Dungeons and Dragons 30-day challenge

[Skye Prower 386]

Day 27 – A character I want to play in the future.

 

Sorry for the (yet another) delay.  Yesterday was kinda crazy busy.

 

So, the character I most want to play. I mentioned it before in chatting about DnD, but here’s the official answer.

 

Nim, my half-elf monk.  But, she’s not your ‘study in a monastery/martial artist’ monk.  Instead, she’s a dancer, who uses her dance moves to fight in combat without ever losing her rhythm (In theory).  She was born after her mother had an affair, which was rather obvious given both her parents were Elves, and after her younger sister was born, ran away from home thinking she was uncared for, and ended up joining an Entertainer’s Troupe.  I haven’t fleshed out the backstory much more, as that will depend in what ever world she might end up in.

Her name was originally going to be Nimue.  But, as I was coming up with the idea in my head, I had a pretty clear image in my mind how I wanted her to look.  Only to realise the image was that of Din from the legend of Zelda games!  So I shortened the name to ‘Nim’ to fit that more!

I was going to also mention Noi, a half-elvin Warlock, who I wanted to play since I first got the 5^th ed books.  However, one of my players in my Beginners’ game is wanting to try their hand at DMing (they grow up so fast *sniffs*).  So it looks like Noi might get a chance to be played very soon.

I chose Noi over Nim because Nim requires… a bit of complex rules (multiclassing) a bit of rules tweaking (with a Drunken Master bonus that doesn’t work with the concept) and possible some house ruling to work properly.  And that’s not something fair to spring on a new GM.

[Skye Prower 386]

Day 28 – A character I will never play again

Strap yourselves in.  This is a long one.  (Hence also why it’s also a day late.  Had a game on last night)

So, the character I will never play again is Corax.  Sorta.  See, there are actually two versions of Corax.

The first version was made for Baldur’s Gate, a half-elf fighter mage.  Not my first character for that game, but the one I made once I understood how the game mechanics works.  The idea was a character who primary uses their weapons skills to battle, with the occasionally fireball in case of emergencies.  But because of how the armour and magic system interact (the heavier the armour, the greater the chance a spell fails) I wanted to equip them with a shield and light armour.  Yet, I also wanted the character to have a ranged attack.  A bow wouldn’t work.  You can’t have a bow and a shield equipped at the same time.  The only way to swap between them is to open the Inventory.  Which unpauses the game.  Good luck trying that in the middle of combat.

The solution?  Throwing Axes.  There’s even some in the game that return to your hand when thrown, in essence, unlimited ammo.

This version of Corax is one I would like to bring back some day.  In fact, he’d work great as a 5^th Edition Eldritch Knight, i.e. the Fighter class that gets some spells.  Plus, they even get the ability to bond with a weapon, allowing them to summon it back to their hand.  That even covers the returning throwing axe trick!

But then we have the other Corax *shudders*  This was the very first character I made for the pen and paper game, DnD 3.5 edition.  He was based on the BG version, but with some difference.  Mostly due to another DnD RPG: Neverwinter Nights.  In Neverwinter, there were some quests that were locked by class, or needing certain abilities such as casting spells.  Not wishing to miss out on content, the character I made was a multiclass mishmash to try and cover as many of those quests as possible.

I took that attitude with me to the tabletop.  Which, as experienced players now, was a mistake.  TTRPG’s are not a single player game.  It’s a group performance.  But I was too dumb to realise that at the time, so I wanted my character to cover as many bases as possible.  I also wanted to take the Dragon Diciple class for all it’s stat boost.  Again, a holdover from Neverwinter, where there is a story where your gear gets stolen.

I said before it’s easy to mess up character development in 3.5 if you don’t know what you’re doing.  Well, it’s even easier if you just THINK you know what you’re doing.  First mistake, I started my build with Ranger, not Fighter.  Why?  Well, cause rangers are cool, which they are, and they get two-weapon fighting abilities.  But… they’re not great for multiclassing.  Nor are spell casters, so going into Sorcerer just gave me underpowered spells.  Add in poor feat choices and yeah, Corax was crazy underpowered.

Of course, an underpowered character can still be fun if it’s a good character. But.. urgh, he was.  The background for Corax was…. terrible.  I’m kinda embarrassed posting this, but…

Okay, so… Corax had an evil dragon as one of his ancestors.  Nothing wrong with that, it explains both Sorcerer and Dragon Disciple.  Then I had him captured by evil cultists of the dragon, who wanted to awaken his dragon blood.  Again, nothing wrong with that, if a bit clichéd. 

THEN, the cult traps him, alone, if a frigging FLOATING CASTLE for TEN frigging years.  Alone!  They do nothing too him.  And apparently, to explain why he’s a Ranger, the only things there were to talk to were ravens…. Yeah… Oh, and he just happened to find a bunch of throwing axes up there…. No idea why.

For the life of me I can’t remember how Corax escaped.  I probably had a magic portal appear for no reason it was that bad.

Corax didn’t even see the end of that campaign.  I got tired of playing him, so the cult eventually caught up with him and took him away.  Can’t say I’m overly sorry.  So yes, the Part-Dragon Ranger Corax is a character I will never play ever again.

The original Corax, the brave fighter-mage who met his fate when he encountered a random lone basilisk that was just chilling out on a castle balcony. Maybe one day he’ll see the light of day again.

[Skye Prower 386]

Day 29 – The number you always seem to roll on a d20?

Hmm… to be honest, there isn’t one.  The closest I can think of was when I was running my first Mutants and Masterminds game.  I seemed to roll an inordinate number of ‘1’s during that campaign.

But aside from that, there’s nothing I’m conscious of.

My Beginners group on the other hand, they seem to have a weird 18 curse.  Whenever it’s a group roll, someone will either roll an 18, or have a total of 18.  It’s pretty freaky, and it didn’t take long to become a reoccurring joke of the group!