Gnome Alone
2023-03-17, 10:30 PM
Had an idea which is perhaps obviously inspired by The Venture Brothers, and so in turn Johnny Quest before it - I thought it would be fun to have a sort of light-hearted...uh, not necessarily one-shot, but recurring single adventure group which consists of two idiot brothers, who are the sons of a great explorer, who is some kind of planehopping caster. It doesn't matter, because the premise is he's not there - for whatever reason, before our story begins, he took the adventuring group to another plane of existence and he had to go back to the Prime Material, and then he never returned, therebg stranding his children, their magic butler (equal parts hypercompetent and long-suffering) and their dog (woof.)
Now, obviously there's a lot of ways that one might go about building such a party. It actually seems like a very obvious setup for a classic party of fighter + rogue + wizard, with the stronger and/or more boisterous brother being a fighter and the more agile or cunning one being the rogue, and then the butler as the wizard. One might even dispense with the brothers as PCs entirely, and use them purely as chaos-generating tools to further the plot by tormenting the protector characters with their ding-dong-ishness.
So, long story short, my question is what to do about the dog. I was thinking it should be some kind of dog that's infused with the family's ancestral guardian spirit. Or maybe the dog IS a guardian spirit. I think you get the idea. Some kind of unholy fusion of H.E.L.P.eR, Snarf and Appa. Might not even talk, which would be good for those who aren't great at roleplay, or are absolute masters of it.
I found a homebrewed PC race for Blink Dog, and I'm sorely tempted to to just use that, since it's easy enough and a blink dog is such an iconic D&D creature in the first place. Or, the other idea I had was to have the dog mechanically represented by a Druid that never leaves wildshape.
Do either of these sound good, or is there some even simpler solution that I'm overlooking? I know that once we're reskinning things, basically the sky's the limit, but that's kind of the problem - I'm not sure what to do with such a broad swath of theoretical options before me.
Now, obviously there's a lot of ways that one might go about building such a party. It actually seems like a very obvious setup for a classic party of fighter + rogue + wizard, with the stronger and/or more boisterous brother being a fighter and the more agile or cunning one being the rogue, and then the butler as the wizard. One might even dispense with the brothers as PCs entirely, and use them purely as chaos-generating tools to further the plot by tormenting the protector characters with their ding-dong-ishness.
So, long story short, my question is what to do about the dog. I was thinking it should be some kind of dog that's infused with the family's ancestral guardian spirit. Or maybe the dog IS a guardian spirit. I think you get the idea. Some kind of unholy fusion of H.E.L.P.eR, Snarf and Appa. Might not even talk, which would be good for those who aren't great at roleplay, or are absolute masters of it.
I found a homebrewed PC race for Blink Dog, and I'm sorely tempted to to just use that, since it's easy enough and a blink dog is such an iconic D&D creature in the first place. Or, the other idea I had was to have the dog mechanically represented by a Druid that never leaves wildshape.
Do either of these sound good, or is there some even simpler solution that I'm overlooking? I know that once we're reskinning things, basically the sky's the limit, but that's kind of the problem - I'm not sure what to do with such a broad swath of theoretical options before me.