April’s challenge was a hard one: go the entire month without creating a full spellcaster. I was honestly not sure I could do this one, but I pulled it off, and without resorting to doing nothing but partial casters as well! Here’s some of my favorites!
Rush
*insert mechanical barking noises here*
look I dunno what you want, he’s a robot dog, I don’t have a quote for him
He’s Megaman’s robot dog. There’s not much else I can say here. Mechanically, he doesn’t function exactly like Rush does in the video games, unless I do a lot of reflavoring of his Paladin abilities, or just go with “He fell into a fantasy world through some kind of portal and his devotion to being Megaman’s good boi robodog gave him Paladin powers. Yes, this is entirely an excuse to make a character out of Kibs’ Oath of the Goodest Boi subclass, which was originally an April Fools joke, and was revised to a 2.0 version for this year’s version of the holiday. I don’t care, it’s great, and I love Megaman, so here’s Rush.
Rush uses Kibbles’ Quadrupedal configuration of his Ironwrought race
Varima Jade
Some days you just wake up and choose violence
I wanted to try creating a Barbarian during the month of April, and Varima ended up being born out of a mismash of characters that came together into an adorable Harengon smasher of faces. For starters, her name is taken from my friend Cass’ two favorite Baldur’s Gate 3 characters she’s ever made. Cass is also the inspiration behind the quote for Varima, as it’s a saying she uses often. Her being a Harengon is a nod to my wife’s Harengon beast barbarian, Beatrice, that she played in a one shot with me a couple of years ago (she might also be bringing her back for a campaign we’re both joining hopefully starting this month). Finally, her Barbarian subclass, the Path of Mutation by one Kibblestasty, shares something in common with the WOTC-created Path of the Giant: you can grow to large size from either Medium or Small. My friend Andrew happens to be playing a halfling Giant barbarian, and I’ve loved watching him enjoy his character growing in size every time he does it. Since Harengons can choose to be either small or medium, I decided I wanted that same fun for Varima.
I imagine in her normal form, Varima probably has more rabbit-like features, but when she rages, her physical mutation has her becoming something like a truly jacked hare. Not sure if you’ve seen a hare compared to a regular rabbit, but they have an unsettling wild and cold nature to them, and I love the transforming dichotomy here.
Zildri
The Everlight’s faithful were nearly wiped out, and without active worship, the Goddess nearly starved. Never again.
I’ll just say…there were more than a few Inventors created this month, I got inspired while actually building a full character sheet for Dynama, the Potionsmith I brought up in this post. She was in the finals for a character for me to play in the forthcoming game I mentioned in the above entry, but I digress. Back to Zildri, Relicsmith is an Inventor subclass I hadn’t looked at too closely, as the idea of an inventor harnessing divine energy in lieu of arcane isn’t one that I had a great deal of ideas about.
When reading it over again, inspiration struck when I looked at their Ordained Path feature, which determines both a combat style and what sort of bonus spells you gain access to. One of the choices was Path of Penance, which is interesting as it leads to locking you into using a whip as your primary weapon, not one you see often. The upgrade support for this style is quite tremendous however, giving you options such as setting your whip alight in holy flame, increasing its reach to 15 ft (from 10) and allowing you to consider that whole area as threatened for the purpose of triggering opportunity attacks. It’s a very zone-controlling melee striker, and I have to admit it sounds like a fun idea.
For a backstory, I leaned in to a story that originated in Critical Role, one I adapted into my own homebrew world. The Everlight is a goddess of healing and redemption, one who had her faithful nearly wiped out in the wars that the deities fought between each other, and lost a lot of the knowledge of her faith as a result. Without that knowledge, few worshipped her. In my world, the Gods are actually fed by the act of worship, and not consistently having it can lead one to “starving” as it were. Zildri is an aasimar inventor who found the preserved bone of a saint of the Everlight that died in those wars, and using her inventor skills, fashioned it into a reliquary that she built into the handle of her whip. Now she zealously pursues the enemies of the Everlight, both current and ancient, and has no qualms about viciously ending them. She sees herself as a necessary part of the Everlight’s faithful, even if many of her more redemptive minded brothers and sisters would disagree with her choices.
Vymnus
Stormsong was once a physical blade, it’s true, but that form became its prison. It has evolved beyond those limitations. And now, with its help, I have evolved beyond the limitations of my people.
Vymnus is a Spiritsworn fighter, a Fighter subclass that I’ve long thought was extremely interesting but up until now was stuck on a novel concept for a character that uses it.
It wouldn’t be until I had begun drafting a future post I have planned for this blog, one that discusses my very first D&D characters, that I would find the seed of what would become Vymnus. You see, I have a fondness for taking old characters of mine and making them into NPCs for players to potentially interact with, and the very first character I ever made, a 3.5 Wizard/Cleric/Mystic Theurge named Nilas, is one such NPC. In his original campaign, Nilas was a priest of the goddess of magic, which meant that he was also an accomplished Wizard. During that campaign, we came across a magical greatsword that was sentient and capable of telepathic speech (among other things) but had no name. Its only desire was to be used to fight in righteous battles.
Unfortunately, none of our group was built to be two-handed weapon users, so the sword was given to Nilas to be used as a detector of intelligent beings using his telepathy. The sword didn’t have a name, so it asked us to pick one for him. I had no idea what to call it, so it got the joke nickname of Steve, and it never was known as anything else.
I adapted the story of Steve and continued it. Nilas would retire and become a teacher, and hang “Steve” up in his tower office alongside various other magical artifacts, the proximity of which would restore its lost memories. It’s true name was Stormsong, Reaver of the Sands, and it raged at its fate of being a magical thoughts detector and now a trophy. It wanted to be wielded in righteous combat as it was made to do.
Vymnus, meanwhile, is a very rare gem dragonborn who was considered a martial prodigy. As Gem Dragonborn possess an inherent psionic ability, Stormsong was able to reach out to it when Vymnus chanced to be in Nilas’ tower, speaking with the Wizard on some matter. It promised him to be the greatest teacher he would ever see, and together bring untold glory to both their names. Vymnus, chafing under the expectations of his people’s culture, saw the sword as a way to break free of his constraints and live his own destiny.
That night he would break into the Wizard’s tower, steal the sword, and destroy its physical form. Stormsong was now a sentient spirit, bonded to Vymnus, and able to manifest in the form of any weapon it wished. Now finally able to taste battle again in the hands of a skilled wielder, the pair seek their destiny wherever they wish.
Your Quest Log is Full 