My D&D Characters

Howdy there! While I'm working on all sorts of things, I had a random thought of writing a short article on the various D&D character I've played, as well as some of my favorite NPCs. While I recognize most of these are tied to their setting in one way or another, feel free to use them in your own games as NPCs. If it makes your game better, it will make me happier.

Sam Eks Kopee

While the name is a little on the nose, this is one of my all-time favorite characters I've ever played. In a long-term solo game, Sam served as a master infiltrator to the Thieves' Guild wielding the combination of his changeling powers and roguish training for spying. Better yet, I got to play one of my favorite creations, the faceless (which was my rework of changelings before the 5e Eberron book has been released). It also came with several feats for expanding the shapeshifting powers, which was just awesome.

When it came to his personality, he was careful but curious. In his free time, he worked as an actor for the local theatre. This profession was so ingrained into his personality, that he would usually entertain his closest ones by transforming them when with them to jokingly mock them. However, that was always just a facade that he used to hide his insecurity about who he feels like he should be, and whether society could accept him for that. Due to his risky profession, he turned his faith in the Goddess of luck and chance, Avandra (although this could be replaced by a fitting deity in your own games).

When it came to mechanics and magical item equipment, he is a simple character. Two magical items I can't imagine him without are glamoured studded leather armor, and gloves of thievery. While the gloves make his hands much more dexterous than they normally would be, the armor serves as his second skin. Not only can he change his appearance using an action, but he can also alter the appearance of his clothes as a bonus action too, completely changing how he appears. Other potentially useful magical items for him are the medallion of thoughts and the slippers of spider climb. While his subclass was originally Swashbuckler, the truth is he could be almost any roguish subclass depending on the world and his role during the infiltrations. Soulknife sounds rather fun if you wanted him to have more supernatural powers. While most of his stats could be adjusted easily, I would keep his Dexterity and Charisma high.

Picture not included, because he could literally look like anyone. While he did have a default appearance, revealing it would kind of ruin the surprise, right?

Katerina S.

A bit of a metagame backstory before I get to the character herself. Over two years ago, I have started my live campaign that lasted for quite a while. I overestimated myself, and managed to gather another group of people, "just for a oneshot". However, as it goes, those friends have called their friends, and then friends of friends have been called. When the number grew too big, I asked my friend for help, if he could take over DMing this group for me. He helped me out, and I am thankful to him to this day. After the oneshot, he actually started to DM a game for us that's been going on to this day. My character in that game, which simply put was a half-orc monk with some extra homebrew stuff, didn't last too long though. He has fallen in combat against an owlbear, trying to help out his cleric companion by attracting the monster's attention away from him and to himself. However, the beast has rolled a little too well, and in one mighty swoop, the legend of the half-orc has ended. I wasn't sad, however. I was glad because I knew this could have an impact on the party. I have chosen to not attend the next game on purpose, to let the party feel the void, and to give them some space before the new character arrives.

Since this happened before a major release like Tasha's Cauldron of Everything, I was looking for inspiration in the homebrew. Turns out I had a little too many ideas, so my DM asked me to make a "vanilla" character. Without homebrews.

Katerina is a human, who has lost the memories of her early childhood. The earliest memory she has is that of waking up on the street without a home, knowing she just made a pact with the Evening Star. She uses her magical powers to protect all that is good, and fight the evils of the world. If this doesn't ring any bells for you, let me add that one of her eldritch invocations was Armor of Shadows, which lets her cast mage armor. And since the appearance of that could be reflavored...

~Fighting evil by moonlight,
... wait, wrong lyrics. Uhh...
~Caught in destiny we shine for we are meant to be the Star Guardians
... wait, wrong again. Wait, I remember now!
~We are, the great Starlight Brigade!

Artwork kindly provided by Yurco_.

Yes. It used to be a joke character. Emphasis on used to.

Katerina is a considerate optimist. Since she was made to patch up something that the party was missing at a time, she is more intelligent than charismatic and uses her Intelligence for her spellcasting too. If there's one thing that makes her happy, though, it's making other people happy. Whether it's through generosity, motivational words, or a little bit of magic. She also suffers from claustrophobia due to an accident when she was growing up.

The world she lives in is an unwelcoming one to the arcane casters. Wizardry is outright banned by the United Order, a religious organization that rules the entire continent. Sorcerers are kidnapped by the soldiers and trained for unknown purposes. And warlocks, well... people don't know yet that those exist. Katerina didn't get much choice in becoming one, at least as far as her memories go. Being a child of the street, she has been found and raised by the previously-mentioned half-orc monk. What he did wasn't legal, but Katerina knew that he did it out of necessity, not because he wanted to. When the United Order has begun founding adventuring guilds all over the continent, he decided to leave his criminal life behind and joined one. In part thanks to this, Katerina got to study under the tutelage of one of the last wizards living in secrecy.

Katerina is a warlock, serving the Great Old One patron. All of her abilities are flavored in a positive optimistic way, usually related to the stars or hearts. What others would consider a disturbing way to telepathically communicate with people by crossing the linguistic and auditory barriers is Heartspeech, a way to speak to another person's heart directly across the barriers. The Pact Boon of choice for her was Chain, with her first familiar being a sprite named Xandra. With her powers, she could tell the good people from evil using her tiny friend, but after an encounter with a genie, she achieved the powers of Heartsight. Since then, her familiar has used the statistics of an imp, still resembling a fairy but a bit more fiendish. The vast majority of her spells revolves around utility outside of combat—long-distance communication, illusions, and charms. Some of her iconic magical items are a robe of stars for some extra spells and a misty scarf that she regularly uses for short-range teleportation.

TCUU

This entry will be quite a bit shorter, but I do want to return to this character someday or reuse it. Since at the moment I don't have games in which I would play him, I don't have any need to hold back the spoilers for his backstory.

Artwork by shinji2602.

Once upon a time, there has been a research facility hidden from the world someplace underground. And in this facility worked an elf called Vittor Robotnik, clever for an artificing apprentice and loved by his family who didn't know of this job. What he worked on he didn't know, it was way above his paygrade. However, his life has changed forever once the accident happened. The facility has blown up, killing many, and among them Vittor too. Unexpectedly, though, he was the only one who did not die completely. Since there were exotic materials related to the current study of the ethereal plane present, his soul was stuck there, lingering and unable to move on. However, over the time spent there, he learned that he could move very small objects on the Material Plane around.

It took him decades, but his project was finally finished. Combining the small parts, he managed to make bigger and bigger parts that he could move. Luckily, everything important for the construct was present, which is why he was able to create a mechanical body for himself. His soul is now bound to the mechanism, which he called TCUU (pronounced tee-see-yous), resembling a local legendary hero who has supposedly recreated his own body.

The decades have made him cold and calculated, but patient. While some of his humor still remains, it is completely dry by now. Each of his jokes told in a monotone voice has to be followed with "Ha. Ha. Ha." to let others know that it was meant to be funny. His motivation was like a boulder rolling down a hill—it takes a while to get moving, but it's hard to stop its determined roll. Upon finding out that his wife has died, he was hopeless until he came to learn that she too is now stuck in the Ethereal Plane. He is dedicated to crafting a body for her to inhabit, which is why he'll do anything he can in order to obtain more robotic parts.

TCUU is a warforged artificer of the armorer specialization. Unfortunately, since the campaign he was in ended after a couple of sessions, he didn't get to experience all that much stuff. One day, though, I'll get to play him some more, and define him better.

The magical rings salesman

This one is even shorter, since it's an NPC. There are very few constants across my various games. However, I always try to find some way to include this character. He's a simple NPC to portray. A fire genasi whose skin and "hair" are blue (possibly due to Wild Magic?), he doesn't have a consistent backstory of any kind. What's better, his name is remembered by nobody. He probably sold it to a fairy or something.

A wonderful rendition of a cross-dimensional NPC magical rings salesman, provided kindly by /u/Seqarian.

But oh what's this? A cart that's filled with all kinds of magical rings! Wait, why isn't anyone paying attention to him? What's this, they're saying that his magical rings are all just pranks? Nonsense, there must be something useful! Let's dig in...

Oh, how about a ring of flying? Oh wait, it only makes you fall upwards. Hmm, maybe a ring of fishing? Huh, so it attracts fish only because it's glittery. Aha, here we go! A ring of impressions, which lets you do supernaturally good handshakes, even when the other person would try to bluff you by turning it into a high-five or a fistbump!

... maybe they were right about him. What was his name again?

I could go on and on about my other characters. Some of my favorites being the Seven-Cursed Queen Arcadia, Doirend the archfey, Gray the noble, Ebenezer, Krush, Kyrislav, and so many others. But for now, I'll spare myself, and see if this is something people like and want to see more of. I hope you've enjoyed this, that perhaps you'll find a use for these in your games someday, and I wish you a great day!

Villainous Cookbook: The Memetic Lunatic

I don't know how many more Villainous Cookbooks I'll write up, so while I do still have some ideas, I may as well put them down on paper. Or blog, I suppose. Lately, I've been considering villains whose whole gimmick is just dealing damage in creative ways. It's extremely tempting to go down that route, but... at the end of the day, I decided to try to keep my standards up for as long as I can. This is not about optimization, it's about story themes. Here, I've decided to write up a villain who's gonna screw with the minds of the party just as much as the players who control them.

Preface

The purpose of the Villainous Cookbook is to offer cool villain ideas for DMs. It uses homebrew player options sometimes mixed with the official ones, but it bends the rules a little to work better. While sometimes restrictions breed creativity, other times it's nice to push the boundary a little to make the villain more interesting.

The stats are left completely up to the reader. You can make them anything you want, as long as it's within some boundaries, and you don't need to spend any ASIs or consider the stat bonuses provided by the feats unless you want to complicate things for yourself.

Each of the builds is split into 4 Tiers, to show how the villain grows in power over time. At any moment, the villain should be at least on the same tier as your players if not higher, since you want them to be challenging. Unless noteworthy, I won't mention the specific spells, ability scores, backgrounds, or skills. All that I leave up to you so that the villain is more customized.

One last word of caution — while these builds might seem overpowered, making the homebrews seem overpowered, bear in mind two things.

1. We're adjusting the rules a little to make the character builds work better. If this demands an in-world explanation, say that this is an exceptional person who figured out something others don't know, or has a special bloodline/destiny.
2. We're crossing the homebrew streams. And that can oftentimes go wrong. I'm doing my best to use homebrews that I consider balanced and that I would actually allow my players to use in the games.

With all that out of the way, our next villain is a secretive wizard type. Spying, watching, possibly everpresent.

Memetic Lunatic

"Paranoia is knowing all the facts."

— Woody Allen

"This Spy has already breached our defenses... You've seen what he's done to our colleagues! And worst of all, he could be any one of us... He could be in this very room! He could be you! He could be me! He could even be-"

— Blue spy, "Meet the Spy"

This build might not contain a character who traps others in the mirrors, but it should be something far scarier. I hope. Look, this was the best I could do for a representation of a shapeshifter, okay? Credits to Magic the Gathering's card "Identity Theft"

Ingredients list

• Doppelganger race (homebrew we'll make up for this villain)
• Wizard 18: Shrouded Arts (SargeBriar homebrew)
• Warlock 1: Perfect Chord (CoFS:A)
• Sorcerer 1: ? (Tweaked Sorcerer)

Tier 1

Let's hit things off with a quick start. We'll get both of our dips of choice — warlock and sorcerer, as well as the wizard, for a good start. The combination we've got going on here is something that requires an explanation, so let's put all the relevant information down below.

When you cast spells that require a material component, you can ignore that component unless it has a value, such as the specially marked sticks, bones, or similar tokens worth at least 25 gp for the augury spell, in which case the components are required. [Sorcerer: Spellcasting]

When you cast a spell that has only a verbal and somatic component, you can choose to cast it as though it only had a verbal component. [Warlock: Seeker of the Sound]

When you cast a wizard spell, you don't need to provide verbal components for it as long as you can provide somatic components.

Now, this might seem like they don't make much sense, so I've made a small chart of what this means for all combinations of spell components. Bear in mind that they don't need to perform these somatic components, they only need to be capable of providing them.

V, S, M* → V, S → V → (nothing)

V, M → V → (nothing)

S, M → S

* assuming Material components without cost that are not consumed

With all this in the pocket, X can cast spells either using Somatic components (in case of S,M, or S spells), no components (V,S,M, or V,S, or V,M, or V), or with all components as written if Materials are consumed or cost stuff.

For our wizard subclass, we chose Shrouded Arts to also get a secretive spellbook that can be stored within the lunatic's mind. Much more interestingly though, the lunatic gets the ability of memory suppression — a number of times equal to your INT mod per long rest, you can force a creature to make a Wisdom save, making it forget something that happened within the last 10 minutes on a failure. You can, however, use this only once per creature, so be careful about what you use this for. Probably go read the feature itself before using it to make sure you're doing everything right there.

When it comes to our sorcerer, the subclass is a rather free choice by the DM's tastes. If I had to recommend any from the Tweaked Sorcerer document, it would be the Imperial bloodline, as well as the Aberrant. With Imperial, our lunatic shapeshifter will get one of my all-time favorite homebrew class features: an ability to cast command using three words instead of just one. The potential here is so much greater, more than tripled. With the Aberrant, you could pick some of the spells from the psionic spell list and cast them without some components. My personal choice here would be hex, and I'll explain that as well as other spell choices after explaining the tiers.

At this point, our villain is a fairly competent spellcaster who almost never requires components for the spells, and can pull off a variety of 1st level spells. Not too shabby if I do say so myself, although as always, you want to keep this one in the background during the Tier 1. Maybe this tier could be reserved for backstory purposes.

Tier 2

From this point on, it's rather straightforward — our multiclassing is finished, so we dump all of the levels into the wizard, transforming our shapeshifter into sorcerer 1, warlock 1, and wizard 8 multiclass. We pick up spells of up to 4th level, get two Ability Score Improvements which could also be exchanged for feats, and we get 6th level feature of the Shrouded Arts wizard — Out of Mind's Eye. Once per short rest, you can make yourself invisible to one creature for 1 minute using your bonus action, provided it fails its Wisdom saving throw, or until you affect it with a spell or an attack. Nothing too extra, but then again it doesn't require concentration, so it's fine.

Tier 3

Our wizard reaches the juiciest part of the build, with fifth level spells providing several of really cool tricks they could implement. They also gain the ability to cast disguise self at-will, making themselves seem 3 feet taller or shorter. The lunatic also learns how to use the Shroud of Oblivion once a day, a powerful one-hour lasting ability that erases you from memories of creatures that encounter you, as well as divination spell sensors. Let's move on to the Tier 4 to get to the juicy spells.

Tier 4

Finally, we gain the last four levels in the wizard, meaning we get to learn Spell Mastery! We also gain all the spell slots up to 9th level, missing only one 7th level spell slot when compared to a regular level 20 fullcaster. Not too shabby if I do say so myself!

Before we address the spells, there's one more bit to discuss.

Why Doppelganger? (And Story Background)

Originally, the build assumed that at Tier 4, the lunatic would turn themselves into the ultimate shapeshifter, but... at the second thought, and seeing how this would make them lose all class features, I opted for a much simpler explanation that explains also the backstory of this character. They've been chosen by the ultimate forces of chaos and fear to spread paranoia across the lands in the most terrible way. They have witnessed the ultimate life form, and they ask the shapeshifter to turn everyone into this ultimate life-form.

For our shapeshifter, we could assume that they're a changeling, but it'd be much easier to just say they're a doppelganger. All they need from the statblock are the shapeshifting and mind-reading traits.

The life-form they've witnessed was a CR 0 doppelganger. Start with the statblock of a regular doppelganger, reduce its hit point maximum to 4, its damage from attacks to 1, and its bonus to hit to +5. You could also remove Ambusher if you want the doppelganger to be able to wield a weapon without it affecting the CR much.

With this knowledge in mind, the memetic lunatic walks the world, transforming the poor common folk into doppelgangers while remaining unknown using...

Alright, I can't do this any longer. Let's talk spells.

It's a Kind of Magic

Sadly, despite hyping myself up to this part for the entire article, I don't think I'll just hand you the complete spell list. Instead, I will give you spell recommendations to consider for every spell level, with a brief description as to why.

Forget - a cantrip from CoFS:A, perfect for the moment when you get caught. Just forget everything about who you are, and act natural. No amount of insight checks or truth detection will help out here, since your lies are not deliberate. You genuinely don't remember.

Magic Stone - useful for reflavoring the spell into tossing any general tiny magic item at the players, as a signature weapon of sorts. Whether it's playing cards, spectral knives, needles, or actual rocks is up to your imagination.

Encode Thoughts - not on any of the spell lists listed in this build, but it's worth noting. I love the flavor of this spell, and I could imagine this working really nicely with the forget cantrip hand in hand. The lunatic literally pulls a memory out of his head as a thread to keep somewhere safe for the duration of the forget spell.

Minor Illusion - superior for distracting folks. A true hero will always pursue the call for help. But... will they remain a hero, if these calls will always lure them into traps? Will they turn paranoid about all these folks who need help?

Friends - I've argued several times with others about how asymmetrical Charisma checks are in D&D. A player can always attempt to make one against an NPC. But an NPC making one against a player is acceptable only when the NPC is lying or performing. An attempt at being intimidating can always be made fun of, and persuasion can be met with suspicions even if the inquisitive rogue of the party rolls a 19 on the expertised Insight. Imagine though how creepy would it feel to be told that "You feel some enchantment magic wearing off as you exit the shop. Someone has cast friends on you, and it did not feel good. You think they did not have the best of the intentions, and you should do something about it."

Prestidigitation - so awesome I don't even need to introduce it. Create small objects, make illusory markings, mask odors, tastes, heat up or cool down meals, light small fires like torches or campfires, do harmless illusions, ... This is a must-have for most wizard builds I play.

Charm Person - in case you're about to be caught by the party.

Command - players hate losing the agency over their characters, so this is a great choice of a spell to annoy them with if you can pick it.

Detect Magic - lost sight of the party? With this thing, you can quickly find them in any crowd. I mean, think of all those magic items that they constantly wield. Even items marked with Nystul's aura apparently show up as magical to this spell.

Disguise Self - self-explanatory, you'll look different. Combined with a shapeshifter, however, this makes for a nasty trick. Most people expect only one layer of disguise.

Find Familiar - screw the free advantage, this is your scouting tool.

Fog Cloud - a getaway in case things go really wrong.

Hex - also screw the extra damage here. Do you know what this is? It's a free disadvantage on one ability score of your choice. No save, no verbal components to be heard due to the way lunatic is built, this thing is just an absolutely nasty tool to use. Even better when you use a 5th level spell slot for 24 hours of disadvantage. Perfect for high Wisdom characters, since you're trying to stay hidden.

Illusory Script - cause the players to panic by showing them a letter on a bulletin board or someplace else that only they can read. Even better if a few of the party members can't read it, or the opposite - few of the party members actually can, the rest sees it as gibberish or a lot of scribbles.

Silent Image - distracting illusions. Unseen Servant is useful for the same purposes.

Arcane Lock - perfect for locking a route during a chase scene, just don't forget to have enough gold dust on your person for at least three casts.

Detect Thoughts - you're a doppelganger, you can do this one at-will! No need to bother with it then!

Invisibility - fairly obvious.

Magic Mouth - randomly enchant doorways and similar to emit whispers audible to the players while they are within 30 feet of it. Could also work with screams for literal jumpscares.

Mind Spike - great for keeping track of the players.

Misty Step - escape tool.

Nystul's Magic Aura - make magic items out of nothing, Hide cursed magic items. Or turn into a child, befriend the party's paladin, and get him to give you a high five, delivering the spell through touch and making their creature type Fiend after 30 days of recasting it. Do this with the entire party. Next time they encounter a wary paladin, have them freak out and call an inquisition on them because of their fiendish nature.

Phantasmal Force - go read the spell and you'll see why this one is here.

Rope Trick - escape tool.

Skywrite - write creepy messages in the sky for your players to see, as well as everyone.

Suggestion - a must-have on the Spell Mastery for this build. With this, you can change anyone's mind and make them do your bidding.

While I would love to make just as detailed analysis of higher spell levels, I'll just run through the spell lists to write out the names. It's up to you to figure out why I wrote these down.

3rd level

Bestow Curse (upcasted at 5+ level)

Feign Death

Glyph of Warding

Leomund's Tiny Hut

Nondetection

Sending

4th level

Dimension Door

Dominate Beast (especially if they have a pet)

Greater Invisibility

Locate Creature

Mordenkainen's Faithful Hound

Phantasmal Killer

5th level

Dominate Person

Dream

Geas

Immolation

Mislead

Modify Memory

Scrying

Seeming

6th level

Contingency (scariest thing in the world? a wizard who's prepared for an enemy they know far too well)

Disintegrate

Flesh to Stone

Globe of Invulnerability

Guards and Wards

Magic Jar

Mass Suggestion

Mental Prison

Programmed Illusion

Soul Cage

True Seeing

7th level

Mirage Arcane

Project Image

Sequester

Symbol

8th level

Antimagic Field

Clone

Dominate Monster

Feeblemind

Glibness (more on this in the future)

Illusory Dragon

Maddening Darkness

Maze

Mind Blank

9th level

Foresight

Imprisonment

Mass Polymorph

Power Word Kill

Time Stop

True Polymorph

Wish

More spells could apply, but I don't feel like rewriting even more spell names here.

One final mention to give is to give the lunatic an Amulet of Proof against Detection and Location. That way, they will be much more difficult to find. Other magic items are optional, at your own discretion.

Maybe this one would have been better to use instead of the first picture. Then again, both show off regular shapeshifter stuff — this shapeshifter tries its best to blend in.
Doppelganger - The Elder Scrolls: Legends

And this is how you make your players paranoid — by introducing a being that goes around the world, transforming more and more people into doppelgangers — beings who can turn into anyone and read minds at-will. And at the same time, a being who can look like anyone, render themselves forgotten and unseen, and blend in with the crowd, while remaining undetected. Making the party distrust any NPC they ever meet, possibly shooting them with a moonbeam or even murdering them, just for the fact that they could be a doppelganger. What? You came here for a villain, right?

Until next time, thank you for reading, and have a nice day!

Villainous Cookbook: The Superb Exemplar

I have to admit something. I'm afraid I've set the bar too high for myself with the first article. Memento Necromancer is a beautiful character that interweaves the mechanics with a theme. And that theme is to give the edgelords whose backstory says everyone they ever cared for is dead someone who they'd love to hate. I don't know if I can do that sort of thing again, especially since these days I have a hard time keeping up with homebrews people produce. With all that being said though, I have some ideas for at least two more villains, who I can publish here as soon as I figure out their themes. At the moment, I can only tell you that their dominant stats are Charisma and Intelligence, and they both revolve around staying hidden, in their own ways.

Preface

The purpose of the Villainous Cookbook is to offer cool villain ideas for DMs. It uses homebrew player options sometimes mixed with the official ones, but it bends the rules a little to work better. While sometimes restrictions breed creativity, other times it's nice to push the boundary a little to make the villain more interesting.

The stats are left completely up to the reader. You can make those anything you want, as long as it's within some boundaries, and you don't need to spend any ASIs or consider the stat bonuses provided by the feats unless you want to complicate things for yourself.

Each of the builds is split into 4 Tiers, to show how the villain grows in power over time. At any moment, the villain should be at least on the same tier as your players if not higher, since you want them to be challenging. Unless noteworthy, I won't mention the specific spells, ability scores, backgrounds, or skills. All that I leave up to you so that the villain is more customized.

One last word of caution - while these builds might seem overpowered, making the homebrews seem overpowered, bear in mind two things.

1. We're adjusting the rules a little to make the character builds work better. If this demands an in-world explanation, say that this is an exceptional person who figured out something others don't know, or has special bloodline/destiny.
2. We're crossing the homebrew streams. And that can oftentimes go wrong. I'm doing my best to use homebrews that I consider balanced and that I would actually allow my players to use in the games.

Alright! Let's get to the villain - the Superb Exemplar!

The Superb Exemplar

"After what you've done to me, I decided to train. To become better. While you raided the dungeons and crypts, I prayed to the divinities for knowledge. While you fought the wolves and goblins that ambushed you on your way, I was taught the way of being one with nature. And while you saved the king from the assassination, I served the one true Queen who sees all. All of this done to become better, the best I could ever be. And unlike you, I've managed to succeed."

I've always pictured this guy as a Sherlock Holmes type, who'd be a noble of some sorts. Extremely competent, popular, and studied.
Sherlock Holmes, by RadoJavor

Ingredients list

• Halfling race (PHB)
• Barbarian 3: Totem Warrior - bear (PHB)
• Bard 3: College of Lore (PHB)
• Cleric 1: Knowledge Domain (PHB)
• Rogue 11: ?
• Warlock 2: Mirror Eyes (Proph's Homebrew)
• Class Feature Variants UA

Tier 1

We begin our journey by starting with two levels of rogue, one level of warlock, and one level of cleric. Including the skill proficiencies from a background, this means that the exemplar has 10 skill proficiencies (2 from background, 4 from rogue level 1, 2 from cleric, 2 from warlock), and expertise in 6 of them: Insight, Perception, 2 Intelligence skills other than Investigation, and any 2 skills you're proficient in by now. For Intelligence, I would make sure to pick Arcana - it's not an important part of our build, just a matter of personal preference.

With all of this, we have a halfling who has an average amount of hit points, ability to bonus action Dash, Disengage, and Hide, and some spellcasting. Make sure to pick up the guidance cantrip if you want to add that extra bit of oomph.

So far so good! At the moment our exemplar sounds fairly average, let's get a bit more crazy.

Tier 2

We start by getting 3 levels in barbarian, as well as 3 levels in rogue. Say, since we're already proficient in Dexterity saving throws, and we'll soon get to reduce damage from them by half, why not swap that out for something more useful? Survival Instinct is a feature that replaces the Danger Sense, and gives us two skills, as well as expertise in them, out of a small selection. My recommended picks would be Animal Handling and Survival. Oh yes, and we also get to rage, and get to resist all damage except for psychic while raging.

This stacks nicely with rogues, who by now get Uncanny Dodge, as well as some other boons. At 3rd level, you get to pick an archetype. And, ... I'll be honest with you, I don't know what archetype to tell you to pick here. While Scout could be cheesed for 2 extra skills and expertises in them, we could also go with something more interesting. Inquisitive, Arcane Trickster, and Mastermind are very interesting picks, and there's definitely plethora of cool roguish archetypes out there that you could pick too. For example, the Maxim Master made by yours truly revolves around casting spells at their most ground level, and develops theoretical knowledge which could be used for arcane programming.

Either way, we end up with a total of 12 skills now, and 2 new skills to have an expertise in. Time to move on into the next tier where we really see what makes this build special, other than soaking damage.

Tier 3

All six levels we gain in this tier go into rogue. We get two new expertises, two feats, and the most important part of our build - Reliable Talent. Now, whatever skills is our exemplar proficient in, they can't roll less than 10 on a die for. This basically means that, for example, if our exemplar has a +3 in Charisma and expertise in Persuasion, the least they can roll at level 16 is 23. Let's not omit the fact that they can reroll 1's due to their race. I suppose there's also other benefits, like sneak attack or evasion, but... we're not really building a warrior here. Sure they can hold up decently in a fight, but their power is focused on situations outside of a fight.

Tier 4

Our exemplar becomes a cultural icon at this point. They gain 3 levels in bard, and 1 level in warlock. With the bard levels, they get 4 extra skill proficiencies in any skills they want, and 2 extra expertises. With the extra warlock level, they get 2 new skills thanks to an eldritch invocation. We'll turn a blind eye to this and assume that it says we can pick different skills if we have Persuasion and/or Deception. Let's also pick up Devil's Sight while we're here. So we get a total of 6 new skills, on top of the 12 skills we had up until now. And... that means we have ourselves a proficiency in every single skill. Plus, expertise in 4 skills from rogue, 2 from bard, 2 from barbarian, 2 from warlock, and 2 from cleric. Total of 12 skills, in which we get to double our proficiency bonus. On top of Reliable Talent. And guidance.

Remember though, even if they have 6d6 Sneak Attack, Rage, and Uncanny Dodge, they're still not built for just face-to-face battle. Make them sneaky and tricky. Always out of reach of the players - since they have such a high Insight roll, they'll always stay out of players' sight. Planning, scheming, hiding.

Expertises

This section will talk about what skills to pick an expertise in for each of the levels. I won't discuss the skills themselves, I feel like anyone could decide those on their own for themselves depending on the exemplar they wish to run.

• Tier 1 gives us Arcana, History/Nature/Religion, Insight, Perception, Stealth\*, and Investigation*.
• Tier 2 grants us Animal Handling and Survival.
• For Tier 3, you can pick 2 out of Athletics*, Sleight of Hand*, Deception*, and Persuasion*.
• Finally, at Tier 4 you can pick the last two picks from the selection above.

* These skills can be exchanged for anything.

Feats

This build gets one feat at Tier 2, and two feats at Tier 3. I highly recommend picking up Observant, since it gives their passive Perception an even better boost and makes it thus harder to sneak upon them. Other picks to consider are Lucky, Keen Mind, Alert, and Squat Nimbleness, though you can really pick anything here.

Story Background

The Superb Exemplar is a character fairly low on magic. 6 of its levels are invested into spellcasters, but that doesn't mean much since their highest level of a spell slot is 2. Seeing how many things they are competent at, I'd have them in an environment you would expect to meet a polymath: A noble court, an inventor's workshop, a gallery, a library, sky's the limit. Listed below are just some of the possible plot hooks to make the players' and exemplar's stories meet:

• One of the player characters has humiliated the exemplar publicly. Ever since, the exemplar took on a new name, holding a grudge against this person.
• The exemplar seeks the approval or acceptance from someone who's already party's enemy.
• The exemplar lost someone close to them because of a player character, but they blame themselves. They seek perfection so that this could never again happen.

The exemplar's greatest motivation is perfection of self, but this could be their ultimate downfall. While they are amazing at anything they can do, they're still a mere mortal, barely capable of magic of 2nd level. Their saving throws and Armor Class do not get any better than those of a 1st level character, unless you were to improve their stats.

Thank you for reading, and have a nice day!

P.S.: If you want to use this as a player character in a party, please don't. Everyone at the table wants to feel useful, and being good at everything hogs all of the spotlight. I'm not doing this to give players ideas for cool builds, I'm doing this to give players cool villains to pursue.
However, you have my permission to try to play this in a solo game. All the spotlight is on you if you're the only player, and honestly I feel like this would be one of the best ways to play solo, other than playing a Charisma caster or a pure rogue. Which doesn't mean that any other classes are invalid, you do what you want!

Villainous Cookbook: The Memento Necromancer

Howdy, everyone! While talking on the Discord of Many Things, I got an idea from an acquaintance who mentioned starting a blog about min-maxed characters. I should start sharing my own villains on this blog. I hope you'll enjoy this!

Preface

The purpose of the Villainous Cookbook is to provide cool villain ideas for DMs. It usually utilizes homebrew player options sometimes mixed with the official ones, but it bends the rules a little to work better as a whole. This is not to prove to the players that they are weak and you are strong, that's something anyone can do. "Prismatic rocks fall, everyone dies." Since you're the DM, you can do that. But the fact that you can do that doesn't mean that you should. Sometimes, restrictions breed creativity. Other times, it's nice to push the boundary a little to make the villain more interesting.

There is one thing where I'll be loose on the rulings always, and that's the stats. I leave the stats completely up to you. I will tell you what feats I recommend you to pick though. Because let's face it - Ability Score Improvements are not important for the villains, so why bother.

Each of the builds is split into 4 Tiers, to show how the villain grows in power over time. At any moment, the villain should be at least on the same tier as your players if not higher, since you want them to be challenging. Unless noteworthy, I won't mention the specific spells, ability scores, backgrounds, or skills. All that I leave up to you so that the villain is more customized.

One final word of caution - while these builds might seem overpowered, making the homebrews seem overpowered, bear in mind two things.

1. We're adjusting the rules a little to make the character builds work better. If this demands an in-world explanation, say that this is an exceptional individual who figured out something others don't know, or has special bloodline/destiny.
2. We're crossing the homebrew streams. And that can oftentimes go wrong. I'm doing my best to use homebrews that I consider balanced and that I would actually allow my players to use in the games.

Alright! Let's get to our first villain!

The Memento Necromancer

After splitting away from his colleagues to go through the dungeon again for more treasures, the adventurer finds himself alone on the way back to the village. His second delve was far from fruitful, those couple coins were not worth it, and now he has to walk through the misty forest on his own. The Sun has set midway through the forest when the adventurer hears a voice in the distance.
"X'harles? Is that you?"
The mighty warrior looks around until he notices a figure standing in the distance. Once his eyes adjust to the distance, he recognizes it. "M-mother?"
"X'harles, why did you abandon us?" Another voice speaks up, this one masculine, from another direction. "The orcs could have been defeated if you helped us."
"What? H-how are you- this can't be..." The warrior stutters as he keeps exchanging glances between both of these figures.
"You have abandoned us. And we will never forgive you that." Adventurer's mother says as he hears shuffles of feet from all around. Zombies emerge from the mist. Too many of them. Each bearing the face and body of either the adventurer's parents.
"No, you've died! I saw it, you died to the warchief's axe! Stay back!"

Soul summoner, by Nghi Vo

Ingredients List

• Faceless race (Proph's Homebrew)
• Warlock 3: Gelatinous Convocation (CoFS:A)
• Rogue 3: Hundred Faced (Caim's Homebrew)
• Wizard 14: School of Necromancy (PHB)

Tier 1

Let's start with our base. Start with picking the faceless race, which is a secret tool we'll get to use later. One level of rogue doesn't get us much besides expertise and sneak attack, but neither warlock nor wizard gets us anything from the multiclassing so that's why we start with it. You can drop the expertises anywhere you want. I would put them into Stealth, and either Perception if you want them to notice players well, or Athletics/Acrobatics if you want them to be good at getting out of the troubles/getting into places. We follow that up with three levels of warlock, picking the Gelatinous Convocation patron, and Pact of the Tome. Now, it's time to bend two rules, both of which are actually presented in Compendium of Forgotten Secrets: Awakening as possibilities. One is using Intelligence as a spellcasting ability, while the other is ignoring the patron prerequisites on the Eldritch Invocations. Former helps us with multiclassing into wizard later, while the latter will help us in getting the signature tome of our necromancer to work.

We'll need two invocations. Catalogue of Experiences from the Gelatinous Convocation patron, and Ledger of the Deceased from the Forbidden Graveyard patron. The combination of all these means that if the necromancer touches a corpse with their tome, the corpse's name gets written into the tome. If a name is written that way in the tome, it counts as if its corpse was always wherever the tome is. Once per day, after one minute of focusing on a name within the tome, the memories from the last 48 hours of its life, as well as memories of the most important moments during the last year of its life, appear within the tome. While we could go for different invocations, such as Agonizing Blast, or Fractured Soul from CoFS:A, our current build has only 3 levels of warlock. If you want to, you could exchange some of the wizard levels for warlock levels to get more invocations, as well as some extra spells.

I would recommend avoiding showing off the necromancer to your players at this point. Have them act in the background, gathering information on the players' pasts and building up their catalog of terrible memories.

Tier 2

This is where our things get a little tricky. We get to earn at least 4 levels of wizard, and then 2 extra levels that can be distributed between wizard and rogue. We'll go with wizard 5 + rogue 1, because it's optimal, and it gives us our desired necromancy.

With one level of rogue, we get the cunning action. Consistent bonus action is always nice to have, especially for someone as squishy as this necromancer. Disengage, Dash, and Hide can be useful more than often.

The five levels of wizard get us the spell animate dead at last, a lot more spell slots, and an ASI. Our dear necromancer can now go on and produce numerous undead every single day. Since the name in the tome doesn't disappear when an undead is produced with our necromancer's pact tome, they could create infinite copies of the same undead's corpse.

So now we have an information gatherer who can conjure some undead, collect memories, and look like anyone. The next tier is where things get even more frightening.

Tier 3

Our dear necromancer will earn the final rogue level and pick the Hundred Faced archetype. Though, we'll change it in a minor way. Instead of its abilities relying on the Wisdom, we'll make them rely on the Intelligence (again, just to make the villain more interesting). This archetype has got an interesting interaction with the Faceless that I like to call "one-man crowd": if you make a copy of yourself, it looks exactly like you do, along with all of your equipment. So, since you're faceless, you can turn into anyone from the past of a corpse inside of your tome, and make a copy of yourself. This copy will from that point on look like the person whose appearance you copied. Its appearance can't really be changed, but that's fine, this is good enough.

From this point on, all of the levels are invested into the wizard. By the time this necromancer reaches level 16, they'll have 3 levels of warlock, 3 levels of rogue, and 10 levels of wizard. With this, they'll be able to cast spells of 5th level, create more powerful enemies, have resistance to necrotic damage and immunity to effects that would reduce their maximum HP. They'll know 2 warlock cantrips and 5 wizard cantrips, know 4 warlock spells and prepare at most 15 wizard spells, and have 2 spell slots of 2nd level that recharge on short rest, along with Arcane Recovery which recharges 10 levels of spells. By now they should be gathering up quite an army, possibly hiding somewhere and drawing more and more undead from their tome.

Tier 4

With the final tier, our necromancer learns spells of 6th and 7th level and learns how to command the undead. Of course, you could just assume the undead they try to control has failed their saving throw while off-screen, so you could go wild with this ability. Some recommendations for the spells to pick would be finger of death and create undead.

Feats

Our necromancer will get to pick 1 feat during Tier 2, 2 feats during Tier 3, and 1 feat during Tier 4. You might want to choose your feats based on the playstyle of your players, as well as personal preference. The list is of course not exhaustive.

• For increased mobility, you could consider Mobile (PHB), Mark of the Storm Lord (CoFS:A), and Flying Figure (Faceless).
• For stealth options, consider the Inanimate Shapes (Faceless), Beastly Forms (Faceless), and Skulker (PHB).
• For improving the magic, you could pick Elemental Adept (PHB), Spell Sniper (PHB), or War Caster (PHB).
• For improving their durability, you could go with Mage Slayer (PHB), Resilient with the choice being Constitution (PHB), or Tough (PHB).
• If you want to drive up the paranoia in your players, consider picking up the Face Stealer (Faceless) or Truly Eldritch (Faceless) feat.
• For universal utility, you could pick Lucky (PHB). Just don't call it "Lucky" in front of the players. Maybe you could flavor it as Legendary Resistance and just use it for saves.

Story Background

When it comes to the potential connections to the players and the reasons for fighting, there are of course lots of options. Here's just a couple of them:

• One of the player characters holds a magical item that needs to be awakened and the necromancer really wants it.
• One of the player characters has murdered someone who necromancer cared for deeply.
• The necromancer's parents have been killed by parent(s) of one or more player characters.
• The necromancer used to be in a friendly rivalry with one of the player characters back when they were children. However, the rivalry has grown into enmity as the necromancer started to study the dark magic.

While at it, consider also the personality of your necromancer. Not all necromancers have to be serious and monotone. Maybe your necromancer is eccentric, or actually a social person. 

So excited to bring back life into those old bones. First success, by Tony Sart.

Anyways, that's about it! Thank you for reading, and have a nice day!

The Departed Man's Inn

Inspired by the OST of Witcher 3's expansion, a blogpost from GoblinPunch, and possibly other stuff that I forgot about.

The blog's purpose did change over the years, I figured every once in a while I could make another location you could plop anywhere in your world. Mainly when I have an idea that feels like it's worth exploring.

Note: Any similarities to real people or places is coincidental, other than Elza Beth. All of these are fictional people.

The Departed Man's Inn

Somewhere, be it just on a road between big cities, or on the crossroads where several such roads meet, stands The Departed Man's Inn. Far away from any big noteworthy city, this tavern seems to be nothing important at a glance. It's actually surprising they have any regular patrons at all. But those who look beyond the facade presented to the public will find a terrifying truth. The inn has lots of traps hidden all over the place, and it even hides a secret basement underneath the cellar. Some of the beds have mechanical spikes that spring at midnight, impaling whoever is unfortunate enough to lie on them. The subtle drainage system built in those few selected rooms lead all of the blood down beneath the inn, right into a bathtub. What's more, this place is full of highwaymen. A group of outlaws, who just so happen to be... immortal?
The Departed Man's Inn, including its regular patrons, is composed of a group of immortal people in hiding, robbing traveling merchants in their free time, because what else will they do. Each of them is immortal in their own way.

D.A.

D.A. is the goblin with a silver tongue. He managed to convince the Vile Darkness — the lord of hell itself (or another appropriate Lower Plane of your choice) — to grant him immortality. It was supposed to be a devil deal that would backfire, but D.A.'s talent of writing contracts is what has given him this immortality. It's also the explanation for his nickname — Devil's Advocate, D.A. He is the third youngest member of the group, and ultimately his goal is to overthrow the leader and manage the group as the boss.

Dorien

Because of a badly worded wish upon encountering a genie, this male dwarf has been turned into a vampire. He is a patient man, rather slow but also artistically talented, and elegant. With the time he has been given, he is capable of painting the same painting for months, sometimes even years. His life goal is to paint a masterpiece to be remembered by forever.

Elza Beth

Taking inspiration from an actual legend, this young-looking female aasimar lures into the Departed Man's Inn young virgin women to slay them and bathe in their blood. This is what keeps her youth, both in appearance and in age. Her only wish is to keep her beauty and admiration from others. She's actually rather reserved when not on the "hunt", keeping to herself

Jack Hopkins

Legends say, that those who have been denied from every single afterlife are fated to travel across the lands, cursed with eternal life. Jack is a ghost banned from any life beyond death, bound to a simple amulet. He can possess people seen by him, which he usually uses to bring in victims for Elza and Dorien to keep their eternal lives. Whenever he possesses someone, the person visibly wears Jack's amulet. Jack is an eccentric prankster, who just wants to enjoy the life for what it's worth, since he's got unlimited supply of it. Drinking, drugs, and other pleasures that would normally damage the body are of no worry to someone, who can exchange bodies with others.

Jade Hart

It is rather unusual to meet a goliath wizard. Second in leadership only to Thomas, she's the brains behind this whole tavern. Jade has several clones prepared in the secret basement beneath the inn's cellar. She's supportive, willing to listen to anyone who has a problem — patron or fellow highwayman. Reading makes her happy, and scrolls containing any spells that she doesn't have yet in the nearly complete spellbook make her even happier. Rumors between the Inn's employees say that her heart is literally a heart of stone, but nobody can tell for sure whether that's true or not.

Lapis Goldielocks Gyroscope

Thanks to her alchemical prowess, Lapis has managed to successfully create a recipe for potion of immortality, which allows her body to regenerate very fast. She's a gnome with an ambitious goal of creating her very own universe in a box. She's naturally curious about all the travelers, and a good listener since she usually pretends to be the barmaid.

Maximillion Dyson Gyroscope, or M.A.X.

Through complicated research, Maximillion has managed to develop his very own spells, akin to magic mouth or arcane lock, but with telekinesis activated by seen inputs. Afterwards, this gnome has built himself an iron golem body, cast imprisonment on himself, and through his visual commands managed to insert the gem used for the imprisonment spell into the chest of the golem. His wish is to outlast even the gods with his ingenuity, and when he's not pretending to be a bodyguard of this tavern, he's constantly working on new gizmos, under a nickname of "Mechanical Autonomous eXterminator", or M.A.X.

Queen of Aces

Bearing the nickname of a Queen is something only someone very proud of their skills would dare to do. Queen is excellent at all sorts of games, and a very fast learner. It is said that the more she plays against the same opponent, the higher her chances of beating them. This lordly gambler has challenged the death itself to a game, and coincidentally won. Ever since, she's been on a winning streak, with a goal of amassing as much wealth as possible for her own amusement.

Immortal Jim and Lilac "Steel Doll" Hemsi

These two siblings are fairly old, and blessed by the gods with skin that's as hard as steel. Both of them are immortal, but for different reasons. Jim will only take damage that's 3 or less at once, while Lilac takes damage only if it's dealt to the pinkie toe on her left foot, which she usually hides with steel-tipped boots. The two siblings care for each other, and technically aren't even immortal. Thomas took them in for their potential when it comes to being in the fight. While Jim is a bit of an airhead who gets angry quickly at even the smallest things, Lilac fills in for his weaknesses by being exceptionally good at reading people and noticing things.
They don't really get a picture, because this is a blank I'd want you to fill out on your own. Do they look like barbarians from north? Like desert travelers? Do they look like stereotypical adventurers? You tell me!

Thomas Booker O'Ville, also known as The Vile Darkness

The lord of hell (or another appropriate Lower Plane) that D.A. managed to trick. He is the oldest member of this group, the leader, and also the founder. He is a trickster, elegant on the outside but playing mind games at all times with folks. Who knows if D.A. tricked him, or if Thomas got him where he wanted to have D.A. all along. Due to being the lord of hell, he always comes back to life by emerging from the hell after his death. To the public, he presents himself as the owner of The Departed Man's Inn.
Some rumors say that he is the Book of Vile Darkness, manifested into a physical form. Which is why there's only one known way of destroying him permanently — wiping out all of the multiverse's evil.

And I suppose that's it for The Departed Man's Inn! Sure I could go into more details, like the environment, or the tavern's layout, or more detailed roles for the rest of the characters, but I would rather keep the details like that vague so that it fits into majority of the worlds. Imagine having your players start in this inn before they venture into the adventures of the world, having little to no clue as to who manages this inn until way later in the game. You can of course alter the crew of this inn by adding or removing members, editing the existing ones, or doing any other modifications you can think of.

Thank you for reading, and have a nice day!

[EoK] 1d8 Characters, part 1

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

Filler time! The Legacy System update is almost finished, but it needs some more tinkering... so in the meantime, here's a collection of ideas for random 1d8 characters I wrote up in my spare time for the Ethernet of Keys. Most of them will have Japanese names, because of one of my EoK games taking place in Tokyo.

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1. Jarvis “Witch Hunter” Nakasai. Jarvis is a half-british soldier on a quest to rid the world of magical influence. He is usually determined, silent and calm, acting as if he had a plan every time something goes wrong. He is very good at spotting anyone with an arcane call, and evaluates based on his own judgment whether they should be removed from the society completely, or whether they just need to be 'purified' by an invention he inherited.
Legacy Traits: +2 Con, +1 Str, Athletic, Climber, Poison Resistant
Class: Fighter (Champion)
Background: Discovery (how to tell magic apart, and the purification)

2. Hikaru Honue. Having power over lights and electricity, Hikaru has been working for a secret hacker organization d15c0da (Discoda) for the most part of her life. Although she is not as technologically skilled as her twin brother Masama, she was trained for other kinds of jobs her twin can't really do. Her arcane calls give her some powers over lights and electricity, and her dominant traits would definitely have to be her flexibility and the natural charm with her optimistic attitude.
Legacy Traits: +1 Dex, +1 Con, +1 Cha, Climber, Electric Ardor, Light Bringer
Class: Rogue (Swashbuckler)
Background: Black Market Contract

3. Masama Honue. An ordinary worker turned into a hacker after leaving the (TL) company due to revelations he made with help from his twin Hikaru. He is naturally curious and can't resist coming up with solutions for any problem he encounters or is told about. He has an arcane call, having some control over the electricity, but also an ability to project images onto other surfaces through minor magic.
Legacy Traits: +2 Int, +1 Con, Amateur Craftsman, Electric Ardor, Uncanny Projector
Class: Inventor (Hacker's Clique)
Background: Researcher

4. Shunto Ichirou. Shunto was a rising star in the martial arts world, with many commenting on his incredibly quick movements. However, he became a fan favorite not through winning, but through his off-screen persona, that of a fast-paced daredevil, always on the move with the fastest cars, fastest women, fastest everything. Shunto’s life is speed. But, if his ties to the Razors gang were to be brought to light, even as he works with them unwillingly, his fans would undoubtedly leave him at a speed that would make even his head reel, and his career would be over.
Legacy Traits: +2 Dex, +1 Con, Quick, Skilled (Athletics + English), Sprinter
Class: Monk (Way of Drunken Master)
Background: Authority
Note: Thanks to Bawdy for helping me rewrite Shunto, making his story flow much better than before! 

5. Shigo. She has overcome the death at a great cost. She forgot her life and tries to remember as much of it as she can. Until then, she got used to calling herself and being called Shigo. The only times she feels emotions is when it is something that relates to her past she's seeking to this very day. Over time, Shigo has realized her knowledge and memories are not completely gone, she just needs to be in the right situation to recall them.
Legacy Traits: +2 Int, +1 Con, Grim Fate, Poison Resistant, Nightly Eyes
Class: Scholar (Philosopher)
Background: Immortal

6. Mari Nakamiya. Ever since she has stolen a magical ceramic watch from the fairy shrine, she has been afflicted by a curse — whenever she touches the iron or steel with her bare skin, it burns her as much as a fire would. She thinks the watch is worth the price, but looks for a way to get rid of her curse. Determined, secretive, and avoiding those wretched metals at all costs, she wanders the world seeking someone who could help her.
Legacy Traits: +2 Str, +1 Cha, Savage Might, Skilled (Arcana, sylvan), Swimmer
Class: Pugilist (Square Circle)
Background: Discovery (the magical watch)

7. Junko Kurobe. Junko is a woman leading double life. One of her lives is a well hidden ordinary job done during the day, but through an elaborate disguise, she's able to lead a nightlife where she acts as the Rouge Cardomancer. Dressed in pinks and purples, and being fabulous, in her Rouge role she gets to do everything she represses during the day by robbing people of their money through various card tricks, well-placed bets and occasionally through cons that involve assistants too.
Legacy Traits: +1 Str, +1 Dex, +1 Int, Skilled (Insight, playing cards), Magical Trickster, Telekinesist
Class: Warmage (House of Cards)
Background: False Identity

8. Hiro Nisan. Ever since he found oil and became a billionaire, he grew more and more bored. And boredom leads to experimentation. He has his own company, and uses it to fuel his various hobby, seemingly a new one every week. Proud, hard to entertain and smug, Hiro is one of the most well-known people in the country. He is also obsessed with the numbers 16 and 23 due to his name translating into them through Japanese wordplay.
Legacy Traits: ???
Class: Warden (???)
Background: Authority, ???

The Cursed Queens Compendium, v1

For quite a while now, I wanted to rework my original warlock patron, the Seven-cursed Queen Arcadia. I've given it good amount of thinking, and came to a conclusion: Why should it be just Arcadia? How could the things have been if she was not to win? Answers to these questions brought me more questions, which were like a pair of tickets for what was the best thought train I've ridden in a long time.

Reddit link
GMBinder link
Google Drive link

Originally, The Seven-Cursed Queen patron was too long and unwieldy for most people to really pay attention to, so I've split her up into six patrons. Eventually I plan to work out dynamic stat blocks for all of the queens so that this can be played out by a DM and players.

Design Notes

Since there's a ton of stuff, I will only address the parts that cause me concerns:

• Some of the ribbons given out from the winning queen, such as Arcadia's or Lia's ribbon, might be used for something a DM did not expect. For example, producing ashes until there's a heap tall enough to climb up a wall, or attempting to produce rare flowers by stomping on their seeds. Those abilities might need some clarifications depending on feedback I get.
• Most of the spell lists were constructed rather hap-hazardly without second thought, since I prefer not to add new spells into the game. If however there will happen to be choices that would make the warlock too strong, I will have no other choice.
• Beguiling Defenses are shared by everyone, because it is a trait I felt fits the queens. I hope people will not see it just as laziness.
• Names for other features are a bit repetitive, but I felt I should keep the theme between them as it was before to further confirm that these subclasses can really be combined.
• Healing effect of the cursed gloves might be too weak on higher levels. Bonus action to heal yourself or an ally 5 hit points would be pathetic at levels such as 10 or so, but I'd assume it would be done in case someone falls unconscious.
• Cursed earrings grant two expertises at level 1, which would play right into the wet dreams of all the skill monkeys out there. Then again, it's for two skills players can't really pick themselves.
• Capstone of the cursed eyes might be a bit too strong. Then again, it can be kinda weak compared to fiend, who gets their thing instantaneously, while this warlock risks their enemies succeeding on all three saves.
• Heart's level 1 and 14 feature are just rehashes of level 1 archfey and level 14 great old one features. But hopefully they are different enough.
• Artworks used don't really resemble the queens. Then again, finding all of those would be too big of a coincidence, and comissioning them for a project that might not even turn out that successful would be very expensive. I hope the Heart's steampunk painting is explained by that brief "queen of skies" note.

That would be all for today. Thank you for reading, and have a nice day!