#dnd aus

[memento-morri-writes]

I am once again thinking about AUs where Rook's rescue from the Sea Snake goes differently. There's two of them and they're both devastating for different reasons.

Some ramblings under the cut because I talk too much, especially about my boy.

The first one (which requires the least amount of changes to canon) is that Dr. Purity comes and rescues Rook before the party can arrive. (The DM literally told me this was a worst-case scenario.) I just just vividly imagine him arriving in the flesh, not a corpse-puppet, and picking Rook up. Rook's blood staining his pristine white coat. Rook's murmured apologies to Sigmar instead of Warren.

I don't think Wolf would survive that encounter, if we're being realistic, hahahaha. Purity is the BBEG of the campaign, and if he decided that Wolf needed to die (which he would, for Rook), she's going to die.

And then poor Rook, waking in an unfamiliar place, sterile and clean, with a man he doesn't know standing over him. But he does know him, because he speaks in Sigmar's voice. He loves Rook. But he won't let him leave. (This was labeled as a worst-case scenario specifically because I would then have been unable to play Rook for who-knows-how-long.)

(If you're curious why Purity didn't come and rescue Rook, it's because Minister White, the man who originally molded Purity into his current self, has been doing more or less everything in his power to distract him. I am very, very normal about this.)

Purity works on manipulating Rook, attempting to convince him to stay of his own accord. He tells him that the party didn't look for him, didn't care. They failed him, just like Zara did. By the time the party find him months later, who knows what Rook's reaction would be to seeing them.

The second one, which would require some MAJOR canon alterations, is that Zara is the one who comes and rescues Rook. Obviously since Rook hadn't reunited with Zara yet at that point in-campaign, I'm imagining that in this universe Rook hasn't yet escaped from his initial capture. Maybe he attempted to escape but failed, and Wolf keelhauled him as a punishment. Maybe Wolf got wind that Zara was looking for Rook and keelhauled him as a punishment for her.

(I had an idea once of Wolf writing a letter to Zara that vaguely implies that Rook's keellhauling was her fault, but doesn't explicitly say what was done to Rook. Something along the lines of "Why would you drag Rook under the ship like that?" And then Zara doesn't realize she meant it literally until she finds Rook.)

Either way, Zara is the first down to the room where Rook is being held. She kills the guards and walks in. Seeing Rook, she immediately drops her rapier and rushes over to him. Unlike in canon and the first AU, instead of lying on a cot, Rook is hanging in chains, semi-conscious.

She has a key from one of the guards and immediately gets to work trying to free him. But when she reaches for his arm, he tries to recoil, turn away from her, and she sees his back. She's so shocked that she actually takes a step back. Then she redoubles her efforts to free him, carefully avoiding touching any of his wounds.

When she frees him he crumples, no longer supported by the chains, and she catches him. Feels the fever burning under his skin. He mumbles incoherently, begging her not to hurt him. She stays with him until Kholl arrives.

Wolf does actually survive the encounter in this scenario. Zara is too worried about Rook to take the time to kill her, and her conflicted feelings about killing a former friend (no matter how much she may hate her now) are too much to deal with on top of her grief and guilt about Rook. (Especially since this is mere months after she already lost Van, her trusted first mate of nearly two decades.)

She remains glued to Rook's side, insisting that he stay in her cabin instead of the infirmary. (Perhaps Rook mumbles, begging to not be brought below decks again.) Her guilt eats at her every waking moment.

Rook wakes in room he knows well, a place he feels safer than anywhere else in the world. Zara came for him. Of course she did. She would never fail him. (Unlike in canon.)

Rook likely never meets the party or Sigmar in this AU, instead staying with Zara forever, eventually succeeding her as captain of the Tide Breaker. He and Zara banish any crew member who was involved in Rook's betrayal, and having survived Wolf for months earns him respect from those who remain.

[shokuheshi]

dimilix in dnd au - barbarian rage (felix is a half elf rogue, dimitri is a firbolg barbarian, and mercedes is an aasimar cleric btw)

[myblackmare]

My new centaur cleric that I’ll be playing some DnD 5e with soon. So excited. 

[wandersoffdoodling]

consider: aasimar dream and tiefling nightmare

[downtroddendeity]

So, how many house rules has D&D AU Stocke had to instate after learning the hard way what happens when he tries to let his friends play a normal game of D&D? Are there separate lists of things both Raynie and Marco are no longer allowed do in an RPG? ... Actually, how many of /Heiss's/ house rules has he needed to explain to them are not actually normal rules and don't actually serve much purpose if you're not using D&D as a form of torture?

Part of the reason for the need for constant retcons is that Stocke is trying to run DnD 5E rules without access to 5E sourcebooks- all he has is a bundle of 3.5E books he found next to a dumpster. This results in a Frankensteinian mess of a game with the game balance occasionally and unpredictably shot to hell.

Whoever buys food gets inspiration, because the DM is kind of broke.

Several sessions in Raynie showed up with a self-satisfied expression and a printout of an extensive crit fail fumble effects table she found on the internet, and everyone but Marco voted to make it a thing even though Stocke was like, “Are you sure you want to introduce more randomness into this game?” Stocke said Marco doesn’t have to roll on it; Raynie usually makes him do it anyway. Once he crit-failed an attack with an alchemical flask and glued himself to the floor.

After that time she rolled a natural 20 on a seduction attempt against an aboleth (Stocke: “…Will Save against blindness”), the table can vote to stop Raynie’s seduce checks.

Raynie says house rules are that Marco is not allowed to racially profile dragons based on color, but technically he only tried to do that once.

Many of Heiss’s house rules are basically just “I liked ODnD/ADnD better” “What’s a saving throw, that sounds fake” stuff. Raynie was very surprised that this time there was not a 10% chance her fighter would have 1HP at character creation. (Marco was not, because he looked up all the rules about how to break the game, and had this Wild Shape-focused druid all ready to go until he realized no one in the party could detect traps, then panicked and rerolled as a rogue.)

[memento-morri-writes]

I may have asked before but who cares, I’m asking again

what are your d&d characters like as d&d players? what sorts of characters do they play? what kind of player are they, both in and out of RP? how many dice do they have? how much backstory did they write up?

- @akindofmagictoo

oh, this is a VERY interesting question!!! I absolutely suck at AUs, because to me, all of my characters are very much a product of and can only really exist in the world I created them for. BUT I will do my best. I have a feeling 99% of my characters would just play the class they actually are in dnd. 😭

Rook would play rogues, or potentially a rogue-fighter like Julien from CR4. Like me, he's a bit reckless and impulsive when it comes to his characters, but unlike me, he doesn't think about the potential consequences of those actions. He's definitely lost a few PCs in his time as a player. He sucks at sitting still and doesn't have a great mind for lore stuff. He's a big fan of combat and action, and he's GREAT at coming up with plans to get the party out of trouble. But he's not the kind of person who's going to be putting together pieces of the DM's master plan. He's very much an in-the-moment kind of guy. He hoards dice like crazy. Most of them are fancy sharp-edged ones in a rainbow of colors. His excuse is that they're cheaper than jewelry, and he only has so much space to wear jewelry anyways. He's superstitious about his dice and will absolutely avoid using certain ones in certain cases, or will put them in dice jail if they misbehave. His backstories are pretty simple, not too detailed. They usually give him an interesting starting point (and a cool personal villain), but in general he prefers to let his characters kind of write themselves during the campaign.

Avra would probably enjoying playing a Mastermind or Assassin rogue, potentially with a small dip into ranger for the skills and fighting style. She's big on stealth and scheming. She's much more cautious than Rook, and tries her best to think out the consequences before she does anything. She's never had a PC die, and has no idea how she would react if one did. She's much more of a schemer and a lot more lore-oriented than Rook. She focuses on the details and likes to piece things together. She's the one warning the party that they might be about to do something stupid. She doesn't get super into the RP between PCs, but the DM loves her because she pays attention to all of their worldbuilding, and whenever the party's in a political or social situation, she tends to take point. She has 1-3 sets of dice. They're all sharp-edged resin and very pretty. She doesn't see the point in getting a large collection, and isn't even remotely superstitious about dice. She knows it's just random chance. Her character backstories are long, detailed, and deeply interwoven with both the world lore and campaign plot.

Carrion plays barbarians, or possibly paladins. The more damage the better. He has no interest in full-casters and thinks they're way too confusing. He's not as reckless as Rook, but certainly not as much of a schemer or as tactical as Avra. His characters rarely if ever die, but that's usually because they're the tankiest tanks to ever exist. (Like me, his characters tend to park themselves in front of an enemy and not move, which drives the party healers nuts.) He also definitely prefers combat, but he does love adding some comedic chaos to RP sessions. He tends to be pretty suspicious of most NPCs, and would prefer to fight his way out of situations than talk his way out. But he's not totally ignorant of lore, and will often surprise the party by remembering oddly specific details. He has one set of cheap dice and does not see a need for more. They serve their purpose, that's what matters. He's terrible at math, and tends to count out loud so that his friends can make sure he's not cheating himself out of extra damage. (Especially on those barb/paladin crits...) His backstories never seem very complex, but there's usually some kind of Checkov's Gun waiting to be set off eventually. Always some kind of cool personal villain, too.

Cyra plays a barbarian, probably either totem or berserker, with a dip into Champion fighter. Like Carrion, her goal is to maximize both tankiness and damage, but she doesn't want to fuck around with paladin shit. She thinks that needing magic to do damage is lame, and prefers for her characters to kick ass the old-fashioned way. Her characters tend to be a bit stupider than Carrion's and less wary of schemes. They're usually willing to go along with anything, regardless of how bad of an idea it seems. She's a big fan of combat, and loves nothing more than long boss fights and other combat-heavy sessions. She absolutely will gleefully abuse that 19-20 crit range from champion fighter. She doesn't pay too much attention to small details of lore, but she does appreciate and enjoy the story that's going on. The DM can reliably count on her to be shocked by any major plot twists. She has a few sets of cheap dice, so that she can roll for crits or advantage/disadvantage without having to pick up and reroll the same die for the same roll. She writes the bare minimum when it comes to backstories. Usually just enough to explain how her character got to their starting position. Oh, and all of her characters are lesbians. Whether or not they ever experience any romance during the campaign, it's almost a law of the universe.

Morana plays wizards. Specifically wizards with absolutely garbage charisma scores. All of her characters are (like her) autistic and overly logical. They often come off as arrogant or uncaring, which is usually not the intention, but makes for some interesting RP moments. She likes the huge spell list that wizards get, and she also enjoys their ability to learn new spells without having to wait for a level-up. She's a very tactical player, and always thinks things through before committing to any one course of action. She's an absolute fiend for lore, and keeps extremely detailed notes on everything that happens in the campaign. She has an uncanny knack for figuring out plot twists ahead of time, which her DMs both love and hate. She's also great at mental math and will often call out the answer to others struggling to add up their rolls. She has most of the 5e spells memorized, even the ones not on the wizard spell list, as well as an near-encyclopedic memory for details about monsters she's fought in the past. She has a massive collection of dice, all of which are uniform in texture and size, and are organized by both type of die and color. She's not superstitious about them, though, and cycles through which ones she's using. Her character backstories are extremely detailed, and usually end up adding a lot to the worldbuilding, if not changing the entire course of the campaign.

Okay, I'm going to cut myself off here, because I've been working on this for about an hour, and it's way too long already. But I hope you enjoyed this insight into my dnd OCs, asjkdaksd.

[shittyaus]

:o requests are still open? Sweet. How about... a DnD AU? (Like, your otp playing the game)

OMG YES i actually used to play DnD with my family soo oh god i’m such a nerd

You’re the dungeon master and liked purposefully making things go after me, i know it

STOP TRYING TO ATTACK EVERYTHING

don’t try to sing to the monst- huh, it worked “I TOLD YOU BARDS DIDNT SUCK”

i’m the healer and i have to keep saving all of your reckless asses

i’m REALLY bad at rolling dice idk why you even let me play this game

ELVES ARE WAY BETTER THAN HUMANS “FIGHT ME”

what kind of quest is this? it’s lame

I hope these work for you! :)

~Karissa