Overdesigned
We talked about the perils of over-accessorizing back in “Pass the Eyeliner.” So rather than revisiting the realms of too-detailed character description, what do you say we talk about the other thing going on in today’s comic? Namely, coming up with an idiosyncratic source for your dude’s power.
This is similar territory to reflavoring, where barbarian rage transforms into “cold focus” and paladin smites become “believe in yourself anime strike.” There’s a subtle difference though. Where reflavoring is all about using identical mechanics to describe different concepts, extrapolating is about expanding on existing details. It’s the equivalent of “yes, and” for printed materials, accepting a game’s premise as written but then expanding it as you see fit.
In today’s comic, Warlock is discovering a bit more about his relationship with Archfey. No matter how many time your double check our fairy queen’s rules, however, you won’t find reference to scarf-powered magic. But by the same token, nothing says that’s not how it works. In essence, there’s nothing to stop you from implementing whatever flavorful bonus shenanigans you like.
You could just as easily make it a part of your monk’s practice to train with his master before leveling up. Maybe your cleric confesses his sins as part of spell prep each morning. Or your oracle uses historically-accurate divination techniques as somatic components for her spells.
We all do this to a certain extent. Imagining what spell casting looks like or how advanced fighting techniques actually work is part of the fun of transforming inert stats into fully realized characters. And so, in the interest of doing this biz a bit more deliberately, what do you say we trade favorite examples? In today’s comments section, tell us all about your favorite moments of “extrapolation.” What was the mechanical element, and how did you twist it and shape it to make it your own?
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Reflavoring-wise, I’m a fan of:
Reflavoring mount types or appearances. E.g. a dire rat could be a dire jerboa.
Reflavoring otherwise taboo or evil magic to not punish a player reliant on it (e.g. necromancers, devil-using PCs). For example, making necromancy be puppeteering. Or application of science. Or it not being auto-evil in the lore/setting.
Reflavoring magic item descriptions or appearances (e.g. a cloak of resistance being a scarf) to better fit your character’s look. One specific example was when I custom-crafted a Padma Blossom (which calms users holding it) into a plushie doll.
Seems to me that the Archfey just likes playing with her toys.
And today, she feels like playing with a life-sized dress-up dolly! (I understand from previous mentions that she also undresses this particular dolly in HoEF, so the metaphor seems apt.)
https://askmerriauthor.tumblr.com/post/180092336328/i-always-forget-how-easy-is-to-make-a-magical-girl
Magical girl warlocks
This is how you get Kyubey as your patron.
Pathfinder has an archetype, ‘Magical Child’, that can also work to create this concept.
https://aonprd.com/ArchetypeDisplay.aspx?FixedName=Vigilante%20Magical%20Child
In a Ravenloft game I ran, set in Souragne, one of my players retooled the Monk class into a Monk/Barbarian hybrid. He named his creation the Capoeira. It was both balanced and thematically appropriate for Souragne.
Warlocks are a very easy class to reskin in general… as a class deriving power from their relationship to a more powerful being, they overlap heavily with the divine classes, but the often-transactional nature of that relationship means they’re also workable as bards and other social classes. And while I’ve not tried it, I suspect they’d translate quite nicely into an SF game, where spells and invocations represented tech provided by a patron.
3.5 has an alternate class feature called Spell Reflection that you can take if you’re a Rogue or a Monk instead of Evasion. If a spell attack misses your AC, you can reflect it back at the caster.
I’ve always pictured it as looking much like redirecting lightning in AtlA.
That is exactly the sort of biz I’m talking about. You took the mechanic, asked yourself how it ought to look, and filled in the details from your banks of stored pop culture knowledge. This is how the game is played.
At least until the stored pop knowledge becomes endless Monty Python references.
On the subject of flavoring: If you read the 5E PHB Warlock’s lore sections that everyone glosses over you’ll notice that all their lore talks aboot them being seekers of arcane lore, and being taught it by their patron. This is because 5E Warlocks were going to be Intelligence-based until they were switched to Charisma at the literal last minute in the laziest most search/replace fashion possible. Other remnants of this flavor include the skill-list and pact of the tome.
So yeah, Warlocks are people who learned Arcane magic through online research unlike Wizards who went to magic grad-school. They are not “Artificial Sorcerers” or “Clerics to middle-management”.
I don’t think anyone makes a deal with Eldritch Powers without putting at least a modicum of effort to find em. That sounds like a seeker after arcane secrets to me.
This reminds me of the Pathfinder Witch, which is very similar (but legally distinct from) the 5e Warlock. Witches are Intelligence-based, which seems odd at first, since they get their powers from a patron. But while Clerics and Inquisitors are borrowing a god’s power (using Wisdom to be close to them), and Paladins and Oracles are channeling power through them (using Charisma to withstand the strain), Witches are really more like Wizards and Alchemists, manipulating the world through knowledge of its hidden levers. A Witch’s patron isn’t powerful enough to loan the Witch any power, but they can teach the Witch some tricks that would otherwise take substantial study or research.
In addition to creating the occasional vanilla NPC foe with tailored spell F/X to keep the players from guessing what they’re up against (“tiny glowing skulls out of his fingers?! What even is that?”), I once successfully lobbied another DM to let my halfling commission an everlasting ration pouch that produced cheeseburgers. The character’s ability to simply produce a nourishing quarter-pounder with cheese (&c.) through sleight of hand became a recurring meme in the campaign.
Years ago in an earlier edition, we rationalized one PC’s new stats following a reincarnation from human to elf, saying that his loss of 6 points of Dexterity came from being suddenly a full foot shorter and constantly tripping over objects or absently reaching for things that were still 6″ away from his grasp.
I like that explanation for the stat change. Clearly, moving from human to elf had mechanical consequences. But deciding what those look like in practice is the job of the players rather than the rules as written.
Last campaign I ran, one of the players was an “oni” warlock-really just a fiendish warlock. But her backstory was that a powerful oni had possessed the corpse of her husband, killed her village, and effectively “stamped” her with his power. Instead of petitioning that oni for power directly, the warlock would expand her abilities by hunting and slaying other oni and absorbing a fraction of their power.
During the campaign, we made it an alternate means of treasure for her character to make spellcasting attempts whenever the party killed an oni to get some minor benefit, depending on whether she got the killing blow and how well the player rolled. The player was fortunately generous enough to count these bonuses against his treasure when the party was splitting loot. Unfortunately for me, he also spent some of his build to maximize on these “oni looting” rolls, making the warlock’s rewards a difficult balancing game at times. He also had fun describing how the warlock was becoming more monstrous as she developed more powers, and sometimes went on mini-quests–morel like off-time tasks–to appease some of the spirits she had devoured to protect her own sanity and alignment.
In one of the last sessions, it turned out the Oni who made the pact was only filling the warlock with power to make her into another vassal of His essence, so he could experience the pleasure of fighting and devouring himself. In the end, the party had to purge first the warlock, then her husband’s spirit, before they could finally kill her evil patron. Afterwards, the player rebuilt the PC as a sorcerer–the natural magical talent the oni had poured his essence into–to finish up the campaign’s main quest.
It’s always fun trying to justify just WHY my barbarian took practically no damage from that attack that nearly killed the rest of the party. We mostly joke that he just flexed really hard and that caused all the fire and acid and lightning to not hurt him as bad. And since he’s an idiot, it doesn’t work on psychic damage.
In Pathfinder, barbarians with the right rage powers can remove magical debuffs by peeling them off of themselves with a knife. With another rage power, you can then eat the magic peels.
Pathfinder is nuts.
God, I love Pathfinder’s bullshit 🙂
Don’t forget the occultist archetype, the Tome-Eater. Who literally eats magic scrolls and spellbooks.
All hail Pathfinder!
Warlock’s outfit needs more belts and more shirtlessness, also more skulls, spikes, swords, asymetries, scarfs, high bots, heels, feathers, earrings, necklaces, piercings, tattoos, fingerless gloves, accessories, handkerchiefs and spoons 😛
Blistering Invective is such a nice spell, stating that, “You unleash an insulting tirade so vicious and spiteful that enemies who hear it are physically scorched by your fury.” So for my Kobold Dragon Herald Bard, I ended up flavoring it as him swearing in draconic and igniting foes in a holy fire by channeling his draconic (deity) patron’s wrath.
Also in a Gestalt Game, I had a Earth Kineticist / Magical Child Vigilante who liked to flavor themselves as a Magical Girl (calling herself a “Maou Shoujo” as a pun due to being a tiefling). Their Earth Kinetic Blast could deal ranged physical damage and allowed you to choose to deal bludgeoning, piercing, or slashing damage each time. So instead of just chucking boring hunks of rock, I asked the GM to allow me to re-flavor their Kinetic Blast as summoning magical weapons and hurling them at the enemy, Gate of Babylon-style. Since she also had Kinetic Blade, allowing for melee blasts, so sometimes she’d just draw various weapons out of thin air to smack her enemies with. Hammers ended up being a favorite of hers, mostly due to constantly running into enemies with either slashing or piercing resistances.
I have been having oodles of fun playing a Skaven artificer. They’re all about reflavouring, and I’ve been having fun describing how he creates his spells with his technological superiority.
Also, I just read the alt-text; well played.
Does she also refuse to design boots? I do notice both fey are barefoot.
My half-drow monk Tamarie has a single level of cleric. Our group has a homebrew rule where characters can get a Martial Tradition from SoM even if they don’t use Spheres completely. Tamarie’s tradition gets her a 20-foot fly speed. She’s a member of the Green Faith, so I picture her flying the same way Storm from X-Men does – lifting herself on winds that she creates.
So this one did involve my GM allowing me to home-brew a bit, but nothing unreasonable. Basically I made a monk who’s Int based instead of Wis based and allowed me to have fire bolt (granted from high-elf) to do force damage. They’re the Astral Self archetype. But the twist here is that they were raised in a wizarding academy and basically just view themselves as a really niche kind of wizard. An Astralogist if you will. =P
Rather than tapping into their astral being or whatever, what happened with them is that at a very young age they screwed up attempted spellcasting rather badly an managed to partially detach their astral body from themselves. This made all further spellcasting result in a magical buildup where it just stuck with the astral body, but couldn’t reconnect to the material plane and thus they couldn’t manage to cast spells.
Then finally one day another magical mishap occurred where some wizard apprentice decided it was a good idea to try astral projecting without proper guidance. Long story short, they encountered my character’s massive astral body and after the more seasoned wizards stepped in, matters were resolved and my character learned to reconnect with their astral being again.
But the astral body is now so large (and will continue to forever absorb their attempted magic use) that they’re still only able to pull upon part of its power. (Or in other words, they’re an 8th level character.)
So…. basically they’re a punch wizard. Even the force bolt is flavored as conjuring forth an astral arm and just punching things with it.
Also their hat is a bag of holding and sometimes they summon the fists out of there too. 😉
I’ve got a 5e Forge Cleric, a dwarf.
Mechanically, Gunter is as bog standard as they come. Heavily armored, big ol’ hammer, shield. All of it was made by himself through crafting, his plate armor being the most notable for being both formal wear and combat wear.
Anyways. Still standard. One of the ways that I decided to dress him up however was that he was blind in one eye, and had a lock-in place holy symbol monocle on the other.
There were a few reasons I wanted to do this. One, I thought it would be cool to have a hammer-themed monocle. Two, from a background standpoint, you’d want something ready to help you do fine-detail work on your high-quality dwarven goods. Three, the most important reason, was for the flavor of being able to fire Guiding Bolts from his eye.
Another thing is that any of the times I used Divination, I would first create an object capable of displaying the divination. For instance, a shield with a mirrored surface one time, the next a miniature diorama of three gods talking around a table. Basically using the creation of ‘art’ as a means of contacting and understanding the divine. Which then gets melted as apart of the spell and finds it’s way in to Moriden’s Holy Treasure Vault like so many bad father’s day presents.
I’ve been playing in a Gestalt pathfinder 2nd edition game- my character is a Cleric of Sarenrae / Draconic instinct Barbarian, with the dragon disciple archetype. since I wanted to go with the fire theme, I went with her icon being a Red Dragon. And since Dragon barbarian gives the option to either Revere or Abhor your icon, I went with Abhor- and spun it as her having a literal draconic mind intermingled with her own. A LG cleric and her CE draconic permanent inner voice.
It’s been going well except for the part where I burned an entire circus to the ground with all of its inhabitants- but in my defense, they were fey, so does it really count as murder?
I once had a fighter with Bladed Brush (using a glaive with dex) and Cut from the Sky (spend an AoO and make an attack roll to stop a ranged attack), I imagined those two as being part of the same flowing, almost dance like, fighting style involving a lot of my character spinning her weapon and herself around.
There also was a whole thing where it was a form of worship of her goddess in her mind but that’s not quite the thing I think you are looking for.
Another extrapolation I really like, is the ideas I have sometimes seen about how exactly people disable magic traps with Disable Device particularly if they have a set of masterwork thieves tools. Stuff like thing pieces of silver/copper or various crystals to interfere with arcane symbolism and mouse-fur or bit of human hair to help with tricking life/creature based magic sensors.
This also touches on the question of what magical traps actually look like. We know they look like something because you can find them with a perception check, so they aren’t just completely invisible/undetectable to normal senses enchantments laid over an apparently ordinary object/bit of tunnel.
Personally I like very small glyphs and runes, through with particular cultural styles raising other possibilities, like an Alarm Trap that’s hidden as a tiny skull carved into a door that’ll open its mouth and scream if you trigger it.
This warlock appears to have much in common with PF1 Silksworn occultist who gets their powers from from fashion accessories.
“Occultists who recognize that flashy garb and fashionable accoutrements can be just as powerful as psychically charged relics in the right situations are known as silksworn. They draw their power from wearing luxurious garments and can be found in many noble courts throughout Golarion, though they often keep their abilities secret. Silksworn are even found among the mystics and the magical practitioners of Nex, each seeking the patronage of one or more of the Arclords”.
I humbly present my gremlin of an artificer, Razwog: The book states artificers cast spells through their tools. so as an artificer with Fireball prepared, he has an rpg
When I saw this, it got me thinking that, due to their customization, that the invocations can be represented by different accessories. Like all the Eldritch Blast improvements are special chains/straps placed around the arcane focus or staff; the devil’s sight is activated using spectral shades that one can summon on a whim; armor of shadow you press on a bracelet. It’s good reflavoring and I love it.
In a recent oneshot, I played a Celestial Warlock whose patron was the Angel of Stars, and as such had a heavy starlight theme. Notably, I renamed Eldritch Blast to Shooting Stars and described it as the warlock raising his staff and calling down blasts of light from the heavens.
Hell yeah! That’s exactly how it ought to work.
I was thinking about it, and strict RAW gets a bad rap, but some of the coolest concepts, visuals, and interpretations can come from going “Okay, so here’s how this works according to the rules. How in the heck is that happening?”
For example: Symbiotic Creature template + Swarm guest creature. By RAW the combined creature gains Swarm Traits, which seems like wacky nonsense if you go with the default visuals of small creatures living on a big creature. (E.g. “A swarm rendered unconscious by means of nonlethal damage becomes disorganized and dispersed, and does not reform until its hit points exceed its nonlethal damage.”) So for my nightmarish creation, I got a little creative with the visuals. The full creature now has swarm traits, therefore the full creature is swarm-like, and thus Futility was composed of thousands of tiny creatures (in this case flying vampiric roses, because hell yes), each carrying a piece of her original body (tangled in the little roots), dispersing and reassembling like the lovechild of Voltron and the T-1000. Now that’s a monster!
I guess that what I’m trying to say here is that fluff and crunch work best when informing each other, using the mechanics to inspire the flavorful descriptions and cool character concepts to help choose what mechanics to include. The degree to which the two can interplay is a major strength of RPGs.
My favorite instance, by far, was a single question related to something not specified in a spell: when under the effect of Zone Of Truth, do people choke on their words when they try to lie, or does the lie get replaced with the truth? A simple question, but one that leads to two completely different scenarios.
On the one hand, the area could “forbid” lies, refusing them air or sound. Any attempt to lie (but not mislead through “technically true, but” and similar faerie/devil deal wordplay) would just “not happen”. It’s not heard, the person has the attempt to speak stop short. Whatever it is, there’s “nothing” (to various degrees of “obvious the lie was attempted”) instead of the lie.
With the other option, things get a little stranger. Closer to a compulsion, rather than “prevents lies” in this case. When attempting to speak, you will speak the truth. So when trying to lie, the relevant truth is spoken instead. People will still talk, and some may end up surprised by what they say. Attempts to mislead by saying “didn’t do it” become a confession instead. Trying to claim a heritage you don’t have becomes a statement about your actual heritage, or admittance that you don’t have the other one.
A simple nuance. A little question. So much fun in a little possibility, and either way we were going to enjoy RPing the result.
Which way did your table decide?
DM decided on the second option, because he found it more amusing. Even included one of the criminals in the group we caught trying to stop his buddy from talking, because his buddy kept trying to lie! Which, of course, meant it was just more confessions.
Looking back, I’d probably consider something like a scaling result. “Just” failing the save and being unable to lie would have the lie catch in your throat and have you gag on it. The larger the margin, the more obvious and forceful it is. Fail by a wide enough margin, and you blurt out the truth instead. Feels like it would be a great arrangement for everyone to get something out of it, right?