Cottman,Crawford and the Jersey guy.
Two Brooklyn born gen X guys and a Jersey millennial shooting the shit. Talking about everything and anything. Ready to hear topic suggestions for future podcasts and feedback on those we have recorded. Follow and Like us on FaceBook & Instagram. Email: CCandNJGuy@Gmail.com
Cottman,Crawford and the Jersey guy.
Dungeons & Dragons: Character Creation Masterclass
The magical world of Dungeons & Dragons unfolds as we journey through character creation with expert guidance. What makes a character truly unique? It's the fusion of stats, abilities, and imagination that transforms numbers on a sheet into living, breathing personas in a fantasy realm.
Our guest meticulously crafted ten distinctive characters, complete with 3D models, to showcase the incredible depth and versatility of D&D character creation. From the formidable half-orc barbarian who tanks damage on the front lines to the brilliant clockwork wizard manipulating time with arcane precision, each character represents a different playstyle and fantasy. The homebrew undead blood hunter reveals how player creativity extends the game beyond official rules, creating characters that damage themselves to amplify their magic while their undead nature provides resistance to those very wounds.
We explore how stats directly shape character identity and capabilities. High wisdom makes druids exceptional at insight checks, while dexterity transforms rangers into masters of stealth and acrobatics. The mechanical foundation of each character creates natural strengths and vulnerabilities that drive storytelling moments during gameplay. A wizard's powerful spells come with the trade-off of low hit points and armor class, creating tension when enemies close in, while multi-classing offers versatility at the cost of specialized power.
Whether you're drawn to the strategic elements of character optimization, the creative expression of building a unique persona, or simply want to understand what makes D&D so captivating, this episode offers valuable insights into the game's remarkable flexibility. For newcomers, we highlight how digital tools have made character management more accessible than ever, allowing players to focus on the adventure rather than calculations.
Ready to roll the dice? Join us after Halloween for another episode where we'll put these characters into action and show you firsthand how combat works in the world's greatest roleplaying game!
Hosted by: Cottman, Crawford & The Jersey Guy
Contact us: CCandNJGuy@gmail.com
Links & socials: https://linktr.ee/ccandnjguy
Hello, welcome to Copman Crawford and the Jersey Guy podcast. Yo Yo, what's going on. What's going on my people? What's going on my what's up? What are you guys doing?
Speaker 3:I'm back.
Speaker 2:Justin, justin's back.
Speaker 3:Justin is back. Justin's back, d&d.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we're going to geek out a little bit yo, A little D&D.
Speaker 2:We're going.
Speaker 1:Geek out a little bit, yo A little D&D we're gonna geek out. Yeah, for sure Gonna be fun. Laugh and bug out and we're doing the Live Instagram as well, so yeah, Instagram or TikTok, tiktok. Oh.
Speaker 2:I'm sorry Live.
Speaker 1:Now we're gonna get Cut off now Already, already starting Holy.
Speaker 2:They heard it. It was like the Algorithm heard it. It was like the algorithm heard it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, fuck, that guy Did you take him in.
Speaker 1:I took him in. I took him in. Did you take him in? Yeah, I did that is too fun. Remember when we had him here last time. He said he was going to make characters for us. Oh right, for D&D.
Speaker 3:For D&D. So now that's it we're at. So um part of the yeah I, I did, I did my due diligence and I slightly painstakingly made like 10 characters and I also, just for funsies, I also made 3d models of every single character for you guys to check.
Speaker 3:That's awesome. So I I did also add a little game to this kind of. So I'm going to show you guys each character and a little bit of what they're about, and then I'm going to have you all pick a character that you like the most and I'll show you what a player character sheet looks like for that character. Oh sweet, so you can see, kind of like how their vibe and aesthetic actually fits into the hard stats of the character Gotcha, the other fun thing that I added in there I'm sorry I didn't bring a bonus prize for this, but there are two characters amongst these characters, one of which is mine and one of which is Aaron's.
Speaker 3:If anybody figures that out, good on you, nice. So I would start with a little bit about character identity and how your stats sort of embolden the type of character that you're going for. So you'll see that when we get to the character sheets. But I also took my, I did my due diligence to make all of these characters as expressive as possible, as far as like how far you can go with character creation in dnd is actually pretty awesome.
Speaker 3:And, uh, there's also a little bit of some homebrew stuff in here, and homebrewing is when people take the base mechanics of dnd and they put a little twist on it or alter something or you.
Speaker 3:sometimes even people will homebrew entire like race options or class options or build entire subclasses. So there is a little bit of that in here. There's actually yeah, there is a lot of it, and Wizards of the Coast, the company that owns D&D, has started a lot of green lighting, of those like off-brand products that people make Wow Okay, and have started implementing them into D&D beyond, which is where most of it gets done online. So now there's like books that come from completely different companies that are getting input in here so that you can have all of the stuff from those gotcha. So there is a little bit of that in here. There's some stuff that is not in the base game that is present here. So now I'm gonna go through every single character and let you guys kind of have a look at each one, and then hopefully we can get these for the audience too at some point yeah and yeah, so first, first character.
Speaker 3:Let me see if I can't get my brightness up a little bit, sorry so, yeah, so watching.
Speaker 3:We are talking about dungeons and dragons yeah, um characters right now yeah, we're about to get into the characters right now. The very first one that I figured I'd show you guys is one of the sort of blended characters with a little bit of homebrew. This is a half orc barbarian. Wow, I did make the full 3d renders for these. I obviously we all have an idea in our mind of what an orc should look like, especially a barbarian orc. What I did here is this character is made off of a homebrew that is half orc, half aasimar, and aasimar is an interesting race, that's they're pale and they're like adjacent to angels, almost like a demi-angel.
Speaker 3:Okay, so he's a half orc, half aasimar barbarian. These guys are typically very high constitution stats for their health and very high strength stats. Obviously, they want to be able to hit as hard as possible and they often will try and be a tank or an aggressor. So, very much a front line. Take all the hits so that all of your less constitution heavy people can do what they need to do without dying so that's the work.
Speaker 1:Well, anybody who's watching too when we do, when we play, put this up on youtube. We're gonna have the characters and stuff yeah, right, happily.
Speaker 3:Make this available so that you guys can see exactly what's happening so yeah that's our first guy and I'll, when we go into whoever you guys decide to pick, I'll talk a little bit more about exactly what their class is and what their subclass is. Next I have a dwarven cleric, as you, bro, dwarven cleric. Now, clerics are interesting because they get a lot of really nice benefits. They are spell casters that have the ability to use heavy armor, which not every class gets. Almost none of them do so. They're heavy armor users. They are weapon users, but they're typically not very good at it. There are exceptions in cleric. Some of the subclasses for cleric are actually really good at weapons and it's more focused on that aspect, but the the takeaway there is that they usually have less spells or less effective spells. Okay, so this is the cleric one guy. They are, again, heavy armor users. They are weapon users for. For him, because he's a dwarf, I went with a big hammer, so that's your guy.
Speaker 3:Next up we have a. This is an example of a few things. This is a goblin, druid cleric. Okay, so again, homebrew style of goblin called Vrel, which are like deep goblins. They live in the Underdark, which is the. There's a, basically a whole nother subterranean world In Faerun, which is the main setting for D&D, and down in the Underdark there is a bunch of like deep versions of a couple of races. So for elves, you have have drow, which are like dark elves gnomes. You have deep gnomes. For dwarves you have I'm forgetting the name for them, but there is. There is a deep version of dwarves too, and most of them are like purple skin, white hair, like sort of alien in a way.
Speaker 1:What are their powers? I'm sorry, sorry, what was that? What are their?
Speaker 3:powers. This is a druid and a cleric, so it's multi-class, which is also something that you can do. Every time a character levels up, you don't have to continue to take levels in that class. You can decide to just split it into a multi-class so this character is a I believe, circle of the moon druid and then, I think, a twilight cleric.
Speaker 3:Wow, yeah, lots of subclasses. Every single one has a sort of theme right, you can get to fit really anything you want to be. We could go into more of the subclasses as we go on, but that's that's it for this character. They are with multi-classing it. The other takeaway is that it does get hard to balance your stats because every class wants to be really good at usually two different stats right, and when you get, you know, two very different classes multi-classing. Now your stats are all over the board and you you start to get weaker at the things you want to be good at because you can do more things across the board. So it is a trade-off between, like, being a jack-of-all-trades or being a master of just a couple of things right. So that's that.
Speaker 3:This stuff, yeah, is another example of some homebrew and also some of the additional content that has been made for dnd. This comes from the same people that made critical role as far as the class goes, the class is blood hunter. Matt mercer made this class all on its own. It has now become part of dnd's ip and is usable by everyone and then for the race for this guy. He is a a take on a homebrew race that was made online called Undead, which is really interesting and cool because you can be any race that you want to be, but all of the properties and benefits that you would get from your race are stripped away in this one because you are getting the Undead sort of race benefit.
Speaker 2:So yeah, so it could be any character, but they're going to take the properties of whatever that is.
Speaker 3:so if you want to play an undead gnome or something? You're not going to get the benefits of gnome at all you're just going to be the benefits of undead.
Speaker 3:So yeah, this character was made to just kind of show you how crazy and like volatile it can get. Yeah, it's crazy, he's. He's undead, he's a blood Blood hunters damage themselves to be able to amplify their magic and because he's undead, one of the properties for that is that they have resistance to necrotic damage. All of the damage that they do to themselves to boost their spells is necrotic damage. Now he's taking less necrotic damage in order to boost his spells, guys and other abilities that he can do right the downside with and they always try and add downsides when you get something that strong downside is, he takes increased radiant damage. So any kind of holy damage is going to be double for him, guy, wherever it is. So, yeah, it can. You can have characters that are well-rounded and like very survivable, and you can also have characters that are like super volatile, just like total wild cards. I'm now thinking of one type of barbarian that I should have used called wild magic barbarians.
Speaker 1:Like what mercenaries?
Speaker 3:The wild magic barbarian does something very interesting, which is every time he uses his rage. Which is the staple ability for barbarians is that they go into a rage and they take significantly less of every type of weapon damage and they hit really hard, but they have to keep fighting to maintain it got you. So the second that fighting's over, they don't get any of their benefits with the wild magic barbarian. Every time they rage, they have to use I use a separate table for this they roll a d100 and from a list of 100, random things can happen every time they're hit, and it can be things that are awesome, like your speed is doubled Right, or it can be things like a fireball is cast right on where you are you know yeah, so or the table that I use is is a D 100 table and it's great.
Speaker 3:There's one where it's like you turn into a potted flower for like five turns.
Speaker 2:That sucks, that sucks.
Speaker 3:But it's that sort of volatility that roll the dice. Next character is an example of another underdark character. This is a drow, which is a dark elf, and he is a rogue. The type of rogue that he is has a specter like ability where he can sort of take on some like ghastly forms, and obviously with the rogue, the, the theme is being this highly dexterous, highly stealthy sort of character right, which, boosted by this subclass, only makes him better, right, he's going through walls now, on top of being an incredibly sneaky guy. Rogues are typically entirely martial classes, so there's no spell casting here, exceptions being stuff like this subclass where he's getting some sort of ghastly-like abilities and also, I think, a couple of spells. The next guy we have is a human clockwork wizard. So for wizards, obviously their biggest thing is going to be intelligence, right, right, and the intelligence stat is what boosts all of their magic abilities.
Speaker 3:That was you yeah wizards have a like typically the most spell slots, so them and also the most spells available to them okay how is that one his man?
Speaker 1:He's the schoolcaster, he's the one. He's the artic well, not the articulist so much, but he's the one who does the research.
Speaker 3:He's the one that does all that. No, I think that's me. Actually, I'm the intelligent guy. Let's continue on. So yeah, with wizards. Obviously these guys are like super squishy in most cases. I just want to see them all first before we decide what's oh yeah, no, no, no this is me, just like you know, jumping out like so yeah, I mean with, with, with wizards, it's uh, it's all about intelligence and thank you and it's.
Speaker 3:It's not necessarily about any of the other stats for them, really, so they are going to dump points into intelligence and pretty much null and void all the other guys With Clockwork Wizards. The actual subclass, I believe, is called Cronergy, so this guy has a lot of spells that affect time. Oh, that's super cool, whether it's giving someone like the haste spell to double their ability to do everything per turn, so they're basically moving at twice the speed of everyone else, or things like completely halting people in combat or slowing time in combat or even reversing things from happening, and right very.
Speaker 3:Wizards are very swiss army knife in a way, because they have so many spell slots available to them. Not every single spell that they have to take is going to be a combat spell. Right, there's plenty of utility spells for wizards that often help the party in huge ways. Yeah, yeah mean you got stuff like the ability to fly. Dimension door is a huge one where it's just we're all leaving, yeah, yeah, yeah, I think it goes like 500 feet away. Okay, make a portal Right, another portal goes 500 feet away, you're gone. Yeah, just like that. Nice, so, and that's just kind of the utility of a wizard. Obviously, the trade-off is that in combat you have to protect them because they're going to die. Yeah, if anyone gets up in a wizard's face, he's done. You will watch normally a whole table hold their breath because if this guy dies, there goes half our damage.
Speaker 2:You know what I mean.
Speaker 3:So that wizard is a great example of just the volatility that you can find in a base class, Even at its most basic level. Just the class alone is scary to play. Because, bad things can happen to them quickly. Alrighty, next one Duelist fighter. So fighter class is obviously exactly what it sounds like, right yeah, fully martial class.
Speaker 3:These guys, in almost every single subclass for them, have no spell casting, but they are also, like, the most tactical as far as some of their abilities go. So, whether it's whether you're playing a champion fighter or a battle master fighter right, whatever it may be they usually have a bunch of stuff that they can do in combat and they have a little bit of tankiness with things like. They have a staple ability called action surge and a staple ability called second Surge and a staple ability called Second Wind. Action Surge allows them to basically take two turns in one, which is huge. Nobody else really has to do that.
Speaker 3:The other thing, Second Wind, is that I believe as a bonus action each turn or not each turn, but one turn per combat they can just heal a good chunk of health to stay in the fight. It's just them literally recuperating mid-fight to continue to fight. Depending on how you build fighters, they're also some of the best at making sure your attacks hit, because you have to roll to hit and there are classes that are just okay at it.
Speaker 3:That'll get you know this know as a marksman almost uh, right, right, like a plus two or a plus three to hit is just all right. Fighters can get up to like plus 10, where it's like you're going to hit almost every single time and it's going to be for a really good amount of damage. So, yeah, fighters, fighters are fun and interesting, especially for people that like enjoy there's a lot involved in this game.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3:Seriously. Yeah, the least things you can do.
Speaker 2:I never knew that.
Speaker 3:No, it's a great and that's why I wanted to do it, just to show you guys, like, how extensive it gets and how expressive it can be Right. Expressive it can be right, like if there's a type of guy that you've ever had in your mind where you'd be like, oh, that'd be so cool to see in like a movie or something. I can almost guarantee there's some version of it in dnd that you would be able to play and act right next. We have you get like a like a matrix.
Speaker 2:I'm sure there's a neo. There's gotta be a neo. Oh yeah, there's there's a Neo.
Speaker 3:There's got to be a Neo. Oh, yeah, there's something like it. This is the race is Aarakocra, which is typically eagle and hawk folk. That's cool. Yeah, their big thing is that, while they don't get a lot of racial benefits, they do have flight, which is huge. Yeah, it's like you don't really.
Speaker 2:So how does that transfer into, like when you're like battling or when you're playing?
Speaker 3:So, depending on, obviously, what you, what you. If you're doing it in physical form, you're going to have to get those little podiums that show like how high up someone is.
Speaker 2:Oh right. But you know but I mean, like what?
Speaker 3:like does that give them an attack power at the flight, or does that do or can you move over characters? Is that like how it goes? It's mostly just a positioning thing, okay, it's just like the freedom of, and then also obviously a huge thing we're in a fantasy setting and most people got a bow as well. Most people are going to be attacking with melee weapons, right? Not everyone has a musket and a bow and arrow or something like that right, right, you're flying and suddenly I'm on.
Speaker 1:All right, yeah, now you're not hitting me and I'm sniping.
Speaker 2:You know what.
Speaker 3:I mean, so yeah, he's a ranger. The ranger class is sort of your traditional bow and sword type guy. It's like a drone basically.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's a little protagonist-y in that way where it's like oh, he's just kind of the jack-of-all-trades guy and they are another utility class. So they are considered half casters because they have some spells, but they're actually considered like the least half caster, so they have a super, super limited amount of spells and most of them are not like mega impactful, it's like utility stuff, right. For instance, good berry it's the ability to magically make a bunch of these little berries that will, I think, have you fed for like 24 hours, like you will not have any longer problems for 24 hours, and it also does heal you when you eat one. So that's just an example of what they can do. And I think, like entanglement or grasping vines is another one where it's just I'm gonna hold you in place, right, some vines. So he would be the healer, this guy not necessarily, but he's a really good utility. Okay, for if it's a travel heavy story, you want a ranger, right, because they're really good at like the survival stat navigation and uh, what's that?
Speaker 2:perception yeah gotcha, just I'll give us.
Speaker 3:I'm not I'm just thanking people she better and so, yeah, so, and with ranger stat block, but it they're typically dexterity, very dexterous, so it also makes them really good at stuff like acrobatics, right, and like scaling buildings and whatnot gotcha, and they can be sneaky like, uh, like a rogue. If, if you're ever gonna pair a rogue to go and sneak into something instead of doing it alone, have them go with the ranger. It's kind of that deal. Next, next, next.
Speaker 3:It's just the last one I actually do have one more that I need to pull up. This is a full-on half elf druid. Now he's only a druid. The halfelf racial features actually boost some of what druids are about.
Speaker 3:Druids' biggest stat is wisdom, which, as far as the skills go, wisdom is pretty useful. Every single base stat that's in the game boosts all of the skills that are used to do things. Got it. With wisdom, you get things like really high insight and really high, I think, animal handling, because the skill sets gets really thorough, because you need to be able to roll for the things you want to do, and that has to be reflected in what the character is supposed to be. So for them, insight druids supposed to be your sort of like sage, seer, wise, somebody's lying and I want to roll an insight check and I'm really good at it, probably going to be able to tell if they're lying or not.
Speaker 3:Okay, and there's also really fun things that happen Betwixt players. Yes, if let's say I was a player and you were a player and you were playing a Druid and you're really, really wise, so and I had something that I needed to lie to you about, for some reason I could choose to roll either my persuasion or my deception. But we, for my table personally, you, the player, does not have to say which one they're rolling so that the other player doesn't know if they're lying. Just I need you to roll either persuasion or deception.
Speaker 3:You make your role, don't say which one it is versus his insight, oh so it's there's fun stuff like that, that can happen and that's why I like the way that stats affect skills is super fun as far as the storytelling and roleplay part of it goes, because that's where the character identity really shines right. So like if we're in a murder mystery, I'm sending the ranger into the house because his investigation's probably really high. I'm going to send him in along a wizard because their investigation's really now. There's one more in here did want to get for you guys where on earth did it go? I might have not saved it. It was probably my favorite one too.
Speaker 3:It was a, it's a. It's called a Githyanki and yeah, so Gith got brought into D&D in, I think, like third edition or fourth edition Years back. There is multiple planes of existence. I know we talked about this last time. One of those planes is called the astral plane and it is like a space-like plane. I believe the air is breathable everywhere, but it is a plane that is like the void of space. They come from there. They are like a really fun blend of if a goblin and an elf were to be clashed together, so they look like elves. They're typically supposed to be like really lanky and have a lot of goblin features like green skin, some partial scaling right, forked ears, stuff, like like that.
Speaker 3:And they're also like there's descriptions for every race. They're supposed to be like really straightforward and aggressive. You know what I mean? Like what you would expect in a movie from like an orc or a dwarf is kind of how these guys are supposed to operate. But what I did with this one, just for fun and for flavor, is it was a gith monk. Are supposed to operate, gotcha. But what I did with this one, just for fun and for flavor, is it was a gith monk. The monk class is a super interesting one. It's another one of those classes that has to sort of dip into two stats at the same time, which is dexterity, because they need to be able to, you know, fight well. And also, I believe, wisdom, wisdom, wisdom is the other one for monks, and the cool thing about monks is that the more you dip into one stat or the other, the better or worse you're going to be at one half of the monk or the other of course so for him he was a way of the astral self monk.
Speaker 3:A lot of super interesting abilities for them as they get higher levels. But they do have like a sort of like soul rejection type vibe going on. Okay, yeah, and they can do like a lot of transcendent type magic. So for right, for that subclass, obviously better bet is probably to go wisdom, because it's more magic based than some of the other monks, right, but there's also monks that are like there's like a drunken fist one, it's like that. You want that one's actually kind of hard because you want strength, you want decks and you want constitution because they are drunk.
Speaker 3:So they have to kind of like fight with themselves to be good at combat, so it's not the easiest thing to do, and they make it so that all of these different classes and subclasses that you can play are more or less player choice as far as how hard you want correct. Some people argue like oh, like, this is way overpowered, like if an experienced player picks up this type of character, they're gonna.
Speaker 3:they're just gonna annihilate everything right, and it's gonna be a problem and this is know sort of the discourse that happens around some types of characters that you can play Like. People say that playing a human is kind of like cheatsy. Yeah, it's kind of cheap because they well one, it's boring. You're already a human. Right Be something else. But also part of the racial feature for humans is that they get a free feat, and the feats are these full-on extra abilities that can get put on any class or character, but they don't come up very often as far as leveling up goes. So I think you can most of the time. As you level up up, you actually get a choice between putting points in the stats or taking a feat from the list of feats. There's all kinds of stuff and the feats really can alter the way a character works. For instance, wizards can't even use medium armor. But if I was a wizard and didn't want to boost stats anymore, I could take the heavy armor feat. Got it.
Speaker 3:Now I'm a wizard and heavy armor, so you know what I mean like there's ways to balance out the flaws right that are in the characters, because they are sort of built to not be good at everything you know they're built to be good at some things and really bad at others right, yeah, yeah so yeah
Speaker 3:yeah, so we go into the picture yeah so now, if you want me to pull up another guy specifically that you want to pick, I'll go into sort of what their stat block looks like and how good they are at certain things. So do you want to start with down there? Yeah, sure, which guy was?
Speaker 2:sort of? Which was the one that you said that I was like the wizard? The yeah sure, which guy was sort of-. Which was the one that you said that I was like the wizard? The wizard, I want to say the wizard.
Speaker 3:All right, so the clockwork wizard, let me get him Clockwork wizard.
Speaker 1:That was a good movie too Clockwork, orange, clockwork, orange, clockwork.
Speaker 3:Okay, so for the stat block for the clockwork wizard, we have minus one in strength.
Speaker 1:Is that right, that's just strength Minus one in strength.
Speaker 3:He's like a Palpatine, you know we have.
Speaker 2:No, actually technically he was a good Anyway we're going, I'm going.
Speaker 3:Sorry, I always go Star Wars, it's okay.
Speaker 1:It's okay.
Speaker 3:Plus two dexterity, okay, not bad. Plus two constitution, to sort of make up for how bad their hit points are.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 3:Plus four to intelligence, see. Plus zero in wisdom. So just neutral, right, just neutral, which is better than having a minus yes, and plus zero in charisma, so just neutral. As far as his armor class goes, it's only 12. Okay, because that's light armor. Right, it's only 12. Okay, because that's light armor, right, right, right. So he again and this is the problem with wizards right is, if someone gets in their face, not only are they super likely to hit them, they also don't have a lot of hit points, right. So, like, they're going to get hit a lot if someone's in their face and it's going to hurt them really bad if they do, yeah, they better have someone strong.
Speaker 3:You've got to have someone near them, or they have to have a way to escape. That's why so many people take with wizards Misty Step. It's a bonus action. I just get to 60 feet away. Right, just get out of here. Yeah, super, super helpful. Really really sucks when the enemies have a caster and they counterspell it no, you're stuck there I do that a lot I like to I love to stop spellcasting.
Speaker 3:It's really bad and I probably shouldn't I. I debated one time counterspelling revivify somebody died. Yeah, they had the ability to use the revive spell and I held my tongue instead of counterspelling it, because that's really really evil.
Speaker 1:Yeah like no, you're dead. Yeah, that just sucks so didn't do that.
Speaker 3:As far as speed goes for them normal speed, 30 feet a turn he this, this character specifically has very high initiative. Initiative is how combat starts. Everyone rolls initiative, including all of the bad guys. I would roll the initiative for them, and that determines the order of the turn. Got it. Dexterity is kind of the only thing that affects initiative, so the more dexterous you usually, the better you are at going first, which makes sense. Quarter staff is obviously the melee weapon. Because we have dex, we have a plus two to hit with the quarter staff.
Speaker 3:But, the quarter staff does 1d6 of damage and because our strength is minus one, that's actually going to be 1d6 minus one. The most damage you can do with the quarterstaff is five damage so now, how long before he starts to level up?
Speaker 3:so leveling is case by case basis and it's mostly dependent on the dm right. So there are people that for some reason, like to use the experience points version. That's a lot of math. That's a lot of math, and everyone has to remember what's going on. Right? Every single enemy in the game actually has an experience point worth, so if you kill that guy, you're gonna get the experience points right. Nobody else's right.
Speaker 3:I don't like using experience points because then that's and it also dictates when they love that. I don't like using experience points because then that's and it also dictates when they level up. I don't like using that. I like using the milestone route, which is whenever you guys do something profoundly good or complete an objective, I'm going to decide whether or not it's time for you guys to level up. Okay, and I depending on how long I think the campaign is going to go that might be several sessions, right, we might only level up every 10 or 12 sessions right or if it's a shorter form one and you want them to experience, yeah, like experience leveling up, yeah, you do.
Speaker 3:You know every other session or something. If it's only going to be a 10 session story, right, you got to try and fit the leveling up in there somewhere. So, obviously, yeah, plus two to hit with the quarter stuff not very good. Minus one on the damage also not very good for his magic, though.
Speaker 1:Plus seven to hit see, yeah, really good, yeah, really really good.
Speaker 3:He's gonna hit with magic almost all the time?
Speaker 2:yep, and as far as spells go, yeah, he's got like a two men, like an arsenal, right, yeah, an arsenal of Right.
Speaker 3:You have an arsenal of spells that are in here.
Speaker 2:Do you have any healing ones for other characters, or not really, because there's healers right. There's different Lyrics. Yeah.
Speaker 3:Lyrics are your. They have a lot of support spells.
Speaker 2:So wizards really don't usually do no it's mostly combat and utility for wizards. Yeah, yeah, and also a little mean utility, like like giving a guy like extra, like like extra armor or something for like a set, or is it?
Speaker 3:or does not work like that no, no, I'm thinking like rpgs no, no, I have a great example. Yeah, we just fought our way up in evil wizard's tower. Yeah, now there's a bunch of orcs at the bottom of the tower trying to level the tower, because they know we're at the top. So, peoples, we have a wizard who has feather fall. Oh, I'm gonna cast feather fall, because they know we're at the top. What's up? Peoples, we have a wizard who has feather fall. Oh I'm going to cast feather fall on everyone and we're just going to glide out of here.
Speaker 3:See, what I mean, well, got it. Or even if it's a more knee-jerk moment, let's say there's a bunch of orcs at the bottom of the tower and they just use bombs. We'll all have one turn to figure out what you're doing. Wizard, dimension Door, we're out. Got it, should we?
Speaker 1:go to? Yeah, I was trying to figure out the utility.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah yeah, I should have just asked that what are these utilities?
Speaker 3:Stuff like that. But they also do have a little bit of support. So Wizard has shield. It's a reaction.
Speaker 2:I'm going to add plus five to your armor class yeah so now, anything that might have hit you maybe isn't, and it's good for a certain amount of turns, uh it's well, I believe until that person's next turn, they have plus five to their class.
Speaker 3:so just for one turn, right, right, one, one round, one round. All kinds of fun stuff like that. And then on top of that you have obviously some huge spells here, like for example yeah, what's he got?
Speaker 1:Well, hey, listen, we got a 40, 50-minute podcast here.
Speaker 2:We need to get to the next one.
Speaker 3:The key thing for you. What's his good one? Just tell me. Whatever his best one is Vortex Warp. Okay, there you go, and it sucks. Key takeaway here for you is you have a plus 10 to Arcana, so you're going to be really good at figuring out what kind of magic is happening to things. Oh, and also a plus seven in history.
Speaker 1:Nice, very cool. That's that. On that, it is See Ogre, first one, you want the orc?
Speaker 3:Orc, orc barbarian yeah, let's take a look. Take a look at the orc barbarian your orc barbarian is. I set these all to level five, okay, so kind of it's low, right and semi-simple, but this is where characters really start to get their identity Right. For the orc plus four to strength Okay At 19. There you go. Plus one to dexterity, plus three to constitution Pretty high.
Speaker 3:Minus one intelligence, Plus one wisdom, though 18? And minus one charisma. Okay yeah, pretty fitting for an orc. This is what most orc stat or sorry, not orc barbarian stat blocks are going to look like Armor class 14. Also, you know, not super high. They're typically unarmored. Plus one to initiative, Not quick to the fight.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 3:Typically going somewhere in the middle or even towards the back end. Gotcha Great axe plus seven to hit. Okay, almost always going to hit. Yep, great axe is due. One d12 x plus seven to hit okay, almost always gonna hit. Yeah, great axes, do 1d12 because you have a plus four strength. Right, it's 1d12 plus four, got it. They hit hard, yeah, and there's other things that orcs can do, you could do.
Speaker 3:I forget what it's called reckless attack. When you reckless attack, it's more likely to hit and it's even harder. But everyone's going to get advantage on attacking you until your next turn, got it? So, like everyone's about to hit you, it's, it's, it's a full on. I'm rushing you and I'm going to try and hit you. Yeah, yeah, but they have those resistances to most melee attacks, so it's not going to be as much damage as you'd think. Roger, that 55 hit points Okay, that's, that's pretty high up there. Biggest ones for him are you have a plus four in animal handling. You have a plus seven in athletics. There you go. Plus two. Intimidation plus two nature. And for this specific type of barbarian which is path of the zealot, plus four in survival, because they, uh, they do get to dip into some of the wisdom skills.
Speaker 1:Okay, nice, yeah, it's that's pretty sick.
Speaker 3:They're the backbone yeah, man it's the backbone. You, you're gonna sit up front and get smacked around yeah, ranger ranger the eric okra oh nice I was like I was like I'm make an eagle guy and he's going to Aarakocra Ranger. All right, Okay, give me two seconds here For the Aarakocra Ranger. I believe he's really good at hitting with the bow, but I have to check if it loads. Here we go.
Speaker 2:All right.
Speaker 1:Nobody out there has got any questions. Nothing, I think they are, it's just we're not listening to watch it.
Speaker 2:Every time someone joins or pops up it's like cool, awesome All right.
Speaker 3:So Aarakocra Ranger, 30 feet of walking speed, but also 30 feet fly speed. That's the huge takeaway, right, he has the ability to fly. If he wants to go 30 feet straight upwards for a turn, he can armor class 15 because of the dexterity right, dexterity also affects armor class because obviously if you're faster and more dexterous you have a slightly better likelihood of trying to dodge out of the way, so it boosts your armor class, okay. That's another fun way that they sort of character identity again right. Plus two to strength, okay. Plus three to dexterity, plus three to constitution really good. Uh, what is constitution? Again, constitution is your the amount of health points that you have, okay, and it also affects your sort of hardiness. So it doesn't really. Constitution is the least expressed right stat. As far as skills go, there's not really any skill that uses constitution. It's made. It's mainly just your health and there's also a lot of spells that require constitution saving throws. So having a high constitution is going to make you really good at saving against those things.
Speaker 2:They're spelled like sickness. We're like I'm gonna make you throw up for a turn and all of your attacks are going to make you really good at saving against those things.
Speaker 3:Gotcha, they're spelled like sickness, mm-hmm. Where, like, I'm going to make you throw up for a turn and all of your attacks are going to be with disadvantage. If you fail this constitution, save Right, having a high constitution, you're probably going to save against it. Mm-hmm. For him. Plus eight on the long bell. Okay, right, even more likely to hit Yep, they only do a 1d8 of damage, but he has plus three attacked onto him and that's because of, I believe, dexterity. We have the longbow, we have also a shortbow here.
Speaker 3:And another Aarakocra feature is talons. They can make a melee attack with talons. He specifically, and because the talon is an unarmed strike, it uses your bonuses from strength and dex. Oh nice. So he has a plus five to hit with the Talons, which is also super high for an unarmed strike, and it does 1d6 plus two slashing damage. Plus two is coming from, specifically, your strength stat.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 3:Obviously that's, and that makes sense. That's how hard you're gonna hit for this guy. We have a plus three to initiative. That's from dex, and your biggest skills are gonna be athletics with a plus five, perception with a plus seven. Ooh, nice, really good at seeing stuff, yeah, especially like if it's outside of what should be visible range. Right, yeah, I'll allow, like all right, make a perception check, like I think. I think visibility is supposed to go out to 200 feet.
Speaker 3:Oh see, cause you're the bird, if you're, if something's 400 feet out and you're like can I perception check to try and see what the hell's going on over there? I would allow that, yeah, and if you roll really high it just makes sense. But the other thing with Ranger is that amongst all these skills there's a lot of pluses here. With the other classes it's all mostly like zeros and minus ones or plus ones.
Speaker 3:Plus three acrobatics Plus one animal handling Plus two intimidation plus two investigation plus two nature plus three sleight of hand plus three stealth. Yeah, sneaky, going back to that sort of Sneaky thief Right. Going back to that sort of like if you're ever going to pair anyone with the rogue, it should probably be a ranger. Right Because they have the dexterity to be stealthy got you and also only medium armor. Yeah, heavy armor takes a disadvantage on stealth okay, so.
Speaker 1:So now, the next time you come up, though, we go to 50 now, but no, I'm just saying, though I'm saying the apple's gonna say that we gotta play one. You know what I mean I could do.
Speaker 3:I could do a nice simple little combat where you guys play these characters. Yeah, yeah, where I mean I could do. I could do a nice simple little combat where you guys play these characters. Yeah, yeah, where I and I will do my own off-screen time. Show you guys exactly how to do combat. Yeah, yeah, and we could easily run combat like that would only take 30 minutes nice maybe I think, I think, uh, I think I'm gonna have to start getting into this and it's online too.
Speaker 3:Right, like you, I'm doing all of this, right, yeah?
Speaker 2:so like, so like. Could I do they have mobile versions or no like? Android based has an app or chromebook, because I have a chromebook, so chromebook works too uh, some people like to play on.
Speaker 3:If you have an ipad, it's like a really good system for this yeah, ipad is just like really good because it's obviously.
Speaker 2:This is the character shia, this is how you play the character. My son's tablet, yeah I got a set of stats in front of you and everything.
Speaker 3:Yeah, you have all your stats in front of you. You know when we're going to do initiative. I just click initiative and it's gonna roll a dice 16 initiative there you go wow, okay, and this is, and it's for every little button here. You know I want to hit with the longbow and I'm sure if I were to get it.
Speaker 2:There's like tutorial modes and stuff like that that's not counting because you're not playing a game.
Speaker 1:Alright, I gotta try. No, no, no, he's fucking hard. No, it's back to the game, that's the tower is that'd be so bad.
Speaker 3:Before you fucking go ahead, before doing a game, you're just gonna tell me what you want. Come over here, you know what I mean. Like, oh, I'm gonna attack with my longbow, I hit this button. Attack with the longbow, that's garbage. Only 11 to hit. And then me, as the DM, I'm gonna tell you, if you beat their armor class right, you know which? For most enemies is pretty low. Yeah, enemies is pretty low. Yeah, unless it's specifically supposed to be a challenge. Like, oh, this thing has an 18 armor class, we're not hitting this, we should run.
Speaker 1:It's freaking great. I love it.
Speaker 3:So yeah, that's pretty cool, man oh and then, obviously, final thing, amongst all of those characters, if you had to guess which one was mine, and if you had to guess which one was mine, and if you had to guess which one was Aaron's, so I'm going to say yours was the, not the. I think the dwarf was mine. Yeah, that's interesting.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:No, no, it was not. Mine was the undead blood hunter.
Speaker 1:Really Super volatile character.
Speaker 3:Yeah, super volatile.
Speaker 1:We were hoping you were going to calm down in the game.
Speaker 3:So I rarely get to play, but my friend Matt decided to start DMing one. We're doing it super sporadically, right?
Speaker 2:now Right.
Speaker 3:Because for me, I don't ever get to play a character. I want it to be really volatile. You know, I want it to be the most insane that it can. So I went with something that's a major dice roll.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I didn't think you were going to go that crazy, you know, as I said, yeah, very fun character and then for Aaron, if you had to guess which one she might have been. I'm trying to remember all of them now. Yeah, I didn't get to pull any of them up again.
Speaker 3:I was learning again.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Let's see here how about we just go through?
Speaker 1:I'll type that there was yeah, you had the orc barbarian, the dwarven cleric, the which one is that on the goblin druid cleric. Right, that one. Yep, that would be one.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's hers she's a goblin druid cleric. Yeah, well, specifically the, the deep goblin that's great.
Speaker 1:Which one is you? I was the, the blood hunter the blood hunter, the undead blood, sorry, yeah, undead blood hunter, sorry, undead. Yes, you did say that. Yeah, dude, that's crazy man. Yeah, it's funny that you said cleric.
Speaker 3:I have. I have, I think, 20 characters.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I'm just waiting.
Speaker 3:All at different levels, right, depending on what someone might want to do so.
Speaker 1:that's the cool thing about it, too, that you can at more than one character yeah, you play any, any character at any level for instance in in matt's campaign.
Speaker 3:We're starting chess, almost in a sense. Yeah, as far as it goes on the battlefield, a little bit right a little bit, and then because of the abilities that certain because you're gonna have the ones that do certain things to help you get to where very similar but yeah, for instance matt's is uh, we started at level 10 okay so. So, that's just something you can do.
Speaker 1:Well, because you guys play, though, so you know what you're doing. Yeah right, higher level, it's made for more experience.
Speaker 3:Right, exactly Because it gets ridiculous. Yeah, the higher the levels go.
Speaker 1:That is freaking awesome. Yeah, thank you, sir, for coming back. Of course, definitely see you again after Halloween, yeah.
Speaker 2:We could do a little. I think it'd be fun. So stay tuned, folks, because the next five episodes are gonna be Halloween based.
Speaker 3:We got five.
Speaker 2:Wednesdays and for October. So October is gonna we're doing.
Speaker 3:We're doing Shocktober anybody from the New?
Speaker 1:York City area knows PIX used to do the Shocktober so yeah, from the New York City area, knows PIX used to do the Shocktober. So yeah, we're going to dive into pretty much everything Movies and any of that stuff. So hit us up, let us know what you're thinking. Everybody's following us on live.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we're popping right off.
Speaker 1:Yes, so come, let us know, hit us up right there for live. We'll be back. We're gonna do one more. We'll be back in a while. So yeah, we'll leave the live running For a little bit.
Speaker 2:I'm gonna, we'll sign off here.
Speaker 1:So that's. That's it, people, cool beans. So Thank y'all for watching. Love, peace and hair grease. Live long and prosper and stay weird, holler.
