How To Be: Rimuru Tempest (in 4e D&D)

Isekai is an overcrowded genre of media in which a few works stand tall. Some of them are just enduring classics of the form, things like Escaflowne and El Hazard, works that served to crystallise a genre. Some have been successful beyond all reasonable ken, like Sword Art Online. Resultant from that has been a whole diversifying ecosystem of isekai stories that expand on the narrative wishes of their increasingly specific wants. As an example, the want to not go to work, and suddenly being hot enough to be voiced by Miho Okasaki.

That’s right, it’s…

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Nations of Cobrin’Seil: Honaj

Let me take you afar to a wonderous placeOf sunshine and flowers and sands,Where the land has a scar cut deep in its faceIt was broken, and yet it standsWhere water is bitterAnd honey is sweet,And the blade of the prince gleams brightDock your boat, come ashore,Have a drink, have one more!And begin your Honaji new life~! Basic Island, by Mark Poole (Source) […]

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Nations of Cobrin’Seil: Honaj

Let me take you afar to a wonderous placeOf sunshine and flowers and sands,Where the land has a scar cut deep in its faceIt was broken, and yet it standsWhere water is bitterAnd honey is sweet,And the blade of the prince gleams brightDock your boat, come ashore,Have a drink, have one more!And begin your Honaji new life~!

Basic Island, by Mark Poole (Source)

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4e Druid Stuff (That I Just Made Up)

I make no secret that one of my favourite character classes in Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition (the best edition) is the druid. After a 3rd edition period where I feel that bringing a druid to the table and using it to its utmost is basically a kind of social cruelty, what with how powerful they are, the druid of 4th edition had a lot to live up to, and it couldn’t. Instead of trying to replicate 3rd edition’s quite frankly ridiculous panoply of powers, the 4th edition Druid instead is designed to be an interesting class about as powerful as the other classes which can do interesting things in its own right.

You know that thing about how when you’ve been the recipient of overwhelming privilege, any cessation of that privilege feels like oppression? That. Wizards and Clerics got it too, but fuck them. I like Druids so I’m talking about Druids this time.

The Druid of 4th edition stripped the concept back to its studs. A druid in 4th edition Dungeons & Dragons is a nature-themed spellcaster who can turn into an animal-like form, and each form is equally capable of doing things to fulfill a role on a team. The druid can be seen as a binary of in and out of wild shape, and out of wild shape, they’re basically a spellcaster. In wild shape, they are a secondary role, which is usually something like an off-defender or an off-striker. This made some people unreasonably mad, because multiclassing to add healing to a druid was an affront to their moral senses I guess.

I get pretty defensive about the 4th edition Druid, but that’s not to pretend it’s perfect by any means. In the effort to take care of things and ensure that the Druid doesn’t start climbing up the tower of its previous power, the writers glowered at it and showered it with options that were just… a little… sour.

I think that the 4th edition Druid, as much as it’s a class I love and works fine, could do with a little help in choice support, and maybe some of the options available to it are a bit crap.

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4e: Technical Seams

Every single time I hear people describing the wording of a 5th edition magical spell or a 5th edition character ability I feel like I’m listening to the fall of an empire and it’s because there was something that the game had solved and was good at that 5th edition seems to have wanted to throw the hell away. That is technically written rules.

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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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Nations of Cobrin’Seil: Winaleon (and Aazum)

It’s always a lovely day in Winaleon. The bees are buzzing, the fields are growing, the coin is flowing. Winaleon, Winaleon, beautiful Winaleon, with its golden days and its golden words. Winaleon is the safest place in the world, a land of gentle slopes and careful lawns, all tended and cared for, so that the children of Winaleon have so safe an upbringing that not even night itself dares touch them.

Winaleon is a land so perfect that the sun never sets on Winaleon.

Ever.

Art by Jeremy Paillotin, Shire Terrace (MTG)

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4e: The Paladin’s Engagement

Ah, the Paladin. Derived from the term, originally, of palantine, it’s interesting how these days it’s used to refer to a virtuous and usually, religiously empowered knight in heavy armour. Interesting given that its origin point was from a term for palace guards, the people closest to the king and inevitably, the kind of people you have to route around in a dramatic conclusion to a story when you’re storming the castle to interrupt a wedding at the last possible moment (but hopefully it’s the kind of story where it all works out in the end).

Perhaps I’m thinking about weddings, though, because I’m thinking about the Paladin outlined in the 4th edition Dungeons & Dragons Player’s Handbook. They are, after all, the kind of character that first and most thoroughly introduced the idea of maintaining an engagement. Thanks to their power, Divine Challenge, they were, in a way, the most romantic of the Player’s Handbook 1 Classes.

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Nations of Cobrin’Seil: Xwera

Are you free?

I ask you this, I ask again, are you free?

If you live under a king, if you live for coin, if you live for a church, then are you ever truly free? You can be free to taste the boot above you, but are you free?

Can you take your weapon and your wits and walk into the wilds and make your own way, know your own self, and share in your spoils without anyone demanding or commanding how it should be done? Can you call yourself free when your own death isn’t even something you can trust, and where you might just fall because a guard or a thug or a brute took a liking to hurting you? Don’t you want the purity, the honesty, of knowing your death comes from the quarry you hunt, that you did something wrong, you slipped at the wrong time, that you weren’t as good as you thought you were, and that your death is something you deserve and that you chose?

Come to Xwera.

Be truly free.

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