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[Kagus]

I'm thinking of putting together a "backup character" for the main campaign I'm in, both as a potential replacement should my primary dude die (although I'm not particularly worried about that happening) and as just a swap-in should I feel like playing something else.

While working out potential concepts for that, I bumped into a couple gimmicks that could be interesting to muck around with.

First up is a front-line Fathomlock, primarily using blade ward and the guardian coil damage reduction to make the most out of agathys. Of course, in order to be much of a tank you need to provide some amount of threat, and while spending each turn on blade ward does crimp damage output by quite a bit, cloak of flies can provide some consistent damage along with a little bit of slapping from the tentacle. War caster can also let you do a little something if you haven't already used your reaction on damage reduction (this combines fairly well with toll the dead, since they'll automatically take poison damage at the start of their turn, ensuring you get to use the better damage dice). An interesting combo, if perhaps a bit lackluster right at the 7-9 range where we're going to be for a while. (Celestilock with flaming sphere could dish out more damage, and healing is always nice, but it gets a little bit messy).

Next is the delightful stupidity of a Hexsinger. 2 Hexlock/6+ Bladesinger, for the only slightly MAD combo of consistently getting off 4 attacks per round at no resource cost (except ammo). I was kinda hoping to do something a bit more up-front and tanky, given that the team as it stands could really benefit from that, but this is definitely entertaining.


Could also just go Ancestral Barb with a polearm, and make enemies very sad. ...barblock could potentially be stanky janky combo, with built-in resistance and 2d6 damage reduction reaction if going that route. Taking a buff round for Agathys+rage would be risky though, as unless you do some weird shit like provoking an AoO and having it land, your rage would end immediately.

Alternatively-alternatively, 2-3 Barb/6+ Genielock. Agathys would be less useful, thanks to the introduction of flight, but going for a marid patron would give you blur for handily canceling out the advantage ranged attackers would otherwise have against your reckless flying ass. Less of a tank, really, but definitely quite the sight.

[Grim Portent]

Gotten an idea for an urban game oriented D&D PC.

Human Mastermind Rogue with either a 2 level dip into Shepherd Druid, or more ideally the Eldritch Adept feat for the Beast Speech invocation, and the Noble (Knight) background with the two free hirelings being a manservant and a maid. Strength and Con as dump stats in favour of solid Dex and mental stats, especially Wis and Cha. Skills likewise being oriented towards animal handling, being insightful and persuasive.

The character is an elderly widow, well off but largely ousted from the social circles a woman of her standing would normally be in as a result of her relatives pushing her out of the social heirarchy following the death of her husband, who depending on time period was either a noble, a wealthy guild member, or an industrialist. As a result she is rather bitter towards her ostensible peers, finding comfort in the company of urban vermin like pidgeons, rats and stray cats/dogs, and helping the lower classes in struggles against the wealthy because, 'they may be bastards, but at least they're honest about being bastards.'

Has a lot of cynical wisdom, like saying that a young woman should always have a knife hidden in their skirt and so on.

In combat mostly takes the Help action, providing Advantage to other characters, but will open a fight with a knife to the gut if an opponent is standing near her. Befriends various forms of vermin and asks them to do favours for her like stealing keys, spying, eating bodies, distracting guards and so on. Her motivation for doing things is largely spite, but also a desire to help people who are genuinely decent people when they fall afoul of people who are assholes like her.

[Kagus]

Could potentially go a few levels into some flavor of Warlock and pick up not only Beast Speech but also Pact of the Chain for a more permanent animal buddy who can even have an easier time doing things on their own thanks to invocations and the pact's quirks. If that's a direction you'd be interested in going.

Archfey patron's Fey Presence can let you actively charm urban critters so they'll actually listen to you when you talk beastily to them. Otherwise not a lot of obvious thematic patron choices, if you even want to acknowledge the patron.

Depending on how bitter and cynical she is about the upper classes and the status quo, could potentially explain "teaming up" with a patron of some sort to ruffle a few feathers.

[Grim Portent]

Could potentially go a few levels into some flavor of Warlock and pick up not only Beast Speech but also Pact of the Chain for a more permanent animal buddy who can even have an easier time doing things on their own thanks to invocations and the pact's quirks. If that's a direction you'd be interested in going.

Archfey patron's Fey Presence can let you actively charm urban critters so they'll actually listen to you when you talk beastily to them. Otherwise not a lot of obvious thematic patron choices, if you even want to acknowledge the patron.

Depending on how bitter and cynical she is about the upper classes and the status quo, could potentially explain "teaming up" with a patron of some sort to ruffle a few feathers.

My preference is to minimise magical abilities as much as possible for the concept, as she's essentially supposed to be an old woman who isn't special except for her fondness for the vermin of the city and being decently knowledgeable, manipulative and knowing that a knife in the gut works best when twisted. Class features are much more concept agnostic than spellcasting is.

If speaking with animals was possible as an all the time ability without any magic (Not counting gnomes or firbolgs) it would be ideal, but D&D was very averse to giving people always on minor magic-like effects until recently for some reason.



On another note, I have a weird idea for an NPC/nation. A Hill Giant queen, who rules her clan by virtue of enormous girth and beauty (which to hill giants means more girth) and rules several other races of monstrous humanoids and giants by virtue of political marriage to form a small kingdom.

Spoiler: wall of text (click to show/hide)

Hothea the Massive, the magnificent, radiant, globulous and pendulous queen of the hillclans. Taught the power of alliances and marriages by her mother, who learned them from a wandering bard she decided not to eat, Hothea chose to ally with her neighbouring hill giant clans by marrying the sons of the other chieftesses. Then she decided to marry the chiefs of the ogre tribes nearby. Then the wandering ettins, the orc warlords, the goblins, the other giant races and so on.

Many of Hothea's allies intended to try and direct her growing horde of barbarians to their own ends, only marrying her because it seemed the easiest way to usurp her, but wound up unable to actually steer the course of the growing tide. Repulsive as many of Hothea's husbands find her, she finds most of them repulsive in turn, the physical qualities hill giants and the other races finding desirable being quite divergent, and as such most of them are allowed to keep to themselves and have their own wives and consorts while still being considered part of the ruling family.

As this web of marriages and alliances grew it rapidly outpaced the ability or desire of Hothea to actually rule, resulting in her delegating the vast majority of it to her non-hill giant husbands, while being content to remain in what passed for a capitol gorging herself on tributed foods and mating with those among her spouses she actually finds attractive.

The goblins, orcs and other races in this alliance found themselves in a strange situation. Many of their leaders were now technically family, and covered by taboos against kinslaying, which has never really stopped anyone, but it did still make them hesitate long enough for some among them to form an actual plan to make the most of this new opportunity. A handful of Hothea's husbands of various races banded together and arranged themselves and their peers into a form of nobility, tasking each of the husbands with the ruling of a parcel of land and the acquisition of tribute, ostensibly to be given as dowries to Hothea and to further the goals of the united clans and tribes, with the position of leadership below Hothea being taken by a council of her most trusted husbands who would govern all the others.

So the governance of the realm is largely done by orcs, goblins and the more intelligent races of giants who have fallen under the sway of the young nation, but Hothea is still symbolically married to any male leader of note found in the land. Indeed she has never even spoken to most of her husbands now, any new clan or tribe of creatures being offered a marriage in name by one of her underlings in exchange for joining the kingdom's borders. Greedy and warlike, the many spouses of Hothea are always pushing to expand the borders, raid neighbors or settle internal conflicts, but the ruling council is content to let them engage in their petty squabbles as long as tribute flows to them, and Hothea is content to let them rule in her name so long as tribute flows to her in turn.

So fat on tribute has she become that the hill giants have come to worship Hothea as a sort of demigod, the most beautiful thing in the world, and some of the other races worship her for other reasons, seeing her as the avatar of gods and demon lords of destruction and consumption, or as a literal mountain that walks (not that she walks anymore). This serves her regents council well, for they can speak on her behalf to those who worship her, directing them to quash any other husbands who defy the council, or to wage war on any who would refuse the honour of marrying Hothea and thus being incorporated into the kingdom.

The borders of this ever expanding realm are beginning to draw close to what could be called the civilised realms, running into the foothills of a dwarven mountain kingdom. So far there has been little interaction beyond skirmishes between the dwarves and barbarous raiding parties, but Hothea's husbands are bound to be looking towards the mountains, and the lands beyond, with ambition.

[Loud Whispers]

Hahaha, I'm having some great fun with my m8s and I never expected to. One of my friends is honestly a terrible fucking DM. The problem is, he sets up great scenarios, great characters, great roleplay - then swings unavoidable fights against creatures with 10,000 HP that takes 3 bloody hours to resolve. We call this the Mugabe problem, because he induces hyperinflation with all of our numbers. He gives a player a weapon that does 1d40 damage, he then gives the enemies 1d40 hit dice to compensate, in an incestuous arms race. We talked about this and he made it clear he would never change his ways, so I decided to just leave; still continuing to play with him as a player, but never as a DM. After a year and a half he comes back to me over a lunch like a scorned ex lover and very sincerely states that it's just not the same without me. I decided I could come back to his campaign, but not as a player, but as NPCs for the party. I've played scoundrels and rogues, rich merchants who caused hyperinflation in the economy to complete the Mugabe motif, enemy bosses and so on.

One of my favourites was someone who seemed so obviously, incredibly evil and witchlike - and indeed, they were a witch, but they never cast a spell and they never did anything evil. They were just sinister, but altruistic. Red eyes in the darkness watching over the city, making sure everyone is safe. Misunderstood they were! Carbuncle the witch. In this setting magic is supposed to be rare (despite its abundance in game), so I had very much fun RP'ing Carbuncle's magic such as... Conjuring a rabbit from a hat. Making a coin appear from behind an ear. Turning a stick into a boquet of flowers. Despite her ability to cast great spells, Carbuncle managed to go through the entire campaign never casting a spell, but is now being hunted by witches convinced she is a powerful mage because the actual spellcasters in the party destroyed hell and the blame is unfairly falling upon her. Life is unfair like that.

A new favourite of the party is someone called Robin. Whereas Carbuncle oozed sinister and fell intent, but was actually a moral saint guiding the party towards a brighter path, Robin is disarming and charming - a one armed child who speaks like a Blue's Clues or Balamory character. "Hello! Will you be my friend?" ..."I don't think we should do that, that would be very naughty." ..."Life is a cage and death is an adventure. Let's go on an adventure friends! :D"
Despite that, he is very clearly a powerful necromancer taking orders from his soul jar'd ancestor to resurrect hell and cause chaos/pandemonium/war/strife amongst the mortal world. I worked with the DM together to make this monstrosity a lvl30 wizard, and it was only after I started reviewing epic spells and 10th lvl+ spells that I realised just how this character was much less an NPC and more a plot point with a personality.

When I designed them I made sure they'd have 30 HP so even with all of their epic boons and other bullshit, it would be a trivial matter for the party to kill this evil necromancer child. Unexpectedly, the party's paladin has taken an incredible liking to them. Whilst the bard is an "end justifies the means" sort of person - they destroyed the entire afterlife to take hell's demons down with it, unfortunately also eliminating all souls - good, evil and in between, the paladin has been struggling to stay on a moral path. For every good action they take they've made three panicked immoral decisions to try and cover up their mounting list of crimes. The bard has been trying to correct this for a while, and had some help when we had a new player playing some werewolf rogue who had a nice little storyline about standing up to authority for what's right and for yourself despite not living up to familial expectations - really swell stuff.

But the moment this evil child shows up, with very little persuasion the paladin has gone full deathknight. There was a hilarious encounter where !not!Robin Hood and his merry men attacked us because a party of a necromancer, werewolf, diabolically augmented paladin with a normal bard looked like an evil cult holding the bard hostage. Whilst the party tried to explain the miscommunication, the paladin launched an assault. In character I took cover in a grave to resume collecting bodies for a meat colossus project, out of character I legit had to ask my friend "are you seriously going to attack the merry men?"

I did not expect him to align his morals immediately with this child of armageddon!!! xD

We managed to end the fight peaceably enough with only one death, but dear Lord. Right now the DM and I are mulling over whether to use a 10th lvl bullshit soulblight spell that causes a zombie cascade. We figured it would fit in right at home with all the other plotlines going on in the background - there is a hyperdimensional witch cold war. A plot to assassinate the god emperor of the humans. A druidic plot to annihilate the new technologies (which are actually ancient technologies). The entire world is a time traveling giant seamine. The blacksun deathcrawl entity.

It's like he took every horrible idea we could come up with and kept smashing them together until they had a negative integer overflow and became fun again

[Egan_BW]

very good

[Iduno]

Hell yes. Sometimes you need to see where the game is going and just lean into it.

[Grim Portent]

Rolling an idea for a horror monster around my head.

Basic concept is a monster that hunts children, which I'm currently thinking of as being some sort of primordial horror, it kills because it enjoys to rather than because it gets any kind of meaningful benefit. Image I have in mind is a long animal like torso covered in tumours and cysts that ooze black fluid that wriggles with worms, head is halfway between a human and animal skull, with stretched torn skin exposing wet muscle, more black fluid oozes from it's mouth and nose, coughs frequently, walks on eight pairs of legs that are jointed like an insect's but end in human hands. The appearance is largely irrelevant though.

Premise for a scenario involving it is that a century or two prior to the events of the game it was confronted during it's rampages across the land by a saint, who I'm currently thinking would be named Carolyn or something along those lines, and was immediately soothed by her presence, becoming docile and calm. The families of it's victims and the knights who had been trying to slay it found that it wouldn't fight back anymore, but that none of their weapons could cause it lasting damage. If separated from Saint Carolyn it became violent in it's efforts to return to her, so they eventually just had to let it follow her around like a pet. For the next few decades Carolyn devoted herself to the guardianship of the beast, keeping it from harming others, and gathered a following of lay clergy devoted to helping those it had victimised in the past, and to caring for Carolyn herself during her time as the keeper of the monster. When Carolyn passed away, the monster vanished from the church that had grown up around the two of them.

But the horror isn't really gone, it was interred in a mausoleum alongside Saint Carolyn, waiting for her to come back. Over the time since it's imprisonment it has become desperate in it's need to be near the saint again, and decided that if killing children brought Carolyn to it in the first place to stop it, killing children again will bring Carolyn back to stop it once again. It's slow at the moment, killing only a handful of children at a time before returning to the mausoleum to show them to the decaying remains of the saint, where before it was like a cloud of death that swept over the land, snatching infants from cradles and children from the fields by the dozens.

The priests above are mostly unaware of it's return, but a few of the very oldest priests still have vague memories of the monster buried below their church, but due to being isolated in their extreme age they aren't aware of the new killings taking place. Most of the locals and younger priests are assuming it's something more... normal, like wolves or a serial killer or something.


I'm not sure what, if anything, should be able to kill it. Maybe being stabbed with one of the saint's ribs or something.

[heydude6]

Assuming we ignore the obvious teleportation solutions like the banishment spell, maybe you have to venture out into the world and find a new saint that can trigger the effect again. Perhaps they are the reincarnation of Carolyn or something.

Alternatively, it might be necessary to dupe the monster into thinking that somebody else is Carolyn (with the spell disguise person perhaps) and have them be their new guardian. Maybe nobody remembers what Carolyn looks like anymore and our heros have to go questing in order to find something like a painting to use as a reference for the disguise.

If you really want to murder it for good, I believe the solution should be somehow tied to how the monster was created in the first place. It would be something you would have to make up, and it won't likely connect to the Carolyn backstory very much unless you make it that way, but I think you need to better understand your monster before you can figure out how to kill it.

[Grim Portent]

My thought on where the monster comes from is that it's basically one of those things that's always existed, a physical manifestation of the darkness before creation and the silence that will fall when everything crumbles to dust. It is death and fear. It is cot death, it is stillbirth, it is the accidents that befall children lost in the woods.

My immediate thoughts are that it just can't be stopped now that it's starting up again, but that's a bit of a downer for a game idea even when going for a Lovecraftian vibe, so ideally it needs to be slain or contained in some fashion so that it isn't going to keep murdering a handful of children every week.

Oh! I have an idea, a bit macabre and morbid perhaps, a cage fashioned from Saint Carolyn's bones. It won't break them, because it can't bring itself to harm her even in death, but it also won't last forever because even well preserved bones eventually crumble to dust, and the string and wire holding the cage together will break sooner still.

Another course would be that someone has to do the same thing that Carolyn did to calm it the first time, something which basically no one else ever managed during her lifetime. Show this monster genuine compassion. My thought is that Carolyn was exceptional in her caring and accepting nature, willing to face down the beast that hunted children and killed anyone who tried to stop it, and was willing to be kind to it even after all it had done. The kind of woman who would make the Grim Reaper or Satan a cup of tea and ask how they were feeling and genuinely mean it. If someone, anyone really, can do the same for it again then they basically are Carolyn, a new Carolyn. Like the old stories about a virgin maiden being able to tame a unicorn, which would otherwise kill or flee from any humans it met.


Banishment also wouldn't work, as it's not from another plane so it would just return. Gate or plane shift would work, but only for a while because it would eventually find a portal back, even if it took a few centuries.

[Loud Whispers]

Banishment also wouldn't work, as it's not from another plane so it would just return. Gate or plane shift would work, but only for a while because it would eventually find a portal back, even if it took a few centuries.

Gate would be a nice one. Could really lean into it being a grim dark heroic martyrdom without the consequences being so unstoppably grim

[MrRoboto75]

You could go a step further, finding the dead saint as a petitioner (or even angel) in the outer planes.

[wierd]

What about the hyper-planar annihilation that happens when a portable hole is placed into a bag of holding? (And vise-versa)

Lure the creature into the portable hole, then puck it up.

Devise a rube-goldberg contraption (or use a golem?) To put the hole into a bag of holding, AFTER the party has reached minimum safe distance?

RAW says the contents, no matter what they are, are destroyed.

[Persus13]

That wouldn't destroy it, just send it to the astral plane, at least in 5e, which I assume is what folks are talking about.

[heydude6]

So, I had been planning a two-player DnD game for this past week. Doing DnD two-players presents many interesting challenges due to the loss of versatility. Since I wanted to run our first session before the break ended, I've needed to really rush/crunch the prep.

Anyway, I found out yesterday that my players chose to make their characters a Warlock and a Druid. I'm really mad at this because our adventure starts at level 1 and as a result, a party of two squishy wizards can get one-shot by basically anything. Also my first planned encounter involves reskinned blink dogs.

I would have told them to make new characters, but due to the rushed nature of the setup, there isn't any time for that.

Wish me luck I guess.