#and yes all those spells are druid spells in pathfinder 2e

[palidoozy-art]

Wanted to do some visual exploration of spellcasting and wildshape.

Kjosev would never describe himself as a druid. He tells people he's a 'failed wizard,' so I thought it'd make sense for him to go down the transmutation line and use the moss/sticks on his body to cast shit. Unsure why I haven't thought of that until like, now, but y'know.

Also was never sure how I wanted to visually display the in-between transformation with wildshape. I usually describe it body-horror style but I realize this doesn't address the fact that your clothes/everything else get absorbed into your body. Plus I don't want to draw that every time lol.

#art #artists on tumblr #oc art #d&d #d&d art #digital art #sketches #pf2e #pf2e art #palidoozy arts #and yes all those spells are druid spells in pathfinder 2e #have i told you all how much better druids are in pf2e? because they are #cannot go back to playing a d&d druid #there's things to love about both systems but by christ there's no contest with druids

[blackestnight]

ttrpg directory

since it’s been over two years since i last did one of these, below the cut you will find all my current (regular) tabletop characters (for those who find such things interesting):

starfinder

starmistress britta makee (NG human solarian), the sometimes-captain of the outland ranger, flagship of the dreaded space pirates known as the reapers. she’s actually an npc i took over after my soldier died (praise be, playing a melee-only soldier in starfinder is so fucking boring) so i didn’t make britta myself. she’s the crown princess from a planet that, due to some fucky radiation shit, produces a lot of insanely high-level witchwarpers, but she didn’t want to be one herself so she sat in a magic chair that made her a jedi. then she was kidnapped and trafficked to be sold as a slave, at which point the intrepid party rescued her (and my poor brave soldier perished while defending her, rest in pieces). because she comes from a low-tech, high-magic planet she...actually doesn’t know what a starship is. or a computer. which is not ideal for this setting. but she makes do, especially because she has a really fancy magic knife.

currently, britta and the reapers have been commissioned as privateers by a deposed emperor to overthrow his sister, the empress, by terrorizing the colony planets and telling them that the former emperor is the only one who can offer protection from the Big Scary Pirates; in the process we’ve also taken bounties from his sister the empress, the presidents of two colony planets, and the pirate king to bring in these other pirates who were terrorizing the colony planets, but we’re planning to fake their deaths and hire them as part of our crew instead. we’re double-crossing like six people. if this works we’ll be gods.

pathfinder 2e

electra godstongue (NG half-elf oracle of flames): she’s still around and kickin’! the circus is going strong, although at the moment they’re on a performing hiatus because some pterodactyls ate part of our tent, which was incredibly rude of them, honestly. in the meantime we’re helping to defend a small town that’s under siege by some big lizard dudes who ride dinosaurs. as a part of that we went spelunking in some sea caves, where we might end up going toe-to-toe with a great old one. so. that’s fine. also, if the campaign ends up where i think it’s going, we might literally become gods.

electra also holds the current record at our table for the highest damage number from a single turn of combat: seven zombies, a seventh-level sunburst spell, and some especially generous dice resulted in a whopping 959 damage. our two healers also had the same spell (16d10 against undead!) and we cleared out the entire room in three turns.

gwenllian (NG human witch), and her raven familiar, sir richard campbell gansey iii. yes i did steal their names from the raven cycle. she’s a new character, created for a mini-campaign, and she’s in charge of party healing despite being...not a healer. if you come to her asking to get your wounds patched up, she’ll rub some dirt on it—literally. but it’s magic dirt, so it works.

she’s a little bit feral, keeps sticking random twigs in her pockets, and no one can figure out if she’s actually just a druid who thinks she’s a witch, but she brews good potions and she’s brave and/or stupid enough to volunteer to sneak into an orc stronghold and assassinate their king, so she’ll work! (even if she does talk to her raven a lot. but also, the raven talks back, or so says the actual druid, who claims to be able to understand him. she and the druid are the only party members who speak sylvan.)

álmos szarka (CN half-elf thaumaturge): another new character, this time for society play! they’ll be debuting this weekend. they’re definitely a traveling wizard* who’s selling 100% authentic talismans** and who you should definitely give your money to***. also, álmos is their government name, but if that’s too hard to remember they’ll happily answer to dream. (not actually related to sandman.) they’re a member of the vigilant seal faction of the pathfinders, so they’re mostly dedicated to tracking down and sealing away or destroying dangerous magical artifacts and creatures; being from irrisen, which has been ruled by winter witches for the last fourteen centuries, they’re appropriately wary of anything magic. despite that, it seems like no matter what they come across, they have the perfect piece of cold iron or saint’s knucklebone or spell scroll to counter it tucked away somewhere in their voluminous coat.

also they’re the Lore Guy, despite having an intelligence of +0. they roll charisma for their lore. they’re full of shit, basically, but really good at convincing you they know what they’re talking about.

*not a wizard **not authentic ***don’t.

#cyan's ttrpg adventures #journal

[enddaysengine]

Apshai (Egyptian Power)

Apshai is a God that occupies a strange position within Planescape’s Egyptian Pantheon. You see, Apshai is a God that doesn’t exist. Let me back up and explain.

Art by Jeff Dee

It is TOUGH to track down any information on Apshai. The name is Egyptian, it appears in the Papyrus of Ani, one of the most famous and well-studied copies of the Book of Going Forth By Day or — as you may know it — the Book of the Dead. In the Papyrus, Apshai is very clearly not a God. The relevant spell in the Papyrus is Spell 36, which wards Apshai away from the mummified body. A scarab beetle follows Apshai’s name, not one of the hieroglyphs signaling a deity,. The scarab indicates that Apshai was not a god, but an ordinary beetle that decomposed and/or laid its eggs in carrion.

Apshai-as-a-God was an innovation of First Edition’s Deities & Demigods, which I don’t mind since Apshai is a demigod. It’s not true to the mythology at all, it is allows for the interpretation of Apshai as a divine monster, which seems reasonable. Also, he got a stat block and a whole two sentences, so it’s not like the writers took massive liberties. This is where is mantis form came from since all the Egyptian references to Apshai peg him as a beetle.

Second Edition’s Legends & Lore skipped Apshai, but he reappeared in Planescape’s On Hallowed Ground, which granted him a divine domain called The Hive underneath the Outlands. Before that happened, someone else got their hands on the Great Mantis. The Real Ghostbusters featured Apshai as the villian in its final episode as he tries to take over New York with an army of giant insects. This can’t be a coincidence, I mean, look at him…

There is one other place Apshai exists as a praying mantis, so it kinda looks like the plot of this episode must be from someone’s campaign. Again, not something I mind since this a demigod created whole cloth for the Great Wheel. If I’m going to use it for inspiration, I’d say that Apshai — in addition to being a God of insects — is a God of ghosts. That also works with the original Egyptian aspect of the apshai beetle as a corpse-eater, the ghosts in the Hive are the souls stranded there when beetles consumed their bodies, unanchoring them.

(Yes, I know ghosts can’t exist on the Outer Planes in 2e. I’m ignoring it.) 

We also know that farmers worship Apshai, although most of that supplication is requests that he keep locusts away from their crops. If I were to give Apshai Pathfinder 1e domains, I would say he has Animal, Earth, Death, and Plant; with the Caves, Decay, Insect, Plagues, and Undead subdomains. It occurs that this is thematically similar to the Golgari Swarm, which I am down with. Creepy Green-Black neutral deities for the win!

The Hive is a “safe” distance from Ilsensine’s domain, the Caverns of Thought, but nowhere is safe from the hoards of cranium rats the Caverns disgorge. One way for adventurers to get on Apshai’s good side and gain safe passage through the Hive is to hunt down the rodent invaders.

The Kemetic faith neglects Apshai as it is, but he recently gained a new group of supplicants. A colony of entothropes in Sigil, mostly weremantises, worship him in a small pantheon alongside Achaekek and Deskari. Apshai is still the least popular of three, but his rangers and druids are more welcome on other planes, allowing them to serve as traders and envoys.

Anubis, son of Ra, Guardian of Dead Gods, made a disturbing discovery patrolling the Astral: beetles have infests several stone deific corpses and consumed them from the inside out. Now he recruits heroes to discover how this happened and to answer an even more pressing question — what does Apshai want with the ghosts of dead gods?

Notes: I’m less familiar with 5e domains, so those are trickier, but I’d say Apshai grants some combination of Death, Grave, and Nature. If I were to port him over to Scion, I’d give Apshai the Hunter, Liminal, and Trickster Callings; and the Beasts (Insects), Death, Earth, and Wild Purviews.

#Planescape #God #Egypt #pathfinder #3.5 #5e #Paizo Publishing #TSR #WotC #plothooks #worldbuilding #Scion