSTIMA- my dokutah always glares at Mostima because 'her second token could've been Thorns' #and literally nobody but the other dokutahs understand what he means by that and he refuses to explain it #so everyone just assumes he's crazy and hates Mostima for no reason lmaooooo #I should stop typing now there's way too many tags on this post- #goldic rambles

[grailfinders]

Fate and Phantasms #174

Y’know what? It’s the america anniversary, and it’s FGO’s anniversary too. Let’s celebrate a bit. Here’s a build early, we’ll be back on schedule on the sixth.

Today on Fate and Phantasms we’re making the precious cinnamon bun who just wants to ruin the environment, Berserker of Learning with Manga! For this build, we’ve got three goals; grow big, grow bigger, and grow biggest. Expect spoilers with her build breakdown below the cut, and slightly fewer spoilers in her character sheet over here!

Next up: Give me a sign~ Build me Nero one more time!

Paul Bunyan is a Rune Knight fighter to grow bigger while helping her friends, a Giant Soul Sorcerer to grow bigger while stepping on stuff, and a Totem Warrior Barbarian to smash things good with Babe’s help.

Race and Background

Pauly B was made out of Udon dough, and as a result she’s a Custom Lineage, giving her +2 Strength and a size of Small. She also get proficiency with Animal Handling, and the Magic Initiate feat to pick up some spells from the wizard spell list. Shape Water is just the beginning of your settling abilities, and Thunderclap is a single step for you. You also get Find Familiar to pick up Babes.

Aside from that, you are America’s pioneering spirit made manifest, so you’re an Outlander. This gives you proficiency with Athletics and Survival.

Ability Scores

You’re a glass cannon, so make sure your Strength is as high as you can get it. After that is Charisma- you’re only here because you were so popular in the book, after all. Your Dexterity comes next so you don’t die wearing denim armor. After that is Constitution. You might be a glass cannon, but a building-sized body is still pretty hard to take down. Your Intelligence isn’t amazing, but we’re dumping Wisdom. You’re a berserker anyway, but you also came from a comedy manga. That’s going to hurt your sense of reality.

Class Levels

1. Barbarian 1: Starting out here gets you as much health as we can, as well as proficiency with Strength and Constitution saves and two barbarian skills. Being nine hundred feet tall helps with Intimidation, and you gotta know a bit about Nature if you’re going to tear it down as effectively as you do.

You also get Unarmored Defense, making your AC 10 + your dexterity mod + your constitution mod when you’re just wearing denim. Your Rage transforms you for a minute as a bonus action. It gives you advantage on strength based saves & checks, extra damage on strength based attacks, and resistance to standard weapon damage. When you’re big enough to drink from a great lake, swords don’t do much.

2. Barbarian 2: Second level barbs can make Reckless Attacks, getting advantage now at the cost of giving other creatures advantage against you. Berserkers are not well known for their defensive power, but this will make up for you using such a heavy weapon while small.

That being said, Danger Sense gives you advantage on dexterity saves against effects you see coming. When you can step across the entire battle map in one go, fireballs are easy to avoid.

3. Fighter 1: First level fighters start things off right with a Fighting Style, and grabbing the superior technique style to make one Trip Attack per short rest is a great way to have enemies shouting timber.

You also get a Second Wind, letting you hang out and eat some beans as a bonus action, healing you 1d10+your fighter level HP.

4. Fighter 2: Second level fighters get an Action Surge to help you perform supernatural feats in a single turn. Now you can add on an extra action to your turn once per short rest.

5. Fighter 3: Our last level of fighter unlocks your martial archetype, the Rune Knight! The big reason we’re here is for Giant Might, spending a bonus action to grow Large, also giving you advantage on strength checks and saves, and you also deal extra damage once per turn while attacking. You can transform this way Proficiency times per long rest.

You can also carve Runes into weapons, armor, and jewelry. You get two runes, and can carve them into one item each at the end of a long rest. The Frost rune gives its wearer advantage on Animal Handling and Intimidation checks. The Fire rune doubles the wearer’s proficiency bonus with tools. Once per short rest per rune, they can also be invoked for extra power. The frost rune gives its wearer +2 on all strength and constitution saves and checks, while the fire rune forces a strength save against being restrained by fiery shackles, dealing damage each turn and restraining the target, when you hit it with a weapon attack. The DC for that save is 8 + proficiency + constitution.

6. Sorcerer 1: We might be done with fighter, but we’re not done multiclassing! First level sorcerers get Spells they can cast using their charisma. Thanks to an old unearthed arcana, you can be a Giant Soul sorcerer , granting you Jotun Resilience for slightly more HP; 1 extra per sorcerer level. The Mark of the Ordning also grants you extra low-level spells, like Heroism and Shillelagh. Neither of those are really useful to you, but they’re free, and not why we’re here.

For spells that are in character, grab Mold Earth, Create Bonfire, and Light to spruce up the wilderness and make it your own. You can also use True Strike to chop down trees, but that’s dumb, just make two attacks. For first level spells, Earth Tremor and Thunderwave are you stepping around. The former knocks people prone and makes the ground a big crater, the latter pushes them and objects away from you.

7. Sorcerer 2: This level isn’t that complicated, but you do become a Font of Magic for some Sorcery points that come in handy later. You can also cast Catapult to throw stuff around. Sadly, the maximum weight is only 5 pounds, but you can always just throw stuff yourself.

8. Sorcerer 3: Third level sorcerers get two Metamagic options to personalize your spells using sorcery points. Extended Spell will help out with a certain buff we’re getting this level, extending the length of the spell. You’re also big enough that your spell ranges should grow to match, so grab Distant Spell as well.

This level you can Hold Person, which you tend to take more literally than most casters. After the target fails a wisdom save, they’re paralyzed until they make one. While paralyzed, all attacks are made with advantage, and melee attacks are auto-crits.

Alternatively, you can use the Mark of the Ordning spell, Enlarge/Reduce to make yourself even bigger than usual. (Giant Might explicitly grows to large, so you have to start with that if you want to stack them.)

9. Barbarian 3: After spending half our build elsewhere, we can finally return to our starting class! Third level barbarians set down the Path of the Totem Warrior, letting you use your connection to Babe to pick up all sorts of goodies as we level up.

Immediately, you become a Spirit Seeker, letting you cast Beast Sense and Speak with Animals as rituals to really get into the Babe mindset.

Babe also becomes your Totem Spirit, so we’ll be taking the Elk options whenever possible. Right now, that gives you an extra 15′ of movement while raging. It’s not quite the whole nation in a step, but it’s a start.

10. Barbarian 4: At tenth level, we finally get our first Ability Score Improvement, so round up your Strength and Dexterity for better attacks and a better AC.

11. Barbarian 5: Fifth level barbarians finally get their Extra Attack each attack action, and your Fast Movement adds another 10′ to your movement speed, regardless of whether or not you’re raging.

12. Barbarian 6: Sixth level totem warriors get an Aspect of the Beast, doubling the travel pace for yourself and up to 10 companions. They can just ride on your shoulders, it’s fine.

13. Barbarian 7: Your Feral Instinct gives advantage on initiative rolls, and you can ignore being surprised if you rage at the start of the fight. Raging right away might not be the best option, but that’s for the casters to figure out. You’ve got land development to get to.

You can also use an Instinctive Pounce to move half your movement speed towards an enemy as part of your bonus action when you rage.

14. Barbarian 8: Use this ASI to bump up your Constitution for better runes and more health. You’re pretty squishy for a barbarian, but I guess that’s to be expected, considering what you’re made of.

15. Barbarian 9: Your first Brutal Critical adds an extra die to your critical damage rolls. Big kid, big axe, big damage. Simple math.

16. Barbarian 10: As a Spirit Walker, you can Commune with Nature as a ritual, summoning a cool spirit Babe to tell you stuff about the world around you.

17. Barbarian 11: Your Relentless Rage gives you a case of Guts, letting you make a DC 10 constitution save to avoid dropping to 0 HP, dropping to 1 instead if you succeed. Afterwards, the DC grows by 5, but it resets on short rests. You shouldn’t be getting guts at all, so be grateful.

18. Barbarian 12: Use your last ASI to bump up your Dexterity again for less getting hit. Healing’s nice, but avoiding the damage in the first place is way better.

19. Barbarian 13: You get another round of Brutal Criticals, for another extra die of damage on crits.

Not exactly rocket surgery, huh?

20. Barbarian 14: Your final level gives you your final barbarian goody! Your Totemic Attunement lets you move through a large or smaller creature’s space as a bonus action. It forces a strength save, or the creature is stepped on, knocking it prone and dealing damage.

Pros:

Thanks to your speed, size, and action surge, you can cover a lot of ground very quickly. With 55 feet of movement, two dashes, and an instinctive pounce, you can cover ~195 feet in a single round. Aside from that, your size gives you mobility options that aren’t available to others. Standing around 15′ tall will do that for ya.

You’ve got some solid swings with your axe, letting you deal plenty of damage in a single swing. Bring down the hammer on a natural 20 to blast through those doors. At your biggest you can deal 1d12+1d6+1d4+4 damage. That’s not a smite, but you can do this every turn while enlarge is up.

You get just enough spells to apply a lot of utility to your build, altering the landscape and messing with enemy movement to help out your team.

Cons:

Due to how we leveled up, your first ASI doesn’t come until level 10. If you roll poorly, that might be a problem.

I wouldn’t call you squishy by any means, but you do make for a big target, with your huge size and an AC of only 15 making you easy pickings even before you start getting reckless.

Most of your abilities are tied to your rage, but your biggest size is tied to your spells. They don’t play nice. Even worse, it’s a flavor fail- you can’t trample over people if you’re at your biggest size. (On a semi-related note: being big and being a barbarian have a lot of overlap. Both giant might and raging give you advantage on strength stuff, so having both up is sort of a waste.)

#fate grand order #fgo #DND #D&D 5e #Berserker of Learning with Manga #Barbarian #Fighter #Sorcerer

[johannstutt413]

(requested by greenone170b7, the next day following this)

“Good morning, Rosmontis,” the Doctor said, greeting the Feline as she walked into their office. “Did you need something?”

She nodded, walking over to his desk. “Mhmm. Chu~ Nya~”

“...ehehe.” They couldn’t help but giggle a bit.

“Is Amiya working with you today?” Rosie glanced at the empty desk. “I was hoping to catch her here, too.”

They shook their head. “She’s delivering mail today. A lot of packages get sent on Valentine’s Day, and they’ve been piling up at the Posts, so she’s lending a hand.”

“Oh. I’m going to help them, too, then. Thanks, Doctor. Nya~” She gave them another peck before leaving to find her true target.

“Heehee.” The Doctor rubbed their cheek happily. “Blaze, I don’t know what you did yesterday, but you somehow made her even cuter...”

For the next few hours, Rosmontis wandered around base, unable to find the Cautus despite her best efforts while incidentally delivering packages. It was easy work - the labels reminded her where she needed to go at a glance, after all - and very rewarding to see her fellow Operators’ faces light up as they received gifts from their loved ones...but it also reminded her of her true mission at every turn. By the end of the day, she had to find Amiya.

As she delivered her second-to-last package, her stomach rumbled; the Feline had gotten so caught up in her mission, she’d forgotten to eat lunch. Deciding it was better to take care of that while she was aware of it than wait until she’d finished her final delivery, she made her way to the cafeteria. “Good evening, Miss Gummy,” she said as she approached the counter.

“Oh, good evening, Rosie!” The Ursus beamed at her. “You remembered my name today~ How can I help you?”

“I forgot to eat lunch. Can I get a double portion, please?”

The chef nodded. “Sure thing! Oh, Amiya was looking for you earlier-”

“She was?” Ding ding ding! Clue found! “When was she here?”

“Thirty minutes ago or so? She was doing deliveries for Logistics.” Gummy picked up her pace, realizing the Feline would want to be off as soon as possible to find Amiya.

Rosie nodded. “I’ve been delivering things, too, trying to find her. No gravy, please.”

“Are you sure? It’s reaaally good...” Nope. “Alright, if you say so~ She brought me a present from Annechka, so I gave her one to take back to her. Promise me you’ll eat before you go to meet her there?”

“I promise.” And Gummy knew for sure she would keep it, despite the fire burning in her eyes.

After scarfing her meal with multiple levels of gusto and returning her tray to its proper place, the Feline continued on to Annechka- sorry, Istina’s place. (The chef had clarified for her after her tray was put away.) Making her way down the halls, hopes skyrocketed, she was sure she’d find her there...But, reaching the advisor’s door, there was no sign of her. A single parcel was left at the door; if the Ursus had answered the summons of the doorbell, she’d probably have still been there-

“Rosie?” The Cautus emerged from around the opposite corner. “Oh! You’ve been helping with deliveries, too?”

“Amiya...Yes, I have been.” Seeing her reminded her of her mission so much, the indicator for it fried in her mind.

The Caster-Guard smiled at her. “That’s sweet of you. Did the Doctor tell you I was doing this today?”

“They did. I...” What was it she’d wanted to do? Oh, wait...She still had a package. “My last delivery is for you.”

“It is?”

The Feline nodded, pulling out the final box from her delivery satchel. “It’s from me.”

“Oh, Rosie...I have something for you, too.” Amiya wasn’t reaching for a box, though; she’d made all her deliveries already. “I wanted to catch you at the Doctor’s office, but they said you’d gone looking for me, and I didn’t know how to find you.”

“That’s alright. We found each other in the end.” Rosmontis smiled as she handed her a small brown-paper-wrapped box.

The Cautus slipped it into her bag. “I’ll open it when I get home.”

“Okay.” As the distance between them collapsed, though, she was reminded of earlier that morning. “There’s something else, too.”

“Can I, um, give you mine first?” When the Feline didn’t object, a brightly-blushing Amiya kissed her on the cheek.

Rosie’s smile grew. “Thank you...Now can I?”

“Of course.” Rather than reach for something on her person, the Sniper took Amiya’s hands. “Rosie?”

“You remember when Blaze said that Valentine’s Day is a day to kiss the people you care about?”

It was yesterday, and a very unforgettable yesterday at that, so yes, she certainly still remembered that. “I do.”

“I care about you a lot,” the Feline continued, blushing, “and one day isn’t enough to tell you that.”

“Rosie...” The Caster-Guard felt a magnetic pull on her heart as Rosmontis closed her eyes and leaned closer. She did the same.

If someone had had their eyes open in that hallway, they would have noticed Amiya’s rings glowing a bright hot pink.

#arknights #arknights fic #rosmontis (arknights) #Amiya (Arknights) #it's a bit out of season #but RosMiya is a good ship #so i'll take an overripe fic for it any day #i wish them allllllll the bestest

[tigerkirby215]

5e Kayle, the Righteous build (League of Legends)

(Artwork by Jessica “OwleyCat” Oyhenart and Victor “3rdColossus” Maury. Made for Riot Games.)

You know I find it funny that I haven’t made a build for Kayle yet, given that I made Morgana awhile ago sort of as a spur of the moment thing. Despite the fact that I main support I really don’t play Morgana (can’t hit skill shots omegalul), but meanwhile I really like Kayle. She was one of the first champions I played along with Sona since I was told she was very similar to Terrorblade who was one of my favorite carries in DOTA 2. I dropped her for a bit after her rework but I picked her up again and she’s still super fun! I mean, shame she’s kinda trash in the meta.

Anyways it’s about time I make a build for her since Morgana was alone for so long, especially since she’s coming back along with Pentakill! Kayle’s probably the perfect character to play if you want to go Lawful Stupid, but out of respect for everyone else please don’t play her Lawful Stupid.

GOALS

On wings of fire, hope ascends - It’s the quest of all champions to eventually transcend mortals. Hopefully we’ll at least be able to fly after this.

Fire reveals truth - Kayle is also well-known for her Zealous attack speed, so we’ll need to be able to get out as much DPS as possible.

The worthy survive! - A little bit of Divine Judgement goes a long way. An explosion of flaming swords helps too.

RACE

This may come as a surprise to you but Kayle is an Aasimar. More specifically a Protector Aasimar, which is rather fitting seeing as she’s seen as The Protector in Demacia. As an Aasimar your Charisma increases by 2, but I’m going to increase your Constitution instead of the typical Wisdom increase from Protector Aasimar, for a bit more lane sustain.

You have Celestial Resistance to both your own Radiant damage and your sister’s Necrotic damage, have the Light Bearer feature for the Light cantrip, and can give yourself or an ally a Celestial Blessing thanks to Healing Hands. It only heals up to your level but it certainly helps!

You also get Darkvision and the Celestial language, and Radiant Soul at level 3 thanks to your Protector subrace, We’ll discuss that when we get to level 3.

ABILITY SCORES

15; CHARISMA - League of Legends body types, am I right? Sure you have a bit of an “evil must be purged” personality, but D&D Paladins like that a lot.

14; DEXTERITY - Something something medium armor. I would call what you wear Half Plate, which means that for once the choice of Medium Armor is accurate!

13; STRENGTH - This feels strangely familiar...

12; CONSTITUTION - Kayle is very squishy in League but I like not dying so...

10; INTELLIGENCE - You may have lived through history but most of that time was spent up in the stars. Basically we need everything else more.

8; WISDOM - Yeah I didn’t increase Wisdom with your racial increase because I was planning to dump it. Kayle’s fatal flaw is that she’s blinded by her sense of justice, which is a sign of poor Wisdom and critical decision making.

BACKGROUND

There isn’t a great background for “Half of the Aspect of Justice” but Celebrity Adventurer’s Scion works fairly well. You get proficiency with Perception as well as Performance (you were in Pentakill, after all!), a Disguise Kit (but I’d maybe replace that with something else or ditch it entirely), and two languages of your choice. (Pick your poison.)

Your background feature Name Dropping lets you tell people that your mom was actually a god. You might be able to find people who knew your mom (or more realistically worshiped her before... you know... you became half of her?) and folk might recognize that you’re... half a god, and give you free stuff.

(Artwork by Alvin Lee and Kan Liu. Made for Riot Games.)

THE BUILD

LEVEL 1 - SORCERER 1

Starting off as a Sorcerer because Kayle is about as useless as a level 1 Sorcerer at level 1. (Also because CON saves are nice.) But you can also grab proficiency with Religion (you are a god, after all) and Intimidation. (Because you aren’t exactly nice.)

Sorcerers get to choose their Sorcerous Origin at level 1 and Divine Soul is like being a Cleric but you get to dump your Wisdom because you’re blind to morality. You get one free spell from your Divine Magic and I guess Bless makes sense since its attached to Law? Honestly there are other spells I’d recommend (Protection from Evil and Good would be helpful, and you can’t go wrong with either Healing Word or Guiding Bolt) but it’s honestly easier to just take Bless and call it there.

But of course since you get Divine Magic that means you get Spellcasting! You learn 4 cantrips from the Sorcerer list at level 1 such as Firebolt to smite the wicked, Sacred Flame for enemies with a lot of armor (but hopefully bad Dexterity), Thaumaturgy to make sure your words are heard, and Guidance because it’s good to provide aid to those who need it.

You also learn two spells from the Sorcerer list: we’ll be taking Mage Armor for the same reason you buy Doran’s Shield as a top laner (because laning phase sucks and you’re weak as hell at level 1), and we’ll also grab Healing Word for your Celestial Blessing. As a treat.

You are also Favored by the Gods, so if you miss an attack roll or fail a saving throw you can add 2d4 to the roll to potentially turn it into a success. Given that you’ll likely be making a lot of attack rolls later in this build it’s very useful to be able to give yourself some insurance.

LEVEL 2 - SORCERER 2

Second level Sorcerers get a Font of Magic for Sorcery Points equal to your Sorcerer level. For now all you can really do with them is get one of your spell slots back, but they’ll be more useful later on.

For something that’s useful right now take Ice Knife for the AoE burst of your Starfire Spellblade. Yes it does Cold damage, but you also shouldn’t have an AoE E by level 2. Hell you technically shouldn’t even be a ranged champion yet. We have to make compromises here.

If you want a single target Starfire Spellblade Guiding Bolt is a decent choice I suppose.

LEVEL 3 - SORCERER 3

Third level Sorcerers gain the power of the Aspects thanks to Metamagic. You learn two Metamagic options to change your spells in various ways: Quickened Spell will let you increase your attack speed to slay the unjust with Zealous fervor, and while it’s perhaps not the most practical choice Transmuted Spell will let you wield holy fire, instead of holy ice or whatever other damage type you pick up.

If you don’t care about doing specifically fire damage than Empowered Spell is a good choice to more effectively maximize damage.

As a Protector Aasimar your Radiant Soul lets you sprout wings as an action. For 1 minute you have a 30 foot flying speed and can add your Charisma modifier as Radiant damage to one target whenever you deal damage. It might not be much at level 3 but the extra damage from Starfire Spellblade adds up when you get more AP! Oh and to top it off you can also learn another spell like Misty Step, for Flash.

LEVEL 4 - SORCERER 4

4th level Sorcerers get the first of many Ability Score Improvements. Increase your uneven Charisma score as well as your Constitution score for nice, even, Lawful stats.

You can also learn another cantrip like Message to keep in team chat, as well as a leveled spell like Spiritual Weapon. Kayle summons hundreds of swords for her ultimate so I think it’s fine if you summon one sword for some more DPS.

LEVEL 5 - SORCERER 5

Normally I wouldn’t go out of my way to get 5th level spells but we kinda need Fly more than once per Long Rest. Sprout those wings or grant the gift of angelic ascension to an ally!

The bad witch Tasha also gave Sorcerers Magical Guidance, letting you spend a Sorcerery Point to reroll a failed ability check.

(Artwork by Zeen Chin. Made for Riot Games.)

LEVEL 6 - PALADIN 1

I swear it wasn’t my intention to make two casters with Paladin levels one after another, but we’re doing it anyways because it’s not like Kayle wouldn’t be a Paladin. First level Paladins get Divine Sense to know of any villains who need justice, and Lay on Hands to save the righteous.

LEVEL 7 - PALADIN 2

Second level Paladins get to choose their Fighting Style. Normally I’d take Blessed Warrior for a character who’s more-or-less a pure caster but you kinda get too many Cleric cantrips as is, so we’ll settle for good ol’ Defense because you can’t go wrong with +1 AC.

Protection and Interception are also fine to help your friends if you’re willing to hold onto a shield (no reason not to), and if you want to do a funny joke you can take Blind Fighting because Justice is Blind.

But of course what we’re mostly here for is Spellcasting: sure you got the entire Cleric list at your disposal but Sorcerer spells known is very limited, so take the following from the Paladin list:

Command to force evildoers to grovel at your feet.

Detect Evil and Good to... detect evil and good.

Protection from Evil and Good to... yeah this is fairly obvious too.

Heroism to empower heroes.

Shield of Faith to protect the righteous.

You also get Divine Smite, which sure would be nice if you used your sword as a melee weapon. I mean if you want to hit someone in melee you can turn a spell slot into damage but I kinda have to wonder why would you.

LEVEL 8 - PALADIN 3

Third level Paladins get to choose their Sacred Oath. Honestly just about any Paladin Oath would work for Kayle, but an Oath of Redemption would probably be best after you failed to upkeep justice the first time. Along with adding Sanctuary and Sleep to your spell list you also get two Channel Divinity options: if you go for Emissary of Peace you can add a flat +5 to all your Persuasion checks for 10 minutes. But Rebuke the Violent works great as a recreation of Divine Judgment’s damaging effect! When a creature within 30 feet of you damages someone other than you they must make a Wisdom saving throw after you use this reaction. If they fail they will take the same amount of damage they dealt as Radiant damage, and if they succeed they will take half. This has no maximum limit so you can use it when an enemy nukes your allies to have them experience retribution! "Drown in holy fire!"

The vial witch Tasha also lets you Harness Divine Power with your Channel Divinity to regain a spell slot equal to half your proficiency bonus once per Long Rest. And finally you get Divine Health, because justice doesn’t take sick days.

(Artwork by John Yucedag. Made for Riot Games.)

LEVEL 9 - PALADIN 4

4th level Paladins get another Ability Score Improvement so cap off that Charisma modifier, because we’re building AP in this build. Maxed out Charisma also means more prepared spells, but we’re going to wait for...

LEVEL 10 - PALADIN 5

5th level Paladins get an Extra Attack which sure would matter if you were actually swinging that sword instead of shooting Fire Bolts and Sacred Flames.

But what does matter is that you get second level Paladin spells! Along with Hold Person and Calm Emotions from the Redemption spell list (you should perhaps cast Calm Emotions on yourself at some point?) you can prepare spells like Aid to boost yourself and your allies, and Warding Bond (Tasha’s work once again) to take some damage for an ally. (Which is almost like making them immune to damage?)

LEVEL 11 - PALADIN 6

The only reason to multiclass into Paladin as a caster would be for Aura of Protection. Seeing as your Charisma modifier is maxed out already that means that you (and your allies within 10 feet) can add +5 to all their saving throws! I really don’t think I need to explain why that’s useful: your Constitution saves are now a +11 (meaning that if you take 22 damage or less you automatically succeed the Concentration check) and even your lowest save is still a +4!

You can also prepare one last spell but I’m actually going to take this time to remind you that Paladins are prepared spellcasters. Even though you have a relatively limited amount of Paladin spells be sure to swap them around to whatever’s the most useful for your task at hand. But if you must pick up a spell Detect Magic is never bad to have?

(Artwork by Alex “alexplank” Flores. Made for Riot Games.)

LEVEL 12 - SORCERER 6

Now that the obligatory Paladin levels are done it’s time to go back to Sorcerer. Hope your party didn’t expect you to be the support because you’re only now getting Empowered Healing to spend a Sorcery point and reroll any healing that you or an ally within 5 feet performs. I mean by total level 12 healing numbers will actually get pretty big, so this becomes a lot more useful!

But speaking of healing we’ll be getting not that but Haste instead. While you can’t use it too well (can only use it to make a weapon Attack, Dash, Disengage, Hide, or Use an Object) you can turn your allies into an avenging angel! As long as you can keep your Concentration which I mean... you have a +11 to your CON save.

LEVEL 13 - SORCERER 7

Unfortunately there’s no spell to make someone completely immune to damage for one round (while also still letting them move as normal except the 9th level spell Invulnerability that you can only cast on yourself) so we’ll just have to settle for Death Ward keeping the target you cast this on alive after reaching 0 HP. No rain of holy swords either unfortunately.

LEVEL 14 - SORCERER 8

8th level Sorcerers get an Ability Score Improvement and I think it’s about time for us to grab Metamagic Adept for 2 more Sorcery points to use on your Metamagic options like Twinned Spell to spread your wrath amongst all, and Careful Spell to avoid hurting those allied to your cause.

Speaking of AoE damage Vitriolic Sphere may do Acid damage but it’s a great recreation of the AoE damage of a high level Starfire Spellblade.

LEVEL 15 - SORCERER 9

Behold the might of 5th level spells! Remember how I was a little disappointed that you didn’t have the ability to make flaming swords rain down from the sky? Here you go: Flame Strike! Sure it basically does the damage of Fireball (and hey feel free to grab Fireball if you’re so inclined) but it has the holy flair that’s to be expected of Kayle.

If you want something more interesting than “Radiant damage Fireball” Dawn is also a good spell choice.

LEVEL 16 - SORCERER 10

10th level Sorcerers get another Metamagic option! Seeing as weve already got plenty thanks to Metamagic Adept one of the few options left is Heightened Spell to make sure your foes tremble beneath your might! You can also grab another cantrip like Prestidigitation for more generalized divine power.

And finally there’s also plenty of great spells you can take but Dispel Evil and Good probably fits Kayle the best. Now is a great time to remind everyone that you’re more than welcome to make your own Kayle, and while what I take may be “accurate” it’s not even necessarily what I’d build if I was making the character.

(Artwork by West Studio. Made for Riot Games.)

LEVEL 17 - SORCERER 11

11th level Sorcerers can finally ascend! I hope you kept your Paladin weapons because it’s time for Tasha’s Otherworldly Guise! Calling upon the power of the Upper Planes (or lower planes too I guess if you’re awful) you get:

Resistance to Radiant and Necrotic damage (which you already have. Oops.) (I mean Lower Planes would make you immune to Fire and Poison damage...)

Immunity to the Charmed condition.

A 40 foot flying speed.

+2 AC

The ability to use your Charisma to attack, meaning that you can finally swing a sword well!

And the ability to attack twice, which you already have.

And the cool part is that unlike Tenser’s Transformation you can cast spells and don’t Exhaust yourself after using this spell! If you want to finally use your Paladin levels to bright the fight to your opponents you finally have the power to do so!

LEVEL 18 - SORCERER 12

12th level Sorcerers get another Ability Score or Feat and I’m simply going to suggest the Tough feat. Even if Kayle doesn’t usually build health in League you can, and d6 hit die suck when it comes to actually surviving.

What? Did you expect another spell known? Nah fuck you lmao WoTC says no to Sorcerers having spells.

LEVEL 19 - SORCERER 13

13th level Sorcerers can learn 7th level spells and while this may seem like a copout I have none that I really want for Kayle. Pick whatever you think would be the coolest since you can make your own choices by level 19. (My personal vote for Kayle would be Fire Storm but you are kinda loading up on AoE spells.)

LEVEL 20 - SORCERER 14

Our final level is the 14th level of Divine Soul Sorcerer to finally ascend. You have Otherworldly Wings for a permanent 30 foot flying speed! You did it! You reached max level as Kayle! You’re now unstoppable!

FINAL BUILD

PROS

Kneel before the light! - Your spells known go up to 7th level, and your spell slots go up to 9th. I really don’t think I have to explain that a full leveled caster is extremely powerful.

What is dark in me, I will illuminate - Even your non-spellcasting has great utility. Both your Channel Divinity options are extremely useful, and a little bit of Lay on Hands healing never hurt anyone. Not to mention your Aasimar transformation providing a flat +20 to damage every turn while it’s active!

I am your salvation! - Even if you aren’t running up in melee range Paladin levels do help a ton for staying alive. +5 to all saves is no joke, especially when it means that your Concentration save sits at a whopping +13! (You have to take more than 26 damage to even have a chance at failing your Concentration check!)

CONS

Why have we wings, sister, if not to fly? - You’d think a high Charisma would at least make you good at socializing but... no you’re not even that. Proficiency in the “mean” Charisma skills and mediocre ability scores in everything other than Charisma means you’ll contribute very little other than divine wrath.

Wings of Immortal Flame, lift me from mortal temptation! - How much flight is too much flight? Between your Radiant Soul, Tasha’s Otherworldly Guise, and you know... the Fly spell you have quite a lot of ways to take to the skies which all become near-completely redundant by level 20.

Celestial justice, guide my blade - Ironically enough one of the biggest issues with this build is how long it takes to get online. The Paladin dip may keep you safe but it’s not making you stronger, and I doubt you’ll be sitting beside your friends like a support. If you don’t mind praying to darker powers Genie Warlock is actually a great choice to get considerably more damage (and “attack speed!”) with Eldritch Blast and easily accessible flight by level 6 in Warlock. (Celestial Warlock also exists if you want more healing utility and want to stay in flavor.)

Of course weakness is something to shed as you come closer to divinity, but remember that even if mortality makes you weak mortals are not. Your allies will fight by your side and its your duty to protect them, as they shall no doubt protect you. Treat them with respect and vanquish evil together! Because no one likes a lawful stupid top laner.

(Artwork by Atey Ghailan. Made for Riot Games.)

#dnd #dnd 5e #dnd build #dnd guide #League of Legends #League of Legends Kayle #angel #avenging #avenging angel #light #wrath #dnd sorcerer #dnd paladin #Pentakill

[monstersdownthepath]

Spiritual Spotlight: Hanspur, the Water Rat (and Ashkaelae)

Chaotic Neutral God of Rivers, River Travel, and Smugglers

Domains: Chaos, Death, Travel, Water Subdomains: Exploration, Murder, Rivers, Trade

Inner Sea Faiths, pg. 58~63

Obedience: With the assistance of another priest of Hanspur or by yourself, simulate the act of drowning. You can do this by fully submerging yourself in a body of water, exhaling all of your breath, and painfully inhaling water instead of air. Alternatively, you can lie on your back with your head at a lower elevation than your legs while water is slowly poured on your face and up your nose. If you choose the latter method, you must cover your face with a cloth while the water is poured. When you conclude this simulated drowning, contemplate your life and how your goals coincide with the teachings of Hanspur and the Six River Freedoms. Benefit: You gain a +4 sacred or profane bonus on Survival checks attempted while on or near rivers.

Just reading this makes my sinuses burn and my lungs itch, and not just because it’s springtime and I have allergies! As anyone who’s ever been in a body of water large enough to slap their face with a wave can attest to, inhaling large amounts of water sucks. While this Obedience requires only one wet breath, some... well, some pretty severe complications can arise from it, if your DM ponders even slightly what doing this to yourself every day would do. Dry drowning and secondary drowning are both real dangers from brief immersion, let alone concentrated efforts at simulating one of the worst fates someone can experience (I say this a lot but basically anything that deprives you of air is pretty terrible). The ‘simulation’ will likely only last a few seconds while the rest of the hour is spent recovering from your experience and meditating, but even that may not be enough to offset the fluid likely building up in your lungs. Priests of Hanspur must sound atrocious, coughing themselves ragged every day! No wonder it’s recommended your ritual is overseen by another priest, either, because they’d likely be skilled in helping you manage your symptoms.

Dangers of daily drownings aside, keeping up with the demands of this ritual is pretty easy so long as you’re somewhere with easy access to water. In Hanspur’s homelands, the River Kingdoms, this is pathetically simple! Everywhere else? It’s a lot harder! While I do appreciate that there’s a secondary ritual you can do if total immersion is impossible, but what happens if you’re stuck somewhere with no easy water access? Your waterskins won’t carry you for very long, even if you pilfer them from your party as well. Better invest in a Decanter of Endless Water! Or do something ridiculous like fill the party’s Bag of Holding up so you can just hop in and out whenever you need to.

That benefit is also the weakest I’ve seen in a long time, granting a bonus to only a single skill type and only while near rivers. Survival checks aren’t even all that commonly made, unless your DM is kind enough to let you use Survival to navigate with river rafts rather than Profession or Ride checks. Hanspur really doesn’t want his faithful straying too far from the River Kingdoms, which is only further exacerbated by how his Boons work, so if you’re not the type to linger near rivers you may just want to skip him entirely.

Boons are gathered slowly, typically obtained when a given character has 12, 16, and 20 hit dice. Unlike fiend-worshipers, servants of the Eldest, and devoted of the Empyreal Lords, characters worshiping Neutral gods do not have catch-all classes… but Neutral-aligned characters can enter the Evangelist, Sentinel, and Exalted Prestige Classes earlier than Evil characters, classing in as early as level 6 (they need +5 BAB, 5 ranks in a single skill, or the ability to cast lvl 3 spells); entered ASAP, one can gain the Boons at levels 8, 11, and 14. 

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EVANGELIST

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Boon 1: River Sage. Gain Hydraulic Push 3/day, River Whip 2/day, or Hydraulic Torrent 1/day.

Hydraulic Push and Hydraulic Torrent live in the same niche of “giant water spouts what push stuff around,” with Torrent being obviously an order of magnitude more powerful than Push. While Push has a range of Close and can target only a single creature or square, Torrent is a 60ft line that Bull Rushes or attempts to destroy everything it encounters, so it really depends on if you’re thinking you’ll need three small streams or one really, really big one. Notably, Torrent can Bull Rush targets of any size, unrestricted by the limits of your pathetic frame, while Push contains no such limiter removal and thus likely means you can only blast creatures up to a size larger than you.

Also of note, Torrent attempts to shatter everything it comes into contact with until it runs into something or someone it cannot destroy or push past. The Strength score the Torrent uses is equal to your caster level plus your casting ability modifier, meaning it will start out barely stronger than you are but will eventually be able to punch holes in iron and shatter stone. Hell, with a lucky roll, it may be able to do that anyway. Your choice on which two to take wholly depends on if you want to push three Medium critters around or launch one Colossal one.

What? River Whip? I don’t see any spell like that here! Lets move on! (alright alright; i just don’t like it. it’s good as an emergency weapon but more or less anything else is better in any scenario)

Boon 2: River Scion. As a free action you can breathe underwater, as if affected by Water Breathing, for a number of hours per day equal to the number of Hit Dice you possess. These hours need not be used consecutively, but must be used in 1-hour increments.

A disappointingly weak Boon. Really, what else is there to see or say? If you need to go underwater, this ability is great and has zero downsides. If you don’t, this Boon doesn’t exist. It’s a very binary Boon that relies on your environment, which means that if you’re overjoyed if you’ve remained in the River Kingdoms, but in a desert or jungle or mountain peak, you’re going to be extremely disappointed upon hitting level 11.

Boon 3: River’s Embodiment. 1/day as a standard action, you can transform yourself into a Huge water elemental, as per Elemental Body IV. You can stay in this form for 1 minute per Hit Die you possess, and can dismiss this effect as a free action.

Finally, a transformation ability that doesn’t suck! What does suck is that this is a level 7 spell being granted to you 1/day, when other Boons are equivalent to level 9 spells in power. Hanspur could have at least given you a little bonus on top of it, or made it 2/day, but it’s hard to complain about the force you become under Elemental Body IV. You become immune to bleed, critical hits, Sneak Attacks, and on top of it all get insurmountable DR 5, and the stack of stats you get? Mmmm-mm! Chef’s kiss!

+6 AC, +8 Con, +4 Str, all for the price of -2 Dex (more than made up for with the +AC). And, of course, a swim speed and the power to collapse yourself into a destructive Vortex, but those are only useful if you’re in water, while the rest of the stat buffs are far more universally useful. You’re not exactly the destructive and terrifying Fire Elemental or the deceptively sneaky Earth Elemental, but a wall of surging water can still wreak all manner of havoc on your enemies, your new dual slams able to smash ships (and bones) to pieces, and since Water Elementals are capable of speech and gesture, you can merely bask in your new tank stats while still casting spells.

There’s also the much more amusing but niche use of transforming while already polymorphed by a hostile effect, as having a new polymorph effect used on you while you’re already changed can end the first automatically.

While I wish the effect was usable more often, or at least broken into 1-minute increments, I can’t call it a bad Boon by any means.

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EXALTED

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Boon 1: River Guide. Gain Obscuring Mist 3/day, Haunting Mists2/day, or Aqueous Orb 1/day.

I love the name of this ability because two of the three spells do the opposite of guiding people. Now I’m a big fan of Obscuring Mist; it’s a simple staple in my list for almost every caster I make just because of how versatile it is! But now that I know there’s an alternative, it may have competition. Both Obscuring Mist and Haunting Mists do roughly the same thing, but one could argue that Haunting Mists does it better; in addition to granting concealment and shutting off an enemy’s eyes, it deals 1d2 Wisdom damage and shakes up anyone starting their turn inside the mist... But as a Figment spell with the Fear descriptor, there are a great many creatures immune to its unique power, and True Seeing allows one to see through it perfectly, whereas Obscuring Mist remains impenetrable to the apex predator of the Illusion school.

While it cannot be dispelled by wind or motion like a tangible fog, it’s important to note that there’s no way to protect specific creatures from the sanity-damaging effects of Haunting Mists, and its casting distance of 20ft and 20ft spread means that you will likely always be caught in its radius. The range means using it offensively is painfully limited, unless you want to cast it from invisibility after sneaking into the middle of an enemy formation, which... you probably, definitely don’t want to make a habit of.

It’s great for covering your retreat, but not your advance or setup like the normal Mist is.

Aqueous Orb is a good choice if your party is getting screwed over by the mist more than the enemy, creating a big ol’ 10ft ball of water that intercepts and engulfs anything that moves into it, or which it moves into. It deals 2d6 nonlethal damage whenever it rams into a creature and a further 2d6 to everything it has engulfed each round, but the damage isn’t so much the main draw as the fact it’s a massive, roving Sphere of Grappling, snaring and drowning any creature it manages to get ahold of if they fail the Reflex save. It’s a fun little spell that’s great for mopping up and controlling minions, especially ones you don’t actually want to kill, and even at its worst it can become a makeshift barrier in a narrow hallway since there’s no written way to actually move through it beyond wasting 2, 3, or more rounds by slamming into it and swimming through to the other side while your party books it in the other direction.

Boon 2: River Traveler. As a free action, you can grant yourself and any allies within 30 feet of you a swim speed of 60 feet. This effect lasts for 1 round per Hit Die you possess or until you dismiss it as a free action, whichever comes first. Your allies must remain within 30 feet of you or lose this benefit. In addition, you gain a +2 profane or sacred bonus on saves against spells with the Water descriptor.

See, this should have been added to River Scion as a bonus. River Scion and River Traveler feel like they could have combined into a single Boon to make something decent, but as it is they both fall into the same niche: Solves the encounter they’re meant to solve, useless otherwise. This ability is noteworthy for having no restrictions about how many times it can be used, essentially letting you switch swimming off and on at will. The fact it doesn’t take an action is incredibly important, because using the massive 60ft swim speed the ability grants actually removes the bonus, as getting further than 30ft from you makes it fizzle.

I don’t really understand why it would grant 60ft of movespeed if they’re restricted to a 30ft bubble, nor do I understand the purpose of the bubble in the first place. It makes exploration a slog, and escape scenarios more finicky than they should be. Since it can be activated whenever you need to as a free action, the duration feels unneeded. There’s so much about this ability that conflicts with itself that it bugs me too much to say much in the way of positives. The +2 to saves vs Water spells is a fun little ribbon, though most Water spells tend to be harmless utility spells rather than ones you’d need to make a save against.

Boon 3: River’s Depths. 1/day as a standard action, you can cause one creature within 30 feet to begin drowning, filling its lungs with water. The target of this ability can attempt a Fortitude save (DC = 10 + 1/2 your HD + your Wis mod) to negate the effect. If the target succeeds, it is staggered for 1 round. If it fails, the target immediately begins to suffocate. On the target’s next turn, it falls unconscious and is reduced to 0 hit points. One round later, the target drops to –1 hit points and is dying. One round after that, the target dies. Each round, the target can attempt a Fortitude save to end the effect. This ability affects only living creatures that must breathe and cannot breathe underwater. This is a curse effect.

Now this one’s just insulting, being a technically weaker version of a level 5 spell, Suffocation. It’s weaker in four ways: 1) It fails against creatures which are amphibious which, if you’re in the River Kingdoms, is many. 2) It’s curse effect, which can mean some creatures are resistant or immune to it. 3) It has a 30ft range, unlike Suffocation’s range of Close (25ft + 5ft/level). And, finally, 4) Just ONE successful save ends the effect entirely, while Suffocation continues to torment and stagger the victim for 3 rounds until its effects finally expire.

It’s hard to ignore fact that it’s a basically a Save-Or-Die with excellent DC scaling, but I can’t get over it being weaker than an existing level 5 spell! ... Granted, Suffocation could probably get away with being bumped an extra level or two higher given how frighteningly effective it is at shutting down any creature who needs to breathe even if they succeed their save. I’m probably slamming down too hard on an ability that, again, is a Save-Or-Die at best and an unavoidable stagger at worst (good for making some emergency repairs against a powerful full-attacker), and for extra fun can be used without any components involved, so you can just drop it on someone out of the blue and they’ll have no idea who just tried to kill them. While I am disappointed it doesn’t meet the power of other Boons, it’s undeniably effective against a large portion of the creatures you’ll be fighting, even at 1/day.

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SENTINEL

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Boon 1: River Warden. Gain Wave Shield 3/day, Masterwork Transformation 2/day, or Quench 1/day.

Wave Shield is one of those rare spells that are amazing to have, but not especially good to prepare or to waste a precious Spells Known slot on. It’s an immediate action spell that grants insurmountable DR and Fire Resistance equal to half your caster level in response to a single incoming attack, which isn’t stupendous at low levels but is a generous equivalent to immediate, on-demand temporary HP as you get higher and higher level. If a creature relies on a lot of little hits rather than a few big ones, blocking even one of them can save you in the long run, and if your DR cancels out the damage from a poisoned or diseased attack, all the better!

It’s not an especially strong spell given how it only works once before fading away, but it’s better than the other two options by a country mile. Masterwork Transformation is something you’ll rarely need more than a few times in a campaign before masterwork items fall into your laps (or you can simply buy them), and by the time you gain this ability it will likely no longer matter. That being said, if you’re in a low-wealth campaign or have been forced to scavenge for your gear, Masterwork Transformation will save you THOUSANDS of gp over the course of your life, because as a spell-like, the material components are ignored and thus you can slowly upgrade your entire party’s armaments for free. Given its ability to affect a generous 50 pieces of ammunition per casting as well means the Ranger and Gunslinger will adore you, and you can work in tandem with a mystic craftsman (PC or otherwise) to get all of your favorite gear enchanted without discarding your precious family heirloom sword for that masterwork one you looted.

Not to mention the simple joy in taking all the gear off a bandit clan, Masterworking all of it, and selling it for a tidy profit.

Compared to the combat utility of Wave Shield and noncombat utility of Masterwork Transformation, it’s hard to make a case for Quench, which falls into the category of ‘niche spell’ like Water Breathing and Water Walking in that it will instantly solve a handful of scenarios and be utterly useless in the rest. Yes, you may need to put out a forest fire or stop a building you’re in from burning to a crisp, but you’ll have to decide if it’s worth giving up three emergency DR 4/-- and Fire Resistance 4 bandages... as the martial-focused Sentinel. If you plan on fighting a fire that day or encountering a magic item that can generate fires (which Quench shuts off for 1d4 hours) and no one else in your party bothered learning Quench, by all means, but as the Sentinel having the DR is probably better in most cases.

Boon 2: River Champion. 3/day as a standard action, you can sculpt water into the form of a melee weapon that you are proficient with. You must have enough water to form the weapon, an amount equal to the weapon’s normal weight. Once formed, the weapon behaves as a weapon of its type with an enhancement bonus of +1, which increases by 1 for every 5 additional HD you have beyond 5 (max +4). This weapon deals double damage to creatures with the Fire subtype. The weapon dissolves into ordinary water after a number of rounds equal to your HD or as soon as it leaves your hand, whichever happens first.

Boons which call weapons to your hand are alright in cases where your signature weapon has been taken from you, and by the time you receive this ability you will have a signature weapon, but such times tend to come few and far between. This one also has the additional caveat that you don’t actually create the weapon from nowhere, there must already be water around to make it, at least enough water to match the weapon’s typical weight. The good news is that a gallon of water weighs about 8 pounds, and a trident--Hanspur’s holy weapon--weighs only 4, with most other weapons barely ever approaching 10, so you can reasonably carry around an emergency weapon in a waterskin or in your backpack... And you know, now that I think about it, it’s kind of cool to be able to turn a glass of water into a dagger.

But when will you need to? How often do you find yourself bereft of a usable weapon often enough to need an emergency armament like this? I can see the niche in front of me, making a new weapon as-needed against creatures whose DR makes them difficult to damage with your normal gear or taking advantage of that delicious little tidbit about doing double-damage to fire-based creatures, but they take your whole standard action to make and last for only a single combat (if that), and you can’t even shuffle around the +1 bonuses for additional effects!

Don’t get me wrong, it’s by no means bad (unless you’re both in a waterless area and haven’t filled your waterskin), especially at 3/day, but I can’t help but wonder when you’d actually need it at level 11+ when you likely already have a primary weapon and several backups. 

Boon 3: River’s Renewal. When completely submerged in water, you gain Fast Healing 2. You can recover a total number of hit points equal to twice your HD in this manner each day. At 20 HD, if you fall below 0 hit points and your body is fully submerged in a river, you automatically stabilize.

As a final Boon, I wish the Fast Healing had a higher threshold than just 28 points a day (+2 per level). In combat it likely won’t matter, and while out of combat it’s a decent amount of healing, usually enough to spare a couple spell slots from your healers or some potions, it’s just not all that impressive for a third and final Boon. Sentinels are the only followers of Hanspur who don’t get some method to easily navigate the seas, so taking advantage of this Boon to its fullest extent relies on an outside method of gaining water breathing or a swim speed.

Funnily enough, you can carry around a Bag of Holding filled with water and use it as a recuperative pod in case you don’t have access to a deep puddle, which is dubiously useful but not entirely terrible. HOWEVER, the little addition at the end is also a kick in the teeth; why does that only happen at level 20? Why can’t that be a base part of the Boon? It’s just insul--Wait, it only works if you’re submerged in a river, too? You can’t stabilize with some good old pond water? The mighty ocean? Can’t take a dip in a bathtub to stop bleeding out? Come on, Hanspur!!! Be a little more generous to your worshipers!

I dunno, maybe I’m underselling the out-of-combat healing this Boon offers, but it just doesn’t feel worth it to put up with the Water Rat for your entire adventuring career just for an extra 1/8th of an HP bar.

You can read more about him here.

#Spiritual Spotlight #Neutrality Notes #Pathfinder #Dungeons and Dragons

[heartwoodventures]

Primary Access Required: Testing, Testing

In which Heartwood heads back to (bloody) Coerthas in order to test Aislinn’s aether dampener and catch themselves a spidery bioweapon!

Aislinn arrived in Heartwood’s front hall after a quick rest and a change of clothes. Seeing Rising near the tanks, she walked up and peered into the aquarium. "How's your friend?" she asked, doing away with any preamble.

Rising was eyeing the smaller fish swimming around the bottom of the tank as Aislinn approached. "Seems like he's doin' alright! If he ain't been eaten yet I don't think he will."

Aislinn gave a brief smile as she caught sight of the little bugger. "Looks like he's one of the team now. Good on him." she nodded before turning and taking a seat to wait for things to get under way. "How about yourself? How's things?"

Cravendy slips out from her room and joins the others by the couches. Once seated, she immediately begins to fiddle with her gun, double and triple checking its parts on repeat.

Riylli lazily waves to Cravs as she enters and takes a seat near her. "Hey! Have we always had this many Miqo'te in the company? Why'd no one tell me?"

"Still need a name though." Rising rubs her chin as she was clearly running through suitable options in her head. "Crimble I suppose seems alright, an' can't complain here, yourself? Carve anythin' neat yet?"

"Crimble." Aislinn tried the name out a few times, murmuring it under her breath. "Aye, that fits. Tiny-sounding. Like a crumb or a thimble." At Rising's question though, she tilted her head. "I'm getting really good at spatulas. And kindling. Lots of kindling for the fire." she replied in a deadpan way before shrugging in wry amusement. "So it goes."

"Well then after you start your fire with the kindlin' you have somethin' to flip your food at least! I guess next thing ya should work on is a fork or a plate eh?" Rising plopped down on the other chair, cursing a moment later. "Shite, we're headin' to Coerthas right?"

N'yami moved through the estate with a carbuncle following right behind her, the Seeker chose to stand next to the railing and eye the group that had showed up. Ears flicked at the mention of Riylli's comment then offered a small wave. "I tend to hide out in my workshop, only come out when I'm either needed or dragged out."

N'ana Firesong stretches.

“I always figured ye cat-folk kept to yourselves...” Cravendy dips her head at N’yami. Case in point.

Riylli waved back to N'yami and flashed her a quick grin. "Well, it's nice to finally meet ya then. My names Riylli." She said, before her friendly attitude turned on a dime as she turned back to Cravs. "Don't call us cats." She said, her voice cold and clearly annoyed.

Haila meanwhile, merely remained silent. She could see new faces being involved in this particular case, and it didn't bring any relief more than worry. Having more people meant bigger risks of losing someone again, or at least, such was the case in her eyes as she glanced around with a small frown.

N'ana Firesong simply dusted her legs and made herself comfortable.

Evelyn Blazewing laughs and shakes her head upon hearing Riylli's comment. "Fufufu... this vessel is merely temporary. But I suppose I am still /technically/ a Miqo'te..." She brought her bandaged right hand up to cover the left side of her face. "I much prefer the company of my familiar than I do that of mortals. But, I figured I should at least come out every once in a while to converse with the commoners..." She smiled smugly to herself with her last comment.

Riylli Aliapoh raised an eyebrow at Evelyn's comment, then looked around the room to check everyone elses reactions only to find no one looking as confused as she was. "Erm... Right. Well, nice to meet you too... I think."

N'yami Synch: "N'yami, ya ever need somethin' fixed lemme know and I'll lend a hand." The carbuncle next to the Seeker jumped up onto the Seeker's shoulder to wrap around her like a scarf, the summon wanted to feel a part of the conversation. "Oh, and this is Whackara before she hits me for not introducin' her." The summon puffed out her chest with joy. "So I'm sure the rest of ya are as excited as I am to head out to Coerthas and deal with that cold hell."

Cravendy Hound grunts, but obliges to Riylli’s request. She was used to hanging out with pirates whose conversations were often thinly veiled insulting contests, and old habits die hard. “Right...Mee-quote-tay. Not cat.”

Aislinn was about to open her mouth to reply to Rising but quickly shut it as N'yami started talking. She turned her attention to the miqo'te and simply sighed. Damned bloody Coerthas.

N'ana Firesong: "What is in this Cold hell ye are dealing with?"

Haila Wetyios: "The reason we're short three people within the Company right now..." was all she'd comment, choosing to allow N'yami to take the floor on this one.

N'yami Synch: "Allagan spider creatures that some crazed scientist made to drain aether from living things...." She paused and thought it over for a moment. "I think that about sums it up." The Seeker shrugged. "I just got pulled into this recently."

Evelyn chuckles to herself. "Ah, are you all going out? I, Evelyn Blazewing, third incarnation of Lord Blazewing the Phoenix, the Eternal Ember, shall accompany you. You said we are headed to Coerthas, is that right, mortal? Fufufu... a phoenix not need worry about the cold. You should be most glad that I'm tagging along! My prowess with fire shall prove most useful to all of you there... i-if you'll have me, I mean." She looked away a bit at her last statement.

Rising Lotus grumbled more as their location was confirmed, shrugging as Riylli glanced at her. "Don't have my damn cold gear with me..gonna be a fun day." she sighed and slumped down a bit in the chair.

After casting an askance look at Evelyn and her declaration, Aislinn murmured almost to herself. "I'll have to grab my bleeding coat before we head out." If Aislinn hated anything, it was the cold.

N'ana Firesong: "Well then meh blade if for ye then. Don't know much of whatever these spiders are but aye am always willing to test meh metal."

Riylli grinned. "Finally, I've been waiting to go after those spiders ever since I joined this group! You can't just lead with that then make me build up some town for moons instead. I'm built for smashing, not building!"

Haila snapped her eyes towards one of the newcomers. "Pride won't do you any good in this, nor recklessness. These things have casters as their primary targets each and every single time we've come across them." she said, immediately sighing afterwards as she raised a hand to her forehead. "It goes without saying that magic should be the very VERY last resort in this expedition you're all about to go." she added, this time glancing at everyone.

Cravendy Hound: “Are ye all ‘earin’ what I’m ‘earin’? Or am I ‘avin’ some kind of...” Cravs shakes her head in confusion at Evelyn’s remarks. But it was all very curious to her, and she found herself wondering about the curious character. “Aye, let’s bring along that one.”

N'yami had a very confused look on her face for a moment but it vanished as soon as it appeared. "Well, I believe Aislinn had a device to help us?" She perked a brow when looking over to the Hyur. "Last time we talked we were goin' to use me as bait for pullin' the creature in while the rest of ya bring it down."

Haila Wetyios: "All of this while keeping the spider as intact as possible. 'Tis all I'd ask to finish cracking the data and communication they all share."

N'ana Firesong: "So we are studying them, not slaying them."

Riylli Aliapoh breathed a sigh of relief that someone else was hearing what Evelyn was saying, and that she had not just gone insane. But she had another concern now, turning to Haila, "Wait, we can't use magic? No one said anythin' about not using magic."

Aislinn nodded to N'yami. "The aether dampener, aye. Did you remember to grab it from your mother's desk?" she asked. "Like I said before it. ..*should* mask a person's aether signature a great deal. But, you can't get something for nothing. In return, it makes using aether far more difficult. Like training with weights on. Should being the operative word. I've tested it out here but it's never really been field tested before. And not against those bioweapons." she added.

N'yami’s ears went down for a moment, that's right she was supposed to grab it. But never fear Whackara was on the case! The carbuncle swatted Yami over the head before opening her mouth to show the object they were talking about. "Oh yea! Gave it to ya to protect." Holding her hand out the carbuncle just dropped it in Yami's hands like it was no big deal. Clearly this wasn't the first time the carbuncle was used for storage.

Cravendy‘s frown deepens at the mention of N’yami being bait. “It sounds like ye ‘ave all the pieces aligned, but that sounds risky. If it looks like yer in trouble, then ye’ll ‘ave to forgive me for trashin’ the enemy.”

"We've lost three people so far, all of them having a specialty somehow tied to conjury or white magic. We can't take extra risks again." Haila paused, turning over to Riylli. 

"When the first person went missing, a group of three assembled secretly and went to try and find them without telling anyone... Needless to say, only the one person that wasn't exactly magically inclined came back. Those creatures are an army of machina to say the least."

Evelyn Blazewing sighs. "Fine, mortal. I shall hold my magic unless it is absolutely necessary. You needn't worry regardless, for a phoenix always rises from her ashes!" She struck a small pose, leaning back in her seat for a moment before returning to her usual position. "So we're letting it live? Perhaps it is best I not use my magic after all..." She sighs and shrugs. "I will simply find another way to assist you all, then. I shall exercise extreme caution so you do not worry, viera. Does that help ease your nerves?"

Riylli Aliapoh peaked up from over the back of her couch to listen to Aislinn explain. "Well... I should be able to work with using less aether, but you won't be getting me at my best! I was hoping to show off proper this time too, since no one could see anything during that dodo fight..."

Aislinn nodded in thanks to the carbuncle for remembering. She looked back to N'yami. "Once you're ready, just cuff it to your wrist, the stone and circuitry should do the rest." she once more eyed Evelyn with a wary gaze.

Haila Wetyios: "As long as you keep your own distance, I won't complain." she merely stated with a serious tone, though from her voice, it was clear that she had her own reservations or even personal feelings about this entire case.

Rising Lotus raised her hand "Going with what Cravs said, in case things start to go sour, we ought to have a signal or somethin' to switch from catchin' to smashin' and gettin' outa there."

Aislinn turned her attention to Riylli. "Unfortunately, I only had time to create one prototype." she jerked her chin to the one in N'yami's hands. "The rest of us need to be careful."

Riylli groaned. "Great... Guess I'll just... Play defense, or somethin'..." She muttered, totally pouting over not getting to fight the spiders properly

"Should I put it on now or wait till we get there?" N'yami eyed Riylli for a moment, an actual caster would be better playing bait but the Seeker couldn't bring herself to letting the others getting injured if things went bad.

Aislinn does her best to hold her tongue in the face of such idealistic exuberance. The gravity of the loss of Heartwood members in the face of these bioweapons hadn't truly sunken in for the new recruits. Sometimes experience was the best teacher. She looked to N'yami and took a refocusing breath. "Depends on if you think you're going to need to call upon some aether between now and then."

“Scream once if yer in trouble, twice if yer just foolin’ with us.” Cravs dryly advises N’yami.

"What happens if I do it three times?" N’yami grinned, joking of course and an attempt to lighten the mood. "No worries, if things start goin' bad I'll let ya know guys know."

Evelyn: "Ah, is that what our signal shall be? Primitive and simple, yet effective. The success of our mission is all but assured regardless if we take the necessary precautions."

N'yami nodded. "So." N'yami clipped the item onto her wrist. "Who wants to hold the Carbuncle? If things start goin' bad she'll let ya know." The summon’s ears perked up and pitch black orbs looked around the room to determine who her Coerthas buddy will be.

Evelyn raises her hand enthusiastically. "I shall care for thy familiar, mortal. Choose me, and you shall not regret it."

Cravendy Hound tries to lean into N’yami’s confidence, and tries to tell herself this mission will be smooth sailing. But an ever familiar anxiety sets her heart pumping.  Cravs huffs, and moodily looks to the corner of the table.

"Whackara is connected to me, if I'm in trouble her fur will bristle so just keep an eye on that." The carbuncle jumped down from N'yami's shoulder and went to sit on the arm of the chair where Evelyn was, a paw reached out to rest on the red heads shoulder as if to say 'Buddy'.

Evelyn grinned quietly to herself and chuckled. "The pact is complete, then. I shall guard this one with my life. You needn't worry, I will simply resurrect should anything happen to me. Your safety is all but assured, friend." She reaches a hand out to softly pet the carbuncle.

Rising Lotus "We have somethin' to catch it or keep it too right? Or should we jus' break it's legs an' bring it in?" she crossed her arms and leaned back into her chair. "Granted I don't know anythin' near enough 'bout them as Haila, but I do remember ya sayin' it can call other ones too right? Do we have some way to stop that?"

Haila turned over to Rising, "No ways to disrupt it yet I'm afraid, 'tis one strong signal, but the best would be to drag the straggler you mean to capture as far away as possible before it calls reinforcements."

N'yami hummed in thought for a moment. "Could use wires? A barrier would just be absorbed by the damn thing, but we would need a couple people who would want to volunteer to just jump the damn thing and tie it up."

Aislinn let her gaze drift over to Rising and Cravendy

Evelyn sighed and looked around. "Unfortunately, this vessel's arms are quite frail, otherwise I would love to volunteer... are any mortals willing to take the lead?"

“Seems easier to just break its legs. We won’t be needin’ those to do whatever we need the spider for, right?” Cravendy looks around, suddenly wary of another’s gaze on her. “Jump it. Beat it up. Been there, done that...”

Rising Lotus grimaces "Ugh, alright. I don't wanna see a wave of them things again if I can help it." she glanced at N'yami as she offered her suggestion. "..that sounds like it'd work, sure Cravs is a right fine knot tie-er too. " she looked toward Cravs.

Riylli raised her hand. "I could probably incapacitate it with my magic pretty easy, depending on how strong the thing is. Would give me something to do too..." She said with an overexaggerated sigh

Haila Wetyios: "As long as it gets the job done, I have no quarry with it. Breaking the legs should do the job, but if all else fails, I'll take a broken spider."

"Ah, are you not joining us, mortal? A shame, your apparent experience with these spiders would be quite the help." Evelyn said, turning her gaze to Haila.

Haila Wetyios shook her head. "As much as I wish I could, I have my reasons for not going... 'Tis been by mere coincidence that the spiders didn't pick up on me the other times. But I can't risk a third one. At least not if I want a few plans of my own to work."

N'yami Synch: "So who's ready to go catch us a spider!? That's a dumb question no one really is but hells we need the bloody thing so let's go punch it in the legs."

N'ana Firesong gave a small sigh. "Why spiders" she mumbled.

Cravendy glances back at Rising. “Can’t say I’ve ever kidnapped a spider, but there’s a first for everythin’. But the idea would be the same. Lure it away to some lonely corner, away from pryin’ eyes, and tie it up afore it knows what got ‘im. Or beat it till it’s broken.”

Riylli gave a concerned look to the pirate Roe, unsure if she was joking or not

Rising Lotus: "Well lets play it by ear then. If we have a chance to bind it lets do that, if not we'll smash it's legs off, and as a last case option we'll kill it all together."

Evelyn stands up and strikes a pose with her staff. "Let our operation commence. The Goddess of Victory is on our side, so long as we err on the side of caution. Now, let us show these spiders true despair..." She held her bandaged right arm up to her left eye again, folding her left one across her body. She let out an enthusiastic "Fwahahaha!" and shook her head afterward.

Aislinn nodded and rose to her feet. "Seems like we have a plan in place." Roughly, but it was still a plan. "I'll go grab my bloody coat." she shook her head and retreated briefly back to her quarters.

After the group made the walk through Coerthas back to the area where they knew the spiders would appear, with some grumbling cause of the cold of course, N'yami lead them through the snowy terrain. Stopping in her tracks the Seeker looked around with perked ears. "Where exactly were you all ambushed before? Perhaps that will be the best spot to look for one."

Riylli kicked at the ground below, trying to keep her shivering to a minimum. "...Hate this stupid place... Grounds all frozen... Terrible to work with..." She muttered to herself as the rest of the group did their thing

N'ana: "Aye hope we finish up quickly. As much as aye enjoy mountain trips in Othard this cold is a different story."

Aislinn looked to Rising and Cravendy to answer that question. She hadn't yet ventured out to meet these spiders head on. For obvious reasons. Heartwood still needed at least a semblance of a medical staff until they could get G'lewra and Vanriri back.

Rising Lotus huffed as they exited the cave, rubbing her hands together as she was a tad underdressed. "I think it was a bit more down there, near the bridge right?" she glanced at Cravs, keeping her body moving to build up some heat. It then dawned on her the Cravs was kind of not there at the time, but maybe she knew somehow?

Evelyn shivered quietly, holding Whackara in her arms. "F-Fufufu... this cold is n-nothing... you m-mortals always complain about the silliest things..." she posed again in her usual fashion.

Cravendy feels her gut sink as she remembers a time when...it was before she woke up, and yet. She groans, but answers to the best of her ability. “Yeah, I remember it was by that hill, and we crossed a bridge at some point. Over there?” Cravs points down south.

N'yami Synch: "Works for me." She offered a shrug and just started walking down the path, they'd eventually run into the blasted thing right? That's how it usually worked from what she heard. "Time to give this damsel-in-distress thing a try I suppose."

"I-If these things go after magic users, how 'bout we just start channelling and wait for it to show up?" Riylli offered, getting sick of standing in one place freezing her tail off

Cravendy lightly elbows Evelyn as she passes her. “Phoenix-lass, right? Ye think ye can ‘eat up the poor sods who’re freezin’ their arses off?”

Rising Lotus looks at the river over the hill. "This is lookin' familiar, bridge ain't too far from here." she pointed across it. "They all came from the other side of it, and we fell back to the bridge." she pointed to the left down the path.

Aislinn heard Cravendy and looked over her shoulder. "I'm good. No need to light me up or anything."

Evelyn Blazewing 's eyes open wide. "Sh-Share my warmth? With... e-everyone? F-Fwahaha, I certainly would if it were possible. Touching a mere mortal with my body temperature s-so high would incinerate them to mere ashes!" she quietly mumbled to herself. "B-Besides, I'm kinda using it right now..."

Cravendy nods to Rising’s statement. “Some of ‘em were underneath the snow too, so watch where ye step.”

Aislinn took a few steps back at that. "Great." she muttered as she peered down at the frozen ground around them.

N'ana Firesong: "Ye seem ye can mix a drink right now, Phoenix."

Evelyn: "I would be happy to mix you a drink were now a good time, mortal. Ask when we return home and I shall happily oblige."

N'yami looked around for a moment as they paused. "We'll stick around somewhere safe so the rest of ya have a place to hide while I drag the damn thing out." The Seeker pointed over at the boulder sticking out of the ground. "Go hide over there while I call it out. Rising, and Cravs, get ready to launch yerself at it once it comes out."

Rising Lotus: "Aye, pulled...uh.. someone off one before it got her, then it called it's friends." she tapped her boots on the ground to shake some snow out of her sandals.

Cravendy: “Aye. Come on Rising, we got a boulder to snoop behind.” She starts to walk over.

Heartwood runs into another RP FC also RPing (Riylli Aliapoh) (feels like two rival gangs are passing) (Aislinn North) ((Throwdown)) (Haila Wetyios) Oh snap)) (Rising Lotus) We have to intimidate them, everyone make yourselfs big)) (Cravendy Hound) OH?? )) (N'yami Synch) PUFF OUT)) (N'yami Synch) I think we win)) (Cravendy Hound) omg haha )) (Riylli Aliapoh) (as big as you can get) (N'yami Synch) Lol one of them is a friend of my so I whispered yelled at him to get out of my swamp xD))

Rising Lotus nodded, pumping herself up before tailing behind Cravs, drawing her spear on the way.

"I can help too y'know..." Riylli muttered as she stomped off to hide behind the boulder

Aislinn murmured to N'yami as she gestured to the device on the miqo'te's wrist. "If your plan is to take that off to lure a spider, I'd suggest snapping it right back on the moment you get one on your trail. As it is we're going to have a hell of a time shutting it up before it calls any others." she nodded. "Watch yourself, aye?"

Cravendy ducks behind the boulder and peeks out, as sneakily as she can manage. But she’s half-distracted by Rising, who to her...does not look dressed for success, in this weather. “Nophica’s teats, ye askin’ to catch a cold again?!” She harshly whispers.

N'yami Synch: "Cravs and Rising, pull Riylli with ya when the thing comes out, the faster we bring the thing down the better." The Seeker looked over to Aislinn and offered a short nod. "I can defend myself pretty well, if you know someone else needs it more I'll be fine without it."

Riylli's ears perked up, her pouting interrupted. "Wait, me? I mean, yeah! The grounds a bit frozen, but I'm sure it'll be fine" She finished with a confident nod, back to her usual self

Rising Lotus was peeking around the other side of the rock, spearing humming away as they waited. "I'll be fine, been through here lots of times dressed like this. Build's character." she shivered a bit as she said the last part. " 'sides fightin' will keep me plenty warm."

Aislinn shook her head and snorted. "I'm not playing the lottery like that. You're going after the spider, you take it. I'm just saying." she turned and went to stand with the others.

Riylli kicks a bit off snow onto Rising's exposed toes. "Builds hypothermia is what it does. How are you gonna fight when you're frozen to the ground?"

Cravendy: “Might be awhile ‘fore we’re fightin’.” Cravs looks back at N’yami and watches the miqo’te like a hawk. Her breath coming out in chilly plumes, she mumbles something under her breath. “Feh, character...Personally, I’m done buildin’ anymore of that.”

N'ana Firesong keeps a watchful eye over her surroundings.

N'yami unhooked the device from her arm for a moment, and that's when the rest of the group would feel a surge of aether crash over them. The group would feel a wide range of emotions hit them, the strongest one they felt would send a warmth through their cold bodies. Raising her hand in the air the Seeker summoned a ball of aether and shot it off in the air, one after the other like a show of fireworks and each one burst in the sky. Red aether mixed into the white winds that were carried off to call upon the creature they were looking for and with how much the Seeker was giving off did the group hear an echoing screech off in the distance. Those who had met the creatures would know the sound all too well, it was coming.

N'ana Firesong knelt over, feeling the warmth take over her body and shivered. "Thralls balls!"

Rising Lotus shot Riylli a glare, flinging the snow off her foot, about to retaliate before N'yami started and she focused up, tightening her grip on her spear. She grit her teeth as they had garnered hopefully only one's attention.

Evelyn recoils a bit, reeling from the emotional surge she just felt. She then turns her attention to the sky, and back to N'yami. "An excellent show, mortal, but will it do the tri-" She's cut off by the screeching, which causes her to smirk. "Fufufu... it seems your ploy worked. Everyone, ready yourselves. Our enemy will be upon us soon." She mumbled to herself again. "I-I think... that's our enemy..."

Aislinn stumbled back as the aetheric emotions hit her, the warmth flowing into her body triggering a sense of alarm. No. Not now. But it soon passes as she realized it was only N'yami and not herself. She breathed and tried to shake off the feeling. "That'll get them if nothing else." she said low, her voice wavering slightly.

Riylli glances over to Evelyn. "Hey, crazy lady, how hot can that fire of yours get? Y'think you can thaw the earth a bit for me when we jump out?"

Cravendy grunts as she weathers the wave of aether, sets her jaw as foreign emotions flow through. When it passes, she finally takes a gasp of air. Without knowing it, Cravs had been holding her breath. But she could not breathe easy, not yet. They were coming.

Evelyn glares at Riylli. "I am not crazy, mortal. My flames are the hottest in the realm. I would be more than happy to assist you, however." She sighed.  "So, my talents shall simply be used to thaw the earth? Fine, fine... I came here to offer my assistance, after all."

The sound of heavy footsteps could be heard as the beast came crashing through the snowy plains, this one was the perfect size to carry someone off and with how much aether it detected it seemed determined to catch whatever was creating it. At the last possible second N'yami slapped the device onto her wrist again to dampen her aether, and that's when the Crawler stopped in front of her. The familiar whirring noise was heard as it scanned the Seeker for the aether source.

Aislinn North From her hiding place behind the boulder, Aislinn tensely watched, her breath trapped in her lungs. She sincerely hoped her device wouldn't fail now, of all times.

Cravendy‘s eyes widen at the sight of the machine, but any hesitation is quickly pushed down. Cravs shuffles over the boulder and charges at her target, hoping to knock it off balance with a low blow to one of its many legs.

Rising Lotus "Great, a big one..." she hopped out from her hiding place and charged forward, taking a great big swipe at it's front left leg as she got in range.

Riylli Aliapoh hopped up onto the rock, shouting out to Evelyn. "Time to shine, crazy phoenix lady! Help me get the earth under it's legs!" She commanded, and began to swirl aether around her as she commanded the earth to reach out and swallow up the spiders legs, though as she suspected the ice made it difficult to manage. However, with Evelyn's help…

N'ana Firesong: "Take out it's eye!"

Evelyn sighs and smiles, bringing her rod close to her. "Fufufu... behold mortals, the purest of flames, the hottest of cinders! This is a gift from Lord Blazewing himself! To ash do we fall, and from ash do we rise... now!" *she launches a small fireball, which then explodes into a larger flame that consumes the ground around the spider. "Hell's Maw!"

Aislinn reached into her coat, white-knuckles wrapping around the grip of her pistol as the others charged. She wouldn't use her aether but she would shoot if things began to take a dire turn. For now, she watched and waited, fighting the frustration that rose in her.

Despite the several attacks aimed at the spider, it seemed as only a selected few even had an effect on it. Riylli's rocks for once, managed to at least ground it on the spot. It's metal legs though, were stronger than the ones that they'd faced before, that much was clear from the fact that it's hindleg barely took any damage from Rising's attack. The edges of it's fleshy limbs suffering very slight charring as it detected the aether sources around it. The fire spell becoming it's first target as it had been the biggest display of aether out of all of them, with the earth rocks being a close second.

Aislinn North can see where this is going and cursed harshly under her breath. The weapon was already assessing and zeroing in on those who had created a display of aether. "Get ready to scatter." she warned.

Finishing it's scans of it's primary targets as well as potential threats, the mechanical spider made several whirring sounds, had it been a smaller one, it would have surely attempted to call for backups already. This one though, was big enough to attempt it's own attacks. Lifting the few legs that weren't trapped in stone, it attempted to free it's other legs as it hurled rocks around at the closest people within it's range whilst smaller spiders dropped off the big one, rushing at the people in the back.

N'yami watched as the crowd charged at the Crawler and watched the chaos start to form, the Seeker waited for the right time to interfere and if needed she would join the battle. Her ruby gaze kept flicking down to the device on her wrist, debating to take it off to act as bait again, that's why she was here right?

Riylli pumped more aether into her spell, refusing to allow the spider freedom so long as she could help it. "Gonna need you guys to keep those things off me! Can't exactly multitask right now!" She called to whoever might be able to help

Ready for it, Aislinn dashed out from behind the boulder as the smaller spiders charged toward them. She fired off a few shots as she went, hoping to pick a couple off before they swarmed the others.

Rising Lotus managed to dodge the stones that were throw at her, grunting and gripping her spear tightly. With a mighty shout she jabbed the tip of her spear right between where the leg meets the body, twisting and pushing open a gap towars the now exposed and vulnerable shoulder mechanics! If someone could aim several shots in there it would sure do a lot of damage!

Cravendy Hound: “Umf! Shit, thing’s built like a brick ‘ouse!” Why did she think that tackling a thing made of solid metal was a good idea to begin with? Now her shoulder felt all kinds of wrong. She rolls to dodge the flurry of rocks and, out of the corner of her eye, she sees the smaller spiders rush at the party’s backline. A bitter cocktail of anger and anxiety sets her heart alight. Not on her watch!

Cravendy grins when Rising serves her an opening on a silver platter. “Thank ye, flower. Now!” She whips her gun out and sends a flurry of shots aimed directly at the exposed circuitry.

N'ana stabbed at the smaller spiders around her. slashing and kicking the ones too close to her.

Evelyn targets the small spiders approaching her, readying another area fire spell. Without giving a small speech this time, she simply readies and casts another area fire spell, hoping to get rid of the smaller spiders coming after her. After launching her attack, she mutters "Calamity Blaze." and strikes a pose.

Relatively assured that she hadn't made herself a target for the smaller spiders, Aislinn continued to fire off shots to drop the bastards before they could reach the ones casting aether about with abandon, pausing only for the scant seconds it took her to reload. Her precision as a sharpshooter on display, she rarely seemed to miss her marks.

Riylli grit her teeth, trying to hold on as the spider did everything it could to free itself from it's bindings. "I ain't gonna be able to hold much longer! Do whatever it is you gotta do, and do it fast!" She called out to the front lines, swearing under her breath. "'Take it alive' huh? Easy to say when you aren't the one holding the damned thing..." She mutters angrily, before pumping another dose of aether into the earthen shackles

Rising Lotus grinned as Cravs fired several shots into the hole she made, twisting her body around to try and spear the other front leg, aiming for the first joint from it's body and thrusting hard, hopefully she'd continued to have good results aiming for those points compared to hacking and slashing

Cravendy feels that telltale burn of combat. Of blood boiling, of time slowing. Given her proximity to the large machine, Cravs decides to try to grab hold of another leg and directly press the end of her gun at its joint. Squeeze, and fire.

The onslaught of attacks took it's toll, for a moment it seemed that the large spider had underestimated it's targets. Such was the issue of programming it's priorities. The leg that Rising and Cravs had worked together to damage caused several circuits to go haywire. The spider had to pause for a moment as the rest of it's legs too, started taking damage from the shots, the spears and the rocks keeping it grounded all causing damage beyond acceptable parameters, the creature attempted to step back to no avail, it's smaller spiders being taken one after the other with the group work from everyone attacking it. Upon finishing it's damage calculations, it buckled down, almost compacting part of it's body for a moment as it emitted a deafening sound alongside static that was nearly palpable in the air. It wouldn't damage it's opponents as much as it would deafen them briefly, but it was for sure calling for nearby backups.

Riylli just kept channeling really. Nothing to see here. She wasn't getting tired or anything. It's fine. All fine.

Cravendy recoils at the explosive sound blaring right next to her ears. She searches for the source of the sound but can’t quite focus with this ringing in her head, so instead she opts to continue her assault. Cravs aims her gun at the spider’s chassis and fires several times. If it’s broken, the racket’ll stop, right?

N'ana shook her head feeling a bit dizzy and off balance from the noise. She put the sword inside its holdster and then drew it with a blinding light of power on one of the spiders back legs.

Aislinn staggered to the side and clapped a free hand over one ear as the blaring beacon went off. Damn it all. That thing simply needed to -die-. Gritting her teeth against the painful noise, she did her best to keep watch on the casters, and pick off any of the smaller spiders that still remained. "Someone shut it up, fast!" her words barely heard over the blaring siren.

Rising Lotus braced herself as the screech blared, bracing herself while she gazed over the ugly thing. Things usually make sound from their mouths, so she thrusted right under it's glowing eye, hoping that was where it would be? If it had one?

N'yami Synch placed her hands over her ears as the creature called out for help. Why did it need to be so loud? "Take it down now! We need to get out of here fast before the backup arrives!"

Riylli Aliapoh huffed, feeling neglected out there in the backlines, watching everyone else do cool stuff. She was not one to enjoy taking the support role, and suddenly a very stupid idea dawned on her. She grinned, "Alright, time to end this!" She called out, suddenly thrusting her arms out to the sides and pumping in every last bit of her aether, the earthen shackles that had been binding the creatures legs suddenly flying out in opposite directions, ripping the spiders legs out with them

Evelyn Blazewing covered her ears and crouched down in recoil from the harsh noise the spider emitted. "I-It's worse than the wails of the damned... shut up!" She stood up, braced herself, and fired a ball of flame at the mechanical arachnid, yelling out "Flames of Ifrit!" as she did.

Cravendy Hound brings her arms up in time to guard herself against a shower of earth and ice. “By the godsdamned Navigator! Warn me next time ye use yer magic!” But, seeing as the spider was now rendered legless by Riylli’s efforts, it seemed a good opportunity to grab and go. Cravs stumbles to the other end of the machine and tries to lift it. They had to get this thing, and themselves, out of here fast.

While incredibly risky and stupid, Riylli's idea worked, the sudden pull from the rocks alongside it's already damaged legs nearly ripped all of them off on the spot. Only one leg remaining, which was the one N'ana kept attacking as the blasted thing started to squirm as much as it could. Several smaller spiders dropped off it's insides, clearly confused as the signal it was sending out to them was not going off well thanks to the damage caused by Rising and Crav's shots.

N'yami bolted towards the giant spider and went to lift it with Cravs. "Let's go go go." The carbuncle grew in size to be big enough to ride and trotted up to Riylli incase she needed to be carried home. "Those who can lift get over here."

The large spider was rendered defenseless, and most of all, it was half intact.

Riylli fell to her knees, aether spent and body exhausted. She grit her teeth and picked herself back up, using her staff to keep her balance as she didn't want people seeing how wiped out she was. "What else could 'time to end this' mean!?" Riylli shot back to Cravs, before carefully trying to crawl her way off the boulder she was dramatically perched on. Maybe exhausting herself right before it was time to run... was not the best plan

Rising pulled her spear back just in time to watch Riylli pull it's legs off like a child would do to a bug, and probably Riylli to a bug too honestly. Quickly returning her spear to her back, she made her way to the front, squatting down and preparing to lift it with the others.

As the limbs come off the spider in a mighty pull of earth, Aislinn wasted no time rushing towards the downed bioweapon, taking out the small spiders that wandered around in confusion. "Alright. N'yami's right. Let's take it and run." she holstered her weapon and made ready to lift along with the others.

Evelyn applauded Riylli's display, a proud smile on her face. "Excellent, truly excellent work, mortal. Your prowess with the earth is quite remarkable..."

Cravendy grumbles something under her breath about being more specific, that “time to end this” should clearly state -how- as well. But it was all bullshit and Cravs knew it - couldn’t expect people to say all that in the heat of the battle. Didn’t stop her from complaining the whole way back though.

Riylli gave a tired grin, always ready to accept some praise. "Best geomancer in eorzea, you can bet on it! You were a big help with that fire though. Couldn't have done it without ya." She said with a nod, before noticing the large carbuncle seemingly waiting for her to pass out. "Oh, hey... you. You offering a ride?" She asked, giving a shrug as she hopped on and did her best not to look so relieved.

As Heartwood managed to take the giant Crawler back, hopefully Haila was fine with the size of it, the group successfully completed their mission and even managed to escape the backup before they showed up but now the real question. How are they going to get it through the door?

#ffxiv rp #balmung rp #ffxiv crystal rp #Heartwood Ventures #Heartwood plots #Primary Access Required #Cravendy Hound #n'yami synch #N'ana Firesong #riylli aliapoh #rising lotus #aislinn north #haila wetyios #Evelyn Blazewing

[wearesorcerer]

Creativity versus Cheating

You may think I’m beating a dead horse about this, but given the number of really stupid takes on this website, I think it needs to be said. With examples! And stories! And ~*fun*~!

A Definition of Cheating

In the end, my erstwhile conversant antagonist mentioned “cheating”. This is a childish way of asserting your disdain for the conversation, but Venomancer has never been a good interlocutor. (This is me being petty and spiteful, but I do have a point here.) “Cheating” gets thrown around a lot as a complaint for why something shouldn’t be allowed. However, to cheat, you have to do three specific things:

Break a rule. Your action has to violate a rule entirely; it can’t simply bend the rule.

Acquire an unfair advantage. Because it required breaking a rule, no one else can benefit from the action you have taken. However, the action still works within the system of other rules to give you some benefit.

Break trust. If you break a rule without intending to do so, it’s a mistake. If you get an unfair advantage but didn’t mean to, it’s a mistake. Cheating has to violate the trust in a system of rules, which demands there be intent behind it.

I point this out because, as I mentioned before, spellcasting in D&D has a very, very long history of people complaining that it is too powerful. Spellcasting. Magic. Seemingly breaking the laws of physics. Magic may or may not itself be cheating (if real, depending on whether or not it actually violates the rules of existence), but its very existence in a codified rule set frequently causes problems, particularly with people who don’t want to play magic-users. The bones of these arguments litter spell descriptions across the editions: feather fall can’t slow down a weapon (so probably not a guillotine blade), magic missile can’t target objects, and other odd bits of wording that make you scratch your head all trace back to some questionable use of a spell.

And yet, it’s not just spells that result in this. Take this conversation from 2006 (D&D 3.5) between a player whose character was a “bareknuckle boxer” Fighter (no idea why he couldn’t have played a Monk) and a DM who was a bit paranoid about getting the run-around from players:

Player: “Can I use Sunder attempts to break opponents’ bones?”

DM: “Hmm... I don’t see why not. However, if you do that, that leaves it open for me to do the same.”

Player: “Y’know, I don’t like that possibility. I’ll just not.”

This is a creative use of established rules to get an advantage. However, it’s not cheating by a long shot: the player is avoiding breaking any rules, the DM approves of the mechanic, and the advantage isn’t unfair because literally anyone can make a sunder attempt (and plenty of monsters can do it better than this bareknuckle boxer could).

You may note that this is the exact same issue as was brought up with the create water in lungs example: the advantage isn’t unfair because others can use the same tactic (this is in fact the poster’s complaint) and the DM had to approve it, meaning either it didn’t violate rules as written (see next) or the DM employed Rule 0 (”the rules are guidelines; tweak or discard them as you wish”). What is “unfair” is that magic users can do this but others cannot; but that’s the same as any class-based issue and is the complaint that’s been leveled at magic users the entire time. But let’s stick with the unfairness at hand: it’s not unfair to other magic users and the DM allowed it, ergo it’s not cheating.

Mistaken Readings: Breaking the Rules but Not Getting a Significant Advantage

Now, here’s the catch. The create water example would vary between editions. I can tell you that in third edition it was against the rules for create water or other conjurations to create objects inside of a creature, while in 5e it requires an open container (lungs themselves are not and the passages into lungs have several ways of being closed specifically to keep water out). All you have to say is “that’s not how the spell works in the rules” and you’re good. But that wasn’t the point of the post, so I’m going to drag it some more.

A great example of such a misreading is a story the bareknuckle boxer player told me of a druid he’d played in high school.. It was the habit of his previous DM to incarcerate his PCs and strip them of all their gear to see how they’d escape from said predicament. My friend’s druid specialized in wood shaping and took Eschew Materials (feat: ignore material or focus components of negligible cost), so he cast goodberry to create some plant matter, then entangle to grow it and wood shape to retrieve the guard’s keys and unlock his cell. Had he a window or were the cell close enough to the outside, he probably wouldn’t have needed the goodberry spell in the first place. As we pointed out to him, though, goodberry didn’t work that way at the time: it wasn’t a Conjuration effect that required berries as material components, but a Transmutation effect that targeted them (making them into healing potions that also filled you), so there were no materials for him to Eschew. This was a key (but subtle) design mechanic to limit the power of a druid, who had no ability to conjure non-creature plants.

Here’s the fun thing, however: 5e’s version of goodberry works exactly the way the player thought it did in 3.5 (save that it’s still an effect of the Transmutation school instead of Conjuration). Any druid worth their salt who likes using plant shaping spells should prepare goodberry if for no other reason than to ensure that they have access to plants. (Sadly, there’s no Eschew Materials equivalent that I know of, but you could find a Divine Focus and hope for the best. Or maybe there is an equivalent that I just don’t know about.)

But here we get into another flaw in the argument: even if it’s not how the rule is supposed to work, it doesn’t exactly grant an unfair advantage. Yes, a druid needs plants to cast a lot of their spells, but not all, and a druid with wood shape (a 2nd-level spell at the time) would be a minimum of 3rd level (I know they were higher because another player was a wild shaper, but let’s just go with that). A 3rd-level druid had a base of 1 2nd-level spell (wood shape) and two 1st-level spells (entangle and goodberry), meaning that if this character had been 3rd-level, he’d have used up all three of his non-bonus spell slots just to break out of a jail cell. (Reminder: cantrips were not at-will in 3.5.) Now, given that I know they could wild shape, I must note that the minimum level for that (5th) would have given him base spell slots of 3/2/1 (not counting cantrips), so he’d still have used half of his spells just to get out of a jail cell.

At that level, though, he could have just shapeshifted into a baboon (Str 15), black bear (Str 19), or a snake (Medium constrictor or Small viper) and gotten out (breaking the door down or slithering through a gap), using a single use of a mechanic to escape and prepare himself for combat. But he didn’t. And his story is better because he didn’t.

And this is where the create water and lungs thing comes back. In the end, if it had been allowed, it would have been a save vs. death. But casters already have plenty of ways of killing creatures at first level -- and often more than one creature at a time, whereas this would have likely only worked on one. Sleep is a great example of an early save or die spell: if the creatures fail their saves, they are now helpless and open for coup de grace-ing (decapitation, stabbination, whatever). Color spray in 3.5 is far and away better than in 5e in this regard because it also makes creatures go comatose, though it doesn’t scale well. (Neither does sleep, for that matter.) Burning hands is an AoE damaging effect. I can go on.

The point is, even misinterpretations of spells tend to run afoul of how cost effective their use is.

In the end, Clerics don’t wander around filling people’s lungs with water because that’s wasteful. You worry about enemy characters trying to kill you in a game about killing things?

Where Rules Mongering Kills Fun

The biggest reason I hate these complaints is not that they make it more difficult to kill things in a game that’s always been about killing things, but in that they try to stamp out any out-of-the-box use for spells. And I mean any.

At the tail end of the Summer of 2005, when I was starting undergrad, another friend of mine recounted tales of a gnomish caster he had played. Two spells featured: dancing lights and Tenser’s floating disk. He had been trying to intimidate some NPC, so rode in on his floating disk and proceeded to use dancing lights to create the image of a humanoid getting disemboweled. Clearly, dancing lights cannot do that: it can create up to four lights or the outline of a single, vaguely humanoid, glowing form. However, if we’re stuck on the dancing lights part, we’ve missed the point: as a gnome caster, he could have done the same thing with silent image anyway (if he had it; I don’t recall what class he was or why he chose dancing lights). No, the issue is with Tenser’s floating disk. Per the spell description:

You create a slightly concave, circular plane of force that follows you about and carries loads for you. The disk is 3 feet in diameter and 1 inch deep at its center. It can hold 100 pounds of weight per caster level. (If used to transport a liquid, its capacity is 2 gallons.) The disk floats approximately 3 feet above the ground at all times and remains level. It floats along horizontally within spell range and will accompany you at a rate of no more than your normal speed each round. If not otherwise directed, it maintains a constant interval of 5 feet between itself and you. The disk winks out of existence when the spell duration expires. The disk also winks out if you move beyond range or try to take the disk more than 3 feet away from the surface beneath it. When the disk winks out, whatever it was supporting falls to the surface beneath it.

It has a range of Close (25 ft. + 5 ft./2 levels), meaning you can direct it to hover anywhere from 0 to 25-75 ft. (1-20th caster levels) from you. If you weigh less than 100 pounds (gear included), at first level you could sit atop it and move at your normal speed. This would accomplish two things: let you ignore terrain problems that require you standing in a square (pressure plates, difficult terrain, etc.) and look really cool but in a fairly typical way for a mage. Since you’re a caster, you’re going to be in the back in marching order, meaning that you’re probably not going to be the one to activate a trap, and your spells have decent range, meaning you don’t have to worry too much about difficult terrain. (This wouldn’t protect you from lava, for the record: remember your convection!) At most, it would let you cross a body of water -- unless the DM said that the surface of the water didn’t count as the surface beneath the disk, which is fair. So minor is this ability that the Elocater prestige class (Expanded Psionics Handbook) gets an equivalent merged with a better version of the levitate spell as a constant effect at first level in addition to a feat and an improvement to previous casting (well, manifesting) ability.

And you might think that all of that’s so minor that surely no one would have complained about it, yet there’s evidence to the contrary. Pathfinder came up with the Magic Trick feat to allow you to do exactly this, but only if you’re third level, pay the feat tax, and put skill points into Fly. Y’know, for the thing that the rules as written would let a light character do at first level and most characters do at second by just casting the spell. Fifth edition won’t let you do it at all: the disk disappears if it comes closer than 20 feet to you (20 ft. is an awfully long distance between you and what amounts to a pack mule you’re leading).

Now, it’s not always that way. 5e’s mage hand is now de jure able to manipulate objects, whereas it wasn’t clear in 3.5, but that’s probably because open/close got folded into it. But for every positive like that, you get two negatives from vociferous people who can’t stand it when other people don’t use spells in specific, pre-defined ways.

In the End...

At the end of the day, having a fun story to tell about how you did something unusual that occurred to you on the spur of the moment and which somehow worked is far and away more important than playing this game like it were a video game, with each spell doing only one thing. And that’s not just coming from me or the people I’ve played with; that’s coming from decades of player stories, fan works, pop culture references, and even D&D novels.

The OP in that old post said that if you can’t abide by their overly narrow, strict interpretation of the rules that maybe you shouldn’t be playing 5e. Ordinarily, I wouldn’t want to sink to their level, but I think I will: if you can’t stand people being creative, you ABSOLUTELY should not be playing a role-playing game of any kind. You should stick to video games and board games. Or Fourth Edition.

#the play's the thing

[kasaron]

Hey, Street Palad-anon here with a slight correction on my last ask. I stated that SP's revolver started life as a Colt Peacemaker, but after some research, that is not the gun I was thinking of. I was in fact thinking of the Colt Army Model 1860, so that is what the gun started as when it was first purchased by his ancestors in 1863. And it's just been remade a lot since then. Also, since my story takes place in 2086, that gun is technically over 220 years old!

I LOVE the idea of that.

Maybe talk with the DM and see if you can make it have a latent spirit that grows with you. The ancient will of your family, made manifest. If they feel concerned about power creep, offer to have to spend a percent portion of your exp into the weapon for it’s power.

I definitely agree that it has to have some severe restrictions on the big dick fak yu power it uses; require a 1 round incantation, a special bullet (blessed silver), and maybe a use of something like smite, but with that cost, it should basically be a OHKO for any undead/evil creature that’s your level.

Something like this;

“Gloria Venandi“ - The Hunter’s Eulogy.

(Please pronounce the V as a W, it’s the correct non-vulgar latin)

This weapon is a heavily modified, retrofuitted, reforged, and updated Colt Army Model 1860, in .454 Cascull is imbued with the staggering might and will of generations of hunters and slayers of evil, seekers of light and delvers of darkness. When used by a scion of this lineage, in the pursuit of the world’s most fell creatures, this weapon sings a song of their final death.

The weapon is considered to have a “latent intelligence;” a will of singular purpose, which can bloom and grow as it obtains experience from it’s wielder. It’s primary goal is the hunting and slaying of fell beasts that stalk the night.

The weapon, in it’s current form, has the following properties;

.454 Cascull Reconstruction - at some point, this weapon was rechambered from .44 paper cartridge black-powder into the (frankly absurdly) powerful .454 Cascull revolver round. In order to accommodate both the slightly larger, and significantly more powerful round without violently disassembling itself, the capacity has been reduced. This revolver has a 5 shot cylinder, instead of the standard 6-shot cylinder common for this weapon.

“Percutiens Malleo Dei” - the Hammer of Smiting; this weapon can fire bullets imbued with a paladin’s channel smite ability.

“Septimia Cylindrus” (C=K, don’t be vulgar) - The Seventh Chamber; anachronistic, considering the weapon only has 5 chambers, not 6, this ability allows a user to load a special, blessed round into the empty gun, perform a special incantation, and fire a bullet of incredible power. Requirements; the gun must have no unfired rounds in the cylinder, save for a single gold, silver, or platinum round, blessed (in the manner used to create holy water). The user must then perform a one-round incantation, which causes them to be enveloped in an aura of unmistakable good, as well as an aura of light (-40 to stealth). The following round, the user may expend a charge of their smite evil power and make a single ranged touch attack against a creature. If the target is an evil outsider or undead of HD equal to or less than the user, the creature is slain immediately and totally (Will partial, Holy, ignores any immunity to death effects). For all other creatures, or if the creature has HD greater than the user, or passes their Will save, they instead take Weapon damage, plus 1D per 2 Paladin Levels, of Holy Damage. (Adjust this for balance, I’m not very used to Shadowrun damage systems).

From there, the weapon would probably gain some abilities like being able to detect evil presences, leap to the user’s hand when they’re in danger, or even incarnate (merge the wills and bodies of the weapon and user into a single, powerful form, at the expense of sanity, health, etc). Maybe allowing more specialized bullets; but that’s getting into caster gun territory, so eh.

The flipside is, this weapon would always WANT to seek out evil and smite it, even if that’s not the sensible thing to do; it’d be the paladin’s job to reign that in, maybe even have to make will saves to not do things that might have a long term negative effect, or are just blatantly suicidal. It’d almost act like a fanatical child, especially at the outset, big ideas, big ideals, but no sense of it’s own (or more importantly it’s user’s) mortality. As the bond between user and weapon strengthens, it’d mellow out, regain the memories of it’s users, sharpen and strengthen it’s will and it’s wisdom.

#Anonymous

[nemrut]

Epic Seven - Balance Adjustment Patch 02.09.2021

So, some interesting units getting adjustments there.

Don't care much about ML Ravi since I do not have her. I'll be honest, I didn't think she needed a buff, but then again, I rarely saw her, so maybe she did.

Her S1 now inflicts injuries, which is interesting enough. Her S2 now gives her a CR push and her S3 gets stronger the more people die, although it only stacks up to three times.

It looks like a pretty good buff, should make her more annoying, at least, although it was never fun fighting an ML Ravi even before this buff. Now, the longer the fight goes on, she will do increasingly more dmg, cycle faster, have an easier time reviving teammates who also revive with more health. So yeah, looks good, too bad I do not have her.

Luna is more interesting to me, because I have her, and she is almost at max mola. I got her when she was first released and back then, Luna was the wyvern queen, and you basically used her everywhere. Lab, wyvern, grinding and even PVP arena. She was cycled out rather soonish though, what with the Commander Lorina SC, who could do her job in PVE better and more reliably and a lot of units who were way better in PVP. At the latest, Luna was unfeasible for Wyvern 13, so, with that, she lost her last useful job. She can be used for one of the expeditions, and many do, but it was mainly people making use of a unit they already had. No one was going to build Luna specifically for expeditions, and even there, Lorina could do a better job imo.

That said, her updates. Her S1 had always been unreliable due to the RNG factor. If she attacked multiple times, it was great and if she didn't, it kinda sucked. Now, she can soulburn ten souls to increase the number of attacks to the maximum amount, which is actually pretty solid. It firmly locks her in as a hero you have to manually control though, since the SB is very important.

Her S2 now always gives crit hit chance by 30, no matter her HP and also additionally 30% crit hit resistance, which is new, as a modicum of protection. Guess pairing her with Diene is now even better than ever. The ATK and Def increase modifiers are the same as always, depending on her health.

Her S3 now penetrates defense by 50%, and she gains an additional five souls if the enemy is defeated. Seeing that the attack always attacks using an advantageous element, having the 50% def penetrating on top of that is pretty song.

On paper, the buffs are looking good, even if they are not going overboard or anything. I am doubting we are entering a Luna renaissance where she will be dominating the meta, but at the very least, it seems like she will be feasible. Personally, I would probably be building her like a bruiser herself, so she would have decent hp and def. Beefy counter build with her EE which gives CR push still seems feasible, especially since she now is less likely to be hit by a critical attack and her S3 now hits a lot harder, making it dangerous to ignore her if she can snipe a unit. She probably can't kill a full health bruiser but since she isn't very fast, by the time it is her turn, the enemy would ideally have accumulated some dmg and it should be enough to finish someone off at least. So, I am interesting to see how this goes. Always feel bad for benching a unit with so many mola investments, so all the better if she becomes viable again.

I do have Kawerik, but I never really used him, and I only fought him a handful of times, so I don't know if this moving stealth from one attack to another and is going to do much, but the attack buff on his EE seems like it would make him better at least.

Same with Mort, never really used him, but I might try him out. SB moved on his S1 so he can apply def break for two turns which is always useful.

His S2 now always gives him a 30% chance to counterattack and his chance to activate his blessing has increased by 10% to 50%, which is fair enough.

His S3 now deals 5 % more injury, 20% in total every time he uses his skill and it deals more dmg.

So yeah, I don't know if this will make him good or worth using but it does make him better, no doubt.

I am also part of the tiny minority of Epic Seven players which is 99.5% of the player base who has never used Roaming Warrior Leo. His buffs seem to make him better, both as a unit in general and to do his job as a bomber, but it really depends on the bomb mechanic being feasible now. With Summer Iseria coming out with bombs as well, could be that they work very well together, making RW Leo a meta unit of sorts but that is very hard to say before seeing Summer Iseria and the new improved bomb mechanics in play.

Ice Dominiel got a pretty significant rework though. Her S1 now can stun and has an SB with which it has a 100% guarantee to stun with only ten souls which is pretty good. Furhtermore, her S2 is now a passive with a 35% of triggering after an ally is hit by a critical attack as opposed to always when she activated it but it is actually a huge improvement because now she doesn't need to go first to activate it. I actually tried Dominiel before, and her reflect barrier strength was based on her atk. That meant, not only did she need a lot of speed so that she could go before the enemy dmg dealers, she also needed a solid atk base since otherwise her reflect barrier would be worthless. So you needed her with high speed, attack but also HP and DEF since her play style revolves around being hit by the enemy and reflecting the dmg back at them and ideally, she kinda needs to survive for that. She also wanted effectiveness for her S3 stuns.

That's a lot of stats for a unit whose stats were already not great, since she is a 4 star. But now, well, now she doesn't need ATK and speed anymore. Now she just wants HP, Def, and maybe effect resistance and some effectiveness. Now she just needs to say alive on your team before she grants your whole team a reflect barrier, one that is based on an ally's max health by the way, which means that if she is paired with soul weavers, knights and bruisers, that's going to make it hurt at least somewhat for enemy attackers. Landy, Arby, SSB and others now have to actively watch out for her.

On paper, at least. Oh, her S3 now also decreases combat readiness by 15 % and gives her increased speed for two turns, even compensating for the loss of speed due to the new gear requirements. I am rather excited for her, since I always liked the idea of killing the enemy with reflected dmg.

Lastly, Mercedes. Now, the only time I used Mercedes was in the first few days of playing epic seven before I replaced her and never looked back.

Her S1 now increases her CR by 15% which is neat. Her s2 now also has a 70 chance to dispel one buff and if she has increased Attack her s2 attacks again. This attack also deals more dmg the fewer enemies there are. Her s3 increases attack of all allies and does more dmg than normal with a critical hit.

Overall, this definitely looks like a buff to result in a stronger Mercedes but I am kinda doubting this will lead to a Meta feasible Mercedes. Maybe the increased dmg and functionality will result in her becoming used more often in RTA or arena, her s2 being able to attack twice and remove one buff from every enemy each time alongside more dmg overall seems to be good on paper at least.

Two artifacts are getting some changes as well. Merciless Glutton which to my knowledge was a more or less useless artifact so far, is changing to increasing single attack dmg by 16% which is pretty good. And when defeating an enemy with a single attack, it increases the CR of all allies except the caster by 12%. Honestly, this is definitely an improvement and on first glance, I kinda want to give this artifact to Luna. I don't know if I have it, tbh, but if I do, I will definitely try it with Luna. Ravi would also benefit from this. Basically warriors with single target attacks who are on counter sets will benefit the most from this. Okay, upon checking, I do not have this artifact. That's a bummer but good for those who have.

Now, Secret Art Storm Sword is confusing me a bit. It says that the effect to grant increased atk to the caster is 100% but that is only the case if you have max limitbroken the artifact which is definitely not the case for most people. So, I am assuming this will still be the case and the text here just was talking about a max limitbroken artifact.

Or, will it change so that the increased atk will always happen but the value which is increased by limitbreaking the artifact is the CR push?

Either way, the artifact was pretty solid on Celine and I don't think on anyone else and CR push can only help there. I still need like 4 more copies of it to make it actually useful because so far, it rarely triggers.

Overall, not my most wanted units who got overworked but some interesting stuff. Hope this all works out positively. The Violet buff for example has proven to be frustrating since the bugger is everywhere and is dodging like crazy. It's no fun fighting him. He is way better than Riolet now.

#epic seven #epic 7

[thevalleyisjolly]

What the Taste Buds Had Left: A Crown of Candy PVP Scenario

[THIS POST IS ALL SPOILERS FOR A CROWN OF CANDY’S SEASON FINALE]

Like many fans, I was relieved that the last episode of A Crown of Candy did not end in PVP.  Like many fans, I was also a little excited to see how a PVP would have played out.  Now, obviously we can’t reliably predict any outcomes.  There’s always roleplay and player agency, to say nothing of dice rolls, so even the most likely outcome is never guaranteed.  However, we can look at the circumstances of each character going into a theoretical PVP, and potentially how that might affect their performance.  

First, a huge thanks to Kyber Bonsai, Tillie the Paladin, and gluegunshots, who put together the transcripts for Episodes 16 and 17 on the D20 wiki!  The transcripts were my main resource in gathering data, and saved me a lot more time and effort than if I had to go through the episodes, pausing every five seconds.  Thank you for your invaluable work in making D20 more accessible!  Thank you also to the D20 wiki editors!  Most of the stats and information about magical items came from the character pages on the wiki, so thank you for your hard work!  Thank you to Samir Barrett (@sketchmasterskillz), whose amazing official art for ACOC is included below.  And a quick shoutout to the folks at CritRoleStats, whose pre-combat “What Do The Mighty Nein Have Left” posts inspired my own efforts here.

Data Collection

The data reflects the current HP and remaining abilities of each character at the point when Saccharina and Ruby make their decisions.  Data collection began with the first spell slot used in Episode 16 (a 2nd level Pass Without a Trace from Liam before the battle started), and ended with Calroy’s death.  I focused on HP and limited-use abilities such as spell slots and magical items.  

For the sake of brevity, I have chosen not to include in this post every single class feature that each character has, and have instead highlighted limited-use abilities.  Unless otherwise stated, assume the character has access to their regular class and sub-class features.  Most of the class features that I’ve omitted can be found in the standard 5th edition Player’s Handbook, and the D&D 5e wiki contains the information for additional subclasses.  I’ve also assumed that apart from magical items and Lou’s Great Weapon Master feat, no homebrew edits have been made.

For magical items, I’ve elected not to describe every single magical ability, except those with particular homebrew features (e.g. Payment Day, Swirlwarden).  All magical weapons are +1 weapons (except Payment Day, which is +2).

While I was able to determine max HP for most of the characters going into the final battle, I was not able to determine Saccharina’s, as she did not take any damage in the fight, nor in the episode after she levelled up.  At Level 9, her HP max was 58.  She has an unknown Constitution modifier.  If Emily followed the Player’s Handbook when building Saccharina, Constitution would be her second highest score as a sorcerer.  Whether or not Constitution is her second highest ability score, I think it’s safe to assume that Saccharina would not have a negative modifier, giving us a range from +0 to +4 (I’m assuming she does not have a Constitution of 20).

Given those factors, we can estimate her Level 10 HP to be between 59 and 68.  She already had her two levels of cleric when we met her, so every level up since then has been sorcerer levels.  Sorcerers have a d6 hit die, so the lowest increase she could potentially have is +1 (1 + 0 CON mod) and the highest increase is +10 (6 + 4 CON mod).  Since she has healing spells, her exact HP doesn’t matter too much unless it comes to very high damage from a single attack (à la Lapin and Keradin), which it could, but that’s impossible to predict.  Suffice to say that for the purposes of this scenario, Saccharina has full health.

And now, on to the fun stuff!

Saccharina - Storm Sorcerer 8, Tempest Cleric 2

[ID: The official art for Saccharina Frostwhip by Samir Barrett @sketchmasterskillz. Saccharina has green skin and a neapolitan mohawk.   She wears a silver tiara, a blue-green outfit dotted with dark spots and a light brown front panel, a white cloak, chocolate pauldrons with cherries on the shoulders, and waffle shinguards.  She holds a spoon-shaped staff in one hand which crackles with lightning energy, and her other hand outstretched to the side also crackles with lightning energy. She stands with a confident posture, and is looking to the side with hooded eyes and a smile.]

HP: Full (between 59-68 HP) AC: 20 Remaining Spell Slots: 1st level (4), 2nd level (2), 3rd level (1), 4th level (3) Sorcery Points: 5/8 Luck Points: 2/3

Feats: War Caster, Lucky

Magical Items Winterscoop Staff: 0 remaining charges; resistance to cold damage Freezerburn: Magical sword

Cinnamon HP: 65/178 Breath Weapon: Unknown

Cinnamon was one of Saccharina’s greatest assets in the battle.  Thanks to the enemy soldiers targeting Cinnamon with their attacks, Saccharina ends the battle with full health and most of her resources.  While both her 5th level spells are gone and the Winterscoop Staff is out of charges, she still has a good number of higher level spells, as well as access to healing spells.  There is the caveat that depending on how long it took between the end of the battle and the start of the PVP, the Haste spell she cast on Cinnamon in Round 4 of the battle may wear off (the battle ended during Round 11).  If it wears off before PVP starts, Cinnamon can still attack on her turn.  If it wears off during a round of PVP, he is stunned for a round, which could prove decisive.

In a PVP, Cinnamon could once again be her greatest asset, provided he is not stunned.  While it isn’t clear whether or not his breath weapon recharged after its last use in the battle, he’s still a large enough threat with his HP and melee attacks that an attacker would most likely focus on downing him first.  Lou revealed in the Adventuring Party’s for Episodes 16 and 17 that he’d been tracking Cinnamon’s HP and that in the case of PVP, he’d eliminate Cinnamon first to try and deescalate the situation.  Given that Amethar is one of the characters who could drop Saccharina to 0 in one turn (depending on her HP), this may give Saccharina the round advantage she needs to bring down Amethar first.

Lou was absolutely correct in identifying Saccharina as his biggest immediate threat (other than Cinnamon, of course).  With a 4th level Lightning Bolt and a Channel Divinity to deal maximum damage, Saccharina could easily drop Amethar at his current HP to 0 with one attack if he fails his save.  In fact, despite having the lowest max HP of the party, Saccharina is easily one of the most dangerous PCs, thanks to Emily’s excellent build.  With a 20 AC, a spell save DC of 17, and her levels in cleric, it would take a massive single attack to pose an immediate serious threat to her.  However…

Ruby - Arcane Trickster Rogue 9, Shadow Magic Sorcerer 1

[ID: The official art for Ruby Rocks by Samir Barrett @sketchmasterskillz.  Ruby has pink skin and red locks of hair tied back into a high tail.  She wears a jewelled red tiara, an all-red outfit with puffed sleeves, and curved toe black shoes.  She is standing partially crouched, with her hands before her in fists, and looking to the side with a focused expression.]

HP: 55/78 AC: 17 Remaining Spell Slots: 1st level (4), 2nd level (3)

Feats: Squat Nimbleness, Magic Initiate

Magical Items Sour Scratch: Grasping Arrow (once/long rest), Acid Arrow (once/long rest) Flickerish: Shield (once/day), 1d6 Superiority Die (Disarming Attack) Locket of the Sweetest Heart: Advantage on death saving throws if other locket is within 5’ Water-steel Dagger: Imposes three conditions requiring saving throws - extra damage, poisoned condition, prevents target from speaking

Ruby has been very strategic throughout the battle, saving her spells and limited abilities for a potential PVP at the end.  The battle has taken out a chunk of her health, only about a third, but enough to put her in danger if she takes an attack from Cinnamon or Saccharina.  As a rogue, she does have Evasion and Uncanny Dodge, which could allow her to mitigate some of the damage from such an attack, although she would still be brought down low and could potentially go down at the next attack.

Of the six PCs, Ruby is one of the best placed when it comes to her resources and abilities.  She has all her spell slots, and full access to all her class abilities.  In particular, as a first level Shadow Magic sorcerer, Ruby has the feature Strength of the Grave.  If damage from a non-critical and non-radiant hit reduces her to 0, she can make a Charisma saving throw (DC = 5 + damage taken) to instead drop to 1 HP.  Paired with the Locket of the Sweetest Heart (if Liam is nearby and on her side), this provides her with a little more wiggle room if she drops to 0.

Rogues in general are very versatile.  Most of their class features are not limited use, and can be used in a variety of situations.  For a partial caster, she doesn’t have very many damage-dealing spells, but her hefty weapon arsenal compensates for that, with Sour Scratch, Flickerish, and the Water-steel Dagger all having considerable abilities and also meeting the requirements for a Sneak Attack weapon.  As we saw with Ciabatta, 5d6 Sneak Attack paired with the Water Steel Dagger is a deadly combination.  Ruby also has Yak, who can grant her advantage on an attack or check.  She may not be as openly formidable as Amethar, but she is just as dangerous in many ways.

Amethar - Storm Herald Barbarian 5, Battle Master 5

[ID: The official art for Amethar Rocks by Samir Barrett @sketchmasterskillz.  Amethar has pink skin and a green beard.  He wears a jewelled crown of purple and gold, an elaborate outfit of striped red and purple, a purple suit of armour and boots, a furred purple cloak, gold vambraces, and various jewels decorate the ensemble.  He holds Payment Day, a gold-coloured sword with an enormous blade, in his hand, and has a strong stance with a serious expression on his face.]

HP: 48/116 AC: 17 Rages: 2 Superiority Dice: 2

Feats: Great Weapon Master (modified - roll +2d6 damage instead of flat +10)

Magical Items Payment Day: Extra damage die against creature who hit you in the previous round; if you roll a Natural 20 against a creature who has killed a member of your family, they must make a constitution saving throw (DC 16) or be killed

Amethar has been in the thick of battle, getting the kills on Grissini and Calroy, which is reflected in his HP (under half of his total).  However, he has not used his Second Wind yet, which could give him the boost he needs to withstand a round of attacks from Saccharina and Cinnamon.  While he’s already used up his Action Surge, he still has two attacks per round, and if anyone kills Ruby, Payment Day’s special ability could come through once again.

By design, high level barbarians are really difficult to kill, and Amethar’s levels in fighter make him even more scarily efficient in dealing damage.  Rage halves any bludgeoning, slashing, or piercing damage, which effectively makes Saccharina and Cinnamon the only ones who can consistently deal full damage to him, since Liam has used up almost all his magical attacks.  Unless Saccharina or Cinnamon deal significant damage in the early rounds of combat, Amethar is unlikely to go down until the end.

Having said that, Amethar is such an obvious threat that from a purely mechanical perspective, it makes sense for all the other characters to focus on him (à la Critical Role’s Battle Royales where nearly all the players focused on Grog).  Ruby can be very deadly in her own right, but she’s not going to present the same immediate danger as someone who doesn’t take full damage from an attack.  If Amethar tanks and absorbs attacks from other PCs, this could give Ruby leeway to either get her own attacks in or to make an escape.

Theo - Eldritch Knight Fighter 10

[ID: The official art for Sir Theobald Gumbar by Samir Barrett @sketchmasterskillz.  Theo is a red gummy bear with big white moustache.  He wears an entire suit of golden plate armour and a golden helmet, with a purple sash and a red cloak.  He holds a purple lollipop shield in one hand, and a sword shaped like an orange popsicle in the other.  He stands at attention, with a focused expression on his face.]

HP: 116/140 AC: 21 Remaining Spell Slots: 1st level (2), 2nd level (2)

Feats: Heavy Armor Master, Tough, Alert

Magical Items Battlepop: Compelled Duel (once/day) Swirlwarden: Use reaction to move up to 30’ and take attack meant for ally

Yeah, you read right.  Theo’s HP max is 140, with an AC of 21 (I had to calculate this three times because I couldn’t believe it).  His current HP is equal to Amethar’s total max HP.  Theo may not be a barbarian, but he’s not going down any time soon.  He’s also been fairly conservative with his abilities, leaving him with the majority of his spell slots, as well as his Action Surge.  He also has a good list of cantrips, notably Blade Ward (resistance against bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing damage until the end of his next turn) and Green Flame Blade (1d8 + spellcasting ability modifier fire damage to target w/in 5 feet).  And of course, he has Princess to give him Help on attacks and checks (Find Familiar is so, so useful).

As Murph remarked in the finale, Theo doesn’t do what the other characters do, which is deal lots of damage.  As Brennan subsequently remarked, Theo doesn’t do that because what Theo does do is not get hit by attacks.  One of Theo’s potential roles in this hypothetical PVP scenario is to tank in the action economy.  Like Amethar, he’s a big threat because he’s difficult to down.  Thanks to the feature War Magic, he can cast cantrips as an action and make a weapon attack as a bonus action, so if he casts Blade Ward on himself each turn, he essentially becomes a foil to Amethar.  If Amethar and Ruby focused their attacks on trying to down Theo, this could allow his allies the breathing space they need to heal or make their own attacks.

In Lou’s strategy that he discussed in the final Adventuring Party, he placed Theo as the last on Amethar’s kill order.  While his order of kills is heartbreaking from a roleplaying perspective, it’s a very astute calculation.  Given his build, Theo is likely to be one of the last characters left standing, if not the last.  Even if he consistently uses Swirlwarden to tank damage for his allies, his considerable HP makes him unlikely to drop anytime soon, short of some really impressive damage rolls.  Amethar could try and team up on Theo with Ruby to bring him down to more manageable health, but that would leave them open to other attacks.  Murph really went a 110% in making Theo a bodyguard, and honestly, good for him, it’s what he deserves.

Liam - Gloomstalker Ranger 6, Assassin Rogue 4

[ID: The official art for Liam Wilhelmina by Samir Barrett @sketchmasterskillz.  Liam has pink skin, a red nose, rosy cheeks, and short dark red hair.  He wears pink overalls, a red and white striped shirt, red boots and gloves, and a red and white hat.  He carries a large pack containing a bed roll and a lantern, and has a quiver of arrows and a book attached to his belt.  He is mid stride, looking down at his feet with a neutral expression.  A small pig with peppermint stripe markings trots beside him, wearing a purple collar with the letter “P” and looking up at Liam with a happy expression.]

HP: 77/90 AC: 16 Remaining Spell Slots: None

Feats: Crossbow Expert, Sharpshooter

Magical Items Crossbow: Bursting Arrow (once/day - used), Ice Knife (once/day) Locket of the Sweetest Heart: Advantage on death saving throws if other locket is within 5’ Seed of Change: ???

First, props to Ally for their roleplaying!  Most of the characters going into the battle anticipated a possible PVP at the end and saved their resources, but in-game, no one told Liam the full —or even half— story.  This means Liam did not have any reason to hold back during the final battle, which is exactly how Ally played him.  Liam used up all of his spell slots during the battle, as well as the Bursting Arrow feature on his crossbow, leaving him with his crossbow’s Ice Knife feature as his sole magical attack.

However, Liam is still a force to be reckoned with.  He still has two attacks each turn, and he’s absolutely deadly in the first turn of combat, where Dread Ambusher gives him a bonus to initiative roles, and Assassinate gives him advantage against any creatures who haven’t taken a turn in combat yet, with any hit on a surprised creature being a critical hit.  Dread Ambusher also gives him a bonus 10 feet of movement in his first round, and an extra attack with a bonus 1d8 damage if it lands.  He also has 2d6 Sneak Attack, which paired with his other features, means that Peppermint Batman’s still got a few tricks up his sleeve.

From a roleplay perspective, Liam is the biggest unknown here.  While he told Theo that he would protect Saccharina, that was without knowing the full story, and without being in the circumstances of an actual PVP battle.  Ally’s WiFi cut out during the Adventuring Party when the cast discussed what they would have done in a PVP, which means we don’t know for certain who Liam would have sided with.  If he defends Saccharina, that increases her numbers advantage.  If he sticks with Ruby and Amethar, this potentially tilts the combat in their favour with another big damage dealer.  He’s in a good place with his HP, which means he’s unlikely to go down soon, but he’s also got the lowest AC in the party.  Who knows what might happen?

(Let’s be honest, Ally rolls a narrative nat 20 that results in something unbelievable, unpredictable, and world-altering happening.  They are too powerful, and cannot and should not be stopped)

Cumulous - Long Death Monk 10

[ID: The official art for Cumulous Rocks by Samir Barrett @sketchmasterskillz.  Cumulous has blue skin and poofy light pink hair.  He wears a pink outfit similar to a sleeveless gi with pants, a purple belt, and purple arm and leg wraps.  He holds a white staff in his hand.  Swirls of pink cloud come off of him.  He is mid action pose, with his legs in a mid-dash position and one of his hands brought forwards in a fist.  He looks to the side with a focused, stern expression on his face.]

HP: 85/85 + 6 temp HP AC: 18 Remaining Ki Points: 4/10

Feats: Mage Slayer

Magical Items Fluffwind: Whirlwind Stance; triples long jump; Gaseous Form (once/day)

While not the absolute juggernaut that Theo is, Cumulous is best placed of all the characters in regards to HP, with full health and 6 temp HP remaining from killing a Meatlander.  Although monks in general are not going to see the same staggering amounts of damage as other classes, and are more of a support martial class, Long Death monks excel in the kind of combat we saw in the finale - lots of lower-level enemies that are fairly easy to kill and gain temp HP from.  With a good AC, Cumulous can take a few attacks before being in trouble.

Unlike other martial classes, monks don’t often get the dramatic killing blow.  While they have a lot of attacks, each attack doesn’t deal that much damage by itself.  Monks consistently erode away at an opponent’s health, or stun them so that their allies can get their hits in.  Cumulous burned through a fair number of ki points during the battle, leaving him with a little under half his total, so he’ll have to be strategic about how and when he uses his ki.  Most of the other characters have a good Constitution and decent ACs, so it may be in his best interest to save his ki for mobility.

Cumulous has two big assets in a PVP battle, which are his mobility and the many hogwild (and unlimited) features that monks have.  With Unarmored Movement and Step of the Wind, he can move up to 150 feet in a turn, which includes across liquids and on vertical surfaces.  He has Slow Fall, allowing him to negate up to 50 points of falling damage, and he’s immune to poison and disease (which may come in useful against the Water-steel Dagger).  Thanks to being on Team Saccharina, he doesn’t have to worry about area of effect spells targeted at him.  If all else fails, he can book the fuck out of there to a safe distance and use Gaseous Form to escape from there.  

Conclusions

As I said at the beginning, there is no real way to predict the outcome of a PVP.  Besides raw mechanics, there’s roleplay, player agency, and of course, the dice.  Even looking at how each character is placed doesn’t necessarily translate to performance.  Mechanically, Ruby has the most resources left available, but that doesn’t mean she’d be able to overcome a worse case scenario of four PC attackers and a dragon.  Cumulous and Theo are doing the best in terms of HP, but would have difficulty downing another PC by themselves.  Amethar and Saccharina both have the potential to deal massive damage, but sorcerers are called “glass cannons” for a reason, and even with Rage, Amethar is sitting at a low HP.  Liam is an unknown quantity who could tip the scales in favour of one side or the other, but he has used up most of his devastating “war guy” abilities.

With the multitude of different factors (e.g. initiative order, possible crits, sheer buckwild shenanigans), it could realistically be either side left standing.  Team Saccharina has the advantage of numbers and several very hard to kill PCs, Team Ruby has the advantage of big damage dealers (not to mention rogues and barbarians are A Challenge to deal with on their own, never mind together).  As part of a team, each character has a better chance of survival and “winning,” with other characters being able to balance out their teammates’ weaker areas.  #teamworkmakesthedreamwork  All this, of course, without including the possibility of NPCs being convinced to join the fight.

But if there’s one thing we’ve seen in A Crown of Candy, it’s that there doesn’t have to be just two choices, either or.  There’s a third possibility, not between the two but something more, of change.  The fact that this is just a thought exercise bears that out.  Many thanks to the Dimension 20 cast and crew for an amazing season!

#dimension 20 #a crown of candy #long post #acoc spoilers #disclaimer: i am not a professional dm and master combat analyst

[radiantresplendence]

ΔΗΜΗΤΡΑ - Boss Notes

So, Covid 19 and other Covid-related activities have kept me pretty busy lately, but I have been keeping up with Fate/Grand Order: Cosmos in the Lostbelt’s new Lostbelt, The Interstellar City on a Mountain Range - Olympus: The Day a God was Shot Down. And I figured that I’d share my notes on the Demeter bossfight which has had a certain portion of the fandom calling this the biggest difficulty spike since the Camelot Singularity years ago. 

The Concept: Demeter is an unorthodox bossfight, as it requires you balancing your sustain and damage abilities without the use of a friend support. Instead, it has you locked into a forced story support in the front row of your team, a Caenis (NP5 10/10/10 thankfully) which is not optimal to say the least with the boss being a Caster and Caenis providing no team utility whatsoever. 

She has 3 health bars, with her first break bar being one of the two major danger timings of the fight, upon which she removes all party buffs and attempts to apply a 3 turn, 3 buff, buffblock to your entire party. 

The second breakbar turns the fight into a more-standard damage test, granting her a 150k guts and healing over time at the cost of randomly sealing her active skills at the start of her turn. 

The key to the fight is finding some balance between the damage required to kill her on her last legs and the sustain required to survive her two most dangerous timings. I should also note that she does fairly heavy area of effect damage with her normal attacks, making some degree of sustain strongly recommended for success at this fight.

The Struggle: Demeter has 3 actives skills that she likes to cycle through in a predictable rotation. On turn 1, she uses Earth’s Authority that gives her an effect similar to Tamamo’s Transformation skill on steroids. The defense buff is so potent, that unless you remove it, you will likely do negligible damage to the boss on your second turn. 

On turn 2, she will use Mourning Mother to give herself a 3 bar NP charge and a one-turn attack up. This skill isn’t dangerous now, but she will repeat it on her first action on turn 6, granting herself an immediate NP modified by the attack increase. This is the other danger timing of the bossfight, as her NP will likely do enough damage to kill your entire front line if you are not prepared. 

On turn 4, she will cast Mother’s Authority to remove any debuffs you’ve applied to her, give herself a one-turn single debuff immunity and heal herself for 25k. This discourages typical stalling strategies during any phase of the fight, but really isn’t terribly problematic. 

After turn 4, she’ll repeat her skill rotation, casting Earth’s Authority on turn 5 and Mourning Mother on turn 6. Followed by (I believe) a normal turn then repeating the established rotation. I am unsure exactly how her self skill seal on the third bar interacts with the rotation, whether it pauses it or simply skips the skill for the current turn. Either way, if you plan to be successful, you should be focusing on damage over party sustain to offset her healing at that point. 

Her Noble Phantasm is nothing terribly interesting, it deals heavy area of effect damage and applies a max health debuff. 

What Works: Caenis tends to die fairly early unless you go out of your way to keep her alive, something I wouldn’t recommend. As far as I’m concerned, her primary purpose is to apply as many attack debuffs as possible using her second skill to Demeter on turn 3, before Demeter uses her first NP. Then she is to die and be replaced by someone more suited to the fight. I’d recommend not even using Caenis’s defensive skill to ensure that she leaves the field when she needs to. 

Merlin doesn’t really help you here, as many players have learned, as his healing doesn’t effectively offset the damage that Demeter can do without a rather high NP level and his illusion magic can only mitigate one of her NPs, which in practical terms, occur once every 3 turns. She’ll also cleanse any Garden of Avalon stacks you manage to apply when you break her first bar. 

Your best bet is to use Riders over your typical support Casters, with Fragments of 2030 and defense buffs if you have them. In practice, Rider’s class advantage combined with defense buffs removes the threat of Demeter applying continuous pressure to your team, so you can focus on dealing damage when advantageous to you.

DO NOT break her first bar on turn 3 unless you want your front row completely erased. I found doing so on turn 4 much more effective as the 3 turn defense buffs that I applied turn 1 had worn off and I had a few turns before the boss could NP. 

I cleared the quest pretty easily with the following team using the Atlas mystic code. 

Caenis (support), Reines (2030), Quetzalcoatl (Victor from the Moon), Ushiwakamaru (2030), George (I don’t remember/Not Applicable), Heracles (Bond 10). 

Reines and Ushi were wiped out on the last turn, were Quetz killed the boss with a 100% crit brave chain, the last two party members didn’t even need to be there. 

Honestly, if you have Reines, she may be the best unit for this quest. I applied her defense buff turn 1, used it to mitigate almost all of the damage to herself and Quetz until it wore off, used the atlas skill haste, broke the boss’s 1st bar, and promptly reapplied Reines’ buffs. 

Through Reines’ defense buffs and Caenis’s 3 attack downs, Riders in your party will only take 5.5k or so damage from the boss’s first NP. In other words, with Reines, you don’t need to waste some form of hard protection against the boss’s fist NP and can save them for the more dangerous second NP. Realistically Quetz, Ushi, George and Herc can be replaced with whatever units you like who can effectively do damage to the boss. The Atlas mystic code can remove the boss’s buff block to make sure you can buff your damage unit when you need to. 

Alternatives to Reines: I understand that Reines is a limited SSR that due to no friend support, a lot of players won’t have access to. To that end I’ll recommend some alternatives. 

I could see using Boudica on an Arts/Rider comp with Ryouma Sakamoto and Mandricardo, so long as you’ve done some skill leveling. I can see it working much more consistently if you’ve managed to pull Da Vinci (Rider) and some good NP gain CEs. Essentially making an arts variant of the team. If you have Kintoki (Rider) I can see you paring him with Alexander for some Quick/Crit composition that exploits Rider Kintoki’s excellent generation skills and single target damage output. 

Conclusion: I really hope that this helps someone out. In my opinion, this fight is less difficult, and more requires unorthodox teambuilding from someone with a strong account to clear without the use of command spells. If you have Heracles bond 10, he can probably secure much of Demeter’s last health bar including the guts if you can make sure that he’s the only unit on the field when he comes out. 

Anyways, these are just my thoughts. If none of this works, feel free to call me out. 

#fate grand order #cosmos in the lostbelt #lostbelt 5 #lostbelt 5-2 #demeter #boss guide #reines el melloi archisorte #olympus #fate series

[hellyeahheroes]

Building Gwen Poole in D&D 5e

Hey, guess who just got told my company is not working next week. Well, let’s celebrate by doing another D&D build, I had lately few ideas, including a character that makes me smile, unless she is making me feel bad for her

Let me quickly list the Goals for this build. First of all, we need to be able to enter Whitespace, cross beyond panel borders and then back. Second, we need to have knowledge only someone from real world entering a fantasy one could have. Finally, we need to summon Gwens from previous books to aid us. And one more for me is to not make this identical to Tulok the Barbarian’s Deadpool build, since the man already been an inspiration so much for these posts. Which will be hard since Gwen does lend herself well to similiar combination of two classes, spoiler alert.

As always, Ability Scores will be determiend by Standard points Array of 15, 14, 13, 12, 10 and 8, if you or your DM prefer point buy or rolls, go ahead and treat these as guidelines.

Strength: 10, we really don’t need it but Gwen carries a lot of weapons around so I cannot give this an 8

Dexterity: 14, despite the big boots I really doubt your suit is a medium armor, what with those bare legs and all.

Constitution: 13, hit points aren’t meat points and you survive in dangerous situations just fine.

Intelligence: 12, you are well-read in world of your heroes

Wisdom: 8,  you let Ms. Marvel convince you you’re an enteirly different species and your life is a lie and you also tried dating Quentin freaking Quire.

Charisma: 15, people like you and even if they don’t believe your claams of being from another world, they’ll likely dismiss them with a heartfelt laughter than trying to book you a psychologist appointment.

Now for Race, I hinted I don’t believe the “Gwen is a mutant” retcon so I’m going with Variant Human. If you think everything must be a mutant now, then go with any Aasimar or Half-Elf. Variant Humans get to be bitter about X-Men, add +1 to two Ability Scores, go with Charisma and Constitution, gain one free language and one free Skill, pick History since you know it because you’re a human from our world, and a feat. Crossbow Expert lets you ignore loading quality of crossbows, let’s you shoot creatures within 5 feet of you without a disadvantage and make an attack with a loaded crossbow as a bonus action after you hit a foe with a one-handed weapon attack. Crossbows are easy to reskin as guns but be warned that this does not turn a crossbow into an automated gun - you still need a hand to reload the crossbow after every shot, which now counts as a part of your attack, but requires a free hand. Which means you cannot wield two crossbows or fire more than one shot in a single round without a free hand. It could be fixed with some Artificer levels but we’re not doing that here, so make sure you’re on good terms with Riri Williams if you want to shoot two guns or use gun and a blade in an accord.

For Background, Far Traveller is someone who came from far, far away and you are literally from real world. You get Insight and Perception proficiency, can pick any free language of choice and one musical instrument or gaming tool and world has All Eyes On You - people notice you’re not from around and take interest in you.

Time to go with Class Levels

1st Level: We’ll kick things off as a Bard, letting gets to be proficient in any 3 skills, let’s go with Persuasion, Deception and Acrobatics. You are also proficient with Dexterity and Charisma saving throws, light armor, shields, simple weapons, hand crossbows, longswords, rapiers, shortswords and three musical instruments of your choice. 

You also get Bardic Inspiration, giving you a number of d6 dices equal to your Charisma modifier per long rest that you can hand over to someone that they can add to any ability check, attack roll, or saving throw that they make in the next 10 minutes. They can do it after they roll but before DM declares result of the roll. So you can now cheer on your heroes while fighting alongside them.

Bards are also spellcasters. You get to know a number of spells and have a number of spell slots per long rest that you can spend to cast them and if you cast one from higher level spell slot, it will be stronger. You learn more spells as you advance but cannot know a spell of level higher than highest spell slot you can use. You also get Cantrips which you can cast always and scale with your level, getting stronger at 5th, 11th and 17th character level. If a spell requires you to make an attack roll you sum up your Proficiency Bonus and your Charisma modifier to add to the roll. And if you add 8 to those two values you get your Save Difficulty, which a creature has to beat if your spell forces them to make a saving throws.

A Bard starts with two Cantrips and 4 known spells

Vicious Mockery is a staple for Bards, it lets you mock someone so bad, they must make a Wisdom saving throw or take 1d4 psychic damage and have a distadvantage on next attack roll they make before end of its next turn.

Message is a spell functioning as a magic phone, letting you send a short message to someone within the range and then can make a short reply.

Identify lets you see if you recognize an item as something you once read in a comic book - it tells you if the item is magical, magic-imbued, what magical properties it has or what spells are affecting it, how to use it, if it requires attunment and how many charges it has.

Tasha’s Hideous Laughter makes you tell a joke that forces the target to make a Wisdom Saving Throw or fall prone and be incapitated and unable to stand up due to overwhelming laughter. Target gets another save at end of each of its turns or a save with an advantage whenever someone deals damage to it.

2nd Level: We stick to Bard to gain 2nd-Level feature Jack of All Trades, letting you add half of your Proficiency modifier to all skills you are not proficient with. You also gain Song of Rest, letting you play some music when your team is resting and rolling hit dice to regain hitpoints, letting everyone roll an additional 1d6. I don’t think it is a power per se that Gwen has, but could totally see her try to cheer up her friends and heroes.

And speaking of cheering up, you get one new spell - Heroism let’s you instill the bravery in one willing creature, making it immune to being frightened and on each of its turns letting them gain temporary hit points equal your Charisma modifier. Again, Hit Points can represent someone’s luck or will to fight so if you see Batroc having a hard time against Captain America, you can cheer him up to keep fighting. I mean, you would but you like Cap too, so maybe hope Batroc fights Taskmaster or something?

3rd Level: And it’s still a Bard, on 3rd Level gaining admission to something Gwen never got in real life - a college. Bardic College, to be more specific. I was thinking of College of Satire but really, College of Lore fits our needs much better. You gain profficiency with three more skills, I’d go with Athletics, Stealth and Sleight of Hand. Since all bards also gain Expertise, letting you choose two skills for which your Proficiency Bonus is doubled, use it on Athletics and Perception which depend on two lowest Ability Scores you have.

Your spell for the level is Invisibility, which lets you skip through eniemies you don’t feel like fighting, we can refluff this as early “slipping out” to the whitespace, but some creatures can still see you and you are “pulled back” (read: made visible) if you try to interact with something or attack anyone. 

College of Lore also gets Cutting Words, which lets you say something that spooks or confuses a creature. Mechanically it lets you use your Inspiration die the opposite way they are normally used, letting you roll to subtract from attack roll, saving throw or an ability check.

I mean, that’s basically how it works

4th Level: Still sticking with the Bard for an Ability Score Improvement, go for your Charisma, since not only your spells but also Bardic Inspiration relies on it.

You also get a new spell and a new Cantrip

Prestidigitation lets you make a number of smaller effects you can play as you messing around with Whitespace. Knock let’s you unlock one nonmagical lock on door or an object. Maybe play it as you “skipping” the door through Whitespace or cutting out to when the object is already unlocked?

5th Level: Surprise, surprise, it is still Bard. 5th Level mostly improves Bardic Inspriation - now it uses d8s and you regain them on a short rest as well. You also gain the access to 3rd level spell - Nondetection can make you or someone else immune on being spied by magical means for 8 hours. Situational? Yes. But something Gwen can do as a person capable of walking out of the reality where people like Doctor Strange or Professor X cannot find her? Very. You can also use it on objects. 

6th Level: Bar...oh hey, we’re doing Fighter now. 1st Level fighter gains proficiencies with light and medium armor and martial weapons as well as Second Wind, letting you once per short rest as a bonus action regain 1d10+your Fighter level hit points. You also get to choose a Fighting Style - Archery grants Gwen +2 to ranged weapon attacks.

ALTERNATIVES: As you can see, I decided to do Gwen as someone gun-toting, if you’d rather her use a sword then picking Defensive Duelist at first level and Dueling style now. Mind you, you need to have a free hand for spellcasting so unless you take a War Caster feat (which is also an option) you cannot duel-wield either sword and crossbow (which would also require sacrificing your Ability Score Improvement for Crossbow Expert) or two swords and use many of your abilitties. On a side note, Gwen is also profficient now with heavy Crossbow, so you can use that as a shotgun.

7th level: 2nd Level Fighter gets Action Surge, letting you once per Short rest gain an extra Standard Action

8th Level: 3d Level Fighter gains a Martial Achertype. I was thinking which one Gwen would choose. Wade went with a Champion but we don’t want Gwen to be exactly like him even if we’re already mixing two of the same classes Tulok did. I have a better pick. Gwen is suppsoed to represent the modern fandom that jumped into comics during New 10s, right? If that’s the case then, without streotyping here, we should ask ourselves what would likely be her possible gateway to D&D.

Echo Knight has been introduced in Explorer’s Guide to Wildemount, the world designed by Matt Mercer for his Critical Role games. You can use your bonus action to Manifest Echo, letting you pull an echo of yourself from another timeline or, in your case, another book you were in. This Gwen has AC 14+ your Proficiency modifier, 1 hit point and immunity to all conditions, uses your saving throws and you command her to moves on your turn. She vanishes if she dies, you’re incapitated, you dismiss her, summon another Gwen or find yourself more than 30 feet away from her. 

As a bonus action you can  sacrifice 15 feet of your movement to swap places with other Gwen, you can choose if your attacks originate from your position or her and you can use your reaction to have her make an opportunitty attack if an opponnent would trigger one. And a number of times equal your Constitution Modifier per Long rest you can make her take an extra attack as a part of your attack action with Unleash Incarnation.

Now, to get third Gwen we would need 18 levels of Echo Knight, but we would lose or all other abilitties about Whitespace then. Instead I suggest you circle through Gwens, as it seems that Echo Knight can summon an Echo as many times as they feel like, just not at once. 

9th Level: 4th Level Fighter gets an Ability Score Improvement, Round up your Charisma

10th Level: 5th Level Fighter gains an Extra Attack, letting you attack twice as a part of the same action. Meaning you can make up to seven attacks with Action Surge, two uses of Unleash Incarnation and Crossbow Expert, provided you’re having a free hand. Unless DM allows it I do not think you can have other Gwen reload your guns, so all problems of Crossbow Expert still apply. Dual Wielding meele or mixed meele and ranged Gwen would get to the same level of attacks.

11th Level: 6th Level Fighter gets another Ability Score Improvement, start focusing on your Dexterity - even a meele Gwen is better off using finesse weapons and it adds to your AC.

12th Level: The Bard returns! 6th level Bard learns Countercharm, letting you use your action to give everyone you consider friendly an advantage on saving throws against being frightened or charmed - I guess it’s Gwen cheering other heroes up more or warning them she read about the baddie they’re facing and he has mind altering powers

You also get one more spell. It is sad we are behind with the spells...or are we? College of Lore Bard can gain Magical Secrets - a Bardic feature we will gain later as well, but this is an additional one and early. It lets you add two spells from any spell list to your spells known, as long as they’re on a level you can cast. Unlike the standard Bard version we will get later, the two spells we get now do not count to our maximum of spells know. Meaning we get three new spells

Tongues will let you read world baloons translated to English for the American readers and apparently let you add translation to  your own dialogues for an hour.

Blink lets you roll at the end of each of your turns and if you get 11 or higher you slip into Whitespace a.k.a. Etheral Plane and reappear in space no more than 10 feet away from where you were at the beginning of your next turn. When you are in whitespace you cannot be attacked or interacted with creatures on material plane. It is not as powerful as in Pathfinder but still - don’t cheat on this, don’t be an asshole and if you are pray you never see a spider.

Fireball is your grenade/rocket launcher. Creatures within range are dealt 8d6 fire damage, half on a succesful Dexterity saving throw.

13th and 14th level: 7th level Bard gains an acess to 4th level spells and 8th Level bard gains an Ability Score Improvement, invest in Dexterity again. I’m doing the two together since each gives you one more spell too add:

Dimension Door lets you teleport anywhere with range of 500 feet, as long as you can see, visualize or know the area. You can bring anything up to your carrying capacity and one creature also carrying no more than its maximum with you. However, if another creature occupies the selected space, you run into it and get knocked back through Whitespace, taking 4d6 force damage.

Greater Invisibility works like Invisibility, but now you can take things with you or attack until it ends naturally. Play it as you slipping in and out of Whitespace.

15th Level: 9th Level Bard gets to improve Song of Rest, now using a 1d8 instead of 1d6. And you gain access to 5th level spells. Legend Lore is a spell seemingly tailor-made for a fangirl - you can gain (or in your case, recall that you’ve read) knowledge about specific person, object or location. It may be vague, the more you already know the better results. This lets you put fun in your fangirl...wait.

16th Level: 10th Level Bard improves Bardic Inspriation dice to d10s, gains Expertise in two more Skills, I’d go with History and Persuasion, and learns one more cantrip and Magical Secrets - this works like before but these spells count to your maximum of spells know.

Blade Wards grants you until end of your next turn resistance agaisnt bludgeoning, piercing and slashing damage from weapon attacks. Your armor is at best light, this may help if you want to go into meele.

Banishment let’s you force a creature to make a Charisma saving throw or let you send them into Whitespace. They get to come back like Paste Pot Pete did after it ends, but if they’re not from this plane and if you don’t break your concentration for one minute, they’re banished for good.

Banishing Smite is similiar - next time you hit a creature with a weapon attack, and it does not specify it must be a meele attack, you deal it extra 5d10 force damage and if you reduce it to 50 or less hit points, you send them to the Whitespace. There is no save, but there is no chance to keep target permamently out. Either spell still can save lives against tough enemies.

17th Level: 11th Level Bard learns to cast 6th level Spells, but I don’t see any so we will grab one more from 5th level - Scrying let’s you poke through Whitespace to find a person and observe them and their activities. They get a Wisdom saving throw to resist being spied on, I guess trying to reassert that their current narrative place is off-page. The better you know them and better materials connecting to them you have, the harder resisting your prying eyes gets. Just please don’t use it to stalk your friends, okay?

18th Level: 12th Level Bard gets last Ability Score Improvement, round up your Dexterity.

19th Level: 13th Level Bard improves Song of Rest to 1d10 and gains access to 7th level Spells. Etherialness lets you just hop to the Whitespace...I mean, Etherial Plane, for up to 8 hours, effectively saving you from an encounter if you would die othertwise. It let’s you regroup, regain your strength, plan ahead, move away or even bypass whole area, effectively skipping to different pages, and doesn’t require concentration to do it.

20th Level: And we wrap things up with 14th Level of Bard. College of Lore grants you Pearless Skill, letting you now use Bardic Inspiration on your own rolls. You also get two more Magical Secrets

Delayed Blast Fireball is a bomb - you put on a fireball in a place. Any creature that touches it must succeed on a Dexterity saving throw to be able to throw it in a different place. Whenever they suceed or not, it explodes anyway, same if your spell ends or you break concentration. It deals 12d6 fire damage plus an extra 1d6 for each of your turn that ended without it detonating, half on a succesful Dexterity Saving Throw.

Plane Shift lets you and up to 8 creatures move to a different plane of existence, meaning you can now team-up with Squirrel Girl to kick Mephisto’s butt. Teleport could be more useful as it let’s you move within a single plane, but then you don’t get to freak Squirrel Girl out by pointing there is no reason someone isn’t punching the devil in the face at all times.

Overview: So this is how I’d do Gwenpool - College of Lore Bard 14/Echo Knight Fighter 6. Let’s see how valid this build is

Pros: You have a pretty decent amount of hit points, somewhere around 160 on average, while having multiple ways to avoid damage. You are a good utility caster with multiple ways to gather information or scout ahead and you have a pretty good array of skills on top of that, making you a good use for non-combat situations. You also have pretty good mobility options, letting you move as you wish across the battlefield. Finally, whenever you picked meele or ranged options, you can dish out a lot of attacks if needed, or even blast out some foes.

Cons: Your Constitution is mediocre, meaning your Concentration and use of Unleash Incarnation could be better. Second, your spell selection is somewhat situational, some of the options we took may not always be useful, even if they are in character. Third, your Wisdom saving throw is horrible so charming, frightening or just Hold Person will be your bane. Finally, you do not have any ways of dealing magical damage, unless your DM throws a magic rapier and/or crossbow your way and your fireballs deal fire damage, which many creatures are resistant or even immune to.

However overall you are able to fill or support in multiple roles, from scout to party face to damage dealer to information gatherer, which makes you great to have. Remember, however, that this is not one-person show and you work better as a part of a team.

For example

-Admin

#Gwenpool #Marvel #Dungeons & Dragons

[grailfinders]

Fate and Phantasms #153: Miyamoto Musashi

Today on Fate and Phantasms we’re creating the ultimate wandering swordswoman,  Shinmen Musashi-no-Kami Fujiwara no Harunobu a.k.a. Miyamoto Musashi!

This wandering samurai is an Aberrant Mind Sorcerer to wander from plane to plane and bend the world to her sword-wielding whims with her Empyrean Eye, as well as a Swords Bard, because you actually have to be good with swords too, I guess.

Check out her build breakdown below the cut, or her character sheet over here!

Next up: Ask not for whom the bell tolls.

Announcement: Today (May 10, 2021) is also the last day to suggest possible servants for the anniversary build! If you’ve already sent yours in, you’re in the running! If you haven’t, just comment and/or reblog with any Type Moon character you’d like to see a build of and they’ll be added to the list! (One per person tho)

Race and Background

Musashi’s a Human, but popping in and out of reality isn’t that ordinary so we’ll go with the variant rules for this one. Variant Humans get +1 Dexterity and Constitution, as well as one feat and one skill proficiency. Grab the Performance proficiency to turn every duel into a mindfuck, and the Dual Wielder feat to dual wield. More specifically, this gives you +1 AC while dual wielding, you can use non-light weapons to dual-wield, so longswords are totally an option if you can get the proficiency in them. You can also draw or stow two weapons in the same amount of time you’d draw one.

Like your rival Kojirou, you’re also a Mercenary Veteran, giving you proficiency in Athletics and Persuasion.

Ability Scores

You’re really good with a sword, but that comes from technique, not brute force, so make your Dexterity as high as possible. That’ll also help with the fact that you’re clearly not wearing armor. Getting into your opponent’s head metaphorically is almost as important to your fighting style as getting into it literally, so Charisma should be number 2. Your Constitution should be next so you can stomach more bowls of udon in a single go. After that is Wisdom- your Empyrean Eye won’t do anything if you can’t see what you want to cut. Your Strength isn’t bad, we just needed other stuff more, but your Intelligence is kind of wonky. Shifting around the multiverse so much means world history is not your strong suit.

Class Levels

1. Bard 1: Going with bard right off the bat gives you a better hit die to start with, as well as a more forgiving skill list. Since bards can pick any three skills to be proficient with, I’d suggest Acrobatics, Intimidation, and Perception. I don’t know what exactly rattling your swords to provoke people would count as, but now you’ve got intimidation, performance, and persuasion, so it’s probably one of those. You also get proficiency with Dexterity and Charisma saves.

As a bard, you get Bardic Inspiration, a number of d6 equal to your charisma modifier per long rest. You can give one of these dice to your allies as a bonus action, which they can use to improve one of their attack rolls, saves, or checks. 

You can also cast Spells using your Charisma. Vicious Mockery lets you get under the skin of your opponent just like the real Musashi, and Message is a neat lil walkie talkie. I assume Gudako gave you one by this point, it’d be really hard to chat with you otherwise.

You also get first level spells like Disguise Self so you can slap a big ol’ hat on your head and be completely unrecognizable, Heroism to be a hero, Detect Magic because it seems that kind of a baseline power in the nasuverse, and Bane for even more ways to insult your way to victory.

2. Bard 2: Second level bards become a Jack of All Trades, adding half your proficiency to any skill checks you aren’t already proficient in. That extra boost to survival checks will probably come in handy if you get rayshifted to the middle of nowhere again.

You also learn a Song of Rest, letting you and your party kick back a little harder on short rests, regaining an extra 1d6 hp if you use your hit dice.

Finally, you learn the spell Faerie Fire for a cheap and easy way to nullify invisibility. You’ll learn how to see through it eventually, but for now break out the light show.

3. Bard 3: Like I said before, you’re a Swords bard, giving you the Two-Weapon Fighting Style so you can add your dexterity modifier to attacks from both hands. You can also use Blade Flourishes, giving you an extra 10 feet of movement if you attack as your action. Once per turn you can also add one of three options to your attack by burning one use of Bardic Inspiration. Defense Flourish adds the die rolled to your damage and your AC for the round. Slashing Flourish deals the roll in damage to the target and any other creatures you want within 5′ of you. Mobile Flourish pushes the target and deals extra damage to them equal to the roll, and you can use your reaction to follow them.

Your Expertise doubles your proficiency bonus in Performance and Perception, so you can find enemies and goad them into fights easier.

You also learn Locate Object. It’s still not tracking down a creature, but it’s getting closer.

4. Sorcerer 1: Bouncing over to sorcerer now nets you Spells, and boy howdy do Aberrant Mind sorcerers get a lot of spells. By using your Charisma you can cast your normal spells, or your Psionic Spells, bonuses you get at certain levels. Most of those aren’t in-character, but thankfully we can swap them out as we go.

You also learn Telepathic Speech. Using a bonus action, you can speak telepathically with them for as long as you’re within Charisma Modifier miles of each other, for Sorcerer Level minutes.

Starting with your psionic spells, you get Arms of Hadar and Dissonant Whispers, but we swap out Mind Sliver for Friends. Whatever goading someone to fight is, it’s definitely a charisma check, so this will help with that. I mean this also helps since it turns the target hostile after the spell ends, but either way you get a fight.

On top of that, you get all your other spells, like Booming Blade, Blade Ward, Green-Flame Blade, and True Strike to make your swordplay even stronger. (On technicality in True Strike’s case, just attack twice) and Absorb Elements and Mage Armor for magical defenses.

Also, your spell levels do mix, so check the multiclassing table to see how much stuff you got at each level.

5. Sorcerer 2: Second level sorcerers become a Font of Magic, giving you Sorcery Points equal to your sorcerer level. You can turn spell levels into points or vice versa, but that’ll get more important in a couple levels.

You also learn Shield for more magic defense, and swap out Arms of Hadar for Comprehend Languages. Everyone in FGO speaks english for no reason anyway, so I bet everyone has this spell to begin with.

6. Bard 4: Use your first Ability Score Improvement to bump up your Charisma modifier for better spells and more inspiration. You also learn the Light cantrip, and Knock. Breaking down a door barely counts as magic, but here we are.

7. Bard 5: Your bardic inspiration dice grows to d8s, and you become a Font of Inspiration, letting you regain inspiration on short rests instead of long ones. You also learn Major Image. It’ll be a while until you can summon a Nioh, at least it’ll look like you can now!

8. Bard 6: Sixth level bards can spend their action on a Countercharm, giving you and your allies advantage on saves against being frightened or charmed. More importantly, you get an Extra Attack with each attack action, which is way better than spending a whole action on some magic nonsense.

Speaking of spending an action to end magic nonsense, you can cast Dispel Magic to cut through magical effects. Raise Dead on permanent contingency is a bitch and a half to get through otherwise.

9. Sorcerer 3: Third level sorcerers learn Metamagic, ways to customize their spells using Sorcery Points. Quickened Spell lets you cast action spells as a bonus action, while Extended Spell doubles the length of time a spell remains active. Both are super useful on your buffs, but you can only have one active per spell.

For your psionic spells, replace Calm Emotions with Mind Spike for a bit of psychic damage and to let you ignore the target creature’s invisibility for up to an hour if it fails a wisdom saving throw. You also always know the target’s location if you’re on the same plane. You also get Detect Thoughts. for now. For your normal spell, Magic Weapon will help you out if your DM’s really stingy with magic items.

10. Sorcerer 4: Your spells are starting to get spicy, so let’s keep things working smoothly by grabbing War Caster this ASI. This feat gives you advantage on concentration saves, and you can cast spells while dual-wielding. On top of that, you can use spells as attacks of opportunity now! They have to be only targeting that one creature though, so Sword Burst and Darkvision won’t be super helpful. 

We’re also replacing detect thoughts with See Invisibility for a saving throw free way to track creatures down.

11. Sorcerer 5: Fifth level sorcerers can use Magical Guidance to turn a sorcery point into a re-roll on a failed skill check. You also learn Fear to send less interesting opponents running, and the psionic spells Sending to boost your walkie-talkie’s range and Tongues instead of Hunger of Hadar. If you’re going to insult someone they better understand you.

12. Sorcerer 6: Sixth level aberrant minds know Psionic Sorcery, letting you spend sorcery points to cast psionic spells instead of using a spell slot. If you do so, you can ignore verbal or somatic components, as well as unconsumed material components. You also get Psychic Defenses for resistance against psychic damage and advantage against being charmed or frightened. Oh hey, it’s like countercharm but significantly better!

You can also cast Haste now, doubling your actions for up to a minute, as well as giving you advantage on dexterity saves, a +2 to AC and doubled speed. (The second action can only be used to make one attack, but still, free attack.) After the spell ends you can’t move or take actions for a round while you take an udon break to refuel.

13. Sorcerer 7: Seventh level sorcerers can use fourth level spells, like Conjure Barlgura! It’s... kind of like a Nioh, if you squint really hard. Just keep it away from the rest of the party.

You also get more psionic spells with Evards Black Tentacles and Locate Creature instead of Summon Aberration. 

14. Sorcerer 8: Use this ASI to finally bump up your Dexterity for a stronger AC and better attacks. You also gain Banishment to cut someone out of this plane of reality. (It’s temporary if they’re actually from whatever reality you’re currently in, but still.)

15. Sorcerer 9: Use your fifth level spell Skill Empowerment to make getting to your target even easier. Need to be really good at acrobatics to reach somebody? Sure, why not. You also get your last psionic spells, Rary’s Telepathic Bond for a long-term walkie-talkie, and Hold Monster in place of Telekinesis. Cutting things is so much easier when they stand still.

16. Sorcerer 10: Tenth level sorcerers get another Metamagic option. Heightened Spell gives a creature disadvantage on their first save against a spell, like Create Bonfire and Charm Monster. I’ll be honest there’s not a lot of fifth level spells that work for you, but you’re both cute and able to start fires, so I guess it works out.

17. Sorcerer 11: Eleventh level sorcerers gain a sixth level spell, and True Seeing lets you ignore any illusions, invisibility, or shapechangers you can see on your path to true swordsmanship, automatically making any saves against their deceptions.

18. Sorcerer 12: Use your last ASI to max out Dexterity for the swordiest swords and the least swordiest body possible.

19. Sorcerer 13: At the penultimate level we finally get our seventh level spell that we’ve been working so hard to reach- Plane Shift. You and up to eight creatures can move to a different plane of existence. Alternatively, you can make a spell attack against a creature, and if it hits and they fail a charisma save they have to find their way back from wherever the hell you sent them.

20. Sorcerer 14: Your capstone level makes you a Revelation in Flesh, spending a bonus action to transform yourself for up to 10 minutes. You can spend 1-4 sorcery points to activate one to four benefits: You can see invisible creatures, fly, swim and breathe underwater, or pass through inch wide gaps and escape restraints easily. Most of those...probably aren’t canon, but at least you get invisibility sight without using concentration.

Pros:

You come packing plenty of magic defenses, with a great dexterity save, advantage on mind altering effects, and the ability to tear down an enemy’s magical traps.

Seeing through invisibility and plenty of location spells makes you hard to escape, especially when you factor in plane shift to the mix. Those Empyrean Eyes aren’t just there for decoration, y’know.

Your psionic sorcery and multitude of telepathic abilities mean you can get a lot done while completely silent, which helps a lot on stealth missions. Your maxed out dexterity and JoAT certainly doesn’t hurt either.

Cons:

Gishes live and die on their concentration saves, and not starting with Sorcerer definitely hurt yours a lot. Even with advantage you’ve only got a +2 modifier. That’s going to drop spells more often than not.

Taking so many levels of sorcerer also leaves you with low hp, barely scratching past 100 by the end of the build. Your AC is very good, but when you get hit you’re going to feel it.

Focusing on dexterity and feats leaves you with a low charisma, at least by bard standards. This means you don’t have a lot of flourishes to work with, and your spells aren’t as strong as they could be. Your buffs and protection don’t really care about charisma though, so most of your kit isn’t that badly hurt from it.

#Fate Grand Order #FGO #Miyamoto Musashi #D&D 5e #DND #Sorcerer #Bard

[dlamp-dictator]

Allen Rambles about Code of Brawl

Man... remind me to never talk about having a future Rambling in the works, it’ll instantly fall into draft-hell. But anyway, I’ve been meaning to talk about Arknights in depth for a while now, but I’ve never had much drive to actually finish the damn draft of my initial thoughts a few months ago. I couldn’t tell you why, I just lost the drive to finish the thing. However, with Code of Brawl coming to a close and my thoughts on the event still lingering I think I can use it as jumping off point to actually talk about the game. 

That said, here’s the synopsis.

Arknights is a Tower Defense game for the PC mobile devices placed in the world of Terra, where an infectious disease known as Oripathy ravages the land, slowly turning people to minerals in a slow and painful process. You play as the Doctor, an amnesiac military commander of the Rhodes Island pharmaceutical company who fights against the Infected radicals known as the Reunion. 

That’s about as far as I can go in a single paragraph for main story, but Code of Brawl instead focuses on the eccentric adventures of Pengiun Logistics, side faction of the game that’s a seemingly innocent delivery company with quite the ragtag group in it, consisting of the happy-go-lucky gunner Exusiai, the cold and dismissive swordswoman Texas, the excitable and energetic Sora, and the business-savvy Croissant. All led by the charismatic and multi-talented Emperor. However, as their new intern Bison comes into the fold the group is caught in a series of gang wars and organized crime trying to snuff out the company.

And unlike Fire Emblem Three Houses, that really is the basic plot without me sarcastically building anything up. With that all said, I think I can move on and talk about... 

The Story

The story of Code of Brawl honestly has the best and worst of Arknights writing. I think having a story that focused on a group outside of Rhodes Island was for the better. For all the lore blurbs and archive notes we get, I think Code of Brawl proves just how little Rhodes Island is involved with the world of Terra at large despite it’s apparent reputation as a weird and quirky company with some terrifyingly powerful Operators and lofty ambitions. And while I’m still only on Chapter 4 since I’m grinding out some E2 before moving on, Rhodes Island really does more reacting to random Reunion plans than anything proactive with their goals of curing Oripathy. They feel more like a counter military force to Reunion, and a barely effective on at that given the point of the story I’m at. Code of Brawl, being focused on another group with a more direct conflict and villains, feels a lot more cohesive and interesting, as Penguin Logistics’s goal is to just get Bison through his first day and take out whatever force is harassing them this week. 

Penguin Logistics as a whole is a rather interesting bunch of ruffians and seeing them is gallivant around Lungmen trading blows and bullets with gangsters is a joy to read and see. Seeing some of the inner workings of Lungmen society, seeing a bit of the underbelly, as well as getting to see the cast just have more casual interactions with each other is great. We learn that Sora really is just gay for Texas, and the all of Penguin Logistics has only 3 function braincells with Texas having one and Mostima having the other two.  We get to see that Sora has probably beaten someone to death with her microphone at some point given how willing she is to bar fight. A lot of fun stuff.

And then... there’s Mostima. 

Look, I like this story, I really do, but Mostima really didn’t need to be here as far as the story is concerned. All she does plot-wise is rile up Exusiai, drop some cryptic advice for Bison, shows she knows more powerful than she leads on, and is a bit of a deus ex machina for the end of the plot, and not even by that much. You could had replaced her with Chen, Swire, Hoshigumi, ShiraYuki, or anyone else that would logically be in Lungmen at the time. Hell, ShiraYuki knowing everything a being cryptic about it would at least be in character for her. 

And that’s not to knock Mostima. I actually pulled her in my last ten-pull (didn’t get Waii Fu though, and I’m still salty about that), she’s a pretty good and damn near god-tier once you get her to E2 if some of the guides on her are to be believed, though her kit is a little niche for an AoE caster of her cost. However, as far as the story is concerned she shows a serious issue with Arknights as a whole. That’s its constant need to have half of their characters be mysterious.

Mysterious Characters

So, just to give an example, here is a list of characters in Arknights with a Mysterious Past™. These are characters that either have their archive notes explicitly state their past is unknown, or characters who’s past is implied but but deliberately kept unconfirmed.

With that said...

Mostima

Myrtle

Cuora

Skadi

Specter

Shining

Siege

Projekt Red

Specter

Blue Poison

Lappland

Texas (?)

ShiraYuki

AMIYA

Okay, I’m cheating a little with Texas since she has enough of her past implied, but it’s still technically a mystery as far as the specifics go. But you see my point, right? A lot of characters have a Mysterious Past™, which is a nice shorthand to not go into depth about writing their background. Now, you don’t need to give twenty paragraphs on their backstory, but something would be nice. Keeping things a mystery might be nice for the theory-crafters, but for me it’s annoy as hell to see so many character, so many high-rated that really just have their skills and design to go off of, especially with most the cast overall having a pretty simple background to them that are interesting when you read through the lore blurbs and think about it. Breeze is a former noble that wanted to do more good in the world than throwing money at a problem. Liskarm is a protective friend that joined Rhodes Island to make sure the problematic Franka integrated without problems. Frostleaf is a child soldier that wants to do some good in the world after becoming Infected. Kroos, Beagle, and Fang joined Rhodes Island after getting kicked out of their old jobs. You don’t need to be flashy, but giving answers isn’t an admission of lacking creativity. The hints might be nice for the analysts, but the fans would likely want some answers.

Again, Mostima isn’t a problem, and a lot characters in that list do have some concrete hints about their past. Texas and Lappland are likely a former mafia heiresses and old rivals. Shining was likely a highly skilled mercenary before realizing she could do more good in the world with a healing staff instead of a sword. Siege is likely apart of Londinium royalty, but was either exiled or ran due to political turmoil. But that’s the issue, likely isn’t confirmed. Mostima being a powerful character with a mysterious past just feels like a cop out to me. It’s not bad, but she’s a symptom of what some of the issues of Arknights story is. I’m not asking for AFK Arena-levels of lore, just... an explanation here or there would be nice. 

But anyway that’s my main issue, moving on.

General Gushing

Despite that large critique I have, there’s a lot I love about this story. For simplicity sake, because I’m tired of all the editing, I’ll put it into list form:

Penguin Logistics in general was just a joy to see. Watching them in action and just how laissez-faire they are is hilarious, especially when paired with the straightforward and reserved Bison freaking out over the wackiness. 

Speaking of, Bison made for a very good straight man to balance out all the wild antics of PL. He really kept things from getting too crazy by at least questioning the zaniness, and the point when he finally stops caring and just charges in with a crazy plan of his own just gave me the giddiest of smiles.

Given how they discuss it, PL apparently trade blows with criminals and thugs on a daily basis, and since they’re just a delivery company this implies they likely deliver drugs or other hot cargo the mafia and gangs want... and given Emperor’s personality, that wouldn’t shock me.

Emperor in general is a delight of a character. He’s about as charismatic and wild as his aesthetic makes him look. I would legit whale for him if he ever become an operator.

Learning a little bit about Lungmen culture was fun as well, as little of it as we see. It’s my personal headcanon now that the mafia and general thugs of Lungmen don’t mess with civilians because they’re either a sleeper agent under the Rat King’s protection or they might be a kung fu master in plain clothes like Waai Fu.

Waai Fu and Texas fist fighting in the streets of Lungmen is just hilarious and awesome. I honestly don’t know what that says about either of them. Texas is holding her own against a martial artist with over 10 years of experience barehanded, meanwhile Waai Fu is holding her own against what lore blurbs have implied is the former heiress/hitman of a mafia. All the while drunkards and Texas’s coworkers are egging them on. This is the dumb content I live for.

Save for some of the absolute bullshit of the challenge maps, I found the actual game content to be pretty fair and interesting. The Bullies required good defender placement, a lot of the ranged units focused on targeting the helpful buildings that buffed your characters and increased the operator deployment count, and maps themselves had a few clever chokepoints to work with... At least until they started spamming Fanatics.

Bison actually has a pretty solid kit for a free Operator. He buffs a lot of adjacent units, has a no real weakness, his tools don’t feel niche like Grani or Celycon, overall a great unit. Once I finish E2-ing all my main Operators I might build him next. 

While I have issues with her as a story element, Mostima is a 6-star that has instant utility once you promote her to E2, much like Chen and Siege. This is something I’m relieved to say as a lot of my 6-stars aren’t worth much until you E2 them and I’m still trying to E2 some of my easier units like Cuora and Gavial for Chapter 5 and CC.

That’s really all I have to say on that front. So to close things off...

For the Future

Like I always say in these Ramblings, I don’t like the idea of people prattling on about being able to “fix” or “rewrite” something has already been made. It always comes across as both arrogant and ignorant to me. However, I think it’s completely fair to make requests and suggestions for the future. ‘

That said, I'd like to continue seeing side stories without Rhodes Island’s involvement. Both to see other factions in their natural element and because, frankly, Rhodes Island always feels a little out of place when involved in other stories, or at least more of a distraction than a good element if chapter 2 and 3 are anything to go by. I think a Black Steel side story would be nice. Jessica, Franka, Liskarm, and Vanille getting into shenanigans in Columbia or something sounds like a fun time. Maybe have the leader/high commander of the organization as a new operator and they’re a really powerful Supporter than can buff the party, like a 6-star version of Sora or something that gives operators insane ASPD buffs... I don’t know, something like that anyway. Ideally something a little less wordy than Code of Brawl at least.

Anyway, that’s all I have to say. Next time... I’ll talk about something else. Maybe discuss a manga or something. 

See you all later.

#arknights #your dictator is speaking

[seafleece]

fleece is making a magic system

(kudos to @for-lonely-giants for letting me scribble this out in his room at 3 am)

basically, i wanted a magic system about creating your own spells, so i’m doing the legwork now to make it part of casting to create your spell as you’re about to cast it, so instead of learning both fireball and delayed-blast fireball, you’d cast a fire spell at a certain level by describing your desired effect and determining with the DM what level that will be.

(i also have made a rudimentary spell type tag list, which is pretty similar to the one on dndbeyond, but the point here is to allow the DM/players to decide if a certain type of spell can even be cast at a low level (i.e. does it make sense for a minor banishment spell to exist?)

to do that, i have a pretty basic list of spell effect tags, with a few categories. the point of these classifications is also that they can be applied to existing d&d spells, and i’ll include some examples. “effect” can also refer to non-damage, and tags like “major” can be discussed as basic damage+other effect, or major effect with increased basic damage radius, etc.

-minor: small change or low damage (maximium 1 damage die)

-basic: basic change or moderate damage (maximum 5 damage dice)

-major: large change or serious damage (maximum 10 damage dice)

-drastic: enormous change or potentially fatal damage (maximum 20 damage dice)

-astronomical: incredible change or fatal damage (no maximum)

-temporary: the effect will end on its own, sub-tag concentration (damage or effect can be repeated without multiple castings)

-permanent: the effect will not end on its own

-undo: the effect undoes another effect

-immediate: the effect occurs immediately

-latent: the effect has duration surpassing concentration or is programmed to occur later

-singular: the effect has one target

-multiple: the effect has multiple targets

with these, i use the question: what can you do with a spell of this level that you could not at a lower level? and developed a more basic idea of what it means to cast a cantrip versus a level 9 spell. this is also not uniformly exact with d&d spells and their levels, but it’s fairly close

a cantrip: has minor effect on one target.

a level 1 spell: has basic singular effect, can have minor singular effect with concentration, or can have minor multiple effect.

a level 2 spell: has basic multiple effect, can have minor multiple effect with concentration, or can undo basic effect.

a level 3 spell: has major singular effect, can have basic multiple effect, or can undo immediate major effect.

a level 4 spell: has singular major effect with concentration or basic multiple effect with concentration.

a level 5 spell: has major multiple effect or can undo latent/permanent major effect.

a level 6 spell: has drastic singular effect or  major multiple effect with concentration

a level 7 spell: has drastic singular effect with concentration or can undo immediate drastic effect

a level 8 spell: has drastic multiple effect

a level 9 spell: can have astronomical effect, has drastic multiple effect with concentration, or can end any effect

there’s some minutia with when tags are applied, and these tags also have malleable potential. a. major effect can be cast at a lower level, for example, if there is sufficient preparation (i.e. something like ritual casting), but here’s me talking through some d&d (attack) spells and their level:

witch bolt: minor damage on one target, but is level one rather than a cantrip because it has concentration and the damage can be repeated

meteor swarm: considered level 9 because the basic idea behind 20d6 fire + 20d6 bludgeoning damage is that unless a character resists it somehow, they will be killed

disintegrate: level 6, the +40 moves it out of major damage range and into drastic, and one target is affected (another good indicator that a spell is drastic is that it indicates in the spell description what will happen if a character dies from it!!)

this system is supposed to be malleable, this system is supposed to allow for loopholes, and “effect” is intentionally vague because i want this to be about discussion between players and DMs about what a caster can do and when. is teleport a singular drastic effect that occurs with concentration, a drastic multiple effect, a major multiple effect that can occur with sufficient preparation, or even a basic effect when applied to one or two people? it’s all of them, and my goal is to change the emphasis of a spell from i know how to do this specific thing on this day to i have this amount of ability in my spellcasting, and i want to see if i can do this effect under these circumstances

damage dice are to be mediated by other effects (saving throw cantrips usually have a higher die because there’s no half damage on success, a major effect can split its “major” tag into some damage and a non-damage effect, in which case d6s might be used rather than d10s or d12s.) this system doesn’t have that name-recognizability of “oh god, blight, that’s 8d8″, but i’m hoping that in play it’s mediated by the synergistic effect of discussing what a spell does as you decide to cast it (which is accidentally what the mcelroys have done in the past by completely ignoring the actual description of a spell (cough planar ally cough).

under this system, d&d spells can be used normally, with as little or as much editing as desired, but you also can make new ones whenever you want. the basic idea is that when you level as a spellcaster, you gain access to spell types rather than spells (banishment, for example, i have in my head as a minimum level 4 spell, as well as shapechanging) and can act within those parameters rather than only with specific spells. i think prepared spells can play out as really funny in d&d (i.e. “i forgot how to cure wounds since yesterday, oops”), but it often doesn’t feel appropriate. i may include a limit on prepared spell types at a time (aka you can’t prep every single elemental spell type without that monopolizing your prep capabilities), or something as a simple as a maximum number of different spells you can cast that you hit as you cast rather than before you fight, similar to deciding equipment as you use it, because i think that also opens the door for small flashback scenes of “why does my character have this today”, and i’ll always take an excuse to create some non-linear storytelling. you can also codify a custom spell the same way you would a d&d spell and consider it a trademark, which could also work as an “always prepared” that wouldn’t add to the limit of prepared spells, but would require lots of prior usage.

(the especially fun thing is that i’m expanding the rules as i’m writing this post)

#fleece.txt #d&d #d&d hack #emergence #ttrpg #homebrew #long post #magic system