#and some--some!--people multiclass

[bonesandpoemsandflowers]

that said all the people being like "ooohhh the action girl has a martial arts background and the muscles to prove it" are ignorant as shit because those are 100000% and obviously hypertrophy muscles! there is literally a bodybuilding competition! martial arts does NOT do that to you! height don't win fights and neither do big biceps! vanity muscle is not the same as fighting muscle. you all suck, review writers. you don't even go here. you know nothing of the gym AND nothing of the dojo.

[rizwalda]

emily axford is one of the funniest people alive, an amazing ttrpg player, and has to put up with so much shit.

fuck yeah, you tell 'em, wah-wah-wah

[forcedhesitation]

I'm actually rather surprised that not a single one of the boys made top three. but then again, I suppose the large number of straight men that play this game are not as visible in fan spaces as us lgbt. That is...a fortunate thing, though, I'd argue.

[tenitchyfingers]

The Beatles as DND adventurers ~

#1: Paul - Bard

[5-htagonist]

i think ive settled on laios being a knight of breath and kabru being a rogue of blood...... i think......

[sualne]

been thinking a lot about the what happens post game and sycamore's hypothetical children.

[darkjusticiar]

like give this man more defined wrinkles and this is my vision. now to find earrings for wyll

[zellkabellk]

I haven't figured out the details of the build yet but I've been OBSSESSED with the idea of playing a longsword + armor warlock whose patron is her lich/archich wife mkfdsjmhgfdsmkdsjh "Yes honey." but she asked you to go commit terrible crimes.

[nysscientia]

official confirmation in tonight’s Instagram live that all four of the core cast will take turns running games for Worlds Beyond Number. delightful. phenomenal. a joy and a thrill. thank u pod

[mytrainline]

oh hey new d&d oc

i dunno, their concept just shot into my head. i guess i just really were craving to play as a player again

this here is Pagan, a private investigator/ vigilante

[takethistoyourstardust]

also, murph immediately notes that what he just said was very unhinged (“he says, like a maniac”). almost like this is a comedy d&d podcast that happens to tell a cool story!

People flinching at "Make sure to chop his head off so he can't be revivified" and acting like it's a wildly too brutal or somehow out of character (???) thing for Riz to say are weak and have forgotten our roots

Do y'all not remember shooting Biz's fingers off one by one? Do you not remember "Take his eye!!! Do you want it? I'll bite it out for you!"

Our special boy has always been an unhinged little violent maniac, and frankly? Good for him! 💗 That's my favorite guy!

[bushelofmuses]

//

[cottoncandybitchfuck]

Gorgug Thistlespring, a Half-Orc Barbarian raised by gnome tinkerers. His parents don’t fully get him but they love him and support him as he is. He dated a 4’11” girl and He’s 6’4”. He offered someone a metal flower on the first day of school, punched them, still offered them the flower, and sang in class. He died on the first day of school and went to hell. He bonded with Kristen because they both died that day. He became a drummer because Fig saw him sing about rage and wanted to share her coping mechanism. They became a rock band. He protects his friends. He loves his friends more than anything. He helped Ragh accept himself by kissing him at Prom and getting him to help fight a dragon. He left Elmville without telling Zelda goodbye and spent an entire season trying to fix it. Fig was missing, Riz was dragged into a mirror? He had to get to them, but he should have called her. He’s the greatest wizard of the age. “Spring Break, I believe in you.” He is the crab king and the shrimp prince. He figured out how to use his parent’s satellite to talk to Zelda. “It’s Gorgug, keep going.” He hugged Fabian, who punched him on the first day of school when they got back to each other in the Nightmare King’s forest. He multiclassed without anyone doing it before him and without help. He mixed his parents together and made a new multiclass. He built the solar lasso that caught the night yorb, he helped Riz gain some of his arcano-tech! His van is holding the Night Yorb. He uses his rage to protect people, he took 4 years of school at once to make sure he got to multiclass because he was not gonna be told no. He stayed on the Owlbears for Fabian even though he didn’t want it anymore. He took the Last Standard Exam and he crit so. many. times. He didn’t fall and neither did his friends! He flew a boat and killed dragons and he protected his spellcasters from Porter because that bitch was not gonna kill his friends. He hugged Kristen and told her she looked better. He looked better too. “Remember when we died?” He posited “It might happen again,” she responded. He didn’t let it. He wouldn’t let that happen. Not to them, never again. His new girlfriend is 2’.

I genuinely can’t get over him I love him and I have so many more analyses of so many more characters coming and hopefully they will be more coherent but it’s 4 am in a warehouse

[real-elias-hodge]

porter not approving gorgug’s multiclass request is so heartbreaking and so accurate to the way the school system actually works. so much focus is put on academics to the point where students aren’t allowed to participate in extracurricular activities if their academics suffer, even though some of those students have no desire to further their education through the traditional route. classic higher education institutions aren’t the only path available, there’s trade school and becoming an athlete and starting your own business along with countless other possibilities that aren’t being presented to students because schools are granted resources based on standardized testing scores. in gorgug’s case, his advisor isn’t letting him participate in something that he shows genuine interest and aptitude in simply because he doesnt feel as though gorgug is doing well enough in the pathway that he chose when he was likely at the end of middle school. people grow and change and unfortunately, both in real life and in elmville, the public school system is set up to push you towards one path that may not be right for you.

[utilitycaster]

little unexplained things can be future plot hooks but sometimes they are just details that make the world seem real. This is a big part of why I don't think every character in a D&D game who plays an instrument should multiclass into bard - some people just play instruments in this world! What does that look like? what are the instruments? What are the musical traditions? And I think this is something Ashley Johnson is exceptionally good at, at playing characters who expand the world without it necessarily having to be part of the plot. Yasha covers an area no one else does. We don't need to know why she's an aasimar or understand it because it tells us a lot about the world and her culture and experience. She isn't a bard but she loves music; she isn't a nature-based class but she loves flowers. Fearne also provides new insight into the feywild. I think people undervalue being really good at embodying a vibe because it sounds surface level but for Ashley it never feels like just aesthetic, it always feels rooted in something.

[kikitakite]

I saw your callout in the Gale tag for that one user (no comment on them, tho ty for the callout bc i'd seen them in the notes of my fics) and was curious if you could elaborate on some of the Mystra incidents you described towards the end of the post? I'm new to the lore of the setting and find it hard to research (which makes sense given its importance to dnd), so I've heard a lot of conflicting things about Mystra's portrayal in the wider series. No pressure, obviously!

No problem! And yea, I've seen her arguing in the posts of a few people I follow or just Gale-related posts I find interesting. Usually I don't get involved in stuff like this, but I noticed a constant pattern and then all the homophobic shit so I went off a little.

Unfortunately it's hard to find exact examples of the Mystra lore because certain modules aren't very popular or even free to access, but if you're interested the best way to learn about her is by reading the Elminster novels. There's twelve total, dating all the way back to 1994, and they detail Elminster's adventures. I'll be honest though, some of them are a hard read and written through the lens of a man who's admitted very creative, but also has a lot of problematic ideas.

In the first book Elminster is a child. His entire town gets wiped out by mages, thereby making him hostile toward magic. He sneaks into Mystra's temple to deface her statue one night, but she appears before him and basically gaslights him into learning magic and becoming her rare Chosen. He becomes a wizard and cleric basically overnight, until eventually he multiclasses into pretty much every class type in DnD. As you can imagine a lot of players aren't too fond of Elminster, as he's a well known self-insert of the author and pretty annoying to run into during campaigns. None of my dungeon masters like him anyway.

He also becomes one of Mystra's most loyal followers, but she fucks with him over and over, turning him into a woman to teach him a lesson and SLEEPING with him in that form, berating him when he struggles with the torture he endures when he gets stuck in the hells, making him reproduce without his knowledge and getting jealous when he gives his partners more attention. Because she's a very jealous goddess, which I think the game vaguely touches on but not really.

I wish I had the time to flip through all the novels and give exact citations but the best I can do is suggest them, because they're so eye opening. She's considered a neutral good goddess, but neutral gods often do terrible things for the sake of their domain. I think it needs to be noted that Mystra, as with all gods in the pantheon, only cares about her portfolio. She isn't wrong for that, but it doesn't mean she's blameless when she messes with people's lives. She's done a lot of good but she's also made horrible decisions, especially where her followers are concerned.

For example, Elminster having children he doesn't know about. He has a daughter named Narnra. Her conception was... pretty fucked up. Basically a song dragon named Ammaratha Cyndusk was an occasional lover of Elminster's (he has a lot of those because of course he does) and she wanted to bear his child, but since he's a Chosen of Mystra he can control his fertility. Magic birth control, basically. He didn't want a kid so Ammaratha went behind his back to learn a counterspell that would make him fertile during sex. The man she asked refused to teach her because...duh that's messed up, but then Mystra intervened and told him to teach her the spell because she wanted Elminster's "seed to spread". Ammaratha never told him and neither did Mystra. No matter what the reasons, that was NOT consensual on Elminster's part, and it happened two more times, resulting in two more daughters with different women. If I remember correctly Elminster did eventually find out waaaaay later when they were all adults, but it never amounted to anything.

The sisters I was taking about are the Seven Sisters, Mystra's "daughters". And I put "daughters" in quotations because Mystra possessed the body of a woman named Elué and impregnated her without her consent. She slept with the woman's husband (again, while possessing her body) and made them sire seven children. This of course lead to Elué's death because the constant flow of magic in her body was too much for her to handle. Her grieving husband broke after she died and eventually left, abandoning his daughters and earning Mystra's scorn...as if he was in the wrong. The sisters were then orphaned and raised by foster families.

That said, most of the awful things anyone can say about Mystra were the doings of her previous incarnations so ultimately it doesn't apply to the Mystra of BG3. In fact, this third Mystra is supposed to be a new and improved goddess who's nicer to her followers. So her portrayal in BG3 annoyed a lot of DnD fans. I should also point out that Mystra has two types of fans: ones who will defend everything she does, even when it's fucked up beyond all comprehension, and the ones who will tell you she's a true neutral goddess capable of good and bad. I'm the latter. There are plenty examples of Mystra sticking her neck out for innocents, but there's also examples of her doing the most horrendous shit imaginable.

A lot of veteran players, at least the ones I know, are upset with the portrayal of Mystra in BG3 because her plan to end the Absolute is, quite frankly, stupid. Your party is the best chance anyone has of ending the threat, but she asks Gale to nuke himself and possibly tens of thousands, which makes no sense because she could've just sent her mages/clerics to deal with the problem. And there was no guarantee the bomb would've worked anyway. She put all the responsibility on one man and it DEFINITELY comes off as vindictive. That isn't out if character for her but she's not SUPPOSED to be that bad anymore. For a lot of DnD players it felt like she was reverting back to her old habits.

I think there's also a part in the game where you can directly ask Gale why she doesn't just blip the Absolute out of existence and he says something like, "She could but Ao won't allow it." That was also really strange for a lot of veteran players to hear because Gale drops Ao's name like it's nothing. Most people (especially if they're new to the franchise) wouldn't know this but most people in Faerûn don't know who Ao is! Because he wiped people's memories of his existence! I suppose it does make sense for Gale to know that name, since Mystra probably explained the pantheon to him, but it's VERY unlikely tav would know it. So during that conversation all I could picture was tav tilting their head like, "Huh? Who? Whaaa?"

And on top of that......Ao absolutely WOULD allow it because the Absolute effects the Weave and every other god! It had the potential to ruin the balance of the universe, which makes Ao a very angry boy. Balance is one of the ONLY things he cares about. The Dead Three were stealing souls and worshippers, which gods needs to survive, and dying gods disrupts the balance. It's a whole circle of chaos. So the only conclusion left for me to extrapolate is this: Mystra just really, really wanted Gale to kill himself to prove his devotion to her. Which...isn't great. Bad look for her.

It's kind of like how Raphael thinks the Crown of Karsus is going to help him end the Blood War and take over the hells. DnD players laughed during his epilogue because...no it won't lol. He doesn't stand a chance even with the crown. He's arrogant and he's gonna get slapped by his daddy and all the other archdevils, the same way Gale gets slapped by Mystra if he ascends. Even the Absolute ending of the game wouldn't last long because the gods would go to war with the Dead Three, wipe them out and rebuild Faerûn, which has happened many times in past DnD campaigns. Mystra alone has torn worlds apart and glued them back together. The main crisis of BG3 is saving the world you live in or everybody dies. For the gods it's just a Tuesday. I mean look at how Withers owns the Dead Three with a wave of his hand at the end of the game. Mystra COULD'VE killed the Absolute, just as she could've removed the orb from Gale's chest the moment it happened. She just didn't WANT to. She wanted him to die. She wanted him to chastise himself. She wanted him to suffer and come crawling back to her as an obedient follower. She wanted him to learn a harsh and honestly unfair lesson, which is a terrible throwback to her previous incarnations.