#plasmoids

[petersolarz]

Untitled © Peter Solarz

[honourablejester]

5e Character Concept: An Aberrant Ooze

Right. So. The thing I wanted here was a character who did primarily acid damage. Or, since primarily acid damage is asking a bit much, at least regular acid damage. Because every so often I pick one of the weirder damage types and try to play around with it.

And acid … see, the reason I picked acid is that oozes are probably my favourite creature type in all of D&D. So I want something on a theme of a schlorpy little dude. Or gal. So for race, we’re going to be picking plasmoid, whatever else we do.

For class, I’m pretty sure we’re mostly looking at spells to do acid damage, and most of the acid dealing spells are on the sorcerer/wizard lists. There aren’t that many of them, mind you. But. If we’re thinking sorcerer. Sorcerers can get the transmuted spell metamagic, which for 1 sorcery point will let you swap the damage type of a spell that deals one of the following to another of the following: acid, cold, fire, lightning, poison, thunder. I love this for storm sorcerer/tempest cleric multiclasses, and it’ll do here too to let us drop a giant ball of acid (fireball) on top of our enemies. It’s spending a lot of sorcery points just for a damage type, but eh. If you want a rarer damage type, this is kind of what you’re looking at.

There is one acid spell that’s not on the sorcerer list that I’d kind of like: Primal Savagery, a cantrip from the druid list that gives you acidic claws, it’d work real nice on a plasmoid to mimic most oozes’ being able to just unarmed hit you for acid damage. Plus it’s a melee cantrip, and sorcerers only get shocking grasp there (or booming/green flame blade), so I might pick up either Spell Sniper or Magic Initiate to pick that up later on.

Now. If we’re a sorcerer, and we’re aiming for a theme of ooze … there mostly isn’t one. There isn’t really any subclass on a theme of ooze. But, if we want slimy, tentacley things, Aberrant Mind is an option? The slimy part of Revelation in Flesh we already have just for being a plasmoid, but it could also give us writhing sensory tendrils and/or glistening mucus that gives us a fly speed, so that’s fun. Also it gets us Hunger of Hadar, which is another of the acid spells that’s not on the sorcerer’s list.

The one thing with Aberrant Mind is that it’s psychic damage themed, rather than acid damage. And psychic damage isn’t really an oozy sort of thing. Except.

What if we’re not technically a plasmoid? What if we’re actually an oblex. Specifically, what if we’re a memory duplicate an oblex made, that thing they do where they eat someone’s memories and extrude a pod person copy of them, that somehow detached from the main oblex and wandered off by itself. After a while, without the parent oblex to maintain it, the duplicate lost cohesion and devolved back into a vaguely humanoid reddish hunk of slime, but it still has some foreign memories and aberrant psychic magic as a result? We’re not quite an oblex spawn directly, something weirder happened, and now we’re a lost, fractured personality of stolen memories inhabiting a mobile pile of goo.

(Did I mention I love oozes? I really love oozes. Oblexes are such a cool monster, I adore them. “The oblex extrudes a piece of itself that assumes the appearance of one Medium or smaller creature whose memories it has stolen. This simulacrum appears, feels, and sounds exactly like the creature it impersonates, though it smells faintly of sulfur. The oblex can impersonate 2d6 + 1 different creatures, each one tethered to its body by a strand of slime that can extend up to 120 feet away.”).

Yeah. Yeah, I like this. An aberrant ooze, an oblex spawn, full of bile and torment. (Aka full of acid and psychic damage). A wandering ghost of a mostly likely murdered person, their form eroded into nothing, and only scattered memories remaining.

I wonder … I think I’d want a custom background for this, call it something like ‘amnesiac’. Take Stealth and Survival, maybe, as the skills, or Stealth and Sleight of Hand, and I wonder if a DM would let me borrow from a race feature as a background one? Because if so I’d like to borrow the Reborn’s ‘Knowledge from a Past Life’: “You temporarily remember glimpses of the past, perhaps faded memories from ages ago or a previous life. When you make an ability check that uses a skill, you can roll a d6 immediately after seeing the number on the d20 and add the number on the d6 to the check. You can use this feature a number of times equal to your proficiency bonus, and you regain all expended uses when you finish a long rest.” I do want their actual race to be Plasmoid, you see.

So. To pull all of that together. An Amnesiac Plasmoid Aberrant Sorcerer. A collection of fractured memories in a reddish, oozing form. Maybe we’ll pull in some influence from Juiblex, too. He’s a demon lord, not an ooze or an aberration, technically, but he’s the creator of all oozes and pretty fucking aberrant on his best day. If he took a holiday in the Far Realms, none of the locals would so much as bat an organ-analogous-to-an-eye at him. So later if we pull out Hunger of Hadar or Evard’s Black Tentacles, we can say that’s Juiblex’s influence threading through our magic, his vast writhing pseudopods slipping through a crack in the world to answer our call. Yeah. On top of our oblex nature, a being born from stolen memories extruded on a string, some part of us also calls back to the Faceless Lord himself.

But we remember being something else. Humanoid. Normal. We remember being a person. And now we’re wandering the world trying to figure out how much of one we still are. While gently or not-so-gently creeping out everyone in our general vicinity in the process.

And mechanically, we’re not too bad off either. We’re a standard enough sorcerer, but we’ll have resistance to poison, acid and psychic damage by level 6, and we’ll be theming our spells around acid and psychic damage, aided by the transmuted spell metamagic.

So. Picture a distinctly reddish plasmoid, one that smells faintly of sulfur, one that holds itself oddly at times, like it remembers being differently shaped, remembers being someone else. A very nice, perhaps oddly innocent plasmoid, that nonetheless is a little off. And that, when threatened, has a tendency to hurl acidic bile and eldritch horrors at people. Heh.

I just really love oozes, you know?

[voidshaker]

So I really like plasmoids, new best DnD race

[honourablejester]

Extremely specific and rather Scooby Doo (with a bit of Doctor Syn) inspired Halloween D&D character concept:

A plasmoid who has been laboriously collecting a complete humanoid skeleton (by entirely ethical and non-murdery means, excuse you, they’re a graverobber, not a monster) and painting the bones with whatever the D&D equivalent of glow-in-the-dark paint is, so that they can lay them all out, schlorp down over them, solidify around them, and stand up as essentially the Spooky Space Kook from Scooby Doo. A glowing ambulatory skeleton sheathed in greyish ‘ectoplasm’.

Why? Just because. They always wanted to know what having a skeleton felt like, and if you’ve got one, wouldn’t you show it off? So a glowing skeleton. And, you know. Maybe as a side benefit they can ‘haunt’ some marshland and scare a few townsfolk on occasion. No reason.

For fun points, maybe there’re some wonky details here or there. The bones are all humanoid, yes, but maybe they’re not all the same type of humanoid, it depended on what they could rob or scavenge, so maybe the proportions are odd. Also, it’s going on its best guesses for what bones go where, based on what it’s seen, but again, there might be bits missing and odd bones in odd places here or there.

Maybe their whole reason for becoming an adventurer is a) access to more bones, b) access to more knowledge about bones and what bits should go where, and c) money and jewellery to better bling out their glowing skeleton ‘costume’.

The first time they meet a necromancer is going to be a bad time and they’re going to be very upset. I worked hard on that, you bitch! De-animate those bones and give them back right now!

[extraterrestrialmusings]

I am hesitant to share the videos of orbs/crafts that I’ve captured. Inquiring minds, feel free to message me.

[semotilus]

The greys control the plasmoids.

I have evidence, all will be released soon.

[honourablejester]

Character Concept: Marrowmire Plasmoid

While I’m talking about the Marrowmire, the vast acidic swamp full of bones, I thought I’d run with the vibes a bit more and make a character. I’ve been wanting to use a plasmoid for ages. Oozes. I just really love oozes. And if we’re doing an acid swamp, they’re the perfect race. The Marrowmire is full of oozes, perhaps a few of them have developed a bit more in the way of personhood over time, given the mire’s near-sentience and saturated magic.

I did doodle around a few classes, draconic sorcerer, some sort of warlock, my old favourite the cleric, but the Marrowmire carries more of a rugged survival vibe. So barbarian, maybe, or ranger, but in the end I went with a good old swamp druid instead. Mostly, not going to lie, because I wanted augury, for the vibe of the rolling bones in the mire, and the druid list just has a lot of swampy spells in general. So. Have a shambling sentient ooze, who’s rolled up out of their incredibly magical and malevolent swamp on a quest to seek out and return some specific bones?

Character Sheet: Shambling Murt, Marrowmire Druid & Bone Collector

Name: Shambling Murt

Race: Plasmoid

Age: Time is counted strangely in the Marrowmire, but probably somewhere in their 20s

Background: Marrowmire Bone Collector (custom background, Survival and Perception skills, wood bonecarver’s tools, one language, and the Lessons of the Mire feature explained below)

Class/Level: Druid 4 (Circle of the Land: Swamp)

Description: Shambling Murt is a roughly medium-sized ooze the brownish-clear colour of brackish water. Little objects tumble gently in their interior, many of them the yellowish-white of bone. When focusing, they can lurch upright into a vaguely hunchbacked humanoid shape, donning their signature dark brown hide armour in the process. When not focusing, they tend to collapse back into a shapeless lump, bundling their belongings inside the hide and schlorping it into their interior to keep it safe as they sleep.

History: The vast, corrosive expanse of the Marrowmire is home to many oozes, among other creatures. Most of them are not particularly talkative or contemplative beings. On occasion, though, by the ‘blessing of the Mire’, as some call it, one of the Marrowmire’s oozes might develop something a little bit closer to a shape, a personality, and a will. These more personable oozes are, if not quite welcomed, then at least readily accepted among the tough and hardy folk of the Mire. The Mire gives, and the Mire takes away, after all. A being who carries the Mire’s blessing, and resistance to the Mire’s acidic embrace, is a handy being to have around.

Most of these oozes make a living as bone collectors and mirepriests, helping search and scavenge the Mire, guide other beings through it, and interpret the will and whims of the Marrowmire. While Shambling Murt, as they came to be called, did have the magic and the gift of the bones to become a mirepriest, they rather lacked the attention span and gift of talking that most preferred in one of the Mire’s spiritual leaders. They lived quite happily as a bone collector and scavenger instead, scrounging materials to sell (or just give) to the Mire settlements who needed them.

But the whims and whispers of the Marrowmire could not be avoided forever. Rolling the bones to guide themself eventually led to a message that Shambling Murt could not ignore. The Mire wanted them to search for a different bone. A far away bone. One outside the Mire itself and all the world Murt had come to know. But the Mire gives, and the Mire takes away, and the whims of the Mire must be followed. So Murt shambled out into the wider world beyond the Marrowmire, a little worried and confused (a little terrified), but pragmatic, determined, and full of Mire fatalism. What will be, will be. And in the meantime there are jobs to be done.

Ideal: Anywhere can be lived in and anything can be useful, if you make a little bit of effort

Bond: I’m looking for a bone. Not just any bone, a specific bone. I’ll know it when I find it. The Mire told me to go out and look for it, and to bring it back when I find it.

Flaw: Rather prone to doing as they’re told unless they have a very pressing reason not to.

Statistics: Strength 8 (-1), Dexterity 14 (+2), Constitution 14 (+2), Intelligence 12 (+1), Wisdom 18 (+4), Charisma 10 (+0)

Proficiencies & Languages:

Saving Throws: Intelligence, Wisdom

Skills: Insight, Nature, Perception, Survival

Armour/Weapons/Tools: light, medium armour, shields, clubs, daggers, darts, javelins, maces, quarterstaffs, scimitars, sickles, slings, spears, herbalism kit, bonecarver’s tools

Languages: Common, Draconic, Druidic, Abyssal (draconic seeping up from the mire, abyssal seeping up from ooze ancestry)

Equipment: Hide armour, a small, strangely pitted and adorned wooden shield, a sling, sling bullets, a druidic focus (a totem, a carved piece of bone from the Marrowmire, carved themself), a herbalism kit, rolling bones (a common Marrowmire divination tool, used for Augury), backpack, 50ft rope, waterskin

Traits, Feats and Background/Class Features: 

Race: Medium Ooze, 30ft speed, Amorphous (squeeze to 1” if naked, adv to/vs grapple), Darkvision (60ft), Hold Breath (1hr), Natural Resilience (acid/poison resist, adv vs poison), Shape Self (action to be humanoid, bonus action for pseudopod)

Background: Lessons of the Mire (adv on perception checks to identify hazards of natural origin, as well as checks or saves made to escape their effects)

Swamp Druid: Ritual Casting, Wild Shape (CR ½, no fly, 2/rest, ½ lvl hrs), Bonus Cantrip, Natural Recovery (1/day on short rest recover ½ druid lvl in spell slots, 6th or lower), Circle Spells

Feat: Fey Touched: Increase Wis by 1, learn the Misty Step and Hex spells, Wis casting stat, once each without slot per day

Spells:

Cantrips: Primal Savagery, Guidance, Shape Water, Thorn Whip

Circle Spells: Darkness, Melf’s Acid Arrow

Feat Spells: Misty Step, Hex

Commonly Prepared Spells: Faerie Fire, Healing Word, Longstrider, Thunderwave, Augury, Pass Without Trace, Spike Growth

Spell Flavour:

Primal Savagery causes ‘teeth or fingernails’ to sharpen to make a ‘corrosive attack’, would like to reflavour that as an extra-acidic pseudopod instead. Wouldn’t mind doing similar with Thorn Whip, flavoured as a very long pseudopod full of bone shards and debris. Melf’s Acid Arrow, again, could just be our plasmoid hurling bits of themself. Would like Spike Growth to be giant bone shards extruding up from the ground, and there’s a bit of me that wants Darkness to be flavoured as an incredibly dense, blinding mist. On a day where they prepared Entangle, I’d go with choking muck and tanged reeds. Misty Step is obviously the Mire’s mist helping spirit them out of trouble, and Faerie Fire the Mire’s will-o-wisps marking their enemies for them. Very much just a theme of their magic being born from the Marrowmire, even if it’s been months or years since they last set foot in it.

[djotaku]

How Desktop Environment Tweaking Helps Me Be More Productive

How Desktop Environment Tweaking Helps Me Be More Productive

A few months ago, someone asked about whether the rices*/modifications/tweaks people displayed on reddit.com/r/unixporn (where people show off their desktops, not human pornography) were actually useful. Someone commented they’d like to see a post on how someone uses their mods. So I decided to write this up. *I know the term ricing could be considered racist or insensitive. In this context,…

View On WordPress