#maybe ill do a series

[whatisurspaghettipolicy]

I think it's really fascinating that a lot of the complaints I see about Shadowheart is her to-hit rate because for me that illuminates a very clever bit of character building via her subclass mechanics. Excuse me a second, I've been a 5e DM for about six years now and I've been thinking a lot about each of the BG3 companions in terms of stats/mechanics haha.

Yes, you can go in and rebuild her and make her a light/life domain and optimise either damage or healing. But we can break down two good story reasons for her being a trickery domain cleric:

(behind a cut bc implied/actual spoilers)

1. Trickery and Shar. Shar is an evil goddess, but she's also the absolute embodiment of the Cain instinct; just a constant opp for her twin sister. She's a duplicitous trickster who has even stolen Selûne's identity in the past. Having Shadowheart as a Trickery domain reminds us - the players - that Shar is a primarily a little dickhead who loves to lie and cheat - which stands at odds with Shadowheart's massive penalties to deception.

Early on in her personal quest, just from this surface read, we know: her god lies, her god's domain and followers are all about trickery, and Shadowheart is very bad at lying directly. When you couple this with the initial places where she gets hit with the ouchies from Shar (the Blighted Village when you're reading about children being taken, the Selûne statue in the Blighted Village, finding Kagha torturing a little girl underground...) and it's quite easy to piece together the arc of her personal quest, in a very OH NO way.

(This could be a whole other stat/build conversation - as a half-elf, Shadowheart should be naturally better than average at social rolls like deception because half-elves receive an automatic +2 to their charisma score at creation...but living in a cult and having your personality shackled to a divine shock collar would absolutely affect that. And her high elf ability [firebolt] relying on intelligence to hit??? The fact that as a half-elf high elf she's likely half moon elf????? I love these little mechanical details.)

2. How trickery clerics are best used. This is where a lot of people who haven't DM'd DnD for the life of a small child fall down I think. But here's the thing: trickery domain clerics are best when they do not fight at all. They're decent healers, but it's more than that; they are advantage bots.

Blessing of the Trickster gives your allies advantage on stealth checks. Good for them.

Guiding bolt has a 70% chance to hit? That's why you use Channel Divinity: Invoke Duplicity. You add an illusory version of yourself to the field to distract and disrupt, giving advantage to your allies.

Your teammate's social encounter not going well? You can add either a quick guidance or charm person (again, giving them advantage) to the mix.

Time to sneak? Good thing you get Pass Without Trace. Let's go lesbians! That's a +10 to stealth checks for all your allies!

Each of these things is an action; she sacrifices her own action in a turn to support and aid another. Unless she has Healing Word up, she's left choosing whether to help or heal; actually fighting likely won't be super up in priorities, especially with her to-hit rate.

We know from the House of Grief that she was trained as a healer. It seems odd that she'd be in a subclass that doesn't focus on that - like the Life Domain. But this subclass gives us the greatest indication of all that she was raised as a tool for both Shar and her Mother Superior, making you, as a player, try to balance her ability to heal with her disrupting spells and abilities, meaning a sacrifice in her ability to hit any fuckin thing at all.

Anyway, chef's kiss, I love the secondary story about each companion the game tells via mechanics.

[kirnet]

ankle pain

[obsob]

here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud!!

✷(print shop)✷

[mayordea]

i have made more alice of human sacrifice content.

i had the idea of potentially designing a deck of cards based on it, or at the very least the face cards. and my dumbass drew it at card size so they’re pretty small and perhaps a little crusty. as much as i’d like to release the blank lineart for this, i can’t due to the quality issues :,)

also will probably not draw the face cards until a long time from now. cuz i wanna do something else for now.

[todayisafridaynight]

[unhetalia]

England headcanons (pt. 1):

Chain-smokes like a motherfucker. Alfred, who doesn't smoke and pretends very hard to think smoking is disgusting, hasn't yet realised where his secret smoking kink comes from.

Currently works for British Intelligence/has infiltrated his own government.

Carries around either a cane or umbrella that hides a sword even though he has never ONCE had to use it. He just feels more comfortable having a sword. (He does also carry around a gun, which, in contrast, has been used often.)

Also carries around his own pen, and absolutely loathes the thought of using someone else's. The pen is a first edition Michel Perchin Serpent in Champagne LE Fountain Pen given to him by Alfred - only ten were ever made and it cost a cool 8k. While Arthur has more valuable things - especially from his time as a pirate and back when he personally knew his royal family - the pen is still one of his most prized possessions.

His favourite tea is actually French Earl Grey - which is Earl Grey with rose petals. Not actually French? But Arthur's still pretty annoyed about it.

As mentioned in a few of my other posts - Arthur is incredibly physical and has kept up with sword fighting and various martial arts over the years, and regularly goes to the gym. He's very disciplined about it.

Tends to eat only for fuel as opposed to enjoyment whenever he's left to his own devices.

If pressed, Arthur will admit his best friend is Francis. Francis would say the same about Arthur.

(Despite their individual body counts, Francis and Arthur have never slept with each other.)

(Arthur doesn't have a lot of friends and has a strained relationship with his siblings, and has always felt that people don't like spending time with him. Even when he was on top of the world, working with his government to become an Empire, he still felt like an underdog.)

On that note, Arthur worked with his government longer than the other Nations, and was a huge part of establishing the British Empire. It made his already fraught relationship with his siblings even worse, and he regrets a lot of it.

Nations get scars very rarely, because very few things have the ability to give them scars - magical weapons is one of those things. Out of all the Nations, England has the most scars.

England is amazing at knitting and crochet, and he gifts Francis crocheted figurines from French cartoons for his birthday every year, which Francis adores. He also knits Canada scarves and gloves and beanies whenever he remembers him.

One of Arthur's most embarrassing memories is getting gonorrhea during his pirate days. He didn't have sex for a month after his healing kicked in - a record back then - and he became a lot more diligent in procuring and using the linen sheaths they used as condoms at the time.

Three of Arthur's back molars are implants made of real gold.

Alfred is the first (and last) person Arthur will say he's ever fallen in love with BUT the closest he's come is with another American - a nurse that took care of him during World War I. She was blonde and blue eyed and once shouted Arthur down when he insisted on continuing to fight even with a bullet lodged in his shoulder. She completely disappeared in April 1917, just before the Americans officially joined the war. He sometimes wonders what happened to her.

[pat-thecat]

Feeling like dropping a random piece of information rn from my au

Tango and Jimmy have a grave case of "it's so painfully obvious they like each other but neither can see the other likes them " so bad that it is not only gossip inside Williams garage but in the WHOLE paddock

When Gem moved to Mercedes she got assigned Impulse as her race engineer, let's just say they bonded alot over the pain of seeing those two being so oblivious lol

[marsbotz]

no matter what happens, no matter how much it hurts, you don't stop dancing, and you don't stop smiling, and you give those people what they want.

[pansy-picnics]

rapunzel ref :3c

[hanashii]

aira card redraw !!! he's very pretty :] (dont look too hard at the hands. they're very rough sketches)

og card under the cut!

[wayward-inspiration]

"It was like suffering the sum of agony of countless lifetimes, and he didn't know if he'd be able to feel any other pain again."

----

10 of Sword - Painful endings, deep wounds, betrayal, loss, crisis

Colored ver.

[paintpanic]

Misc. drawings sheet.

[ty-bayonet-betteridge]

3l!grian is frequently depicted as a tragic figure and sometimes i wonder if we even watched the same series

[hmm-ctrl]

whenever i start to feel like ive lost the ability to draw humans (due to frequently being obsessed with robots) i just draw kakashi being stupid repeatedly until i feel better about it

[everyday-chromecanvas-kirby]

day 5 - a totally normal waddle dee

starstruck dee belongs to @starflungwaddledee!

alts!

the resolution.. could be better, but I got the background to look not so much like That via Ibispaint! chrome canvas has no blur or gradation tools so backgrounds are always.. tough (forgive meeee)

and finally my little sketch! I couldn't get her happiness here to convey in canvas, so I figured I'd tack it on to the end as well.

whew, that was long. enjoy!

[todayisafridaynight]

call him cake cause he's got layers baby