Yesterday we were introduced to kind, naive halfing Cleric of Chauntea, Eddie Stoatbridge. Today it's time to meet the rest of the party.
Aseem Nandri, male Human Fighter
Aseem is protective and helpful, but a little illogical - he does have an Int of 7, bless him. I did say I wasn't going to go into the stats too much, but I do enjoy characters who have an obvious weakness: in a Curse of Strahd campaign, I play a Cleric who gets a -1 penalty to most Charisma-based roles, yet mystifyingly seems to feel that he's the party Face. On one incredible occasion I managed to persuade the DM to give me Advantage on a Persuasion check - but promptly rolled two 1s. On YouTube, Tabletop University has great video about the value of leaning in to character flaws and dump stats.
Anyway, ex-Soldier Aseem is handy with a greatsword and a flail, and I gave him the Musician Origin Feat because I liked the idea that, in a quiet moment, he might unpack his flute and play a lilting lament that stirs the hearts of his comrades before their next battle. He's also the most Charismatic person in the group, so perhaps he's got the greatest social awareness of when everyone needs a lift?
Finally, Aseem's trinket is "an eggshell painted with scenes of misery in disturbing detail"... that'll be interesting to connect to his backstory.
Ilanis Siannodel, female High Elf Rogue
When I was randomly allocating class and species, I hoped for this particular juicy combination. Ilanis, who is a bit of a beast, stats-wise, is fidgety, reserved and laconic -but I've made her Neutral Good alignment to avoid any slide into edgelord-ism. She has the Criminal background, so I've got a bit of work to integrate her with the rest of the party - the Tyranny of Dragons Campaign Bonds section in Appendix A could help.
Ilanis feels pretty deadly at range and in melee combat, and perhaps nailed-on for the Assassin subclass - but let's not get ahead of ourselves!
I actually forgot to roll for Ilanis' trinket when putting her character sheet together, so here goes with the d100: 21 - "a gnome-crafted music box that plays a song you dimly remember from your childhood". I like that a lot; let's see where I can take it!
Jarana Steelfist, female Dwarf Wizard
I wrote yesterday that the party wizard's stats were a bit "meh" - well, Jarana is OK at most things, but not outstanding at anything. She's informative, self-conscious and loyal; I'm already imagining her suddenly bursting into life and to chatter on about a favourite niche subject - until, that is, she realises that everyone's looking at her.
For Jarana I've used the ToD Optional Feature of Dragon Scholar and combined it with the Sage background from the 2024 Player's Handbook. This gives Jarana the ability to automatically recognise locations built by dragons, and identify dragon eggs and scales by sight. Thematic, and not particularly game-breaking. Jarana's trinket is a 1oz block made from an unknown material: not much to work with immediately, but I know if I was running this for a 'live' player I'd always be looking out for opportunities to integrate this into the campaign - it positively screams "missing piece"!
What's Next?
The individual members of the party are complete, but I don't yet know how they all came together, or what brings them to the town of Greenest in the southern Sword Coast. The Ideals, Bonds and Flaws sections of the character sheets (I'm using the 2014 version) are also blank -as is each individual backstory, and their physical descriptions.
I'll probably use the tables in the 2014 PHB and Xanathar's to randomly generate some of the backstory elements, while I think it'd be good to allow others to come out through play - especially where they don't have a material impact on the game. I've got some ideas for using James D'Amato's Ultimate RPG Campfire Card Deck for developing links between the characters. But now, having spent three days creating these characters, I'm itching to put them in harm's way!
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