Dungeons and Dragons Issues with Character Building

To start, I am going to say that while this post is going to focus on where D&D annoys me with how it builds characters, I still do like the game. The 5th edition has done the best job at being able to adapt to various play styles and allow for legitimate flexibility of build of any of the previous editions. These issues I find are ones other people will not care about but that's fine. Not every game is for every player and if the problems I have were addressed new problems would definitely rise up that other people have trouble with. That said, let's get on with it.

Cleric of the Forge (Hill Dwarf Forge Cleric)

This is going to be a little bit of a stereotypical character: the dwarven cleric of a forge god, but I want to create a cleric with a race that has a little bit more flexibility in terms of spending Ability Score Improvements so I can spend a couple of the early improvements on some particular feats. I had a couple of potential ideas of what to use, and I might do some of those others later, but first I'm going to do this version. I am going to stick with the normal array for this and I don't have a particular idea in mind for how to give this a new twist. It's just a little bit of investigation into what this will look like. For that matter, the two Feats I'm considering for this aren't particularly unique and are rather obvious for a cleric to use.

Air-Headed Healer (Drow Life Cleric)

Back when I was still playing Dungeons and Dragons Online, I for a time played a drow cleric
unimaginatively named Peenk (her hair was pink). She was mostly geared toward healing and obliterating undead. Her Wisdom and Charisma was quite high, as was her Strength, because I knew going in I wanted heavier armor, but her Intelligence was really low. This is the reason I'm not using the normal 10 to 15 array I normally use here, because I want to be able to get the lower intelligence. I could have gone with a normal, default array, but I just like the extra flexibility of the 30 pt array.

Due to being mostly focused on healing, I'm going to go with the Life Domain. There aren't any of the feats I used in 3.X to enhance the character's abilities regarding turning undead or healing, but that's fine. Note on the art, I don't currently have DDO uploaded and can't remember which of my turbine accounts has it. However, I do have Neverwinter Nights 2 and was thus able to reproduce something similar to what Peenk looked like. I actually have another Drow cleric who was a nature cleric and archer who has been recreated in the list of 5e recreations.

Vampiric Sniper (Dhampir Gunslinger)

This is based a bit on Seras Victoria from the anime Hellsing and I am going to be using Matthew Mercer's Gunslinger and Benjamin Huffman's Dhampir race to pull this off. To actually do Seras, I'd mix bits of Warlock, Barbarian, and Gunslinger, but for this I'm going to be focusing on doing a straight Gunslinger build.

There isn't much to say about this save that she's a vampire with a gun. I could try to completely recreate Seras's backstory and abilities, but she's rather more varied than D&D makes easy to represent with its system. In this case, I'm going to be focusing mostly on Dexterity and Wisdom with some Constitution as well. That said, if this were Hero System, I'd have her with some rather middling Dexterity but high Strength and Constitution. This is because in 6th edition Hero System the ability to hit is not directly tied to any of the characteristics but has to be bought separately.

Hobgoblin Sky Pirate III - (Hobgoblin Bard of Valor)

This is another direction that I had decided I might go with this concept. In fact, as I desired to play a full caster, this one was ahead of the barbarian on the list of likelihoods. In the end I settled on the sorcerer option one I finally created the actual character. In the end, I had decided the fact that I had previously played a bard (granted only as far as level 4) settled me on sorcerer. Though that doesn't really make much sense given I have also recently played a sorcerer. Both bard and sorcerer are versatile enough classes that one might play very differently from another. That said, I also was feeling stubbornly determined to make best use of the Martial Training racial trait by taking a class that did not normally have martial weapons or armor proficiency. This is also what set me against Cleric and Druid while the firm desire to use a greatsword a la the picture settled me against Rogue.

Hobgoblin Sky-Pirate II (Hobgoblin Storm Herald)

When I was considering classes for building the hobgoblin sky-pirate concept, I went through a

couple of different concepts for it. So I'm going to stat out a couple of those variants here. This concept was inspired by a combination of the Pathfinder art and the GM's description of the world. I had been thinking of wanting to play a character based on that art for a while already and the world description of islands floating in air with great moons orbiting the remains of shattered world sold me on the Sky Pirate idea.


I am going to start with a Storm Herald barbarian. The description of the world setting certainly inspired me to the idea of a storm theme early. Also there was Taliesin Jaffe's portrayal of a Storm Herald Pirate in the Stream of Annihilation that also sparked my interest. Contrary to the version that's going live, using the Storm Sorcerer, this one will go for the desert storm as the Throne Moon of Jakhan she hails from is heavily connected to the element of fire.


One of the deciding elements not to go this way with Vimi was that another player was also thinking of playing barbarian. Plus I really enjoy pushing the limits of a concept, so trying to make a survivable melee sorcerer was an interesting challenge. However, it's interesting to explore some of the other concepts I had for her.

Hobgoblin Sky Pirate - (Hobgoblin Storm Sorcerer)

I am partly doing this as a sort of plan for how to proceed with a character I will be playing fairly soon in a campaign based around flying, magical ships piloting between moons in orbit around the remains of a shattered world. Islands drifting within the air. The major civilizations being on the moons but with spotty settlements on the various islands here and there and lots of places with elemental portals.

Now, there's a couple of things I know, the first is that in the actual campaign we will have the ability to gain feats via training as rewards for gaining reputation and renown within various factions. The other is that I always end up deviating from plans. One thing to note is that if you go with a specialty in thunder and lightning, you're going to want to be closer to the combat than usual for sorcerers. A lot of thunder and lightning stuff, including every cantrip, is short range or melee in nature. The hobgoblin race also comes with some armor and weapon proficiencies. Not as much as the mountain dwarves, mind you, but enough to make melee a bit easier on the player.

As another note, for this campaign we're refluffing the crossbows as pistols and rifles. They're using the exact same stats, but just a flavor change. Also note, I'm away from the house and using the old PDF names for some of the Storm Sorcerer traits, these will be fixed if they're off when I get home.

For this I am using the 30 point buy were given for the campaign.

Vanifer Burns Out - Princes of the Apocaverse - Session Twenty-Six

The Chapters and Cast of the Ballad

Within the bard's summoned shelter;
Time was taken to examine the haul;
In their place south of the smelter;
Though they had not time to see all.

Vimi Ajam - Hobgoblin Storm Sorcerer

Sorcerer Level 1

Background: Pirate

Str: 14

Dex: 12

Con: 15

Int: 14

Wis: 8

Cha: 15

HP: 8

AC: 12

Sorcerer Save DC: 12

Speed: 30ft

The Shiny Red Candy-Like Button - Airship Lost - Divine Blood Campaign - Third Session

[The camera screen shows a flickering blue light radiating off of the energy blade held by Lydia. The
image is shakily focused on the blade more than the various features of the walls around them. In the background, it is barely possible to catch the obvious signage in the Romanesque metal walls. The writing comes into focus enough to reveal an unknown set of syllables.]

So it's not a lightsaber, apparently. It's a "mana blade." It's still really cool. 

"Shouldn't you be filming the cages?"

What, Mr Darring? Oh, right. These things.

The Shiny Red Candy-Like Button - Airship Lost - Session Three Gameplay Notes

Back to the Airship Lost index - Aeryn Lee's Travel Log - Yukimura Amaya's Perspective

I ended up not compelling as many Aspects this session this time. This was the first Significant Milestone meaning that the party received 11 XP here. My original thought was that they would encounter some monsters rather than civilized people and then they would find enough stuff to scavenge to give their ship some decent navigation and ability to detect shards at range. Instead, they've come to the conclusion that this city-sized shard with an unknown number of supernatural predators would make a nice base of operations that they could fix and steer it around in their quest for home. So now they plan to use the Sol Suna for basically patrolling around the shard...once they make it safer to inhabit.