#Character Options

[muchemovies]

painting & modding CO Doctor Who figures

[iconuk01]

Oh yeah, bring it ON!

[tootallferne]

It’s out now! Take your adventurers to their DOOM with my new DOOM system for d20 fantasy!

[honourablejester]

Numenera Character Foci That Make Me Giddy

I’m really liking the Numenera character construction. You have your character type, which is basically your class, but then you have your character focus, which is a whole extra set of cool abilities on top of that. You can control metal. Cast illusions. Be a werewolf. Skulk in alleyways. Go berserk. Forever wear a halo of fire. You can be a sneaky rogue who turns into a ravening beast five nights a month (a stealthy jack who howls at the moon). You can be a scholarly mage who also happens to be a professional assassin (a learned nano who murders). You can be a daring ruin-spelunker with ESP (a risk-taking delve who sees beyond). Are some of those advisable? Possibly not. But you can be them. Heh.

So. Some of the foci that make me excited, just from my first skim through:

Controls Gravity. Because if there is any power that’s guaranteed to make you feel like a minor god, it’s the ability to control what’s up and what’s down. You can (eventually) fly. You can smash people into the ground. You can make people/things so heavy they can’t move. And then there’s this:

I’m putting it here because the second I read this, I found myself making the gesture. One hand palm up in front of my chest, the other palm down, moving sharply apart, like an orchestra conductor telling one section to get loud and another to quiet down. And if a game ability immediately has you physically acting it out, then it’s a cool ability.

Explores Dark Places. You’re so used to digging around in the dark that you’ve adapted to it. This is a mix of relatively mundane and relatively less mundane abilities, varying from making you better at sneaking and physical exploration and finding stuff, to giving you darkvision, to letting you partially become a shadow. And I just like that mix of practicality and edginess, and I also like the idea of someone who was just so good and went out of their way to become so good at spelunking and exploring dark, inaccessible places that they sort of absorbed the darkness and got comfortable there. I wanna make a stinky mole-man jack or delve who hasn’t seen daylight in three years because they were too busy rooting around in ancient sewers.

Fuses Flesh and Steel. You’re just straight up a cyborg. One who can tinker with themselves to try and improve their form/abilities. Your initial artificial components might have been done to you, or you might have done them to yourself. And. Sometimes you just want to play the nano/wright scientist who tried to make themselves that bit more durable the old-fashioned, mad-science way?

Howls at the Moon. You are a werewolf. And by that I don’t mean any old shapeshifter, I mean you involuntarily change five nights a month, you can only transform at night (for an hour), and you have to level your character to gain the control to shift voluntarily (and you never lose those five involuntary nights). And while you’re in your beast form, involuntarily or otherwise, you can’t use Intellect, you involuntarily attack anything close to you, and if you didn’t kill and eat anything as a beast, recovering after the transformation is harder. You are full on roleplaying the werewolf curse. But hey, you do a shit tonne of damage and you can tank a lot as that beast. And! You get the option to pick one of the other PCs to be your special person, who soothes your beast and is safe from them, and can let you transform back easier. Is this necessarily the best focus to pick in a team game? Possibly not, depending on how willing the rest of the party is to work around the ravening indestructible monster that guaranteed WILL erupt in their midst at least five nights a month, but if you’ve always wanted to roleplay the struggle against your inner beast, Numenera does go all in.

Emerged from the Obelisk. You got eaten by a hovering crystal obelisk and spat back out a year later with no memory of what happened in there and, oh yeah, turned into crystal yourself. Because these are the sorts of things that happen in the Ninth World. I just. I love that this is a thing. You don’t even have to have been spat back out as a humanoid crystal, there’s a note that if you want to be differently shaped, like, say, a levitating crystal shard, you just have to work it out with your GM how you, you know, touch and see and manipulate things, etc. One of the suggestions is ‘crystalline tendrils’. So, yeah. You can get hoovered up by a giant floating crystal and spat back out as a crystalline tentacle monster, if you so choose. This is excellent. You do get boosts to physical stats for being crystalline, and later on you get levitation, laser beams and teleportation through known crystals/obelisks, which are definitely all cool, but if I’m fully honest I’m taking this to be an amber crystalline fish creature with tendrils, whose driving quest is to figure out how the fuck this happened. Obelisk! Get back here! I have so many questions.

Never Says Die. What it says on the tin. You are doggedly determined not to die. That’s it. That’s the whole deal. You’re just not going down. Health boosts, recovery boosts, later abilities to stay up a round after you should be dead. For when you just want to be stubborn about this. I’m gonna be immortal by sheer dint of just not dying. I just. I always enjoy abilities that are just raw bloodymindedness.

In general, the Foci are just cool. Pick the fantasy you want to live out, and go for it. Heh.

[expectopatronum18]

UNPOPULAR OPINION( may not be tbh)

DISCLAIMER = This is just my personal opinion, I don't mean to offend anyone who likes the character

I really don't like Ginny Weasley. Partly because of the stuff she does( I'll come to that in a moment), and partly because of the way she's written. She had a few good moments till book 4 and had some great character development in book 5. I absolutely loved the interactions between her and harry in ootp n was looking forward to more of her in book 6. That's where the trouble comes tho, because book 6 absolutely ruined her for me.

Let's start from the beginning. I HATE the way she treated Fleur. Sure, Hermione n Mrs. Weasley were rude too, but she took it to a whole other level. Lyk it's okay to complain about how Fleur treats her lyk a child n all that, but Ginny goes as far as to mock Fleur for her french accent by calling her 'Phlegm'( yeah, coz EVERYONE'S born with a typical British accent) and mocks her femininity by 'prancing across the room with her arms held aloft like a ballerina.' She never really apologizes for any of this. All of this while Fleur's relocated all the way from France just to fit into their family. How tf does the plot expect us to find this funny!?

Then there's her treatment of Ron. She calls him a prat when he's just nervous during quidditch, does literally nothing to help him through it, and makes impressions of Ron nervously hobbling by the goalposts for the amusement of the team (teasing ur sibling about their insecurities in front of a whole crowd doesn't count as a normal sibling thing)

Now, I don't mind characters with these flaws, but she's never called out by anyone within the story. Harry might hv rose-tinted glasses for her( which is a dumb argument btw), but it doesn't mean he's deaf enough to not hear anyone else criticize her. Far from this tho, the narrative expects us to find this 'cool' and 'feisty'. She's also unnecessarily violent, with that bat bogey hex being lyk half her personality. Oh, and I'm not buying the 'she's been sneaking out to practice on her brothers brooms since the age of 6' bs....lyk how tf wud molly n arthur not notice their 6-7 yr old flying in the backyard? Not even once? Really?

She only has the exact traits harry needs in his ideal partner. No complexities, no insecurities, and no account of how she managed to bounce back after she was fucking possessed. Instead, hbp tried to promote ginny to us by showing how cool n popular n perfect she is, rather than some realistic character exploration.

This is more of a personal thing now, but I just find her sense of humor annoying. Lyk i generally prefer dry, sassy comebacks( there's no need to call me sir professor, or; yeah, u can have a word, goodbye) than her bold, loud, 'jk trying to promote her as cool n funny' sense of humor.

None of this is rectified in the end, as she sadly ends up being harry's metaphorical prize after he's defeated Voldemort, with no real development given to her outside of her relationship with him. She had so much potential, I wish her character hadn't been restricted or brushed off so much.

[pl9090]

(Guess what I got for Christmas). As stated previously part of my Chapters and Houses headcanon canonwelds by having all Chapter members being required to wear their Chapter robes for ceremonial occassions, (Deadly Assasin's, "seldom worm robes") which is the kind of expected pomp. Mr Miles said Grandfather Paradox looked like Norman Stanley Fletcher. I don't think he'd of worn a skullcap as part of the, "allowed but frowned upon" thing. Naturally if someone would like to try and make such a custom please let the Faction Paradox fandom know.

[garbage---garden]

Genesis Ark

[downthetubes]

Crowdfunding Spotlight: Go Figure!, the ultimate collector’s guide to Character Options’s 5.5” Doctor Who action figures

There’s not much time left to back Go Figure!, the ultimate collector’s guide to Character Options’s 5.5” Doctor Who action figures from 2005-2024, from Roundel Books

[thelastgherkin]

AN INCOMPLETE HISTORY OF DAVID TENNANT HEAD SCULPTS

Here’s something that has been on my mind before we even knew a Fourteenth Doctor action figure was on the way: just how many times did Character Options sculpt David Tennant’s likeness?  This isn’t quite all variations, as I didn’t bother to photograph all the paint variants, nor do I own the 3D glasses or old man versions.  Still, these are the ones that just look like David Tennant The Man Going About His Day, and maybe it’ll come in handy to any amateur Tenth Doctor action figure spotters out there!

Did you know I maintain a spreadsheet of every Doctor Who 5.5 inch action figure?

[box-full-of-dolls]

Dream Seekers Bella (2020)

[muchemovies]

DOCTOR WHO: Character Options figures modding; carving, sculpting, kit-bashing & painting 1:13 / 5.5" toys to make characters not already available.

[tardistimelord03]

Just realised this Dalek has a really big plunger and gun in this shot

This is making me believe this is why the original 2005 Dalek toy is so out of shape/size, compared to its later figure counterparts

[sephirajo]

Okay, it already updated.  Time to remake Xochi xDD  Also waiting for a twin braids, no buns option. Like a proper Mexica woman thank you very much.

https://www.nexusmods.com/baldursgate3/mods/10?tab=description

[pugtor-who]

I gotta say, I've grown into quite a fan of 14's Sonic Screwdriver, but I'm pretty disappointed in the toy.

It looks and feels fantastic to use - I'm so glad Character didn't go with the 11th Doctor-style springloaded claws, since they were so aggressive and failed to stay retracted over time.

But there are 2 distinct problems.

1) the sound quality is muddy as hell? It's very odd - maybe it just sounds like this in the show? But compared to the Character Options toy of 13's screwdriver, it just sounds crappy.

2) it barely projects any light? Like, obviously I'm not expecting it to function as a torch, but even so - I think it must be to do with where the LED is placed below the emitter bead and the shape of the solid bead, but it doesn't refract the blue light through it??

The core glows blue, the claws glow blue, those little jimmy-jammy core circles glow blue...and then the emitter bead itself shines a pale, clear light? Baffling design choice.

[honourablejester]

Starfinder Themed Augmentations

I’ve been browsing the augmentation options in Starfinder. They’re kind of fascinating and occasionally horrifying, and it’s a fascinating subsystem to have available for a character, enabling them to in-universe customise their own bodies. If you have a paranoid asteroid miner from the Diaspora, they can give themselves pressurised lungs as an emergency backup in case of decompression. If you have an envoy with a spooky vibe, they could go for a vampire voice necrograft to get a threatening edge. Or if you have an expressionistic artist who’s fascinated by light, they could go for a bioluminescent skin and an angler’s light. And those are just some basic options. There’s room to go a LOT more extreme, if you’ve got credits and room in your body. Some are useful, some are less useful, but it fascinating that they’re an option.

So. Some ideas for themed sets of augmentations, if you character wants to pursue specific bodily ideals. For reasons, perhaps not all of them sane. Heh.

Tentacle Monster

Paranoid Spacer

Performance Artiste

BioTitan

Tentacle Monster

First and weirdest, but I love that this is honestly something you can pursue. If you want a character who gradually turns themselves into a tentacle creature, that is 100% doable. If you want to be a cultist from Aucturn who wants to modify themselves in honour of the outer gods (or a devotee of Oras with similar ideals), there are options. Particularly from the biotech augmentations tree, and one from the necrograft tree too. Unfortunately, a lot of them live in your spine, so you’ll have to pick and choose, but if you choose the biotechnician theme you can get an extra one at 12th level (or take the Augmented archetype to get it at Level 4).

So. Some tentacular options to pick up: Slimelashes (lvl 4, Hands), for little ‘protoplasmic tendrils’ that you can shoot out of your hands to snatch unattended objects, Mesoglea Tentacles (lvl 4, Spine), for a cloud of wavering jellyfish tendrils extending from your back that you can wrap in tight for 1 minute for a bit of slashing resistance and the ability to sting melee enemies, Healing Tendrils (lvl 3/7/9/13/16, Spine), for a translucent tendril you can send out to heal people and a few other things, Grasping Tentacle (lvl 6, Hand/Arm), where you turn one of your arms into a tentacle for some extra reach and a bonus to combat manoeuvres, Unity Tendril (lvl 6/10/14, Spine), for touch telepathy via spinal tentacle, Mobility Tentacles (lvl 8, Legs/Feet), where you replace your lower limbs with 4 tentacles to gain built in climb/swim speed, and, from the Necrograft tree, Squirming Entrails (lvl 1/6/12/18/20, Throat), where you line your throat with writhing entrails that bolster your digestion and can be extruded from your mouth to act as auxiliary limbs.

Personally, if you were going for the full visual tentacle experience, I’d go for Squirming Entrails, Slimelashes (grasping tentacle just makes it feel unbalanced, unless you were getting two, and I think I’d like to keep both opposable thumbs and the ability to shoot little tentacles from my hands), Mobility Tentacles, and your favourite of Healing Tendrils/Unity Tendrils/Mesoglea Tentacles. Mesoglea Tentacles gives much more visual impact, but less utility, but if we are going for the visual, this character wanted to be a tentacle monster, then I’d go for them first. If you have biotechnician or some other means of picking up multiple biotech augments in the same system, I’d pick Mesoglea and Healing Tendrils, myself.

So now by level 8, if you got them as soon as they became available, you have tentacles for legs, writhing jellyfish tendrils drifting out from your spine, little tentacles you can shoot from your hands, and horrifying tentacly entrails you can shoot from your mouth, plus maybe a healing or telepathy tentacle you can also extrude from your spine. Nyarlathotep and/or Oras are very pleased.

Paranoid Asteroid Miner/Colonist/Vaster/Spacer in General

Redundancy is the key to survival. This was the mantra beaten into your brain from day 1. Vacuum and other environmental dangers lurk only a thin skin of metal away at all times. Plan for system failures. If your bedroom is vented out into the vacuum in the morning, with you naked and asleep in it, try and see to it that you have means to survive.

This is that character who runs numbers on scenarios like ‘if the sleeping quarters on the station get hit and vented into space in the morning’ or ‘if I’m captured by enemies, stripped naked and thrown out an airlock or into a toxic wilderness’, how screwed am I? The sort of character who just wants all the survival augments, because you can’t always trust that you’ll be in armour or a spacesuit when the worst happens, or that your armour/space suit/ship/space station will remain intact.

So they look at options like Pressurised Lungs (lvl 1, Lungs), Cold Inured Graft (lvl 1, Skin), Withered Lungs (lvl 1/6/12/18/20, Lungs), Void Flyer Graft (lvl 4, Lungs & Spine), Regenerative Blood (lvl 5/8/12/15/19, Heart), Atmospheric Adaptation Graft (lvl 6, Lungs), Starhide (lvl 7, Skin), Personal Stasis Unit (lvl 9, Skin)/Stasis Gland (lvl 9, Spine), Stillheart (lvl 11, Heart), Superorgan (lvl 14/15/16/17/19, Brain Heart Lungs). Maybe even things like an Emotional Regulator (lvl 4, Brain), to control panic responses in a crisis.

Maybe they’ve seen habitat rings go down in station attacks, or they’ve lost buddies on space walks gone wrong, or they’ve heard horror stories of disabled starships and slow deaths, and they’re willing to spend credits on their paranoia to avoid it happening to them.

(Yes, sarcesians are one of my favourite species, and yes the Diaspora is one of my favourite settings, and yes, my paranoid little ysoki mechanic from the Farabarrium wants pressurised lungs and later void flyer just in case. Is her bedroom ever actually going to be vented into space, or a bunch of space pirates strip her naked and throw her out an airlock? Probably not, but you can bet she’s thought about it happening. Redundancy is the key to survival! Just because you’ve got environmental protections and armour doesn’t mean you shouldn’t plan for the worst anyway!)

Performance Artiste

For when you want body mods that are useful, yes, but also pretty, impressive, or themed around performance, captivation, allure. For the character who wants to be stunning, in more ways than one, and is willing to pay to achieve it. Also works were for certain types of spies/envoys. These are augmentations designed to make specific impressions on people, for good or ill.

(A lot of these live in your skin/throat/eyes, so pick and choose)

Bioluminescent Skin (lvl 1, Skin), Vocal Modulator (lvl 1, Throat), Vampire Voice (lvl 1/6/12/18,20, Throat), Angler’s Light (lvl 2, Spine), Skin Mimic Graft (lvl 2, Skin), Psychoactive Eyes (lvl 2/6, Eyes), Mighty Vocal Cords (lvl 3, Throat), Glass Skin (lvl 4, Skin), Resonant Larynx (lvl 6/11, Throat), Ultralight Wings (lvl 7/11/14, Arms), Enchanting Vocal Modulator (lvl 11/14/17, Throat)

(I love glass skin in particular, and that’s not because of invisibility, but because it comes from glass serpents, and it’s just a fantastic background worldbuilding detail)

BioTitan

Your body is a weapon. Your body is many weapons. You want to be the most lethal thing in the world to get close to. You absolutely cannot be disarmed, because you built your lethality into your bones. And skin. And throat. And a few other things. Nor have you neglected your defenses, either.

Options: Restraining Spinneret (lvl 1, Hand), Bone Blade (lvl 1/6/12/18/20, Arm), Enervating Hand (lvl 1/6/12/18/20, Hand), Stench Glands (lvl 1/6/12/18/20, Skin), Venom Spur (lvl 2, Hand), Sonic Vocaliser (lvl 2/7/11/16/20, Throat), Dragon Gland (lvl 2/10/26, Throat), Resistant Hide (lvl 2/4/7/10/13/17, Skin), Optical Laser (lvl 3/7/11/15/19, Eye), Rending Talons (lvl 4/8/12/16, Feet), Bone Spines (lvl 5/9/13/17, Spine), Acid Reservoir (lvl 5/12/19, arm or throat), Flametongue (lvl 5/9/13/18, Throat), Psychic Chatter (lvl 5/9/13/17, Brain), Dermal Plating (lvl 5/7/9/12/14/16/19, Skin), Adrenal Booster (lvl 8, Endocrine), Shock Fist (lvl 9/12/17/20, Hand), Superorgan (lvl 14/15/16/17/19, Brain Heart Lungs)

So if your character wants to pick up, say, a bone blade, a laser eye, acid breath and plated hide, as well as bolster their internal organs, and maybe pick up a cheap spider spinneret in their hand for when they need someone alive afterwards … Or a bone blade, bone spines and rending talons on their feet, for a general theme of spiky boi … sonic vocaliser and shock fist for a thunderous sort of experience …

Weaponising your body is absolutely an option in Starfinder.

Final Thoughts:

If you’re getting the impression that the biotech augments are my favourite types, you’re not wrong. I didn’t realise I preferred biopunk to cyberpunk, and possibly I don’t, as a genre, but I do like the idea of a character, in a galaxy full of aliens, being able to adapt their own form to merge elements of others. A bit of chameleon instinct, maybe, or possibly a chimera instinct. Heh. But I do enjoy the idea of ubiquitous augmentations regardless. I wouldn’t mind a little space engineer with slimelashes, an angler’s light, pressurised lungs, and starhide. A bounty hunter/assassin with glass skin and psychoactive eyes. A space femme fatale with psychoactive eyes, enchanting vocal modulator and a venom spur. Augmentations are a great characterisation option, because unlike external gear, these are things that the character is choosing to alter their body to accommodate. So what does that say about their personality? Are they just chill about body modification in general? Do they generally not like it but they have particular fears/needs that make them make exceptions? Is it just handy to always have something on (or in this case in you)? Or are they pursuing augmentation as an ideal, a continuous project, seeking the perfect form?

I enjoy that this is there as an option for any character to dabble in. There’s a nice range that lets you explore both practical and RP options (and practical options as RP options).

[expectopatronum18]

-JK Rowling's original draft for the Battle of the Department of Mysteries.

IN TEXT:

"Harry runs for it with prophecy but Sirius is in trouble - goes back - chucks away the prophecy -Sirius chooses death rather than the Dementor - snake there - Voldemort comes"

Personally, I wish this had made it to the books.

In the book though, Sirius's arrogance and underestimation of his opponent in his last moments are supposed to parallel Bellatrix's last words as well, hence showing the distinct similarity between the 2 cousins fighting on diametrically opposite sides.

What does this prove anyways? That Sirius was arrogant? Ofc he was, we see examples of this throughout the 5th book. Plus this in NO WAY compares to the type of arrogance Bellatrix exhibits. She takes pleasure in Molly's grieving of Fred and taunts her asking what her children would do without their mother.

Sirius does have a dark malicious streak, yes, but it still doesn't compare to the way Bellatrix takes pleasure in the torture of her victims.

On the other hand, if Sirius's death had been written the way it is here, it would show a facet of his character. Throughout the books, Sirius tries to pretend as if everything is perfectly normal. When he isn't able to keep up the act, he locks himself away from the world by staying in Buckbeak's room for hours, indulges in drinking, and is affected by the smallest of remarks. Nobody shows him any compassion except Harry, who never shows it out though( poor boy's never learned how to). Mrs. Weasley calls his depressive isolation 'fits of sullens', and literally flings his deepest regret to his face over a simple argument concerning Harry. Dumbledore insists he has to stay in the house despite being a personal witness to all this.

Showing Sirius choosing death rather than trying to fight off the dementors( something he claims would enjoy: “Personally, I’d have welcomed a dementor attack. A deadly struggle for my soul would have broken the monotony nicely") would have really shown the depth to which he struggled during those 12yrs, and just how much he was brushing off his suffering by making that claim. Making him choose death as a means of escape even when Harry's safety hasn't been fully guaranteed at the moment( the thing he cared for the most) would have instilled a deeper understanding of why he acted the way he did in phoenix, and would have ultimately made his death soo much sadder( not lyk we needed that tho 😭 )