How to Be: Frieren (in 4e D&D)

Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End is an anime about what happens after an adventure is over and the player character with all of their level 20 powers wanders the world keeping their brains from being pickled by the feelings of losing all your friends. It’s a well-regarded, critically acclaimed series, and it’s clearly resonating with a lot of people. It’s a story about grieving and loss and finding your own purpose, as well as a story about connecting to your own emotions, and recognising the way your own life can pass by you.

It is also a story about a petite smug elf who turns into animated gifs really well.

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How To Be: Princess Zelda (in 4e D&D)

Hey, haven’t I done this before?

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How To be: Sherlock Holmes (In 4e D&D)

In this project, there’s always a challenge presented by every character. Even when the character straight up ports from a piece of media based on Dungeons & Dragons there’s always going to be something that comes in the translation that has challenges going back. Usually, the problem is one of specificity, where the character is represented in a particular form that can be very clear, with fine detail — a high resolution image, as it were. If a character can leap twice their height and do a diving bomb attack with their weapon, and they do that all the time, any build is going to have to represent that meaningfully or it won’t feel like the character.

The other, rarer problem, perhaps only encountered once before with Robin Hood, is when I’m talking about a character with such vast cultural presence that there’s almost anything they could do.

The game is afoot.

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Decemberween: The 2025 How To Be Covers

Every month throughout the year, I make an article about taking Dungeons & Dragons 4th edition and using a system that is somewhat renowned for being confining and unexpressive, and using it to represent a character who is meant to belong to a different kind of property. I’ve been doing this for a few years now, and every year, I try to present an article where you can just look at the covers, nice and high resolution, clear and visible and not in the middle of a field or at an odd angle. It’s also a chance to reflect on the How to Be Category.

Here’s 2025!

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How To Be: Captain America (in 4e D&D)

Doing this kind of exercise about real long-running characters can be an interesting challenge because so many of them, with enough time, try enough things in different ways that it’s challenging to really identify what makes the character the character to everyone.

And sometimes it’s really easy because Disney makes a billion dollars selling pictures of his butt.

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https://press.invincible.ink/how-to-be-captain-america-in-4e-dd/

#dnd4e #howToBe

How To Be: Gideon Nav (in 4e D&D)

What a bozo!

First things first, before we go past the fold (as we normally do), I need to lay out a quick spoiler warning. I’m going to mention things about Gideon Nav, the protagonist of Gideon the Ninth and a factor in the subsequent stories Harrow the Ninth and Nona The Ninth.

What I’m going to discuss is what I consider establishing details; that is, it’s hardly really meaningful for me to tell you that Gideon Nav is a tall woman with red hair and a sword, even if, strictly speaking, those are things revealed in the later chapters of the book. I don’t intend to spoil anything meaningfully deep about why things are the way they are for Gideon, so you can read this if you want.

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https://press.invincible.ink/how-to-be-gideon-nav-in-4e-dd/

#DnD4e #HowToBe

How To Be: Nobara Kugisaki from Jujutsu Kaisen (In 4e D&D)

I like Jujutsu Kaisen but I don’t like how it went. Not because the story is bad, per se, but because the things that it wanted to focus on weren’t as cool to me as the things they were doing before that focus happened. Nonetheless, it’s a banger of a show and it has some great character designs, such as today’s subject:

As a necessity this is going to include some spoilers. After all, Nobara is not in the first episode of the anime or the first issue of the manga, which means even her existence is a spoiler (geeze, look at that anime ending, spoilering such important things like ‘she exists’). Necessarily, though, I am going to mention some things about how this character’s story goes, and includes spoiling things from both an old season of anime and a manga story that’s four years old.

Point is, you’ve had your time to catch up if you care a lot, but even then, I’m giving you a spoiler warning here if you want it.

Also, Content Warning: Jujutsu Kaisen is a horror action manga and I’m going to mention themes that could invoke self-harm.

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https://press.invincible.ink/how-to-be-nobara-kugisaki-from-jujutsu-kaisen-in-4e-dd/

#DnD4e #HowToBe

How To Be: The Elusive Samurai (in 4e D&D)

In 1333, in Japan, the Hojo clan fell. The Kamakura Shogunate was defeated by the forces of the Ashikaga. The Ashikaga clan – the eventual provenance of the future shogun Ashikaga Takauji – conquered Hojo territory and left almost nobody alive. Only Tokiyuki Hojo, whose life is a mysterious footnote in this spotty period of history, seemed to escape the situation, fleeing to friendly territory and engaging a war against the Ashikaga that was composed of so many retreats it’s literally the thing Hojo is known for. We don’t know when Tokiyuki was born, only when he died, and even that is from a period of historical records that are so unreliable it’s entirely possible that they’re making up the dates to cover their asses for the Shogunate’s records.

Yet the Hojo are not gone, and the Hojo family name remains. The history persists in story and folklore, and has been retold through statues and monuments and historians poring over old letters about the story. In 2021, a manga was started that decided to cast Tokiyuki Hojo as a twelve year old boy talented in avoiding problems, and it kicks ass. Today, I want to address the question, then, of how we make that Tokiyuki Hojo in 4th edition D&D, and then I’m going to be mad at myself for how hard I made this.

I am going to mention some of the real historical events and some events that come up in the manga, which constitutes something of a spoiler for the anime. Like, that shouldn’t really matter much? Because you know, history spoilers, everyone dies eventually, but if you are interested in reading the manga, that’s a good impulse to follow. I like it a lot, and there are these great sections at the end of each volume where the historian consultant provides interesting input.

Ready?

Okay let’s be basara.

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https://press.invincible.ink/how-to-be-the-elusive-samurai-in-4e-dd/

#DnD4e #HowToBe

How To Be: A My Hero Academia Character (in 4e D&D)

What are we doing here today. I’m not feeling well, but the words need to be worded so how hard can it be. I plan this blog out in advance, I have a specific plan in mind for the rest of the year, all I really need to do is look at the plan and then map it out through a process I do understand really well. Let’s see what we have here, what treasures Past Me has set up so that Current Me can have an easier time.

‘A Hero Academia character.’

Well fudge.

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https://press.invincible.ink/how-to-be-a-my-hero-academia-character-in-4e-dd/

#DnD4e #HowToBe

How To Be: Hitsugaya Toshiro (in 4e D&D)

The anime of my lifetime have been a series of towering successes that, typically, plow face-first into the ground. I loved Robotech, and it pulled me into loving anime at all. I loved Ranma 1/2, and it pulled me into creating characters and recognising I was bisexual. I loved Bleach, and it pulled me into wanting to understand ways to be cool in storytelling.

Now let’s talk about a character from Bleach who is both very cool, and also, at least trying to appeal to people who are incredibly bisexual.

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https://press.invincible.ink/how-to-be-hitsugaya-toshiro-in-4e-dd/

#Bleach #DnD4e #HowToBe