#or do they level into barbarian

[chuchotements-de-le-radiateur]

DnD character concept: Barbarian

“The misshapen blade"

There used to be an elegance to your movements. Not of a dancer, but a skilled swordsman, a soldier. The discipline sharpened through years of training, through force of will and dedication. Every movement learned and practiced and perfected, a unity of body and mind, applied to a noble task. All gone now. There is a gap between these years and now, a gnawing span of years, dulling the instincts, twisting the muscles, breaking the mind and will. You scream at your body to move, to raise a shield and push the blade to the side, but you barely manage to move it before it cuts another wound into you. An injury instead of a fatal blow, that’s all you manage. All your years of experience do now is tell you exactly how you are failing, where the flaws lie. All you can do now is survive. And all you can do to survive is give up. As the screams and clashing of metal fades into the suffocating grey darkness and shackles grip your wrists you try not to panic, but it only works for so long, before a deep wail shatters against the colourless fog. Your body aches as you come to. As the senses come rushing back in you feel your wounds sting, the iron smell hits your nostrils and punches you in the gut. Your eyes are open but only now does the reality reach you. Bodies. Broken, motionless. Silence. You pray all of them were enemies.

You used to be a soldier, a skilled swordsman. You fought in many battles and helped to keep the order when your land was at peace, joining adventurers and guards to deal with the those who threatened it. One day that threat was a mage, and with your comrades you went into the ruins where he made his camp. The threat was much worse than anyone thought, and out of twelve sent by the lord only two crawled back to the town days later. You were not one of them. When the lord sent his garrison to deal with the mage for good, he was already gone. Some bodies of your comrades were recovered, but you were not among them either. The mage decided, that since his safety was threatened, he needed to ensure it was better protected. And so he took two of those sent after him and cast a spell. The last thing you remember is the ghostly shackles forming out of smoke around your wrists, the sound of rustling chains and a smell of rotting flowers. After that — you do not remember much but the grey fog. You saw glimpses of what you did, felt echoes of your body moving, fighting. The harder you tried to resist the thicker the fog grew and the further the echoes got. You didn’t know how much time had passed when one day the fog lifted. You were lying on the ground, almost dead, with a soldier holding a sword to your neck and a cleric finishing a spell. As you learned later, years had passed. The mage was slain and you were free. Except, as you later learned, the chains remained. No matter how hard the clerics and mages tried to dispel it, you felt the cold touch of the shackles, even if you couldn’t see them. And if you pushed too hard, just as all these years, the shackles grew tighter and the grey fog surrounded you once more.

This concept attaches a lot of narrative possibilities to the rage mechanic and gives good narrative reasons for the character to try and avoid using it. How this could be expressed mechanically is up to the DM, but the key idea is that the character is not in control of their actions when “raging”, and it is the spell that drives them. And so, while becoming much more efficient as a tool of violence, if the character surrenders to the spell that imprisoned them for all these years, not only might that lead to complicated feelings on their part, but also cause their actions during that state to stray from the values the character normally holds.

[crybaby-bkg]

Arranged marriage AU with Barbarian Bakugou who is so daunting to be around at first. He’s all gruff curses and broad shoulders and scarred cheeks and neck and jaw. He scowls constantly, stares at you while your parents auction you off like some show pig, but doesn’t say much to you besides a grunt of his name. You’re terrified, thinking that he’ll be cruel to you, that you’re being set up for a life full of unhappiness and terror and regret.

But he’s the exact opposite. Bakugou is gentle in ways a man of his size typically wouldn’t be, but he shrinks himself for you. Not in a way that diminishes his status as the newly appointed king, but to respect you, show you that you’re beside him instead of behind him.

He picks you berries on his hunts because he knows the smell of a fresh kill brings nausea to your stomach. You find him along with the other maidens and helpers around his village, sitting beside them, big fingers holding tiny little flowers that he weaves into a crown for you. When he sets it on your head, he purses his lips, mutters something under his breath in his language that you’re still not too familiar with, but sure it means something along the lines of pretty and soft.

And when he finds you bathing in the river only few have access to, he’s sweet the whole time. Doesn’t make a spectacle of you being naked, and is relieved when you don’t instantly cower when he wades his way over to you. You try not to stare at the clawed scars that decorate his pec and jaw when he stands above you, and it helps when he suddenly dumps water all over your head. He shushes you when you splutter, continues on with cupping his hands and letting the water run off of your hair and down your shoulders, scrubbing at your skin until your flesh squeaks. He doesn’t expect you to do the same for him, but he hums in satisfaction when you push him down a little lower so you can wash the crown of his head.

[dragons-and-ages]

The Solas hair reveal has me cracking up…

And it’s not that I think it looks weird or funny or particularly attractive.

It’s because that specific hair color and style and the fact that he is a light-skinned elf man reminds me of a fellow player-character in my D&D campaign. Specifically, he’s a character that my own character is in love with.

And

Ohmygod

I just realized as I was writing this that the D&D character I’m talking about has a form of lycanthropy. And Solas is the Dreadwolf.

[du-hjarta-skulblaka]

Stuck on the first few eps of Farscape after finishing up Fantasy High s2 and maybe its the whole most recently consumed bias but I'm really struck by how much it feels like a dnd game??? Bunch of weird lil renegades slapped together and put in weird situations, honestly it would make a really interesting starting point for a game

Anyway John Crichton is a bard/wizard; he does a lot of persuasion as performance and that scene of him collapsing to the floor to write slingshot equations is THE most wizard shit- perhaps Artificer would be more accurate to him but it's not a class I'm familiar with.

[lunarrolls]

whenever i need a laugh or a smile i go back and watch the early bells hells episodes. like pre-bassuras was such an insane vibe for an adventuring party and the shit they got into? unparalleled. truly just a collection of guys doing shit and sometimes experiencing consequences. and then bassuras came down on them like the fucking sword of damocles. i hope that one day, when this is all over, bells hells will still travel, doing dumb shit and fucking around like they once did for lord ariks eshteross. i hope they find that peace once their questions are answered, but i don’t know if a quiet life is for them. i think they’d just continue on, continue to scheme, do incredibly chaotic shit for forever. just let them throw parties, root out government corruption and little shade creepers every once in a while, and pretend to be ghosts, that’s the proper bells hells post-campaign enrichment plan

[haemosexuality]

marceline would be besties with astarion, obviously, but also shadowheart. and well, everyone, because shes marceline, but especially those two

finn would love being heroic with wyll and swapping tales. hed think wyll having his own superhero name is the COOLEST shit. hed also like training with lae'zel

at first i thought bubblegum and gale would get along great and be insufferable nerds together, but then i realized shed not only out nerd him, but shed offend his entire existence by explaining in length how the weave isnt even real, its just science. like marceline, she would get along super well with shart, but she would HATE astarion

jake gets along with everyone, except lae'zel. she doesnt... get him.

everyone loves karlach, because she's karlach. impossible not to. phoebe would help her with controlling her fire, and bonnie would somehow be able to fix the engine issue

fern would be friends with astarion. they would understand each other. *cries*

[armor-goblin]

this post made me think about gods-carver the barbarian turned paladin in a modern au (and also in canon, where she's basically just whittling ducks and showing her friends around golarion)

in a modern/humanized au she would have freckles (for the hyena spots) and either pineapple her hair or shave it into a true hyena mohawk. and she would run a community arts center and teach woodworking classes and badly throw pots and get kids to care about art. also possibly about how fun it is to swing a giant polearm around. she would dress entirely in bike shorts and workout tops. and be frequently stained with clay and paint and unknowable craft items. she would help her bffs set up for local music gigs and pole showcases and carry all their equipment for them and also dabble in costuming. she would still be six foot eight and she would get even more hugs and she would be so god damn happy!!!!!

[rosesrambling]

there are many good critiques of dnd 5e offloading too much work on the DM to interpret and manage the rules but my PERSONAL pet peeve is the wild magic sorcerer

per RAW, wild magic surges happen whenever the DM calls for a roll. it’s one of your key class features & resets tides of chaos, and exists purely within the realm of DM fiat

wild magic surges have a fairly low % chance of happening in the first place, and mostly aren’t really penalties. so in my experience DMs just call for the roll after every leveled spell. which is fair! except

tides of chaos resets on each wild magic roll not each wild magic surge. this would basically give sorcs advantage on every single spell they cast with an attack roll! which seems a bit silly and overpowered, unless you house rule the ability to work off surges instead.

it’s just a whole mess of an archetype which requires the DM to intercede on a class feature, and the easiest way to offload that work unbalances the class unless you make a second house ruling. which is again, just more unnecessary work. absolute mess of an archetype that typifies the wider problem

[whoblewboobear]

Mhm mhm JacePorter and WadeLogan doing a universe swap purely so that Deadpool and Wolverine can finally have nasty brutal gay sex while plotting some scheme on the side and starbreaker get to just beat the shit out each other in a Honda it would fix them all.

Bonus for Logan as the new barbarian teacher. Wade is the sorcery teacher who deffo gets fired immediately for accidentally killing a student

[tox-tea]

Catch Me If You Can~

[mazovian]

i have a level 5 barbarian/level 3 fighter and i rolled two nat 20s on my first two attack rolls, then action surged and hit my additional two attacks- plus some additional abilities i just did 104 damage in one turn lets fucking go

[spooky-dice]

thinking abt them… purplecloak!scary, doodler!normal, demon!taylor, and oathbreaker!link…

oh to behold your children and see them fit into the lives you never wanted for them… to raise the one thing you feared…

[somelazyassartist]

Fuck it maybe I will multiclass Kora into a class that objectively sucks!! We're a heist team it's not like we do much combat anyways maybe I'll just do it for the Flavor of it All, you know, to be a Silly Little Guy.

[tomurakii]

I gotta start bg3 multiclassing there is so much plot potential for new tavs/durges

[antlereed]

being a barbarian is being reckless by nature!!!! ive been waiting for ashton to nuke himself for ages now

[quilleth]

Ok I'm at the point where I'm like invested in the bg3 story now so I need to make a new character to play instead of bg3!Vanora because this isn't her story and I don't want to get attached to it xD

I just can't decide if I should make just some dude (another generic Tav bg) or a Durge, since the Durge has more of a plotline beyond the one Tav gets.

I *am* still having fun as a barbarian so I will probably stick with that either way. Idk if there's a class that *really* suits the Durge in terms of like flavor/ flavor text though, so I'm waffling