Stellarcell Character Discussions

This thread is for discussing MrDeVale's character please do not post anything here that is not related to MrDeVale's character and yes collaborating with MrDeVale is consider fair postings.

Please make your rolls in here and outline what your are doing so that I can give you feedback on the world. Do note though this game borrows heavily from the Forgotten Realms so you can use information from that setting to outline your background.

Alright! I am new to the site and haven't had the pleasure of using the dice roller yet. Let's see if I can't figure it out on the first go.

So 14, 12, 15, 14, 12, 11 I think, right? That's pretty crumby for such a generous rolling method. Look at all those 1s! Should be interesting.

So I haven't done a whole lot of 5e but am kind of familiar with it. Like I mentioned in the recruitment thread, I really liked the idea of playing a pugilist fighter. I will flesh out his background but I was thinking something along the lines of being a former monk and gave up the order and discipline.

The only reason I brought up Tasha's Cauldron is that it specifically had a template for a pugilist and I was okay with just following that for guidance. Most of what's in the template are from the PHB but is an option from Tasha's.

Fighting Style: UNARMED FIGHTING
Your unarmed strikes can deal bludgeoning damage equal to ld6 + your Strength modifier on a hit. If you aren't wielding any weapons or a shield when you make the attack roll, the d6 becomes a d8.
At the start of each of your turns, you can deal ld4 bludgeoning damage to one creature grap­pled by you.


There is a new maneuver mentioned in the template too but it's for grappling and I am not sure that grappling fits my concept. If you're not a fan of that new fighting style and have something else in mind that could work I will be okay making whatever work.

Would it be easier for me to just come up with another concept? I really don't mind if this one is too much of a bother. As I said, I am a novice with 5e so maybe it'd be better for me to go with something that requires less work upfront? It was literally the first thing to come to mind so coming up with something else will be cake. Now that the other players have mentioned their interests too I could come up with something to even out the party a bit more as well.

I'm super flexible!

No I was going to address this yesterday but got overly busy will try to get this covered today

Sounds great. I appreciate you!

Okay Stellarcell this is what I have in mind -- your character will be using the Fighter Class with the Battle Master Archetype but we are going to apply the Martial Artist alterations to it as follows:

Proficiency
... Armor : None
... Weapons : Simple Weapons, Martial Weapons
... Saves : Strength, Dexterity
... Skills : Choose 2 from Acrobatics, Animal Handling, Athletics, History, Insight, Intimidation, Perception, Stealth

Starting Equipment
... Longbow and 20 Arrows or Light Crossbow and 20 Bolts
... Two Martial Weapons
... One Simple Weapon
... Dungeoneer's Pack or Explorer's Pack

1st-Level -- Fighting Style is replaced with Martial Arts

Marital Arts
The character has gained mastery in combat styles that use unarmed strikes as well as weapons. The character gains the following benefits when not wearing armor nor using a shield.
• Their AC equals 10 + Dexterity Modifier + Proficiency Bonus
• All weapons the character uses have the Finesse attribute added to them.
• Unarmed Strikes do a d4 that improves to d6 at 5th, d8 at 11th, and d10 at 17th
• When using the Attack Action with an Unarmed Strike or a Weapon, the character can make an additional Unarmed Strike as a Bonus Action. Provided the character has not already taken a Bonus Action during that Turn.

Addition to Battle Master Maneuvers

Deflect Missiles
When another creature damages the character with a missile attack, the character can use their Reaction and expend one Superiority Die to reduce the damage taken by the number rolled on the Superiority Die + Dexterity Modifier. If the damage is reduced to 0, the character has the option to catch the missile provided they could catch such a missile and have the necessary hand(s) free to do so.

Note : You do not have to take Deflect Missiles I am just adding it in as an option in case you did want to take it.

This all sounds great! I didn't really want you to have to go through that much trouble putting all that together but I do appreciate you going above and beyond to make it work. I will get my character put together using this and submit it soon.

Well not really all that much being a game designer collaborator these kind of balanced alterations are fairly easy for me to produce.

Just submitted my character. I was bouncing all over the place changing things around but I think I got it cleaned up good. As I said, I am a novice to 5e so do let me know anything I need to fix whenever you get time. Thanks so much!

As far as backstory goes, I tried to leave some hooks in there for you to play with. Let me know if you have any other ideas. For my background, I adapted one I saw from Curse of Strahd instead of creating a whole new one. I hope that works okay.

Okay for this character I might suggest Acrobatics instead of Religion -- although the esoterics of Religion can be helpful as well then again perhaps you can use a Feat and get Acrobatics later on.

Okay it appears you took the Feat of the Human Variant but you took the standard Human otherwise not viable you need to take all of the Human Variant or all of the standard Human. Still other than a slight reduction in some stats you are picking up another skill which I would suggest you take Acrobatics.

Human (Variant)
Ability Score Increase: Add +1 to 2 different Ability Scores of your choice
Skills: You gain proficiency in one skill of your choice.
Feat: You gain one Feat of your choice.

I may have other suggestions but this one jumped out at me fairly quickly

Okay due to the fact that you had not incorporated the fullness of the Human(Variant) I have added back in Religion since you get one additional Skill that you had not accounted for and Acrobatics can be that missing Skill

However I do need you to fix your stats remember your base stats were

STR .... 14
CON ... 14
DEX ... 15
INT .... 11
WIS ... 12
CHA ... 12

You get 2 (+1s) to two different stats and a +1 to either Strength or Dexterity

Also I added the descriptions of your maneuvers and the Features of your Background to your character sheet -- please read them as the Feature has changed and the other was added. Further your Disarm has been tweaked -- in 5e dropping a weapon at your feet is actually rather meaningless the slight improvement fixes that issue

Got it adjusted. Thanks!

I like that Haunted feature!

Great thanks -- next instead of taking the Celestial language which kind of seems out of place with your background -- why not take the Tool Proficiency : Cook Tools -- then those recipes you have outlined actually have a mechanic to back them up ;)

I am glad you like it -- I have been trying to balance the Backgrounds so that every background has 2 solid beneficial features which still match the theme of the Background but removes some of the vagueness that creates a headache for the GM and seems next to useless from a player's perspective (me being both I found it doubly annoying)

I forgot to note it but the Battlemaster feature Student of War already gave me proficiency with a set of artisan’s tools, so that’s why I put that in the backstory to begin with.

But yeah the celestial language doesn’t fit. The Haunted One background gave me a choice of otherworldly languages and none of them fit super great. I imagine the language was supposed to be a connection to whatever haunted me but I kind of wanted to leave the source open-ended for you to do what you will with it.

Also you get from your background the Hunter's Pack which includes the following items.

Holy Symbol (your choice of patron)
Fask of Holy Water
Set of Cold Iron Manacles
Chest
Crowbar
Hammer
Wooden Stake x3
Steel Mirror
Flask of Oil
Tinderbox
Torch x3

Now some of that you can sell if you do not want it that chest might be difficult to lug around for one but I would suggest keeping the first 3 items on the list.

Is there a point to carrying a holy symbol if I don't care to play into his religious beliefs all that much? I imagine his religious studies to be more general academic knowledge covering multiple different religions while at the monastery. I am not really interested in exploring religion with him much more than that though.