#i know it's more a dnd problem but cmon we can do better

[3gremlins]

i foolishly started another playthrough of bg3 in the early access even tho the game comes out for realskies in like a week or so and i'll have get to make more characters/new pts anyway.

trying to make myself not be a pretty wood elf/half elf druid so rolled drow paladin (i'm def going to play a druid first once it's out for real tho b/c talk to animals is my favorite larian studios skill and i'm so sad without it. i just want to talk to all the animals and also wild shape!) and it's actually been pretty fun to just be tanky and whack things.

npcs are super rude to drow tho, it's real da elf and skyrim khajit/dunmer flashback hours (i don't love it? the fantasy race racism stand-in in rpg games always feels not terribly thoughtful? i realize it's b/c the source material has it but still idk there's got to be a better way and wotc/dnd is historically still not great at it)

i keep attempting to play a different type of character (i usually start to swing chaotic good no matter where i start lol), but it's difficult and also it's real hard not to flirt with astarion even if he disapproves of my kinda do-gooder paladin atm lol (i think b/c a character disproves sometimes my contrary nature takes the better of me b/c i'm like oh no but i want *them* to like me even tho everyone else approves or maybe b/c everyone else approves XD i've already romanced him & shadowheart tho, gotta try someone else's arc or proto arc as it were lol. BUT FLIRT WITH HOT KINDA STANDOFFISH ELF!!! i am weak T.T)

still wish you could set up the "what do you desire" character to be genderfluid and appear as both masc/femme forms. like my characters are all bi/pan! they're attracted to lots of people- idk if they've said anything about this? i haven't been watching *too* many dev videos b/c i don't want to spoil myself too much but i did some searching to see if it was mentioned anywhere yet and couldn't find anything (i did see that they'll have more body types for your tav at least in the final which is another small thing i dislike about the early access cc- even tho you can pick non binary as an id, you're still stuck w/ very binary body choices)

[plounce]

what is, in your brave and genius opinion, the best characterization of mollymauk

okay here’s a couple things i think people should keep in mind

the first thing is that taliesin is a player who chooses when to speak, rather than speaking all the time. so molly isn’t actually super talkative or hyperactive or always starting shit - he goes along with things, steers himself where he wants to be sometimes, but is pretty chill except for when he goes ham.

molly is yasha’s best friend. this is his most significant relationship by far in the party. they both love their independence, but he has to be someone who is yasha’s best friend and who yasha feels safe and comfortable around.

if he feels sad or bad, he’s not going to dwell on it. this bitch is living to be happy! he’s not going to mope and sulk and sigh, he’s going to distract himself as best he can. “why let myself feel sad when i can NOT think about what’s making me feel sad and instead think about something that i LIKE?” so there’d be a tendency towards repression, but i think he tries to talk with yasha (who he feels really comfortable and not-judged around) before he explodes. he’s pretty self-aware.

he isn’t given to extreme outpourings of emotion, and would honestly hate it if other people (besides yasha) saw him having one. i think the most unrestrained we saw him in canon (regarding negative emotions) was when he was blindingly angry that yasha was abducted. after that - probably his frustration and defensiveness when he was being interrogated in ep 14.

genuinely doesn’t give a shit what people think about him. he’s spent his whole life being chased out of town with his family unit, he’s got a pretty thick skin. laughs or shrugs off people who reject him. it isn’t a forced coping mechanism - it’s just what he does. he’s got no time for that - onto the next town.

he is a herd animal. has only ever existed in a big dysfunctional found-family unit. he’s not going to cling to people, he knows that sometimes things end, but he needs to be in a group. doesn’t super care much about people outside of that group beyond basic human decency (see: giving money to people the m9 were attempting to cheat), such as his treatment of toya vs his deliberate distancing from kiri. he only lets himself be close to people who are more of a sure thing (for given values of that).

likes taking care of people. knows the value of creature comforts. remember when he bought all that nice food for the party in like ep 25? he likes cooking for people, likes feeding people. he can’t solve all your problems, but he can make sure that being hungry isn’t exacerbating them.

values control over himself. he’ll get drunk or high, sure, but that’s him doing that to himself. a part of him is always very paranoid that lucien is going to subsume who he is now (which adds to his ‘live for the life you have now bc you could die at any moment’ lifestyle). i personally like to take this a step further and make him kind of annoyed when other people make him feel things he can’t control. however, through all of this, he copes pretty well - unless it’s lucien, obviously. having a crush on somebody that he can’t make go away: annoyance, attempt to repress, attempt to ignore. more of lucien’s powers coming to the surface: drink all night.

would not sexually harass people.

is genuinely a very fair person. will do a lot of things for a laff. weird sense of humor in certain ways - see when he put the gold in the burnt out tree. superstitious, but only about certain things. thinks a lot of common superstitions are total bs (walking under ladders, black cats, etc) but he has ones he’s quietly very mindful about. spiritual.

he is a good person, but he’s a bitch for laughs. he is careful not to go over The Line, but The Line is different for everybody and he was raised in a circus - he’s okay with using charm person if it isn’t going to harm or traumatize somebody (and speaking of charm person - cmon yall, it’s dnd, people use charm person, it’s not really a valid thing to put on a yfip post unless they do something super evil with it). he’s a bitch and a bastard but one of his core tenets of existing is “leave every place better than you found it.”

likes to give little gifts, and is willing to share what he has with others as long as he can experience it with a friend or two. see: giving yasha the silk flowers, constantly asking caleb if things are magical (which imo is born both from curiosity bc he’s never hung out with a wizard before so magic is an interesting weird thing he isn’t interested in learning, as well as wanting caleb to feel valued and included in a way that caleb is capable of accepting), and sharing the skein with beau.

he has middling charisma. he talks too much when he’s trying to get information from npcs - he has more fun asking than actually being good at getting what they need to know. he’s off-putting and kind of weird and a bit mean? it’s kind of ironic that the member of the m9 least likely to cheat you (besides caduceus) gives off some of the least trustworthy vibes. he’s not gonna be the party face and honestly isn’t inclined to be. he has his people and that’s what matters to him.

can i just say that it bugs me that so many people have made him a lounge singer in their aus? 1. his charisma isn’t good enough for that 2. his default attack is making his voice so bad to hear that people taken damage from it! his singing voice is probably more of a joyful yowl than a smooth croon.

tl;dr he’s chill. be chill about him. he’s genuinely just here for a laff m8 x