I based a set of D&D villains around the six main stats called Virtues. (think Full Metal Alchemist sins, except Strength, Constitution, Dexterity, etc..) My favorite of the bunch was Charm. Her conceit was she could persuade, lie, cheat, change appearance, and manipulate the players pretty much however she wanted, but the second someone attacked her she would go down. I introduced her relatively early into the campaign, and I was a bit nervous because I was pretty upfront about her introduction. I didn't say it explicitly, but it was pretty obvious Charm was a Virtue from the offset. I thought "well, I like this character a lot, maybe I'll cheat it a little if I have to." Surprisingly, I never did.

In retrospect, I think the context of the Charm encounters was a huge boon. The party really only confronted her twice: the first time at a dinner party and the second at a war council, where leaders from various factions met to discuss retaking the main city for the finale of the campaign. Neither were explicitly combat scenarios, and both times it would have looked pretty bad for the party if they just up and killed Charm for apparently no reason. The end result was I had villain with only eight hit points to her name run around and torment my level 16 party unpunished for several sessions. Let me tell you, as a DM, that felt amazing.

To add onto this as a player perspective, Charm was immediately positioned in such a way that, in the social and emotional dynamics of the roleplay, she was untouchable.

Charms first introduction was as the foreign dignitary of a far off nation who we knew had secret ties to the Church. We were at a mansion dinner party held partially in our honor - we were in part invited directly by the King, who we were favored by and wanted favor from. Charms plus 1 at the party was our party leaders sister - they were good friends. This was all true the second time she appeared at the war council, which was not only an expressly political appearance but also one where she represented the nation from which we were trying to secure military aid from.

It didn't matter at any point that we could have rolled a few dice for an attack roll and destroyed her. To destroy Charm of the six virtues, we had to murder, in cold blood, someone who was well liked, well connected, and well loved by some of the npcs closest to the party.

The only way we defeated her was because when we threatened her, subtly, she tipped her hand. Charm openly threatened the party leader's sister, who from then on no longer believed in her. We came to the bargaining table with her and convinced her (with no deception!) she could leave the battle march and be done with us. And when she got on her boat to leave, as it left port, our Bard (independently of anyone) snuck onto the ship, snuck into her room, and killed her in her sleep. The only kill that character ever got in the entire three year campaign.

It was an extremely well executed factor of the game because it was essentially a social encounter Boss fight. We had to construct and push and change the context of the situation until we could kill her without everything else crumbling around us - personal relationships as well as political ones.

I should add, Bard character *chose* not to kill anyone. She would willingly torment enemies and assist the party in combat, but never did any killing herself. She only killed Charm after everything had been resolved and Charm had effectively exited the campaign. She would have gotten away scot-free if Bard hadn't decided to take action. It was a great moment, and as a DM I couldn't have asked for a better character death

Here's what the fight with Tenacity (Constitution) looked like:

That little red bar at the top is her health. I don't show specific numbers, but I like having the health bar available for players to see so they have a general sense of how wounded the enemy is. I believe for this fight I started Tenacity at 999 HP out of a possible 20,000.

I greatly enjoyed watching my players realize what they were in for after they hit for 50+ damage on their first attack and saw the health bar get one pixel smaller.

Ferocity (Strength) was the most conventional of the Virtues, but context was everything. The players hadn't fought a Virtue yet, and were debating whether to defend some potential allies or lay low, only for the Paladin to slip away and confront Ferocity by himself. I was personally prepared to save the fight for later, but when a Paladin does something heroic and foolish you gotta let them have it.

I did not skimp on Ferocity's stat block either. She had a greatsword fashioned out of a massive hunk of stone that dealt bludgeoning damage and was much too heavy for anyone else to even lift. She could grab players and throw them across the map, resulting in fall damage from the distance thrown. She could chuck her sword at someone and leap to where it landed from a standing position. Paladin stood no chance by himself. The result was a mad dash to the join the fray while Paladin tried to hold out for as long as possible, with new party members arriving round after round to help. It was a very close fight, and my favorite combat of the whole campaign.

Incredibly, Monk found a way to disarm Ferocity after she threw her greatsword at him. He couldn't lift it of course, but he could use his new magic item to teleport away with it and hide it in a nearby river. Ferocity spent the rest of the combat leaping around the map to find it, allowing Barbarian to finish her off. Really ingenious play.

(Pictured above, Ferocity and Paladin.)

Look slow burn is great but have you considered: slow burn and the opposite at the same time.

One of them looks at the other for the first time and is like “that one.” Ready to marry them five minutes later. Falls like a ton of bricks.

Other one is completely oblivious to this and fails in love so slowly that they go boiled frog and don’t realise for years that they love the other one back just as fiercely, and have for a while, until it’s “oh” time.

#that’s the wismey/vane and it’s a fucking great dynamic [chimericaloutlier]

#i think HV might have a little further flavour of willful ignorance at a certain point - an intentional unexamined quality #in the sense of she’s willing to admit she LIKES him (as a human as a friend co-consipirator in cahoots with as well as romantically) #but couldnt possibly be love despite walking and quacking like love #but she deliberately sabotages it by telling herself it’s Not A Thing that can or should be realistically acted upon #in spite of - or rather BECAUSE of - the fact that he’s patently transparently demonstrably Into Her on all possible levels #including matrimonial #DELICIOUS

i have spent so long trying to place who astarion reminds me of

his dry little sarcastic bits gets me every time and like it's automatically funny but it felt so familiar...

this bastard.

and some more similar comparisons i think

thank you for coming to my ted talk

happy new year, y’all

shoutout to everyone who’s also dealing with the longest year of a week this week

only murders in the building is honestly like The fun little show. it’s so weird and so unlike anything else. the odd trio casting of two incredibly famous comedians in their 70s with Selena Gomez. the main plot revolving around true crime podcasts. the level of complete contrivance and silliness necessary for the entire plot’s existence. certain disability representation i haven’t seen anywhere else on TV. surprise bisexuality. the mystery-comedy-??? genre mix. Jane Lynch as a lesbian lookalike of Steve Martin. the most insane celebrity cameos so sudden and jarring that you get jumpscared at least four times every season. Nice, Hot Vegetables.

"you hate capitalism because you're jealous of rich people" well I wouldn't mind having an in-ground pool but there's also other reasons to hate capitalism such as the fact that owning a chocolate company that doesn't use fucking child slavery earns you praise because it's so uncommon, or the fact that it by design results in repeat economic collapses when the average consumer can't afford to stimulate the economy, or the fact that our future (and current) existence on planet earth is full of detrimental environmental disasters because pursuing fossil fuels was more profitable in the short-term, or the fact that entire wars are started specifically to make money, or...yeah the list goes on

also like, yeah, i AM jealous of rich people. i DO think about how cool and fun it would be to have a billion dollars. i could build my own food forest. i could open up a zillion homeless shelters. i could save the last red wolves, my favorite subspecies, who are in their very last days and will be extinct by the end of the decade. i could buy ALL the fabric i want. i could hire artists to inlay my floors with roman mosaics of hunky gladiators fighting godzilla. i could hire the magic chocolate guy to make me a different random item for desert every week. i could get alexander mcqueen to do more menswear lines and have a backyard full of beautifully dressed sexy space elves pretend to like my fanfiction. i could make sure all my friends are safe and healthy. i could recarve mt rushmore into my little ponies or hand it back to the native people who revered it in the first place. i could hire a guy with a bullhorn to follow elon musk around and recite the obituaries of everyone who dies in a tesla factory. if i was rich i would have fun forever. instead these lame ass nervous wrecks are going around with the net worth of entire nations and they're on twitter begging for love from strangers who can't afford to go to the dentist. how does that not make you crazy!!!

Hayao Miyazaki’s Happy New Year 2024 Year of the Dragon illustration

Oh there are some I had never seen <3

That post about death note being "everyone's first anime" (untrue statement) made me curious and now I want to gather data for science

Can you reblog this and tell me where are you from and what was your starter anime?

fucking hate how cats think they can mrrp their way out of anything because yeah, they fucking can.

as much as I love Baldur's Gate 3 it is. Baffling and infuriating that there is nobody online talking about how in a world as massive and populated as this game's there are 0 fat people in it, anywhere, at all, when we had body sliders in Fallout 3 fifteen fucking years ago

If you want Boy body type you get to be hunk and More Hunk and if you want Girl body type you get to be skinny or skinny with muscles and that's WEIRD, right? It's weird that no one's talking about that?? This is a bizarre regression from a game that advances so much and I would have happily waited another whole year of development for a body slider feature

this bitch is so iconic fr

kill them with kindness? wrong, eldritch blast

 Pantheons in fantasy will almost always be something like “fire deity, water deity, light deity, EVIL deity, GREAT MOTHER” while an average bronze age city’s pantheon was s/t like “deity personifying the city, god everyone has to treat as the main one because his city got geopolitically lucky, three or so personifications of main local sources of income, a nearby mountain, half a dozen incoherent minor deities (at least one is the result of some misspelling a name), deified branding iron”

I wish I was taller. I wish I was a baller. I wish my cat had a phone I would call her.