The Harbinger of Ferocity

Post a random fact about yourself.

As I have shared in the past, my diet is largely and almost strictly carnivorous and I begin to obsess about meat the longer I go without it. What is the new fact then? I can go for a longer period without eating than I can eating things that are not flesh. The idea of food at all and having it, but not what I should be consuming, reminds me just how truly I hunger for what is amiss. At some point, one just ceases being hungry enough to care about food whatsoever.

DnD or Pathfinder?

In the original incarnation of the edition, each die rolled that displayed a value of "1" was treated as a critical failure and canceled out a success, @SgtSlayer. Say the difficulty class was "6" and the character had four dice to roll, and they had rolled a "1", "5", "6" and a "3", their only successful roll was not only cancelled out, the entire roll went extremely bad due to a critical failure. It was further found by the optimization community that as the game scaled and the difficulty classes became harder, the more ranks a character had in their sum of skills meant it became disproportionately more likely to cancel out rolls. However, critical failures also had the added negative that if one failed because of them, they became increasingly catastrophic for each failure and even more so with each critical failure. Failing to succeed is bad enough, failing spectacularly because of cancelled rolls combined with critical failures is exceptionally bad.

I am not certain if this was corrected in the revised edition versus the original printings. I almost wish to say it was not, although other corrections were made. Admittedly I have not spent much time checking the two printings against one another; the most I did with it was read optimization strategies and formulate my character around excelling at their role the best that they could and that was some of the material I came across. Supposedly, the general consensus was that White Wolf Publishing wrote excellent stories, not so much mechanics.

DnD or Pathfinder?

The primary reason I steer clear of Pathfinder is that so much of it is piddling content and trap options. Third Edition Dungeons and Dragons had no shortage of this either but Pathfinder took it to a new level, particularly with all the endless once per day abilities, single modifiers to highly specific circumstances, and then of course the fact that in many ways monsters were made stronger against martial classes than those magical. As a result, I most often just permit players to convert Pathfinder content back into the original edition it was born from as there are some creative mechanics, concepts, classes, and themes, but overall nothing that really moves me much.

Comparatively, Fifth Edition for Dungeons and Dragons I find vastly superior in most capacities except the one which I care about most, options. The sole flaw is that Fifth Edition is so narrow in its choices with so few supplements that I cannot begin to really enjoy it. It is trying to make mechanically distinct, novel, unique characters when there are so few classes, so few archetypes, so few spells. This has improved with time but as a Dungeon Master and player who only ever is permitted to use officially published material? It feels relatively empty still and that is my issue with it. Balance and play wise it is leagues better than prior editions, likely the best ever written through and through. "Homebrew" content, however, will likely never see any existence for myself or others. It is too unreliable and often poorly written by people who do not have a strong grasp on the system and I am one of those who spent no shortage of time mastering Third Edition and its mechanics; I "min-max", as people call it, to make my roleplay and character concepts viable.

As for other games outside the two listed, the old World of Darkness setting put out by White Wolf Publishing is perhaps the only one I have ever cared about at all. Werewolf: The Apocalypse and Vampire: The Masquerade are more or less what comes to mind when one talks about modern horror and the supernatural in roleplaying for myself, particularly since I have a love-hate relationship with the mechanics and core concepts of the material versus its themes and narratives. It drives me mad, for example, that it becomes statistically more likely for a severe failure the better a character is at a skill due to how critical failures work, yet at the same time the mythos is dark, savage, and extremely morally ambiguous.

Post a random fact about yourself.

I would sooner starve to death than successfully manage a vegan diet as virtually none of these things I find edible. The sole reason they would be consumed at all would be out of desperation.

D&D 3.5e - The Marches of the Savage Realm

The Savage Realm

The Marches

Prologue

---

The sounds of the village outside were at first all the real company the man had after sitting in his prison for several days on end. It was not the guards who kept him company, rather the sound of freedom just outside the walls. The odd tradesman or merchant, followed by women and their young children all kept the day lively down the short ways into the heart of the community as it was only their indistinct voices and the sound of their business that could reach the half blood man's ears. Little here happened in the cell as it were, as the guardsman, when he was present, did little more than ensure their captive was provided the most basic of food and drink, and then was off again to leave the lone soul in isolation; leaving him to sit with his charge of vagrancy.

Between the bowl of water and stale, tough slices of bread, there was little else to do outside practice his art and moreover, meditate and pray. This had been the nature of things, the ritual, all up until the old stone prison became less solitary. A reclusive man had been brought in and casually cast into a cell down the way with the same disregard they did the man-orc, left to surely rot until they could figure out what to do with him at all. So he had been told, the reason for this was that his own trial would be delayed until the people of the village would provide testimony and witness for him - they would not. This left him in a purgatory, one resolved only by the local magistrate and justice, both of whom had better things to do than worry about one vagrant orc and now one lone man. It was clear, however, to Gorosk what this man's charges were as the militia who dragged him announced his charges.

"Vagrancy, drunkenness, traveling without the permission of their lord", all things that could be believed and from the sound of it, the man was not even conscious or coherent enough to resist in little more than word. Probably content to sleep off the rest of his alcohol and by spying him through the most extreme angles of the narrow cell, this too was confirmed as he slept haphazardly with his back to the wall. At least now the follower of perfection's ways was not alone. If he wished conversation he probably would well have it when the man came to and he did, although the man was not forthcoming. He called himself "Renault" and did not dispute what he was charged with although he spoke little on it, seemingly content to instead remain in withdrawal from the situation.

For whatever reason it was, the sole two prisoners of the entire village were far more introverts than they were extroverts, huddling around their core sense of identity and either doing battle with it or using it to sustain themselves in this time of waiting; with much waiting to be done still.

What came next over the passing days was different from their circumstances, for when the militia returned, this time they came late and loudly. The sound of horse and cart outside alerted the two men to their return, as did the urgency it arrived and the roar of their torches which cast a great orange glow into the barred windows. They dismounted and drew out another man, whom they berated for the militia's misfortune of needing to travel at this hour as the Marches were the lone inhabited land with such a legendary background for nightfall's threats. Were it any later past the hour of twilight, it was quite possible none of them would have arrived at all both Gorosk and Renault knew, so the anger they redirected toward their captive was hardly surprising. They cast him in, carelessly this time, with Renault, hurling him in after having kept him aloft by the arms and shoulders.

They bothered not to even charge him formally, shutting behind him and before the cell's former single occupant the wrought iron bars and securing the lock and its bolt. Like the man from Andallia, the newest addition was very human, whereas Gorosk's identity was not quite clear to the other. Perhaps for the better, for the time being, as even the half orc knew that his heritage was at least a major subject of his imprisonment; if an orc wished not to be seen as a slavering, bloodthirsty warmonger bent on pillaging everything in reach, it would take no shortage of concession and kindness to the mundane folk to persuade them otherwise - too, too many years of old wars and raids long past made it impossible otherwise and the village of Redbarrow was no exception in any sense. But for both Renault and the newcomer in "de Brey", specifically Quentin, the night was spent having to rely on the fact that neither of them might kill the other during it. Fortunate enough for them both, the two were amicable enough to not resort to conflict and would rather nurse their respective wounds to pride than fight over what little space they had.

Come the next evening, just as the sun had begun its slow crawl toward the horizon, the warmth of the day fading in this spring season, the militia returned again. The rattle of their flimsy, poorly kept chain, the creak of their open wagon and hoof fall of their horse gave them away, but this time they were not alone. More horses and more men on foot too, with the latter being obvious through the narrow hole to the outside world that the prison's first member could see; a mob of five men, all wearing armor and armed with spears, shields, barring one with a crossbow. They looked as raggedy and disorganized as Gorosk remembered the rest to be, not professional soldiers and certainly only the peasants wearing the mantle laid upon them. But what filled his emerald eyes with surprise, most likely, was that their captive was a woman. A tall, robust woman, one that dwarfed them all in much the way they made say, a man made a halfling seem insignificant.

She was not just shackled but kept in chains, bolted to the wagon itself and only unlocked by one man and his set of keys as they followed her in, letting her bonds scrape along the stone floor as she shuffled on. While she seemed to be a human, her shade of flesh in its pale slate tone and odd markings was anything but human, and as she passed by her new company in this forsaken little holding place, spears leveled at her, she was put into a hold of her own. The men, as they stood in the hall between the cells, were clearly quite tense until she was locked in, her chains removed, and her shackles taken off. It was likely they had spent hours, if not a few days keeping her under arrest, and when one of the men announced her charges it was clear why beyond just appearances; "unlawful hunting, disturbing cursed ground, and conspiring with beasts".

For all listening, these types of accusations were not light in the Marches, and any one of them was a serious charge. The type of charge that would surely merit an actual sentence than just being kept captive until the purveyors of the law in this land could come around to carry out whatever sense of justice they deemed fit. Likewise, it was overwhelmingly clear why they came with so many men and arms, as the woman was more than just intimidating through her presumed physical power, it was evident she had a friend in nature. Nature, that very thing that devoured the unwitting, tore them asunder, and left only grim evidence of their once being here in this land, was in some way her ally. Was she a witch? Had she made some pact that had twisted her so like this? Or was she some sort of poor, unfortunate being with the luck to be this way on her own?

Whatever the case was, the resident guard cast out the rations while the rest stowed their equipment, preparing to leave. Once he had finished, the sound of the entrance's door being secured for the night, they all had been left with one another for the first time...

@BangoSkank@Ghost Shadow@Hellion@TyrannosaursRex

Post a random fact about yourself.

On the matter of the lottery, I did also know a man who won the lottery. Not the whole winning but some twenty-thousand dollars was their winnings. The more I reflect on it, the more I realize I knew many strange, unusual, uncanny persons.

Marvels of Mountain City

I see no issue with adding other forms of astral magic that invoke certain fringes of it, the topic is exceedingly broad. However, I cannot say I know much of what the cosmology of the universe is in this case, @ZAVAZggg. The Aspect's powers certainly do not touch on those elements but I have as of yet not seen anything preventing that approach.

Post a random fact about yourself.

I do not like fruit, it is that straight forward.

Marvels of Mountain City

The general concept of the character is that the use of the Astral Plane focuses more on the nature of spiritual beings and powers associated with it, not specifically any sort of mythos or theme. Think of it along the lines of an animist's interpretation, @ZAVAZggg. The idea that all things have some sort of soul and or energy that makes them up which can be interacted with. Obviously this becomes more difficult when dealing with non-living things and those things which diverge further from nature. A sort of magic that interacts well in that realm but less so in others.

Post a random fact about yourself.

There are times for which I have no explanation for phenomena I encounter. One of which, which was in no small way startling, was a simple electronic clock which produces no radio traffic. I had the tremendous displeasure of it suddenly, without warning in the early hours of the morning, emitting static which I can only describe similar to a radio or telephone with distortion in the background. Needless to say, were it have to been alive, it would be dead now although I can come to no good solution how the initial incident took place. It was not a dream, not at all this time, and this was not the first time some device decided to become provocative with this great cat.