The Magnificent Weathermen: Winston Cloudstorm

In preparing for The Magnificent Weathermen, I realized that I wanted to experiment a bit with characters and character concepts. One in particular that I had been very interested in really getting into was the "Ghost" character featured in Dragon Magazine #420. Of course, with my luck, the ghost features were never implemented into the character builder, so I would have to work by hand on this one. Of course, I would also have to decide WHO this ghostly weatherman was and how he fit in.

Winston Cloudstorm, former Guild Leader

As the idea for The Magnificent Weathermen began to really formulate, I decided that the motivation for the plot would come from the funeral of Sir Winston Cloudstorm, former Chief Meteorologist of the Waterdeep Meteorologist's Guild. I imagined that the details of his death would be fleshed out by the players at the table, but I liked the idea of a funeral with a bunch of different weathermen coming to pay their respects. Once this was established, it did not take long for me to determine who the ghost would be. From that, (the late) Winston Cloudstorm was born.

Don't stress the "feats." The names are all made up.

This may seem strange to experienced 4E players.

Cloudstorm is my first real attempt at openly violating the character building rules. Players familiar with Dungeons & Dragons 4E will observe that he seems to fit no character build whatsoever. Fourthcore players will scoff. Of course, Cloudstorm isn't meant to be "tournament legal" by any stretch of the imagination. He's a flight of fancy.

Experienced players should be able to detect some of his roots, of course. Other than taking a series of powers from the Ghost article, Cloudstorm is very much built on the base of a Dwarf Hammer Knight. His "Ghostform" powers are very clearly Knight stances. He has a number of Dwarf and Fighter feats to make him more effective at hitting and moving enemies around. Of course, his stats are wrong for a Knight, but that's because I swapped INT and STR. In addition, he's clearly missing Knight abilities like the Power Strike and Fighter Utilities. Mostly, I took them away to focus more on the Ghost aspects.

People familiar with the Ghost article will notice that I cheated that a bit, too. He has three healing surges instead of two, two uses of Stolen Years, and a few other tweaks. Instead of just building the Knight and overlaying the Ghost, I fused the two in a way that felt natural. It's not that he's the ghost of a guy with a hammer. He's a ghost, and that's what makes him effective at defending his allies.

Either way, that's the late Winston Cloudstorm, former Chief Meteorologist of Waterdeep. I welcome any comments from 4E advocates.

The Magnificent Weathermen: A Waterdeep Adventure

When I prepared a series of prospective adventures for my home D&D game, I had not expected what my players would make of them. Some of them seemed very much like typical D&D fare but a few of the prospective "episodes" were a bit off the standard tracks. One in particular that I want to focus on was the adventure that I originally titled "The Lost Weatherman" that would eventually be known as "The Magnificent Weathermen."

Background of the Weathermen

One of the players in my home game originally came to the table with his hometown weatherman (Vince Condella) as a weather predicting bard. This character eventually inspired a nemesis, the mad gnome Chet Doppler who threatened Waterdeep with elementally-infused weather. Chet was captured and placed in the Waterdeep Adventurer's Guild (WAG) "dungeon," left as a sort of reoccurring joke. Eventually, that player decided he was done playing weatherman, so Vince accidentally left on a transport ship bound for Luskan.

Chet Doppler!

During all of this, we established that there was a Meteorologist's Guild in Waterdeep. We never spent too much time explaining how that worked, but it clearly involved Arcanists who predicted the weather and promulgated that information throughout the city. Vince and Chet had been weathermen who, for somewhat unspecified crimes of "weather speculation," were stripped of their authority and kicked out of the guild. The only other character in the guild we really defined was Winston Cloudstorm, the head of the guild. Cloudstorm had been implicated as a conspirator in the attack on Waterdeep and stabbed outside of the Lord's Hall by a Thayan assassin, but the adventurer's eventually cleared his name.

The relationship between Chet and Vince was one that continued to pop up in play. When we ran a "Turn Left" session (It's a Wonderful Life, for those of you are not familiar with Doctor Who), we tried to return to as many iconic moments from our previous play. The elemental storm attack on Waterdeep returned and the characters engaged in a slightly different battle with Chet Doppler. Mid-battle, to the surprise of most of the table, Vince Condella joined the fray, now Chet's ally in the attack. Of course, as this was an alternate timeline, it had no greater impact on the story.

From Inception to Reception

As we began the "fourth season" of our D&D game, the WAG was arrested, found guilty of treason and murder, and sentenced to life in the Waterdeep Prison Authority. Our first adventure involved the "big breakout." One of the monkey-wrenches I threw into the mix was the presence of the two former residents of the WAG prison: Malvolio Guildenstern and Chet Doppler. These two (former) villains now aided the party in their escape, ostensibly joining the former Adventurer's Guild (in exile).

I thought it would be interesting to have an adventure where we find out what happened to Vince Condella so many sessions ago. Chet Doppler, now changed by his time living as a prisoner of the WAG, wants to find his old friend. I had originally intended this adventure to feature Chet Doppler and an arrangement of other adventurers. There would be some pirates, a couple of battles, and somehow the party would be reunited with their old ally.

Ridiculousness ensues.

No adventure idea survives contact with the players. One of my players, on reading my original adventure premise, interpreted it as "bring your own hometown weatherman to the table." Suddenly, this went from a standard rescue adventure to something resembling the iconic Deep Space Nine episode "The Magnificent Ferengi." Accordingly, I changed the official title of the adventure and told all of the players to start thinking weird weathermen.

Of course, this changes the entire nature of the episode. From out of the woodwork, crazy ideas started surfacing. One player wanted to play his local Hawaiian meteorologist, a jilted lover of Vince Condella that wanted to "rescue" him (without explaining what that might entail). Another player immediately went to Brick Tamland for inspiration (Brick, where did you get a hand grenade?). Other ridiculous characters came up: the Underdark weatherman (Today's weather: cool and damp); the psychic weatherman (who steals other people's forecasts); and so forth.

The Buddy Story

Having all of my players get into the ridiculousness of weathermen got me really thinking about what I wanted to accomplish out of this adventure. Most of these characters were intended as one-offs. Whether they died, survived, turn traitor, or whatever else didn't especially matter. With that in mind, it occurred to me that the focus of this adventure was the relationship between Chet and Vince. This made me re-think the "rescue attempt" as a concept.

Although I am not certain what tomorrow's adventure will entail, I know that in one way or another, its resolution will be about the relationship between old comrades and later nemeses Vince Condella and Chet Doppler. Maybe they will both end up dead. Maybe Chet will discover that Vince has established himself as a pirate king and join him. Maybe Chet will find Vince a prisoner of his own power and rescue him. Who knows.

Player's Story: Avatar of the Archive

In the midst of a discussion with a friend about character options and how I found certain new role-playing game dissatisfying, I began to realize that my process for creating a character (as a player) was not quite in sync with that of a number of my peers. As I had the possibility of participating in new Dungeons & Dragons Fourth Edition campaign (likely set in the default setting of the Nentir Vale), I thought I would take some time to demonstrate how I go through the process of creating a player character for myself.

Person made out of Psychic
Crystals. Seriously?

The DM mentioned an interest in a story involving psionics. I wanted to create a character that had a distinctly psionic focus, although I was not sure how I would potentially accomplish that. One distinctly psionic thing in Dungeons & Dragons that I have yet to really work with was the Shardmind, a Player's Handbook 3 race that has never found its way to a table I play at. This seemed like a good place to start. Now, I simply had to decide how I could make a shardmind into an interesting player character and not a ridiculous novelty.

Reading over the shardmind entry in PHB3, I continued to get a sense that an individual shardmind is not a person, per se, but a little different. In a certain sense, the entry gave me the distinct impression that every shardmind was a specific instance of a larger thing.

Shardminds are sentient fragments of the Living Gate, which once stood at the pinnacle of the intricate lattice of the Astral Sea. Beyond that gate lay the alien Far Realm, and the gate’s destruction during the Dawn War resulted in the rise of the mind flayer empire.

Although I was not particularly enthralled with the idea of "sentient fragments of the Living Gate," it did get me thinking about each individual shardmind being a specific instance of a greater intelligence or sentience. To that end, I found myself thinking of Gene Roddenberry's Andromeda and, more specifically, Rommie, the Andromeda Ascendant's robotic avatar.

I assume every warship looks like this on the inside.

As I tried to think about how the shardmind would become associated with a ragtag group of adventurers, I realized that this character would need to be tweaked a bit. I had originally looked at this character as a separate avatar of a larger psionic entity. However, after giving it some thought, I thought it would be much more interesting if I made this shardmind more like a specific unit or process of a larger entity now separated from its greater whole. Instead of Rommie without the Andromeda, I thought it more like a Borg Drone without the Borg Collective.

I can only imagine Gene Roddenberry's disgust at my
brutal hacking of his creative universes...

This idea, and the inherent quest for identity, seemed to fit great for what I wanted. The shardmind was a physical instance of an old, psychic archive created by an ancient civilization. With the psychic archive facing destruction (or, even more interestingly, corruption), this shardmind was separated from the whole to save the last fragments of that civilization. As a potential future plot hook, it potentially carried some vital piece of knowledge that others would stop at nothing to acquire, although I know enough not to over-specify a character at creation. Either way, its crystalline structure was more than just a novelty. It was the last vestige of a fallen civilization.

Of course, I'm difficult. This wasn't enough. I did not want to make another robot finding a soul. That has been done plenty of times already. I wanted something more interesting. I wanted my character to have a personality and that personality was a problem. I also wanted to be able to tie my character to another player in an interesting way. For a moment, it seemed like I was asking too much. Nothing would satisfy my character concept. Then I remembered Winifred Burkle. Or, more appropriately, Illyria.

I always assumed Cthulhu looked like this
in human form. Didn't you?

I liked the idea of somebody important being consumed in the creation of this shardmind character. For this to work, I needed a second character. I would begin the campaign as a relatively mundane fighter, wizard, or whatever was needed. We'll call this character Bob (for now, anyway). The important thing about Bob is that Bob is a brother, husband, or lover of another character in the party. I even planned the first adventure (yeah, I'm that kind of player) where the party would discover the psychic archive as it began to finally collapse. Bob would approach the primary control interface only to be annihilated by psychic energy, a rather unfortunate outcome of the archive improperly trying to communicate with the adventurers. From this, the archive would know enough to create its final avatar, the shardmind. The shardmind would guide the adventurers to safety as the archive collapsed, earning a measure of trust.

So what's the point of Bob? Bob is there for dramatic effect. Bob's memories, emotions, and personality were imprinted on the shardmind (albeit accidentally). As with Fred/Illyria, the rest of the party would have to deal with this strange creature (who they realize to be important) but who continues to exhibit signs of the person they lost. Perhaps, over time, the personality of Bob would become more manifest, creating essential character drama in season 3 or 4. Or, perhaps the shardmind would begin to look like Bob. Time would have to tell on that one.

Part Bob. Part Psychic Archive.
All BADASS.

Of course, I haven't even gotten to stats or powers. That's usually the smallest part of my character creation process. The power-point psionic classes are interesting as I have never played one as a player and they're sophisticated enough as to not bore me (like the Elementalist did). Of course, since the shardmind is only "stat-synched" with one of the psionic character classes, how I deal with it is a story for another post.

The Council of Spiders, Part 6

One of the weird issues I have with Dungeons & Dragons in later editions (3.0+) was that although there were no mechanical limits on race-class combinations, there still existed mechanical features that dis-incentivized certain combinations. In Fourth Edition, it became even more prevalent as races had fixed attribute bonuses. Since a Dwarf could never get an Intelligence bonus, a Dwarf wizard would never be as good as a Human wizard or a Tiefling wizard. Similarly, a Drow would normally never make as good a fighter as a Dwarf or a Goliath. Because of the design that went into it, maximizing hit rates became exceedingly important so having a higher primary ability score was exceedingly important.

This became extremely obvious in the current season of Dungeons & Dragons: Encounters, where every pre-made character had its race changed to Drow. Now, the slayer fighter is less effective than he had been when he was a Dwarf. The wizard is less effective than when he was a Human. As a person who has been bending the Character Builder to his will for as long as I have, this really bothered me. Unfortunately, House Xorlarrin, one of the three houses involved with the adventure, is supposed to focus on arcane spell-casting. I tried to find ways I could get arcane spell-casters to match up well with a Drow without simply breaking the build requirements. Pelloth is my attempt at doing just that.

Pelloth, graduate of Sorcere.

He does have a wizard-like feel to him.

The powers exhibited by the Gloom Pact Binder seemed to fit in with the arcane Drow ideal. Pelloth manipulates the shadows, darkness, and gloom as taught to him at Sorcere. The cold hand of darkness envelops all who stand before him in his quest to construct the Demon Weave. Furthermore, as the primary ability scores for the Gloom Pact Binder are Dexterity and Charisma, it fit perfectly well with the Drow ability scores.

With Pelloth, players at Dungeons & Dragons: Encounters don't have to feel like being a part of House Xorlarrin means you have to be slightly less effective than the rest of the party. Hopefully, I can figure out other clever ways to match up arcane power with the Drow attribute set.

The Council of Spiders, Part 5

The current D&D: Encounters season, Council of Spiders, is more than half over. However, it has reached the point in the story where things have begun to get more suspicious and entangled. Characters may have already begun forming suspicions about how the other characters intend to backstab them at the worst possible time. That is, assuming they have not done so already.

To continue in my journey of supplementing the D&D: Encounters collection of pre-made characters, I am providing another Drow to join the ranks. This Drow, however, is a bit different than most of the rest. This Drow, a male of House Melarn, has a very different purpose and goals than most of the members of his house.

Sorin, Elderboy of House Melarn and Drow Vampire

His goal is nothing short of the toppling of House Melarn.

The inspiration for this character came from one of the players in my weekly D&D Encounters group. He had actually read quite a bit of the new D&D book, Menzoberranzan: City of Intrigue. He suggested a character to me that was not a member of any of the three groups set forth in the Encounters season. Instead, he chose a member of Jaezred Chaulssin who was masquerading as a member of another house. To that end, he often acted suspiciously when certain events would occur as his character actively tried to upset the plans of Lolth and House Melarn. Imagine his surprise when the assassin in session 5 was also a member of Jaezred Chaulssin...

I liked the idea of somebody within House Melarn secretly intending to upset the plans of House Melarn and the Spider Queen. With the story proceeding as it goes, it would not be especially difficult to drive a wedge between the houses. So, an Elderboy from House Melarn with a big chip on his shoulder became the basis for this character. From there, imbuing him with the power of the vampire just seemed to make sense. I thought of this idea, n Elderboy who had discovered power that made him better than the priestesses that had beaten him for so many decades, and it just made sense.

Hopefully, this character will give people a new take on the Council of Spiders. Unlike the other four characters I made, I made Sorin a level 2 character so he would fit along with the rest of the party.

Character Profile: The Herald

The Herald is a character I wrote for a Dark Sun campaign I used to run. He was an essential component of my rather peculiar Dark Sun campaign arc and I thought I would present him as a potential addition to a Dark Sun campaign that wants to go a little off the rails.

In the Fourth Edition of Dungeons & Dragons, the world of Dark Sun exists as it does in part due to a great battle between the Primordials and the Gods. In that battle, the Gods were destroyed. The Primordials were either destroyed as well or left to do business elsewhere, leaving the world to slowly die on its own. By the time of the city-states and sorcerer-kings, the idea of gods and primordials is long since forgotten.

Things forgotten often have a way of coming back to relevance. The Herald is a peculiar link to that past, a servant of the Gods left behind for some reason unknown to the world of Athas. The Herald's peculiarity, the fact that he is a creature of another world and his motives are unclear, is what makes him both a potential ally for or against the Sorcerer-Kings and a potential threat to the world that is Dark Sun.

Appearance of the Herald

Don't mess with
this guy's orb.

Physically, the Herald is a Deva, a servant of divine powers and a creature unheard of on the desert world of Athas. When found, be it by the player characters or some other party, his appearance is both astounding and alien. Although Athasians may have seen creatures with blue to gray skin covered in strange markings or tattoos, the Herald has a certain aura about him that feels completely foreign and out of place within the harsh, desert world of Athas.

His presence tends to make most Athasians uncomfortable in part because he is a creature unknown to the world but in part because he is imbued with power, divine power, that is completely foreign to Athas. Despite being far out of time and far from his source of power, the Herald can still utilize and manipulate the divine forces imbued into him by the Gods. His utilization of this power is enough to make even the Sorcerer-Kings take notice. He is an anomaly in Athas and the players should be reminded of that.

When found, he would be wearing clothing normally associated with Deva in Dungeons & Dragons: gossamer blends of silk that support the majestic, divine appearance of Deva. Of course, how he changes his appearance as he adapts to the environment of Athas can be an important element of his character. Does he continue to clothe himself in a manner consistent with the old world he came from, or does he take on the appearance of the new world in which he awoke?

Adding the Herald to your Dark Sun Campaign

Having the Herald appear in a Dark Sun campaign is relatively easy to do. The PCs (or some other power) could find a strange cave in the desert that has within it a mysterious sarcophagus containing him. Maybe he appears after the activation of some ancient ritual from the old time, a powerful exhibition of old, divine power. It could be as simple as he simply appears, teleported through time to a specific day and place to carry out his divine mission.  Depending on the story of the campaign, it may be more appropriate to make his appearance a sort of startling twist at the end of a previous story arc, giving the players something to think about between play sessions.

How the Herald appears in Athas is much less important than why he is there. When introducing the Herald to a campaign, it is important to know what his motivations are. Here are a few possibilities as to why the Herald was left behind and what his goals for Athas may be:

Who knows what he could
be doing here...

1) The Herald was left by the Gods as a last ditch effort to prevent their demise. Perhaps he knows a way to tear the fabric of space and time and allow the Gods to escape their inevitable destruction at the hands of the Primordials. Maybe he holds the secrets to creating a new age of Gods. Whatever his purpose, the eventual conclusion of his plan could be exactly what Athas needs. Or, more sinisterly, the worst thing that could possibly happen to Athas. No matter the exact details of the plan, the Sorcerer-Kings would likely be interested in stopping the Herald's efforts as the return of the Gods would likely lead to their demise. Or, maybe they try to use the Herald to advance their own plans for divinity. How the party chooses to side in this conflict may depend on the nature of the divine plan.

2) The Herald could be a deserter from the God-War. Although a dutiful servant of the Gods, Deva still retain a modicum of independent will and sense of self-preservation. The Herald may simply be somebody who could not handle the horrors of the war and fled, adopting the moniker of "The Herald" in order to establish himself as relevant in this new world. Of course, without the power of the Gods, the Herald may no longer have the ability to be reborn anew. After countless lives serving the Gods, the Herald may know that he is on his last life. Maybe he sees the efforts of the Sorcerer-Kings as method he could use to preserve his existence. How the Herald deals with his newfound mortality could become an extended story arc, with the player characters trying to aid him (or stop him) from carrying out some sort of plan to save himself.

3) In contrast to above, the Herald may be an effort by the Gods to repair the eventual damage caused by the God-War. Maybe they knew the resulting arcane power that would appear and sent the Herald forward to rebuild the world. The Herald could be an important tool in restoring Athas to its pre-devastation status. The Preservers would be quite interested in him. Of course, it is quite possible that the Herald was meant to be brought back shortly after the God-War. How will he respond to the fact that his restoration was too late to save Athas? Is his purpose irrelevant now, or is there still a way for him to rebuild the world?

Whatever his goal, it is likely that he would not share them readily as the world he awoke to was not necessarily what he expected. The Herald would try to execute his plans while letting those he works with no the least about the eventual outcome. Building a measure of distrust in the Herald could be an important part of his involvement in the campaign. Take him at his word? Or assuming he has no good intentions for Athas? Only time will tell.

The Council of Spiders, Part 4

Dungeons & Dragons: Encounters is all about introducing new people to the game. Session 0 of Council of Spiders was last week and as an Encounters Dungeon Master, it's my responsibility to make sure new players have a good sense of what they are doing. Part of the way I have always tried to do that was by providing clear, relatively easy to understand pre-made characters for new players to use. I also have a number of player aids that help explain certain game mechanics in an easy-to-digest way.

Last week I actually had a fellow come in who had never played Dungeons & Dragons before. We went through the character building process and he was able to grasp most of what Heroes of the Forgotten Kingdoms was saying, but I could not help but think that when it comes time for the actual game, he will have a bear of a time with the fancy Encounters character sheet that he wrote his character down on. I thought about it and realized I could very easily whip up a character card for him that would at least simplify the character sheet interaction. From this process, Xian was born.

Whatever you do, don't call him Belgos.

Another Bregan D'Aerth mercenary joins the ranks.

As this new player built his character, I realized that he created a very slight alternative to Belgos. I considered just giving him the Belgos character card but the differences were sufficient that I thought it would be neat to turn his character into a pre-made card and share it with the world at large.

With three Bregan D'Aerthe mercenaries in my set of characters, perhaps it is about time that I look into a different type of character.

The Council of Spiders, Part 1 (Revised)

He's busy with that.

When I first created the "re-make" of Ryltar, I did not have a good picture of the character that appears on the card. I suggested at the bottom of the post that I would revisit the character once I had a clean shot of the Drow warrior. When I finally realized that the image used for Ryltar was actually from Heroes of the Forgotten Kingdoms, I was somewhat surprised. I had access to the picture the whole time (through the D&D Art Archives). Keeping that in mind, I poked around and found the original picture.

Of course, imagine my surprise when I discovered that the picture was much busier than I would have imagined. The entire bottom of the photo involved the severe slaying of a bullywug (or some other sort of froggy like creature). The red background was similar to what I worked with before, so that was not especially frustrating. The Drow warrior still had the quiver on his back, a thing that I still found surprisingly irritating as the character did not have a bow. Most surprising, though, was that the image had been flipped horizontally. All of these facts seemed a bit peculiar but I was willing to work around them.

New and Improved Ryltar

Now with additional abilities!

Some people may question the color change. D&D: Encounters character cards have always been color coded in such a way that you can easily determine what type of character it is just by the color. Of course, the thing that is being color coded in the classic cards is the power source (Psionic, Martial, Divine, Primal, or Arcane). Honestly, when I realized how the colors were chosen, it did not take long for me to decide against doing that. Although it would have been easier to keep Ryltar's background red as it goes better with the original image, I wanted all of the Drow characters I made to share background elements. As it ends up, this card uses the same background color as another card I worked on at the same time, so that's the reason for it. If I were more clever, I would have color coded them by House affiliation.

As the new Drow character themes were available, I changed Ryltar to be a Bregan D'Aerthe Mercenary which gave him a bonus to his Bluff check and a new combat ability, Skullduggery. All around, this version of Ryltar is actually quite playable and I hope people find him an effective replacement for the original.

The Council of Spiders, Part 3

Having made a Drow servant of Lolth, I thought I should also make a few characters that fit in with the other "factions" of the new Dungeons & Dragons: Encounters season. Of course, my ability to craft quality Drow characters is surprisingly limited by my ability to find good pictures of Drow to use for the card. Keeping that in mind, I thought I would try and make some sort of quality Bregan D'aerthe mercenary using a picture I was able to grab from the Neverwinter Campaign Guide book.

For those unfamiliar, Bregan D'aerthe is an elite Drow mercenary company primarily composed of male Drow of fallen houses. Founded by noted R. A. Salvatore character Jarlaxle Baenre, Bregan D'arthe works for the various Houses of Menzoberranzan and anybody else wealthy enough to pay their fee. I felt like any Bregan D'aerthe mercenaries I make should be powerful and have his power come from a unique and peculiar source. The Lady of the White Well, the cursed daughter of Sehanine and a mortal enchanted by Lolth to look like Corellon, seemed like an interesting thematic match. From there, the Fey Hexblade mercenary Kelnozz was born.

A bold mercenary of Bregan D'aerthe.

His Cloud of Darkness is bigger than yours.

I have been trying to give these new Encounters characters a little bit of backstory to plug them into the plot of the adventure. All of these characters come already "slotted" into one of the three factions presented in the Encounters packet. Obviously, Kelnozz is an agent of Bregan D'aerthe. I also selected the Bregan D'aerthe Spy character theme from the Neverwinter Campaign Guide as it was available in the Character Builder and effectively captured the essence of the character concept.

Hopefully, Kelnozz will bring new players a more interesting experience than the pre-gens provided by Wizards of the Coast. He fits nicely into the pre-built factions provided in the Council of Spiders adventure and should be an interesting addition to the set.

The Council of Spiders, Part 2

When the new season of Dungeons & Dragons: Encounters was announced to be the story of Drow machinations in and about Menzoberranzan, it was apparent that the "classic" pre-made characters would not work. Wizards of the Coast provided a set of new characters to use but I found them to be somewhat lacking. After looking at them, I felt it was appropriate  to remake all six of them so they would be more effective at what they were supposed to do.

After finishing the first one, the Drow Slayer Ryltar, I started looking at other interesting Drow character possibilities. It did not take long for me to decide that it would be a little more interesting to make my own Drow characters for use in D&D: Encounters. For my first attempt, I present a very different kind of Drow priestess.

Not the best front line character, with defenses like those...

Who doesn't love turning into a giant spider?

When I was putting this together, it made sense to me that a loyal servant of Lolth would be able to transform into a giant spider in service of the Spider Queen. The only real character class that supported this was the Player's Handbook 2 Druid, a class that gets very little love or respect in the Dungeons & Dragons 4E continuum. I had been talking to a friend about how to do the PHB2 Druid properly and I thought this was a good opportunity to do that.'

Technically, the Druid's Wild Shape can turn into any animal. I limited it here to "Spider" only. Honestly, I cannot imagine that any self-respecting servant of Lolth choosing to polymorph into anything BUT a spider. Because spiders are a thing...

The Council of Spiders, Part 1

I have been in the business of making pre-made character cards for Dungeons & Dragons: Encounters for quite some time. I never would have expected to need to make new pre-made characters but I quickly found that some players wanted to use the Encounters program as an opportunity to explore new character types and concepts without having to to go through the trouble of making the character. Adding novelty character "images" was something I was more than happy to do.

One of the biggest problems I had with the pre-made characters provided was that they were not always well implemented characters. In fact, I find that they often had a plethora of poor choices in the design process. While there is something to be said about providing something to be improved upon, the idea that these characters felt like they had been made by somebody who did not understand the game was disheartening. Further, when a new person arrives and plays with a group of "regulars" with their own characters, the deficiencies of the pre-made characters became quite apparent.

With the new season of Encounters, a new stock of pre-made characters have finally been included for players to choose from. As this new season centers around the Drow and their machinations, it only made sense that a set of Drow adventurers would be included with the adventure content. The biggest problem with these characters is that they are actually just the previous six characters with the race option switched to "Drow." Some of these characters are so poorly implemented as to beg the question: Why print them at all? In response to that, I decided to look at each one in turn and see how I would have better developed it.

For once, I have chosen to abide by all of the official rules. This character is developed entirely from standard Essentials content. He is a Drow Slayer Fighter and all of his choices come from those allowed in the Essentials core books.

Drow + Slayer? Not the standard combination.

It's amazing what a good feat choice can do.

Ryltar is the Slayer Fighter of the bunch. On first glance of the character card, I was already thoroughly convinced that the folks responsible for making this did not have a good working knowledge of the game. The original Ryltar was a Strength-based Slayer with a Constitution of 14 and a Dexterity (his secondary stat) of 12. None of this felt right. I looked at it and realized that I had already made a Dexterity based Slayer, so it did not take me long to come up with a quick fix for ol' Ryltar. Swapping out his "Toughness" feat for "Melee Training (Dexterity)," I shifted the 18 Strength to Dexterity (bumping it up to 20). Keeping the Constitution at 14, I put the rest of the points into Charisma (for effect, I suppose).

The net effect was astounding. This new Ryltar was better at hitting his opponents AND dealt more damage. I swapped out his hand axe for a dagger so his ranged attack became absurdly more effective. With a high Dexterity, he was able to wear lighter armor and benefit from the natural Dexterity modifier, making his speed higher and most of his armor-affected skill checks better.

Honestly, after making this Dexterity based Ryltar, I could not see a way in which the original was superior. My Ryltar, made only using the elements of the Essentials books, was simply a more finely crafted character. A new player who picked this character up would still be able to compete with Encounters participants who made overly-optimized "super characters." Although not perfect, I think it better fit the intent of the original character while retaining it's Drow-iness and Slayer-iness.

NOTE: The image for this character card was taken from scans of the official D&D Encounters character card. Due to that, it bears characteristics of the medium. Once high-resolution images of the Drow characters are available, it will be updated accordingly. This website apologizes for the quality issue.

Dungeons of Dredmor (and Dragons), Part 2

After talking a lot about the Dungeoneer with his Pet Mimic, I could not imagine what other sorts of ridiculous characters would come out of this relationship.  It did not take long until my good friend Dominic came up with even more ridiculous ideas.  I suspect the next character he provided was inspired, in part, by the ever popular sequence from UHF: Conan the Librarian.

When we really began talking about it, I had spent a significant amount of time reading about the Berserker character class featured in Heroes of the Feywild.  The idea of the calm, collected librarian who eventually loses his cool and rages against errant teenagers and book graffiti artists was too entertaining and ridiculous an idea to pass up.  With a little talk and a little inspiration from Phil Foglio, Grom of the Reference Desk, Lord of Circulation and Shelving was born.

Grom, from a long line of noble librarians

Be wary of the Shush of the Five Tribes

When Dominic gave me Grom's character sheet, I was surprised to see how similar to my previous Berserker, Anakin Skywalker, Grom was.  Other than a few power and feat selections, the biggest difference was that Grom was also a Scholar (character theme), which gave him a slightly different set of abilities.  Comically, one of Grom's abilities has an ability based of his Intelligence modifier, which Grom is sadly lacking in.
Despite being very similar to Anakin, there is something very different about Grom.  A new player who chooses to play Anakin versus a new player who chooses to play Grom are undoubtedly going to have a very different experience.  Honestly, making the same mechanical character in two very different presentations does emphasize the point I tried to make when I first set out making these novelty character cards.  Although the rules provide a framework, it's what you bring to the table in the role-playing department that makes the game the fun that it is.  My biggest concern has been that, as a Dungeons & Dragons: Encounters DM, I rarely get an opportunity to play these characters myself.

Which is too bad...

Dungeons of Dredmor (and Dragons)

A friend of mine recently began talking to me about making strange Dungeons & Dragons characters in the style of the popular Rogue-like, Dungeons of Dredmor. Having never played the game, I did not have a whole lot to say about it, but I was happy to oblige his interest. Apparently, this interest was ... absolutely ridiculous characters. His first idea was an iconic dungeon explorer who had acquired a sort of "pet" in his travels: a mimic. As the story goes, after years of exploring the deep dungeons, this erstwhile adventurer found a very strange creature began following him around. From that idea came the most peculiar D&D character I've been party to...

My friend assures me that this makes perfect sense in the world of Dredmor. I suppose, as a fan of Torchlight, I understand how a Mimic might end up hopping alongside an adventurer, although it still felt a bit weird. Nonetheless, the idea of a brave dungeon explorer being followed around by a Pet Mimic has now been done in the world of Dungeons & Dragons.

Danger is, in fact, his middle name...

Dungeon Adventurer, Born and Bred

When I was first approached by this, the real question centered on how to make a character that had a "pet" that acted enough like a Mimic. There were options, including some interesting character themes from Heroes of the Feywild, but the Sentinel Druid ended up being the one that made the most sense. If nothing else, granting combat advantage to everybody around it seemed like a viable feature for the Mimic. Who wouldn't be weirded out by a hopping chest trying to eat you?

Normally, all of my pre-generated D&D characters are "street legal."  This is the first time I changed text to better suit the needs of the character.  I suppose this partially motivated by the fact that I did not create this character; I just generated the character card. The daily power "No Dirty Fighting Here..." has been modified to be more expansive than its original form. The original ability, Shillelagh, only applied to hammers, maces, and staves. I felt that was far too limiting for "Danger" McCallahan, so I expanded it to be any weapon. It's a small deviation that I hope will not anger too many people that follow the blog.

D&D: The Clone Wars (Part 10)

For the longest time, I had a real problem with respect to two things in the whole D&D/Star Wars crossover.  First of all, I had really wanted to do a dual-lightsaber character but did not want to use villainous characters (such as Assajj Ventress).  Secondly, I had spent a great deal of time not knowing what to do with Ahsoka Tano, Anakin Skywalker's apprentice.  Both of these things bothered me and I would never have guessed that the two issues would one day come together.

But they did.  When I was watching season 3 of Star Wars: The Clone Wars, I noticed that Ahsoka Tano had two things hanging from her belt.  I assumed that one was a ... scanner?  Honestly, I had no idea what it was, but the one thing I knew it couldn't be was another lightsaber.  That is, until the Mortis trilogy, where she busted out dual lightsaber action!  It's like the writers had heard my thoughts, unduly upset about not being able to properly work a two-weapon character into my D&D re-skin.

The color is just because it matched the picture....

Dual lightsaber wielding action!

I found it somewhat difficult picking all of the appropriate class features for Ahsoka.  I wanted to make sure that anybody who picked her up (and knew waaaaay too much about Star Wars) would feel like she had been done right.  Ahsoka is an interesting character because she was put into the story to be a sort of reflection of Anakin Skywalker and his slow progression throughout the series.  This is somebody who learned the important parts of being a Jedi from somebody who is slowly being corrupted to darkness.

For those curious, this variant of Ahsoka is an Elf Ranger (Scout).  I felt that the higher Elf speed matched Ahsoka's agile style while the ability to re-roll an attack seemed to fit Ahsoka and her ability to do the most ridiculous stuff as a Padawan.  It seemed to work out well.

Dungeons & Dragons and Star Wars

As I put the finishing touches on my eleventh or twelfth Star Wars themed Dungeons & Dragons character, I thought I would take time to say a few things about how Dungeons & Dragons (4th Edition) and Star Wars intersect.

Star Wars: The Clone Wars is a television show currently (as of this writing) entering its fifth season.  It fills the gap between Episode II and Episode III.  As I see it, it is the Star Wars content that everybody thought they were going to see with the prequel movies.  It revolves around the Clone Wars, it displays a galaxy at war, and shows us the slow degradation of our alleged protagonist, Anakin Skywalker.

However, as it is an ongoing television series, it is much more than that little piece of story about the man who would be Darth Vader.  It is about the entire war, not just the few characters who's names we remember from the movies.  The creators of the show might be some of the world's biggest Star Wars fans as they often go out of their way to fill the show with bits and pieces of Expanded Universe trivia while crafting out a galaxy we thought we knew so well.  Quite frankly, I consider it the best Star Wars I have ever seen.

But what does this have to do with Dungeons & Dragons?  When I started making pre-generated characters for Dungeon & Dragons: Encounters, it was because there had been a definitive drought of characters provided by Wizards of the Coast.  Although I understand their intent in doing so, I felt like many players liked the ability to try out new character classes and features via the Encounters program yet did not have the time to make their own characters.

As I found interesting, iconic characters to convert to D&D format, I started to realize that I had made a significant number of Star Wars characters.  Star Wars characters seemed like an easy thing.  People would walk into Encounters, never having played Dungeons & Dragons, but could immediately get a sense of what their character would do because they knew the character.  Anakin Skywalker?  Whine a little bit and then start killing things with reckless abandon.  Obi-Wan Kenobi?  Talk a lot and belittle Anakin.  C-3PO?  Complain a lot.  I considered these iconic character a resounding success.

But why are we fighting Drow and Spiders, Master Plo Koon?

After having made five or six of these Star Wars D&D characters, a good friend asked me why I did not consider writing my own Lair Assault or One-Shot Adventure using Clone Wars material.  Wasn't going after Mordai Vell in his underground Dawn Forge just as reasonable as breaking into the Separatist facility to rescue R2-D2?  It made sense.  Choose a group of six characters and go after General Grievous aboard his flagship, the Malevolence.  Or, battle the Sith Assassin Assajj Ventress during the Battle of Christophsis.  This seemed a great plan.

I am more powerful than any Dragon, my dear Obi-Wan...

Although still hard at work on this, my first attempt has been to recreate the fifth episode of the first season, entitled "Rookies."  The episode begins on the Rishi moon, where a group of newly commissioned clone troopers have been stationed to monitor for Separatist incursion.  Their job?  Maintain the "All Clear" signal unless invasion by the Separatists is imminent, thus warning the rest of the Republic of the attack.

Alright, brothers.  We have to save the Republic from the clankers.

By the middle of the episode, it has become an adventure of five characters as they attempt to retake the Rishi station from Commando Droids who are masking a Separatist fleet's invasion into Republic space.  Captain Rex, Commander Cody, Echo, Fives, and Hevy must fight off a Rishi eel, get back into the station, defeat the Commando Droids, and deactivate the "All Clear" signal.  Of course, trials and tribulations face them as droid reinforcements arrive to secure the outpost.  Soon, they are forced to do the unthinkable and one of them makes a great sacrifice for the Republic.

That sounds like a perfect one-shot D&D adventure!  So, what started as an attempt to liven up my Wednesday D&D Encounters game has turned into a project building Star Wars themed adventures and encounters.  Although not for everybody, it demonstrates that with the right homebrew mindset, the Fourth Edition of Dungeons & Dragons can do quite a bit and make it fun.

Dungeons & Dragons: Ace Attorney (Part 3)

Not every character in the Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney series is an attorney.  In fact, there are any number of absurd characters worth memorializing as Dungeons & Dragons characters that are anything but attorneys.  As I put the final touches on Apollo Justice, I realized that there was another character from that Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney that I wanted to make into a character to go along with Polly.  It only made sense to build his "assistant" and Phoenix Wright's adoptive daughter, Trucy, as a D&D character.

Notable illusionist, Trucy Wright!

She controls her enemies.

I decided I would experiment with Illusion magic and see how an Illusionist Mage would turn out.  The class feature "Illusion Apprentice" makes all targets hit by arcane illusion spells to suffer a -2 penalty to hit the caster un of Trucy's next turn.  An illusion feat, Phantom Echoes, causes all targets hit by an arcane illusion spell to grant combat advantage to Trucy until the end of her next turn.  Both of those effects seemed best described as a trait, so I wrote it onto the front of the card.  Enemies hit by Trucy's illusions will be highly motivated to stay away from her as they not only get a penalty but she gets a bonus to hit them.

The Phantom Echoes power had another peculiar feature that I spent some time mulling over.  If the attack had an effect which imposes a condition that a save can end, the granting of combat advantage is tied to that save roll.  This was only applicable in one case, with Trucy's daily attack power.  Instead of writing an exceedingly cumbersome traits box that separated that fact, I instead decided to implement it directly into the attack power.  So, her feat is actually split across a general trait describing every power and a subtle change to the single attack power that behaves recently.

It was fun putting together a few PW:AA characters and I hope to continue to get that chance moving forward.

D&D: The Clone Wars (Part 9)

After a while, making Jedi and Clone Troopers gets a little boring.  Occasionally, I feel as if I need to create something a bit different.  C-3PO and R2-D2 seemed like good choices for characters as they appear in quite a lot of Clone Wars episodes and they are iconic.  Unfortunately, making a protocol droid and an astromech droid using a ruleset that focuses on combat seemed difficult.

C-3PO was surprisingly simple once a friend helped me realize that he is simply the laziest of lazy warlords.  R2-D2 was tough, on the other hand.  Everybody had their own idea how he would be.  Some people thought he was a thief or rogue.  A wizard.  A bard.  Honestly, he is something of a generalist insomuch that he has a gadget for everything, so it was difficult finding something that captured him well.

I wanted to capture a few things with R2-D2.  He is something of a jack-of-all-trades in the Star Wars universe, although he's best known for cracking locks.  Most of his abilities are a result of some gadget or another hidden inside his casing.  From memory, I could think of a buzz saw, an electric zapper, a welding torch, and his booster jets.  So, whatever I chose would have to somehow capture as large a cross-section of those abilities as possible.

The Star Wars character who knows *everything*.

R2-D2, the jack-of-all-trades.

I had originally conceived of making him a Pixie to capture the booster jets, but I did not feel comfortable torquing the Pixie.  Besides, R2-D2 normally only uses his booster jets for brief periods and only rarely.  So, an encounter power would be reasonable enough.  I came across a rather peculiar racial power for Goblins that fit the bill: Leg Up lets a Goblin character adjacent to another creature jump his speed horizontally or 10 feet vertically.  This seemed a perfect match for R2-D2's booster jets.

Thief and wizard were high on my list of classes to use.  However, neither of them quite fit R2-D2 how I thought he should be.  When I started flipping through different classes, I found the Sorcerer to have an array of powers that might fit.  Furthermore, the Storm Sorcerer had a flight ability (on natural 20 attack roll) that also looked good.  So, from that, the Goblin Storm Sorcerer named R2-D2 was born.

I will honestly say that even after I had settled on a Goblin Storm Sorcerer, I still had what was potentially the most difficult challenge yet remaining: an iconic quote.  I spent at least twenty to thirty minutes scouring different websites, trying to find out how his bleeps and bloops are best written.  Unfortunately, I did not find anything that was particularly impressive.  Thus, I stuck with the relatively uninteresting <beep> <beep>. Perhaps I'll touch it up in the future.

People who have read my C-3PO post should already know why it is that R2-D2 is a vampire.  I wanted droids to be modeled after undead.  Radiant damage is ion blast and necrotic damage is more like radioactive damage.  Thus, the natural resistances and vulnerabilities of vampires worked very well.

At some point, I will likely try an alternative R2-D2 build, perhaps using a Pixie with a more wizardly class.  But, for now, R2-D2 is now available to join the rest of the Clone Wars team.

D&D: The Clone Wars (Part 8)

One thing that I have found in building all of these different Dungeons & Dragons characters is there are a lot of different ways to achieve certain character results. When I wanted to make a Clone Trooper, I wanted a ranged weapon character.  I started with the Ranger (Hunter) as the obvious choice and ended up with Hevy and Jek.  The Archer Warlord was another obvious choice, resulting in Commander Cody.  As I continued to research, I found some classes that seemed less obvious at first but fit well for a character like Captain Rex.  Sometimes, though, it takes me a while to find even the most obvious permutation.

Echo, Defender of Kamino and Rishi Station.

Pretty simple power set.

When I did Hevy, the only "Domino Squad" episode I had seen was the first season episode, Rookies.  I never would have guessed that these clones would appear in later episodes.  When I finally got to season three, I was quite pleased that not only did these clones get a back story (in the episode Clone Cadets), but also a sequel to the original episode where the survivors of Rishi Station return to Kamino. Excepting Cody and Rex, these were the first clones that really stuck out as characters.  It only seemed appropriate that I feature as many of them as I can as Dungeons & Dragons characters.

I made Echo at roughly the same time I did Charon, so the similarities between the two is easy to see.  Like Charon, Echo is a slayer fighter focused on Dexterity and ranged combat.  As a human, Echo got an additional feat.  This allowed the selection of the Greatbow proficiency, giving him enormous range and a higher damage range.  Dealing 1d12 + 10 damage on every hit, Echo is no slouch in the damage dealing department.  I felt like the Poised Assault stance seemed more appropriate for Echo than the Unfettered Fury stance that Charon had as Echo served as a sniper when he helped defend Kamino.

Dungeons & Dragons: Ace Attorney (Part 1) [Alternate Image]

Alternate Image?  It's something I picked up from local game company Flying Frog Productions.  As it ends up, they are not fond of doing special promo cards at trade shows or for pre-orders.  Instead, they like to do alternative images on normal cards.  It makes them unique but not game-changing.

After I did Apollo Justice and a related upcoming card, I thought it appropriate to redo the art on the Miles Edgeworth character card so it matched the style of the other ones.  Hope people like a "matched set" of characters.

Same text as before, new image (mostly with new background)

Still the same Sorcerer-King Warlock we already saw.