Ryik

Tales of Adventure (5E DnD)

DISCORD for???

@HEAVY METAL

Discord the chat client. I just find it more convenient for stuff like talking about characters.

I made a server: discord.gg/C2myAUYbNb

Yu-Gi-Oh GX: Next Gen

Caleb & Lexa

Several minutes earlier...

He ran over to the machine. He couldn't help his facial expression at the moment, pained and twisted up like he was watching his parents being murdered. He shut his eyes tight, then blinked the moisture away. He wasn't about to cry in front of Alexis, not when it was his fault. He addressed her without turning around. "Please tell me you know how to fix it."

There was a certain desperation in his voice. He cursed himself for it. He'd never said anything about wanting to go back before now, but it was plain to see what was on his mind.

"There's no way."

That was it, then.

She kept talking, though Caleb tuned her out, too caught up in his own thoughts. She was only going on about how it was impossible anyway, as if to make sure there wasn't any hope. It was pretty kind of her, he thought, to be so heartless. It'd only be false hope anyway.

"Who did this? We weren't followed here, right?"

"That should be impossible. I explained it before, right?"

"Ugh. Multiple times."

"Let's hope you remember, then, so I don't have to do it again. Come on. If you saw it, then others probably noticed it too. We should get out of here before they show up."

Caleb sighed. "You're right." She always was, it felt like.

Yu-Gi-Oh GX: Next Gen

After a series of tag duels that played out like tournament semifinals: Cassandra and Sina vs. Helena and Mina, Pine and Valerie vs. Kaison and Leo, and finally Kaison and Leo vs. Cassandra and Sina, the last possessed student was freed from the control of the duel spirits.

Although most disappeared without so much as a trace, the spirit of Master Kyonshee stuck around, hovering above Renho and Haruko. It simply held out its hand and dropped a card - itself, before fading away like smoke. Renho, unable to see the spirit, simply took the card and raised an eyebrow. Wasn't this in Haruko's deck?

As things settled down, Kaison took charge. "Is everyone alright?"

A clear answer or nod from most of them. Although the finalists - Cassandra, Leo, Sina and him all had some scratches from the duels with their psychic opponents, they were mostly unharmed, and the previously possessed students all managed to stand up, except for Pine and Helena.

Although it was rather worrying that neither had woken up since their duels ended, both were still breathing, confirming that neither has died, at least. There was the more insidious possibility that they had lost their souls, but it didn't make sense given their respective partners were fine.

Renho picked up Haruko, carrying her piggyback. "I'll bring Haruko back to her room. Lemme know what it was that woke everyone up later, kay?"

Kaison joined her, carrying Pine, who had fallen unconscious. "Same here. I'm curious, but this has been a weird night and I'm suddenly a lot less curious after all of that."

Sina grumbled. "What the heck was all of that? How am I supposed to ignore such a crazy event!?" She let out a long-suffering sigh as she mimicked Renho, struggling to carry Helena on her back. "But a hero's work is never done. I'll bring Helena back. It looks like things are over, but you guys be careful, okay?"

With that, the six of them headed back, leaving Cassandra, Leo, Mina, and Valerie in the clearing. They could go back now and forget this ever happened... Or they could go see what it was that caused that massive light. Decisions, decisions.

The consequences of choosing to walk deeper into the forest

About half-way to the origin of the pillar, the students will notice an old, abandoned well. It's long since been dried up, and if one were to look closely with a light from their PDA, has quite a few cards sitting at the bottom. Tuckered out though the spirits might be, it will nonetheless give the students an uneasy feeling, like they should let sleeping dogs lie.

Walking on further, beyond the well, resting under a tree like any other, lies a large, orb-shaped machine. It has a windowed hatch that readily opens to reveal a single cushioned seat within, in front of dead screens and a bunch of unlabeled buttons surrounding the window's view. Besides a tacky pair of fuzzy dice hanged over one of the screens, there doesn't seem to be any discerning marks for companies, brands, or its owner, and the interior has very little wear and tear, as if it was hardly used. On the side of the machine, there seems to be a large gash, burnt black around the edges and up the side of the machine, passing over a small circular indentation that looks like it's supposed to open to reveal something, but nonetheless refuses to budge. Above the machine, tilted off towards the side with the gash, is a large circular hole within the tree branches, as if something cut straight through it, leaving burn marks on the leaves and branches that remain.

There doesn't seem to be any further explanation to be found.

Tales of Adventure (5E DnD)

Discord when?

Tales of Adventure (5E DnD)

Akio

"What, where, When, How and Why?"

"That, I'd also like to know." He said, placing his own drink on the table, inserting himself in the conversation. "I'm only curious about it though. On the condition that you're coming with us and pay at least half of the gold up front, then I accept your offer."

He took a swig of his drink as an older man came up and joined them. The ale was fairly low-quality, but there was a certain rustic charm to it. He set his mug down and saddled up next to the man, putting a hand over his shoulder. "I'm not afraid of some danger, but you have to understand that this is not an agreement to fight to the death on your behalf. It never is, and you should be careful of those who'll lie to you and say they will. We'll guard you and your goods up until the point where it clearly becomes impossible. If you're still willing to pay us the second half, we'll make sure you get to Evergrim alive even if protecting your goods becomes untenable. To that end, you should hire the old man and convince the fine lady here to join. We're gonna need more hands in case we run into something... bad."

With that, Akio takes his arm back, taking another nonchalant swig. It was a common negotiation tactic to look like he didn't care about the man's decision, though truly, Akio wasn't desperate for money, so it didn't really matter to him if his conditions were rejected. He'd already run into a witch once, and she was pretty nice before she tried to kidnap him, so it was more that the rumors of hauntings and witches didn't really bother him.

Tales of Adventure (5E DnD)

Akio

Theme

D&D Character Sheet

Rolls

roleplayerguild.com/rolls/24724 - 13 (Strength)
roleplayerguild.com/rolls/24725 - 14 (Dexterity)
roleplayerguild.com/rolls/24726 - 13 (Constitution)
roleplayerguild.com/rolls/24723 - 11 (Intelligence)
roleplayerguild.com/rolls/24727 - 17 (Wisdom)
roleplayerguild.com/rolls/24728 - 13 (Charisma)

(Human bonuses are +1 to Wisdom and Strength)

Name: Akio

Gender: ♂

Personality: Despite his noble upbringing, Akio is easygoing and hates standing on ceremony. Although he's capable of showing the manners of a member of high society, there's nothing he hates more than pretentious snobs. He's a bit reckless, and has a penchant for getting involved where he doesn't need to, though he's surprisingly cool-headed and not as much of an idiot as his devil-may-care attitude might suggest.

History: Akio ran away from his life as a noble, abandoning his family name and forging a new identity for himself. He found he much preferred the company of commoners and a traveler's lifestyle. He mostly worked as a courier, delivering goods and messages between towns. He was camping in the woods one night when he stumbled upon a large mansion, just sitting there in the middle of the woods, far from any towns. Although curious, he wasn't going to intrude until a pack of wolves cornered him and forced him inside - the doors were unlocked, luckily.

Although he hadn't planned on staying for long, he was soon greeted by a short girl with long, curly white hair. Akio asked to meet with her parents, though she insisted she was the lord of the manor, and also a fully grown adult in her mid twenties. Akio, barely an adult at the time, was about a foot taller than her, though he didn't want to be rude when he was already intruding on her home, so he didn't comment on it further. He explained his situation, and a look of realization swept over the girl, before she moved past him and opened the door. The wolves immediately tackled her, and after a brief moment of Akio's panic, the girl started laughing as the wolves licked her face affectionately. "They're my precious children", she said. He didn't lower his guard as one of them growled at him.

The girl invited him to stay in her mansion, and against his better judgement, he accepted, if only because he was still curious about the strange girl and her empty mansion in the middle of nowhere. The girl said she already ate, but volunteered to make him dinner, and sat at the table with him, asking for his opinion on her cooking. The food was pretty good, if a bit salty, and he gave her his compliments. As he was finishing up and she was reading a book, he asked her why she had a mansion built in the middle of some woods, and also how she tamed a bunch of wolves. She simply responded that it was magic, to which Akio immediately asked her to teach him.

In the following days, Akio learned the basics of druidcraft. The girl started off trying to teach him wizardry, but it proved too boring for him to handle. Although they weren't doing anything special, learning the ways of a Druid proved exhausting. There also seemed to be a mosquito problem in his room, because he had irritating bite marks on his neck.

It all made sense when he announced he was ready to leave, returning to his travels. The girl didn't want him to leave, and had more than enough pure physical strength and speed to stop him. Turns out, she was a vampire, and apparently a very lonely one, because she refused to let him leave. In the end, he had to hold a knife to one of her wolves to get her to let him go, cringing as it sank its teeth into him all the while. She said she regret not turning him into a spawn, and swore she would find him again one day.

He managed to drag himself out of her castle and back to the nearest town, wrestling with the wolf as he did so, though even after managing to release it without tearing him to shreds, getting his wounds treated and coming to rest at a local inn, her vow to find him weighed on his mind.

Years passed by as he managed to avoid being found by both his family and the vampire girl. As dangerous as it was, he still felt he owed a lot to her as his mentor, but when he tried to visit the girl again, he found that her mansion was completely gone.

What kind of Vampire becomes a Druid, anyway? They don't exactly scream "communer with nature". In any case, he's continued on, learning more and more as a Druid. He's heard they can even change into animals, something he never once saw the girl do, which is ironic since Vampires are known to change into bats. Using his newfound magical abilities, he took on more work as an adventurer, though, perhaps even more ironic than the girl, he found he preferred close combat over sitting in the back, tossing around spells.

(Failed to Start) Rift Warriors X: Augmented Virtual Battle City

Ren & Aster

Player Name: Ren Kline

Nationalities: Japanese & U.S. American

Age: 21

Personality: Ren is the quiet type. He's antisocial and suffers from chronic clinical depression. He has a tendency to overanalyze, and is a meticulous perfectionist. He has a proclivity towards sesquipedalian diction, and gets disappointed when he is forced to dumb it down. He spends a lot of time online, watching shows, reading novels, and playing games as both a form of escapism and, depending on the type of content, an attempt to feel something. Competition is one of the few things that can consistently get his heart racing, as well as one of the few forms of social interactions he enjoys and actively seeks out. He likes playing with all kinds of players, and will often switch to characters he has less experience with as a handicap to level the playing field. Unfortunately, he's done this often enough to improvise good combos for every character and now plays all of them at a fairly competent level.

Backstory: Ren's mother is Japanese and his father is American. They married, lived in the U.S. for a while, had Ren, moved to Japan for a while, had a fight, with Ren and his father moving back to the U.S. for a while, made up, moved back to Japan for a while, and eventually split up for good, with Ren bouncing back and forth since. He's always been an only child, though over time he came to grow more distant from his parents as they each, at least in his perception, prioritized their own problems over him. Ren is bilingual and has gone to school in both America and Japan. He hasn't made many friends at either place, and the few friendships he has made generally don't survive him moving away every year. He can't decide where he wants to live, and can't figure out how to make enough money to move out in the first place. His parents both work their own jobs, both keep unsubtly hinting that they want him to live near them, and both keep making promises they can't fulfill. For the last couple of years, he's been unemployed, withdrawn, and hasn't spoken much with either of his parents.

Enter Rift Warriors. It's a long-running franchise, and he's played the games since he was a kid. However, it wasn't until recent years, especially in Rift Warriors VII through IX did he really get into the series on a competitive level. He won his local tournaments often enough that he gained the confidence to try participating in bigger tournaments, and he was certainly no stranger to travel. By Rift Warriors VIII, he was a well-recognized player, and he managed to win his first nationals towards the tail end of VIII's competitive popularity. When Rift Warriors IX came around, he shot up the rankings, and is now regarded by many as the best Rift Warriors player around.

Theme of Aster Wilde

Rift Warriors Character: Aster Wilde

Debut: Rift Warriors V, though he's been a part of the lore since Rift Warriors II, mentioned in passing as the half-brother of another character who's been in since the first Rift Warriors.

Playstyle: Contrary to appearances, Aster is a sticky rushdown character with a strong neutral game. Although most of his attacks utilize his guns, and he doesn't have any ammo system to hold him back, his bullets slow down unnaturally quickly, in a linear fashion, becoming barely reactable at a medium range and relatively easy to avoid at long distances. Nonetheless, the bullets still project a huge zone of threat, are nigh impossible to react to at close to medium ranges, can lead into combos or blockstrings, and are very hard to whiff punish since they have hardly any startup and end lag. He can also spend meter to have them maintain their speed, letting him play like a true zoner for a limited time. It doesn't really matter where you are; when up against Aster, you need to be prepared for him to flash step in and shoot you. His movement is quite excellent, allowing him to relatively consistently convert bullet hits into combos, which generally require his shorter ranged melee attacks for good damage. Ever since the jump from 2d to 3d in Rift Warriors X, where his weird acrobatic kicks were replaced by freeform player input, he's considered a somewhat high skill floor character, due to the execution demands of following up on his medium and long distance attacks.

In addition to simply firing bullets, his gun is capable of unleashing short range blasts, a translation of the muzzle flashes coming out of his guns that he had for melee attacks in the previous games. They're an important combo tool, though they complicate player input further in that choosing between them is a manual process rather than controlled by player thought.

His backwards action dive, where he leaps backwards while shooting above him, is generally considered one of the best anti-airs in the game, since it has a huge disjoint and can lead into a full combo with some meter. His flash-jump lets him do the opposite, appearing in the air (turned around, perfect for crossing up opponents) and firing off a series of bullets whose kickback somehow keeps him airborne, allowing him to drift forward to follow up for a combo or backwards to avoid retaliation as the bullet salvo juggles opponents or keeps them in block stun.

Finally, he also has demon magic, which only manifests in game in one of his supers to summon flaming chains around opponents that "drag them off to hell" (for apparently only a second before they fall from the sky somehow) and in his taunts to establish demon contracts, which are usually more fun little gimmicks than a viable tactic. Essentially, he can offer his opponent a magic contract, tossing it at them. It's unblockable, pretty fast, and doesn't change speed like his bullets, giving it slightly more effective range, though locking him in an animation if it hits such so that it has little use as a zoning tool. If it hits the opponent, it unfurls and hovers before them, prompting them to accept or deny the contract. He can also spend a hefty amount of meter to force them to accept the contract. Once accepted, a gameplay restriction is placed on both players, such as "no jumping" or "no supers". Naturally, he has ways of cheating all of the contracts, such as flash-jumps not counting as jumps, or being able to spend meter outside of supers on things like faster bullets. All but the newest of players know to decline his contracts, but then again most Aster players don't even bother using them because of that.

In terms of weaknesses, his biggest one is that he doesn't have a lot of defensive options besides his backwards dive, which itself is punishable if predicted. He has no meterless reversal, and he's rather meter-hungry, having to choose between dumping it into combo damage, neutral game control, or using it to cover for mistakes.

Aster's Backstory: Aster is a half-demon hitman and bounty hunter living in a near-future pseudo-apocalypse brought on by climate catastrophe coupled with the aftermath of world war 3. His demon father was summoned by an unknown (dead) group of humans, and went on to manipulate certain characters and NPCs into conflict. Only about 1/4th of the original human population remains in his time.

Aster makes a living hunting down persons of interest and the many war criminals that fell through the cracks. His primary, if not only goal, seems to be to make a lot of money. He's superhuman, possessing great strength, (how much is never shown) capable of moving faster than the eye can see, (flash step trope) and has inherited the ability to use "demon magic" from his father. (which is vaguely defined besides the use of demon contracts) He is canonically an edgy, over the top, devil-may-cry-esque badass.

Aster's Powers: Aster was given the ability to control minds, though it's been shown to be short of absolute control in the lore, working best when its target is unaware, and has little impact on gameplay, besides forcing people to accept demon contracts. In the tutorial of Rift Warriors VI, he teaches his half brother, who had lost his memory, how to play the game with it, and calls his own ability "usually useless" in a fight.

5th edition D&D Adventures starting at 1st level and continuing on thru homemade Quests

I went with a Human Druid. Their background is basically Noble with Charlatan's feat instead, since the Noble feat didn't really match. I can write up a more detailed history if need be.

Akio

Rolls

roleplayerguild.com/rolls/24724 - 13 (Strength)
roleplayerguild.com/rolls/24725 - 14 (Dexterity)
roleplayerguild.com/rolls/24726 - 13 (Constitution)
roleplayerguild.com/rolls/24723 - 11 (Intelligence)
roleplayerguild.com/rolls/24727 - 17 (Wisdom)
roleplayerguild.com/rolls/24728 - 13 (Charisma)

(Human bonuses are +1 to Wisdom and Strength)

5th edition D&D Adventures starting at 1st level and continuing on thru homemade Quests

Glad I asked, because the aforementioned really bad character was really bad because they try to optimize movement, at great expense.

I don't think specific magic items are in the core books full stop. I checked the DM book and apparently a guide for making them is on page 284, where it describes the ones I would be after (something to confer the Longstrider, Jump and Haste spells) as Common, Common, and Uncommon, respectively. I asked because the speed character is basically taking 5 or 6 levels in a mage class just for those three otherwise, but it probably doesn't matter with their main gimmick being mostly irrelevant.

If PDF size is the limiting factor, I could just post the subclass I was going to use, if that's okay with you.


(Text version here)

If it's okay, I'd use the Swashbuckler. It's a subclass for Rogue, (from Xanathar's Guide to Everything) hence all the details are on one page. The character didn't feel right in another class. (and even worse as another Rogue subclass)

Otherwise, I'll just make a new character.

5th edition D&D Adventures starting at 1st level and continuing on thru homemade Quests

A few questions I thought of while I flail about, thinking of what to do for my character:

1. Will combat be grid-based or purely text-based?
2. Would the acquisition of specific magic items (within reason of course) be feasible, eventually?
3. Non-PHB races, classes, and subclasses are out, but are we sticking strictly to core book options or are shenanigans valid? Would I be able to play, for example, 3 halflings in a trenchcoat? Someone transformed into a sapient bear via the true polymorph spell? Someone cursed to have a fireball spell rain down on them every time they exert themselves?