Zaq
2016-03-06, 02:14 PM
I have here a collection of character concepts that I'd like to see approximated with the 5e ruleset. Some of them are from other editions of D&D/d20 (my past campaigns), and some of them are from other fiction. I'm going to try to highlight the most salient features of those characters, the essence of what makes that character feel like that character. (Obviously, there's much more to these characters than what I'm writing here, but I'm trying to just hit the most important highlights without demanding a flawless point-for-point recreation.) Some of them are going to be easy to approximate. Some of them are going to be hard. And of course, a different system is a different system, so I understand that we're not going to find a perfect match for everything. But I'd like to see how close we can come.
Naturally, I understand that fluff goes a long way, but fluff goes farther when it's supported by the rules, so the more mechanical support we can find for whatever we're trying to do, the better.
I don't have a level range in mind. I doubt any of these characters will be recognizable at level 1, so let's not even try for that. Some will obviously be higher than others. In general, the lower level you can put something together and make it work, the better.
Finally, my only physical books are the Core Three, though I also have whatever stuff WotC's put online for free (Unearthed Arcana and the Elemental Evil thing, mostly). If you need to use material from outside that, go ahead (I don't like restricting things to core-only for no good reason), but if you do so, please offer a brief synopsis of what that material is/does.
Characters from Other D&D:
Sir Ptelia
From: 3.5
Primary class: Crusader
Essence: Sir Ptelia was a tireless advocate for the cause of Mundane Characters Deserving Nice Things (his holy book was the Tome of Battle). He wasn't afraid to use magic items or ally with magic-users, but he also believed that it should be possible to be a fearsome warrior without innate magic. Mechanically, he was a tank's tank—he used great melee lockdown techniques (spiked chain, Thicket of Blades, AoO tricks, etc.) to corral attention where he wanted it to be (generally onto himself), and he was frightfully good at absorbing punishment (avoiding damage, soaking damage, and self-healing damage). Since he was a firm believer in the principles of the Tome of Battle, he would have been aghast at the thought of just full attacking every turn—he made sure that he always had meaningful choices to make.
First 5e thoughts: Battlemaster Fighter is a start for having meaningful choices beyond "I full attack. Again." Unfortunately, it's not a finish. You really don't get enough superiority dice to have meaningful choices to make every round, so we've gotta find a way to deepen that bag of tricks. Tunnel Fighter + Polearm Master + Sentinel is decent melee lockdown. Our challenge now is to make him inhumanly resilient (Second Wind is cute, but it's probably not enough) and to make sure that he doesn't run out of tricks when he runs out of superiority dice (Sir Ptelia is very emphatically not Sir Ptelia if all he can do is attack normally).
The Inspector
From: 3.5, but transparently inspired by Inspector Gadget
Primary class: Dragonfire Adept, though he'd never have admitted it.
Essence: Like I said, The Inspector was a loving homage to Inspector Gadget (though the D&D version was less of an ineffective buffoon), so he had some measure of investigative/detective skills. He was good at figuring out the history of objects (represented by at-will Identify and Object Reading). He was also a warforged with a supply of increasingly wacky gadgets built into his body. In combat, he was really good at throwing around area effects (90% of which were party-friendly) and inflicting debuffs on enemies. He was particularly fond of tossing around mobility-restricting effects (Slowed and Entangled being his go-to effects). Since he was a Dragonfire Adept, almost all of his tricks were at-will.
First 5e thoughts: At-will effects basically don't exist in any meaningful capacity (yes, cantrips are a thing, but a character who uses nothing but cantrips isn't likely to be powerful or interesting, since they're balanced around being fallback effects rather than primary weapons), but I also don't want to limit his cool effects to being daily spell slots if I can help it. Since moving is now a weird non-action, I'm not sure how much meaningful mobility denial really exists, particularly in spammable form. Knowledge Clerics get Object Reading at 17, but that's a crazy high level. I don't need the game to tell me that an effect is built into my body as long as it's something that can be reasonably fluffed that way, but a lot can be fluffed that way if you try hard enough (his go-to attack was a cone that did fire damage and entangled enemies; I called it Go Go Gadget Hot Glue Cannon).
Rayje
From: 3.5
Primary class: Binder/Incarnate/Chameleon
Essence: Rayje was a Cleric. Stomping around in full plate, healing people, bestowing the blessings of his god, that sort of thing. Except, um, none of that was true yesterday. Yesterday he was a Wizard. He had an obviously magical familiar, he wreathed himself in fire, he threw around lightning with a touch, he could answer questions about arcane topics, he definitely wasn't carrying any full plate, and so on. Which is absolutely crazy, because the day before that, he was a Ranger. He knew how to track things, he made crazy shots with a bow, he knew how to sneak in the forest . . .
Basically, Rayje got to totally reinvent himself every day. His three classes (two base, one PrC) let him pick a new suite of abilities every day, and he combined them in clever ways to emulate other classes. He had enough Bluff that no one could ever pin down what he "really" was (he'd swear up and down to just be whatever "class" he was being that day, and he'd swear that he'd never been anything else, and that would usually work!). He wasn't so much a generalist as he was a serial specialist.
First 5e thoughts: It might not be fair to bring up Rayje, because he's kind of my go-to example for "crazy characters that 3.5 made more possible than any other system I've explored," but I figure it'll be worth seeing what kinds of things people can come up with to try to imitate him.
Sanden
From: 3.5/4e (I played the character in two campaigns)
Primary class: Truenamer (3.5)/Runepriest (4e)
Essence: Sanden was "the narrator." He knew bloody everything about bloody everything. He spoke way, way too many languages. It was basically impossible to lie to him (Mephistopheles might have been able to do it, but ol' Meph still probably would have had to roll), because of course the narrator knows what's really going on. He was no less of a narrator in combat than outside it—he was great at directing the flow of battle and making sure that it unfolded the way he wanted it to unfold, which took the form of a combination of granting movement to his allies, throwing around giant bonuses (mostly to damage but also to hit and/or to defenses), and granting lots of extra attacks. He wasn't bad at keeping folks upright, either.
First 5e thoughts: The fact that I've played this character in two campaigns means that I've seen that you can still stick with the essence of someone even if the rules get weird. Truenamers are INT-based backline casters, while Runepriests are STR-based frontline weapon-users (despite having bizarrely similar fluff and a few eerily similar mechanics), and Sanden still felt like Sanden in both guises because I was able to find enough support for his quirks and tricks. The flip side of this, though, is that those quirks and tricks are going to be really important, and in neither case did I end up with an unplayable character despite investing heavily in what made the character special. Mechanically, the Scholar background is a good start (even if you don't know the answer, you know where to find the answer, and that's awesome), and Knowledge Cleric seems appropriate. Still, I'm not sure that just any Scholar/Knowledge Cleric would quite fit—I don't know if it's possible to afford a decent INT and still keep enough stats to be effective elsewhere, and I'm not sure they can grant enough bonuses and enough extra attacks (both the 3.5 version and the 4e version could do both of those things very well). Not sure where to go from there, though.
Kepsek
From: 4e
Primary class: Rogue
Essence: Kepsek was a partially-animated kobold statue (he could move his upper body freely, but his feet were still stuck to a giant stone base—think of the green army men from Toy Story) who just happened to have a portal gun. He literally never walked. Literally. He teleported 100% of the time. At low levels, he was able to get basically wherever he wanted by teleporting (again, literally never walked), and he was pretty good at hiding. At mid levels, he could become invisible to half the battlefield as an incidental part of his actions (basically, teleporting made him invisible to people), and at high levels, he could bring friends with him when he teleported, so he could rearrange basically the entire battlefield and become completely unfindable (at really high levels, he could even do this off-turn). Oh, and he was still a Rogue, so he was still shanking people for nasty Sneak Attacks in the middle of all this.
First 5e thoughts: Kepsek should serve as an example of how I'm willing to apply nice fluff effects as necessary—there wasn't anything mechanical turning his feet into solid stone and preventing him from walking, but that's just how the character was played, and to suggest that he had the capability of walking without using his portal gun would have simply been preposterous. Anyway, Shadow Monk seems like a start, though there's gotta be a way to expand that Shadow Step ability to work even without nice patches of natural darkness around. I feel like Shadow Monk is a start, but I don't feel like it's a finish.
Diane
From: 4e
Primary class: Psion
Essence: Diane was a prankster, but that's as much fluff as anything else. What really made Diane unique was the fact that she basically worked entirely through proxies. She would hide somewhere (often in plain sight) and create proxy conjurations on the field that she could see through and cast through. The real Diane would be safely squirreled away somewhere (sometimes even in the next room, though that was relatively rare), and there would be two or three fake Dianes on the field who were still capable of casting all of her powers and still capable of seeing everything that was going on. (The powers that she would cast were generally control-type effects that would force enemies into bad situations, but honestly, that's almost secondary to the fact that Diane was just Somewhere Else and had several fakes doing her bidding in the meantime.) The proxies would pop if they got attacked, but she could usually make more.
First 5e thoughts: Mislead is a cute 5th level spell, but while Diane is obviously at least a mid-level character, I still don't want her to be only functional a couple times per day. (Plus, while Mislead lets you see through the double's eyes, it won't let you cast a spell without ending the effect.) Not sure if there's going to be any better support for this sort of concept, though. Trickery Cleric has an illusory double that can be cast through, but it can't be seen through, and I dunno if Clerics get good control spells.
Brey-Ka
From: 4e
Primary class: Fighter
Essence: Brey-Ka was a thri-kreen Fighter whose mission in life was to grab things and sit on them until they stopped being problems. He was a master grappler who was basically impossible to escape from (I think a total of two critters ever broke his grasp in a campaign that lasted well over a year, and neither of them actually managed to disengage from him). He could keep stacking penalties on things he grabbed and would basically make them irrelevant until the rest of the party was ready to deal with them. He could multitask very well—it was simple for him to keep one thing grappled while fighting a different thing, it was possible for him to keep two things grappled and keep making life miserable for them, and at high levels he could really overextend himself and keep three things grabbed at once, though that cost him dearly. (Yes, that was silly. We still loved it.) He was also disturbingly fleet of foot.
First 5e thoughts: I know an obvious grapple build is Barbarian + Tavern Brawler + Grappler, but I feel like there should be more than that, because being grappled doesn't really make things as difficult for the poor bastard being grappled as it should be if Brey-Ka has decided you need to not matter for a moment. Brey-Ka wasn't just about grabbing folks—Brey-Ka was about making folks irrelevant until he stopped sitting on them. Barb + TB + Grappler will let us grapple things, but what can we do to make life miserable for someone once we have them grappled?
Shurbi
From: 4e
Primary class: Rogue
Essence: Shurbi's power source was arrogance. (You'll notice that his name is an anagram of "hubris.") He was supremely confident that whatever he was going to do was going to work out, and damned if that wasn't the case! Basically, Shurbi encouraged enemies to take lots of attacks of opportunity against him, but he had an absolutely unfair bonus to AC against AoOs (I mean, it WAS fair in that he invested like half his build in it—it affected his race and his class and his theme and his items and at least three or four of his feats). Why is that better than just not provoking in the first place, as is typical for Rogues? Because he had a feat that gave him combat advantage (necessary for Sneak Attack, just like Advantage here) against anyone who missed him with an AoO. At higher levels he could even damage people who missed him, so he would intentionally provoke as many attacks as he could. (If monsters decided to get clever and just not attack him, then he'd simply waltz into a perfect flank and still shank them.)
First 5e thoughts: I'm not even sure where to begin with this one. I know the almighty Bounded Accuracy means I can't get crazy bonuses against AoOs (though I understand Rangers get something similar), but I'd still like to explore the concept of "character goads enemies into doing something that's usually good for the enemies but ends up punishing them for it."
Characters from Non-D&D Fiction:
Plague Knight
From: Shovel Knight/Shovel Knight: Plague of Shadows
Essence: Plague Knight is a mad alchemist who firmly believes in the principle of "the bigger the explosion, the better the alchemist!" He's got lots and lots of different bombs that he throws around with abandon, but he's also kind of a walking potion shop who's got all kinds of strange magical elixirs that do weird and interesting things.
First 5e thoughts: On the one hand, cantrips are probably the best way of representing "hey, I've got lots of bombs to throw." On the other hand, cantrips aren't very strong overall. Like, I guess Produce Flame can be a Plague Knight bomb, but a character who's defined by Produce Flame isn't a very interesting character. Still, it's better than trying to use the printed items for acid or alchemist's fire; Plague Knight should probably carry a handful of such things, but the actual items are weaksauce enough that they wouldn't really be that interesting, and it's really annoying to try to get enough of them to spam them every turn. (Yeah, I read the "Crazy Alchemist (https://www.reddit.com/r/dndnext/comments/2k325x/the_crazy_alchemist_ideas_and_discussion_welcome/)" character, and I don't think it goes far enough to actually represent Plague Knight.) Plus, most of the methods of making cantrips stronger are more appropriate on CHA-based characters than on INT-based ones, and even though I was comfortable turning my INT-primary Truenamer into a STR-primary Runepriest, you're not going to convince me that Plague Knight has higher CHA than INT, so I feel like he kinda has to be Wizard-based. Maybe. I dunno. Convince me. Beyond that, since most potions can't actually be created by RAW, we'll have to fluff other magical effects as being potions rather than just being straight up spells, which I suppose is doable. I mean, I guess there's the Artificer Wizard from the Eberron UA; not sure if that's actually a good idea or not, though.
Gunvolt
From: Azure Striker Gunvolt
Essence: Azure Striker Gunvolt looks like a jump-and-shoot game in the vein of Mega Man (and it is indeed made by the same developer, if I'm not mistaken), but it's a little bit different. Your bullets only do minimal damage, but they put "tags" on a target they hit. You can (nearly at-will) create a field of electric energy around you, and the more tags something has, the more damage it takes from your electric field. (What's more, you don't really have to aim the field—if something's tagged, your field is going to hit it basically no matter where you are on screen relative to it.) Your field also protects you from damage, though your stamina is reduced when it does so.
First 5e thoughts: Witch Bolt is perfect for representing "I've tagged you, and now lightning is coming for you," but unfortunately, I feel like a character who uses nothing but Witch Bolt isn't going to stay effective for long, especially if I'm parsing the "at higher levels" entry correctly (correct me if I am wrong, but I think the fact that it specifies that the "initial" damage increases by 1d12 means that only the first hit deals extra damage and the automatic damage on subsequent rounds never goes above 1d12). Hex and Hunter's Mark are other nice ways of saying "I don't like you, so my attacks are stronger against you," but I'm not sure if we can find a good way of representing the lightning field. Shocking Grasp is melee, which is inappropriate. Tempest Cleric has a fun reactive lightning ability, so that might be a possibility if we can get a good tag effect with it. Storm Sorcerers like lightning, but I dunno if that's exactly what we want.
Legacy
From: Sentinels of the Multiverse
Essence: Sentinels of the Multiverse is a really neat superhero card game. Many of the characters in SotM are transparent homages to more well-known superheroes (The Wraith is obviously Batman, Tachyon is obviously The Flash, Guise is obviously Deadpool, and so on), and Legacy is obviously Superman. That said, building Legacy in D&D is very different from just building Superman, because even though he's a super-strong flying dude in a cape who defends the innocent and upholds justice, he doesn't play like Superman. In the game, Legacy is primarily what 4e would call a leader—he heals, he buffs, and he serves as a force multiplier. He's very good at making other characters more effective (he's got the easiest access to party-wide damage bonuses in the game), so any Legacy we build needs to be able to dole out some kind of bonuses that make allies' attacks better (more accurate, more damaging, or both). He can also be a bit of a tank (though "tanking" in the Sentinels card game isn't like tanking in D&D) in that he can make himself resistant to damage and then take damage that was meant for his allies. He can hit stuff reasonably effectively, but his job isn't usually to be a primary damage-dealer.
First 5e thoughts: When I built a Legacy-inspired character in 4e, I used a Warlord, but there isn't a Warlord in 5e. He has some of the fluff of a Paladin (I mean, come on, he's Superman—tireless defender of truth and justice, yada yada), but I don't know if Paladin actually fits what he does (though Crusader's Mantle is a start). Who else does good party-wide buffs? I know about Bardic Inspiration, but that seems to target one person at a time (and it also seems pretty sharply limited). Bless is better than nothing; does it have a big brother at higher levels?
That's probably enough for now. Now, my goal here isn't to make fully statted 20-level builds for each and every one of these characters, so we don't need to get bogged down in minutiae about each of them. And while some of these are obviously going to be easier than others, I'm going to be really interested in seeing what we come up with for as many as possible. I've tried to distill down each character to just the most important points in an effort to not turn this into a tl;dr snorefest, but if you want me to expand on anything I've said about any of these characters, feel free to ask.
Naturally, I understand that fluff goes a long way, but fluff goes farther when it's supported by the rules, so the more mechanical support we can find for whatever we're trying to do, the better.
I don't have a level range in mind. I doubt any of these characters will be recognizable at level 1, so let's not even try for that. Some will obviously be higher than others. In general, the lower level you can put something together and make it work, the better.
Finally, my only physical books are the Core Three, though I also have whatever stuff WotC's put online for free (Unearthed Arcana and the Elemental Evil thing, mostly). If you need to use material from outside that, go ahead (I don't like restricting things to core-only for no good reason), but if you do so, please offer a brief synopsis of what that material is/does.
Characters from Other D&D:
Sir Ptelia
From: 3.5
Primary class: Crusader
Essence: Sir Ptelia was a tireless advocate for the cause of Mundane Characters Deserving Nice Things (his holy book was the Tome of Battle). He wasn't afraid to use magic items or ally with magic-users, but he also believed that it should be possible to be a fearsome warrior without innate magic. Mechanically, he was a tank's tank—he used great melee lockdown techniques (spiked chain, Thicket of Blades, AoO tricks, etc.) to corral attention where he wanted it to be (generally onto himself), and he was frightfully good at absorbing punishment (avoiding damage, soaking damage, and self-healing damage). Since he was a firm believer in the principles of the Tome of Battle, he would have been aghast at the thought of just full attacking every turn—he made sure that he always had meaningful choices to make.
First 5e thoughts: Battlemaster Fighter is a start for having meaningful choices beyond "I full attack. Again." Unfortunately, it's not a finish. You really don't get enough superiority dice to have meaningful choices to make every round, so we've gotta find a way to deepen that bag of tricks. Tunnel Fighter + Polearm Master + Sentinel is decent melee lockdown. Our challenge now is to make him inhumanly resilient (Second Wind is cute, but it's probably not enough) and to make sure that he doesn't run out of tricks when he runs out of superiority dice (Sir Ptelia is very emphatically not Sir Ptelia if all he can do is attack normally).
The Inspector
From: 3.5, but transparently inspired by Inspector Gadget
Primary class: Dragonfire Adept, though he'd never have admitted it.
Essence: Like I said, The Inspector was a loving homage to Inspector Gadget (though the D&D version was less of an ineffective buffoon), so he had some measure of investigative/detective skills. He was good at figuring out the history of objects (represented by at-will Identify and Object Reading). He was also a warforged with a supply of increasingly wacky gadgets built into his body. In combat, he was really good at throwing around area effects (90% of which were party-friendly) and inflicting debuffs on enemies. He was particularly fond of tossing around mobility-restricting effects (Slowed and Entangled being his go-to effects). Since he was a Dragonfire Adept, almost all of his tricks were at-will.
First 5e thoughts: At-will effects basically don't exist in any meaningful capacity (yes, cantrips are a thing, but a character who uses nothing but cantrips isn't likely to be powerful or interesting, since they're balanced around being fallback effects rather than primary weapons), but I also don't want to limit his cool effects to being daily spell slots if I can help it. Since moving is now a weird non-action, I'm not sure how much meaningful mobility denial really exists, particularly in spammable form. Knowledge Clerics get Object Reading at 17, but that's a crazy high level. I don't need the game to tell me that an effect is built into my body as long as it's something that can be reasonably fluffed that way, but a lot can be fluffed that way if you try hard enough (his go-to attack was a cone that did fire damage and entangled enemies; I called it Go Go Gadget Hot Glue Cannon).
Rayje
From: 3.5
Primary class: Binder/Incarnate/Chameleon
Essence: Rayje was a Cleric. Stomping around in full plate, healing people, bestowing the blessings of his god, that sort of thing. Except, um, none of that was true yesterday. Yesterday he was a Wizard. He had an obviously magical familiar, he wreathed himself in fire, he threw around lightning with a touch, he could answer questions about arcane topics, he definitely wasn't carrying any full plate, and so on. Which is absolutely crazy, because the day before that, he was a Ranger. He knew how to track things, he made crazy shots with a bow, he knew how to sneak in the forest . . .
Basically, Rayje got to totally reinvent himself every day. His three classes (two base, one PrC) let him pick a new suite of abilities every day, and he combined them in clever ways to emulate other classes. He had enough Bluff that no one could ever pin down what he "really" was (he'd swear up and down to just be whatever "class" he was being that day, and he'd swear that he'd never been anything else, and that would usually work!). He wasn't so much a generalist as he was a serial specialist.
First 5e thoughts: It might not be fair to bring up Rayje, because he's kind of my go-to example for "crazy characters that 3.5 made more possible than any other system I've explored," but I figure it'll be worth seeing what kinds of things people can come up with to try to imitate him.
Sanden
From: 3.5/4e (I played the character in two campaigns)
Primary class: Truenamer (3.5)/Runepriest (4e)
Essence: Sanden was "the narrator." He knew bloody everything about bloody everything. He spoke way, way too many languages. It was basically impossible to lie to him (Mephistopheles might have been able to do it, but ol' Meph still probably would have had to roll), because of course the narrator knows what's really going on. He was no less of a narrator in combat than outside it—he was great at directing the flow of battle and making sure that it unfolded the way he wanted it to unfold, which took the form of a combination of granting movement to his allies, throwing around giant bonuses (mostly to damage but also to hit and/or to defenses), and granting lots of extra attacks. He wasn't bad at keeping folks upright, either.
First 5e thoughts: The fact that I've played this character in two campaigns means that I've seen that you can still stick with the essence of someone even if the rules get weird. Truenamers are INT-based backline casters, while Runepriests are STR-based frontline weapon-users (despite having bizarrely similar fluff and a few eerily similar mechanics), and Sanden still felt like Sanden in both guises because I was able to find enough support for his quirks and tricks. The flip side of this, though, is that those quirks and tricks are going to be really important, and in neither case did I end up with an unplayable character despite investing heavily in what made the character special. Mechanically, the Scholar background is a good start (even if you don't know the answer, you know where to find the answer, and that's awesome), and Knowledge Cleric seems appropriate. Still, I'm not sure that just any Scholar/Knowledge Cleric would quite fit—I don't know if it's possible to afford a decent INT and still keep enough stats to be effective elsewhere, and I'm not sure they can grant enough bonuses and enough extra attacks (both the 3.5 version and the 4e version could do both of those things very well). Not sure where to go from there, though.
Kepsek
From: 4e
Primary class: Rogue
Essence: Kepsek was a partially-animated kobold statue (he could move his upper body freely, but his feet were still stuck to a giant stone base—think of the green army men from Toy Story) who just happened to have a portal gun. He literally never walked. Literally. He teleported 100% of the time. At low levels, he was able to get basically wherever he wanted by teleporting (again, literally never walked), and he was pretty good at hiding. At mid levels, he could become invisible to half the battlefield as an incidental part of his actions (basically, teleporting made him invisible to people), and at high levels, he could bring friends with him when he teleported, so he could rearrange basically the entire battlefield and become completely unfindable (at really high levels, he could even do this off-turn). Oh, and he was still a Rogue, so he was still shanking people for nasty Sneak Attacks in the middle of all this.
First 5e thoughts: Kepsek should serve as an example of how I'm willing to apply nice fluff effects as necessary—there wasn't anything mechanical turning his feet into solid stone and preventing him from walking, but that's just how the character was played, and to suggest that he had the capability of walking without using his portal gun would have simply been preposterous. Anyway, Shadow Monk seems like a start, though there's gotta be a way to expand that Shadow Step ability to work even without nice patches of natural darkness around. I feel like Shadow Monk is a start, but I don't feel like it's a finish.
Diane
From: 4e
Primary class: Psion
Essence: Diane was a prankster, but that's as much fluff as anything else. What really made Diane unique was the fact that she basically worked entirely through proxies. She would hide somewhere (often in plain sight) and create proxy conjurations on the field that she could see through and cast through. The real Diane would be safely squirreled away somewhere (sometimes even in the next room, though that was relatively rare), and there would be two or three fake Dianes on the field who were still capable of casting all of her powers and still capable of seeing everything that was going on. (The powers that she would cast were generally control-type effects that would force enemies into bad situations, but honestly, that's almost secondary to the fact that Diane was just Somewhere Else and had several fakes doing her bidding in the meantime.) The proxies would pop if they got attacked, but she could usually make more.
First 5e thoughts: Mislead is a cute 5th level spell, but while Diane is obviously at least a mid-level character, I still don't want her to be only functional a couple times per day. (Plus, while Mislead lets you see through the double's eyes, it won't let you cast a spell without ending the effect.) Not sure if there's going to be any better support for this sort of concept, though. Trickery Cleric has an illusory double that can be cast through, but it can't be seen through, and I dunno if Clerics get good control spells.
Brey-Ka
From: 4e
Primary class: Fighter
Essence: Brey-Ka was a thri-kreen Fighter whose mission in life was to grab things and sit on them until they stopped being problems. He was a master grappler who was basically impossible to escape from (I think a total of two critters ever broke his grasp in a campaign that lasted well over a year, and neither of them actually managed to disengage from him). He could keep stacking penalties on things he grabbed and would basically make them irrelevant until the rest of the party was ready to deal with them. He could multitask very well—it was simple for him to keep one thing grappled while fighting a different thing, it was possible for him to keep two things grappled and keep making life miserable for them, and at high levels he could really overextend himself and keep three things grabbed at once, though that cost him dearly. (Yes, that was silly. We still loved it.) He was also disturbingly fleet of foot.
First 5e thoughts: I know an obvious grapple build is Barbarian + Tavern Brawler + Grappler, but I feel like there should be more than that, because being grappled doesn't really make things as difficult for the poor bastard being grappled as it should be if Brey-Ka has decided you need to not matter for a moment. Brey-Ka wasn't just about grabbing folks—Brey-Ka was about making folks irrelevant until he stopped sitting on them. Barb + TB + Grappler will let us grapple things, but what can we do to make life miserable for someone once we have them grappled?
Shurbi
From: 4e
Primary class: Rogue
Essence: Shurbi's power source was arrogance. (You'll notice that his name is an anagram of "hubris.") He was supremely confident that whatever he was going to do was going to work out, and damned if that wasn't the case! Basically, Shurbi encouraged enemies to take lots of attacks of opportunity against him, but he had an absolutely unfair bonus to AC against AoOs (I mean, it WAS fair in that he invested like half his build in it—it affected his race and his class and his theme and his items and at least three or four of his feats). Why is that better than just not provoking in the first place, as is typical for Rogues? Because he had a feat that gave him combat advantage (necessary for Sneak Attack, just like Advantage here) against anyone who missed him with an AoO. At higher levels he could even damage people who missed him, so he would intentionally provoke as many attacks as he could. (If monsters decided to get clever and just not attack him, then he'd simply waltz into a perfect flank and still shank them.)
First 5e thoughts: I'm not even sure where to begin with this one. I know the almighty Bounded Accuracy means I can't get crazy bonuses against AoOs (though I understand Rangers get something similar), but I'd still like to explore the concept of "character goads enemies into doing something that's usually good for the enemies but ends up punishing them for it."
Characters from Non-D&D Fiction:
Plague Knight
From: Shovel Knight/Shovel Knight: Plague of Shadows
Essence: Plague Knight is a mad alchemist who firmly believes in the principle of "the bigger the explosion, the better the alchemist!" He's got lots and lots of different bombs that he throws around with abandon, but he's also kind of a walking potion shop who's got all kinds of strange magical elixirs that do weird and interesting things.
First 5e thoughts: On the one hand, cantrips are probably the best way of representing "hey, I've got lots of bombs to throw." On the other hand, cantrips aren't very strong overall. Like, I guess Produce Flame can be a Plague Knight bomb, but a character who's defined by Produce Flame isn't a very interesting character. Still, it's better than trying to use the printed items for acid or alchemist's fire; Plague Knight should probably carry a handful of such things, but the actual items are weaksauce enough that they wouldn't really be that interesting, and it's really annoying to try to get enough of them to spam them every turn. (Yeah, I read the "Crazy Alchemist (https://www.reddit.com/r/dndnext/comments/2k325x/the_crazy_alchemist_ideas_and_discussion_welcome/)" character, and I don't think it goes far enough to actually represent Plague Knight.) Plus, most of the methods of making cantrips stronger are more appropriate on CHA-based characters than on INT-based ones, and even though I was comfortable turning my INT-primary Truenamer into a STR-primary Runepriest, you're not going to convince me that Plague Knight has higher CHA than INT, so I feel like he kinda has to be Wizard-based. Maybe. I dunno. Convince me. Beyond that, since most potions can't actually be created by RAW, we'll have to fluff other magical effects as being potions rather than just being straight up spells, which I suppose is doable. I mean, I guess there's the Artificer Wizard from the Eberron UA; not sure if that's actually a good idea or not, though.
Gunvolt
From: Azure Striker Gunvolt
Essence: Azure Striker Gunvolt looks like a jump-and-shoot game in the vein of Mega Man (and it is indeed made by the same developer, if I'm not mistaken), but it's a little bit different. Your bullets only do minimal damage, but they put "tags" on a target they hit. You can (nearly at-will) create a field of electric energy around you, and the more tags something has, the more damage it takes from your electric field. (What's more, you don't really have to aim the field—if something's tagged, your field is going to hit it basically no matter where you are on screen relative to it.) Your field also protects you from damage, though your stamina is reduced when it does so.
First 5e thoughts: Witch Bolt is perfect for representing "I've tagged you, and now lightning is coming for you," but unfortunately, I feel like a character who uses nothing but Witch Bolt isn't going to stay effective for long, especially if I'm parsing the "at higher levels" entry correctly (correct me if I am wrong, but I think the fact that it specifies that the "initial" damage increases by 1d12 means that only the first hit deals extra damage and the automatic damage on subsequent rounds never goes above 1d12). Hex and Hunter's Mark are other nice ways of saying "I don't like you, so my attacks are stronger against you," but I'm not sure if we can find a good way of representing the lightning field. Shocking Grasp is melee, which is inappropriate. Tempest Cleric has a fun reactive lightning ability, so that might be a possibility if we can get a good tag effect with it. Storm Sorcerers like lightning, but I dunno if that's exactly what we want.
Legacy
From: Sentinels of the Multiverse
Essence: Sentinels of the Multiverse is a really neat superhero card game. Many of the characters in SotM are transparent homages to more well-known superheroes (The Wraith is obviously Batman, Tachyon is obviously The Flash, Guise is obviously Deadpool, and so on), and Legacy is obviously Superman. That said, building Legacy in D&D is very different from just building Superman, because even though he's a super-strong flying dude in a cape who defends the innocent and upholds justice, he doesn't play like Superman. In the game, Legacy is primarily what 4e would call a leader—he heals, he buffs, and he serves as a force multiplier. He's very good at making other characters more effective (he's got the easiest access to party-wide damage bonuses in the game), so any Legacy we build needs to be able to dole out some kind of bonuses that make allies' attacks better (more accurate, more damaging, or both). He can also be a bit of a tank (though "tanking" in the Sentinels card game isn't like tanking in D&D) in that he can make himself resistant to damage and then take damage that was meant for his allies. He can hit stuff reasonably effectively, but his job isn't usually to be a primary damage-dealer.
First 5e thoughts: When I built a Legacy-inspired character in 4e, I used a Warlord, but there isn't a Warlord in 5e. He has some of the fluff of a Paladin (I mean, come on, he's Superman—tireless defender of truth and justice, yada yada), but I don't know if Paladin actually fits what he does (though Crusader's Mantle is a start). Who else does good party-wide buffs? I know about Bardic Inspiration, but that seems to target one person at a time (and it also seems pretty sharply limited). Bless is better than nothing; does it have a big brother at higher levels?
That's probably enough for now. Now, my goal here isn't to make fully statted 20-level builds for each and every one of these characters, so we don't need to get bogged down in minutiae about each of them. And while some of these are obviously going to be easier than others, I'm going to be really interested in seeing what we come up with for as many as possible. I've tried to distill down each character to just the most important points in an effort to not turn this into a tl;dr snorefest, but if you want me to expand on anything I've said about any of these characters, feel free to ask.