#probably won't do it again idk

[terrified-spider]

Changes to the Zombie - Vers. 1

As part of my Ravenloft/Domains of Dread Hopping Campaign, my players are going to be visiting Falkovnia and defending a small lumber farm over the course of a few days leading up to the full moon. While I love fighting and/or playing zombies (my main PC is literally a spider-infested corpse), I find 5e's basic zombie stat block a bit lackluster, particularly when using it in mass combat with low level PCs. Of course, there's the Strahd Zombie, but the extra limbs become a pain to track, and when working with a party of four level three characters, I can't have too many of them in a fight.

With the session less than 12 hours away as I write this, here's what I'll be test running:

I'm using the RAW statblock as a starting point, and will be making only small changes to the AC, HP, and Damage details, to keep the CR close to 1/4.

Rather than just the Slam attack, I'll be adding a Bite and Claw/Slash attack. Each attack will have the same Damage dice, before taking into account the changes mentioned later. The main variations will be the Damage type, with slashing for the Claw/Slash, and piercing for the Bite. One of my favorite house rules I've played with and used is that the damage type for some weapons can change depending on how the attacks are described, and I want to provide the zombies with a few different options.

To keep with the CR, they won't receive Multiattack, and just have the option to shift between attack methods.

To make it easier to come up with descriptions for the zombies, and to create some mechanical variation between them, I created a simple table to roll on as needed. Most are purely aesthetic changes, though a few change speed, buff or debuff damage/attack rolls, and impact AC.

A Missing Jaw have a -1 to hit, along with the debuffs from a Broken Jaw or Missing Teeth.

Zombies with Missing Teeth, Missing Fingers, or a Broken Jaw have a -1 to damage rolls of their respective attacks.

A Limp drops speed by 5, and Missing a Leg by 10. Those Missing Both Legs are prone and must crawl.

Armor, even when broken, adds some kind of protection. Wearing it provides the zombie with +1 AC.

Larger zombies receive an extra hit die and +1 damage to Slam attacks.

Anyway, I'll be testing this stuff out tomorrow, I'll give an update as soon as possible about how it all went. I don't do a lot of homebrew, at least not beyond reflavoring stuff, so this will probably need a few revisions before it's actually decent.

An early "thank you" to my players, who don't yet know how much help they're going to be.

[claitea]

isat-style n portraits hehe

[radiance1]

Hi. I just had an idea about temporally misplaced Danyal Al Ghul.

Clockwork yoinked him after he was seriously injured and patched him up. Basically saved him. And then yeeted him to the past to be adopted by the Fentons.

So by the time Danny and Damian have a reunion Danny is in his late 20s at most, early 20s at the very least. And he is most definitely a shapeshifting magical eastern dragon with a cult and all that.

I do not make anything having to do with Danny being related to the Al Ghuls.

However

This gives me the foundation to do such a thing.

Alright, so we would need to find a reason why Clockwork would even want to help Danny in any sort of capacity since he wasn't being pushed to kill him because of the observants.

But what if the reason was because he needed someone to beat some sense into (and I am both sorry and not at all sorry for this) his husband turned tyrant turned sleeper soon into the future. Since in a few timelines Danny does beat Pariah Dark he just, decided to push him onto that path.

The perfect opportunity presented itself when Danny was heavily injured in a battle between brothers to decide the true heir, to which both was heavily injured actually, and yoinked him away, patched him up, and left it to the LoA to assume he was just dead after his body disappeared.

So then, following the timeline he foresees where he fought against Pariah, gently and carefully guided him along the timestream (For which to prevent the notice of other Masters of times) to a few years prior and landed him in the care of the Fentons.

Over the years he did gently nudge things here and there to have the Fenton's views on ghosts changing slowly, but surely, as thanks to the boy for unknowingly helping him.

Oh, and avoiding a disastrous future, he guesses.

Everything followed along with his plan, slowly coming to fruition until the boy knocked some sense into his husband, to which made him the new king of the Ghost Zone after the Observants deemed Pariah unfit to rule beyond this point anymore, and as a boon because he was unable to have the Crown and ring in Pariah's possession (given to Clockwork to watch over, so as to not have a repeat of Pariah Dark), he was granted the ability to turn into an eastern dragon at will.

Occasionally he sent the boy back into the past to right some wrongs, avoid disaster, and to occasionally collect the soon-to-be Duke after he found himself in the past. Though he does find himself (and his husband) amused at seeing the boy slowly having a cult built in his name.

Danny's honestly been living the good life, no longer being expected to succeed the League of Assassins and leaving it up to his twin, he was adopted by a new family who, while a bit eccentric was amusing nonetheless, and they did become a true, proper family after his reveal went exceedingly well!

He was 25 now, and decided to take a break from both his kingly duties, and Amity Park, his parents pushed him to take this as a well-deserved vacation and, since Jazz was also in Gotham, he could drop by and say hi to her!

Danny was a bit miffed about leaving the inner-workings of the Ghost Zone to Vlad, more so that it's him than anything. But he did at the very least trust the Duke's skill in making everything go as smoothly as possible and having him consumed in paperwork would stop his brooding over being unable to find that guy, he had a one-nighter with.

(He's honestly surprised anyone would do that, but he guesses people have... interesting tastes. Also, a brooding phoenix, to his displeasure, was far worse than a phoenix trying to woo his mother.)

So he stopped by Gotham, said hi to sister and decided to crash at her place for a while. Wandered around Gotham, seeing the sights, tasting the food, talking to people.

A very good vacation, in his books.

So now what was he supposed to do, when he found his vacation interrupted by what was undoubtedly his twin along with the goddamn Wayne's showing up in his sister's apartment.

They gave him a jumpscare of a lifetime, honestly. But also couldn't they do this somewhere else? Like, a coffee shop, perhaps?

[catholicsapphic]

Cool About It - boygenius

Divine Mercy by Eugene Kazimierowski before, during, and after restorations / Saint Rita and her Sons before the Crucifix by Giovan Battista Galizzi / Pilate washing his hands, by Jacopo Robusti Tintoretto / Christ in Gethsemane by Carl Heinrich Bloch / The Last Judgement by Gostave Dore / The Lost Sheep by Alfred Usher Soord

[thatonecrookedsmile]

"There's nothing wrong with dreaming. Wishing for the impossible is just human nature. That's how I got started. Just a pencil and a dream. We all want everything without even having to lift a finger. They say you just have to believe. Belief can make you succeed. Belief can make you rich. Belief can make you powerful. Why with enough belief, you can even cheat death itself. Now that... is a beautiful, and positively silly thought." -Joey Drew.

[OPEN YOUR EYES]

-Line-

-----

I mean, at the end of the day, he wasn't so wrong about that last part.

This one also took a little longer to finish. I wonder why /s.

I usually don't like drawings where I have to create a design for a character I've never drawn before. It ends up making me force myself to come up with ideas and sometimes I end up not liking the design anyway. At least this time? That didn't happen (thank goodness).

At first, I didn't know what to do for this prompt. What I originally conceived was a more "joke" drawing with Joey and Sammy, with Sammy literally drawing the line between him and Joey with a big pencil. No big deal, right? But then the phrase "end of the line" came to mind and then… this happened. Funny. A while back I had an idea for a drawing about Joey's afterlife. The idea was much simpler, from what I remember. And compared to what we have, quite different.

"Death" is what came for Joey, and it's what comes for everyone. What he faces is nothing less than what will determine his fate. It is the very Arbiter itself - the eye that sees all - who decides where souls whose lives are over will go. The heavenly gates in the great beyond? The burning flames in the darkest pit? The void of vast nothingness? Somewhere else beyond? Reveal your soul and the Arbiter will decide. I have a certain guess as to where Joey is going, but I'll leave that up in the air.

Maybe I thought just a little bit too much about a character that I probably won't draw in a long time,but i don't mind giving a little lore even to characters that i don't see using much in the future, you know.

(Also, since I used Joey's audio log from BATIM CH3 in the beginning, did you know that Dave Rivas (Joey's current VA) did his own reading of that audio? He's going to be a guest on the Indie Horror Talk Podcast, and the video they posted teasing Dave's appearance there has him reading this same audio log, only with his Joey voice. So now we have Joey's first audio log in the series voice acted by both his first VA (David Eddings) and his current one. I thought that was cool, you know. I found this out a while back and wanted to talk about it for a sec.)

(Alt. without the text):

[ficoandleo]

((i was looking up how taxes are paid in japan because i realized that leo is self-employed

Normally your employer would file your taxes for you but if you're self employed or make a certain amount or have a sidegig that makes a certain amount you have to fill them out yourself

Which means Leo is like one of the only people on campus who's going to be like 'everyone shut up i'm doing my taxes i'll talk to you in like a week when i've stopped dissociating and managed to get them done' in February

(Sho doesn't have to pay his taxes until the year after starting his business so he's off the hook this year but since Leo often pays him digitally along with cash he has to do Sho's taxes too as his employer just so no one gets suspicious)

(Sho joining Leo like 'yeah I'm gonna have to do these with the fiod truck and all so I guess I have to learn now?' and just watching Leo file their fucking taxes. And both of them hate being bored and they will spend the entire month they have to do it getting extremely distracted by literally anything else. You could check in on them like 'hey how're the taxes going' and they've made a thousand little origami stars and the taxes are not done. Like at first Sho was teasing Leo for having to do something so boring but he was trying to watch and learn and then he got bored too and he's like. I would rather do literally anything else right now can we take a break please)

I just think it's funny to realize that Leo has to pay taxes. Like out of all of them he's one of the only ones that knows how to do his own taxes. Ritsu's family are his employers, their accountants do his taxes. Jin's family's accountants do any taxes he owes. Darkwick does the taxes for most of the students I imagine particularly since I'm pretty sure it's implied they get paid to do missions. But Leo, as an influencer, is self-employed and does it himself and has been for a few years so Darkwick makes him handle it himself lmao

And you might think Leo would just get an accountant and I can absolutely see him getting someone to it for him. On the other hand since he probably has less-than-legal income he doesn't trust someone else to do it for him lmao.))

[teddybeartoji]

tomorrow is gonna be such a weird day i am not looking forward to it at all

[mintyyyjades]

feeling cute might whack a transphobe later 🥰💖

[hl-obsessed]

for @luckyagain who's tags kicked my ass to work 💕

[click for better quality as always]

[pynkhues]

I hope they don’t make Lestat lie or exaggerate about the wolves because that’s a very early memory and would set the tone for the rest of Lestat’s interview. If he embellished how many wolves there were, who’s to say he isn’t lying about how severe his other traumas were or about Claudia and Louis? About what the Coven did to him before the Trial? Louis’s interview also started out quite grounded and Daniel didn’t start questioning what he said until after 1.01: of course, there’s some unreliable-ness in the first episode, but the show didn’t start with Daniel prodding Louis like ‘You’re saying he was hunting you? I thought he was your first love.’ It layered in those qualities in Louis’s narration over time.

Ah, I hear you, anons, I really do, but as I talked about a bit in this post it's a really normal response to trauma to alter details of traumatic events over time, and I think the show's already explored that a bit with Louis, and could do so in different ways with Lestat, because a lot of their traumas are very different. At the same time, I will also say that I think Lestat can't be positioned as the truthteller/the beacon of truth on the show. I think it runs into some very, very hairy territory in terms of the racial undertones (and overtones) to put it mildly with Louis, Claudia and Armand, and I'd even go so far as to say that it would undermine the message of the first two seasons. A personal history, a personal truth, is often subjective and compounded by time, experiences, relationships and intent, and I think that was explored beautifully with Louis and is ripe to be explored in different ways with Lestat.

When I talk about exaggeration, I'm talking about it potentially in that sort of context. It's not about Lestat bigging himself up, it's in the context of Lestat having undergone unimaginably awful things, and the details of those becoming blurry as he's had to justify himself and his traumas to the (very few) others he's told and to himself. God, personally I think it's lowkey canonical already where he talks about how much Magnus was in love with him as he 'raped him into existence' when that feeling of being loved and wanted was at best briefly felt and has been exaggerated in Lestat's head as a means to protect himself from reality. That's not about Lestat exaggerating what happened to him, it's about him applying and exaggerating feelings to Magnus. It's not deliberate. It's about survival, and the performance of survival, and to me both those things are compelling and harrowing and also just make sense with Lestat, y'know?

That can and does manifest in different ways for people, and it can make the details of traumatic events - - not malleable, but not necessarily 1:1 to teh experience itself.

And look, the show probably won't go there! This is all just me percolating, haha, but I will also add that I hope the writers never take into consideration how this fandom will receive anything, because frankly, I think fandom and the people who bring us shows should exist on different planets, haha.

[starflungwaddledee]

been working on answering a prompt i received in an ask the other day, and so i'm back thinking about... the Thing... 💖🎀 and thought maybe prompt doodles might help me work through this a little?

so uhhh.... if by any wild chance anyone has any ship suggestions for starstruck...??? feel free to send them through!

[pekoeboo]

ugh. some thoughts.

really been trying to find the joy in drawing/writing again and honestly it's been such a challenge. friends have told me it's most likely depression that's making it hard to feel motivated and tbh they're probably right.

hoping to get back into being creative in the way I Want to be at some point tho. I miss it. there's still so much with my stories and characters that I haven't been able to share or explain and I wish I knew how without it feeling like this daunting, impossible task.

I don't know when I'll get around to actually sharing art again (or writing, if ever). was hoping that I'd manage to get some of my mental and physical issues in check recently for just long enough to get back into the swing of being creative, but that hasn't seemed to work. everything feels bad, both artistically and physically. I'm struggling to keep up with the frantic pace at which my brain comes up with story concepts and intriguing character interactions, even tho everything in me wishes I could turn it into tangible artistic expression so I can get it out of my head and share it. it used to be easy. I don't know why it's not now.

I'm just . tired, I guess.

[theflyingfeeling]

...😭

[kirkwallguy]

also i was kind of into it at first just because it did something to my brain but the more i think about it the less fun the concept of someone being able to See the spirit / demon possessing them is.....it's just soo much crunchier when you become completely intertwined and struggle to differentiate between each other's thoughts. you can't really have that when your demon is just a guy who yells in your ear and tells you what he can smell all the time.

[imeriayapping]

I'm so happy that at least in motogp i can breathe without seeing russians because they are always lased in f1 history, they still try to push that fucking shwartzman there too and into indy, they are in wec. THEY ARE EVERYWHERE

And I can't even express my fury because I'm not gonna be called racist/nazi/xenophobic but when people do same thing to Israeli it's ok. I can't be angry at nation that killed my granddad my uncle and probably many more in my family tree. I can't be anything other than thankful for support even if it's never fucking enough because my timeline looks like necrolog.

All i see when I'm online is either other Ukrainians trying to crowdfund ammunition for our soldiers without much success because everyone and our economy is exhausted or news about how new forces join russians to kill us. It's their only goal.

And you can't just fucking cherry pick those russians you like to say that they aren't guilty. They need to embrace consequences of what their politicians are doing. You can't be innocent and russian at the same time, one of very few truly good russians died recently fighting on the side of Ukraine. Our outlook on life becoming so individualistic we don't realise that power is hold by masses, that if they wanted for war to stop those "simple russians" could just stop going to war. Their system is extremely corrupt, it's easy to escape being drafted. Only times they protest is when they get denied another app. There millions of them and somehow just dozens of those caught by police for protest. They just don't fucking care and you continue to defend them online

[spadefish]

.