#I just wanted to draw my blorbos as silly fantasy characters smh

[reduxulousoctopus]

DnDCAU Character Updates

Still occasionally plugging away at my Justice League animated series/D&D thing as I do more research, figured I'd update any of y'all who are interested.

Just to refresh, my two rules for picking species & classes for this AU are:

Focus on what a character "is" (their history, personality, thematic archetype, vibes, etc) rather than what they "do" (their specific powers & abilities). There are plenty of actual DC-inspired builds out there which do try to replicate the characters' specific powers, and those are great (and take a lot more knowledge of D&D than I have), but I wanted to put my own spin on things and haven't seen anyone come at it from this specific angle before.

Because it would be boring if half of the cast in a D&D setting were humans, canonically human characters can be reimagined as any of the "common" species, with exotic and monstrous lineages reserved for canonically alien/otherwise inhuman characters.

As always, suggestions are welcome. This got kinda long, so if you just want to know the League's races & classes, scroll down to the bottom for the TL;DR. Otherwise...

SUPERMAN

Clark is still an aasimar Paladin, and hasn't changed much from the original post. At the risk of taking the name "Small"-ville a bit too literally, Clark grew up in a village mostly populated by halflings, Ma and Pa included. As such, he pretty much always knew he was adopted, but assumed he was a normal human until his aasimar abilities began manifesting when he was a teenager, at which point his parents showed him the various celestial artifacts they found with him when he was a baby. In D&D terms, he has the Folk Hero background. He'd start out as your classic Truth, Justice, & the American Way-style Devotion Paladin, but after the events of the episode "Legacy" (or in this AU, the finale of his previous D&D campaign), his subclass changed to Oath of Redemption. I guess Darkseid would be replaced with... Bane? Maybe? I still don't know a whole lot about the D&D pantheons tbh, but he's the god of evil and tyranny and he wants to take over all the planes, which sounds pretty Darkseid-y. I briefly considered making Justice Lord Superman an Oathbreaker, but they seem more the type to revel in their own villainy, whereas Lord Clark unquestionably still thinks he's the hero. He's just completely lost hope that criminals can be redeemed, so instead they must be ruthlessly controlled and, if necessary, exterminated. Ergo, Oath of Vengeance.

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BATMAN

Bruce is now a half-elf (inspired by various attempts in the comics to retcon Martha Wayne's ethnicity), and although I considered multi-classing monk to get all of his ninja stuff, I decided to stick with a pure Inquisitive Rogue build--he is the world's greatest detective, after all, so we gotta go all-in on the detective subclass. Besides, there's enough overlap between rogues and monks that you can say that he learned stealth and swordsmanship by training at a temple, anyway. Other than that, his backstory is what you'd expect from D&D Batman. I've seen builds that give him the Noble background and yeah, that makes sense, but who is the Faceless background for if not Batman? Born to wealth and privilege as the son of a nobleman, during a mugging gone wrong, he witnessed the murder of both his parents and thereafter vowed to avenge his family by preventing anyone else from losing their loved ones to criminal violence. He traveled across Faerun as a wandering adventurer, learning the skills that would help him on his crusade, before returning home to don a masked identity: the Bat-Man of... whatever city on the Sword Coast is the equivalent of Gotham. Oh god there's still so much research to do.

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DIANA

As evidenced by the original post, it was a struggle picking Diana's species but I settled on earth genasi as a nod to her being sculpted from clay. She wasn't completely turned into a human in this version because this way is more fun. Hippolyta and the other Amazons are preexisting figures from Greek mythology who could therefore easily fit into the D&D universe, so I've decided that Themyscira is located somewhere in Arborea, the same Outer Plane as Mt. Olympus. Souls of women and girls who died at the hands of men, if claimed by the goddesses of Olympus, are reborn on Themyscira as Amazon warriors. Diana is a War Domain cleric and her patron deity is Athena. I was very tempted to go with Hera & Strength Domain, but alas, some of that subclass's bonus spells don't really fit and Hera's domain is officially listed as Trickery, which definitely doesn't fit. Athena makes sense, anyway, considering there's a big statue of her overlooking the altar where Diana gets her armor. That could also lead to a character arc where Diana starts out really good at the War Domain side of being Athena's champion but initially struggles with her goddess's other domain, Knowledge, reflecting her early naivete and hotheadedness, which eventually matures into genuine wisdom--symbolically represented by Diana unlocking her lasso's ability to compel the truth from people, since Truth is an aspect of Knowledge.

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GREEN LANTERN

I've more or less worked out what the Green Lanterns are in this AU--basically, I saw that Lantern Archons are a thing and ran with it. In this AU, at some point in history, the Archons began granting magical abilities to select mortals who would be entrusted to enforce Law & Good on behalf of the Seven Heavens without being affiliated with any specific god. They send Lantern Archons out across the planes to select worthy mortals, and to act as their assistants if they agree to the terms of the Archons' boon. To avoid drawing too much attention to themselves, these agents started hiding their Archon assistants within special cases which resembled lanterns made of opaque green glass--for which they came to be known as the Green Lantern Brotherhood. John specifically is a variant human Battlemaster Fighter/Celestial Warlock multiclass (maybe ~5/15 level split?). That keeps him from the higher level Warlock stuff, but John didn't use many advanced constructs in the show anyway, so that kinda fits. As someone still figuring out how D&D even works, I was reluctant to multiclass any of the characters at the risk of making things even more complicated for myself. However, there was really no other way to fully represent John as a character, given that he has two such distinct "modes" in combat (the man/marine vs the Green Lantern) and how often the show explored that dichotomy. I still can't decide on his Pact Boon, though. On the one hand, Blade would make better use of his Fighter levels. On the other hand, Pact of the Chain could give him a homebrew Lantern Archon familiar, and *gestures to above paragraph* they're kind of important to this AU's version of the Green Lanterns.

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SHAYERA

...Oh lord. See, in the first version of this, I said that Shayera was an avariel (aka, winged elf). That wasn't actually my first choice, though. Because if you're going to put Hawkgirl in a D&D setting, what are you even doing if you don't make her a literal Hawk Girl? Obviously she has to be an aarakocra, right? However, her romance with John is THE big emotional centerpiece of season two of the Animated Series and quite a lot of Unlimited. And I say this with all love to the bird furries out there (featheries?) but I can't take their romance seriously if she's a bird. It's not even the sex, it's specifically because of how stupid birds look from the front.

But again, hawk girl Hawkgirl! So I don't know. Maybe John's having a less tragic (but far more embarrassing) time romancing Wally instead, and John and Shayera are still best friends? Of course, none of this is even getting into how either the winged elves or aarakocra would end up in the role of the Thanagarians; neither of them are exactly world-conquering societies. Idk man, I'm losing my mind. Oh, she's a Berserker barbarian btw. I considered Ancestral Guardians, re-flavored as the Hawks' reincarnation thing--like her past lives are manifesting as spirit allies or something. Ultimately though, I stuck with your classic "screaming and hitting stuff" barb.

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FLASH

I've changed Wally's species so many times, it's really getting out of hand. You ask me again tomorrow and I'll have probably changed it again. For now, though, he's a tiefling. I'd love to say it's because of some deep comic book lore (his dad was in a cult and got with a succubus!) or a clever reference to his first episode in the DCAU, "Speed Demons", or even just a stupid pun about him being a horny devil. Really, it's because I couldn't come up with a character design that was clearly recognizable as the Flash, so I just gave up and made him red with lightning-bolt shaped horns. Yep, I'm a hack. The one cool design element I came up with (by which I mean it's basically stolen from Karlach Baldursgate) is a glowing magical Lichtenberg figure scar on his chest, as a way to evoke his lightning-bolt symbol without being too obvious. Speaking of lightning, I originally had Wally as a Storm Sorcerer, but decided to save that subclass for characters like Static & Red Tornado. Instead, Wally is now a Wild Magic sorcerer, which suits him better as a comedic character while also reflecting the more dangerous side of the Speed Force and his fear of what his powers could do to himself/others. As for his backstory, this is breaking from DCAU canon (where he was given an origin more like Barry's), but Wally is a Celebrity Adventurer's Scion. He's a superhero nepo baby and I love him.

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J'ONN

For a long time, I just kind of assumed J'onn should be a wizard. "But wait," you say, "Martians don't technically have superpowers. J'onn didn't learn how to shapeshift or fly or read minds by studying ancient tomes or whatever, that's just something innate to his species. You're focusing too much on what he can do, and not who he is! Doesn't that break one of the rules you established at the top of this very post?" Yes, yes it does. Also fuck you. They're my rules, I should be able to break them if I want. J'onn has to be a wizard! He was the one high INT character on the team! Who is going to solve the puzzles, now?! ...Alright, so J'onn isn't a wizard. What is he, then? I've got an idea, but let's figure out his species first and come back to it. My initial "vision" for the series had mind flayers standing in for the unnamed alien invaders from Secret Origins, with J'onn as an ancient gith from before they split into the githyanki and githzerai, who (through some kind of time magic or undying sleep or something) had survived to the present day. But that doesn't quite capture the vibe of the Martians or the tragedy of their genocide, so I came up with a real wildcard alternate option, depending on how willing I am to homebrew shit: J'onn is an original oortling, from before they were enslaved and genetically altered by the mind flayers. So rather than being completely wiped out, J'onn has to live with the knowledge that his people have been genetically altered into helpless livestock and fed upon by mind flayers for centuries. Like that's some fucking All Tomorrows type shit (and like All Tomorrows, it'd be clear by the end that there's still hope for the oortlings, not to return to what they once were but to become something new which still carries the spark of what came before). With all that in mind, Gloomstalker Ranger. Favored enemy: aberrations. The Martian Manhunter is now the Mind-Flayer Slayer.

TL;DR VERSION

Clark - aasimar Oath of Redemption Paladin

Bruce - half-elf Inquisitive Rogue

Diana - earth genasi War Domain Cleric of Athena

John - variant human Battlemaster Fighter/Celestial Warlock

Shayera - aarakocra(?) Berserker Barbarian

Wally - tiefling Wild Magic Sorcerer

J'onn - original oortling (homebrew race) Gloomstalker Ranger