Gorgon Archer - Legend of Five Rings - 5th Edition (Epithet) - Character Creation Analysis

Official Kaito Shrine Keeper Art

The 5th edition of the game involves some very different mechanics than what came from earliereditions. I looked at 4th Edition already on another post. Now there are some similar structures. You choose a Clan, you choose a Family, and then you choose a School. There's also a twenty questions structure to the character creation. However, while the previous editions used the twenty questions as purely a way to fill out your character's personality and backstory, this edition ties the twenty questions into the mechanics as well. As with 4th edition, we can't really do a legitimate gorgon and have it make narrative sense. If the naga were available it would be a different issue, but we don't have that.

In addition, this new edition set back the timeline to before the Scorpion Coup and the core book does not include stats for any of the minor clans. As such, I do not have access to the Tsuruchi Archer school yet. There is, however, the Kaito Shrine Keeper which is an archer monk that does magic stuff with their archery. A further note of the lack of Minor Clans means no Snake Clan stats. So I can't make them a pariah by birth so much the way I did with the 4th edition character.

Bearer of Calamities - Variant Human Hexblade, Pact of the Tome

Anime: Gate of Memories is an third person fighting game with a lot of roleplaying game elements. It is based on a French tabletop RPG called Anima about which I don't have much knowledge more than that the art is full of inhumanly slender, long-limbed, and impossibly proportioned people and bizarre monsters and that the books are quite expensive.

I've been curious so I decided to pick this game up a while back to see if I could get some sense for the setting. However, it is a highly focused scenario and you don't get to build your own character. That gives a moderately limited idea of what is happening, but the character you are given made me think of a D&D warlock for obvious reasons. Eventually, I pondered that she seemed to most resemble a Hexblade who had taken the Pact of the Tome.

As a note, she finds and equips weapons, but the weapons just sort of increase her stats. They don't change her fighting style at all, so I tend to assume that regardless of what item she equips, it is subsumed into the flashes of energy that she uses when she fights. Also, she can switch places with her Patron, Ergo, they share a magic pool but have different health levels. However, I'm not sure how the different health levels would be represented, so I would have Ergo appear mostly as a fluff.

I'm going with a Faction Agent for background due to her associations with the Order of Nathanial and Variant Human for race.

For this I am using my typical theoretical 30 pt array of 15, 14, 13, 12, 11, 10.

Emma Terreal - 2nd Edition Geist

This is a rebuild of this character I played as a Geist from the 1st edition game.

Root: Advocate

Bloom: Avenger

Concept: Balance of Accounts

Burden: The Kindly

Archetype: Furies

Intelligence ***

Wits **

Resolve ***

Strength **

Dexterity **

Stamina ***

Presence *

Manipulation **

Composure ***

Veteran of Hell - Feral Winged Tiefling Monster Slayer (Revised) Ranger

In the Player's Handbook section on alignment on page 122 there is a paragraph that reads:

"Alignment is an essential part  of the nature of celestials and fiends. A devil does not choose to be lawful evil, and it does not tend toward lawful evil, but rather is lawful evil in its essence. If it somehow ceased to be lawful evil, it would cease to be a devil."

Now, despite the fact that it says "it does not choose" earlier on, the last line of that paragraph that interests me the most. We know that celestials have become fiends due to their choices such as Zariel who is now one of the Archdevils and rules the 1st of the Nine Hells. And there have been past discussions of fiends that rose to be celestials, also due to their choices, such as Eludecia who was a succubus paladin who had been made for the D&D fight club back in the days of 3rd edition. We also know that a lot of devils and demons had previously been mortals and, in fact, a lot of the involvement of the fiends with mortals is geared toward collecting recruits for the eternal Blood War.

Holy Archer - Wood Elven Celestial Warlock, Pact of the Blade

I've wanted to do a Divine Archer for a while now and had been focused on the Paladin due to Divine Smite. This is especially true once I heard that the Smite ability was limited to melee only for flavor reasons rather than balance.

However, when I started to think through a subclass I came to realize that it just doesn't work because the bulk of the Paladin features synergize very well with melee and almost not at all with ranged attacks.

Perhaps you could choose to sit near the other back rank members of your party, but that invites AoE targeting, so it's not exactly best practices. So I started looking at other options. Ranger and Arcane Archer are frequently where I'm pointed to as a way to do this. Both have some really good archery enhancements and spells. However, they just don't have the feel of what I'm looking for. Similarly, Clerics also don't really work because they don't have many options on how to enhance archery beyond some basic weapon enhancement. Then I recalled that Warlock could get blade pact archers via Improved Pact Weapon and Smite via Eldritch Smite. So that is the direction I am going.

Summary of the various classes in Dungeons and Dragons 5e

Okay, I've retyped this a few times on the Dungeons and Dragons 5e Facebook group, so I'm making good on my threat to type this out and I'm going to expand upon it a little bit.

Warlock Traits

Warlock Statistics

Hit Dice: d8
Saving Throws: Wisdom, Charisma
Skills: Two out of Arcana, Deception, History, Intimidation, Investigation, Nature, and Religion
Armor:Light Armor
Weapons: Simple Weapons
Tools: None
ASIs: 5 (4th, 8th, 12th, 16th, 19th)
Important Ability Scores: Charisma
Subclasses (Patrons): 6

• PHB Patrons: Archfey, Fiend, Great Old One
• SCAG Patrons: Undying
• Xanathar Patrons: Celestial, Hexblade
  

Shade Blooded Serpent - Yuan-ti Shadow Magic Sorcerer

Art from thegreencarousel.tumblr.com

This was an idea that came to me tonight. Yuan-ti are sort of pure breeding. The child of a Yuan-ti pureblood and any other humanoid will also be a Yuan-ti pureblood. There are likely some variations based on the non-human races but it occurs to me that the Shadar-kai are also human-descended and occasionally have been prone to seeking ways to infiltrate societies, or at least they had that tendency in earlier editions. I haven't seen much of the current lore on them yet. So I had the wonder about what would happen with a Yuan-ti and a Shadar-kai had a child.

It's pretty easy to figure out from a mechanical perspective. You could either have Shadar-kai with a class that allowed for picking up a lot of the snake-like abilities of a Yuan-ti, or a Yuan-ti with some of the Shadar-kai shadowy stuff. Since I don't have the Shadar-kai stats yet, I'm, going to be doing the second one. I could have done this with a few different ways. The Shadow Monk, Arcane Trickster Rogue, maybe an Eldritch Knight Fighter, the Gloomstalker Ranger, and so on. But I'm going to go with a Shadow Magic Sorcerer.

I am going to focus her on powers of deception, illusion, and mental influence and I'm going to mark her as the Spy variant of the Criminal Background. Charlatan was another option for this, but Criminal does give her the Thieves Tools proficiency as well.

Sorcerer Traits

Sorcerer Statistics

Hit Dice: d6
Saving Throws: Constitution, Charisma
Skills: Two out of Arcana, Deception, Insight, Intimidation, Persuasion, Religion
Armor: None
Weapons: Daggers, Darts, Slings, Quarterstaves, and Light Crossbows
Tools: None
ASIs: 5 (4th, 8th, 12th, 16th, 19th)
Important Ability Scores: Charisma
Subclasses (Heritages): 5

• PHB Heritages: Draconic, Wild
• SCAG Heritage: Storm Sorcerer (reprinted in Xanathar's)
• Xanathar Heritages: Divine Soul, Shadow Magic
  

Rogue Traits

Rogue Statistics

Hit Dice: d8

Saving Throws: Dexterity, Intelligence

Skills: Four out of Acrobatics, Animal Handling, Athletics, Deception, Insight, Intimidation, Investigation, Perception, Persuasion, Sleight of Hand, and Stealth

Armor: Light Armor

Weapons: Simple Weapons, Hand Crossbows, Longswords, Rapiers, Shortswords

Tools: None

ASIs: 6 (4th, 6th, 8th, 12th, 16th, 19th)

Important Ability Scores: Dexterity; (Intelligence, Wisdom, or Charisma)

Subclasses (Archetypes): 7

• PHB Archetypes: Thief, Assassin, Arcane Trickster
• SCAG Archetypes: Swashbuckler (reprinted in Xanathar's)
• Xanathar Domains: Inquisitive, Mastermind, Scout
  

Ranger Traits

Ranger Statistics

Hit Dice: d10

Saving Throws: Strength, Dexterity

Skills: Two out of Athletics, History, Insight, Intimidation, Medicine, Persuasion, and Religion

Armor: Light Armor, Medium Armor, Shields

Weapons: All

Tools: None

ASIs: 5 (4th, 8th, 12th, 16th, 19th)

Important Ability Scores: Strength or Dexterity, Wisdom

Subclasses (Archetypes): 5

• PHB Archetypes: Hunter, Beast Master
• Xanathar Archetypes: Horizon Walker, Monster Slayer, Gloomstalker