You know how sometimes villainous characters try to corrupt good ones to get them to join their side?

Well, what if you have one of your villainous characters try to do that, and then have it massively backfire on them. Getting the character they were trying to corrupt to now have a very intense personal vendetta against the villain.

I think it’d be neat if you have a character who’s whole vibe seems much cooler than they actually are.

Like, a character could wear black form concealing clothes overlayed with plates of tarnished steel armour who’s metal has been forged into bold and aggressive unnatural shapes.

Their voice could be deep and gravely their every sentence verging on sounding like the roar of an ancient and deadly beast.

And then their job could be a structural engineer who fixes damaged castles well after all the fighting in an area is gone, and even then after they send some workers to begin the repairs they mostly just spend their time snoozing or birdwatching.

I think a useful set of skills for fantasy characters could be the ability to make weird unnatural creature-y monster-y noises.

If used to emulate the sounds of particular monsters and creatures they could potentially intimidate and ward off other creatures and monsters who are scared of them.

And even if these noises aren’t based on anything real in, they could probably still be used to deter man and beast alike. After all an unknown creature could be far scarier than a known one.

Imagine not playing the “Muppetborn” homebrew race in 5e and going “YAAAAYYYY!” Or “COOOKIIEEESSS!” every two minutes.

patentlyabsurdrpgideas:

cargopantsman:

anais-ninja-bitch:

krisdoesart:

katherine-xari:

wielderofscythes:

gottabeastringplayer:

paulsrockinpagoda:

presidentobarna:

leaf-jelly:

131-di:

illogicalhumanoid:

brickiestsurgeon:

131-di:

the contrabass saxophone is such an absurd instrument

talk dirty to me

Have ya’ll seen the double contrabass flute before???

reblogging my own post because what in the fuck

i give you the contrabass tuba. Why is it real. I dont know.

Know what’s even better?

HYPERBASS FLUTE

my counter:

piccolo trombone 

I’m both glad and sad that string players are only limited to violin, viola, cello, and bass. Can you imagine a contrabass? Or a piccolo violin????

String players are not limited to just those.

I present, THE OCTOBASS

It’s so big that it needs keys to hit the strings.

And in the reverse direction there exists the Pochette. Translated from French, it means pocket, as it was a pocket sized violin like instrument.

This is amazing

someone post the archlute

This one?

Who ordered the Patently Absurd Bard DLC?

Fighter- You have my sword.

Ranger- And my bow.

Barbarian- and my Axe.

Bard- and my OCTOBASS!

Velocilpastor - Dino-Druid Cleric Multiclass

talesfromweirdland:

Zombie designs by William Stout for RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD (1984).

“Choose your character.”

al-from973:

biggest-gaudiest-patronuses:

biggest-gaudiest-patronuses:

in the book of ezekiel, angels are described as eyes on their wings. sound familiar?

so what i want to know is what the hell type of predator was preying on biblical angels to make them evolve eyespots

possibilities include:

• what the hell else were the Old Gods supposed to feed on?
• theAngelusgenus contains a diverse array of species whose members regularly cannibalize each other
• the Holy Spirit swoops around heaven clicking its tongue like a bat out of hell, and in this manner echolocates and consumes thousands of pesky angels every night, thus maintaining the celestial ecosystem’s delicate natural balance
• God keeps swatting them

• Ancient humans monster fuckers liked it and furthered the bloodline of eyes-patterned wings through intense breeding.

chaoticsleepygremlin:

biggest-gaudiest-patronuses:

supersmashwolves:

biggest-gaudiest-patronuses:

the-mellow-wonder:

biggest-gaudiest-patronuses:

rubinaitoart:

biggest-gaudiest-patronuses:

carnivalseb:

biggest-gaudiest-patronuses:

hedgehogcryptid:

biggest-gaudiest-patronuses:

biggest-gaudiest-patronuses:

normal halloween fantasy world w/ vampires & monsters & all that good jazz but the skeletons are just normal people who happen to be deceased but stuck around

like ghosts get the option to stay w/ their corpses instead of passing on so now everyone’s family is made up of like 3 living generations and your great-aunt Bernadine

sometimes family members die but decides to like. stick around. there’s a polite period of seclusion while their corpse goes through the decaying process, bc of hygiene reasons. then once the bits and pieces fall away you get a nice clean skeleton haunted by the un-aging spirit of a family member. and it’s not like they’re another mouth to feed, so they just spent their afterlife being passed around by relatives and offering free babysitting i guess

But, you know, you can technically speed up the decaying process. I could go feed a big ass murder of crows. And then have a nice bleach bath to get rid of the itty-bitty bits that got stuck. And then go to a bone engraver to get very unique designs, to make sure its hard to fake my identity. And also to be a really cool tattooed skeleton. I’d get back to my family after a week tops. The future grandchildren could color in my cool tattoos.

Fuck you, now I want to be a cool ghost skeleton. And I can’t. Fuck you

1. everything about this comment is good and right, catch me laying my skeleton out to feed the birds

2. i completely FORGOT bones could be CARVED, and for that i am shamed

gonna be the most badass skeleton babysitter 

if you were a bare skeleton anyway I bet you could just Meccano in spare bits of unoccupied bone

wanna be a bone centaur? find an unhaunted horse skeleton & stretch your legs

art prompt: BONE CENTAUR

I know your whole shtick is cursed-content but I couldn’t help but make something a little wholesome. An elderly couple, Liam (the skeleton) and Rose (the little old lady). Liam passed away before Rose, but he chose to stick around and take care of her since they live alone.

oh my bleeding goodness i love it

“Its great great great grandpa’s turn to take care of the kids.”

This post gave me a surge of inspiration so here ya go. The big sis is painting a dragon on her old man’s arm, while the little bro is placing a flower crown on his head. Sorry its a bit blurry.

oh my goodness. i would absolutely love to see this in color if anyone is interested

@biggest-gaudiest-patronuses​ I never wanna do bones again with so many details, you’ve killed me you damn yogurt of hell, but this helped break through a bit of a art block so hindsight thank you XD

oh my gosh the DETAILS

@supersmashwolves

EXCUSE ME WHY

pomrania:

probablygoodrpgideas:

The “Necromancy is evil“ we see in most fantasy worlds stems from a christian view of having to honor the body after death in a certain way to ensure the soul’s safety in the afterlife. And while I encourage you to explore societies that don’t see necromancy as evil, I also encourage you to explore societies that see necromancy as evil for different reasons.

Drow might believe that after death, your body belongs to Lolth and must be fed to spiders. Reanimating a body means stealing from Lolth and must therefore be punished.

A Zoroastrian inspired society might believe that with death, evil starts infesting the body, so dead bodies must be kept away from the community, and reanimating them keeps them in the community and is therefore bad.

There’s just so much GOOD stuff in the notes, I’ll try to compile it into one post (sorted alphabetically by writer), since some of them are in different chains.

@135weirdos:

• A society of druids that uses the dead to grow sacred gardens, and reanimation deprives the dead of their part in the cycle
• A society where each plot in the cemetery is used to grow vegetables/herbs for community use, to ensure that everyone is fed and the dead are visited/remembered. Necromancy deprives the community of the food that person would have grown and disconnects the dead person from their community
• A society obsessed with history/recordskeeping/memory, and necromancy prevents the dead from being properly catalogued
• A totalitarian society wherein the citizens are property of the state and necromancy is stealing
• Death is nirvana and reanimation deprives the dead of this experience
• The dead are ritually eaten by friends/family to allow them to live on, and reanimation ends their time prematurely
• The finest jewelry is made of the bones of the dead, so there’s a lucrative trade in grave robbing, and the bone jewelry lobby has convinced the public that necromancy is worse than the expensive jewelry made from the bones
• The current regime used necromancy to take power, so now it’s forbidden for everyone outside the very small circle of favored state necromancers
  
• The corpses of dead kings/honored warriors are laid to rest in the palace catacombs, so necromancy is heavily regulated as a matter of national security
  

@absolxguardian:

• in the afterlife, they’re still using the body. With an empty grave, their soul won’t be tethered to a point in the afterlife nor can they receive offerings
  

@datasoong47:

• My conculture believes that the dead must be cremated quickly after death, in order to free the souls for reincarnation - if the body is not cremated but allowed to rot, the souls risk being trapped in the body and dying.  For that reason, the most heinous crimes are punished with not just execution, but the denial of cremation - death of both body and soul.  So, necromancy would be seen as risking the destruction of the souls - or, alternately, of imprisoning the souls, since an undead body may be able to preserve the souls’ existence, but they cannot control the body, and thus would be effectively imprisoned
  

@eclipseyeger:

• a culture that recognizes the effort and emotional strain their people go through in life, and when someone dies they throw a huge wake and celebrate their break from life before joining their god/reincarnating/guarding something/etc.  Reanimating someone or trying to bring them back to life is seen as a huge taboo because it’s like asking someone who constantly works and finally gets a time of rest to go straight back to work before they’ve recovered.  Except it’s the hardest job/adventure ever.  For the same reason, motherhood, illness, leadership, recreation, personal growth, and winter are all highly venerated concepts/times in the culture, as times of rest or things in need of a period of rest eventually.  To honor these times as sabbats is commanded by one of their gods after a great catastrophe. The whole community is involved with these things, and so too are is the whole community involved with death and picking up the physical or emotional slack of the person who died.  If permission is given from the person who is being reanimated, then maybe maaaaaybe it’s ok, but that’s only happened once when a guardian was once needed, and it’s pretty hard to verify if it really was the person.  
  

• The dead just turn into pillars of salt if they’re seen by the living once they’re reanimated, and it just gets annoying trying to clean up all that shit. Not to mention it screws over the crop field rotation. Thanks carl.

• the dead like the afterlife and it’s just plain freakin rude to rip them from that, jerk

• the spell to reanimate the dead is incomplete/glitchy, and it just spreads from corpse to person to person and creates a zombie plague

@esoanem:

• A Confucian society would be interesting here. Part of one’s duty of filial piety is to return the body your ancestors gave you to them (which is why China has historically been so against cremation, body modification, and even hair cutting, all of which damage the body your ancestors gave you), necromancy would be seen as robbing that body from the person’s ancestors and so would be highly taboo
  

@imsopopfly:

• there’s no stigma against reanimating bodies specifically, but there is a preference among necromancers in these parts for uh….fresher materials to work with, so they’ve developed a reputation for, you know, making their own dead. By murdering people. Not ALL of them do it but it’s happened often enough that most practitioners of necromancy are looked upon with suspicion at best
  

@mollymauksandtealeafs:

• #if your fictional society has beef with necromancy there!must!be!a!reason
• #also societies can think necromancy is bad unless relatives are doing it
• #or they can think it’s good bc they’re a warrior society and it’s a way for your body to keep fighting after death
• #or they can think it’s bad bc it’s a type of punishment for criminals/outcasts/whatever bc it’s basically saying “this person was only useful after they died"

@plotbunny-hutch:

• In a community with a high rate of child mortality, dead adults are thought to be the caretakers of dead children; resurrecting an adult is seen as robbing a dead child of their parent.

• There’s nothing wrong with reanimating the dead to live an unlife of leisure, as companionship to a living person, but any labor done by a dead person is viewed with disdain or stigma—basically, classism against working-class necromancers, while wealthy necromancers get a pass.
  

• A dead person is buried with a highly personal artifact which tells their entire life story and holds their secrets, such as a tapestry-shroud or scroll, which only the dead person and their nearest relative has ever seen; reanimating the dead is seen as a HUGE invasion of privacy because a) You SAW their SECRET THING and b) Where exactly is their secret thing kept while they do undead things????

• The culture believes that the dead come back in dreams to deliver prophetic warnings to their descendants; the voices of the dead are therefore considered inherently prophetic, which is awkward when you’re undead and trying to go about your day.

• Death is an integral function of time in this culture and/or magical system; reversing the natural course of death risks reversing the natural course of time, halting the round of seasons or freezing the growth of crops in the fields.
  

• This culture is highly informed/stratified by gender and the dead are considered to be genderless, therefore they have no place/role in the community and nobody knows how to treat them or speak to them.

• It’s not that reanimating the dead in itself is an issue—but it *is* proof that the necromancer has done some other taboo act as part of the reanimation process (like animal sacrifice or sth). Nobody can look at the reanimated person without remembering that, oh shit, somebody did that gross thing. So having a reanimated corpse around is not so much taboo as really, REALLY awkward.

@pomrania:

• necromancy is associated with the culture’s traditional enemies, and is the same level of frowned-upon as using certain symbology or weapons or languages etc which are also linked to those enemies

• once someone has died, it is severely disrespectful to look upon their corpse, so anything which is VISIBLE as being an undead is Very Bad, because it means you can see that person’s dead body

• the reanimated dead have historically been used to spread plague and do other biological warfare type stuff; if you create something like that, a) gross b) unsanitary c) this is interpreted as the intent to commit war crimes

• when someone dies, their death is considered a “sacrifice” to the deity who presides over their cause of death; how exactly you deal with the body, that doesn’t matter so much, but USING the body to your OWN benefit, that’s an insult to the god of warfare / disease / ocean / etc. Like stealing the offerings from a shrine.

• reanimation is seen as asserting “ownership” over that being; so while it’s okay to have an undead animal (so long as it wasn’t someone ELSE’S animal, as that would be theft), reanimating a HUMAN counts as “slavery”

• necromancy is considered “lazy”; like, dude, do the work yourself, or pay/convince someone else to do it, what kind of loser has to resort to CORPSES

• only the divine can raise the dead; reanimating the dead is a poor mockery of the gods’ ability, and you are liable to be punished for your hubris, and that kind of punishment tends to have a lot of collateral damage so it’s best for mortals to solve the problem before the gods take notice

• “animated corpses” attract carrion birds who then poop on everything

• a decent chunk of the populace is secretly undead, and “ability to use necromancy” is strongly correlated with “knowledge of necromancy” is strongly correlated with “ability to tell that someone is secretly undead, and perhaps control them”

• reanimating the dead involves borrowing the “property” (ie, the dead) from the god of death, who keeps a close eye on their belongings, and might take a shine to anything/anyone else they see while monitoring that; so not only is it potentially dangerous to CAUSE undead, it’s risky just being NEAR them

@syntax-forest:

• There was a huge necromancy fad a while back and now it’s just kind of tacky? Like if you’re gonna animate things with magic to do your bidding try to be a little creative at least.

• You can reanimate a person’s body if you have their consent, but it’s difficult to reliably get in contact with the deceased so proving consent is difficult after the fact. You can get written consent but there needs to be a certain number of witnesses and a lawyer needs to write up the contract and it’s really more trouble than it’s worth. People start to wonder why you’re so set on animate corpses that you’re going through all that legal trouble.

• The town used to let people raise the dead willy-nilly but something went catastrophically awry. You’ll also get the side-eye if you cast fireball.

@thedupshadove:

• If you could truly raise the dead, put body and soul back together in good health, it would be a Mitzvah. But most Necromancy does not do that; it merely raises the corpse into a puppet of the mage’s will. This is no slight on the dead–either they are safely in the afterlife, or else they are gone–but seeing the shell of their loved one will pain the mourners, and so it should not be done. Weep not for the dead, for they rest, and we moan. We would moan all the more to see their husks walking about.  #now that I think about it #this means it might *not* be evil to animate skeletons #since all of their loved ones are probably also dead
  

@when-are-we-gonna-play-squash:

• #i actually have a necromancer oc and as far as the magic system goes it’s not forbidden but is just an unpopular form of magic #because it causes the user physical pain #and she has chronic pain as a result of practicing necromancy

• #also worth noting is she brings back extinct animals #so maybe think about the ethical implications of Ghost Jurassic Park

@woefully-undercaffeinated:

• The dead are able to remember their past lives, and wars have been started by revelations from beyond the grave. The taboo arose after a particularly bloody set of clashes several thousand years ago.

• The dead tend to be extremely… libidinous, and as most of the living are Very Much Not Into That, it was agreed that necromancy was a bad idea.

• Necromancy can raise the dead, but it can’t control them. The reanimated will usually just lumber back to whatever home they had in life, and will expect to be able to return to their previous existences in every detail. Unfortunately, most beds were not made to accommodate multiple generations of dead relatives in addition to the living family, and necromancy was banned after the kingdom could no longer afford all of the additional mattresses needed.
  

• Estate lawyers have formed a highly effective lobbying group and successfully convinced the king to outlaw necromancy so that they would no longer have to put all those extra terms into their clients’ wills or deal with having to reverse inheritances.

• The undead all clearly know about the afterlife in detail, but none of them will give up any information about it. Clerics got tired of having their sermons interrupted by yet another dead asshole making sarcastic remarks about their god’s paradise and refusing to elaborate when asked to explain. 

Final projects are keeping me very busy as I finish up my last semester of college (forever! unless I decide to go back later for some reason so forever for for now I guess) and so I haven’t really had the time or energy to keep up with my own projects, let alone start new ones.

Still, I’ve had this idea for a character bouncing around my head for some time and I’d really love to share her with you guys.

‍Bri the Bee Scientist:

Bri is a scientist who really loves bees. She loves their fuzzy little bodies and their wiggly antenna and the fact that they communicate through dance. Bri is working on experiments to genetically modify bees to help them resist disease and multiply more. She has had some success but for some reason her experiments always have horrid side effects. Flesh-eating bees that multiply like rabbits for instance. Or bees that photosynthesize but have no interest in mating but may also be immortal and create honey that is only slightly hallucinogenic. Still, no matter how weird or terrifying her creations are, she loves all her bees. Her co-workers hate her creations, but she’s the sweetest person in the world so they have a harder time hating her. She often helps them with their work and it turns out well, but she still insists on mainly focusing on bees.

Her boss recognizes that her experiments are a problem but is reluctant to fire her since she really is a great person and super smart. Instead, her boss sends her to work outside of the lab in an office doing paperwork. Her boss hopes that this new position will help Bri get a better handle on procedure and make her co-workers less prone to injury. However, Bri continues her experiments in secret, hiding bees in boxes under her desk and in her drawers and storing her illicit research behind the copy machine and in the ceiling tiles.

Boss: I’ve been hearing buzzing in my office the last couple of days but no matter how hard I look I can’t find the dratted thing. I think you being here has made me paranoid.

Bri, slightly pink: Hearing things? Maybe you should get that checked out. Ha ha.

Later, Brian spots her stuffing papers into the pot of the office plant. He only manages to catch one word on them: Invisibees.

For all the artistic/writerly/creative people I follow/who follow me/anyone who comes across this post if she happens to pique your interest please feel free to use her in any of your stuff! I’d love to see her come to life! Especially since I know I’ll never get around to creating anything for her myself…

If you do use her in something, tag me! I’d love to see it!

In in any case, hope you all do well on your finals and that the stress stays away ❤️

*bonus Bri artwork by my sister @thecraftingferne*

this-is-milo:

no-url-ideas-tho:

no-url-ideas-tho:

I love characters that are completely harmless until they finally unleash their power and then they’re TERRIFYING

or, even better: totally harmless but occasionally the other characters catch glimpses of what’s underneath and you just know

Characters with raw, unbridled power, that choose compassion and kindess anyway

shittycryptids:

an octopus merfolk who is also a ninja. they can change color to blend in, use ink as a smokescreen, and wield eight katanas at the same time

I won’t comment on its status as a cryptid, but that is a badass RPG character! Almost definitely an NPC/Bestiary Entry though, because to my knowledge neither D&DnorPathfinderhave rules for octuple-wielding.

D&D Character idea #7

A Tabaxi who works as a carter.

Or as they say, a Taxi

D&D Character ideas #8

A golem made by the Goddess of Hoarding.

They are literally made out of all sorts of scraps and pieces of trash, mixed with shiny stones, old coins, bottle caps and sea shells.

The character is just a human-shaped mosaic of everything their creator has hoarded.

Buckle up for this one

You know Risk-Tego, the game where every time you have a battle encounter in Risk you settle it with a full game of Stratego?

Get ready for Operation Risk-tego Pandemic Kerbal-team Among Lasers and Feelings.

So you play Risk-tego as normal, but if a soldier gets wounded during battle you can help them by playing the game Operation. Additionally, during your conquer the world campaign, a deadly virus may ravage the world at which point the players must set aside their differences to play a game of Pandemic. Then, once you conquer the world in Risk, it’s time to colonize other planets. To do this you start by having players run through Kerbal space program to see who can develop space ready rockets. Then, they take their rockets and fly to another planet by playing Space Team, settling character interactions and space diplomacy with a game of Lasers and Feelings. Should something go awry in transit, they then must play a game of Among Us. Once you get to the next planet you start all over again with Risk-Tego.

Bonus: If someone on your conquered planet decides to open a business you can play a game of Monopoly.

The pyromancer of the party, master of all magicks known to burn, creator of the dreaded Forbidden Sun - The Gaslighter

The paladin of steel, impenetrable glacier, who would die for his comrades - The Gatekeeper

The hand-to-hand fighter, who can kill you in 700 different ways with just her bare hands - The Girlboss

Warlock Patron: Pact of the PS5 SPEAKING TO YOU INSIDE YOUR BRAIN

A Warforged that looks to be colored five distinct colors (head and torso, each leg and each arm) that is a magic swordsman. They like to yell out thier attack names and do overly dramatic posing and fight sequences and speaches about fighting evil-doers. But, if too much damage is done to the head torso section, it is revealed that there are five Tiny creatures, dressed up like Power Rangers.

Your party consists of three undead female bards and three living female bards on a quest together to take down the BBEG. Each of them reveals that she is secretly the BBEG’s disgruntled ex-wife.

Play a character who’s constantly making pop culture references, but as time goes on the references slowly keep going further and further back in time and more obscure. They start out referencing recent mainstream movies and/or memes, and eventually wind up referencing early cinema (obscure stuff too, things that none of the other characters or players will get, not stuff that’s still well known like Casablanca), and maybe even older works if the session or campaign goes on for a long time. The character keeps saying these references as if they are all the same level of relevance and relatability.

For an additional twist, reset back to modern references at the start of every session, and never address this.

Gerund, a syn-tactical mage who uses a grammoire for their unique brand of spell-craft

Concept: play a wizard who knows all their spells off by heart, and recites the magic words to both do damage and heal their allies. In battle a short incantation from them provides inspiration and rejuvenation, and their endless knowledge means they are skilled in many areas. They never need a spellbook, and can even wear armour.

Keep playing them as seriously as possible and see how long it takes people to notice you’re playing a bard who just doesn’t know what a bard is.

Dragon elf but their dragon is a dragonfly

A warlock with two patrons, a tiny angel and a tiny devil, who occasionally appear on their shoulders to give them morality advice

sashaforthewin:

ventusregina:

soggywarmpockets:

Tonight I may have had an encounter with the smoothest human being on earth.

As many of you know I work as an actor in a haunted house. This is a fun job for many reasons, but witnessing people’s reactions to being scared is by far the best. I’m a scare window actor, which means I hide behind a section of the wall that is held up by a latch that I can lift and drop away suddenly, scaring people with both my scream, and the loud sound my window makes upon being dropped. I have a small hole drilled in the wall to look through to see people passing.

The smoothest human being on the planet wore a white hoodie. He came in a group with three other friends. I did not expect to scare him much. After a while you can kind of gauge just by what you can glimpse from your peephole whether someone will be a good scare or not. Men in their 20’s in a mixed group of friends typically do not get scared easily. But this guy was wearing white in my blacklight-equipped hallway, so he had made himself an easy target and I had to take advantage.

I dropped my window precisely when he was in front of it.

He leapt back toward the wall on the other side of my narrow hallway and his drew back his arm like he meant to punch me.

“This is it.” I thought. “I’m finally going to be socked in the face for scaring someone.”

But I was wrong.

His arm kept curling back behind his head. Smoothly, flawlessly, effortlessly he tucked his hand behind his head, leaned back on the wall opposite me, and propped a foot up on the plywood frame of my open window, reclining with ease.

“So, come here often?” He asked.

All of this occurred within the span of a second. Maybe two.

I was shook. I was stunned. I almost broke character.

I shrugged. “Only on the weekends.” I replied with my character voice. His group laughed. He double finger gunned me and walked on.

I will never forget him.

I cannot stress enough how perfect his transition from his fear reaction to his playboy act was. It flowed so naturally.

He is already a legend in my haunt.

It’s the fight, flight, or flirt response

Oh, a bard

WHY AM I SO BLIND

I’ve been making my character, Oremil, as a backup backup character for so many campaigns. BUT

There’s SUCH A BETTER OPTION! I COULD JUST MAKE MAFWY, HIS PET RAT, AS A CHARACTER!

It would have to be a setting with a Ratfolk race, or one that has Shifters, but STILL!

I miss that sassy rat with his Boston accent