Yeah I've noticed Quoting seems to be rather broken right now 0.o; but awesome! I look forward to it, thanks for waiting for me to get my stuff together, I really appreciate it =)
Languages:
- Common
- Elvish
- Modern Saurian
- Orc
Money:
- PP: 0
- GP: 2
- SP: 0
- CP: 0
Inventory: Total Weight = 5+3+3+1.5+0.7+1+4+1+4+5+3+0.5+3+1.5 = 36.2 [<60, unencumbered]
- Backpack[5 lbs, Equipped]: A cheap, cloth backpack with a few patches on the lower face, most of which look almost as worn as the cloth around them. The left-hand side of the backpack appears to be ripped open, with the corner of a book peeking out from the tear. Contents are as follows:
- Healer's Kit[3 lbs, Contained]: A well-used cloth sack containing a variety of substerile cloth bandages, splints, and waxy, resinous salves that supposedly help with the traumas of battle. It has evidently never been opened before, and therefore contains 10 uses' worth of materials.
- Hooded Lantern[3 lbs, Contained]: A simplistic sheet metal lantern with an adjustable hood and a glass oil well with a cloth wick. When not in use, the wick is replaced by a small cork to prevent oil from spilling during travel, so it takes a few seconds of concerted effort to prepare when withdrawn from storage.
- Ink Bottles w/Pouch and Sand[0.25+0.25+0.5+0.5=1.5 lbs, Contained]: 2x simplistic, but thick 1-oz glass bottles of a well-made lampblack ink, one of which has been slightly used. The bottles have a wax-coated cork seal that prevents spillage during travel, and they are surrounded by sand within their containing pouch to keep them from clacking into one another or being damaged by surrounding backpack contents.
- Ink Pens[0.1+0.1+0.5=0.7 lbs, Contained]: Two elegant, but sturdy sheet-metal calligraphy pens with wooden shafts. They are both contained by a wooden box with cloth-lined insets designed to house the pens comfortably, and to thereby protect the relatively fragile nibs from damage during the jostle of travel.
- Mess Kit[1 lb, Carried]: A simple, but well-made metal box with a clamp consisting of a 6" wide rounded plate and a pan clasped together using a hook on the plate and the ingeniously-shaped handle of the pan. The inside of the kit contains a small handcloth with a metal fork, spoon, and a dull steak knife wrapped up within it. The kit looks lightly worn.
- Oil Flasks w/Pouch and Sand[1+1+1+0.5+0.5=4 lbs, Contained]: 3x simple, but relatively large glass flasks with precariously thin necks, each of which are filled with a pint of cheap, mixed vegetable oil. They are tightly packed into a containing pouch, and are surrounded by sand so as to prevent them from clacking into one another or being damaged by surrounding backpack contents.
- Tinderbox[1 lb, Contained]: A small, wooden box with a tiny metal latch to keep it closed. The box contains a stick of flint, a dull rectangular piece of steel, and a whole bunch of dry, fibrous material packed into a tight ball. It looks like it's been opened a few times at best.
- Travel Rations[2+2=4 lbs, Contained]: 2x rock-hard, heavily preserved and bland meals wrapped up in a cloth into relatively dense packs of calories that're guaranteed to get stuck in your teeth and make your jaw hurt. Each ration contains a mixture of various kinds of bone-dry meat jerky, dry berries, a stick of salty hardtack, and a variety of different kinds of bitter, crumbly nuts.
- Vector's Journal[5 lbs, Contained]: A leather-bound, flexible book with around a third of the pages densely coated in ink scribblings. Vanilla uses this book to write his observations during travel, especially including key notes that he doesn't want to forget, such as important people, places, things, and ideas.
- Vector's Spellbook[3 lbs, Contained]: A wood-bound, leather-clasped, and elegant book which contains all of the many discoveries that Vanilla has made regarding his studies of the arcane throughout the years. Despite the incredible volume of information contained within, it is only around a tenth full. The clasp doesn't function as a security measure so much as a protection for the book, since it keeps the pages from getting battered too heavily during travel.
- Belt Pouch[0.5 lbs, Equipped]: A cheap, cloth pouch with what remains of a rawhide draw-chord. Contains all of Vanilla's coins, as well as the faceted rose quartz crystal that he uses as an arcane focus for his spellcasting.
- Common Clothes[3 lbs, Equipped]: A ragged set of heavily-worn clothing that Vanilla has worn throughout his travels over the last two years. It consists of a pair of brown, grass-stained trousers, a brown grass-stained tunic, a leather belt(tied, not buckled), a pair of cheap leather boots with several holes around the sides, and a pair of holey socks. Overall, it looks filthy, and it smells like sweat and dirt.
- Dagger w/ Sheath[1+0.5=1.5 lbs, Equipped]: A rusty, virtually unused stiletto dagger kept in a worn leather sheath with a metal cap. The sheath has a strap which keeps it firmly set against the belt of Vanilla's set of common clothes. The dagger is in poor condition due to rust, but it's still wickedly sharp.
Background:
Vanilla was born to the Bartleby family in Saurvain in the middle of a hot and dreary summer, only a few weeks after a torrential thunderstorm that nearly destroyed their house. His parents say that a lightning bolt struck the house the night of the storm while they were bailing water out of the cellar, and that something knocked Alicia unconscious the moment it struck, but she survived the night and felt fine the day after, so they thought nothing of it. His father Clyde was a master tailor with a lot of say in the guild, and his mother Alicia was a strict, but loving woman who kept the house from falling apart. His parents were worried in his first few years since he was a quiet, lethargic little baby, but he developed alright, even if he was a bit skinny since he didn't eat much.
He retained his lethargy throughout his childhood – rarely playing with other kids, tending to just play around with rocks, bugs, plants, or whatever other objects happened to catch his fancy. His parents tried to catch his interest with puzzles and toys, but he seemed to enjoy taking them apart a lot more than using them as 'intended'.
By the time he was old enough to start training for his apprenticeship to take on the family business, his father quickly discovered that his son had a remarkable intuition for the craft, but that his son was alarmingly bad with his hands. He tried painstakingly to guide his son through the chalking and stitching techniques for his craft, but his son ended up chalking and poking his hands a lot more often than he did the textiles. Ultimately, his mother got his father to drop the apprenticeship since it was putting the young Vanilla in harm's way. But his parents were worried about him, since he didn't seem to be 'growing out' of his weakness like their relatives said he would, so they resolved themselves to put the money together to get him over to a physician.
What the physician discovered was that the child was healthy in every conceivable way, but that he had abnormal development. For whatever reason, his body was developing muscles and immune system infrastructure a lot slower than normal humanoids, even compared to elves, but that his mind was developing alarmingly fast, even compared to monsters like goblins. Since the physician couldn't think of any natural cause for the oddity, he redirected his parents over to a cleric of the Tempest clergy to see if the development was altered by something 'supernatural' in nature.
After watching the cleric perform some sort of ritual on their child, he said that he discovered that the child's development was altered as a result of a curse! Vanilla's parents were astounded at the suggestion, but upon learning that the curse seemed mostly benign and that its removal would require far more resources that the church had available, they resolved themselves to try and help their son overcome it on their own.
After receiving guidance from the Tempest clergy, they decided to try and help their son pursue more academic pursuits. To that end, they hired a tutor and, through a combination of tutoring and reading an enormous number of books, Vanilla eventually developed the academic repertoire to gain acceptance into the Saladar Royal School of Magic. Since he was admitted at an especially young age(he was 9), he avoided interaction with other students as much as possible, making his time at the school especially dull. He studied illusions, primarily, although he also seemed interested in movement-based spells, animations and transpositions, which starkly distinguished him from the majority of students at the academy, who seemed to favor the flashy, explody types of spells that were used for warfare.
He graduated with honors at the age of 13, but to the astonishment of his parents, he refused several scholarships to continue his studies as an academic researcher. His parents asked him why, but he indicated that he was "bored" of it, and wanted to do something else. This angered his father, who had already invested a significant amount of money into his education, and his mother was also outraged at her son's selfishness. As such, they had an unreasonably long one-sided argument about what the young Vanilla should do going forward. Vanilla caved in under the torrent of will which his parents launched at him, so he went back over to the school and worked as a researcher for the next five years.
Much like with his undergraduate schooling, Vanilla was remarkably young, so he was treated with prejudice compared to the other scholars in the academy. Due to the war, he was asked to develop combat-capable spells with high reliability, and since he was pretty much forced into the situation by his parents, he didn't have the ability to refuse. He somehow managed to work in his interests by developing a few material-launching cantrips and spells, and since he was a bit older and more mature now, his experience in the academy was much more pleasant than it was during his schooling. He got to know a lot of his significantly-older peers through his presentations and discussions, and since he was being paid now, he even got to enjoy nice food and purchase books to decorate his room.
In his fourth year as a researcher, he had a eureka moment while in the testing grounds. One of the students asked about why the spells couldn't be re-directed in the air, and the teacher answered that "that's just the way it works." This angered Vanilla, but as he was angrily stamping over to start arguing with the teacher, he had already begun conceptualizing a spell. Halfway over to his target audience, he realized that the spell was far more valuable than the argument, and so he quickly rushed back over to his room to begin drafting it. Three months later, he completed his masterpiece work, a spell he titled "Vector Rearrangement", which earned him the monicker "Vector" due to its acclaim.
In recognition of his achievement, he was offered a full position as an instructor at the academy in his area of expertise, and he continued teaching there for the next three years. However, during his time as a teacher, he was frustrated that he wasn't able to focus on his research as much due to all the pestering of the students, and he was frustrated by his lack of physical stamina, which made lecturing difficult. Eventually, he decided that teaching at the school for the rest of his life would be frustrating, and continuing his research to receive more funding would be pointless since he had already read the majority of the interesting books in the capital by that point. All that remained in his mind was to travel somewhere else, so he formulated his plans, resigned from the school, said goodbye to his parents, and headed off to the mainland to seek new arcane knowledge and to improve his physique.
During the long ship-ride over to the mainland, Vanilla played around with illusion magics that he had proposed in his journal, and even developed a few fun ones. However, he also spent a great deal of time at the side of the ship due to his lacking constitution. By the time he finally arrived at the mainland in Kardeel City, he was cachectic from all the sea sickness and hardtack, and had to spend a month at an inn to recover his strength. Thereafter, he used the majority of the money left to his name from his time as a researcher hiring some especially competent guards, and went off on a journey to search the libraries and academies of the mainland.
2 years into his journey, a few months after he arrived in the lost lands, his guards were taken out by a horrifying abomination of some sort(he never saw it, as his guards just advised for him to run for his life), so he ended up lost while travelling towards Saballi. Luckily, he happened to be close enough to the town that he wouldn't starve to his death while searching for a way over to it, but he was more than a little worse for wear by the time he arrived. At least he still had the letter that led him there...or did he?...what's that hole doing there?…
Other Info:
Starting Equipment: Used random dice roll for gold to buy equipment rather than taking default stuff. Rolled 11*10 = 110 gp.
Background:
- Sage: Proficiency in Arcana and History skills, and two languages of choice(Elvish and Modern Saurian), 10 gp, a belt pouch, a bottle of lampblack ink, and a set of common clothes.
- Researcher: Even if Vanilla does not know a piece of information, he will often know where it can be obtained, unless it is in an inaccessible place or outright cannot be found.
Unknown Effect: Vanilla was afflicted by a supernatural effect of unknown origin before he was even born. All he knows about the effect is as follows:
- It significantly reduces his ability to put on muscle mass, although it doesn't actually affect his strength at all.
- It makes his immune system adapt much slower to dangerous stuff, although it doesn't actually affect his ability to fight off diseases, toxins or other such dangerous stuff.
- It is discernible through the use of holy rituals, but not through arcane magic detection(i.e. through "Augury", but not through "Detect Magic").
- It cannot be removed through traditional means(i.e. the "Remove Curse" or "Greater Restoration" spells).
@Vii I know I'm not the GM but uhhh... why negative dex and low con? That will subtract from your AC and your HP is gonna be p. bad... especially as a wizard. Even when you backline you can still be shot with arrows even if the tank gives them disadvantage to hit you if you have low enough AC...
I also forgot to ask @Tufty Bunny why the low con...? That subtracts from your HP... and most warlocks don't need str...
Just wanting to ask/clarify as one of the resident tanks
@EldridSmith thank you for warning me, but I was aware of the downsides when I chose to put Vector's low ability scores in Dexterity and Constitution. My rationale for doing so was mostly based on narrative rather than mechanical considerations. Due to being a Wizard, Vector lacks proficiency in any armor type whatsoever and has the lowest possible hit die in the game, so his AC and HP will be low whether or not I invest heavily into them. I am planning on eventually using ability score increases to make his physique a bit better down the line, since by then it'll actually have a more significant impact on his survivability, and since that's one of his desires as a character.
As for your worries as a tank, you probably don't need to worry too much about trying to block attacks. Vector will be able to protect himself pretty well against ranged attackers just by ducking behind some cover and going prone to impose disadvantage on their attacks until they decide to look elsewhere. And that's not even factoring in spells like mage armor, shield, minor illusion, silent image, and false life, with the possibility for additional homebrew spells tossed in to the pile as well. With all that considered, I'm sure he'll be plenty defensible in combat for a level 1 character.
Ok then... well hoping we don't get flanked by enemies that should work. Still feels like a dangerous game you're playing though... I just hope you don't get burned for it.
