Are you a refluffer?

[Theo R Cwithin]

Well re-skinning sounds harsh and violent with tinges of wet sloppiness mixed in....hmmmm

Eh, everyone's got their thing that does it for them. There's something for everyone, if you just google hard enough.

 

[Wormwood]

Reskinning Monsters: I do this *every game*. The Monster Builder allows me unlimited opportunities take disparate powers and abilities and apply them to my ideal antagonist. A piece of Minotaur here, a dash of Orc there, add a hint of Hobgoblin and voila: a perfect War Ape in the service of my Mad Scientist.

When I am a player, I reskin constantly. My Tiefling Warlord, for example, doesn't simply shout encouraging words and occasionally point out his opponent's weaknesses---he invokes the forbidden, hell-born pacts of his ancestors and lends his companions infernal boons. He opens a conduit into Hell itself, momentarily granting the fighter the strength of a Pit Fiend, or the Ranger the accuracy of a Spined Devil. All the better to smite those foolish enough to oppose them

 

[Derulbaskul]

On this subject, I was re-reading the artificer class a couple of nights ago and I realise that with some reskinning, that it would make a perfect rune mage/runecaster/graven one/tattooed sorcerer. As in, all of its powers could be represented by runes and/or tattoos on the artificer's body.

I regularly reskin class powers to better reflect how I see the monster or NPC, particularly for clerics and other divine spellcasters where I try to match the described effects of the powers to what I have read about the particularly deity (I play in FR so obviously have a lot of source material for this sort of stuff).

 

[Dykstrav]

Virtually every DM I know and respect re-skins constantly and shamelessly. Here's a few brief examples of the fluff I've changed from core D&D to fit my homebrew.

• Dragonborn are the result of powerful magic shared by a tribe of lizardfolk. This tribe banded together under their mightiest shamans and magicians, slew one of the world's most ancient dragons, and infused their bloodline with its power. Now all of their descendants carry some measure of its power in their veins, although they suffer from occasional strangeness as well.

• Shifters are the children of druids. I didn't want to have to explain why there had never been shifters in my homebrew and now suddenly they were available... So I explained to the players that druids and other primal characters have occasional odd children who bear the mark of their parent's shapeshifting abilities.

• In my homebrew, the various constellations are associated with powerful angels. Recently, angels have been visiting the world, bestowing mighty powers upon select agents to wage war against star pact warlocks. Invokers are the agents these angels have empowered to fight for them. Many feel that the invoker's mandate and angelic patrons will lead to the formal establishment of a new religion in the setting's future.

 

[Jack7]

Poetic, power like it I do, an experience point I send from me to you.

For the XP I'm grateful
My demonstrance is true,
One day in good order
I'll return it to you,
If humored in comment
I'll point that out too,
If versed-up for context
I'll send you out two...

It's times like this I think "fluff" should be filed under "concepts that desperately need a new colloquialism".

And now for a word on "Flufflication"

The Fluff that we speak of
Is the stuff we enjoy
When the crunch of the matter
Is too roughly employed,
And it's true that the term
Seems a bit like to me
Calling rose windows posies
Or a redwood a pea,
Yet still when the naming
Was passed all around
That's the one that stuck longest
Though it hardly resounds,
But the fluff of the matter
Is that fluff is the word,
Though if you ask my opinion
It's a bit of a turd...

 

[pogre]

Yes I do.

I have come to hate the word fluff. Everytime I go into a description - canned or original one of my players pipes up, "Shhhh, he's fluffing us!"

It was funny the first dozen times...

Now it's old. I haven't addressed it, because everyone else still finds it amusing, and really it's a minor annoyance. I'm just getting crotchety in my advanced years.

 

[Jack7]

I'm just getting crotchety in my advanced years.

I hear ya. I was the same way myself and then I went to new, tagless underwear. I'm a lot better now. It's just a suggestion.

 

[Lanefan]

My first law of D+D monster and item writeups (any edition):

"Nothing is sacred. Nothing is safe."

Lanefan

 

[Phaezen]

I refluff and repower monsters constantly, often in the middle of a session if the need arises. I have even gone as far as to refluff, add fire damage and a zone negating fire resistances to kobold minions to turn them into minions for a refluffed fire elemental the party were fighting to mix things up a bit in the middle of a fight.

 

[Garthanos]

My first law of D+D monster and item writeups (any edition):

"Nothing is sacred. Nothing is safe."

Lanefan

DM's perogative sure its been there for every edition (now players get it).