D&D 5E Out of the Abyss OOC

I think most of us struggle with the perennial "do-I-go-with-Human-or-Variant-Human" internal debate.

This is a little stream of consciousness, hope you don't mind the lack of focus [MENTION=6799753]lowkey13[/MENTION]. You've given me a nice plot hook in the "bound to service" and "greatest honor for any Haruchai" aspects, thanks for that. Reminds me a little of the Unsullied from Game of Thrones. Brinn is a good name for PbP; we'll be typing it a lot, so short and sweet is good. Otherwise, we're apt to come up with a god-awful nickname for your character!

I LOVE the idea that a portal opened to the Realms from another world. It's nice that you've anticipated this quirk and that it's purposeful. It'll fit well with the "whimsy" theme that is woven into the adventure, too. Don't feel like my excitement locks you into it, though. If the portal doesn't make the final cut of your draft, no worries. A drow raiding party is pretty much dead-on for what the drow have been doing in OotA, and would also work nicely as a character hook. Maybe check out the OotA Bonds I posted in the OP, see if any of those take you in a particular direction. And feel free to invent your own custom bond, of course.

Brinn does not like magic. In his homeland/homeplane, natural magic (druids, rangers, hippies) are respected, "god" magic (clerics etc.) is also fine (Lords) but other spell casters are almost always using it for evil or, perhaps, for not good. This has been exacerbated by his capture. He will be suspicious of other spell casters in the group (that's not a veto! just saying he has issues).

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That'll be fun to rp. Can't wait to mess with Brinn's head about that!

Brinn is fundamentally broken. I will work this into flaws . . . .

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I'm a fan of broken. I like characters with flaws. Not only are their flaws useful mechanically to me as DM, but I think they're entertaining to watch as the character reacts to their environment. Plus, flaws are fun to roleplay! Will Brinn be an anti-hero?



Beg to differ about being an underachiever, [MENTION=23298]industrygothica[/MENTION]! I know whatever character you dream up will come to life during play. You could take Race: Potato and Class: Sack and make it shine, yeah?

industrygothica said:

As for monks... Heh, I skipped that chapter. But now I kinda want to play a mage just to piss off your guy!

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See?! BRILLIANT.



On point buy versus rolling stats...these days I always use point buy for PbP, but I still roll characters for tabletop. Funny, that.

lowkey13 said:

Right now, I am really struggling because I don't play with feats, and I don't normally use a point-buy system. So I'm going back and forth with variant human and standard human. Several of the feats (athletics, alert, mobility) seem like they would work well for my character conception of the Haruchai, and the Mage Slayer one would work well for his ... recent issues, but his focus on overall improvement of the body fits in with the standard +1; but then it's no different than any other human.

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I usually play with feats, and have found that giving a human a feat is a great way to make that character unique from first level! It certainly sounds like you have all the characterization ideas in place to make Brinn stand out, if I were you I'd take one of the feats to help the mechanics reflect the character

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Sounds good.

If it helps, the OP has a basic chart containing what it costs to buy each ability score using the 5e point buy system. Use a base of 8. The rest of the wheedling and tweaking to arrive at ability scores to suit, well...you'll figure out as you play with it.

ALL: I'll want a digital image of your character as part of your character sheet.

It occurs to me as I write that sometimes I dig through deviantart or Google images to find particularly keen artwork, and then base my character concept on the art. That's worked out pretty well for me a time or two, and has the boon that you wind up with an on-point portrait of your PC.

Hello all -- really looking forward to this. Thanks for pulling this all together, CB!

I'm currently deciding between a Rogue or a Bard. But then I look at a goblin barbarian and can think of nothin' finer. It looks like we're not hurting for ideas, and as long as someone has a cleric in mind, I'm sure we can make it all work.

And now I'm looking at the new Arcane domain for clerics...

Looking forward to this, and to watching ideas coalesce in the coming days.

Playing without a healer would be an interesting challenge I guess we'd be relying on long rests and the natural healing rules, but that's ok. The Underdark is meant to be a very big place, and it makes sense to me that there would be large parts which are very deserted. Which means that once an area is cleared, resting for several days without random encounters makes sense. We might have to watch our rations though

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Almost done cooking. Jesus. Taking a break for a few minutes to enjoy a quick moment of solitude.

[MENTION=6799753]lowkey13[/MENTION], you asked about posting your character sheet in the RG (in Community >> Out of the Abyss >> Characters). To give you an idea what the EN World etiquette is for character sheets, take a look at these links. I'm not asking for a standardized format, but one thing I *do* like is when there's a brief block at the top that lists hp, AC, languages, and passive Perception. How you order the rest of the sheet is up to you. It's nice if big blocks of texts are sblocked; that way, when we scroll through the RG, we only have a little way to scroll before getting to the relevant entry. To see how someone wrote the code to organize their entry, click "Reply with Quote."

Picayune Leveaux
Briony Kidd
Father Spec Thomson
Lieutenant Ser Marcus Dent
Damien Darkspawn
Tolan
Kid
"Gentleman Jim" Barrington
Cass Anders


Later tonight, when my house is quiet and folks have gone home, I'll pop back in to more thoroughly read and reply to the thread. Just wanted to get to this post in case anyone found themselves with time this afternoon or early this evening.

Happy Thanksgiving!