#quickling

[ttrpg-smash-pass-vs]

On the left, the Stone Giant Dreamwalker! 18 ft (5.5 m) tall artists devoted to thier craft and known for thier wisdom, but these are special! You see, to a stone giant anything aboveground is "the land of dreams." These are ones who brave and embrace this "hallucination", but thanks to latent magic the world starts changing around them like it's actually a lucid dream. They turn things to stone, magically charm people, random errant thoughts make favorite objects become part of them. They think they're in a dream world without consequence, so they act on errant emotion and whim.

On the right are Quicklings, the speedsters of the fey realm! 2 ft (61 cm) creatures, they essentially experience the world in slow motion. They move and think so fast they look like a blur, and just cannot stop moving in some way. They're like if the flash was also extremely ADHD and a bit of a dick. Like they don't kill people or whatever, but they do mess with people to instigate fights and drama out of boredom. I don't think I need to explain how "vibrating so fast they're a living blur" could be a benefit.

[dailycharacteroption]

Lich (Pathfinder Second Edition Archetype)

(art by MitchGrave on DeviantArt)

Ah yes, the lich, considered by many necromancers to be the pinnacle of necromantic study, turning oneself into a perpetually renewing undead being so that their study of magic and accumulation of personal power never has to be stopped by a silly little thing like death.

In the previous edition, becoming a lich was something that was less governed by class options and more by personal investment in terms of downtime research and monetary expenditure, and that’s technically still true in 2E, but today’s subject lets you gradually claim the powers of that transformation rather than go through the arduous task of the GM adapting those powers into your power set.

While we’ve covered a handful of these undead archetypes before on the blog, the lich is a little bit different in that unlike the others, the lich is guaranteed to be something that the character willingly did to themselves, putting their soul into a receptacle to that their body and mind could persist as a powerful undead wizards and simply regenerate a new body whenever slain as long as nobody finds the soul cage and destroys it.

Oh right, yeah, 2E made the call to rename the object that serves as the vessel for their souls from the old “phylactery” to “soul cage”, as the latter is a much more evocative name, and also because the former is one of the names for a bit of religious paraphernalia from the still-living Jewish religion, making it kinda icky to use. These are sacred things, not a toy box of terms for any RPG or writer to just use whenever. (This is the same reason that the upcoming Remastered version of 2E is doing away with the term “golem” and making all of those constructs a moderately related group of created creatures without a unifying name.)

But that’s enough of that side tangent. Another way that the lich archetype differs from other undead archetypes is that it’s not one that can be taken in a reduced form at first level, or early in the character’s career at all. After all, liches are masters of magic, and while they are no longer limited to arcane casters, they still require a good deal of mastery in magic to fully grasp the concepts of the lichdom process and research their own personal path to dark immortality.

The dark powers of a lich are many, and we’ll soon see exactly how they can provide for your amoral casting character.

The base dedication for becoming a lich requires you to be a skilled craftsperson and have upper-middle casting proficiency, and for it the lich gains the basic undead benefits and their soul cage, which returns them to unlife when slain.

Those liches that started out as wizards can choose to make their soul cage their focus item, allowing them to drain reserves of magic from it to cast spells as usual. However, unlike other bonded items, it need not be on their person, and once per day (even if they are able to drain multiple times per day), they can use the drained power to cast any spell they know, even if they didn’t prepare it that day!

Given it is the key to their continued unlife, the soul cage is a lich’s most prized possession. As such, many weave a complex and layered series of abjurations and illusions over it to make the vessel extremely hard to identify as anything but a mundane items, as well as alert the lich if it is damaged at all.

While not quite as powerful as the touch of the monstrous lich stats, many do learn to charge their touch with negative energy to sap the life of their foes, and even potentially making them more sluggish.

Many of these undead mages also develop a natural sense for magic, helping them to notice spells and items nearby.

The efforts to further bolster their soul cage often bear fruit, with the item becoming especially durable and able to regenerate a new body for the lich at a much faster rate on average. Truly masterful liches can even be regenerated in a matter of hours.

Though most every lich dreads the fate, some liches do take inspiration from the crystalline demiliches by infusing a gemstone into their own flesh, usually the forehead, to cast a warding or divination spell, allowing them to draw upon the magic of the stone to cast said spell.

Meanwhile, some of the more powerful exude an aura of dread that strikes fear into the hearts of mortals, driving them away.

The fact that this archetype doesn’t come into play until midway through the levels means that your character will have plenty of identity beyond the archetype before you take it and can be built however you like with the lich feat being barely obtrusive. On that note, this archetype is exclusive to casting classes, so which one you choose will define your build as much as anything else, though it can be hard to justify any sort of primal caster becoming undead, unless you flavor them as being a perversion of nature or homebrew some modifications to make the archetype more like a druid undead like a siabrae. If there’s anything I’d say the archetype lacks, it’s the lack of feats tied directly to the abilities of other casting classes the way it does for wizards specifically.

The story of lichdom is one of both hard work and dedication, but also of hubris and an arrogant inability to grasp the consequences of one’s selfish actions. Sure, you may persist far beyond your mortal span until finally being slain for good, but is any of it actually worth it if you forget what it meant to be mortal, to be kind and understanding? Many liches are twisted into monsters unable to conceive of what they lost even before they’ve gone through with the process, while others may realize far too late how alienated they’ve become from the life they tried to preserve.

Faster than some traps can spring and hard to spot even when visible, quicklings like Zephyrtoes make for excellent thieves. However, when the young fey snatches a pretty bauble from a hidden vault, he soon realizes that his latest trinket is none other than a lich’s soul cage, and the undead mage is as relentless as Zephyrtoes is quick, possibly even more so.

The Rasinstar family has long been plagued by bouts of weakness and nausea that seem hereditary, but many a noble family has such quirks due to how such lineages are maintained, so nobody bats an eye, but their malaise is more than just a result of their breeding, but rather their ancestor: a familial lich who doesn’t wait to be destroyed to take advantage of the many able bodies in his lineage, sapping away a little bit of their life force at random when casting certain spells.

Emulating The Tireless, dark dwarven deity of undeath that values constant labor towards an endgoal, The Forgotten King Bolkgaard achieved lichdom late in life and began conducting experiements in undeath and construct crafting techniques to make his people as tireless as he was. Though he was destroyed, the abandoned factory-palace he once ruled from still lingers, and some have heard an echoing ticking coming from it’s depths recently.

[haaaaaaaaaaaave-you-met-ted]

Quickling by Clint Cearley

[cagemasterfantasy]

DND Monsters: Quickling

From: Wild Beyond the Witchlight, Volo's Guide to Monsters, Mordenkainen Presents: Monsters of the Multiverse

Tiny Fey, Chaotic Evil

AC 16

HP 10 (3d4 + 3)

Speed 120 ft.

Str 4 -3 Dex 23 +6 Con 13 +1 Int 10 +0 Wis 12 +1 Cha 7 -2

Skills Acrobatics +8, Perception +5, Sleight of Hand +8, Stealth +8

Senses Darkvision 60 ft.

Languages Common, Sylvan

CR 1

Traits

Blurred Movement. Attack rolls against the quickling have disadvantage unless the quickling is incapacitated or restrained.

Evasion. If the quickling is subjected to an effect that allows it to make a Dexterity saving throw to take only half damage, it instead takes no damage if it succeeds on the saving throw, and only half damage if it fails.

Actions

Multiattack. The quickling makes three dagger attacks.

Dagger. Melee or Ranged Weapon Attack: +8 to hit, reach 5 ft. or range 20/60 ft., one target. Hit: 8 (1d4 + 6) piercing damage.

[sculien]

WHAT WE DO IN THE SHADOWS 6.09

[cal-kestis]

i love arm

[lemon-lyman]

THE WEST WING → 4.03 'College Kids'

[guildfordd]

— MANNY JACINTO as QIMIR in The Acolyte, 1x06, "Teach / Corrupt" (2024)

[horrorgameanalysis]

Greyhawk Monstrous Compendium Review [A to C]

I’m currently preoccupied with the design of the RPG I want to make – when I’m not busy being stressed! To relax, then, I’ve been reading old Dungeons & Dragons monster manuals, trying to find ideas I could leverage. There’ll be an upcoming post that discusses in further detail monster theory and culture in relation to the monsters I’m thinking about. But I came across a compendium in my search,…

[blueskiesandstarrynights]

Dimension 20: Fantasy High Season 3, Episode 10: Cursed Out

[imogens-temult]

CRITICAL ROLE: CAMPAIGN 3 Episode 114: Fight for the Bloody Bridge

[ttrpg-smash-pass-vs]

Quicklings, the speedsters of the fey realm! 2 ft (61 cm) creatures, they essentially experience the world in slow motion. They move and think so fast they look like a blur, and just cannot stop moving in some way. They're like if the flash was also extremely ADHD and a bit of a dick. Like they don't kill people or whatever, but they do mess with people to instigate fights and drama out of boredom. So you need something to entertain them, but I don't think I need to explain how "vibrating so fast they're a living blur" could be a benefit.

...also I love that the lore is just "Their archfey got mad that they kept showing up late and wasting her time, so she shrunk them and hit the fast forward button on thier existence." Like they didn't used to be 2 foot tall with a 15 year lifespan, she apparently just has life's remote control.

[dailycharacteroption]

Class Feature Friday: Spirit Instinct (Pathfinder Second Edition Barbarian Instinct)

(art by LudvikSKP on DeviantArt)

It’s time for another bout of Second Edition Class Feature options, and I think this is a good time to say how I’m going to handle Remastered versions of previously-existing options.

See, in some ways the Remastered version of previously existing content is subtle, just changing certain damage type names and tags. Sometimes it’s a bit more dramatic though, what with new abilities or entire new structuring, such as anything related to dragons since the “core” set is no longer the classic chromatic and metallic dragons (heck, only one of those traditional D&D holdovers is even in the list under a different name) I’m sure the others will be added back in later with other core books, but you can still use the stats from older 2e books anyway.

Which brings me to the most dramatic changes, with the likes of the champion and wizard classes, since they’ve done away with alignment and the classical schools of magic (and making the title of necromancer it’s own class in the near future. Sounds like a neat addition but still mixed feelings on that).

So with that in mind, my official stance is that remastered versions of archetypes and class options will either be covered simultaneously if changes are minimal, or covered as their own separate thing if they’re too different. (old wizard schools will still be covered as different subsets of the “Thassalonian” school of thought alongside their more culturally diverse counterparts, for example).

All that to say that today’s entry is one of those selections that has barely changed between editions: the Spirit Instinct for barbarians.

The barbarian class has always had its minor connections to the spiritual and supernatural, and while they often translates to elemental power or the ability to draw power from an association with supernatural beings, sometimes it really is purely spiritual in nature. Maybe they come from a culture that venerates their ancestors, or perhaps the nature spirits all around them. Or maybe they’re outright haunted by spirits that either wish to protect them or rage impotently against them. Either way, the touch of these spirits resonates with the souls of these warriors, granting them enhanced strength against their foes and protection against the undead.

So let’s see what the instinct has to offer them!

When these barbarians rage, they are surrounded by spiritual power, which lends itself into their strikes to harm the living and the dead alike. Furthermore, their weapons gain an ectoplasmic presence to make them fully effective against ghostly foes.

As they grow in mastery, the spiritual harm they can inflict only increases.

Whether it be the active protection of a guardian spirit or the touch of the spiritual insulating them, these warriors also gain a measure of protection against undead foes and the negative power of the void.

Of course, the spirits that guide these warriors can offer other abilities reflected in various feats. Ghost Wrangler, for example, allows them to grapple ghosts; Spirit Guides, meanwhile, offer guidance in noticing hidden things or in performing tasks. Meanwhile, Inner Strengh sees the spirits helping the raging warrior recover from effects that would sap their strength; and Spirit’s Interference has them subtly deflecting projectiles away from them. By invoking Spirit’s Wrath, the barbarian can send out one such spirit to manifest and strike a foe that is out of their normal reach.

Meanwhile, other feats might prove useful for these warriors, including Moment of Clarity, Raging Intimidation, Intimidating Strike, Second Wing, Shake it Off, Supernatural Senses, Scouring Rage, Invulnerable Rager, Renewed Vigor, Corpse-Killer’s Defiance, Embrace the Pain, and Unstoppable Juggernaut, as well as any others that may suit your particular build.

This instinct is fairly well-balanced, having both offensive and defensive abilities, with even some utility on skill checks, and so it’s a generally good all-rounder with a slight edge against undead without making them useless against the living, and because it covers it’s bases, you can use it with pretty much any build you like.

No matter their origin, the spirits associated with these barbarians regularly whisper to them. Not enough to be distracting, but they are ever-present, only ever truly silenced by the unified purpose of rage. However, exactly what sort of relationship the barbarian might have with said spirits may vary. Some may be non-specific entities and are little more than a light, indistinct background noise. Others, however, might talk directly to the barbarian, and might offer helpful advice if they like the warrior, or backhanded admonishment if they dislike each other.

They say that Leader Stonescale is favored by the ancestors, and that seems to be the case, for the lizardfolk chieftain is capable to conjuring the spirits to aid himself in battle, and often entreats them for advice, his body adorned with carved bone talismans taken from the ancestral elders.

Subject of a cruel prank, Okaan believes she is receiving messages from her ancestors, marking her as a spirit-blessed warrior among her people. In truth, however, it is a quickling fey hiding nearby whispering these things to her when nobody else is present. This joke is destined to turn ugly were it not for the timely intervention of the party.

The Broken Sword clan has their share of spirits, but they are not nurturing guardians, but rather, the ancestral remnants of the Sword King clan which they betrayed and splintered off from long ago. Thus, their spiritual practices are more focused on placating these spirits than honoring them, hoping to someday atone for their founder’s indiscretion.

[pavlmescal]

☆2024 Pride Celebration☆ Day 6: Favorite LGBTQIA+ Media [2/10] ⤷Sense8 (2015-2018)

[televisiongifs]

Freaks and Geeks (1999-2000) The Diary (S01E10)

[starwarsblr]

THE ACOLYTE – 1.05 "Night"