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dress up time with inquisitor lavellan, my beloved elven fashionista

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paladin oaths :)!

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Dragon lineage over generations

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i keep forgetting to upload stuff here lol. at any rate, my new sorcerer for a campaign where the pcs have all already died and are each from different time periods. her name is eirys :)

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Making sense of my girl's outfit design.

🚫 Do NOT repost / trace / plagiarize / use the characters / train a.i. with / etc. ! all rights reserved.

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Wisp

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Willow for @lyexsah !

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A Magical Taxonomy

Warlock: from wær (old English, “pact/oath”) + loga (proto-Germanic, “liar”) + hard “-ck” (Scottish English); Oathbreaker (contextually; breaker of Baptismal Oaths; hence also Apostate)

Wizard: from Wis (old English, “knowledgeable”) + -ard (same, “too much of”); Possessor of too much knowledge

Witch: from weyk (proto-indo-European, “apart, separated, different”)[connotations akin to Latin’s “Sacre”]; Sacred Outsider

Sorcerer: from Sors (Latin, “Fate”) and Ser (same,“to bind”); Fate Manipulator

Druid: from dru (proto-Celtic, “Oak”) + weyd (same, “to see”); Oak-Seer, or Tree-Knower

Cleric: from kleros (Ancient Greek, “lots/ casting lots/ drawing lots”) [contextually; public servants were selected by drawing lots, as opposed to, say, voting]; Public Servant / Clerk

Bard: from bard (proto-Celtic, “Bard”); Bard

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So, from a worldbuilding perspective, wizards have schools, right? It's an easy 1:1 to go from the idea of people who gets their magic from study to the cultural touchstone of academia, and that helps us figure out what institutions and cultural norms are like in our setting.

Correspondingly, clerics have temples, place where their connection to the divine was fostered among a community of fatihful who share their devotion if not their magical gifts. If you were in a d&d world and needed someone with cleric skills, you'd head toward a temple.

But what do Sorcerers have? They're usually presented as one off oddballs or magical oddities but if power exists it's a logical consequence of worldbuilding that there's going to be institutions dedicated to preserving and refining that power.

I'm going to argue that Sorcerers have dynasties, an extended family who share the collective potential for inheriting the magical gift of their powerful ancestor(s). Dynasties would likely be closely tied to the reigning power structure, extended privileges and patronage the same way that noble families are in exchange for their marital support. If you were a ruler in a d&d world, having Battlecasters on hand to shore up your powerbase is just as important as having cavalry and footmen, so you want to make sure the people who are capable of passing down their magical gift are having kids so that their heirs can support your heirs.

This puts a sorcerous dynasty in an interesting position depending on how people in your world think that magic is inherited. Is the gift recessive? Do you breed for it or follow your heart? Are you having too few children or too many? How does that factor into material inheritance? What do you do with all the children who don't show signs of being able to do magic? What if the gift skips a generation or two one of THEIR children show signs of sorcery? Can you let them marry into other families knowing you might be giving away some of your power? Could you use that as a political bargaining chip? How do you handle bastards? What's your stance on monogomy? How do you handle fertility issues? Is the magic waning over time or is it just diluted or are none of your heirs just not living up to your potential? Is there some unadvised ritual or alchemy or dark pact you can make to restore greatness to your line or awaken dormant potential? Does intermarriage with other magical practitioners of different disciplines strengthen or weaken the chance of inheritance? Is there a way to bend politics in your favour to ensure you get this infusion of new blood? Is that baseborn adventurer with the sorcerous gifts a threat to your power or a potential spouse for your firstborn?

All these are brilliant adventureseeds that I don't think I've seen explored all that often. There's only a specific type of player and a specific type of adventure that are concerned with court politics/brigerton style affairs of the nobility, but making those nobles into spell-slinging-sorcerers make them FAR more relevant characters for the background of an adventure.

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"let me show you what planar travel does to humans" -Planar archsorceress.

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oh to be a little elven sorceress, daydreaming in a tavern about her next adventure… instead i have to endure the horrors

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i may have missed goblin week but every week is goblin week bay-beeee.

over on patreon VanillaCaramelDonuts asked for a moon witch and Trip Space-Parasite’s p threw me a prompt about ‘the source of all light returning to life’ so i imagine this coven gathers on eclipses to make sure everything goes smoothly and nothing, oh i don’t know, tries to eat the moon or steal the moon or romance the moon out of the sky. there are so many tales around the world of people screwing with the moon and even though most of them are pure myth some are true. the witches’ job is to keep those weirdos out of the sky at times when certain natural events make reality extra flexible. once the eclipse is over they can usually breathe easy but they never stray far from their telescopes. an ounce of prevention is better than a pound of deadly apocalyptic tidal waves.

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New modern magic homebrew creature

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Thinking about a duct tape wizard

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It kind of bugs me that whenever somebody tries to draw a D&D orc with high Charisma, it’s always, like, slender frame, smooth skin, small tusks, high forehead, etc.

I mean, leaving entirely aside the fact that D&D explicitly treats Charisma as a metaphysical quality that operates wholly independently of physical appearance - you could have 20 Charisma and be ugly as hell - why are we making the high Charisma orc pretty by human standards? Seems awfully chauvinistic, if you think about it.

I wanna see a 20 Charisma orc who’s an absolute knockout by orc standards.

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