Personality Traits - Confident, Friendly, a tad bit eccentric, genuinely cares about his allies and friends and would happily take an arrow or a dagger for them if it meant keeping them safe, while not easily excitable he does have a tendency to get excited when a new case comes to him.
Quirks- When stressed out he will play with any loss fabric or hair on his person. Hums softly to himself while reading.
This will be a homebrew world that will borrow from both Etharis (Grim Hollow’s setting) and Ravenloft.
Are you just talking about the tone and themes? Or should we be looking at the subclasses and backgrounds from those settings? Do we need to be familiar with any specific game mechanics from those settings? (I've never played a Grim Hollow game, and the last time I did anything with Ravenloft was back when the supplements for 2e were released.)
the world has been recently broken and will now begin slowly fading away into oblivion. The inhabitants of the world aren’t aware of this fact just yet.
Should the character then be more "standard D&D heroes" who will later be thrown into grim circumstances? Or should we be creating darker / haunted characters right from the start? A campaign where a jolly half-elf College of Glamour Bard from Faerun stumbles into Barovia is different from a campaign where a disembodied a School of Sangromancy Wizard has fought his way from 1st to 3rd level in a grim and dark world.
Advice about play-by-post
I am not familiar with PBP or these forums
You should probably clarify what pace of posting you expect and how you'll handle unexplained absences. I've been playing play-by-post here for a couple of years now, and I'd say that those are two critical factors.
It can be difficult to keep the whole party engaged unless everyone has a similar pace of posting in the game thread. If most of your players post once/day but one player posts only posts 2 or 3 times/week, it can be challenging to keep that player engaged and feeling like a full member of the party. Conversely, if the DM and a couple of the players in the DM's time zone post back-and-forth several times/day, but the rest of the party spans wildly different time zones, players outside the DM's time zone may feel like 2nd-class participants.
Play-by-post games typically last years. Even a "one-shot" will take months. Understandably, circumstances IRL will probably interfere with at least one player's participation during that time. Sometimes they'll notify you, and sometimes they won't (or can't). You probably don't want to kick someone out of the campaign only to discover that they were in the emergency room all weekend, but you don't want the game to lose momentum because there always seems to be at least one player (not always the same one) who's posting about half as frequently as the others. Stating your expectations (and also how you want to handle unexplained absences) helps keep the game moving with a minimum of misunderstandings. The strictest but clearest policy that I've seen were the rules for @DandDSince1973's "Deathworld". That certainly kept everyone engaged until the DM had to stop the campaign.
Another fellow PBP DM asked for some tips; reposting here for your consideration and other's comments:
here's a couple thoughts on PBP that i've seen work well:
Have the enemy's all have one initiative roll (unless for the story line or other purposes; e.g. the Big Bad gets his own)
When everyone has rolled their initiative, break them into two groups, before enemy's and after. Then have everyone in that group post as soon as they an. That way they are not waiting on others.
Set a time limit on combat posting. Say 12 or 24 hrs. Your call.
You can also say that to keep things moving in combat you could 'bot' a given character. (bot = a predetermined set of actions; e.g. cast firebolt, strike with longbow, etc.)
One thing that i've seen that seems to kill a pbp group is stagnation. If you see it bogged down, move to the next scene. 'Railroading' is usually acceptable in PBP games.
Keep it fun for yourself. I've seen a number of DM's get bored or tired out. Switch things up to keep things lively; a big RP or combat encounter.
Have the other players help you make it fun. Let them know that is the reason we are all here. Everyone can contribute in someway.
Give rewards to those that are involved most; e.g. give inspiration, magic items (even common items can be a lot of fun in RP staff of flowers, etc.
Donavan was raised in a noble family but was always preoccupied sine he was a youth with the city's eccentric inventor, named Dr. F. Stein. Donavan, as he spent time with the good doctor, picked up many of those eccentricities. He is friendly, outgoing, but with times of keeping to himself, especially when working on a new idea. He is very loyal to Dr. F. Stein. An unusual quirk he has is talking to himself, or better stated, he will carry on conversations with the absent Dr. F. Stein.
(I am good with the 2014 version of the Artificer, but I would love to try out the new UA version )
Donavan was raised in a noble family but was always preoccupied sine he was a youth with the city's eccentric inventor, named Dr. F. Stein. Donavan, as he spent time with the good doctor, picked up many of those eccentricities. He is friendly, outgoing, but with times of keeping to himself, especially when working on a new idea. He is very loyal to Dr. F. Stein. An unusual quirk he has is talking to himself, or better stated, he will carry on conversations with the absent Dr. F. Stein.
(I am good with the 2014 version of the Artificer, but I would love to try out the new UA version )
I have closed the recruitment tag and switched the public tag to the private tag -- I hope the latter doesn't limit access to everyone who has posted in this thread so far.
Going over the advice posts (thanks for the resources there) -- I intend on posting around 3 times per week, and I live in EST time. My posts will generally be later in the evening and unless they're combat orientated each of my posts will be intended to give each PC something to do -- skill checks, actions, etc... etc.. (I will put this in the first post)
If that sort of commitment isn't possible please let me know and I can put people on the wait list.
Speaking of which, I'm going back and forth on how many people I am going to take -- I did say 4-5, however, that was with a traditional party and nobody is playing a fighter type here :) I'm fine with that, but I might go with 6 to start instead.
This will be a homebrew world that will borrow from both Etharis (Grim Hollow’s setting) and Ravenloft.
Are you just talking about the tone and themes? Or should we be looking at the subclasses and backgrounds from those settings? Do we need to be familiar with any specific game mechanics from those settings? (I've never played a Grim Hollow game, and the last time I did anything with Ravenloft was back when the supplements for 2e were released.)
Tone and theme. There is nothing from Grim Hollow or Ravenloft that you need to be familiar with to start or mechanics. I personally never got to play in Ravenloft game, but have read most of the original novels -- which I think were all around 2e times as well.
the world has been recently broken and will now begin slowly fading away into oblivion. The inhabitants of the world aren’t aware of this fact just yet.
Should the character then be more "standard D&D heroes" who will later be thrown into grim circumstances? Or should we be creating darker / haunted characters right from the start? A campaign where a jolly half-elf College of Glamour Bard from Faerun stumbles into Barovia is different from a campaign where a disembodied a School of Sangromancy Wizard has fought his way from 1st to 3rd level in a grim and dark world.
Standard D&D heroes are fine, the idea is that world (which I'll get around to detailing out soon here) has just recently been flung into chaos/despair and will soon be learning about what the consquences are going to be. Think of it like this, if the world were a frisbee the frisbee is just about to get stuck up on the roof but right now its still flying through the air like normal to most people. I don't know if that makes sense, the metaphor worked in my head.
I am not familiar with PBP or these forums
You should probably clarify what pace of posting you expect and how you'll handle unexplained absences. I've been playing play-by-post here for a couple of years now, and I'd say that those are two critical factors.
It can be difficult to keep the whole party engaged unless everyone has a similar pace of posting in the game thread. If most of your players post once/day but one player posts only posts 2 or 3 times/week, it can be challenging to keep that player engaged and feeling like a full member of the party. Conversely, if the DM and a couple of the players in the DM's time zone post back-and-forth several times/day, but the rest of the party spans wildly different time zones, players outside the DM's time zone may feel like 2nd-class participants.
Play-by-post games typically last years. Even a "one-shot" will take months. Understandably, circumstances IRL will probably interfere with at least one player's participation during that time. Sometimes they'll notify you, and sometimes they won't (or can't). You probably don't want to kick someone out of the campaign only to discover that they were in the emergency room all weekend, but you don't want the game to lose momentum because there always seems to be at least one player (not always the same one) who's posting about half as frequently as the others. Stating your expectations (and also how you want to handle unexplained absences) helps keep the game moving with a minimum of misunderstandings. The strictest but clearest policy that I've seen were the rules for @DandDSince1973's "Deathworld". That certainly kept everyone engaged until the DM had to stop the campaign.
Thanks for this. I will be adding rules in the original post here over the next couple of days.
I have closed the recruitment tag and switched the public tag to the private tag -- I hope the latter doesn't limit access to everyone who has posted in this thread so far.
We're good. AFAIK - the tags are just so that people can filter posts and find ones that are still tagged as public / recruiting. Changing this thread to private doesn't prevent us (or anyone else) from posting in this thread. It's just a tag for the thread display and the search filters.
Speaking of which, I'm going back and forth on how many people I am going to take -- I did say 4-5, however, that was with a traditional party and nobody is playing a fighter type here :) I'm fine with that, but I might go with 6 to start instead.
I posted my ability scores but no character yet. I'm somewhat flexible, but my first choice would probably be to play a barbarian. With that 6 ability score, I could play a low-INT Fezzik-like character. He doesn't really love fighting, but it's what he's good at. It's not his fault that he's bigger and stronger than everyone else. 😉
Up to you (on keep here or make a new thread). If you like things clean and crisp, maybe start a new thread, otherwise we can just keep chatting along. :-)
Speaking of which, I'm going back and forth on how many people I am going to take -- I did say 4-5, however, that was with a traditional party and nobody is playing a fighter type here :) I'm fine with that, but I might go with 6 to start instead.
I'm mean, you'll have to narrow it down in any case. It looks like there were 8 of us here before you closed recruiting.
I'll probably just start a new thread when we're all set to go. It'll help with my OCD.
Yeah, I've seen it done both ways, but I prefer a separate thread for the game. There's often also a separate private message thread for out-of-character discussion among the players and the DM. That's helpful for communicating about any expected absences, but it's also useful for some OOC planning. With the inherent delays in play-by-post, planning and deciding what to do next can take a long time to resolve in-character in the game thread. Like @GR_Mustang said, it's easy for a play-by-post game to get stuck and stagnate as the party tries to agree on what to do next. I also agree that having the game "on rails" (if not a full "railroad") really helps in a PbP game.
For example, I'm in another PbP game that's just about to wrap up Against the Cult of the Reptile God. Early in that game, we were trying to figure out what was going on in Orlane. Our group decided what we wanted to do, but the DM at least provided this structure:
The party can stay together or split up.
Each sub-group can do at most 3 things per day: morning, afternoon, and evening.
So, if we wanted to buy a horse, talk to the town's mayor, and follow-up on a lead that so-and-so knew the most about the town's history, that was our 3 things for the day.
I was in another game that was trying to run one of the heists from The Keys from the Golden Vault, and that felt really hard to do in a PbP game. There's was a bunch of very open-ended investigation and planning to figure out how to pull off the heist. The game folded before we ever got to put our plan in action.
Class (options?): Barbarian (but I'm flexible. I also have other concepts for playing as a monk, a melee-based ranger, or a rogue (scout) if that works better for the group.) Name: Uthal Race: Goliath (or Dragonborn) Background: Either Giant Foundling (Storm) or Soldier Personality Traits: A dim but good-hearted barbarian, he is kind but a little sad. He was born big and strong, and he has been fighting since a young age. He's good at fighting, and it feels good to "play his role," but all he really wants to do is make friends and enjoy their company. He relies on others to make the plans and big decisions. He does have his own moral compass and sense of fairness, but he's easily convinced to go along with someone else's plan. He's brutal and deadly when necessary, not cruel, just an efficient fighter. His personality is inspired by Fezzik from The Princess Bride book and film. He would work best if one of the other players is a particular friend whom he trusts and feels he needs to protect. Quirks: He'll have some hobby that seems incongruous with his large size. Maybe he knits in his down time. Or maybe he likes to pick pretty flowers and press them in a book that he keeps specifically for that purpose (since he only barely knows how to read and write).
I originally built a barbarian like this for a different campaign, but that was before the 2024 rules. I'm not very familiar with those rules, but I'd be interested in trying them for the barbarian build. I'd probably choose the species (goliath vs. dragonborn vs. something else) based on what makes sense for the campaign world.
If you use Reckless Attack while your Rage is active, you deal extra damage to the first target you hit on your turn with a Strength-based attack. To determine the extra damage, roll a number of d6s equal to your Rage Damage bonus, and add them together. The damage has the same type as the weapon or Unarmed Strike used for the attack.
You can cast the Beast Sense and Speak with Animals spells but only as Rituals. Wisdom is your spellcasting ability for them.
Level 3: Rage of the Wilds
Your Rage taps into the primal power of animals. Whenever you activate your Rage, you gain one of the following options of your choice.
Bear. While your Rage is active, you have Resistance to every damage type except Force, Necrotic, Psychic, and Radiant.
Eagle. When you activate your Rage, you can take the Disengage and Dash actions as part of that Bonus Action. While your Rage is active, you can take a Bonus Action to take both of those actions.
Wolf. While your Rage is active, your allies have Advantage on attack rolls against any enemy of yours within 5 feet of you.
Your Rage taps into the life force of the World Tree. You gain the following benefits.
Vitality Surge. When you activate your Rage, you gain a number of Temporary Hit Points equal to your Barbarian level.
Life-Giving Force. At the start of each of your turns while your Rage is active, you can choose another creature within 10 feet of yourself to gain Temporary Hit Points. To determine the number of Temporary Hit Points, roll a number of d6s equal to your Rage Damage bonus, and add them together. If any of these Temporary Hit Points remain when your Rage ends, they vanish.
You can channel divine power into your strikes. On each of your turns while your Rage is active, the first creature you hit with a weapon or an Unarmed Strike takes extra damage equal to 1d6 plus half your Barbarian level (round down). The extra damage is Necrotic or Radiant; you choose the type each time you deal the damage.
Level 3: Warrior of the Gods
A divine entity helps ensure you can continue the fight. You have a pool of four d12s that you can spend to heal yourself. As a Bonus Action, you can expend dice from the pool, roll them, and regain a number of Hit Points equal to the roll’s total.
Your pool regains all expended dice when you finish a Long Rest.
The pool’s maximum number of dice increases by one when you reach Barbarian levels 6 (5 dice), 12 (6 dice), and 17 (7 dice).
Barbarian. Storm with Rage, and wade into hand-to-hand combat. Then follow the Path of the...
Heh. Thanks for the summary! I'll wait to see whether the DM picks this barbarian before going through everything to finalize choices. I just wanted to get a basic character concept out there for the DM's selection.
Like I said, this barbarian concept was something I came up with a year or two ago. IIRC, the idea behind that build was to go with Path of the Ancestral Guardian and Giant Foundling (Stone). That way, Uthal could hit an opponent while raging, give them disadvantage to hit anyone other than him, and use the push feature from Strike of the Stone Giant to move the opponent toward another melee fighter in the party. The opponent would either have to move back to Uthal (opportunity attack for an ally) or remain in melee with the ally (disadvantage on their next turn and doing half damage because of the Ancestral Protectors feature).
Then again, this campaign sounds like it may have less combat than I'm used to, so I'll have to think about what role Uthal could play outside of combat.
Alex Eldritchblaze Sorc 1 Warlock 2 with 17 more Warlock and Celestial patron.
Species - Human
Background - Noble
Born to a noble family, members of the mystical council in their home area "insert place here". Father, Victor Eldritchblaze, a warlock master on the council of elders and mother Celest Eldritchblaze, a sorceress on the council. The only child of the couple was given their full attention and taught and trained to be educated in most matters along with their talents for mystical skills. He left to find his own way in the world.
Alex is a noble by birth. He is sure of himself most of the time. His charisma allows him to sway others thoughts and course of actions in most cases. His concentration keeps him focused on the task at hand and big picture.
Ideals
Alex is good natured at heart. He is willing to bend that a bit if the situation calls for it. He's a noble, so sometimes it's a call of make sure it's worth the risk. He doesn't mind sizing up a situation to see what the best tactics are for a situation.
Bonds
This will hopefully be a gift from his patron or items from his family given to him before he left to find his own path.
Flaws
He would have liked to be a bit more stronger. A runt of the family as it were. He found a bit of peace in his charisma though. He's a ladies man a bit vain, but not over the top. He'll definitely get distracted if there is a nice looking gal nearby. His constitution will hopefully refocus him though.
Name - Enwynn Thialtennedro
Class- Warlock (patron: The Fathomless)
Species- Human
Background - Investigator
Personality Traits - Confident, Friendly, a tad bit eccentric, genuinely cares about his allies and friends and would happily take an arrow or a dagger for them if it meant keeping them safe, while not easily excitable he does have a tendency to get excited when a new case comes to him.
Quirks- When stressed out he will play with any loss fabric or hair on his person. Hums softly to himself while reading.
Character Sheet- https://www.dndbeyond.com/characters/139130463
Questions about the game
Are you just talking about the tone and themes? Or should we be looking at the subclasses and backgrounds from those settings? Do we need to be familiar with any specific game mechanics from those settings? (I've never played a Grim Hollow game, and the last time I did anything with Ravenloft was back when the supplements for 2e were released.)
Should the character then be more "standard D&D heroes" who will later be thrown into grim circumstances? Or should we be creating darker / haunted characters right from the start? A campaign where a jolly half-elf College of Glamour Bard from Faerun stumbles into Barovia is different from a campaign where a disembodied a School of Sangromancy Wizard has fought his way from 1st to 3rd level in a grim and dark world.
Advice about play-by-post
You should probably clarify what pace of posting you expect and how you'll handle unexplained absences. I've been playing play-by-post here for a couple of years now, and I'd say that those are two critical factors.
It can be difficult to keep the whole party engaged unless everyone has a similar pace of posting in the game thread. If most of your players post once/day but one player posts only posts 2 or 3 times/week, it can be challenging to keep that player engaged and feeling like a full member of the party. Conversely, if the DM and a couple of the players in the DM's time zone post back-and-forth several times/day, but the rest of the party spans wildly different time zones, players outside the DM's time zone may feel like 2nd-class participants.
Play-by-post games typically last years. Even a "one-shot" will take months. Understandably, circumstances IRL will probably interfere with at least one player's participation during that time. Sometimes they'll notify you, and sometimes they won't (or can't). You probably don't want to kick someone out of the campaign only to discover that they were in the emergency room all weekend, but you don't want the game to lose momentum because there always seems to be at least one player (not always the same one) who's posting about half as frequently as the others. Stating your expectations (and also how you want to handle unexplained absences) helps keep the game moving with a minimum of misunderstandings. The strictest but clearest policy that I've seen were the rules for @DandDSince1973's "Deathworld". That certainly kept everyone engaged until the DM had to stop the campaign.
Another fellow PBP DM asked for some tips; reposting here for your consideration and other's comments:
here's a couple thoughts on PBP that i've seen work well:
I hope this helps
D&D since 1984
Ability scores: 16 14 13 10 12 9
D&D since 1984
I'm thinking of doing a Human Artificer.
Donavan was raised in a noble family but was always preoccupied sine he was a youth with the city's eccentric inventor, named Dr. F. Stein. Donavan, as he spent time with the good doctor, picked up many of those eccentricities. He is friendly, outgoing, but with times of keeping to himself, especially when working on a new idea. He is very loyal to Dr. F. Stein. An unusual quirk he has is talking to himself, or better stated, he will carry on conversations with the absent Dr. F. Stein.
(I am good with the 2014 version of the Artificer, but I would love to try out the new UA version )
D&D since 1984
Go for it. The UA artificer, I mean.
I have closed the recruitment tag and switched the public tag to the private tag -- I hope the latter doesn't limit access to everyone who has posted in this thread so far.
Going over the advice posts (thanks for the resources there) -- I intend on posting around 3 times per week, and I live in EST time. My posts will generally be later in the evening and unless they're combat orientated each of my posts will be intended to give each PC something to do -- skill checks, actions, etc... etc.. (I will put this in the first post)
If that sort of commitment isn't possible please let me know and I can put people on the wait list.
Speaking of which, I'm going back and forth on how many people I am going to take -- I did say 4-5, however, that was with a traditional party and nobody is playing a fighter type here :) I'm fine with that, but I might go with 6 to start instead.
Tone and theme. There is nothing from Grim Hollow or Ravenloft that you need to be familiar with to start or mechanics. I personally never got to play in Ravenloft game, but have read most of the original novels -- which I think were all around 2e times as well.
Standard D&D heroes are fine, the idea is that world (which I'll get around to detailing out soon here) has just recently been flung into chaos/despair and will soon be learning about what the consquences are going to be. Think of it like this, if the world were a frisbee the frisbee is just about to get stuck up on the roof but right now its still flying through the air like normal to most people. I don't know if that makes sense, the metaphor worked in my head.
Thanks for this. I will be adding rules in the original post here over the next couple of days.
I'm going to ask a REALLY dumb question, but I can't seem to find an answer in the FAQ.
Do I use D&D Beyond to make a campaign and invite everyone to it for character sheets? Or is that not possible?
Thanks.
No dumb questions. We are all still learning. Yes, while not necessary to play, using a campaign is a great way to get everyone together.
D&D since 1984
https://www.dndbeyond.com/characters/139137849
D&D since 1984
Thank you. I will be inviting people to a campaign -- I do have the service, might as well abuse it!
Another quesiton (still probably dumb), do I make a new thread for the campaign itself or do I just use this one?
We're good. AFAIK - the tags are just so that people can filter posts and find ones that are still tagged as public / recruiting. Changing this thread to private doesn't prevent us (or anyone else) from posting in this thread. It's just a tag for the thread display and the search filters.
I posted my ability scores but no character yet. I'm somewhat flexible, but my first choice would probably be to play a barbarian. With that 6 ability score, I could play a low-INT Fezzik-like character. He doesn't really love fighting, but it's what he's good at. It's not his fault that he's bigger and stronger than everyone else. 😉
Up to you (on keep here or make a new thread). If you like things clean and crisp, maybe start a new thread, otherwise we can just keep chatting along. :-)
D&D since 1984
I'll probably just start a new thread when we're all set to go. It'll help with my OCD.
I'm mean, you'll have to narrow it down in any case. It looks like there were 8 of us here before you closed recruiting.
Yeah, I've seen it done both ways, but I prefer a separate thread for the game. There's often also a separate private message thread for out-of-character discussion among the players and the DM. That's helpful for communicating about any expected absences, but it's also useful for some OOC planning. With the inherent delays in play-by-post, planning and deciding what to do next can take a long time to resolve in-character in the game thread. Like @GR_Mustang said, it's easy for a play-by-post game to get stuck and stagnate as the party tries to agree on what to do next. I also agree that having the game "on rails" (if not a full "railroad") really helps in a PbP game.
For example, I'm in another PbP game that's just about to wrap up Against the Cult of the Reptile God. Early in that game, we were trying to figure out what was going on in Orlane. Our group decided what we wanted to do, but the DM at least provided this structure:
I was in another game that was trying to run one of the heists from The Keys from the Golden Vault, and that felt really hard to do in a PbP game. There's was a bunch of very open-ended investigation and planning to figure out how to pull off the heist. The game folded before we ever got to put our plan in action.
Class (options?): Barbarian (but I'm flexible. I also have other concepts for playing as a monk, a melee-based ranger, or a rogue (scout) if that works better for the group.)
Name: Uthal
Race: Goliath (or Dragonborn)
Background: Either Giant Foundling (Storm) or Soldier
Personality Traits: A dim but good-hearted barbarian, he is kind but a little sad. He was born big and strong, and he has been fighting since a young age. He's good at fighting, and it feels good to "play his role," but all he really wants to do is make friends and enjoy their company. He relies on others to make the plans and big decisions. He does have his own moral compass and sense of fairness, but he's easily convinced to go along with someone else's plan. He's brutal and deadly when necessary, not cruel, just an efficient fighter. His personality is inspired by Fezzik from The Princess Bride book and film. He would work best if one of the other players is a particular friend whom he trusts and feels he needs to protect.
Quirks: He'll have some hobby that seems incongruous with his large size. Maybe he knits in his down time. Or maybe he likes to pick pretty flowers and press them in a book that he keeps specifically for that purpose (since he only barely knows how to read and write).
Sample build: https://www.dndbeyond.com/characters/139147324/VTCX1L
I originally built a barbarian like this for a different campaign, but that was before the 2024 rules. I'm not very familiar with those rules, but I'd be interested in trying them for the barbarian build. I'd probably choose the species (goliath vs. dragonborn vs. something else) based on what makes sense for the campaign world.
Barbarian. Storm with Rage, and wade into hand-to-hand combat. Then follow the Path of the...
Berserker to unleash raw violence.-
Level 3: Frenzy
If you use Reckless Attack while your Rage is active, you deal extra damage to the first target you hit on your turn with a Strength-based attack. To determine the extra damage, roll a number of d6s equal to your Rage Damage bonus, and add them together. The damage has the same type as the weapon or Unarmed Strike used for the attack.
Wild Heart to manifest kinship with animals.
Level 3: Animal Speaker
You can cast the Beast Sense and Speak with Animals spells but only as Rituals. Wisdom is your spellcasting ability for them.
Level 3: Rage of the Wilds
Your Rage taps into the primal power of animals. Whenever you activate your Rage, you gain one of the following options of your choice.
Bear. While your Rage is active, you have Resistance to every damage type except Force, Necrotic, Psychic, and Radiant.
Eagle. When you activate your Rage, you can take the Disengage and Dash actions as part of that Bonus Action. While your Rage is active, you can take a Bonus Action to take both of those actions.
Wolf. While your Rage is active, your allies have Advantage on attack rolls against any enemy of yours within 5 feet of you.
World Tree to tap into cosmic vitality.
Level 3: Vitality of the Tree
Your Rage taps into the life force of the World Tree. You gain the following benefits.
Vitality Surge. When you activate your Rage, you gain a number of Temporary Hit Points equal to your Barbarian level.
Life-Giving Force. At the start of each of your turns while your Rage is active, you can choose another creature within 10 feet of yourself to gain Temporary Hit Points. To determine the number of Temporary Hit Points, roll a number of d6s equal to your Rage Damage bonus, and add them together. If any of these Temporary Hit Points remain when your Rage ends, they vanish.
Zealot to rage in union with a god.
Level 3: Divine Fury
You can channel divine power into your strikes. On each of your turns while your Rage is active, the first creature you hit with a weapon or an Unarmed Strike takes extra damage equal to 1d6 plus half your Barbarian level (round down). The extra damage is Necrotic or Radiant; you choose the type each time you deal the damage.
Level 3: Warrior of the Gods
A divine entity helps ensure you can continue the fight. You have a pool of four d12s that you can spend to heal yourself. As a Bonus Action, you can expend dice from the pool, roll them, and regain a number of Hit Points equal to the roll’s total.
Your pool regains all expended dice when you finish a Long Rest.
The pool’s maximum number of dice increases by one when you reach Barbarian levels 6 (5 dice), 12 (6 dice), and 17 (7 dice).
D&D since 1984
Heh. Thanks for the summary! I'll wait to see whether the DM picks this barbarian before going through everything to finalize choices. I just wanted to get a basic character concept out there for the DM's selection.
Like I said, this barbarian concept was something I came up with a year or two ago. IIRC, the idea behind that build was to go with Path of the Ancestral Guardian and Giant Foundling (Stone). That way, Uthal could hit an opponent while raging, give them disadvantage to hit anyone other than him, and use the push feature from Strike of the Stone Giant to move the opponent toward another melee fighter in the party. The opponent would either have to move back to Uthal (opportunity attack for an ally) or remain in melee with the ally (disadvantage on their next turn and doing half damage because of the Ancestral Protectors feature).
Then again, this campaign sounds like it may have less combat than I'm used to, so I'll have to think about what role Uthal could play outside of combat.
Alex Eldritchblaze Sorc 1 Warlock 2 with 17 more Warlock and Celestial patron.
Species - Human
Background - Noble
Born to a noble family, members of the mystical council in their home area "insert place here". Father, Victor Eldritchblaze, a warlock master on the council of elders and mother Celest Eldritchblaze, a sorceress on the council. The only child of the couple was given their full attention and taught and trained to be educated in most matters along with their talents for mystical skills. He left to find his own way in the world.
https://www.dndbeyond.com/characters/139119430
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Levi Flint - DM - Mad Mage; Korvin - DM - Tyranny of Dragons; Player Lucan - The One Breath, Player Gildor Surion - Balder's Gate-Decent;