#how to be

[talenlee]

How To Be: Cassandra and Rapunzel from Tangled (In 4e 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.

You know the story of Rapunzel? The kid’s story about a girl with long hair in a tower which you can tell as a bedtime story and it takes maybe ten minutes, fifteen if you’re doing a lot with the voices and details and want to make the witch’s end really grisly? Well, yeah, turns out that got a movie back in the day and then that movie got a TV series and that TV series kicks ass, and so for this Smooch Month, I decided to try and make an article about base-level optimising choices for a pair of characters, a battle couple. In this case, one of those Battle Couple members is Rapunzel, the hero of the story Rapunzel, and the other is, uh

Her name’s Cass.

Original art by Nonadraws

And hey, I’m going to talk about some spoilers for a kid’s cartoon you probably didn’t watch but I do like it and I think if you care about spoilers, well you should watch it without me being the way you find out about the third story arc of the TV series and what it means okay byeee.

Alright, what do you know about Rapunzel and Cassandra? They’re Disney Princess style characters so it’s not like you see a lot of comic book measurement stuff going on in their stories. They’re adventure stories, and the characters are as tough and strong and smart and witty as they need to be to get you to an ad break, or, because this was late 2018, probably to the next streaming check-in. Though maybe they have ads on Disney+ now, it wouldn’t surprise me.

The characters are pretty basic, though so it means it’s not that hard to give a rudimentary breakdown of how they present in the story and then how that informs choices about how to build them in the rest of the game.

Rapunzel,

Is a charismatic leader with a huge variety of skills. In the story of Tangled she’s shown developing a huge variety of skills, including engineering, crafting, knot-tying and juggling, which implies mathematical skill.

Extremely sociable and prosocial and operates in a good faith with almost everyone.

Access in some form or another to influential music; she can sing songs that change people’s minds or maybe make a compelling case.

Cass, on the other hand:

Routinely is shown handling weapons and wearing armour

Is represented as being physically fit and uses her physical strength to achieve things

Doesn’t, at first demonstrate any magical powers or prowess

For this exercise, the challenge is not in trying to find a way to represent everything the characters can do but instead to present an example of how two players can construct their characters so they fundamentally work together, while sticking to the framework presented above. It’s also going to try and build a pair of characters that work together expressing the different versions of these characters that you can perceive throughout the story, in a way that fills two complementary roles in a party.

Basically, how do you make team synergy that also leaves other people ways to connect, and can it be done such it looks like the different possible iterations of Cassandra and Rapunzel?

Before the Beginning

First principles, established introduction for Cass and Rapunzel. You have Rapunzel, as she was at the end of the movie Tangled, and her handmaiden Cass. These are characters who are very new to one another and new to their relationship to the world. Rapunzel has not been a princess before, and Cass has been a handmaiden in waiting looking for a princess to take up the mantle.

Cassandra in this time is also sneaking out to fight. She wants to be a warrior, she has aims to be a knight, but her predominant job is to be a handmaiden doing needlecraft and proper courtly management. At this point I would suggest you can represent Cass best with a Rogue, and Rapunzel, without magical powers as a Warlord.

The build I’d pick for Rapunzel is a lazy Warlord – the build that doesn’t actually have to make attacks of its own, and only grants them to other people. The best advantage of this build for Rapunzel is that it avoids her needing a high strength score, and instead focuses on things like her Wisdom and Charisma. While Rapunzel does not commonly wear heavy armour, this kind of build can give up on armour in exchange for better and more free movement.

As a rogue, Cass can emphasise a good basic attack, which is exactly the kind of thing a Warlord wants to have on hand. The Thief build from Heroes of the Fallen Lands starts with a good basic attack, and can do things that emphasise and improve it.

During The Day

The next major iteration of the pair, Cassandra is now openly able to act outside of the Handmaiden duties she has in the castle. She gets involved in fights, but her fighting is in defense and protection of Rapunzel. Rapunzel, on the other hand, now has access to her hair again, which changes a lot about how she acts – now she’s a character with a lot of reach and the means to control people at distance.

For this pairing, which represents the bulk of the narrative of the series, I’d represent Cass with a Fighter of some variety, and Rapunzel now as a Bard.

Rapunzel as a Bard can take the Superior Weapon Proficiency (Whip) and have that represent her hair. Melee bards don’t have to care that much about the power of their melee attacks, but they can do things that trigger off those attacks. An example would be the Skald bard, where you set up an aura around you and trigger buff effects off your basic attacks.

The Fighter gets to wear armour of varying degrees, but can mix up a melee weapon and a bare hand, if you want Cass to feel like a fencer, or you can represent a shield with a reinforced arm guard, and play a much more standard fighter build. The bard can grant attacks, or temporary hit points depending on build choices, and the fighter can capitalise on that.

The Lonely Twilight

In the final season, Cass and Rapunzel are apart, broken up by the revelation that Cass is the real child of Mother Gothel and has had to deal with Rapunzel literally being chosen over her by even her own mother. But in this time, Cass embraces magical power, and gets lithomancy magic, a kind of stone based magic. What it looks like is attacking with spikes and having big chunky stone armour. She still draws a great big sword, and she still fights with that.

At this point, the Cass looks a lot more like something like a Paladin. Her powers are driven by her personality and she’s less mobile. If you take this aesthetic, this look, you’re going to see her raging out and swinging a big sword. There’s a lot more magicality to her area control, and if you want the Warden could do the same thing, similar vibes. The heavy armour pulls me towards Paladin here.

Rapunzel is at this point full blown wizarding with glowing eyes and magical incantations and the hair as a whip is less important. For this end, and because a thing like granting basics is less important, I’d instead look to a Cleric as your compatriot pair. Two different sources of divine powers are pretty cool but also they can have overlap on energy damage types. A cleric who goes for blasting lasers and charisma based powers can benefit from the Radiant Mafia build, and that means these two bring the core of what that needs to any given play group.

Junk Drawer Options

It’s pretty cool how many of the leader types can be stuck onto the different versions of Rapunzel. Bards, Clerics, Warlords, they’re all covered, but don’t neglect the value of the Shaman or Artificer, which both can carry a lot of the feelings of the setting even if Rapunzel herself doesn’t do much with it. Cass is very limited but if you don’t want to play the defender type in the group, she can play a dual-wielding Ranger or Scout, too.

At this point the outline of this document is a thousand words. Presenting specific examples of things that can make builds work together in synergy is pretty challenging. There are things like Agile Opportunist and specific ways to maximise basic attacks. With a really off the wall option you can have Cass doing the leader duty of a Bard while Rapunzel takes up the job of a Wizard or even –

yes, I’m going to mention it

A druid.

Okay, okay, I’ll stop.

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

[foodartandotherstuff]

You cannot control the pace of things, I think. By that I mean, to impose a false sense of time on a thing is to strangle it. Let it breathe and flow as it must, as it feels, as it insists. I'm not saying be consumed by a thing, taken over by a force, but rather find your way into a rhythm that feels natural and good and balanced. Some things happen slowly and some fast and some in between. The pace matters less than the intention and the molding, is what I mean.

[howifeltabouthim]

. . . I wanted him to teach me how to be.

Chris Kraus, from I Love Dick

[celtadri]

What are you supposed to do anywhere, really>

[vizthedatum]

Menstruation day-3 and I’m struggling with energy. Physical and spiritual. Deciding between pushing myself and resting is not easy. Working when you’re still financially not where you want to be and knowing that if you fuck up, you could be unemployed again… is terrifying. I know I can get employment but I hate it. It’s not dumb of me to say that I wish I could be comfortable. I wish I were as successful as I dream of being. What does that look like? Figuring out boundaries to reduce and be aware of toxic attachment patterns is not easy. How many more people do I cut off when I realize I’m hurting myself? Or when they’re hurting me? Even if it’s not abuse? Knowing that you’re deeply and madly in love with someone (who can’t and won’t care) and feeling so protective that it’s almost primal… is not easy, especially when you’ve already told yourself that pursuing that connection is bad for you (it was) and that you deserve more (you do). And then feeling so upset that your ex/spouse screwed you over the way they did. Ugh - like babe, you helped me wake up but at what cost… and when will you fucking wake up? Coming to terms with your relationship anarchist way of being - and realizing omfg this is how I’ve been operating my whole life - is heartbreaking. I must protect my inner love and energy… because then I can love harder. And I am. And miraculously (not really - I’m actually letting myself be open to this) I’m getting all that love back to me. I deserve so much. I absolutely love the relationships I’m cultivating now - and I know I’m getting more insightful about it all day by day. I’m still in my head about what I have to offer - it would be so easy to start diminishing myself and my needs to do that. I want to just be in the flow - offer what I want, what I can, what feels right, work on connection and collaborative repair, and be. That’s how I want to be in all my relationships: work, home, everywhere.

[rhaenyradelights]

i love rhaenyra so much im so upset about it

[whiteshipnightjar]

Zoozve, my beloved

[daylighteclipsed]

ENTRY LEVEL MEANS NO EXPERIENCE. IT MEANS NO PORTFOLIO OF RELEVANT SAMPLES. ENTRY LEVEL IS ENTRY LEVEL

[wizardpotions]

Christmas as a cultural icon is starting to get really dystopian in a climate sense, december has historically been a time of year in which there would be snow in a significant portion of europe and north america, and the fact that its not even icy this time of year and all the christmas songs and decorations reference a time of year that will likely never exist in the same way again in my life time is so strange.

[oncorhynchus-nerka]

VERY IMPORTANT a dam in the Netherlands, the weerdsluis lock, is directly on a migratory path for spawning fish. They have a worker stationed there to open the door for the fish, but they can take a while to open it. So to keep the fish from getting preyed on by birds they installed a doorbell. Only, the fish don't have hands to ring the doorbell. If you go to their website, they have a LIVE CAMERA AND A DOORBELL that YOU RING FOR THE FISH when they're waiting, and then the dam worker opens the door for them! I can't express how obsessed I am with this. look at this shit. oh my god.

Please check on the fish doorbell once in a while :)

[talenlee]

How To Be: Harrowhark Nonagesimus (In 4e 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.

I’ve had this one in the drawer since like April, I didn’t realise just how much I was going to enjoy digging into it two books later.

Oh and hey, sorta-but-not-really spoiler warning? I don’t mean to spoil the books to examine the character, but there is some inextricable hairs that come off with this particular bandaid. Particularly, if you know nothing about the books, there’s a vision of ‘proper’ fandom that says I shouldn’t do anything that gives you any impression of anything in the story, that I should somehow make a hermetically sealable piece of media because someone hypothetically should know nothing about the book when they first engage with it. This is silly. Telling you that, for example, in Harrow The Ninth we get to see that Harrow is a really good necromancer, that shouldn’t be considered as a violence against engagement with the books.

I liked the books, by the way, I think you should check ’em out.

First thing we do for these articles is to consider the character we’re trying to replicate, and to look at them in terms of what they can or can’t do, how they do things, and how we can capture that feeling. In the game system I’m using here – 4th edition Dungeons & Dragons – there’s a few things that can make Harrow a little challenging to interpret.

You’re Not The Nonagesimus

Harrow’s level of power is going to be hard to replicate in any team story game. The character’s powerful, in a way that holds a whole front of a battlefield on her own. Basically, where 4e D&D wants players to work together in a reasonably small space to engage with combat challenges and more widely apart for non-combat challenges, it’s not the same thing as ‘I’m going to this opposite end of the fortress to you.’

Instead I want to talk about significance and communication.

First up, significance! You don’t need to make a character whose apparent, tangible power, is unfairly overbalanced compared to anyone else. You don’t need some excuse that makes your character ‘more powerful’ and does things out of type to everyone else in the group. Don’t approach things where the story and the cinema in your head has to match a sense of prestige in the actual play experience. So set aside ‘Harrow can do big things, so I should be able to do big things.’ Big is relative. Harrow’s conflicts are on the scale of an empire, and she fights truly dreadful things that are big and scary when she fights them, even if they only ever seem to usually get to be ‘the size of a dude’ or a big monster.

Next up, communication! In the context of her own story, Harrow has two major narrative threads and in each one, despite being around people who can help her, she doesn’t talk to very well and therefore, spends a lot of time on her own rather than working with friends. This is because in the context of her story, she is dealing with matters of life and death and the movements of gods through eternity, and she doesn’t know who to trust. Do not take this vibe as a demand to be an annoying player. Talk to the other players. You don’t even need to talk in character, talk to them out of character about how to cajole or direct or get information out of you, work out the best ways for the narrative to work that feels right. Is your Harrow a super smart one? Is she a bumbling goofaloopus who thinks she’s super smart? In the former case, she might insightfully deploy information to the party, working out the best way to do it. If she’s a dummy, you can have her slip up or let information out that she’s not realising they notice, because why would she notice that they’re not stupid. Basically, work with other players.

Basically, you’re not going to be bringing Harrowhark. You’re going to be bringing your version of a Harrowhark. You’re going to be doing a reimagine, a spin, a different vibe. In a D&D style game, that might mean this grumpy little rat baby wandering around behind the group, scrutinising things then at the last minute producing a deeply insightful message that everyone else is waiting for. It might mean you’re a smug necromancer who’s so goth she shits bats and when the time comes for battle to start you make bone spines appear out of the ground and impale a dozen enemies in one shot. The game has a different demand, and the important thing is not perfectly replicating the greatest necromancer in history, but rather, capturing the vibe.

Okay, what is the vibe then?

Considering Harrow

Harrow’s a necromancer, that’s a given. We don’t see her do a lot of what you might think of as autonomous necromancy. No summoning a skeleton and sending it to do a thing, like a programmed entity. It’s not that we have proof she can’t do it, but we know she can turn little bits of bone into big bits of bone, but don’t put much stock in bones as a construct versus bones as a tool.

We know she’s not strong. Not totally lacking in strength, but not strong. Generally there’s implication that necromancers like her are wussbags, so there’s a certain measure of expected sickliness going on. Still, despite this, we know that she makes herself armour of bone, and even a sort of powered armour regimen that lets her use bone supports to carry heavy objects! Bone shields come up too.

While she’s definitely a good necromancer, the stuff that makes you a good necromancer can be compared to the stuff that makes you a good theoretical physicist. She’s capable of engaging with high level theoretical applications of necromantic theory, ways to bind and attach souls and wards, all sorts of things that you don’t need to understand unless you’re also a necromancer trying to un-necromance the stuff she’s necromancing.

We know that Harrowhark can carry and use a sword — she does, in fact! Not well most of the time, but it’s an option.

Reconstruction

Alright, so how do we construct someone who has the makings of all these parts? Well, this is actually pleasantly open compared to some other versions we’ve looked at for exploration in 4th ed D&D.

First of all, we can rule out that she’s probably not martial, primal or psionic as her power source. Martial characters are nonmagical and tend to be about exerting very material forces on people. Primal is usually nature magic, and, without going into spoilers, while you can make a long reach that that’s applicable it kinda isn’t, given the who and what is involved. There’s a definite mental magicality to her; she cares about concentrating, devising formulas, plans and projections – basically, it’s very easy to imagine that Harrow’s power needs to be intelligent. Force of will, maybe? But she’s definitely smart as much as we can measure that.

She’s definitely going to need or want that standby of Ritual Caster that lets any given character pick up magical rituals and rites to do things like create keys out of bone. It’s even got a currency for its execution, ‘ritual components,’ which uh, in her case? They’re probably all bones.

Armour is wide open, and Harrow is vague enough that we could have her as a lilting dress-wearing robey wizard, or as a crunchy tank with the right excuses, though I bet she whines about it a lot.

Build Basics

Now, if there’s anything that’s going to matter to every possible ways to build this character, this is where we get it out. In this case, Ritual Caster is our first place to start. No matter how you spoon this soup, Harrowhark needs access to a wide variety of magical abilities across a host of different disciplines that don’t matter for combat. Rituals are a great way to get those — and you want to dedicate some money as you level to pick up some rituals that are very her.

Some rituals to grab that I think match what people would expect a Harrow-like being able to do:

Gentle Repose

Hold Portal

Silence

Tenser’s Floating Disk (MAKE IT OUT OF BONE)

Undead Ward

Speak With Dead

There’s others – but really, just look at the rituals for anything you like and pick up the ones that make sense ‘made out of chunks of bone.’ Play with it, and I recommend being as unsettling as possible. If I ever do this in my own games, I am absolutely playing someone whose phantom steed is a horse made out of human bones and the hooves are enormous molars pressed flat-down onto the earth.

Anyway, where was I, oh yes!

The Artificer: A Heart Is A Pump

The Artificer starts with Ritual Caster, good. The Artificer gets to summon things, which you can theme as constructs made out of bone, good. The Artificer can use an implement instead of a weapon, even better! The Artificer is intelligence-based, but also can wear heavier armour, perfect!

The Artificer has a problem in that it’s single best power they get at level 1 and it never stops being good. It’s called Magic Weapon and you need to face it that as an Artificer, you’re always going to have to treat your powers in terms of ‘what can I weave around a Magic Weapon?’

The Cleric: Faith In Jod

Another armoured class, the Cleric has access to a lot of necrotic powers. They’re even implement based, so you don’t have to spend time lugging around a big sword you can’t use, you wimp. But the other thing is, these implement powers are touch range, which is very in keeping with Harrow being able to throw fingernails at people to turn them into spires of bone, or having to touch someone to make the bones in their body do extremely hecked up stuff.

You can also heal people, which is weird, but you know, whatever hobby you’ve got. Putting a body together can’t be that much harder than taking it apart. Also, starts with Ritual Caster.

The Wizard: Perhaps Most Obviously

Almost any given piece of Wizard nonsense can be done here. The Wizard is one of the weird 4e class options in that because you don’t have a very specific purpose beyond ‘being wizardy’ they let the Wizard do a lot of stuff. My particular fave here is the starting power rotting doom which turns off enemy healing, and is great for regenerators, restless dead which is a pile of bones grabbing at people who get close, and dread presence which also is not only a big area blast of nasty bone spear junk, it also ignores necrotic resistance.

Oh, and Wizards get access to the level 9 power Animate Dead which lets you resurrect one of the defeated foes and use their body like a puppeteer, which y’know. Not inappropriate for Harrowhark!

Junk Drawer

The Swordmage sits in the junk drawer. Not because it’s inherently worse than the others but because it flies in the face of the idea of a low-strength build. Similarly, the Paladin could be a great option if you want to be a center-stage defender type Harrow, using your implement, and maybe even picking up the Blackguard powers that let you throw Necrotic damage at people. Both of these builds need to pick up Ritual Caster, though so it’s a little less free than just starting with it.

Harrowhark is a character who we have seen – literally – do hilariously little in her story compared to what a typical D&D character would do. This is just another way to add her into another AU, to find your own version of the character and give her a chance to have adventures and fun and maybe be a bit less abused by literally every part of reality.

And isn’t that fun?

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

[necromimetics]

can’t stop thinking about my friend’s cishet partner who said last night that he doesn’t think anyone is the same gender. god-tier take.

[cassassinated]

I miss the days when, no matter how slow your internet was, if you paused any video and let it buffer long enough, you could watch it uninterrupted

[apollos-boyfriend]

mspec gays are so cool i love you bilesbians and pangays and everything in between each and every one of you deserve the world mwuah

[ladychlo]

Motaz Azaiza interviewed by Ajstream after fleeing Gaza, please do watch the whole interview...

[ankle-beez]

nimona (film that was saved by netflix after disney canned it along with closing the studio that was making it) and the boy and the heron (2d animated movie, the type that disney doesn't make anymore due to "limitations with the medium") getting animated feature noms at the oscars this year and not wish... bro that's funny