enginerd121 - Tumblr blog

enginerd121 · 2 years ago

Text

D&D Class & Alignment of Stormlight Characters

If Stormlight characters were assigned the D&D classes & alignments that most suit them (in this blogger’s opinion), what might those be?

1. Kaladin: Lawful Good Paladin

Kaladin follows a strict code of honor–so strict that he loses his powers when he makes two conflicting promises and cannot keep both–and he cares deeply about what is right. As someone who fights to protect others and to maintain a moral code, paladin makes sense for him. Plus, I mean, it rhymes.

2. Dalinar: Lawful Good Cleric

Dalinar does not fight these days; he carries no weapons and uses only noncombat powers, like restoring people’s stormlight or rebuilding broken masonry. As someone who draws power from a deity and has a restorative role, cleric feels right for Dalinar. As for his alignment, well–he follows a very strict code, like Kaladin, and strives to do what is right. Most recently he was willingly to wager his own soul to keep Odium locked away.

3. Jasnah: Neutral Good Wizard

Jasnah is definitely a knowledge-based character, and knowledge is what wizards are all about. I wouldn’t exactly call Jasnah lawful–she rejects the religion that most of her peers follow, and there was that time she deliberately baited some thieves into attacking her so that she could kill them all. She’s definitely willing to cause social upheaval–as queen, she decides to free all slaves despite Dalinar’s protest that this will cause too much social upheaval. She is determined to follow what is good and true, and to use research to determine what that is.

4. Adolin: Neutral Good Fighter

Adolin certainly cares about codes and about honor, but he also stabbed a guy through the eye in a deserted hallway, so I couldn’t in good conscience call him “lawful.” Especially not when he later declares that he feels fine about the murder, since it made things better overall. He does care about right, however, and so I went with “neutral good.” Adolin is a duelist, which makes him a fighter in D&D canon.

5. Renarin: Neutral Good Cleric

Renarin can see the future–divination!–and heal, so cleric is the class for him. Renarin is somewhat lawful–he repeatedly jumps off of a balcony when Zahel tells him to–but he also, say, scrawls incoherent messages on the walls because he doesn’t want anyone know he can (irreligiously) see the future. He bonds a corrupted spren and invites Rlain to do the same. So while he respects rules too much to be chaotic, he’s also willing to forge his own path.

6. Lift: Chaotic Good Rogue

Lift’s mission is to remember those who have been forgotten, and she’s the first to stand with Dalinar when he’s facing down Odium’s army in Thaylen City. On the other hand, she is a thief by trade who takes great delight in stealing ever new and more adventurous lunches…but only from people who can afford to be stolen from.

7. Nale: Lawful Neutral Ranger

As a Skybreaker, Nale cares only about the law of whatever land he is in, far more than any abstract ideas of “right” or “wrong.” Nale will murder a child if it’s legal. He argues that humans cannot determine right and wrong on their own, and so the only moral path is to adhere strictly and utterly to the letter of the law. Nale is also something of a bounty hunter–he follows Lift through various countries, and you’ll often find him trying to hunt down some criminal or other. His talent for tracking and hunting people down gives him the characteristics of a ranger.

8. Szeth: Lawful Neutral Rogue

Back in the day, Szeth dutifully followed his Oathstone no matter what was demanded of him–doing things he he knew were wrong because he had to follow his master’s rules. Later he became a Skybreaker, the most lawful netural of all the orders. Currently he’s pledged to Dalinar, and once again, he’s basically outsourced his moral code and will do whatever Dalinar commands. Szeth is the Assassin in White–good at covert missions, good at hiding when he needs to, good at getting into wherever he needs to be. A rogue, then.

9. Shallan: True Neutral Rogue

Shallan is at home in gray areas. She infiltrates the Ghostbloods partly to bring them down, but also partly because she desires the knowledge and power they offer. As a Lightweaver, she’s very good at lying but also advances by admitting to deep truths. She has a habit of murdering people, mostly for good reasons, but still. She is excellent at disguises and infiltration, at tailing people while losing her own tail–at spy stuff, basically. I could see a “neutral good” argument for Shallan, but to me, her motivations are a bit too gray, even if she is ultimately a protagonist.

10. Hoid: True Neutral Bard

Hoid tells Dalinar that he would let Roshar burn to get what he wants–with tears in his eyes, perhaps, but still he’d let it burn. Hoid will go out of his way to give Kaladin a moment of peace when Kaladin is in the dream hellscape, and he’ll be there when you need him, but he’s doing everything for his own purposes, whatever those may be. And he’s a bard. Like, pretty much literally.

11. Lezian: Chaotic Neutral Barbarian

Lezian–or the Pursuer–is a force of true chaos. Most of the time he’s fine with just causing destruction, but he will fixate on anyone who manages to kill him–and will do whatever necessary to kill that person in turn. He’s quite literally being driven insane from having been alive so long, so he’s highly unstable to boot. He’s also a brawler–he gets in close, grapples, sometimes cuts your spinal cord repeatedly with a big knife, that sort of thing. So I went with barbarian for that brutal and up-close fighting style.

12. Odium: Lawful Evil Bard / Deity

Odium may be bent on shattering the other shards and taking over the cosmere, but he certainly is lawful about it. He is bound by the rules of his shard, and his main strategy is to make deals that will bind both himself and others. He even wants to make sure both parties understand and willingly commit to the deals he offers, explaining to Dalinar that he’s not someone who will try to rules-lawyer his way out of things. If he succeeds in his evil plans, it will only because the rules let him do so. As for class…well, since he relies mostly on persuasion and talking, he feels bard-like to me. But he’s also just straight up a deity.

13. Taravangian: Lawful Evil Warlock

For the record, Taravangian would call himself “good” but, uh. He needs prophecies, so he creates a hospital for people to die in and hastens them along if they’re not dying fast enough. He trades the whole world for his own city to make sure that humanity survives. He assassinates most of the world’s leaders. From the point of view of the narrative, Taravangian is evil. But he is lawful–he follows the Diagram assiduously. It is Law for him. He gets his power first from a deal with the Nightwatcher and later makes a deal with Odium–and making such deals for power is what a warlock is all about.

14. Venli: Neutral Evil Wizard

Venli is also a knowledge-based character, I’d say. She starts out as a researching trying to discover new Forms, and getting intel is always a part of her character. She also, to put it succinctly, does what is best for her. She manipulates the Listeners into inviting their gods to return, since she wants power, but then ends up not liking her new life as the “last” remaining Listener. So she immediately foments rebellion, but quietly so it’s not too dangerous for her, and she ends up bonding a spren from both sides. She does eventually join the radiant side…but decides to abandon the battle for the Tower once she realizes her mother might still be alive. So she’ll sometimes do good, sometimes evil, but most of all she does what is best for her in the moment.

15. Flashback Dalinar: Chaotic Evil Barbarian

Pre-Nightwatcher, Dalinar was a guy controlled by the Thrill. He just wanted to find people to fight and people to kill. Sure, Gavilar had reasons for the battles Dalinar was fighting in, but that Dalinar didn’t really care. He just wanted more war. Plus, at times he was so consumed by the Thrill–some might say he Raged–that he killed not only his enemies but also any allies who happened to get too close. And let’s not forget the time he burned an entire city alive.

Dalinar may more lawful good these days, but in the past he was very much the opposite.

104 notes · View notes

enginerd121 · 2 years ago

Text

Controversial take: Hoid is a tumblr sexyman.

I like Brandon Sanderson, I think he's a good writer, but I never thought he was a great writer until the 'dog and the dragon' chapter of the Rythem of War at which point I realised that 1, Sanderson really knows how to use the story within a story device to communicate both to characters and the reader different information at the same time, and 2, Hoid is the ultimate tumblr sexyman: it's not the fact he's a super powered badass normal OP, it's not the fact he's sarcastic as hell, or the fact you need to peice his backstory togeather from a rabbit hole of internet lore and snippets of about 20 different books, and it's not the fact you could read him as Neurodivergant or bi, or the fact that his canonical appearance is a white haired pretty boy with cheekbones aka he looks like Jack Frost from that Guardans film that made us all wet back in the day. It's this: his in universe plan for defeating a litteral god of evil is shitposting. In universe shitposting. Whenever one of the heros is at their breaking point, Kaladin or Shallan or Lift, rather than actually act directly, he sits them down and tells them a long, rambling, often funny story that directly connects in no way with thier current situation, but speaks to their personality strongly enough to inspire them to keep going through their own darkest moments, and I think that is beautiful. It's the power of story itself to make the world a better place... just canonically delivered in the most annoying way possible by a massive and unapologetic troll (hell he beat up Kesler as much to teach him as anything), and i think that makes him more tumblr than any other recent litteraly character: his commitment to, in the face of Armagedon, be a silly little dude till the last.

#Damn it hoid #But keep doing it #Shitpost odium back to roshar

339 notes · View notes