#plus you've got the normal hermits

[swordswoman97]

So, who's ready for the Hermitcraft takeover of MCC? /j

[satancheeto]

PLEASE tell us about your oc then I'm fascinated by him already just by what you've said

👁️ u 👁️

You have activated my trap card dear anon omfg

TWs that I’ll try to keep things just mentioned but: child abuse, military/war, homophobic violence, mentions of sex

Bexon is my D&D character Human/Fighter long sword specialist (2e). Cisgender, homosexual. He’s Brown (equivalent of Indian), 6’6.6”, super hairy, and built like a fuckin truck. He’s very scary looking. And he’s a sub.

He starts out True-Neut to vaguely Neut-Evil, but by now is True-N or N-Good. His special interests are swords, sword fighting, and horses :3

He has major problems with paranoia and PTSD, plus general anxiety and depression. Bexon is also autistic, so he struggles with social situations, but also a lot of his stereotypical naive autistic person traits are mostly due to his sheltered childhood. He also has very severe internalized homophobia, masculinity complex, perfectionism, etc. because of his upbringing.

This giant terrified ex-soldier (human) ends up in a crazy slow burn relationship with the hypersexual nonbinary elf twink cleric who is his total opposite (except he’s also got major depression).

I will a fuller explanation and pics under the cut in case people don’t want to see my essay about my beautifully fucked up boys. Thank you so much for asking about him though!!! He’s a very complex and interesting character, and I love putting him in emotional turmoil.

So his name is Bexon Cavaldier, he grew up in an extra evil tribe of warriors that served the already evil army of The Empire (Humans) waging a 100+ year long war against the Elven people. He was a high ranking military official and the favorite of 8 children, until he wasn’t. From a very young age, he spent much of his training to eventually be in the army.

Bexon grew up majorly sheltered in this environment, and knew nothing outside the military, in terms of what people actually thought about the war, how socialization and relationships normally work, etc. He had major blind faith in everything he was told about why the army had to commit war crimes, as well as the idea that everywhere else outside of his tribe and the military had the exact same experiences he did. To the point where he genuinely didn’t know that your parents are supposed to love you and whatever.

When his dad ended up finding out that he was gay at the age of 20, he violently hate crimed Bexon and another guy. His parents never spoke to him after that except for necessary military business (he wasn’t demoted bc they didn’t want anyone else to question what had happened and tarnish the family name). Less than 2 years later, Bexon runs away after an incident where he suddenly decided to try and save two elven children from a house (that he set on fire…). He gets them out, they also save his life somehow, but then a fellow soldier kills the kids anyways. Things finally click and he realizes every single part of the war is bad and even if you try to do good in it, it’s not possible.

Bexon is now in hiding, since there’s a chance is family is hunting him down to kill him for deserting. He basically lives as a hermit, often surviving on his own in the woods. He changes his hair and wears bulky clothes to cover up all his military tattoos. After 2 years, the war finally ends, and after 5 more years is the start of the campaign!!

Bexon has had 1-2 occasions where he’s tried sleeping with a man, but mostly hated it bc he was just so ashamed and scared. He tried once with a woman which was also awful bc he is very repulsed by the idea of being with a woman at all (partially due to misogyny). But eventually he decides to try again, and quickly gets hit on by this elf twink at a tavern, who also immediately clocks Bexon as very submissive (military instinct lol), and he ends up bottoming (also kinky sex and with an elf) for the first time. This absolutely blows his minds, the way this guy is so loud and upfront about his sexuality, and he hadn’t even considered that it was possible for a huge guy like him to bottom.

But this is a one night stand and Bexon especially never wants to see this guy again now that they know he’s gay. But being in a good mood for once, Bexon decides to help out as a bodyguard to help some people travel between cities. Unfortunately, the twink, aka Obediah, cleric of Dionysus, had already agreed to help these people as well. The two of them are forced back together along with a bitchy 19 year old wizard and a paladin farm girl who believes in always helping people and doing good (all these guys are also awesome I’m just trying to condense everything 😣). Bexon and Obediah “pretend they don’t know each other” but it’s super obvious and they are still occasionally fucking when they get the chance. Their initial “friends” with benefits is very toxic as they’re both desperately afraid of relationships for different reasons. Bexon is also just a major asshole a lot of the time because he’s very new to interacting with other people and is terrified of everyone.

It takes Bexon and Obi 2-3 years of desperate yearning, fighting, being on and off intimately, and unhealthy sex from terrible communication (and Bexon’s inexperience) for them to actually get together after the wizard finally yells at them to actually talk bc they’ve been being so annoying about this.

There’s a bajillion million more things I could tell you, but I’ll give you that and if you actually are curious about any aspects I’d be overjoyed to tell you more!! Sorry if this is way more than you expected, I don’t know how to be brief with him lol.

[grailfinders]

Fate and Phantasms #238

Today on Fate and Phantasms we're thinking big thanks to Kingprotea, the last of the Sakura Five (so far) to enter the Grand Order. She big. That's her whole schtick. We've done this before with the Berserker of Learning with Manga, but back then we were fettered by things like "other goals" and "being a small character". Not so today. Today we push the boundaries of the Big Character Meta to their utmost.

To do so, we're picking up the old favorite: Rune Knight Fighter. Grow big, hit things, real simple. Less simple is her other class: Wild Magic Sorcerer. We're stealing from her mom's slot machine to (hopefully) push her to new heights.

Check out her build breakdown below the cut, or her character sheet over here!

Next up: The next servant could really use some moisturizer. She's looking kinda ashy, y'know?

Race and Background

Most D&D games don't include artificial intelligences, so normally we'd go Custom Lineage here. Buuuuut KP's big, fuzzy, and has really big arms, so Bugbear is a pretty good pick too. She gets +2 Strength and +1 Constitution, plus a bit of Darkvision to style on those tiny humans. Surprisingly little light in space, so this should help out. You're also Long-limbed, giving you an extra 5' of reach on your turn, and you have a Powerful Build to make you count for one size larger for carrying stuff. Basically, you have doubled carry capacity. You're also Sneaky for proficiency in stealth, and can make a Surprise Attack against a surprised creature once per combat. Nobody notices kaiju until they're right on top of them. If they're really unlucky that's literal.

KP got kicked out of the Existing Club for a bit, so that means she's a Hermit. She gets Medicine and Religion proficiency from it, which we really didn't need but we don't need many skills so why not. Her mom's a doctor and she's kinda-sorta part god.

Ability Scores

Your highest score should probably be Constitution. KP's max HP breaks past the 45,000 marker in a game where 16,000 is a lot. After that is Strength, you need this one high just to be able to sit up in reality. Turns out several stories worth of girl is heavy. After that is Charisma. Depending on who you ask, Kingprotea is either adorable or terrifying, both charisma skills. Your Intelligence is slightly above average- I've never seen KP do long division but she is still an AI from the future. This means your Wisdom is low, since it's really hard to spot individual people when they all look like little dots, and we're dumping Dexterity. I'm sure you're nimble for your size, but I'm sure even olympic gymnasts have issues avoiding mosquitos.

Class Levels

Fighter 1: Starting off as a fighter is cool, you get proficiency with Strength and Constitution saves, plus Athletics and Intimidation. You're really good at (admittedly very specific kinds of) sports, and being 50' tall makes it real easy to scare people. You also get a Fighting Style to punch people real good with Unarmed fighting. If you've got one hand free, it's 1d6. If you've got both, it's 1d8. You also get a Second Wind once per short rest for a bit of healing using your bonus action. We aren't getting any ways to actually grow your HP total, but at least you've got the healing factor down.

Fighter 2: Second level fighters get an Action Surge once per short rest, giving you a second action in a single turn. Punch with the right hand, then punch with the left. You're practically a monk already!

Fighter 3: Third level fighters learn a martial archetype, and you already know we had to go Rune Knight to get big punches. You get another tool proficiency with smith's tools, and you can use these tools to become a Rune Carver, adding one rune each to two objects that are weapons, armor, shields, jewelry, or anything else you can hold in one hand. Your hands are big, so... everything, basically. WotC really doesn't expect people to be bigger than medium. Wearing or holding the runed item gives you a passive buff, and you can invoke the rune as a bonus action once per short rest for a more substantial power-up. The frost rune gives advantage on Animal Handling and Intimidation checks, and invoking it gives you +2 to all Strength and Constitution checks and saves for ten minutes. In case it wasn't obvious, that's where we're sticking all our ASI into. You also get the Stone Rune, giving advantage on Insight checks, and an improved darkvision. 60' isn't even enough for you to see the ground sometimes. Invoking this rune forces one creature to make a wisdom save against your constitution. If they fail they're charmed for a minute, become incapacitated and gaining a speed of 0. Oh right, also you get Giant Might. As a bonus action you can grow Large for a minute, get advantage on strength saves and checks, and once per turn you deal an extra 1d6 damage on a hit. You can grow proficiency times per day. Humble beginnings, but we'll get bigger later.

Sorcerer 1: And by later I mean right now, surprise! When you become a Wild Magic sorcerer you learn some Spells that you can cast with your Charisma. For cantrips, pick up Blade Ward for thicker skin, and Booming Blade and Thunderclap to slap people around, and Acid Splash. Most of our spells are going towards acting big, but you can summon the Kshira Sagara, and as we learned in Lostbelt 4 you do not want to get stuck in there. For first level spells, pick up Mage Armor for even thicker skin, and Earth Tremor to kick up some serious dust. The former makes your AC 13 plus your dexterity modifier- so, 12. The latter breaks up the stone and earth around you, dealing bludgeoning damage and turning the area into difficult terrain. And it's an aoe spell, that gets better and better the more you grow! The range gets bigger, at least. And more importantly, you can get an Wild Magic Surge when casting a spell of 1st level or higher. If your DM chooses, they can make you roll a d20. If you roll a one, then you have to roll on the Surge table. If that isn't consistent enough for you, Tides of Chaos will force the issue a little more, giving you advantage on one attack, check, or save once a day. Your DM can recharge your Tides by forcing a roll of the surge table after you cast a spell, so keep those tides low for maximum effect! The reason we've picked Wild Magic this time is simple. If you roll a 93 or 94 on your surge table you grow one size for a minute. It's not very reliable with only a 1/50 chance, but cutting edge technology never is.

Fighter 4: Use your first Ability Score Improvement to bump up your Strength for harder hitting.

Fighter 5: Fifth level fighters get an Extra Attack each action. That's two attacks per turn, or four with an action surge.

Sorcerer 2: Second level sorcerers become a Font of Magic, giving them sorcery points you can spend to create new spell slots, or spend spell slots for more points. They'll be more useful later. You also pick up Catapult, so you can throw objects at creatures to deal some damage if they fail a dexterity save. You can probably do that without the spell tbh.

Sorcerer 3: Third level sorcerers get the real reason we're taking this class, Metamagic! Extended Spell doubles the duration of the spell you cast, and Subtle Spell lets you cast a spell without using verbal or somatic components. Most of your spells are just... things you do. Things like Enlarge/Reduce, growing or shrinking you by doubling/halving all your dimensions and growing you by one size category. This doesn't really work going from large to huge, but if you're lucky you'll get large from Rune Knight and huge from a Wild Magic Surge, so this will turn you from huge to gargantuan, which will make the doubling work again.

Sorcerer 4: Use this ASI to bump up your Constitution for stronger runes and a stronger you-nes. You get an extra 9 HP this level since your HP scales retroactively, is what I'm saying. You'll need it, sorcerer hit dice are trash. You also pick up Gust and Hold Person. You are so big you can literally Hold People, and sometimes you don't want to crush them, you just want them to scootch to the side.

Sorcerer 5: Fifth level sorcerers get Magical Guidance, letting you re-roll a failed check by spending a sorcery point. You're so good at knowledge skills now it's almost like you're a supercomputer or something. You can also use Thunder Step to teleport you and up to one other ally up to 300 feet away and dealing thunder damage in the area you just left. A thunder step, or as you call it, a "step". You can also carry items up to your carrying capacity while teleporting. We'll go over this more in the pros & cons, but trust me, it's high.

Fighter 6: Back in fighter now, you get another ASI. Use this one to bump up your Charisma for a higher spell save DC, and scarier "Gao"s.

Fighter 7: Seventh level rune knights can use their Runic Shield to make blows just glance off their body. Or use your big-ol arms to protect your allies. When you see a creature get hit by an attack and they're within 60' of you, you can use a reaction to force the attacker to re-roll the attack proficiency times per day. You can also carve the Hill Rune into an item, giving you advantage and resistance against poison. Invoking the rune gives you resistance to physical damage for a minute, just like a barbarian.

Fighter 8: Use this ASI to max out your Constitution for as much health as possible. Yeah, that's it.

Sorcerer 6: Sixth level wild mages can Bend Luck as a reaction, spending two sorcery points to help (or hurt) another creature's odds of success at an attack, save, or check, adding/subtracting 1d4 to the roll. You have to choose between this and Runic Shield to protect your friends, but the latter is free, so it's not much of a contest. You can also cast Erupting Earth, turning a 20' cube of earth into difficult terrain and dealing bludgeoning damage to anything in the area. Stepping is nice, but now you can throw giant rocks at people.

Sorcerer 7: Seventh level sorcerers get fourth level spells. That mossy onsie you put on sometimes is made of dirt, so grabbing Stoneskin isn't totally out of the picture, giving you resistance to nonmagical bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing. Again your rune knight feature is better, but some backup doesn't hurt.

Sorcerer 8: Use your last ASI to become Tough for an extra 32 HP now, and two more every time you level up. You can also cast Dimension Door now. You tend to make a lot of difficult terrain wherever you go, so it's nice to have a way out of sticky situations.

Sorcerer 9: Our last level or sorcerer gives us a fifth level spell like Bigby's Hand. It makes a big hand that does a lot of stuff. Block damage, hold people, crush people, move objects, there's a lot to love. (Honestly your own hand should be able to do plenty of this by now, but a spell's nice too if you ran out of Mights.

Fighter 9: Ninth level fighters are Indomitable once per long rest, letting you re-roll a failed save. Don't use this on dexterity, it'll just hurt more when you fail.

Fighter 10: Tenth level fighters get a Great Stature, giving you an extra 3d4 inches in height normally, and your giant's might damage increases to 1d8. If you rolled really well on your height rolls up to this point, that means you're now nine feet tall, no magic required. I'd happily argue with your DM that this means you should be a large creature normally, but since you're missing that extra foot it's... quite a stretch. You can also use a Storm Rune now, giving you advantage on Arcana checks, and you can't be surprised. You can also invoke it to enter a prophetic state for a minute, giving you a special reaction to force advantage or disadvantage on nearby creatures' attacks, saves, or checks for up to a minute.

Fighter 11: Our last level nets you another Extra Attack per action. It's not flashy, but putting a dragon into the ground doesn't have to be.

Pros and Cons

Pros:

First off- you are big. Grow to large with Rune Knight, maybe grow to huge with a Wild Magic Surge, then double in size as a gargantuan creature thanks to Enlarge/Reduce. If you need an example to show how big that makes you, here it is:

That yellow square is a normal character. That red square is Kingprotea. Add in your 10' of reach and you've got a silly amount of the battlefield under your control. And what control you have! With a nearly maxed out strength score, gargantuan size, and a powerful build, you can carry two to four thousand pounds (RAW it's the former since there's no "larger size" for powerful build to work with, but... c'mon.), and haul four to eight thousand in a pinch.

On a similar note, being that silly huge means your spells are massive as well. A normal person casting Earth Tremor breaks up the earth in a 5x5 square. You do it in a 10x10 square. They can hit up to 24 creatures, you can hit up to 64. And thunderstep is even stronger, since that takes your airspace into account. 74 cubes vs. 584.

You're also a massive roadblock, taking up tons of space to keep the enemy from reaching your squishier party members or whatever macguffin you're guarding. With almost 250 HP, resistance to physical damage, difficult terrain generation, and several ways to force disadvantage on incoming attacks, you can keep the hordes at bay for a good long while.

Cons:

Reaching your max size takes luck, so much there's a pretty good chance it'll never happen in a campaign unless your DM really wants it to. You'll still be as big as Bunyan otherwise, but it's not great.

It also takes time to grow that big. You can activate your Giant Might as a bonus action, but then you need to pull off a wild magic surge with your first action, plus another casting of Enlarge/Reduce on your second turn. That's two spell slots and two turns spent getting big.

Your low dexterity makes you a really easy target no matter your size, with only 12 AC protecting you, and a body so huge you'll never find cover. Also, you're not gonna have fun when the fireballs come out, but no kaiju likes getting hit with missiles so that checks out.

But you're not here for speed. Plop yourself down wherever it's least convenient, grow to take up the whole map, crush anything that's dumb enough to get close and outlast everything else. Just be careful about getting banished again, your charisma isn't that high.

Bigness Meta Update: Just putting this on the bottom bc I don't care enough to find two more downsides. Turns out the luck and time issues are totally not true. You can get to the advertised 30x30x30 size super easily in a single turn.

Step 1: Cast Enlarge/Reduce on yourself with your action, shrinking yourself. (It's just for a little bit, promise)

Step 2: Use your bonus action for Giant's Might, growing to Large.

Step 3: End concentration on Reduce to grow another size to Huge.

Step 4(optional): Cast spells until you hit a magic surge.

Step 5(optional): Pray you roll a 93 or 94 on the surge table. If this happens, you'll grow Gargantuan.

Step 6: (If you want to do all this in one turn, skip step 3&4 and action surge.) Cast Enlarge/Reduce again to grow Gargantuan, or double your size if you followed steps 4 & 5.

Step 7: If you waited for the surge, you'll be 40x40x40, otherwise you'll "only" be 30x30x30. Either way, you're big enough to give the Tarrasque a run for its money.