Anghraine

brynnmclean responded to this post:

Honestly, speaking as a DM here, players taking the initiative and working out backstory stuff and location details is SOLID GOLD.

I replied:

Oooh, thanks!

[ETA 5/13/2024: apparently they were right! The same DM actually just invited me to collaborate on some world-building points pretty much completely unrelated to my characters! <3]

My grad school friends and I played our D&D session over Discord last night (irl we’ve scattered to the winds) and it was so fun!

I’ve always played clerics, but my aasimar celestial warlock is pretty cleric-y while doing a lot of different things (though RIP to my AC) and she got a visitation from her angelic patron. HELL(errrr) YEAH.

Also, she and my best grad school friend’s character rolled badly on a perception check for our watch while the others slept, so we decided we were just really into a conversation. So we played it all out with chatting about my character’s patron and our reservations about the kinda imperialist side we’re temporarily on the side of, given that both of our peoples were driven from their homes, and bonded over our separate but related histories.

And between that conversation and the one my character had with the angelic patron, our DM gave me inspiration! I’m terrible at RP, so this almost never happens, but I had a lot of fun with it last night! :D

Tagged: #my patron was like 'you don't need to be afraid' #me with 13 ac: ACTUALLY i feel there are MANY things to be afraid of #like a stiff breeze

My warlock managed to survive to level 6, so naturally, I’ve been looking at the powers she’ll have if she manages to get to … 14

When you have to make a death saving throw at the start of your turn, you can instead spring back to your feet with a burst of radiant energy. You regain hit points equal to half your hit point maximum, and then you stand up if you so choose. Each creature of your choice that is within 30 feet of you takes radiant damage equal to 2d8 + your Charisma modifier, and is blinded until the end of the current turn.

hell yeah

Tagged: #also i get to add my cha mod to any radiant or fire damage i do at all #so that would actually be +10 to whatever the roll is #this character is designed for theme and not effectiveness (her aasimar and celestial abilities overlap at multiple points) #but still #:D #and i have counterspell and dispel magic now so i feel a bit better about things

[ETA 4/26/2024: somewhat (though not always) hilariously, this character built entirely around her backstory and theme, sometimes to mechanical detriment, was more or less regarded as incredibly powerful by the group. This was fairer later on because Protector Aasimar used to get a trait that's minor at first but scales incredibly well at higher levels—i.e. your bonus damage is based on level rather than your spellcasting modifier, so any attack that hits at level 14 would add +14 damage. As a warlock with Eldritch Blast+Agonizing Blast, by level 11 she'd have to miss three separate rolls to not get the damage bonus. The real difficulty was avoiding melee combat aka death, hence my relief at getting her all the way to 6 in this post!]

2020 fic writing post!

2020 was not my most productive year, but apart from the general state of 2020, I had a lot to do for my PhD and sleeping problems, so … /shrug. Anyway, this year—

- I got inspired by my “eh” feelings about TROS to outline a big chunk of my f!Luke series, and after (I think) four years of no updates, wrote some eighteen and a half chapters on The Jedi and the Sith Lord in something like six weeks. It’s now 67k.

- I updated my very niche Guild Wars 2 fic, pro patria, a kind of fragmented AU in which the “Missing Sister” option to say that the PC/Deborah are proud Ascalonians has a major effect on the PC’s character and story. I got Althea through a bunch of Ebonhawke/Fields of Ruin stuff, which was 50% of the motivation for writing it at all. It’s now at 89k.

- I finally finished the gift of men, the Eldarion/Faramir-and-Éowyn’s-daughter fic that has been rolling around my brain/Google Drive for years. It’s only a little over 1k, but I was really glad to get it finished and posted.

- I was overpowered with Ascalon/fuck the Searing feelings while playing the original Guild Wars and wrote a fic about the Prophecies PC’s last day (creatively called the last day) before the Searing. It’s also just over 1k and almost nobody read it, but it was really for me, so that’s okay.

- I updated tolerably well acquainted, my canon-compliant book-only P&P fic about how Elizabeth falls in love with Darcy from Pemberley onwards. Lydia just ran off with Wickham and Elizabeth reunited with Jane; I wrote about half of another chapter, but didn’t finish it. The fic as a whole is now 27k, which is kind of astounding to me tbh.

- I’d always thought of my Éowyn-meets-f!Faramir fic, we also are daughters of the great, as a one-shot, but got inspired by their canon scenes to take it further … and then got waylaid by Merry feelings? I don’t know. I also wrote about half of another chapter of this one before exams struck, so that’s partly done. I’d really like to get to the hair mingling scene! Someday. It’s 4800 words.

- I haven’t posted much of it (just this) or named it, but I started a fic about Darcy’s family (canonical and head-canonical) reacting to his engagement to Elizabeth/Elizabeth herself. It’s part of the tolerably well acquainted continuity, I think, and a kind of fun experiment with different voices. It’s 1500 words so far.

- I started a fic about Faramir’s birth and early childhood, but it stalled partway through dealing with tiny Faramir’s first dream of Númenor. I might get back to it someday. It’s 1300 words.

- I also brainstormed a Star Wars/Dungeons and Dragons fusion where Anakin is an aasimar (as are Luke and Leia), but the composite setting drifted far enough from either that it became an original fic in a universe powered by the blessings/curses of the gods. It follows a sorceress of the god of the Void who takes on the care of a troubled demigoddess. I wrote a ton of background material, but only 1200 words of actual fic.

- After only cutting things out and fixing the gaps for years, I wrote two full chapters of my original fantasy novel; I’ve decided to take out a big chunk of one of them, but even so, it’s very satisfying, and (after a lot of cuts) brought the whole thing to 72k.

And I think that’s everything!

I reblogged a post (originally from birdimages on Tumblr) saying that your Tumblr avatar is your external self, while your Discord avatar is your real self, and added:

#leia on the outside; my aasimar warlock within #i'll take it lol

I reblogged this post and added:



My excellent decision-making process at work!

Tagged: #i initially thought of aasimar as the natural counterpart to demigods #i can see both aasimar and human variant as the nearest approximations of demigods so...

It’s really easy to imagine the Metamorphoses as a D&D campaign with a truly malevolent DM.

Tagged: #alternately: it's a beautiful day in greece and you are a terrible god #idk it alternates in this really peculiar way between genuinely awful things and d:os style hilariously awful things #with little flashes of 'surprisingly not awful' things here and there #kind of begs to be a game #i know there are a ton of games that use this stuff too but ... idk. a very particular kind of game

Belated again, but here it is!

Search in your current space, whether brick-and-mortar or digital. Post a picture (a link to a picture will be fine!) or description of something that is or represents:

1. Something your favorite character would like
2. Something that makes you laugh
3. A fandom place you would like to visit
4. A fandom creator (pro or not) you'd like to meet
5. Something you find comforting
6. Something from a favorite TV series or movie from your childhood
7. A piece of clothing you love
8. A book or song with a color in the title
9. Something only someone in your fandom would understand

Ooh, challenging! Let's see:

1) Something that your favorite character would like:

My favorite character is Fitzwilliam Darcy! I've got stacks of books all around me for grad school reasons, which he'd definitely like. And a bunch are eighteenth-century texts, which would suit his relatively modern tastes(IMO). To go with a specific choice ... given his dry sense of humor and falling in love with Elizabeth, I think I'll pick this:



2) Something that makes you laugh

Nothing, really. I do get a smile at this dragon my mother got me, though:



( Read more... )

One of the fun things about combining the Gale romance with a cleric of Mystra PC is that ... okay, there's the whole channeling the Weave scene where he's guiding Larissa, though the game makes it clear that her affinity with Mystra makes it easy for her where it might not be for someone else. But it could still feel kind of unbalanced, esp as a man guiding a woman through something she can't really do without him.

However, while the Weave is a more "sensitive" conduit (lol) than prayer, I feel clerics' prayers are more ... personal, I guess? The player's handbook, iirc, distinguishes between a priest and a real cleric because of that personal element—gods have lots of priests, or at least can, but only clerics are blessed recipients of the deity's power in that way. As a cleric, you are a conduit for your deity, and you get divine power just by asking them for it (typically, without nearly as many demands as a warlock's pact, even a celestial warlock's). You just ask your deity for a personal favor and they're like "okay, sure." I think this is at least partly true in BG3, because in a previous run, Gale talked wistfully at the end of the channeling the Weave scene about how nice it must to be to have your deity's power on tap. And people (including Gale) definitely talk in BG3 about clerics as a specific thing.

So in Larissa's case, she can't draw directly from the Weave without help, but she can straight-up ask Mystra herself for favors every day, and Mystra's like "oh, you want your enemies irradiated by divine light? sounds good." And I think Gale would probably find the idea of just ringing Mystra up for spells about as cool as Larissa finds channeling the Weave.