#guildmaster's guide to ravnica

[honourablejester]

My thoughts on Ravnica’s Ten Guilds

Since I’m reading through Guildmaster’s Guide to Ravnica for D&D 5e. I have some obvious favourites, but just some general thoughts counting down the line. Also, apparently, some character concepts as well. What I'd play if I was playing this guild. Heh.

Azorius Senate

The Law, capital letters. I have mixed feelings on the Azorius. I tend to have a mildly chaotic bent, so they automatically ruffle my feathers slightly. On an ideological level, they are complicated for me. Especially since they appear, at the moment in time this book is set in, to have lost their foundation and started becoming increasingly autocratic in response. Kneejerk, that inclines me to fight them. Heh.

However. I deeply enjoy investigators, librarians, functionaries and general paper pushers as a character archetype, so I could actually see myself playing an Azorius. An investigator or advocate for the accused or legal secretary who is getting increasingly alarmed at the direction things are going, and who might be looking for ways to investigator or reform the Azorius from within. The Azorius feels like somewhere my favourite knowledge cleric/fey ranger build could do some good. Or a bard. Might be a good place to try a bard. Heh.

Boros Legion

They don’t really spark joy, for much the same reasons as the Azorius. Worse, in some ways, as the Boros are the true enforcing arm. A paranoid military army led by angels that fears it will be undermined from within by corruption and temptation … Not generally my cup of tea, despite being primarily a cleric player.

That being said. A while back I had a thought for a warforged paladin who’d been blasphemously built in the form of an angel. And, well. That could go interestingly with the Boros? Given what they’d likely think about such a creature, especially as paranoid as they are. Did someone commission a blasphemous construct from the Izzet? To what purpose? Sure, she says she only wants to do good, but can we trust her? A warforged redemption paladin who doesn’t know who made her and who genuinely is a good (and trusting) person, but who may actually have been built for a less salubrious purpose. Could be interesting!

House Dimir

Now, see. House Dimir is everything I should adore. Spies! Messengers! Couriers! Lies and secrets and misinformation! Knowledge being power! A guild of assassins and spies disguised as couriers and reporters. Such a juicy tangle. I really should adore them, and kind of do? It’s just. One tiny thing. The Dimir rely on memory magic to hide their dealings, quite casually, and that … can go thorny places for me. They are, in a lot of ways, quite cyberpunk, actually. Mind wiping, implanted memories, orders given by thought transmission. It is cool and thorny and interesting. It just could go bad places for me.

Which is such a shame, as I really want to go play old-school spycraft with these guys. Dead drops and coded messages and deceptively simple orders that have snowballing effects. Maybe not even someone who willingly joined, as such, but who did a favour for someone once and got pulled in progressively deeper, trying desperately to keep their head above water and not let on. Rogue is the obvious first thought, but also I’m thinking GOOlock, because Dimir kind of behave like a warlock patron anyway, in the sense of ‘inscrutable instructions’, and Ravnica also has ‘old gods’, Nephilim, who have equally inscrutable goals. A messenger torn between two equally terrifying and inscrutable masters might be fun! If I play very carefully around the idea that my memories might not be my own.

Golgari Swarm

My far and away favourites! A subterranean undercity built among the sewers and the ruins and the deeper things beneath, full of farmers and sanitation workers and shamans and necromancers. The guild that’s shat on by everyone else, and who patiently wait until the time is right to prove otherwise. Assuming their own factional politics allow, of course. Anyone who knows me, it should be obvious why I love these guys.

Here I would play a rogue. A phantom rogue. Or a gloomstalker ranger. Or a swarmkeeper ranger. Or a spores druid. Or a grave cleric. Or a life cleric. I do suspect this would be the guild I’d play most if I had the opportunity to do so. Lots of options. Though I think swarmkeeper might get first dibs, for, well, obvious reasons. An urchin drawn down into the deeps by the gentle chittering of vermin, the welcome of those equally despised. The artifice and arcane rules of the city above is not for them. There is a simpler, warmer sort of existence down here.

Gruul Clans

Again, mixed feelings here. On the one hand, I feel like Ravnica is playing a little too hard into ‘raging barbarians’ for the Gruul, with the repeated emphasis on just tearing it all down and ‘might makes right’. The Gruul as predators and enemies of all softer or weaker peoples feels reductive. However. This is a power to the image of a people of the wilderness hunted into smaller and smaller reserves, into the rubblebelts and run down sections of the city, into nature restored by tearing the city down to make way for it. There’s something post-apocalyptic about them, both in the sense of their world, the world of nature, having been ended by the city, and then the city in turn being torn down to make way for them again. I feel like if they had a bit more of the Golgari’s ‘it’s all cyclical’ sort of philosophy, plus a little less ‘band of savage warriors led by the toughest and most brutal’, we could really go somewhere with the Gruul. I do quite like the Slizt and Gravel Hide clans, for example.

I would play a Gruul. I don’t know if I’d want to rise within the clans, especially if ‘might makes right’ is the mechanism, but I wouldn’t mind playing a defiant inhabitant of the wastelands, determinedly defending my patch from encroachment, taking pride in survival, in holding to a way of life that the city would destroy. Stars druid, possibly? Or ranger. Or ancestral barbarian. Or wild magic barbarian, the strange, stubborn magic of those places where the city and the wilderness have destroyed each other and become entwined. Yeah, that could be fun.

Izzet League

Ravnica’s mad science guild. BUT. And this is actually the fun part for me. They’re also the guild in (at least nominal) charge of public infrastructure. Plumbing. Transport. Power. Lights. The plumbing for your toilet is in the hands of people who will accidentally clone two million rats in your piping while trying to build a sewage system around the principle of mass shit teleportation relays. Which is fantastic. I love them completely. Second favourite guild after the Golgari. The fact that they’re mostly goblins does not hurt at all. Also, with the current unrest, they’ve all somewhat taken a turn for the Bond villain and are researching superweapons, so that’s extra fun. In the people, again, responsible for your plumbing.

I fully want to start out as a plumber. Attached to the Laboratory of Orientation (aka the teleportation lab). Because, look, a sewage system based on the teleportation of shit is an efficient sewage system! No pooling, no piping, no leaks. Stench teleported away before it gets bad. I’m telling ya, it’s a great idea! Do we necessarily want a bunch of tiny portals honeycombing the structure of our buildings? Absolutely. Don’t even worry about it. I got my engineering degree right here! (Fully a conjuration wizard. Maybe some rogue, maybe some artificer. And yes, they’re a goblin).

Orzhov Syndicate

I mistyped that as ‘sindicate’, which is likely apt, given that they’re mostly an undead banker mafia with a thin veneer of Catholicism on top. Think the Borgias and you’re close. They’re currently getting closer and closer to outright war with the Azorius, because the thin legal veneer over a lot of their racketeering is getting ripped up by the Azorius’ growing paranoia and dedication to writing out loopholes, but for the moment they’re just doing their best to increase the divide between their legal and illegal ventures to hide them better. It’s all very much ambition and greed and a veneer of respectability.

Which is why it baffles me that bard is not a suggested class for them, because whispers bard was my literal first thought. The suggestions are cleric, fighter, rogue or wizard, and I’m baffled, because unless you’re playing a straight enforcer, the Orzhov would seem to be the Charisma-based guild? Deception, Persuasion, Intimidation, no? Whispers bard, conquest paladin if you’re aiming enforcer, assassin or mastermind rogue if you’re aiming for the blackmail route, order cleric or celestial warlock if you want to act the part of churchman better. Orzhov is about vicious social climbing in a system where the top spots are all jealously held by undead oligarchs who most certainly won’t be clearing a path for upward mobility unless forced to do so. My first thought was whispers bard, a lean, handsome young thing who has tasted poverty and will do anything to avoid sinking so low again.

Cult of Rakdos

Not going to lie, I get a strong tang of Warhammer 40K’s dark eldar from the Rakdos. Dark hedonism and violence, the seedy underbelly of the city. They don’t do a lot for me, not gonna lie. They’re probably my least favourite of the guilds. I do like the theatre aspect, the circus of fear, the ideas of ‘backstage’ including basically spycraft, but they’re a chaotic evil guild and it does show.

If I was playing a Rakdos character … guild-owned dark speakeasies are mentioned. And if we’re talking that, something a little noir flavoured … I could be a Rakdos femme fatale, maybe? Less ‘evil’ and more ‘amoral’, a songstress who likes to destroy her enemies in interesting ways. Bard again, possibly glamour bard, although I really like creation bards, and there’s an interesting bit of blasphemy about the song of creation in the mouth of demon-worshipper that could add something. Glamour does work better for the femme fatale, but creation tickles me more. Yeah.

Selesnya Conclave

If the Dimir are giving cyberpunk vibes, the Selesnya are giving me … also cyberpunk vibes, with a solarpunk skin. The ‘city and nature entwined’, green gardens and growing cities, very solarpunk, but the emphasis on collectivism, on the destruction of selfishness and desire, on the subsummation of the individual into the peaceful, coherent whole … there’s a dystopic edge running under them. Less obviously than the Azorius or the Orzhov, but definitely present. (I’m realising that, in MtG terms, I don’t vibe well with White). And, see, I like a lot of their overall goals. I love the natural cities thing, I love striving for overall good. I tend to play neutral good. They just … I get a ‘death of the self’ sort of vibe from them that weirds me out a bit. They seem weirdly more culty than Rakdos to me.

Playing a Selesnya character … I want to be a gardener. No higher ambitions, no greater thoughts. An innocent, who genuinely just wants to help the plants grow. A dreams druid, I think. A gentle druid focused on healing and shelter. And maybe I meet some things for the first time that make me … question. How innocent can you afford to be?

(I am probably being unfair to them, and it probably says a lot about what I’ve been trained to see, given that the Selesnya are broadly good, decent people. I just … I kneejerk distrust it about them. I want to cleave my own path).

Simic Combine

My third favourite guild. Mad science, biology edition! With bonus lovecraftian oceanic vibes. And yes, they are just as dystopic as the Selesnya, and they’ll do it rewriting your body, but I just vibe with them more. I love the zonots. Simic home territories are sinkholes called zonots that pierce through the layers of city and undercity to the buried ocean beneath. Immediately, this adds a whole other layer to Ravnica as a city and a planet for me. The city is at least partly built over top of an ocean. The Simic are also currently divided between the isolationist faction, who believe that slow, cyclical evolution and staying connected to nature will win out, and the adaptationist faction, who believe that we need to evolve now, by hook or by crook, because the system is collapsing and we need to keep up. These are the Simics gearing up for war, by way of aquatic supersoldier experiments.

I think I would like to play an adaptationist spy. Or information-gathering operative, at least, I would want to be a mutated Simic hybrid, so I’m not like Dimir level passing for any old joe soap on the street. I think I’d want to be either an alchemist artificer or a fathomless warlock. Maybe the fathomless, the result of an experiment, more than the one performing the experiments, which would be the alchemist’s wheelhouse.

Other Thoughts

I would so love to play like a Golgari-Simic campaign that’s about exploring the depths of the undercity/underocean for secrets. The zonots and the undercity are so cool. This is a city planet where the city has eaten the world, but strange things lie underneath, and I’m vibing with that so much. We could bring along a Gruul, digging for the foundations of the world that was lost. A Dimir, making sure nobody unearths any superweapons or nothing. Possibly an Izzet, in the hopes that we do. I just really, really, really want an explorer party to go digging under Ravnica.

I also wouldn’t mind a Golgari-Gruul ‘scavengers living on the edges’ sort of campaign, a sort of post-apocalyptic urban scavenger, literal ‘seed of new hope’ where the cycles turn back towards wilderness again.

And then there’s a noir campaign, your Azorius-Dimir-Rakdos sort of game, with possibly some Izzet spice in the sense of ‘why was this Izzet plumber murdered: what did they build or what did they find?’. Heh.

Ravnica does have such a lot to recommend it as a setting. Feelings on WotC aside, this place has such cool, complicated vibes.

This is my VtM Nosfertu talking, though: Golgari for the win!

[minotaur-in-my-labyrinth]

The Minotaur from Guildmaster's Guide to Ravnica

Wonderful, darling, precious. Perfect except for the kind of too small mouth. Bellows need more cavernosity. Excited to go get milkshakes with me.

Minotaur from Mordenkainen's Monsters of the Multiverse.

I think someone took the wrong idea from the word... piebald. You do look like someone put human skin on a bovid.

But your mouth looks right and I love the look of adventurous determination, still look excited to try your first milkshakes with me.

[jessaliaart]

DND emotes of my groups characters! these were drawn back in 2020 when we had to use discord due to the pandemic.

[littjara-mirrorlake]

The D&D/Magic crossover sourcebooks are how I got into Magic, as a D&D player myself! They're a great way to get invested in the worldbuilding before you even pick up a card, and they'll always have a special place in my heart.

should i. get into magic the gathering. (as a fan of dnd and wizards of the coast already)

Magic is a super fun game, so I would try it out. There’s a digital version called Magic: The Gathering Arena that has a free tutorial. Sample it and see what you think.

[jacebeleren]

ok i posted this on twitter so i might as well post it here too

THE THING IS, HALF-GORGONS ALREADY EXIST ON RAVNICA. There is art that depicts half-human and half-elf gorgons. Note the skin + ears!

If Jace & Vraska are struggling with infertility / unable to get pregnant, it's not because a human and a gorgon can't make a baby.

Full-blooded gorgons like Vraska and the Sisters of Stone Death have green skin + do not have external ears.

ALSO INTERESTING though is the fact that Vraska's mother was Ludmilla of the Sisters of Stone death. Vraska is a full-blooded Gorgon with a mother, but no father. Perhaps they're able to reproduce through parthenogenesis? But they can also hybridize with other species, as demonstrated.

Personally, it's always been my headcanon that Ravnican gorgons are similar to the Asari from Mass Effect: a monosex species that can reproduce both sexually and asexually. And like the Asari, Ravnican Gorgons are not all women and aren't quite "biologically female" in the human understanding of the term. I've always been struck by the line in the Guildmaster's Guide to Ravnica D&D book saying gorgons "appear superficially similar to human women".

I think Ravnican Gorgons have a very different view of sex and gender than humans do. The are monosex; their experience of gender identity is completely separate from their bodies. Their reproductive parts are irrelevant because they all have the same thing. Ravnican Gorgons can be any gender, but I think they mostly identify as women due to millennia of cultural influence- the surrounding cultures (humans and elves) perceive them as women.

Jace and/or Vraska are infertile. Though I think the most probable reason is Phyresis / their recovery from Phyresis having side effects, as the #1 champion of trans man Jace, I think it's also because Jace has either had bottom surgery and his junk can't get Vraska pregnant, OR he hasn't had bottom surgery and he can't get pregnant by Vraska because his HRT stopped his periods.

[vorthosjay]

If the days on different planes are roughly the same length then does that mean the years are different lengths?

The wiki says Dominarian years are 420 days and Guildmasters Guide to Ravnica says a Ravnican year is 365 days.

Years are roughly analogous in the multiverse. Anything else is madness.

Please trust me, as the person who painstakingly created the official timeline with references: It's not worth it. It's a logistical nightmare that will only exist to frustrate creatives and fans alike.

[littjara-mirrorlake]

This is partially a D&D question and partially a lore question in general: how does being a praetor work? Like is there anything specific abilities you gain from being it? The green praetor is the apex predator, the black praetor is the strongest(?) (most influence/power?) of the thanes.

Like could a PC try to overthrow a praetor and could one become a praetor in their stead? If so does anything actually happen

Praetor is a political title. It doesn't hold mechanical weight beyond the fact that the praetors happen to be the most powerful beings in the setting (CR 21+) thanks to their significant sway and the might they've accumulated, magical and otherwise.

I'm sure a PC could attempt to overthrow a praetor in Plane Shift: Mirrodin/New Phyrexia, with great difficulty–but it's like usurping a guildmaster in Guildmaster's Guide to Ravnica, or taking over as monarch in any generic fantasy setting. You don't get set bonuses if you take the throne. The approach would also differ greatly by faction. The Thanes might require more cunning, while Vorinclex would prefer you fought him to the death.

Obviously, roleplay-wise, things would change a lot. The game would pivot to deeper intrigue as the party becomes a significant political force. I could also see a more powerful Phyrexian gain increasing influence over ichor memories as they take up more of Phyrexia's collective consciousness. I've been playing with the idea of letting DMs set compleation saving throw DCs (to resist mind control) higher when caused by mnemonically high-profile Phyrexians, for example.

Overall, nothing mechanical changes by default as a result of a PC becoming a praetor–it's mostly RP–though I imagine if a player did manage to pull this off, the DM might reward them with something!

[cagemasterfantasy]

Dnd 5e (source) books for @doodl3 as a thank you for editing for me

Players Handbook Dungeon master's guide Monster Manual Volo's Guide to Monsters Xanathar's Guide To Everything Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes (Tome of Foes was dedicated to dnd artist William O'Connel who passed away during devlopment of the book at the age of 47) Tasha's Cauldron of Everything Fizban's Treasury of Dragons Mordenkainen's Monsters of the Multiverse Bigby Presents Glory of the Giants (please forgive me this was the best one I could find) (also please forgive me for not including the book The Book of Many Things I couldn't find a pdf for it)

Now for the different dnd settings

Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide Guildmasters Guide to Ravnica Eberron -Rising from the Last War Mythic Odysseys of Theros (you're really going to love that one as that introduced Satyr as a playable race) Van Richtens Guide to Ravenloft Astral Adventurer's Guide Boo's Astral Menagerie (if you love space you are going to love the previous 2) (Also sadly I couldn't find a good version for Sigil and the Outlands, Turn of Fortune's Wheel or Morte's Planar Parade :( I tried I really did)

(Enjoy these 3 adventures though) Strixhaven A Curriculum of Chaos Dragonlance - Shadow of the Dragon Queen and Light of Xaryxis (with the third one you need to use Astral Adventurer's Guide and Boo's Astral Menagerie)

thank you so much for editing my book. :) @doodl3

To any other adventurer including you who stumbles upon this please enjoy. May your story go far and wide and your dice rolls be even higher.

[crinosmonsters]

Endrek Sahr, Master Breeder

The Original creator of the Thrulls, Endrek Sahr was a member of the Order of the Ebon Hand, a depraved cult which operated upon on the continent of Sarpadia on the plane of Dominaria thousands of years ago. Sahr created the Thrulls initially as slaves and sacrifice fodder, but felt like his creations could be more, pushing him to create larger and more powerful Thrulls. These Ambitions led him to create the Derelor which, while physically powerful, consumed too many resources to be viable. As a result, Sahr was sentenced to death. But while history considers Sahr dead, there was a period in Dominaria's history where time and space became mutable, and Sahr may yet have escaped his unfortunate fate and lives on.

Endrek Sahr's Enchiridion

Endrek Sahr has access to numerous unique magic spells, some he created himself (Breeding Pit and Thrull retainer) and others which were created by the Order of the Ebon Hand. These spells can be found in Sahr's spellbook on his person, or an ambitious and unscrupulous wizard can learn the spells themselves under the evil wizard.

Thrull Retainer

1st level Necromancy

casting time: 1 action

range: An unoccupied space within 5 feet.

Components: V, S, M (at least half of a humanoid corpse or more)

duration: Concentration: up to an hour

This spell summons a single Servitor Thrull (descriped in Guildmaster's guide to Ravnica) Which loyally serves the caster to the best of its limited abilities. The Thrull will not move more than five feet away from its caster, and can be called upon to use its self sacrifice ability as a reaction.

Classes: Cleric, Warlock, Wizard

Hymn to Tourach

2nd level Enchantment

Casting time: 1 action

Range: 60 feet

components: V

Duration: Instantaneous

Named for the evil cleric which founded the order of the ebon hand, the Hymn of Tourach requires the caster to unleash a dark infernal prayer to torment their enemies. One target within 60 feet must make a wisdom saving throw or be stunned until the end of your next turn. In addition, if the target was a spellcaster, they lose a spell slot of the highest level they are capable of casting.

Classes: Bard, Cleric, Warlock, Wizard

Breeding Pit

Third Level Necromancy (Ritual)

Casting time: 10 minutes

Range: 120 feet

Components: V, S, M (a large hole, approximately 1,000 pounds worth of corpses, and alchemic potions equaling about 500 GP)

Duration: See below

Endrek Sahr's masterpiece, this spell allows for the mass production of Thrulls on a massive scale. The Spell creates a breeding pit, a 10 foot wide, 80 foot deep pit filled with bubbling ichor comprised of numerous alchemic reagents and liquefied flesh.

Once per day, at sundown, a Servitor Thrull emerges from the Breeding pit, loyal to the caster who created the pit. So long as it is maintained, the Breeding pit will continue to produce new Thrulls in this manner indefinitely.

Maintenance of the Breeding Pit requires two things: First, the pit must be replenished with a periodic supply of new chemicals and corpses once a month, to the equivalent of one medium sized corpse and 50 gold pieces. More importantly, the Pit requires a constant source of magic to function. Each day, a spellcaster (not necessarily the one who created the pit) within 60 feet must sacrifice a level two or higher spell slot in order to keep the pit alive. Without this magic, the pit will dry up and die in a matter of hours.

There is no limit to the number of breeding pits that a single caster can create at one time, so long as the upkeep requiements are met.

If you enjoy my work, please consider joining My Patreon, Where I post compilations of the monsters that you see here (Along with Patreon exclusive new monsters) Or donate to my Ko-fi where you can request a monster writeup for the low low price of one dollar.

[justavulcan]

Backgrounds With Class: Izzet Engineer

I'll be honest: Ravnica has always fascinated me. I was a high schooler when the first set came out, and I was immediately consumed creating characters for the setting. Now that we've actually received my long-awaited crossover, I thought it would be nice to write a love letter to the setting in the form of another Backgrounds with Class series. After all: some guilds have natural class choices tied in, from a conceptual standpoint. Boros and Fighter, Izzet and Wizard, Selesnya and Druid. But guilds aren’t class-restricted, and so I wonder what it would look like if you paired every class with every guild background, even the ones that seem at odds, like Izzet and Barbarian, or Gruul and Artificer.  So I thought about it, and this is what I came up with.  Some character concepts for each class, and each Guildmaster's Guide to Ravnica background for each class.

Izzet Engineer

The Izzet Engineer Artificer is a study in contradictions.  Temperamentally, he’s the quintessential vedalken- cool, calm, orderly, and precise.  When it comes to the subject of his work, though, he’s exactly the opposite.  His area of expertise is pyrodynamics, and he specializes in demolitions magic.  When asked about the contradiction, he’s as likely to say that destruction should be no less calculated for maximum efficiency than anything else as he is to crack a rare smile and say simply that it needs to be done.

The Izzet Engineer Barbarian was lab security before his accident, mostly internal in case the mephits or weirds break containment somehow.  Turns out that his chemister employer was experimenting with tri-elemental weird fusions, though, and the massive surge of wild magic that resulted contaminated everyone in the lab that didn’t meet an untimely end.  Now the wild magic is in him, too, triggered by the surge of adrenaline brought on by combat.  Accordingly, and in the spirit of testing the results of the accidental experiment, he’s been involved in a lot more field work lately.

The Izzet Engineer Bard is preoccupied with bringing life to the lifeless.  Motion in general has been an interest of his from gobling on the streets to assistant in the lab, and it’s always fascinated him how the world acts around moving things.  Gifted with a keen sense of timing, he claims to be able to keep the rhythm of the universe, and his ability to magically pull that rhythm to reality is his greatest pride and joy.  If you need someone who knows how to get something somewhere sometime, he’s your man.

The Izzet Engineer Cleric has never been a high-concept member of the League, instead focusing on the materials fabrication.  Attached to things they can work with their hands, they’ve made thousands of miles of piping and scaffolding in their career, and have even supplied housing, capacitors, and other more technical equipment for a variety of projects in the League.  Low-key indispensable and firm in their desire to one day be working with guild-trademark alloys like mizzium, their faith draws from the raw confidence that with the proper tools, and the right material, anything is possible.

The Izzet Engineer Druid is an unusual member of the League in that she hates spending time in the lab.  Bound to a fire elemental companion of her own and planning one day to be a one-woman foreman, her real ambition is to serve as one of the guild’s elementarii.  Weirds and their creation have always fascinated her, and her willingness to field-test anything even remotely related to the topic has made her a popular contractor for testing handheld equipment.

The Izzet Engineer Fighter, like his father and older brothers before him, has always been a dab hand with the crossbow.  The family business is support and assistant work for the chemisters of the Izzet League, and he’s always wanted to be a scorchbringer.  The old man says you always need an edge, so to set himself apart, he’s audited engineering courses at the guild workshops and started making new ammunition for his ‘bow- enhancements of energy and matter, making some truly unique shots possible.  His designs have recently caught one of the lesser magisters’ eye, and now he’s on track to become one of the guild’s best combat engineers and troubleshooters.

The Izzet Engineer Monk was caught in an electro-galvanic storm as a youth and hasn’t been the same since.  Infused with raw elemental energy and adopted by the scientists whose work took the lives of his parents, she spent much of her youth brawling and scrapping on the street until she suddenly- explosively- cut loose with a thunderwave.  Her adoptive parents, hearing of the incident, took her into the Laboratory of Storms and Electricity to see if there’s more to the storm’s changes than her perpetually windblown hair and the crackle of ozone that follows her.

The Izzet Engineer Paladin sees herself one day as not just a scorchbringer, not just a security chief on a project, but the champion of the Izzet League.  She’s not much of an inventor herself, but there’s always room for a strong back and a will to fight in the League, clearing abandoned structures for refurbishment and engaging in one of modern Ravnica’s countless small-scale military action.  The day is coming, she can see, that she sprints into battle bearing the latest and greatest of her League’s tech.

The Izzet Engineer Ranger joined the Izzet combine under unusual circumstances.  A kraul and formerly a farmer in the Undercity, she used to deal with all kinds of run-off from the Izzet laboratories above contaminating her food until one day a weird washed down the pipes.  After putting it down, she went to the laboratory to demand they reroute their sewage, and left hired as the official run-off and chemical waste technician under the League's employment, as well as underground security.  Now, she handles the access tunnels and piping for a network of laboratories, growing increasingly interested in wielding a scorchbringer.

The Izzet Engineer Rogue has a dirty job, for the Izzet League.  Officially on the payment records as an outside consultant, she is one of the League’s idea thieves.  When guildless engineers hit on something the League can use but refuse to sell, she seeks them out and makes sure their designs and experimental materials fall into the hands of someone who can use them.  She doesn’t mind the work; the challenge is nice, and although she has enough technical know-how to make modest progress herself, she is much more comfortable cracking locks and dodging security.

The Izzet Engineer Sorcerer is a natural talent at storm summoning, but when a stray bolt fried their clan’s shaman, they fled the Gruul to take up with the other guild that likes lightning.  Among the Izzet, their talent is looked down upon for the more primitive flavor they bring with it, but none can argue with the results.  As-is, they ended up doing the scut work of keeping maintenance tunnels clean and smoothly running, a dull job with a lot of hands-on ground-level know-how involved.

The Izzet Engineer Warlock has had an unorthodox apprenticeship.  Instead of working with and learning from a chemister or blastseeker, she made a deal when she joined the guild to work under a water djinn.  He gave her a disused segment of water-cooling piping, part-time work at two labs, and a promise of an arcane engineer’s manual in the future.  She’s making the best of it so far, helping with her colleagues’ experiments where she can and faking her way through the rest.

The Izzet Engineer Wizard is, predictably, fascinated by conjuration magic.  Themself a weird brought to life by a magister’s experimental elemental summoning, gifted with an unusual spark of intelligence for elemental plasm, it is small wonder their talents tend toward the calling of things- and, eventually, beings.  Crackling with life and lightning, limber as a stream of molten mizzium, they’re as mercurial in interest and focus as any magister of their guild, a role they hope one day to fulfull.

[honourablejester]

I’m idly reading through 5e’s Guildmaster’s Guide to Ravnica, mostly the section on the ten guilds, because I enjoy reading about factions. And at the end of each guild section, they have a little box with the standard guild opinions on each of the other guilds, and some of them are fantastically bitchy. Like. Exquisitely bitchy. Each of the guilds has other guilds that they view either as ‘somewhat useful but just not us’ and other guilds they view as legitimate, competent threats, and then they all seem to have a couple of guilds that they’re just bitchy about. It’s fantastic.

Some of my favourite comments:

Azorius:

On the Golgari: "Their underground structures break numerous building regulations, but at least they fulfill their duties as garbage collectors."

(At least you’re doing your job. Your filthy, horrible job).

On the Rakdos: "An absolute blight on Ravnica. They are clowns who know nothing of culture and exist only to torment the functioning members of society."

(No pretences here, just seething hatred and condescension).

Boros:

On the Azorius: "Legalism. Arrogance. Hot air. The law in their hands is a bludgeon, and they use it to seize more power than they deserve."

(I just love ‘hot air!’. Arrogant douchebags who don’t do shit!)

On the Selesnya: "I almost envy the naiveté that leads them to retreat into their little communes and pretend they've built a just society."

(Wow, the condescension!)

Dimir:

On the Boros: "Not inherently dangerous. The true danger is that they'll drag down all we've worked for while chasing some romantic crusade. Continue to direct their righteous fury toward our strongest enemy—until the Boros threaten to become the strongest."

(Yes, yes, dear, just … go on a quest over there for me, would you?)

On the Izzet: "Even an overloaded, sizzled clock is still right twice a day. When Izzet experiments succeed, they can have unpredictable consequences for active missions. Their activities must be monitored at all times."

(Unfortunately, they don’t always blow up *just themselves*, and then we have to deal with it).

Golgari:

On the Izzet: "Perplexing. They are attracted to whatever flashes brightest and booms loudest. Their fascination with their toys will only hasten their own end."

(Idiots with ADHD who are distracted by the sparky boom booms).

On the Selesnya: "Their reverence for nature is the mark of immaturity and naiveté. They fear death, so they can't understand life. They can be dangerous when they fervently cling to their narrow-minded and inadequate view of life."

(Oof. Lots of people considering the Selesnya immature and naïve over here).

Gruul:

On the Rakdos: "The guild of fools. They waste their potential on acts of mockery while the real work of razing the city remains undone."

(Useless wastes of space who *could have been useful* if they put their minds to it).

On the Selesnya: "The Selesnya would coddle a wolf, teach it to fetch sticks, and call it a dog. We prefer to starve the wolf, let it hunt for its food, and make it a stronger wolf."

(Literally none of the other nature-based guilds have anything nice to say about the Selesnya, it’s amazing).

Izzet:

On the Boros: "All too often when we're on the verge of setting off a little explosion or a spell that tears a hole in reality, the Boros show up to spoil the fun."

(Just general spoilsports! It was only going to be a *small* explosion! Lighten up!)

On the Rakdos: "Steer clear of these senseless riot-fiends. Their enthusiasm is best appreciated from a distance."

(Just … leave them alone over there and don’t bother with them).

Orzhov:

On the Golgari: "Admirably resourceful and elegant, but tragically unhygienic. The swarmers may persist, as long as they don't try to force their aesthetic sensibilities on us."

(… ‘tragically unhygienic’. Wow. Lots of the guilds do condescension, but the Orzhov are *good* at it).

On the Gruul: "They know nothing of order and dignity, and therefore they serve little purpose as an organization."

(Again, just utterly useless. Just don’t bother).

Rakdos:

On the Dimir: "They crave secrets, but there's nothing they can get by eavesdropping that we won't freely scream at the top of our lungs. They lurk in the shadows trying to look mysterious, practically inviting our mischief."

(Aw, sweetie, would you like a trench coat so you can play spy some more? They’re just so condescending here).

On the Izzet: "Every performance benefits from prop masters and pyrotechnicians. They can be useful backstage, but they lack the charisma for the spotlight."

(Oof. Nice toys, darling, but you mustn’t let yourself be *seen*, you know.)

Selesnya:

On the Golgari: "They wallow in filth and rot, too preoccupied with death to appreciate the bliss of life's connections."

(The Golgari just get generally shat on, both figuratively and entirely literally, by basically everyone. They have a dirty job! That doesn’t mean they’re worthless!)

On the Gruul: "They are a desperate echo of what they should be, reaching blindly toward something greater. Such a waste. And a smelly, unreasonable, destructive one at that."

(Amusingly, the Selesnya, despite being a nature guild, just don’t seem to like dirty things. I love that with the Gruul, they start out all philosophical, and then just devolve at the end into ‘and they’re smelly and I don’t like them’).

Simic:

On the Azorius: "An absurd and inelegant construct, forever trapped in a maze of their own making. They would outlaw evolution if they could. And if any of them truly seek utopia, the rest are far too busy shuffling papers to notice. Avoid their attention at all costs."

(‘Far too busy shuffling papers to notice’. Oof.)

On the Izzet: "The Izzet have spent ten thousand years mimicking the appearance of research, producing more pyrotechnics than progress. Surely that is a performance to rival the Rakdos."

(… Ouch. The Simic are *bitchy*. Shots fired in science-land over here!)

-----------

It is just fabulous. The amount of seething contempt and condescension and generalised disdain in these sections is amazing and so much fun.

[tilthedayidice]

Could I get a palette for my cow-inspired tiefling paladin Belby Tux? His god is Silvanus and he was raised by very reclusive elves after they picked him up in the forest. They kicked him out once he became an adult and he’s been kind of wandering around trying to find a purpose and helping people. He’s pretty friendly and dare I say docile and he’s best friends with a bard (cows and music after all). Thank you! <3

Very cute concept I love him very much :) The Fluer de Lilas didnt appear as blue as I was hoping, But i thought they really fit his softer vibe!!!! I hope you like it!

Dice Envy Fluer De Llias

Dice Envy Holy Crit

Dice Envy Smaug The Impenetrable

Chessex Gemini Black/Grey

Chessex Lustrous Alpestris

WOTC Guildmaster's Guide to Ravnica Companion Dice

Legendary Pants Champaign

Crystal Caste White Pearlized Hybrid Dice

[jessaliaart]

Cute sketches of my DND gal Willow and her fiance Lucien!

[thetownsendsw]

Okay. So D&D 5e is on its way out, the new playtest is changing things and a lot of people have sworn off WotC anyway, so this might be my last chance to post this where it has any relevance.

Why Warlocks don’t get Animate Dead

You’ve seen people say it. Animate Dead seems like it should fit Warlock’s lore perfectly, they’re the spellcasters with connections to dark, evil forces, they rule over the weak willed and bind themselves to things from the beyond, why wouldn’t they be able to accumulate a few zombies?

Well, part of it is that it’s not just a few, but we’ll get to that in a minute. Ultimately, the restriction here is not thematic, but mechanical. The spell Animate Dead has a specific proviso that feeds into the narrative the game is trying to tell with it: If you don’t re-up the spell on any undead you’ve got around within 24 hours of creating them, and each 24 hours thereafter, you lose control of them and they turn against you. You are playing with forces beyond your control, and if you don’t monitor your resources as a spellcaster carefully, they will try to kill you. The way Warlocks work in 5e completely negates that: they get their leveled spells back on a short rest. With a warlock casting it, Animate dead goes from “Guys I used too many spell slots in that fight, we’ve gotta kill the stooges before they turn on us in a couple hours” to “Guys I used all my spell slots…as usual, gimme an hour so I can re-up our cannon fodder.” The risks built into the thematic elements of the spell are rendered harmless by how a Warlock is played, which also completely violates the themes of the Warlock! This is the “dark magic has consequences” class and when you give it the “dark magic has consequences” spell, the two cancel each other out! Two wrongs actually do make a right!

But that’s not the only thing

The Undead Army Build

So, it is actually possible to get your hands on Animate Dead as a Warlock without much finagling. I mean sure, there’s the Undying Servitude invocation, but that’s once a day explicitly for the problems stated above, that’s not gonna work for us.

However, the Golgari Agent background from Guildmasters’ Guide to Ravnica, like all backgrounds in that book, grants access to a handful of extra spells that might be outside your class’ normal spell list. Golgari, being a sewer-dwelling death cult-slash-municipal waste and agriculture department, throws Animate Dead in there.

Now Warlock is not one of the “suggested classes” for that faction, but the book does specify that the Great Old One patron is appropriate for any Guild, and the (not yet published when this was printed) Undead or (justifiably ignored) Undying patrons would be entirely fitting for an organization intermittently run by sewer liches. Also who cares what the book suggests, you’re not here because you respect authority.

Once you’ve got that figured out, make sure you’re an Elf or a Reborn (either of which is also very appropriate for Golgari, look at you adhering to themes!) so you can finish a short rest in four hours. Hours in the day are your currency here. Make sure you’re level five. Yeah. Level five(5). Also take Undying Servitude, just to double down.

First, get a whole lot of corpses. You’re supposed to be part of the sewer-cult that disposes of bodies in a fantasy ecumenopolis, so this should not be hard. Ideally you want to be within an hour’s shamble of the site of whatever horrible thing you plan on doing at the end of this, so find a nice location, possibly underground, with a lot of room.

Wake up, or rather come out of trance/deathlike stupor, and immediately cast Animate Dead twice with your two spellslots. Set your two zombies to guard you while you immediately take a short rest. Once you have your spell slots back, repeat the process. There is, to my knowledge, nothing in the rules preventing you from taking one short rest immediately after another. Repeat this each of your twenty waking hours. You now have 40 zombies to watch over you wile you take your 4 hour long rest.

(The mathematically minded among you may note that it should actually be 21 rounds of casting for 42 zombies, one at the start of each hour and one at the end of the last. However, Animate Dead takes a minute to cast, and your doing it 40-41 times a day, effectively squeezing another hour in between, resulting in 20 rounds of animation with 19 short rests in between.)

Now, here’s the thing. Animate Dead creates one zombie at a time, but it reestablishes control over up to four. So maintaining your zombies takes much less time that making them, about 5 hours for those 40 if you use the same pattern of cast-short rest-cast. Now you’ve got 40 undead that are good for the rest of the day and it’s not even noon yet! Let’s do something utterly horrific!

But wait…why stop there? You’ve got 15 more waking hours to work with.

Here’s a basic rundown of how your next few days can go. (I apologize if this formats weird for anybody, I couldn’t be arsed to make a chart as a pdf) D=day; sZ=starting zombies, how many you wake up with; HM=hours maintaining your existing zombies; HC=hours spent creating new zombies; nZ=new zombies made that day, sometimes with +1z from Undying Servitude’s free casting.

___D___sZ___HM____HC____nZ_

    0z.      0h.       20h.     40z

   40z.     5h.      15h.    30z+1z

   71z.     9h.      11h.    22z+1z

   94z.     12h.     8h.     16z+1z

  111z.    14h.     6h.     12z+1z

  124z.   15.5h.  4.5h.     9z+1z

  134z.     17h.    3h.       6z

  140z.   17.5h.   2.5h.    5z+1z

  146z.   18.5h.   1.5h.    3z+1z

  150z.     19h.     1h.      2z

  152z.     19h.     1h.      2z+1z

  155z.    19.5h.   .5h.     1z

  156z.    19.5h.   .5h.     1z+1z

  158z.      20h.    0h.         +1z

  159z.      20h.    0h.         +1z

  160z

Two weeks later you’ve got one hundred and sixty undead minions at your disposal. Assuming a nice blend of about 2/3 zombies for front line cannon fodder and 1/3 skeletons for mobility, range, and flanking, DnD Beyond’s encounter builder puts that at roughly 32,000 adjusted XP, roughly equivalent to fighting one CR 21 monster. The way DMs talk about action economy, I think most would say that’s low-balling it.

(If you’re wondering why you don’t use the +1z from Undying Servitude every day, sometimes not using results in a sZ in a multiple of four, meaning the next day you’re using your HM time with perfect efficiency, re-upping four Zombies each time. Adding one more on those nights just means you have to spend a whole slot just to keep that one guy in line, functionally equivalent to just waiting to animate it the next day. Same reason you could get to 161 total but it’s not really worth it. You can use Undying Servitude on those nights, if you want; just be sure to send that zombie off on a suicide mission.)

Now, the diminishing returns on that Zeno’s paradox of necromancy is real. Honestly, if you’re smart, you can just stop after day 10, since the 152 zombies you’ll wake up with on day 11 will give you one free hour in which to regain spell slots for other things, so you can actually be a caster during whatever horrifying siege you have planned. Just make sure you’ve got the timing worked out on when your minions go bad so you can put the next group to time out on the front line. Azorius doesn’t know what’s about to hit it.

Final step: draw up a new character sheet because the DM will kill your character for pulling this off at LEVEL FIVE. The wizard got fireball, you got an undead horde in a fortnight. At higher levels I don’t wanna figure out the whole pattern, but at a Warlock’s maximum number and level of spell slots you max out at 640 zombies, plus you can take Create Undead as your Mystic Arcanum for some more powerful irregulars.

Don’t try this at home, kids. Or do, I’m not your mom.

[morkaischosen]

Not a counterexample but a case I found amusing: Magic: the Gathering's convention has demons as generally Black-mana creatures often depicted making and enforcing pacts with mortals for power in exchange for service, whereas Devils are Red-mana creatures who embody senseless, chaotic destruction, thus almost exactly inverting the D&D model.

Then of course Wizards mashed the two games together with the Guildmaster's Guide to Ravnica and the Forgotten Realms MtG sets - GGR has Rakdos Cackler relabelled as a Demon rather than a Devil for D&D purposes, while D&D crossovers - along with Warhammer - are one of the main sources of Demon cards in MtG that don't include Black, coming very close to equalling the half-dozen Demon cards from MtG-native settings that don't include the colour.

Because you know a lot about these sorts of things: is D&D the first place where devils and demons are distinct groups of mutually antagonistic evil entities as opposed to being synonyms for one another, or did they steal that from some obscure fantasy pulp novel from the 1960s, as so much other stuff now seen as iconic to D&D is?

Much like making picky distinctions between wizards, sorcerers and warlocks, the general idea of making "devils" and "demons" distinct classes of supernatural beasties pre-dates Dungeons & Dragons in popular fiction, but the specific definitions that D&D uses are basically only applicable to D&D; every work of sword and sorcery fiction I'm aware of that distinguishes between the two terms does so differently.

For example, in Robert Aspirin's "Myth Adventures" series, "Devils" are a specific race of extradimensional aliens who coincidentally resemble pop-Christianity's notion of the Devil (i.e., red skin, goat legs, etc.), while a "demon" is simply any sapient being who's been magically summoned from another dimension. Hence, Devils are sometimes demons (at least when they're away from home), but – unless there's a convention or something going on – the majority of demons in any given dimension are not Devils.

To the point, I can't think of any particular work of pre-1974 (i.e., pre-D&D) sword and sorcery fiction whose demons-versus-devils split hinges on Law and Chaos in the same way that D&D's does; I suspect that the game's authors simply took the pre-existing notion of demons and devils being different things and pasted the terms onto a straight lift of Michael Moorcock's "Eternal Champions" cosmology (which doesn't use either term) – though if anyone is aware of a prior case of fantasy fiction specifically associating "devil" with cosmic Order and "demon" with cosmic Chaos, I'd love to be corrected!

(As always, if anyone would like to offer a counterexample, please check the publication date first; works published after 1974 post-date Dungeons & Dragons, so they're no help here.)

[vorthosjay]

Do we know which guild handles Education on Ravnica? I'd be willing to bet money a good amount of it for the Guildless is run by Dimir, but does each Guild have their own schooling or something?

From the Guildmaster's Guide to Ravnica:

A crystal-paned center of learning that concentrates on magical theory and application, Prism University draws potential wizards and other would-be mages who want to learn about all forms of magic, in contrast to the specialized and practical applications of magic espoused by the guilds. Even though the school maintains a formal state of neutrality, it’s an open secret that many guilds have infiltrated the university and planted agents to woo prospective members. Partly as a result of this influence, many graduates of the university do go on to join a guild, finding a way to apply their broad experience to support the narrower focus of the guild.

Presumably there are other non-guild affiliated schools as well.