Atypical Characters: Tricky Cleric

For this week the atypical character is a Cleric class with the trickery domain.  The reason is that, partially due to video games, when one thinks of a cleric they imagine a life domain cleric. Someone who's main job is to heal the party, and maybe fight if things get too dangerous.

Really though a cleric's spell set is based around their particular god. The Player's Hand Book for fifth edition has the domains of: Death, Knowledge, Life, Light, Tempest, Trickery, War. Each domain gives the cleric a different set of spells to choose from, apart from the cleric spell list.

"Gods of trickery-such as Tymora, Beshaba, Olidammara, the Traveler, Gari Glittergold, and Loki are mischief-makers and instigators who stand as a constant challenge to the accepted order among both gods and mortals. They're patrons of thieves, scoundrels, gamblers, rebels, and liberators. Their clerics are a disruptive force in the world, puncturing pride, mocking tyrants, stealing from the rich, freeing captives, and flouting hollow traditions. They prefer subterfuge, pranks, deception, and theft rather than direct confrontation." Player's Hand Book page 62

Any cleric serving these gods should have a large focus on stealth, deception, and other subterfuge related acts. As an example I present Nudnik.

This character sheet is less filled out than the last ones to better allow you to print it out and use it. Nudnik is a Female Tiefling with the Criminal (spy variant) background. All her rolls were done with dice, and clearly she has little in the way of physical capabilities.

This makes sense for a trickery cleric, as it isn't their job to come into conflict. Their 1st level spells are charm person and disguise self. At the first character level their clerical blessing is that they touch one willing target and give them an Advantage (+5) to stealth rolls for an hour. At second level their channel divinity allows the cleric to create an illusionary double of their self.

A character like this should really be played like a self-serving-sort. Very smart and witty for good social interactions, but also likely to screw with the party just to see what will happen. This could easily cause conflict, so the character should only do this when their is no perceivable threat to the party's lives when the prank happens.

Say the fighter is talking to a shopkeeper: the trickery cleric breaks an valuable looking item then casts mending to fix it; the cleric uses light to make the counter between the fighter and shopkeeper radiate; use thaumaturgy to make it seem like there is a fly buzzing in the fighter's ear; use disguise self to turn into a fat half naked man who starts dancing.

A more serious instance of the trickery cleric causing problems would involve using their deception skill to hide and item they stole from a guard and place it on a random person. They then use disguise self, inform the guard, and collect a small reward.

The point is that the trickery cleric is a stealthy character that will do generally odd things. They are very chaotic, just like most trickster gods, but usually not malevolent. They are either neutral or good. Their reasons for helping the party could that their god told them too, or the cleric finds the party amusing and sticks around. Using Nudnik's spry background, it could be to gather information for someone. It's really up to the player, as always.

Trickery Clerics seek to cause chaos in everyday life through pranks and deception, yet rarely to invoke lasting harm on others.

Many Weapons

Weapons are a key aspect of combat in Dungeons and Dragons (D&D). The Player's Hand Book for 5th edition happens to have a table of base D&D weapons on page 149 in a neat table [see figure 1]. As extensive as this list is, it might be lacking for a campaign. We can actually draw from pages 273–279 of the Dungeon Master's Guide that speaks of how to create custom monsters.

Figure 1: Weapon List

How can tips for building monsters be useful? One has to cherry-pick the ripest fruit from such a tree. Most of the steps aren't directly usable, such as challenge rating, damage immunities, and the like. What is usable is the concept of modifying preexisting monster stats. (Dungeon Master's Guide, Step 3, g. 274). Using figure 1, one could play with statistics of weapons, change the name, and have the players be able to use them.

For one NPC type I made a boar spear i.g. With it this type of guard could wield it with one hand or two hands, along with causing both slashing and piercing damage. My inspiration came from the History Channel show "Forged in Fire" season 3 episode 7.

I took the versatile trait as well, as that refers to the item being both one-handed and two-handed. (Boar Spear). For the slashing damage I gave 1d8 slashing damage with one hand and 1d10 slashing damage with two hands. For piercing damage it is 1d10 with one hand and 1d12 with two.

The reason I gave it so much options for attack is that weaponized boar spears could do slashing or penetrating strikes. If a weapon is versatile I think it should be allowed multiple attack types. This goes to game master preferences, but I'm not opposing to say a player stabbing with their sword so it counts as piercing damage rather than the usual stabbing damage, or striking with the hilt to cause half bludgeoning damage.

Whatever you do be sure to test the weapon out with some practice rolls, which will give an idea of power. If you don't have the time for that then just use the same damage rolls as other weapons in the weapon list.

Hopefully this helped get the creative juices flowing.

Works Cited
Crawford, Jeremy, et al. Dungeon Master's Guide. USA: Wizards of the Coast, 2014. Print.

Crawford, Jeremy, et al. Player's Handbook. USA: Wizards of the Coast, 2014. Print.

The Boar Spear. Forged in Fire. Host. Willis, Will. Outpost Entertainment, 4 Oct. 2016. History Channel.Television.

Villians: Goblins

Villains are a crucial part of any story—including those told at the table. This post, and other villains post like it, pick a monster from the Monster Manual for 5th edition Dungeons and Dragons to discuss in detail. It starts with an examination of its stats as shown in the Monster Manual, followed by how it behaves in combat and general tactics the party can use. It also goes into various ways to use the monster as a villain in a campaign.

For the second addition to this series I played around with wanting to use some weak monster that is rarely given much of a spotlight as the main villain in adventurers. I considered Kobolds and Threekreens, but eventually decided on Goblins. Goblins are more iconic, yet I've found them underused as substantial villains.

The figures where screen captures from a pdf of the Monster Manual. All other images used where gathered with the Bing Search engine using the "Free to Share and Use" license. They where then changed by having their Black and White percentages modified, horizontally flipped, resized, and/or cropped. I claim no ownership over the images.

Atypical Characters: Inquisitive Dwarf

Welcome to another post of Atypical Characters. This one, as promised, will be shorter than the initial post of this series. Prepare to see Wladimir Hafbeard a Dwarf Fighter. The general idea of him is a dwarf who carries a large assortment of throwing axes, and thus behaves as a short range fighter, who can also rush into melee if need be. I also ensured he had an interesting backstory and skill set by modifying his background.

I rolled his stats and found them to be above average across the board except for that 8 ability score. Making the character I initially thought of the gimmick that he was dwarf that had too many axes. Working on the character though I found that stale. I knew Strength and Constitution had to be high. Yet the mountain dwarf sub race bonus of +2 to strength ability score didn't seem necessary. If the character is so strong why throw axes? Also as fighter he already had proficiency in light and medium armor, being a fighter made the Dwarf race proficiency in axes rather pointless too.

Hill dwarf would give some Wisdom to the character, and +1 health every level up which would useful for a character going without a shield. Same for the Fighter Type, Defense, I picked for him. The character is expected to avoid direct melee until two or one axes are left.

Considering the additional wisdom from being a hill dwarf, I thought about giving the character more wisdom based skills. A fighter with intimidation and athletics is common place, but not with insight. I decided craft a custom background for him. The Inquisitor Background combines aspects of the Soldier and Acolyte Backgrounds.

He is a Lawful Neutral character. Wladimir isn't swayed either way by good or evil, as his job has caused him to commit acts by both. His life under the Temple of Moradin's inquisition has left him aligned with law. Hard to be chaotic and in an organized religious/martial organization.

This is why his skill set includes insight. Insight is often used for deducing if someone is lying to you, an inquisition operative could torture or intimidate, but its better to discern intentions before such grisly deeds. As an enforcer Wladimir would have spent much of his time on edge, constantly looking for suspicious activity, hence the proficiency in perception. It's also hard to not learn about religion when working for one. Finally is survival, which is useful in tracking down targets such as heretics.

Wladimir needed a reason to be adventuring, and not still enforcing for the inquisition. Using a bond from the soldier background we have that reason, he experienced a crushing defeat. Wladimir is a middle-aged dwarf, he would have seen many things. Having been dealt a serious blow could have made him depressed and experience a midlife crisis, so he left. It can be up to the player if he's still on good terms or not, but he would certainly have contacts remaining in the inquisition after all the time he spent there.

When playing him it is suggested to use the throwing weapons as often as possible in fights. Wladimir has a high AC for first level due to his chain shirt (+13), proficiency with medium armor (+2), dexterity modifier (+2), and his fighting style (+1). That means he's safe to charge in and engage foes quickly. Perhaps throwing an axe and then moving forward?

When exploring take advantage of his +5 to survival rolls and 15 passive perception. In social interactions the character's skills work best when using religion or insight rolls. Without rolls the character tends to be suspicious of others, as was the nature of his previous career. The dwarf would most likely try to interpret omens and the like from anything uncommon that occurs. He can work well with the group as he prefers figuring out cause and effect before acting, but will do what is necessary to get the job done. Thievery would be a potential qualm, as he is aligned toward Lawful.

To reiterate, those are suggestions. If you can think of your own ideas of how to play the character, add a different backstory, or even reroll your own stats, do it. The above page images are there to print out or copy from at leisure.

Combing background traits can help with giving a unique feel to a character.