I've been meaning to ask for a while, do you have any official character art reference sheets for Angela (and/or the others?)
ahdok
Your Laeral is very similar to the way I run Laeral in my games, which is lovely. I think she's a good character, the tragic "I live forever" schtick works well on a genuinely good, intellegent, competent leader type.
I do always feel that she makes friends with the PCs too easily in most of my games. (I have a similar problem running Vajra... which at least evens itself out a bit whenever the PCs suggest having the two of them meet up...) - but also, if you do (good-aligned) adventures out of Waterdeep for long enough, you should probably end up friends with both of them.
It's actually a significant issue in Waterdeep's setting that she can't just planeshift and visit Khelben, because of where his soul is.
(It's not somewhere you can planeshift to...)
The villains in question were running a business at a street faire in Waterdeep. We had pegged their group as suspicious in general, and figured this was some kind of cover to pass on covert messages or meet with other villains that we were tracking. Wanting to get an opportunity to get a good look at them, and stake them out to see who they were meeting, we showed up and spent some time hanging around keeping an eye on their activities. (They had not met us and we had no reason to think they would suspect us of foul play.)
After a couple of hours of not much happening, we started passing shifts around keeping an eye on them, and Konsi went on a walk around the stalls at the faire, where some gnomes from the temple of Gond were making candyfloss with some kind of contraption. Faelys has a massive sweet tooth, and Konsi (who was magically disguised as a gnome so as not to cause concern in the streets of Waterdeep) figured it'd be really cool to learn to make candyfloss, so she asked the gnomes how the machine worked. They refused to tell her, but she was determined to figure it out, so she watched them operate the machine for a while to try and learn what she could about it.
As a part of this investigation, she cast detect magic, to see if the machine was in any way magical (it wasn't, it was purely mechanical) - so, a little despondant, she returned to the group staking out the villains, only to discover that all of them had magical illusion auras - as they were all wearing magical disguise amulets.
Thanks so much, it means a lot to artists to hear this kind of thing :)
It's going to be hectic in the next few months, so I may be a bit sporadic, but everything will be back to normal by the end of October, and I should be able to knuckle down and focus on drawing a lot more!
Heraldry be like that sometimes.
Generally speaking, this is something that an experienced GM can handle in session zero. An important part of session zero is establishing expectations for the style of game to be played: Things like "are the player characters friends?" "Is PvP encouraged or discouraged?" "Do I as a DM want the characters to stick together?" etc etc.
Generally when running DnD, I request of my players to design characters who:
- Have a disposition to get along well with their companions. (this can be for any reason: because they're like that with everyone, or because they're loyal to the group, or because they view it as useful to have some friendly scapegoats nearby or any other motivation.)
- Be the kind of person who will go on adventures and take risks. (This can be because they're a daredevil, or because they're desperate, or because they're devoted to their duty, or any other motivation.)
Fundamentally, most DnD games are the story of a group of friends going on adventures together. If your DnD game is the story of a group of friends going on adventures, then it's extremely beneficial for your players to build characters who will be friends, and who will go on adventures. Together.
It's going well, I think. We're on top of it. I'm not panicking.
There's a Konsi in the invitation art. I'll colour her in so y'all can spot her.
The drawing prompt was "existential dread" The runic scribble around her is actually just all her negative thoughts - they're more readable in the light version.
I like that kind of thing in a lot of settings, especially more philosophical or metaphorical settings.
DnD always feels to me like it's a world where the metaphysics are defined by the players having an hour long argument at the table about "what RAW says", while people look up rules in books. Back in my 3.5 days, someone would manage to find a ruling in an obscure 3rd party book, in 4th edition, you'd find some hard definition in the source material. In 5th edition, someone will find a tweet from Crawford, and the table will agree it's stupid and decide the opposite is always true.
For my experiences in D&D, the question of "whether x counts as y" is a definition that sticks to the universe itself - there aren't many examples of metaphysics in D&D where the answer varies by intent. (I'm sure there are some though!)
Caveat: As with everything I say about D&D rules and definitions, this is not advice, just how I think of things, and the objective correct answer is always "whatever works at your table."
On average, it's cheaper to use reincarnate, you just provide a bodypart, and, so long as you didn't die of old age, reincarnate will make you a new "newly-adult" body. It's more expensive than Clone in materials, but much lower level, and if you roll a long lived race like an elf, gnome, or dwarf, you get a lot more mileage out of it before having to go around again.