| Stop Me If You've Heard This One Before |
[Mar. 26th, 2009|03:07 pm] |
So for lunch I was doing a Tuna Helper dish for the first time, and Allie reminds me to drain the tuna before adding it to the mix, otherwise it would turn the whole thing soggy-- Tuna Helpless, as she quipped.
I retorted that, knowing me, it would as likely turn out to be Tuna Hell. That cracked her up.
Seeing as I already had as many as three fleshed out D&D characters I had never gotten to play with yet, it seemed silly to be making any more. Silliness seldom stops me from doing certain things however, and I decided that Tarkov, Farlow, and Siya would be lonely all by themselves; they needed a party.
I enjoy drawing Mei, and so she had to be in there somehow, small and smug as ever, but packing the firepower to back it up. Human Wizard was the easy spot for her, canceling out my long-standing allergy to casters and magic users in general. Snuck in a little Spiral Power flavor in there as well, heh.
Now we had crowd control. We needed a healer.
Once again, it was time to mix it up with a race I never play, and a class I avoid. Dwarf was the obvious pick to round out the races but am not sure whether to pick a Dwarven Cleric or a Dwarven Paladin, both of which are as common as the grass. To distinguish him a little, I decided that a fairly unusual background and backstory might be in order.
I already had a female black Elf, so why not a male Asian Dwarf? I'd already decided on a black, bulky armour motif, wicked-looking sword/war axe, and if I had to have a shield at all, it would have to be spiked. I'm keeping the long, silky black hair, too. Can't quite decide if I want them braided though. At the same time, I tried out a couple of other concepts I liked, including the scarab-horn helmet and the sacred writings draped over the breastplate.
As sinister as the initial appearance of this fellow is, he is designed to be the most benevolent and charismatic of the group. His story is one of the religious devout, happily married for some hundreds of years, but sadly lacking in offspring to bring up in the faith. Eventually, this dwarven dogmatic decides to go on a pilgrimage to his pantheon's holy land in the hopes of acquiring favor enough to father a pious heir or heiress. He sets off not on the usual paths however, or even in a caravan of like-minded dwarves, but throws in with a most unlikely set of adventurers whose goals, or at least destinations, intersect with his own.
If he was going to go on a pilgrimage, might as well take the time to preach and perhaps convert others on the way. Then he might get twins.
So now we had the rudiments of a party-- a little geared towards offense, but with myself being the sole architect of this gathering, one can scarcely expect something as quaint as balance.
When the PHB2 came out, I was told a little about the Primal classes, including the Druid, which gave me some ideas. Having looked over the book myself, I saw that another viable option for an additional controller in the team was available.
Male Human Warden, and none of this forest-love nonsense either. This fellow is a bog-dweller, and channels the powers of rot and decay. Drawing heavily from Magic: The Gathering themes here, particularly the regime of Black mana and swampery. I don't even have a drawing for him yet, as I can't decide whether to have him in black, or dress him as the most colorful of all, on account of his clothes and gear all being random salvage from the hundreds of travelers to have lost their lives over the years in the marshes he dwells in. Maybe the latter is better. Point is, this fellow's hook is in his quiet mystery, this gaunt, pallid fellow with the stringy, greasy brown hair and the air of nausea about him, even though he has not a speck of dirt on him.
A poison fighter if I can make him so, and an angle I think would be neat is if all his weapons were corroded to the point just above usability, but so rusted over that any contact by the blades with a victim would likely result in some kind of enchanted tetanus or something.
Finally, we get to Saynora, whose name means the colorful marbling found in various metamorphic rock. Thinking up this female Goliath Barbarian was loads of fun, primarily as a comedic foil to Tarkov, my big, obnoxious Dragonborn. Sparks flew immediately upon their first imaginary meeting, centering on how short Saynora is compared to other Goliaths, and Tarkov's insistence on calling her Elthen, the dragonborn word for 'tower'.
I already knew this girl would be very, very angry-- straightforward rage barbarian for easy play, but I was free to mold her appearance as I wished. Given the significance the dark patches have for the Goliath race in general, an ominous tear drop shape was something I was thinking about if it didn't feel too contrived or generic.
As another departure from my convention, she will be a Great Mace user. The fun thing I want to try to implement is a minor weapon she has that doesn't interfere with the two-hand status of her main weapon, but is an off-hand weapon that can be used in conjunction with it-- in giving her a nice, long braid, I decided to add an iron ball at the end of it. Might just count as a distraction at most, but the thought of a mace-wielding girl flicking her head around in battle to swing what amounts to a hair flail into enemy faces tickles me to no end.
So there you have it. None of these guys even have character sheets yet; just placeholder images and glimpses of lives into whose shoes I may want to jump in in the future. The biggest temptation I'm trying to resist is the thought of just taking the lot of them, saying bollocks to actually playing the game, and then setting them down on their own adventures with each other, where I am both PCs, NPCs, and DM.
I think that's called 'writing'.
Godspeed~
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