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talenlee · 2 months ago

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How To Be: A Bunch Of People From Arcane (Season 1) (In 4th Edition D&D)

In How To Be we’re going to look at a variety of characters from Not D&D and conceptualise how you might go about making a version of that character in the form of D&D that matters on this blog, D&D 4th Edition. Our guidelines are as follows:

This is going to be a brief rundown of ways to make a character that ‘feels’ like the source character

This isn’t meant to be comprehensive or authoritative but as a creative exercise

While not every character can work immediately out of the box, the aim is to make sure they have a character ‘feel’ as soon as possible

The character has to have the ‘feeling’ of the character by at least midway through Heroic

When building characters in 4th Edition it’s worth remembering that there are a lot of different ways to do the same basic thing. This isn’t going to be comprehensive, or even particularly fleshed out, and instead give you some places to start when you want to make something.

Another thing to remember is that 4e characters tend to be more about collected interactions of groups of things – it’s not that you get a build with specific rules about what you have to take, and when, and why, like you’re lockpicking your way through a design in the hopes of getting an overlap eventually. Character building is about packages, not programs, and we’ll talk about some packages and reference them going forwards.

This one gets really big and sprawling pretty quickly, here, hey, we’re going to talk about the characters from Arcane. Oh, and necessarily:

Spoiler Warning: I’m going to talk about Arcane season 1. Doing so I’m going to imply that I didn’t think much of Arcane season 2.

Examining Arcane

I’m looking at season 1 of arcane. Season 2 doesn’t bring anything to the story that’s interesting, to me. It’s a single season of television, it’s nine episodes long, and I really enjoyed those episodes. Where that series took the paper plate puppets of the League of Legends mascot combat franchise, a range of Sanics The Hedgehogs but they’re actually hot, and then used the general outlines of those characterisations to tell a story about class disparity and the coherence of morally acceptable violences.

Show rules.

Arcane is a series with a bunch of vibes, but those vibes have needs. It’s a magepunk story, where there’s a lot of things that are meant to evoke the look of a modern city, the conveniences of them, but with magic rather than an industrial people-population based, economic exploitation model to get you there. It’s a place where big systems are still moving against one another and the movements of individuals can make or break the change between stories but none of what they do gets to transform or erase those systems. Economies and nations and the movement of wars and the economic engines of those wars, they’re still present, but you still can make a difference in your life, for the people around you, and maybe carve out a little well of light in a great big unfeeling void. A point of light, if you will. It’s also a way you get wizards with shotguns and railroads powered by crystals happening, and turns out that that’s a great vibe for a 4th edition game.

But Arcane is also a limited run series, with nine good episodes that I liked and watched, and in that, there’s a bunch of characters, some really good mascot costumes you can jam onto a D&D character, with wonderful, cool, exciting cool art that you can use as an inspiring base for what you’re trying to bring to a table.

The Basics

Look, we’re doing something different today. This isn’t about the builds I’d hand you, with a deliberately vague chain of possibilities that you can snap together the way you want. This is going to be about how I would approach three of these characters that I like, and consider the ways I’d handle them when I’m pitching to a DM. This is as much about telling people ‘here’s what I’m going to do, and here’s what I’m looking for.’

Do you do that? Do you approach a DM and say ‘hey, here’s stuff I want in the setting, can you use this?’ Not every DM is going to want that kind of thing but being able to be specific is really useful. In a game I ran I asked the players to each give me three secrets about their character that could be fair game for me to use as hooks in the narrative, and those wound up being wildly varied in their outcome. Being given ways to connect to the aims of a character is really useful.

Glossary Note: Conventionally, the term used in D&D for this mechanical package is race. This is the typical term, and in most conversations about this game system, the term you’re going to wind up using is race. For backwards compatibility and searchability, I am including this passage here. The term I use for this player option is heritage.

Viciously Violent Vindication

Vi is the most obivous high-profile character to make from Arcane. This is reasonable, because she rules, and because she is dripping with main character swagger. There’s an obvious way of engaging with the world (physical violence), a robust set of needs (she’s not a big thinker or technical problem solver), and even an obvious character flaw (she fucks cops).

Vi is obviously strong, and she’s into pulling attention onto her. While she may use magical technology to do more, she’s not going to know rituals or rites. This isn’t to say she’s stupid – she’s actually quite cunning, as highlighted in the first fight we see her in, where she criticises a teammate for giving up information they don’t have to and shouldn’t.

Fighter, Battlerager talent

Heritage, I’d grit my teeth, um and ahh about it and take Goliath. If the DM asks me otherwise, I’d ask how flexible they are about how Dwarves stand. Failing that, I’d take Human, because ultimately, Vi is a baseline member of the culture she’s in. Where every major character is ‘a human,’ Vi being a human is fine.

Main stats are Strength and Constitution, with Wisdom as third. Intelligence and Dexterity are not very important, which means that her Armour Class and Reflex defense are not going to be great, but we’re also hoping to sponge through nasty effects wiiiith…

Take powers with the invigorating keyword. With the Battlerager Talent, that means on each attack, she’ll be getting double her Constitution modifier in Temporary Hit Points.

Weapon choice is another place to talk to the DM. See, Vi classically uses a big pair of smashy fists. They’re not really like hands though, because hands are capable of grabbing things, and Vi is much more just punching things with these huge hands. I’d talk to the DM and ask them, if the weapon occupies both my hands and makes a huge impact, can I treat it as a Mordenkrad. That’s a Superior hammer that deals 2d6 damage, at Brutal 1.

The result is a tank character, who runs around in light armour, and who blocks with her face. Vi doesn’t really defend herself as much as she walks face-first into being punched.

Then the questions I’d throw at the DM:

The place the story’s going to start needs to be importrant to her, like she’s a kind of locally known character. Not necessarily heroic or famous, but like, the toughest girl at the bar she frequents. Is the campaign going to focus on a space or start there and move on from there?

She’s defined by an immense failure in her past. Most people who know her by reputation think well of her, but she has a hard time handling praise or positive attention because she’s too focused on the ways she failed her ambitions. Is there a major incident like an uprising or a rebellion that I can tie her into?

Something put a gulf between her and a family member. I’d rather have this tension be with another player character, but if there isn’t anyone, is there an important NPC she can have a tie to?

Jinx’s Justified Jigsaw

Jinx, the character, in League of Legends, is really obviously some kind of striker. She has bombs and guns and if I bothered to open that wiki I bet that’s the kind of thing she’d be good at doing. I think ranged nonmagical damage is the least interesting thing you can do in a D&D game, so where I start with the image of Jinx, I’m going to then take it in a direction I’d like. They haven’t given me a chaingun tank, but there is a leader supprot-style character that I like a lot that uses ranged weapons, and that’s the Artificer.

Artificers also line up well with Jinx as an Intelligence-based character who uses the Arcane power source. I mean the anime’s named after it. Artificers bring a huge basket of cool stuff; there’s a ritual book, there’s turning daily item abilities into twice-daily items, and the Artificer has probably the single best at-will attack power for people who can take advantage. Magic Weapon is incredible.

Artificer class!

Heritage-wise, I’d talk to the DM about the brand-specific Githzerai. The stats line up with what I want (Intelligence and Wisdom), and has the ability to push through mental attacks that can be really good for representing a character retaliating against mental attacks. On the other hand, Githzerai have a really specific visual aesthetic, and I don’t like it. Devas are also a good option, and their heritage ability looks like ‘getting lucky,’ more or less. I’d probably theme the necrotic resistance as being ‘I have been mucking around with dead bodies a lot, so I’m used to it.

Main stats are Intelligence and Wisdom.

Weapon of choice is a repeating crossbow. This is a weapon focused build. The repeating crossbow is the most ‘chunky mechanical’ feeling weapon for this kind of attack, and it gives that cool, chunky feeling of ‘reloading’ with a big magazine.

The power choices are going to have to fit around Magic Weapon. The default best power to use, at every chance, is Magic Weapon. I don’t need any other single-target attack that buffs an ally, any encounter or daily attack needs to be considered for area damage.

I’ll be looking at the White Lotus feats, since this is a character who’s going to overwhelmingly using an at-will ranged attack standing next to an ally.

And with that stencilled in, I’d look to these questions:

She wants to be close to people and have people who she can rely on but she’s also going to be a real asshole to people because she doubts them. Are there any players who aren’t okay with that dynamic and would like me to have that not affect you?

This character may have committed some terrorism, in a way she feels pretty justified. It’s more important to her that someone accepts that she did what she did for a good reason than to accept that she did the right thing. Is there room for that kind of thing? Can you, the DM, at least leave it ambiguous, and not have anyone come down hard on ‘these acts were definitely bad’ or ‘these acts were actually good?’

This is a character who needs downtime to make things, to buy rituals, and to work on things. She’s meant to feel like a researcher, a geek with a workshop. Is that going to be a thing we can do in this game, and if it’s not, can I facilitate it with a sort of portable tinker’s kit?

Ekko, Ekko, Ekko

Alright, now let’s get the timing down.

Ekko, in Arcane, is not a character who is shown to have explicit time powers. The game, Leage of Legends, is a game with time travel powers and blinks and whatnot, and that’s fine, you know, what the hell ever, but Arcane is not a place with time travel (yet, I know, shut up). Instead the show represents Ekko’s time travel powers, his mastery of time, as being about something in the way he attacks, the way he fights. He plays things out in time, he plots them out, in an instant, and then he acts. We only see it once in Season 1, with Ekko fighting Jinx based on mapping out a memory then crushing into her in six seconds. Because of this, I dont’ want to play with time-zippy powers (oh hi, Battlemind).

This is a great way to represent a melee weapon character who uses a mental stat – either Wisdom or Intelligence.

And

Class: Swordmage

Important stats, Intelligence first, Constitution as a backup, and then Charisma because he’s really cool and to round out the non-armour defenses.

Heritage: Eladrin. This is very specifically to play with the Eladrin Swordmage Advance feat, and the chain that leads to Fey Charge in Paragon. That’s going to need multiclassing to fighter, but there are good feats for that.

Weapon of choice is a longsword, which is how Ekko wields his pipe-like weapon and he’s shown with a sword.

I also want him to have Ritual Caster so he can do the same long-term complicated projects as Jinx.

Then:

In my mind this character is part of an underclass, he has some kind of safeness to his life. Is there a chance that there’s another player in the group who can be from the same safe haven as him, maybe with a place they can have lively conversations about method?

Is there room for this character to have been foraging/earning money through gang activity? What can I do that represents having that kind of support, like maybe access to a good market as a little extra bit of flavour?

Conclusion

That’s a bunch of words, and I’m not making Caitlyn, she’s a cop.

(Also because snipers aren’t that interesting to me in 4th ed D&D).

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#DnD 4e #How to Be #Dungeons &amp; Dragons #Games #Making

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talenlee · 1 month ago

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How To Be: Baiken (in 4e D&D)

This is going to be a brief rundown of ways to make a character that ‘feels’ like the source character

This isn’t meant to be comprehensive or authoritative but as a creative exercise

While not every character can work immediately out of the box, the aim is to make sure they have a character ‘feel’ as soon as possible

The character has to have the ‘feeling’ of the character by at least midway through Heroic

The random Arc Systems Works round start text generator I use for these characters has broken, perhaps a victim of link rot, or some change in pastebin structure. For whatever reason, goodnight sweet prince, THE FRIDGE IS EMPTY, round the FIRST, eat SHIT!

Examining Baiken

I love Guilty Gear characters. Their lore is both extremely simple and straightforwards (Baiken is a disabled samurai who dedicated her life to pursuing the man who maimed her and burned her home) and also completely unhinged (she’s a samurai who was born in 2187 on the Japanese Human Containment Reserve, and the man she’s dedicated herself to hunt is one of two men, and one of them is Jesus from the 90s that invented magic).

What’s more, this breadth of narrative and aesthetic space feels like it should result in incoherent characters inventing new powers as the story demands. When you have a magical girl podcaster and a sentient bed side by side in a narrative, one of those is probably going to be producing effects the other thinks is impossible, and eventually, something has to give. Pleasantly, though, Guilty Gear characters have a consistent and coherent mechanical identity across the decades the franchise has existed.

Baiken’s concept space, her lore, is ridiculous, but every time we’ve seen her, she’s been a Samurai lady with one arm, a big sword, and a chain. She’s tough, so some kind of a tank, she is defensive, she has the option of using a shield or not, she has a dash, she has punishment, and she has a big scary melee hit if you leave her alone. Baiken controls the air in front of her and she has reach.

Here’s a place where the limitations of Dungeons & Dragons and non-Dungeons & Dragons conversations kick in, because it’s not clear if Baiken is strong. I couldn’t find any records of her deadlifting things, or pushing heavy objects, but she does also walk around with a bag of metal chains as a toy to fling at people. That means it’s unclear how her melee combat works – I assume she’s ‘Strong’ but that doesn’t mean she has to have a good ‘Strength’ score.

There is a bit of a problem with her defense. Baiken is not wearing what is obviously armour, but she is covering up a lot of metal (in the form of all those chains). You could use this to justify heavy armour (and I do).

The Basics

Hey, first up, let’s talk about playing a character with a disability!

If you follow this series (?!), this is a restating of material first presented in How To Be: Amaya from Dragon Prince, where I said:

Disability is not transactional. You do not get bonuses for limiting your character in a particular way and you do not need mechanics to assert that limitation. The game rules indicate that a character can move through a space, navigate daily life and cope entirely with the space around them in a standardised way, and that any given character you play is capable of doing those things. This means if your character lacks a major sensory capacity or has a mobility limitation, even with that incorporated they can navigate life at the same standard as other characters. If your character has a base movement of 6, then that character in a wheelchair still has a base movement of 6. How? I don’t know, ask them, they’re clearly really good at using that wheelchair to get around!

Remember that your characters can already be taller or shorter or harder of hearing or shortsighted or longsighted and the game rules do not impose limitations on you because you have ‘more or less’ of a physical capacity. The game rules are for handling the function of game entities within a fictionalised space, and the fiction is an explanation for how those functions work. If your character has deafness, then that is part of the fiction, and it is merely a little bit less than a character who is hard of hearing. Use the fiction to tell the story, and look to the rules to resolve disputes, not to create that fiction.

With that in mind: Baiken has one arm. But I’m going to talk about her wielding two-handed weapons or wielding a weapon and shield (more on the shield later). In D&D games, a character has two ring slots, and two hand slots, and they can wield a weapon in one hand or two hands. That they have this is, however, not contingent on them having two actual hands. The game has no mechanical way to represent losing an arm.

What’s more, since people disabilities adjust their lives and relationships to their bodies to compensate, it seems a simple concession to accept that while it may not make sense for Baiken to be able to hold an orange in each hand, there’s nothing in the game rules that suggest she shouldn’t be able to hold two oranges somehow.

As far as heritage and stats go, since her stat choices are functionally free, you can pick any heritage that gives you stats to meet the needs of your class. More on those in each entry.

Baiken uses a big tatami mat as a ‘block’ – she can make an attack that throws a mat up from the ground in front of her, by stomping on it. This is sick as hell but it also serves as an example of a defensive shield she can move around with, and she even uses it to control an area. To that end, each of these builds is going to work with the assumption that they need to work for a big two hander like a greatsword or a sword and shield build. A third option is a kusari-gama, which costs a feat, but adds reach and defensiveness to the character, which does feel appropriate.

If you want to focus on the chain element of the character, that reach becomes more meaningful. If you want to focus on the single target punishment, then you want your main hits to be very strong, which means, big two hander. If you want to be able to do tatami mat style blocking, you want to focus on sword-and-board. Easy enough choice to make.

Build 1 – Just A God Damn Fighter

The Fighter build is the easiest of all of these to work with because the fighter is the class that is already built around punishing mark violation. It’s the toughest tank, it’s the tank with the least nonsense around what it can do, and it’s the tank with the best access to cool weapon-based malarkey.

What Baiken struggles with if she’s a fighter is a breadth of abilities. You might want that; to you, the samurai element of her may be an aesthetic. On the other hand, if you like the idea of Baiken as this kind of renaissance woman with a variety of cultural insights, you may want to multiclass bard to pick up the feat Jack of All Trades, to diminish the lack of ability she has in educated fields.

Good heritages are Muls, Dwarves (ick) and Humans.

Build 2 – Swords and Shields Of LIght

I like the weapon-based, strength-focused Paladin a lot for punishment stacking builds. Punishment stacking is something that Paladins are especially good at, so in short, it’s finding ways to make it so multiple different things trigger when your opponents violate your mark. It’s a form of control, and it’s best done with minimal effort.

Consider, if you take the power Ardent Strike, and you hit an enemy with it, they are subject to your Divine Sanction. If you also Combat Challenge them, they are subject to that, too. Therefore, if they violate that by attacking someone else, you get to retaliate at them for Sanction damage (3+Charisma damage) and Divine Challenge damage (3+Charisma damage). What’s more you can also add in the Guardian theme, so now that violating that mark gets you a basic attack as well.

To make punishment stacking work, though, you then need to make it so attacking you is useless; you need to have a high armour class, so your enemy can feel like they’re wasting their time. There are a lot of routes to this, but my favourite is what I call the Virtue Sponge build. You take the utility power Virtue, and the neck item Amulet of Life. This lets you start fights with a huge block of temporary hit points, at the cost of 2 surges, and when you have that many temp hit points, it’s very easy for enemies to feel they need to leave you alone until everyone can focus you down. They want you to suffer from AMFAD (wait how have I never written an article about All My Friends Are Dead), basically.

Good heritages: Dwarf (ick), Half-Orcs, and Humans.

Build 3 – Strike As Golden Claws!

Where the Paladin fails to deliver the Baiken vibes is mobility. If you want to move forward so fast people don’t see you cross the intervening space, then you need the teleporting goodness that is the lightning-rush swinging time-warping action economy punishment monster, The Battlemind.

Hey here’s a fun argument to start with your DM (which you should only do if it’s a fun thing and you’re okay with having the conversation once). If you Lightning Rush an enemy who’s making a ranged attack, you teleport next to them, then you become the target of the attack. That means that someone just made a ranged attack against you while you threaten them. Do you get an attack of opportunity on them?

(Probably not, but if your DM allows it, recognise that they are probably erring in your favour and don’t be a big asshole about it if they later realise it’s a problem and want to take it away.)

The Battlemind is tough and wants to have its secondary stat choices for wisdom, or charisma. Mind Spike isn’t the most amazing punishment available leading up to when you can take Lightning Rush but once you can take lightning rush, it’s very good. In fact, you can also grab Forceful Reversal to play full Baiken version – someone hits your ally, you teleport next to them and kick them in the face. Someone hits you? You kick them in the face so hard they can’t get up for six seconds. The worst thing about this is that you wind up with a build that wants to lock in two of its three At-Will attacks at level 9, which can make later game powers a problem. Of course, humans and half-elves get to cheat that.

Good heritages: Dwarf (ick!), Humans, Mul, Tieflings.

Junk Drawer

Any class that can rely on weapon attacks and interrupt attacks has something of the Baiken vibe that can transfer over. While not every weapon class has an interrupt attack like that, there are still a few. The Ranger gets Disruptive Strike (level 3). The Swordmage gets Frost Backlast (level 1, but a daily). There’s even the Escaped Slave theme that can, if you really want, pick up the power Turn the Tables (level 5, daily), though I wouldn’t, because it’s not very strong compared to other forms of punishment available.

There’s also the Ardent, benefitting from provoking attacks of opportunity with the Mantle of Recklessness, which can have some of the same feeling of baiting people into attacking you, and the Infernal Wrath ability of the Tiefling opens up some stacking punishments with the right feat support. None of these are in my opinion the best option, but between punishment and a single large weapon, they can all be made to feel Baiken-y.

One other place you can look is the Cavalier and Knight, which are both Essentials classes with some very robust, standardised basic attack patterns. This has the character of Baiken as a standard, modest attacker who has a big punishment effect. On the other hand, they’re also, never my first choices for a character unless there’s something very specific I need to make the concept work (like the werebear).

Conclusion

Baiken is a perfect character for this kind of project. The main way you know anything about her is watching her fight, and watching her fight means you have a clear idea of how she does something. With that in mind, the fantasy of her combat style can extend into every aspect of her character. The actual choreography of combat is exciting and interesting, but it’s also hard to explain to people without a clear visual in your own mind.

Watching how she fights gives you a blank canvas into which you can project all sorts of inner life, a way of being that she thinks that this way of presenting herself is the right way to do it. Maybe she’s intuitive and fluid; maybe she’s infinitely calculating. Maybe there’s a part of her that thinks and moves like a chaotic predator, and maybe she’s struggling with multiple conflicting wants for her presentation and her behaviour. When the time comes to draw your sword, all the things you may want to do are pared down to what you must, real quick.

Also, boobs honkers jugs jubblies rack tits.

Check it out on PRESS.exe to see it with images and links!

#How to Be #Dungeons &amp; Dragons #Games

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