Every artificer can be flavored as just an average American dad. Always tinkering with shit. The subclasses too.

Artillerist? Your dad’s hobby is hunting.

Alchemist? Your dad likes brewing his own beer.

Armorer? Your dad is really overprotective and is trying his best to keep you safe.

Battle Smith? Mom said you couldn’t get a dog, so dad built one.

Even the spells too. The artificer spellcasting feature states that to others, it looks like you have magical items that cast spells, but that you don’t.

Cast Thunderwave or Gust of Wind? Looks like dad pumped up the power of the leaf blower.

Heat Metal? Dad got a new blowtorch!

Mending? Nothing some duct tape won’t fix.

Bigby’s Hand? It’s your neighbor Bigby who stopped by.

Rope Trick? Dad broke a vase and is hiding in the attic from mom.

The possibilities are endless.

and it’s time for a few small repairs, she said sunny came home with a vengeance

Ending the year by starting a pirate-themed D&D campaign. I'll be playing a changeling battle smith artificer named Nobody, along with his two friends, Pride (his steel defender) and Joy (a clockwork parrot homunculus).

Okay, I'll say it. I don't like the idea that post epilogue, Dammon is just banging away at his forge alone, still holding a torch for Karlach. This isn't some comment made in jealousy at all, but one meant to say Dammon deserves better than to be some kind of thirst joke afterthought.

At the epilogue party, the game makes it pretty clear she's with Wyll if alive and not romancing the player.

In a DLC, Dammon is the perfect candidate to become an Artificer companion-hells maybe even become an origin option too! But most of us would settle for him to be simply a companion and romanceable like Halsin and Minthara or just a romanceable NPC that's not some one-time fling. He's someone we can visit on the daily most of the time, so yes, it can work.

But why? Because he deserves to be wooed and romanced by Karlach, Tav, one of the other companions, or hells all three at once. To say he can't be romanceable because he would lose his mystery is pure bullshit. Sorry Frazier, but it's true.

Gaw! It's so frustrating when a solution and an opportunity are all right there, and it's overlooked or ignored. He can be BOTH romanceable and mysterious when all that's needed is to write him in a way that leaves the player yet not Tav or Durge in the dark.

Dammon could even be written in a way where the player questions if our fav blacksmith could be up to no good. Let the fandom sweat over and argue about whether or not we should help him with some mysterious mission. Have him outright refuse to elaborate on it. Let him be equally tight-lipped about all he was forced to do or willingly did to survive in the hells when working on infernal machinery. This way, Frazier can play what he loves to play the most, and that is at least a potential bad guy. Well, not mean to the player but instead a character some might find almost as sketchy as Astarion is viewed would be fine.

*sighs* Why does he need to be romancable to everyone too? The simple answer, all of us could use a little bit more sunshine.

If I could say one thing to Frazier, it would be, "Karlach is not the only touch or affection-starved character out there. There are so many real people who need a Dammon in some form in their lives, even if it's only fictional. Karlach and Dammon's story is important to us. A Dammon and Tav/Durge story is just as important, too. These stories of love and friendship all need to be shown and celebrated. Plus, Dammon comes off as warm, thoughtful, and supportive, and so many of us out there really desperately need that-the more the better. We need it to feed our hopes to keep trying and open up our hearts again. So let him help fix heal more than just one heart, please. We all want to see him grow just a little more because he's such a fantastic character so far."

Out of context quotes from a session of Curse of Strahd

"Chill touch...better known as Litch slap"

"Can I vibe check his sermon?"

"I don't need to talk to people that's what I have all of you for"

"we are a bunch of 1%ers, we are here to solve your problems"

"yeah that's a good role, I am a persuasive little boy"

"the DND version of Pedialyte"

"Okay I need you to conjure me a cork board and red string I am gonna detective board this shit"

"hey...smile or die"

"Time is a weird soup"

Azzkii’limov at your service

Azzkii’limov (Azzy for short) at your service. A Kobold Battle Smith, ready to scrap and smack things with his wrench

Posted using PostyBirb

Backgrounds With Class: Selesnya Initiate

I'll be honest: Ravnica has always fascinated me. I was a high schooler when the first set came out, and I was immediately consumed creating characters for the setting. Now that we've actually received my long-awaited crossover, I thought it would be nice to write a love letter to the setting in the form of another Backgrounds with Class series. After all: some guilds have natural class choices tied in, from a conceptual standpoint. Boros and Fighter, Izzet and Wizard, Selesnya and Druid. But guilds aren’t class-restricted, and so I wonder what it would look like if you paired every class with every guild background, even the ones that seem at odds, like Izzet and Barbarian, or Gruul and Artificer.  So I thought about it, and this is what I came up with.  Some character concepts for each class, and each Guildmaster's Guide to Ravnica background for each class.

The Selesnya Initiate Artificer has kept an ear to the Selesnya’s Worldsong since she was young.  As a mason and sometime healer for the Conclave, she’s not as attuned to the song as some, but her ear is still beyond reproach in some ways; one day, as she was putting the final touches on a life-sized wolf carving, it begun to sing the song of all living things, and came to life under her hand.  Now convinced this can’t be the only time this has happened, she roams eagerly, listening for more stone that sings with life.

The Selesnya Initiate Barbarian has always been...excitable.  Not well-suited for guard duty, meditation, or tending gardens, this centaur has instead put his overflowing font of energy into training to become a ledev guardian.  His dream is to run the roads on his own, spreading the joy and passion of the Conclave's Worldsong to all who will listen and take that righteous ecstasy as a weapon to those who wish harm to his fellow travelers.

The Selesnya Initiate Bard has always been fascinated by dryads and their ways- after all, sharing a soul with a tree is such a foreign thing to one only of the flesh.  Ever since he was young, he has sought after them and their ways, and eventually met forbearance in a charitable soul who took the time to explain to him not just the way she and her tree were connected, but how all life was in the Worldsong of the Conclave.  Ever since, he's taken it on himself to sing it aloud- such that those who do not know it by heart may hear the call and, perhaps, become one with the Conclave he loves.

The Selesnya Initiate Cleric is a pacifist by nature, and the blessings he finds pursuing the worship of Ravnica’s own natural life have not changed that.  Far from opposed to combat in defense of the helpless or the Conclave, he instead prefers to incapacitate his foes by nonlethal means, or by placing them in positions that they must hurt themselves to harm others.  Every time he sheds blood aggrieves him, but the lesson is slowly coming to him that sometimes nature is as red in tooth as it is green as leaves.

The Selesnya Initiate Druid wasn’t born, they were awakened.  Pulled from a place of rest for defense against a Gruul raid on Selesnyan holdings, they did not lie back down and return to being inanimate dirt.  Instead, they’ve remained awake and surprisingly self-directed, volunteering in the vernadi gardens and fields to commune with the plants.  As a living patch of grassland, they’ve proved to have an intuitive grasp of the land’s needs and will, and have become a personage of importance for the other initiates.

The Selesnya Initiate Fighter was a cadet in the Boros Legion whose sergeant was a bully.  Sickened by his exposure to the abuse of authority in so crude a figure, he left for the Conclave.  There, his training was more evenly supplemented by a sense of community and fairness that left little room for the kind of deliberate fear-mongering he saw.  Now he trains in maneuvers as part of a unit, enabling his allies and striking with precision and teamwork unlike that the Legion showed him.

The Selesnya Initiate Monk was trained by a ghost.  Her mentor, one of the ancient Quietmen of the Conclave, was once an extension of the Worldsong’s will, a weapon in body alone and a witness for the Conclave’s parun.  They were supposed to be destroyed, after their treachery during the Decamillenial almost led to Mat’Selesnya’s destruction.  Forced to keep her master’s secret while balancing the needs of the Conclave, she finds a growing tension within her, a tension that only violence has helped resolve- hardly the attitude of one nominally seeking peace of mind.

The Selesnya Initiate Paladin was brought up in the Conclave, but over the last few weeks, starting with a friend leaving the guild in favor of the Boros Legion, he’s started to doubt.  Is this really the life for him?  What other paths might he pursue?  Surrounded by the comraderie of other squires and soldiers, the only time he really feels the Worldsong is in battle, fighting along like-minded souls.  With the day for his oath drawing near and his meditations bringing him no feeling of welcoming, doubt and curiosity might form the wedge that splits him off from the Conclave too.

The Selesnya Initiate Ranger is, like many of the Conclave’s dryads, not actually bound to the tree that she calls her heartwood and home.  Free-roaming and imbued with a greater-than-average share of her people’s magic, she wanders the roads as a ledev trainee, a gifted traveler and guardian of those who travel Ravnica’s highways.  Trostani herself oversees the promotion of ledev guardians from among the Selesnyan cadets, and she yearns for the recognition of this most elder of her kind.

The Selesnya Initiate Rogue serves as one of the Conclave’s covert investigators.  An odd pursuit for a vedalken, but one they take to with relish.  Part of their community as much as or more than any other, they don’t take their training as an investigator as a way to stay separate, but a way to stick together to their friends.  Picking up on the subtle clues of when someone is not at their best or may be hiding a danger to the conclave and licensed to pursue the investigation where they wish, they serve covertly as an in-house problem solver at worst and a counselor and therapist at best.

The Selesnya Initiate Sorcerer’s family has always been rumored to have some connection with the boros legion’s angels.  Certainly her statuesque beauty supports this notion, but the true testament is her sorcerous powers.  A gift of the celestial blood running through her veins, they’ve proved valuable on more occasions than not, as she lays hands on soldiers protecting Selesnya interests and blesses them before battle.  She is proud of her power, and those elder around her murmur that she has real potential as an evangel or hierarch someday…if she can reign in her ego.

The Selesnya Initiate Warlock is fortunate enough to have a direct connection with Trostani herselves.  Having sworn herself to their personal service, she benefots from a taste of their fey magic- a taste she hopes one day to grow into a glut.  Her aspiration is nothing less than to become Trostani’s rightmost hand.  She has a long way to go, but the tiny wooden drake that clings to her is proof she has the talent to bring life to the lifeless, demonstrating her aptitude with Trostani’s gifts.

The Selesnya Initiate Wizard was, like so many others, not born a part of the Conclave.  She was born and raised until quite recently among the stacks and papers of the Azorius archives, trained in defensive magics as an on-call riot squad member.  Unfortunately, first contact with the enemy- a golgari tenement filled with more desperation than criminality- tainted her impression of the cold, sterile law in favor of something warmer and more communal.  The Selesnya welcomed her compassion with open arms, and as yet have only ever asked to help or protect others- even those outside the Combine.

i think battle smith artificers are cool

To commemorate participating in a new West March, I did a Smash style reveal of the character I'll be playing, Yamauchi Hibana! Blacksmith, Priestess, Archer, and Gunpowder expert!

cause the joke's on me and im laughing too

you wanna watch me bleed cause i bleed so well??

Artificer won by a landslide! Which subclass are we choosin'?

i’ll move through the night, love, i’ll sleep when i’m dead

My Armorist goblin artificer, Maeve <3. She’s very femme and valley-girl-esque, and really good at what she does; making battle armor. She seems disorganized and chaotic to observers, but there’s a very precise method to her madness… she’s just terrible at explaining her method to anyone else. Just let her to do her thing, she's got it figured out. This is her casual clothing under her armor, which summons like Garnet's gauntlets when she needs it.

Berg Goldfinch: Human Artificer/Wizard