dragoeniex
2018-11-02, 11:06 PM
With great powers comes great customizability. Our lv 12-13 group recently polished off an arc and the most recurring villain, then headed into a 2-year time skip. The DM is being generous and working with players to figure out a custom feat per person to fit their characters and major arcs or traits. So! This is exciting, and I've got two parts to this post. One for me, one for my wizard pal.
Regarding my whispers-bard-dipped-hexblade: both his crippling weakness (3 at story's start, 1 now without life support gauntlets) and special abilities- mantle of whispers, hexblade's curse- have been flavored as a result of being swarmed by shadows before the adventure's start. The recurring villain (smarmy bard/wizard gnome) ended up being the one who orchestrated that attack. My character was just a guard caught in collateral. Has spent a couple decades figuring out how to turn the shadow remnants inside him into strengths to use in his search for answers.
The baddie's soul was all corrupted and warped by the time of the conflict and his subsequent capture, since he'd been experimenting with shadow powers himself. After realizing there was no way to keep or kill him safely with all the high-magic underlings the guy had waiting to res or break him out... My guy pushed his shadow inside the gnome and grabbed his. Took quite a lot of necrotic damage but managed to get a hold of the shadowy soul, pulled it out, and tore it apart.
This also put him through another strength drain, which nearly killed him and is why strength is permanently down to 1 instead of 3 now. DM liked the moment a lot, and it was very cinematic, so we'd like my feat to build off that. After talking with him and a couple others, here's what we've got so far:
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Turbulent Soul
As your powers have grown, so have the restless energies inside you. Enemies that touch your mind or spirit leave their own open to a surge of resistance.
When a creature forces you to make a mental save (wisdom, intelligence, or charisma), before you roll, you may use your reaction to add your proficiency to the roll. If you make the save, the effect is disrupted, and so is your enemy. They take 2d6 necrotic damage and 2d6 psychic damage and may not take reactions until the start of their next turn.
This ability does not apply to non-spell fear effects- such as dragon’s frightful presence or an aasimar’s necrotic shroud. You regain it when you complete a long rest.
---
The gist of this is that he may have accidentally hung onto a piece of that soul (gnomish cunning, shadow nastiness) and has some bad juju of his own rolling around in there already. Feels like it'd be pretty cool, if situational, to be the one making enemies startled/creeped out when they touch something unexpected. A buzz back. I'm curious of what others think of what's here.
I'm trying to keep it limited to things that would "hook in" to him internally, as is. But I'm also curious about alternate ideas or feedback. Already have pretty solid control, illusion, and gish options.
Now! For my wizard buddy. He actually became king of a country that was varying levels of thrilled before this encounter. One level cleric of Ioun, the rest necromancer- but the necromancer themes are ones he's been feeling less comfortable using in context of the story. He's not quite sure what he wants, and I'd really like to help toss some "feels cool for you" ideas to him and the DM.
His character is involved in trying to work on some major racial prejudices in the kingdom and has been doing magic research/country research prepping for a possible war. It's fun watching the socially anxious character slot into such a major leader role.
He has an owl familiar that is dorky and lovable and dies a lot in dumb ways. He's protective of his half-orc half brother (on the receiving end of some of that prejudice), and he has a couple types of things he seems to really get into. While he's gone mostly support/buff, he gets his pyromaniac blaster on with fireball and disintegrate recently and cackles when he gets to nuke. Flipside, he's also a booky dork who frequently blows downtime slots on screwing with his teammates or because he can. Really likes turning people into other things.
He's not big on ideas like switching a couple spells out midday because he feels like he's always prepped himself well enough going in. He might like extra cool familiar things- preferably not chainlock existing ones, since another member may get that later- social presence, power... etc.
Anything fun pop into your heads for this one? He may be getting a +half proficiency or limited advantage to intelligence checks as part of the feat, given he's the designated smart guy but has huge bad roll streaks. If so, DM would like to toss on an extra that's more exciting than a static buff.
Regarding my whispers-bard-dipped-hexblade: both his crippling weakness (3 at story's start, 1 now without life support gauntlets) and special abilities- mantle of whispers, hexblade's curse- have been flavored as a result of being swarmed by shadows before the adventure's start. The recurring villain (smarmy bard/wizard gnome) ended up being the one who orchestrated that attack. My character was just a guard caught in collateral. Has spent a couple decades figuring out how to turn the shadow remnants inside him into strengths to use in his search for answers.
The baddie's soul was all corrupted and warped by the time of the conflict and his subsequent capture, since he'd been experimenting with shadow powers himself. After realizing there was no way to keep or kill him safely with all the high-magic underlings the guy had waiting to res or break him out... My guy pushed his shadow inside the gnome and grabbed his. Took quite a lot of necrotic damage but managed to get a hold of the shadowy soul, pulled it out, and tore it apart.
This also put him through another strength drain, which nearly killed him and is why strength is permanently down to 1 instead of 3 now. DM liked the moment a lot, and it was very cinematic, so we'd like my feat to build off that. After talking with him and a couple others, here's what we've got so far:
---
Turbulent Soul
As your powers have grown, so have the restless energies inside you. Enemies that touch your mind or spirit leave their own open to a surge of resistance.
When a creature forces you to make a mental save (wisdom, intelligence, or charisma), before you roll, you may use your reaction to add your proficiency to the roll. If you make the save, the effect is disrupted, and so is your enemy. They take 2d6 necrotic damage and 2d6 psychic damage and may not take reactions until the start of their next turn.
This ability does not apply to non-spell fear effects- such as dragon’s frightful presence or an aasimar’s necrotic shroud. You regain it when you complete a long rest.
---
The gist of this is that he may have accidentally hung onto a piece of that soul (gnomish cunning, shadow nastiness) and has some bad juju of his own rolling around in there already. Feels like it'd be pretty cool, if situational, to be the one making enemies startled/creeped out when they touch something unexpected. A buzz back. I'm curious of what others think of what's here.
I'm trying to keep it limited to things that would "hook in" to him internally, as is. But I'm also curious about alternate ideas or feedback. Already have pretty solid control, illusion, and gish options.
Now! For my wizard buddy. He actually became king of a country that was varying levels of thrilled before this encounter. One level cleric of Ioun, the rest necromancer- but the necromancer themes are ones he's been feeling less comfortable using in context of the story. He's not quite sure what he wants, and I'd really like to help toss some "feels cool for you" ideas to him and the DM.
His character is involved in trying to work on some major racial prejudices in the kingdom and has been doing magic research/country research prepping for a possible war. It's fun watching the socially anxious character slot into such a major leader role.
He has an owl familiar that is dorky and lovable and dies a lot in dumb ways. He's protective of his half-orc half brother (on the receiving end of some of that prejudice), and he has a couple types of things he seems to really get into. While he's gone mostly support/buff, he gets his pyromaniac blaster on with fireball and disintegrate recently and cackles when he gets to nuke. Flipside, he's also a booky dork who frequently blows downtime slots on screwing with his teammates or because he can. Really likes turning people into other things.
He's not big on ideas like switching a couple spells out midday because he feels like he's always prepped himself well enough going in. He might like extra cool familiar things- preferably not chainlock existing ones, since another member may get that later- social presence, power... etc.
Anything fun pop into your heads for this one? He may be getting a +half proficiency or limited advantage to intelligence checks as part of the feat, given he's the designated smart guy but has huge bad roll streaks. If so, DM would like to toss on an extra that's more exciting than a static buff.