I play a Half-Orc Alchemist Artificer. He is basically a witch doctor. Instead of clockwork gadgets and mechanical contraptions he uses potions, voodoo (the homunculus servant is a voodoo doll) and other weird stuff.
I recomend in reading about Witches, Voodoo, Hags and similar topics.
Check out my Browser Extension: BeyondMarkdown, which seamlessly converts markdown in character and encounter notes into beautifully formatted HTML, making note-taking more efficient and readable. GitHub, Chrome/Edge, Firefox
I was looking at how to really use the Lizardfolk's proclivity to make weapons and tools out of bones. Basically harvesting the bodies of kills for magic. I like the idea the magic includes a lot of intricate carvings in bone and painting symbols.
Ooh. Maybe an artillerist whose eldritch cannons are small clay and bone golems that belch fire and an arcane firearm that's just the withered old finger of a harpy.
I like the idea of an Alchemist. When you harvest stuff to make equipment you can also harvest various humors and such to make potions. Then feed the potions to your party members who will be grossed out, but the unconscious can't object and that'll teach them not to be unconscious. ;-)
I'd say it depends on the setting. Maybe their hyper-intellgent alien beings from another plane? Maybe this particular lizard person just really likes tinkering with stuff, taking their natural aptitude for making things out of defeated foes to a whole new level? Like taking the hide of a displacement beast or other sneaky animal to make an Infiltrator armour or building as teel defender out of the bones of things you killed.
Lizardfolk are described as being almost surreally practical and pragmatic. They focus on survival first, survival second, survival third, and anything else only after they've gotten survival down at least threefold. Their craftiness comes from using the limited tools and materials available to most lizardfolk to do what lizardfolk do best - survive.
A lizardfolk artificer could've been brought up in an area rich with magical energies, applying that same inventiveness to magically-charged versions of a lizardfolk's normal materials and learning as they go. They could, perhaps, have moved into an old kith city that's been partially reclaimed by the wilds after a disaster befell it, using the remnants of that old civilization to learn their trade. perhaps their tribe captured a kith tinkerer, and this lizardfolk learned to do their usual thing with new materials through studying the tinkerer's methods (before eating him, because lizardfolk).
Or, and here's a fun one - your artificer wasn't born a lizardfolk. They were a normal kith species before, but during their training they attempted a magical experiment that went haywire and zapped everyone in the vicinity with uncontrollable magic. The artificer was turned into a lizardfolk and now has to deal with both the societal distrust and ostracization of lizardfolk, as well as a bunch of new instincts and priorities clamoring for attention in their lizardy brain. They have all the learning, intellect, and background of a kith scholar of magic, but now they think like a lizardfolk - however much they may not want to. Perhaps that hyperfocus on survival is the only reason they managed to escape the rage of the villagers around wherever this magical accident took place, but now the artificer is caught between the lizardfolk need to look after their own personal short-term survival above all and the equally valid need to risk themselves in Adventure to try and find a way to reverse the accident.
I'm loving the Dr. Connors - Lizard, Dr. Hank McCoy - Beast angle there Yurei. That would be an intense personality to try and roleplay.
I also really like diving into the survival-magic angle. That was my first instinct and it lends itself so well to a witchy vibe which I'm always about. Having it be influenced by the ruins of a forgotten civilization-turned lizardfolk nest is a nice touch. I love the idea of flavoring the artifice as being constructed from bone, organs, hair, flesh, shells, mud, sticks and stone, mixing in copious amounts of intricate carving and painted symbols. Heavy rune magic vibes without the Giant connection.
I second the lizard folk nest in a ruin of ancient machines. If you want to mythic it up. Its an old Gond monastery that destroyed itself with its tinkering. The place is still saturated with the god's power and it influenced the young of the Lizard folk born there. Now they can't stop building things. But give them a wilderness survival bent and focus their work on Lizardfolk style equipment.
Haha nah. That character is a complete mystery...even to me.
@Elfdope: Gond is definitely something I'm going to have to look at. This is definitely developing into an NPC civilization I'd love to have in my back pocket.
I was looking at how to really use the Lizardfolk's proclivity to make weapons and tools out of bones. Basically harvesting the bodies of kills for magic. I like the idea the magic includes a lot of intricate carvings in bone and painting symbols.
Ooh. Maybe an artillerist whose eldritch cannons are small clay and bone golems that belch fire and an arcane firearm that's just the withered old finger of a harpy.
This is how I'd approach it. Clearly they are resourceful crafters. An artificer would just take that a bit farther and Monster Hunter the $#!% out of the corpses of its kills. Your +1 infused armor is reinforced with the carapace of a kruthik. The lightning launcher in your infiltrator armor is from the skull of a Giant Lightning Eel. Forget Iron Man, your Armorer is the Lord of Bones/Rattleshirt guy from Game of Thrones. I think any of the subclasses could work if you lean hard into the voodoo/witch doctor angle.
I didn't realize just how well artificers work for achieving that witch doctor vibe. It's got me real excited. I love the possibilities when coming up with what monsters were harvested for artificer constructions and how all of that comes to together. What an awesome way to flavor artificer magic.
Depending on your setting you can also take a twist on the "standard scavenger lizarfolk" and make it reuse all the materials (bones, scales, etc) into mechanical contraptions, like and armorer with a bone armor - or a scale armor (for infiltrator).
Yeah that's definitely the approach that has me most excited Arrasar. Once you divorce the artificer from making advanced contraptions out of metal, Lizardfolk ends up feeling like a natural fit to the class. I'm loving it.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
To post a comment, please login or register a new account.
Not sure how this popped in my head, but now I'm curious.
How would you approach explaining an artificer's magic and tinkering in the context of being a Lizardfolk?
Are there any Artificer subclasses you would gravitate towards for this concept?
Any and all ideas on the subject are welcome. I'd love to see what all the beautiful imaginations on this forum can come up with.
I play a Half-Orc Alchemist Artificer. He is basically a witch doctor. Instead of clockwork gadgets and mechanical contraptions he uses potions, voodoo (the homunculus servant is a voodoo doll) and other weird stuff.
I recomend in reading about Witches, Voodoo, Hags and similar topics.
Check out my Browser Extension: BeyondMarkdown, which seamlessly converts markdown in character and encounter notes into beautifully formatted HTML, making note-taking more efficient and readable. GitHub, Chrome/Edge, Firefox
Yes, yes, yes.
I was looking at how to really use the Lizardfolk's proclivity to make weapons and tools out of bones. Basically harvesting the bodies of kills for magic. I like the idea the magic includes a lot of intricate carvings in bone and painting symbols.
Ooh. Maybe an artillerist whose eldritch cannons are small clay and bone golems that belch fire and an arcane firearm that's just the withered old finger of a harpy.
I like the idea of an Alchemist. When you harvest stuff to make equipment you can also harvest various humors and such to make potions. Then feed the potions to your party members who will be grossed out, but the unconscious can't object and that'll teach them not to be unconscious. ;-)
I'd say it depends on the setting. Maybe their hyper-intellgent alien beings from another plane? Maybe this particular lizard person just really likes tinkering with stuff, taking their natural aptitude for making things out of defeated foes to a whole new level? Like taking the hide of a displacement beast or other sneaky animal to make an Infiltrator armour or building as teel defender out of the bones of things you killed.
Lizardfolk are described as being almost surreally practical and pragmatic. They focus on survival first, survival second, survival third, and anything else only after they've gotten survival down at least threefold. Their craftiness comes from using the limited tools and materials available to most lizardfolk to do what lizardfolk do best - survive.
A lizardfolk artificer could've been brought up in an area rich with magical energies, applying that same inventiveness to magically-charged versions of a lizardfolk's normal materials and learning as they go. They could, perhaps, have moved into an old kith city that's been partially reclaimed by the wilds after a disaster befell it, using the remnants of that old civilization to learn their trade. perhaps their tribe captured a kith tinkerer, and this lizardfolk learned to do their usual thing with new materials through studying the tinkerer's methods (before eating him, because lizardfolk).
Or, and here's a fun one - your artificer wasn't born a lizardfolk. They were a normal kith species before, but during their training they attempted a magical experiment that went haywire and zapped everyone in the vicinity with uncontrollable magic. The artificer was turned into a lizardfolk and now has to deal with both the societal distrust and ostracization of lizardfolk, as well as a bunch of new instincts and priorities clamoring for attention in their lizardy brain. They have all the learning, intellect, and background of a kith scholar of magic, but now they think like a lizardfolk - however much they may not want to. Perhaps that hyperfocus on survival is the only reason they managed to escape the rage of the villagers around wherever this magical accident took place, but now the artificer is caught between the lizardfolk need to look after their own personal short-term survival above all and the equally valid need to risk themselves in Adventure to try and find a way to reverse the accident.
Please do not contact or message me.
I'm loving the Dr. Connors - Lizard, Dr. Hank McCoy - Beast angle there Yurei. That would be an intense personality to try and roleplay.
I also really like diving into the survival-magic angle. That was my first instinct and it lends itself so well to a witchy vibe which I'm always about. Having it be influenced by the ruins of a forgotten civilization-turned lizardfolk nest is a nice touch. I love the idea of flavoring the artifice as being constructed from bone, organs, hair, flesh, shells, mud, sticks and stone, mixing in copious amounts of intricate carving and painted symbols. Heavy rune magic vibes without the Giant connection.
Artificer lizardfolk = computer monitor.
😆HailRobonia I think WotC has a job for you naming magic cards: Hall Monitor
I smell someone prepping a Throwdown hunter? ;)
I second the lizard folk nest in a ruin of ancient machines. If you want to mythic it up. Its an old Gond monastery that destroyed itself with its tinkering. The place is still saturated with the god's power and it influenced the young of the Lizard folk born there. Now they can't stop building things. But give them a wilderness survival bent and focus their work on Lizardfolk style equipment.
Haha nah. That character is a complete mystery...even to me.
@Elfdope: Gond is definitely something I'm going to have to look at. This is definitely developing into an NPC civilization I'd love to have in my back pocket.
This is how I'd approach it. Clearly they are resourceful crafters. An artificer would just take that a bit farther and Monster Hunter the $#!% out of the corpses of its kills. Your +1 infused armor is reinforced with the carapace of a kruthik. The lightning launcher in your infiltrator armor is from the skull of a Giant Lightning Eel. Forget Iron Man, your Armorer is the Lord of Bones/Rattleshirt guy from Game of Thrones. I think any of the subclasses could work if you lean hard into the voodoo/witch doctor angle.
My homebrew subclasses (full list here)
(Artificer) Swordmage | Glasswright | (Barbarian) Path of the Savage Embrace
(Bard) College of Dance | (Fighter) Warlord | Cannoneer
(Monk) Way of the Elements | (Ranger) Blade Dancer
(Rogue) DaggerMaster | Inquisitor | (Sorcerer) Riftwalker | Spellfist
(Warlock) The Swarm
I didn't realize just how well artificers work for achieving that witch doctor vibe. It's got me real excited. I love the possibilities when coming up with what monsters were harvested for artificer constructions and how all of that comes to together. What an awesome way to flavor artificer magic.
Depending on your setting you can also take a twist on the "standard scavenger lizarfolk" and make it reuse all the materials (bones, scales, etc) into mechanical contraptions, like and armorer with a bone armor - or a scale armor (for infiltrator).
Yeah that's definitely the approach that has me most excited Arrasar. Once you divorce the artificer from making advanced contraptions out of metal, Lizardfolk ends up feeling like a natural fit to the class. I'm loving it.