How to Win at Warlock Characters

Weave a warlocks tale of morality, hard choices, and being the most metal party member.

Warlocks inspire a lot of wonder, right out of the gate. They've got an incredible story hook baked right in, and one can sit there considering how terrifying they look for ages. But where we've fallen down before is really making that hook pay off. This episode explores the themes and potential stories that warlocks offer us, and how to play them to their heights.

In Kinship Camp we explore how to make the three elements of a warlock shine. When planning your character, you really have to consider their want and need. What were they trying to fix with their shortcut to power, and what's going to set them free from their pain? When creating your patron, work with your DM to consider their goal and the relationship between them and the warlock. Finally, we talk about steps to create a simple but powerful origin story for their deal, where their story could go, and some methods for roleplaying this unique class.

As always, huge thanks to the support of our patrons for making this episode a reality.

DM Thunderbum, Marley R., Garr the Pirate, Timewarp, DangerousMarmalade, Zach G., NoMaam, Michelle T., Alan E., Felix R., Chris F., The Senate, Lucas D., Lyla G., The GM Tim, Nevermour, Thomas W., Tyler G., Ty N., Heavyarms, Erik R., Aldrost, Leprecan, Will H-P.

Create Sorcerers with Art

Play the most chaotically creative caster by looking at the most creative people.

Sorcerers are channelers of cosmic power, and that's rad. They don't need all that book-learning, they've just got that something special. Roleplaying that something special can be a little tricky, however, and figuring out how a sorcerer might behave has never been as obvious as some classes. Our pitch is that sorcerers that draw from the chaos of magic is shockingly similar to artists that draw from the chaos of creative inspiration. So, we read The Mind of the Artist: Personality and the Drive to Create by Dr. William Todd Schultz, and boil it down to what we can use to play our most fascinating sorcerers yet.

In Kinship Camp, we take a wide view of all the common personality traits of artists, then hone in on four that can work the best for our spell slingers. We talk about how these traits are exemplified by some real world artists we can use for inspiration, then generate some ideas for sorcerers based on them.

Then we go to Moradin's Forge to present a list of eight questions you can use to add a ton of flavor to your next, or current, relentlessly chaotic Sorcerer, with our our examples tossed in.

For reference, here's the questions:

• How do they display an openness to opportunity or ideas?

• How do they specifically display their disorganization?

• What situation is ideal for your sorcerer to cast spells?

• What situation is absolutely the WORST?

• How does your magic overflow when you’re not casting spells?

• What is your sorcerer obsessed with? Color? Creature? Time of Day? Item?

• What habit or ritual does your sorcerer strictly adhere to for maximum magic?

• What magic or mystery do they believe about their spellcasting focus?

Use Paladin Oaths Aplenty

Use your Paladins tenets to fuel your character, not be your character.

Creating a great paladin character that gets everyone else at the table excited is kinda tough. A bad reputation has been made, of people playing them strict, unwavering, and all conquering. As people that do not get along. That stop the game on behalf of their god. Well, it doesn't have to be this way, and we think there's some incredible roleplay opportunity that comes from going down the path of the Paladin a little further.

In The Strategy Stateroom, we go through some steps that will result in Paladins with great internal conflict, ways to play that out, and a better consideration of dealing with party members. We also provide a whole slew of terrible oaths, in case you needed that. Nobody needed that.

Then we head over to The Interdimensional Gateway to talk about just a couple examples of Paladins from pop culture that provide some great inspiration for yours, and what your characters journey could look like! No giveaways, but one rhymes with Chandagorian, which is a great name for a Paladin.

As always, huge thanks to the support these folks give us on our Patreon.

Chris F., ISeeSpidersWhereThereAreNone, Sean J., The Senate, Lucas D., Lyla G., The GM Tim, Nevermour, Thomas W., Ty N., Heavyarms, Erik R, Aldrost, Leprecan, and Will H-P.

Announcement: For the next two weeks, the two of us are going to be incredibly busy moving and renovating some areas of our new home so we can create a new podcast studio. Due to not having a place to record, or good content to record, we are taking those two weeks off of podcasting! We hope you'll be patient with us, and not swear an oath of vengeance upon us. But we'll be back on June 21st with our next episode, and after that we hope to have some great guest episodes to share with you! Thank you for your support in listening, sharing, and reading this far.

The Wisdom and Class of a Druid

Go deep into the concept of a forest dweller, and explore the core of what makes druids great.

The power a druid wields is great. They are an incredibly flexible class, and can go in a wonderful amount of character directions. But the classic druid embodies nature and wisdom. The wisdom of nature, if you will. We want to dive into the details that can make a druid great, and maybe even inspire ourselves from history while we're at it.

In Kinship Camp we consider traits that can add depth to your druid. We pull ideas from their love of nature, their shapeshifting abilities, and the way that wise people make decisions. Then we figure out some juicy roleplay details to pull from the way real druids operated. Like the fact that they weren't all society shunning hermits, they were respected figures that wanted their communities to thrive!

Then we head to Griffon Street Market, where we talk about a new tool that makes your life as a DM much easier! Do you have more campaign ideas than prep time? Of course you do! Does your party have a peculiar knack for going that one place you’d least expect? Of course they do! Want over 1750 box texts, from places, monsters, items and spells to drop into your games? dScryb has seasoned writers creating this for your table. One of our favorite bits is that dScryb is a proud community partner of Safer Spaces, a 2S-LGBTQ+ Workplace Training & Inclusion organization. Safer Spaces played a foundational role in forming dScryb’s writing policy.

Check it out at dscryb.com and use the coupon code "hook" to save 10%.

We wrap things up with a stop at the Extra-Dimensional Gateway, where we talk about what characters we love could be reinterpreted as, or inspire, our druid characters. From Swamp Thing to Splinter, there's a few greats to consider.

Infuse your Artificer with Character

Your Artificer character concept is undoubtedly amazing, now just make sure you're extra inspired to roleplay them!

The Artificer is a class that stands out as way to visually express your stunning creativity. You can have mechanical friends, suits of super armor, incredible weaponry, the list goes on. It's incredibly fun to keep detailing out these aspects of the artificer. With these concepts, however, we find it easy to forget to build a rich character underneath it all, with a story and a personality that's gonna shine as brightly as their robo-monkey-cat. That's why we talk about what steps you can take to create a great artificer character in this episode.

We start things off in Kinship Camp. First, we take inspiration from our favorite parts of the Artificer concept, then build characters that we would have a blast playing. We do so using our "Character and Traits Planner", which you can download for free from our website. Jordan's Character is an alchemist drawing on the history of alchemy and its goals, and Travis' is an Armorer that draws on the newer concepts of transhumanism.

Then we pop over to Grandma B's Schoolhouse to learn how to think inventively, like a true Artificer. All you have to do is apply some "Inventive Principles" outlined in Jack Hipples book The Ideal Result: What It Is and How to Achieve It. We talk about 5 of them and apply them to our specific challenges in our dnd games, but you can see all 40 inventive principles for yourself. See if there's any you like, and try to use them in your next session as an inventive character. Even if they don't work in practice, running through them is a great way to roleplay that inventive mind.

Create a Wizard with Science

Breathe life into your smartest casters by considering the smartest people.

Wizards are pretty incredible, what with their dazzling array of cosmic powers and daunting intellect. They can, however, be challenging to role play due to said intellect, and it's easy to rely on classic archetypes when you aren't sure where to go. That's why in this episode we try to get into the minds of the real life wizards that have blown away our perceptions of reality throughout history, known as scientists, and create our best wizards yet.

Building those incredible characters comes from exploring that initial idea and giving them just enough detail to be able to step into them at the table.

That's why we go to Kinship Camp to run the idea of a scientific wizard through our Character Planner, coming out the other side with some pretty exciting characters. We draw from the scientific idols of Lise Meitner, who cracked nuclear fission, and Nikola Tesla, who figured out alternating current.

Then we go to Grandma B's Schoolhouse to talk more about Tesla, because he was an actual Wizard, and we couldn't get enough. Part of why he was so interesting was because he had a lot of traits that didn't fall into the classic vision of a scientist, like being a socialite and loving pigeons. Borrowing simple unexpected traits like these at the table makes characters very real very quickly.

More Magical Monks

Build a monk that either pays respect to the class or breaks the boundaries completely.

This means that you can benefit from Jordan's mega deep-dive into the awesome mix of history/religion/lore that surround the Shaolin monks and their unique fighting style and avoid a potentially awkward converation about cliche or cringeworthy characters and play one right. We also chat about a unique system created by James Intracaso to fully and completely customize the underlying race system of D&D for when you really need to colour outside the lines but not break the system.

Here is a link to James Introcaso's post

Also check out the bad-ass pugilistic half orcs. How could you not want to play them? https://www.deviantart.com/ianllanas/art/Half-Orc-Brawler-436419289 https://www.reddit.com/r/DnD/comments/8t8urg/scartoof_2_the_punchening_art/

In Defense of the Ranger

The Ranger class gets a lot of flak. Why? Lets make some lemonade outta those lemons.

Google “5e Ranger” and all you’ll find is a lot of people talking about how underpowered they are. But what if playing them with a few key ideas in mind and a tweak here or there made them tremendous? If you’re considering playing a Ranger, playing with one or DMing for one, this is an episode for you.

The Trouble with Roguish Traits

Disarm the traps of a rogue personality.

We run through some of the most dangerous and commonly used personality traits of rogues, like "I work alone", and propose ways to mold them into things that work in D&D. What if your job is actually spying on the party? Then you're still working alone, ya sneaky weasel.

The Angry Folk

Unleash all kinds of creative fury! Make sure it's in character, you bloodthirsty beasts.

Barbarians are given the space to flourish in this one. The brothers get into some pants-crappingly intimidating lore about berserkers, explore what rage really could mean, and talk about some less obvious Barbarian concepts from media, the world, and wherever thoughts come from.

Classes - #NoBasicBards

Stuck strumming lutes? Build a bard that offers more.

D&D Bards can be troublesome if only because of their pervasive reputation to be musicians. Which isn't a bad thing, but the brothers believe there might be a bit more to their depths. In this episode they take a closer look at the history of bards and look to other option they may have available to them.

Warlocks, Demon Worship, and You

Inspiration for fiendish warlocks everywhere.

Everyone feels a little down sometimes. In the world of D&D, you can just worship your local superpowered fiend, and they’ll fix all your problems, hooking you up with dark powers to boot! What kind of bargain will they make? The brothers discuss who they are and what they want in this episode.  

Supporting Content:

Ash Character Sheet

Boomstick

BMW “Beat the Devil” short film