Envisioner
Explorer
Okay, looking pretty good so far. I'm having trouble keeping up with the lot of you, given what Real Life tends to do to me, but I should be able to post a bit more often over the next couple of days.
Multiclass is a yes, and you may either roll your HP (on one of the two roller sites), or take the average.
With regard to magic items, I have something planned, so for now leave them off.
Random anecdote on the subject of rolling stats - I busted out my old dice this morning to roll up an NPC for fun, and my first four rolls were 16, 17, 17, and 16. I rolled one more time, still saw more than two 5s and 6s, and concluded that these dice were defective. I'll have to use them for Skill rolls in Champions instead....
Just to make sure you didn't miss it, you can also pay another 3 points to get {17} in a stat, and then 4 more than that if you absolutely must have an {18}. Of course, we're still rolling stats, this is just how you calculate what the equivalent point-buy total would be. Thusly, if you have a {16}, a {15}, a {14}, a {13}, and two {8}s, you pay 0 points for the {8}s, 5 points for the {13} (since it's 1-for-1 up to this point), 7 points for the {14} (since going from {13} to {14} costs 2 pb instead of 1), 9 points for the {15}, and 12 points (per my houserule) for the {16}. The result would be 12+9+7+5=33 point-buy, meaning that your character is significantly more powerful than one built using the default point-buy of 27.
@ Tglassy - I think in view of the tactical complexities you mention, I will have to stick with PHB-only and not allow the additional spells. Save this character for a future campaign, either someone else's or one run by a future version of me, who owns that book and has had time to fully digest it. Mountain Druid with a lot of Cold spells sounds like a good time to me; it works nicely with the fact that we'll be dealing with a lot of Dragons in this game, of which the most dangerous ones are Red dragons who are vulnerable to Cold (and the least dangerous are White Dragons which will ignore your cold, giving other heroes a chance to compete with you).
@tglassy - I kinda want to make you randomly select 3 stats from each of your two rollsets, producing a more middle-of-the-road one, instead of the consistently amazing stats found only in your second roll. I can be talked out of this desire pretty easily though.
On the fluff side, I'm also a bit nervous about the whole Eye of Gruumsh thing. (Don't panic; I'm working my way through your post and writing my first impressions as they come.) It's extremely close to Chaotic Evil, and this adventure path is written to pretty strongly favor Good characters. While a desire to make Dragons your prey is a reasonable basis for a Chaotic Neutral character in an average campaign, I have trouble seeing how your character could earn the esteem of the CG Harpers and the LN Lords Alliance and above all the LG Order of the Gauntlet (or their equivalents in my setting), sufficiently that they would specifically invite you to come answer the call to help stop the titular Rise of Tiamat. I'm sure the Emerald Enclave would be on board with a self-described Predator, but even they might balk at the idea of accepting someone who openly worships the Orc god, given that Orcs are not just pillagers of civilization but also pretty big on despoiling wilderness as well.
I'm willing to work with you on sources of character growth, whereby the EoG would eventually "evolve" into some other worldview that's a bit more acceptable to the Enclave; I could then say that some oracles or whatever have insisted that you're going to be crucial to the mission. But it's very hard for me to see how even that much of a bridge between your very anti-heroic concept and the general shape of the adventure can be constructed. Just saying that your character is LN, and fulfilling every contract to the letter while otherwise behaving monstrously (if anything, that results in an LE alignment, which isn't 100% off the table for this scenario, but does cause special problems on top of everything else), isn't going to change this approach very much. Taken as a whole, the backstory does lend itself to the idea that your character is going to grow over time, but I need to know that you're willing to embrace that in your RP. A likely event in the character's future would be a direct encounter with Gruumsh himself (or some proxy thereof that you couldn't simply dismiss as a false prophet), which would probably break the character's lifelong faith and force him to admit that his power comes from Nature itself, not from the gods who created the orcs and continues to guide their typical behavior.
I'm very happy to hear about that. Let's assume that the tribe which slaughtered her people were a long-standing territorial rival of your own (now extinct) tribe. In fact, let's say that since you've probably been in the woods a lot longer than she's been on the road, I might even say that the rival tribe specifically went a-pillaging after yours was wiped out, so after a fashion the dragon who killed your tribe was also indirectly responsible for the death of Annaliese's boyfriend.
Which I haven't read. I'm operating off 3E sources and the Orc statblock in the Monster Manual; the former do offer a small amount of nuance, but also double down on the general awfulness of Gruumsh and the Gruumshites, both of which line up with the 5EMM version a lot more than they do with any of the more nuanced portrayals in some 3E sources. So while your character might well be less awful than most orcs, most orcs are still pretty awful, though not necessarily all of them equally so. (While my homebrew setting tries to steer away from clichés, it hasn't changed the Orcs very much overall except in an "under-the-hood" way. And while FR may have some decent Orcs out there somewhere, I haven't read very much of the source material, and likely won't do much of this soon. So either way, I'm pretty much treating these guys as being half Warcraft and half Lord of the Rings, neither of which is a very good look. The fact that your character is even halfway to being a decent person is pretty definitely due to the fact that he hasn't seen another half-orc, let alone a full-blooded orc, in years.)
(Oh, and who the heck is Jeremy Crawford?)
Moving on to other players....
This is what I get for not checking the book. I'm probably okay with Ritual Caster as well, but I think I should rule that you can't "buy" any Rituals having been learned during your first 5 levels (in particular I haven't read the Tiny Hut, and I'm very nervous about spells that might give the party extra Rests regardless of the environment; Identify is probably fine, but I don't know what you'd have to pay for it, so I'll probably just give it to you as treasure early in the game). Find Familiar can be one of the 1st-level rituals you get for taking the feat; I definitely approve of the magic hawk. I'll allow you to keep that and the other two level-1s; drop the Identify (for now) and the Tiny Hut (I'll think about it), and refund yourself any GP you spent to buy them.
With those adjustments, Annaliese is approved. I might have missed it when reading the backstory, but did any of her siblings escape the destruction of her home life? If she'd never have left without knowing they're dead, then we can say they are, but it'd lead to more future plot hooks if we assume that some are still out there somewhere, and she simply lost track of them while her own life was falling apart. That's some good drama we could put together on this subject, but only if you're cool with it.
As to Ashur, my first stipulation is that we rename Brandon to Brand or something. The former is just too modern-feeling for me to be cool with it in either FR or my homebrew setting. (And if there's a Brandon in one of the Drizz't novels or something, I still don't care; it's a whitebread name that isn't welcome in my organic wholegrain D&D.) Also, I think it's hilarious that everybody seems to be playing an Outlander with orcs in their backstory, especially given that this has nothing at all to do with the adventure we're playing. But whatever, I'm not worried about a Ranger being overpowered, so approved.
We've got two players ready; that's enough for me to start creating an intro scene. Robyn looks pretty good, but I'm assuming he's not quite finished, so I'll wait to hear that he's finished. Once he and Keth are up to speed, I'll bring them into the opening scene, and we'll have our first encounter.
Multiclass is a yes, and you may either roll your HP (on one of the two roller sites), or take the average.
With regard to magic items, I have something planned, so for now leave them off.
Random anecdote on the subject of rolling stats - I busted out my old dice this morning to roll up an NPC for fun, and my first four rolls were 16, 17, 17, and 16. I rolled one more time, still saw more than two 5s and 6s, and concluded that these dice were defective. I'll have to use them for Skill rolls in Champions instead....
tglassy said:
Just to make sure you didn't miss it, you can also pay another 3 points to get {17} in a stat, and then 4 more than that if you absolutely must have an {18}. Of course, we're still rolling stats, this is just how you calculate what the equivalent point-buy total would be. Thusly, if you have a {16}, a {15}, a {14}, a {13}, and two {8}s, you pay 0 points for the {8}s, 5 points for the {13} (since it's 1-for-1 up to this point), 7 points for the {14} (since going from {13} to {14} costs 2 pb instead of 1), 9 points for the {15}, and 12 points (per my houserule) for the {16}. The result would be 12+9+7+5=33 point-buy, meaning that your character is significantly more powerful than one built using the default point-buy of 27.
@ Tglassy - I think in view of the tactical complexities you mention, I will have to stick with PHB-only and not allow the additional spells. Save this character for a future campaign, either someone else's or one run by a future version of me, who owns that book and has had time to fully digest it. Mountain Druid with a lot of Cold spells sounds like a good time to me; it works nicely with the fact that we'll be dealing with a lot of Dragons in this game, of which the most dangerous ones are Red dragons who are vulnerable to Cold (and the least dangerous are White Dragons which will ignore your cold, giving other heroes a chance to compete with you).
@tglassy - I kinda want to make you randomly select 3 stats from each of your two rollsets, producing a more middle-of-the-road one, instead of the consistently amazing stats found only in your second roll. I can be talked out of this desire pretty easily though.
On the fluff side, I'm also a bit nervous about the whole Eye of Gruumsh thing. (Don't panic; I'm working my way through your post and writing my first impressions as they come.) It's extremely close to Chaotic Evil, and this adventure path is written to pretty strongly favor Good characters. While a desire to make Dragons your prey is a reasonable basis for a Chaotic Neutral character in an average campaign, I have trouble seeing how your character could earn the esteem of the CG Harpers and the LN Lords Alliance and above all the LG Order of the Gauntlet (or their equivalents in my setting), sufficiently that they would specifically invite you to come answer the call to help stop the titular Rise of Tiamat. I'm sure the Emerald Enclave would be on board with a self-described Predator, but even they might balk at the idea of accepting someone who openly worships the Orc god, given that Orcs are not just pillagers of civilization but also pretty big on despoiling wilderness as well.
I'm willing to work with you on sources of character growth, whereby the EoG would eventually "evolve" into some other worldview that's a bit more acceptable to the Enclave; I could then say that some oracles or whatever have insisted that you're going to be crucial to the mission. But it's very hard for me to see how even that much of a bridge between your very anti-heroic concept and the general shape of the adventure can be constructed. Just saying that your character is LN, and fulfilling every contract to the letter while otherwise behaving monstrously (if anything, that results in an LE alignment, which isn't 100% off the table for this scenario, but does cause special problems on top of everything else), isn't going to change this approach very much. Taken as a whole, the backstory does lend itself to the idea that your character is going to grow over time, but I need to know that you're willing to embrace that in your RP. A likely event in the character's future would be a direct encounter with Gruumsh himself (or some proxy thereof that you couldn't simply dismiss as a false prophet), which would probably break the character's lifelong faith and force him to admit that his power comes from Nature itself, not from the gods who created the orcs and continues to guide their typical behavior.
I'm very happy to hear about that. Let's assume that the tribe which slaughtered her people were a long-standing territorial rival of your own (now extinct) tribe. In fact, let's say that since you've probably been in the woods a lot longer than she's been on the road, I might even say that the rival tribe specifically went a-pillaging after yours was wiped out, so after a fashion the dragon who killed your tribe was also indirectly responsible for the death of Annaliese's boyfriend.
Which I haven't read. I'm operating off 3E sources and the Orc statblock in the Monster Manual; the former do offer a small amount of nuance, but also double down on the general awfulness of Gruumsh and the Gruumshites, both of which line up with the 5EMM version a lot more than they do with any of the more nuanced portrayals in some 3E sources. So while your character might well be less awful than most orcs, most orcs are still pretty awful, though not necessarily all of them equally so. (While my homebrew setting tries to steer away from clichés, it hasn't changed the Orcs very much overall except in an "under-the-hood" way. And while FR may have some decent Orcs out there somewhere, I haven't read very much of the source material, and likely won't do much of this soon. So either way, I'm pretty much treating these guys as being half Warcraft and half Lord of the Rings, neither of which is a very good look. The fact that your character is even halfway to being a decent person is pretty definitely due to the fact that he hasn't seen another half-orc, let alone a full-blooded orc, in years.)
(Oh, and who the heck is Jeremy Crawford?)
Moving on to other players....
This is what I get for not checking the book. I'm probably okay with Ritual Caster as well, but I think I should rule that you can't "buy" any Rituals having been learned during your first 5 levels (in particular I haven't read the Tiny Hut, and I'm very nervous about spells that might give the party extra Rests regardless of the environment; Identify is probably fine, but I don't know what you'd have to pay for it, so I'll probably just give it to you as treasure early in the game). Find Familiar can be one of the 1st-level rituals you get for taking the feat; I definitely approve of the magic hawk. I'll allow you to keep that and the other two level-1s; drop the Identify (for now) and the Tiny Hut (I'll think about it), and refund yourself any GP you spent to buy them.
With those adjustments, Annaliese is approved. I might have missed it when reading the backstory, but did any of her siblings escape the destruction of her home life? If she'd never have left without knowing they're dead, then we can say they are, but it'd lead to more future plot hooks if we assume that some are still out there somewhere, and she simply lost track of them while her own life was falling apart. That's some good drama we could put together on this subject, but only if you're cool with it.
As to Ashur, my first stipulation is that we rename Brandon to Brand or something. The former is just too modern-feeling for me to be cool with it in either FR or my homebrew setting. (And if there's a Brandon in one of the Drizz't novels or something, I still don't care; it's a whitebread name that isn't welcome in my organic wholegrain D&D.) Also, I think it's hilarious that everybody seems to be playing an Outlander with orcs in their backstory, especially given that this has nothing at all to do with the adventure we're playing. But whatever, I'm not worried about a Ranger being overpowered, so approved.
We've got two players ready; that's enough for me to start creating an intro scene. Robyn looks pretty good, but I'm assuming he's not quite finished, so I'll wait to hear that he's finished. Once he and Keth are up to speed, I'll bring them into the opening scene, and we'll have our first encounter.
