Not so much flavouring the spell as the method and consequences of casting:
I have an NPC in my world called Gizmo Grayling, an artificer who is obsessed with storing magic and curses in gems. For a spelljammer campaign, I have created a wild magic autognome sorceror called Junior (or "Gizmo Grayling Junior" in full), who was built by Gizmo to help test his inventions. Junior, naturally, decided he was fed up of being an experiment and stole a sack full of Gizmo's gems and set off to tour the world, and later the universe. He casts magic by selecting a gem on his arm-holster, putting it into a wrist-mounted contraption which resembles a revolver, and then the mechanism in his wrist activates the spell.
Because Gizmo was also storing curses and experiments in his gems, whenever the Wild Magic goes off, it's because Junior picked the wrong gem, or combined two or more in an experiment which went wrong. As such, all the wild magic events are caused by curses stored in the gems, whilst the magic itself comes from the same gems - meaning technically, junior isn't actually magical! Thus far, he's become a sheep, and also wild-magicked twice in one round - first caused him to immediately cast another spell, and then that spell caused wild magic, causing him to heal 10hp! So it won't be long now until the negative side of it comes around XD
i like this idea about storing slotted spells in gems! A lot! I could see maybe extending that metaphor as a way to physically track spells at the table, like have small pretty rocks or crystals. etc that represent spells, maybe each level represented by a different color, keeping them visible or out on the table when they are unused and then put them back in the box or the bag when they have been expended. I also like the backstory on why the spells are stored in gems and just the idea of having a backstory for why all of a character's spells might be physically stored gems (that the player can use to track).
Now also thinking about if it would be neat if material spell componients somehow became magically infused into the crystal, perhaps at the time that the character decides to cast the spell. So that the caster would interact with a single object, the crysal, in casting the spell, and it might be sort of a hybred between using material components and using a spell casting focus (not sure if that would work).
ThorukDuckSlayer What do you say and how do you roleplay casting a spell that is stored in a crystal? This is so neat, I wanna do something similar!
A. My alchemist casts tasha's caustic brew by popping a few ingredients into a bottle, shaking vigorously and spraying, champagne-style. She has the only crossbow in existence with underslung rocket launcher, firing everything from gas canisters to hypodermics full of small doses of healing potion. I joke that the spray that causes the faerie fire effect also causes +10 to long-term cancer risk. She's somewhere between Mary Poppins and Willie Wonka.
I really like the imagery of uncorking a vigorously shaken champagne bottle, as a means of casting a spell (and perhaps also incorporating the necessary material components that you have in your possession
Not so much flavouring the spell as the method and consequences of casting:
I have an NPC in my world called Gizmo Grayling, an artificer who is obsessed with storing magic and curses in gems. For a spelljammer campaign, I have created a wild magic autognome sorceror called Junior (or "Gizmo Grayling Junior" in full), who was built by Gizmo to help test his inventions. Junior, naturally, decided he was fed up of being an experiment and stole a sack full of Gizmo's gems and set off to tour the world, and later the universe. He casts magic by selecting a gem on his arm-holster, putting it into a wrist-mounted contraption which resembles a revolver, and then the mechanism in his wrist activates the spell.
Because Gizmo was also storing curses and experiments in his gems, whenever the Wild Magic goes off, it's because Junior picked the wrong gem, or combined two or more in an experiment which went wrong. As such, all the wild magic events are caused by curses stored in the gems, whilst the magic itself comes from the same gems - meaning technically, junior isn't actually magical! Thus far, he's become a sheep, and also wild-magicked twice in one round - first caused him to immediately cast another spell, and then that spell caused wild magic, causing him to heal 10hp! So it won't be long now until the negative side of it comes around XD
i like this idea about storing slotted spells in gems! A lot! I could see maybe extending that metaphor as a way to physically track spells at the table, like have small pretty rocks or crystals. etc that represent spells, maybe each level represented by a different color, keeping them visible or out on the table when they are unused and then put them back in the box or the bag when they have been expended. I also like the backstory on why the spells are stored in gems and just the idea of having a backstory for why all of a character's spells might be physically stored gems (that the player can use to track).
Now also thinking about if it would be neat if material spell componients somehow became magically infused into the crystal, perhaps at the time that the character decides to cast the spell. So that the caster would interact with a single object, the crysal, in casting the spell, and it might be sort of a hybred between using material components and using a spell casting focus (not sure if that would work).
ThorukDuckSlayer What do you say and how do you roleplay casting a spell that is stored in a crystal? This is so neat, I wanna do something similar!
I'm glad you like it!
Jr. is an autognome, so being mechanical he has a sort of revolver mehanism built into his forearms which contains the gems. I tend to roleplay as him saying something along the lines of "I've always wanted to try this one!" or "Pretty sure this is the one which makes them go away" or something like that as he fires them. The firing system I've styled like a gun - a hammer comes back and then strikes the gem, sending a pulse of magical energy through Jr's arm and manifesting as a spell which comes from his hands. When he gets wildmagic, I roleplay that he picked the wrong gem, or combined more than one into a disaster/brakthrough moment. For getting new spells, Jr. has a whole bag of thse gems stashed away, so when he levels up he picks out a few new ones that he likes and gives them a whirl!
I have an idea for a lizardfolk necromancer paleontologist. He uses his magic to animate the skeletons of dinosaurs, so for animate dead he would be animating dinosaur skeletons. For chill touch, he summons the ghosts of long dead dinosaurs to attack. His familiar would be a small animated dinosaur skeleton which would just be a reskinned normal familiar that is undead. His arcane focus would be an ammonite fossil amulet.
I also have an idea for a Dr. Frankenstein-like character that I would probably never play but may use as an NPC. He would have several lightning spells and shocking grasp would be used to give life to his creations. He would either have a crawling claw as a familiar, or a frankenstein animal named jigsaw because it is pieced together from different animals. The zombies he gets from animate dead would be flavored more as smaller Frankenstein-monsters that he has made. Create Homuculous would be similar and his ultimate goal would be to find a book of flesh golems.
I may have a three page doc listing spell flavours for my late-night kind of classes, it was intended for my Twilight cleric but I've used some of it for my Stars druid and Gloomstalker ranger. Some of my faves include:
Several divination spells each have a constellation associated with the result. For example, for detect magic has a constellation for Abjuration, Evil and Good have one for each creature type.
Protection from Poison - there's a taste of milk and cookies on the tongue when it neutralises the poison.
Silence - the loudest brown noise possible. Sleep and Calm Emotions, similarly, conjure brown noise, incense, and a lullaby for the former.
Life Transference - a tiny black hole causes the necrotic damage, and then a shooting star is the healing energy towards the target.
Spiritual Weapon - looks like a scythe, with a crescent moon as the blade, and night-sky forming the handle
Bane/Bless - I use the spell components, which transform into tiny stars/supernovas that help or hinder the targets
Guiding Bolt - a meteor that forms a radiant wound for the next person to target with advantage
Spare the Dying - a star forms above the chest of the target, that pulses in line with their heartbeat.
Toll the Dead - it sounds like an alarm clock in the morning, their least favourite sound.
My cleric has a little constellation book of their own, with many constellations associated with a form of magic.
I like to give a mundane equipment / nature vibe to all my Ranger spells in order to get the “Aragorn” style.
So when I cast Goodberry, I flavor it as my Ranger finding and collecting special fruits that only him is able to locate.
When I cast Ensnaring Strike and Entangle, I flavor both as my character throwing a special Net that he learned how to use from the elves, and it’s made from a special type of plants who provides the “silk” to sew it.
I have never used Hunters Mark yet, but this is easy to flavor it as a keen eye who identified a weak spot in a given enemy.
Recently I flavored Aid as a tonic juice made from the Goodberry special fruit that can be drunk or inhaled when I throw the flask over my allies.
Last but not least, my favorite spell: Pass Without a Trace. I flavor it as my Ranger helping allies to be more sneak by covering part of their bodies with mud, adding some leaves and similar things to make them more stealth.
Not so much a flavoring but a funny bit of roleplay, all my bard's Vicious Mockery casts involve quotes from this: Shakespeare Insult Generator
His magic mouth enchantments look like raven's beaks when cast on plain surfaces, while his dimension door looks like a fancifully gilt birdcage door.
For my Kobold rogue, he's a blade juggler by occupation, so I flavor his Booming Blade as a series of flips and tosses of his main hand weapon (his version of "brandishing the weapon"). His juggling then picks up so much speed that the weapon appears to blur and buzz like a whirring propeller before he attacks, transferring all the weapon's pent-up energy into the target.
I just started playing a Warforged and renamed some spells to give them a SciFi theme, Toll the Dead became the Ultrasonic Brain Buster, Produce Flame became Flamethrower, Guiding Bolt a Plasma Blaster, The Irish club cantrip I can't spell became a Shock Baton. (Magic Initiate Primal, Btw). Goodberry immediately got renamed Scooby Snaks by the group.
The idea is he's a member of a spelljammer ship that crashed and stranded him.
So, since this thread started I've finally gotten to actually play as the Tiefling Artificer I wrote about way early in this thread, and I've managed to do a lot of flavoring with him even though we've only played up to level 4 so far.
So, right off the bat, his Tiefling spells have proven interesting. As a Mammon heritage tiefling, he has a heavy gold theming, right down to his horns looking as though they were made of pure gold (although any horn that gets separated from his body immediately blackens and crumbles). So when he casts mage hand it appears as a gold, glowing, monstrous, clawed hand that looks ragged and torn at the wrist, and appears to be constantly dripping spectral coins that vanish before they hit the ground. He has control over it, but is clearly wrestling with the hand constantly when it's conjured, and once it completes any functions he's actually using it for the hand then immediately tries to grab the nearest shiny object it sees... the DM decided that it doesn't just grab these items, but actually absorbs them and sends them to Mammon. The Mage Hand even comes out on its own if he gets drunk, and when casts Floating Disk it appears by the mage hand flipping a spectral coin into the air that expands and grows into a massive coin with the symbol of Mammon on it... and again the hand starts stealing things if he doesn't immediately dismiss it.
That aside, the rest of his spells come from being an artificer, and rely heavily on a metal gauntlet he wears on his left hand that is very deliberately designed to look like a Power Glove. As in, a "So Bad" NES power glove. The buttons are swapped for switches and levers, and the d-pad is instead just a cross-shaped handle attached to a rip cord that is used to activate various spells. The most obvious are Shocking Grasp and Guidance... he hits a few switches, moves his hands to a specific position, then pulls the rip cord to make the gauntlet spark with electricity and activate different effects. For Shocking Grasp he extends two fingers in a "Devil Horns" gesture, pulling the rip cord and unleashing electricity in a taser-like fashion. For Guidance, however, he puts his hands in a "Hang Loose" gesture, with thumb and pinky extended... touching his thumb to the center of his forehead (or the forehead of a willing ally), giving them a jolt of energy that helps them on their next skill check. It's been pretty fun to occasionally have characters react with shock and confusion to see him suddenly zap himself in the forehead before attempting a task.
Other than that, I've tried to come up with a few ideas for how his "magic" works. The Mending spell actually uses Chronal manipulation, basically doing limited time reversal on inorganic material to restore objects to their original state. The same concept applies to Cure Wounds, but because organic material is more complex and sensitive, it requires an actual spell slot to activate and control. Catapult works basically like Syndrome's little stasis beam from The Incredibles... he fires a beam of hard light that's strong enough to grip an object, then just whips it in the direction he's sending it. For Faerie Fire he activates a lens on his gauntlet to release a laser array similar to what you might see from a motion sensor, then he yanks the rip cord which locks the laser lights in place (which is also how his Magical Tinkering works when he displays images on a surface).
Any ritual spell is accomplished by sticking an allen wrench into his tools and cranking it for ten minutes to build up enough kinetic energy to make up for not using a proper spell slot... for detect magic, he charges up his goggles to activate a scanner and a magical display on the goggle lenses. Alarm involves putting a crank on his gauntlet and turning it to provide energy to convert into hard light that turns into an actual long wire that encloses the space of the alarm spell, while Identifty is mostly just described in-flavor as very closely examining an object until its nature is uncovered.
Finally, for concentration the basic idea is that any spell he casts that requires concentration requires him to constantly make adjustments to the switches and levers on his equipment to keep things stable and active. So when his concentration is broken it's not just that the damage broke his mental concentration so much as it distracted him enough that he either hits the wrong switch or fails to turn a lever at the right time to keep all of this unstable magic safely active.
He's also a Battlesmith, and we spent the first several levels with him constantly experimenting with an invention he was working on that was eventually revealed to be his Steel Defender. I just liked leaning into the idea that his Steel Defender was something that required time and effort to create and is the culmination of all the studies he has made in his backstory leading up to the start of the game itself. It's essentially his most valuable invention, and at this point he's experimenting to figure out just how intelligent it actually is, and also trying to figure out how to actually manufacture them efficiently enough to sell them.
Mending: Repair Protocol. Fingers transform into repairing tools.
Hex: Homing Blast Package. Further attacks trigger small disintegrator discharges. Bad for enemy morale (penalty on skill checks)
Armor of Agathys: Reactive Cryogenic Blast Field. (Freezing Aura with explosive packets on the warforged’s skin)
Blur: Visual Field Distortion Protocol. (Components around the torso emerge and distort the warforged’s image.)
Hold Person: Paralyzer Beams
Counterspell: Disruption Protocol - wide-pattern magic-distorting blast rends all attempt at weaving the spell
Fly: Multi-levitation panels open across the warforged’s body and billows their clothes and cloak dramatically as they fly. Casting on another person involves rapid-deployment levitation attachments.
I played an orc necromancer - Nox the Bonecaller - whose every spell was reflavored to some sort of necromantic incarnation, like ... oh, I don't know, turning Firebolt into Soulbolt and so on. That's not to say I changed anything functionally, no necrotic damage on Firebolt for instance. It was all just for the fluff.
He'd also make most of his decisions by asking his ancestors and rolling bone dice to 'hear' their answers. Also, he'd foretell the future based on my own loose assumptions about plot - or just random guesses. This turned into a fun minigame of Nox explaining away his many, many incorrect predictions.
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Blanket disclaimer: I only ever state opinion. But I can sound terribly dogmatic - so if you feel I'm trying to tell you what to think, I'm really not, I swear. I'm telling you what I think, that's all.
I was once playing an Armorer Artificer / Battlerager Barbarian multiclass. Basically a very angry dwarf covered in a full body suit of spikes. As one of their cantrips I picked up Thorn Whip for those instances when I could not quite close the distance at the start of combat. Whenever I cast that spell, I reflavored it as a spiked chain coming from my suit, kinda like scorpion from mortal combat.
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Now also thinking about if it would be neat if material spell componients somehow became magically infused into the crystal, perhaps at the time that the character decides to cast the spell. So that the caster would interact with a single object, the crysal, in casting the spell, and it might be sort of a hybred between using material components and using a spell casting focus (not sure if that would work).
ThorukDuckSlayer What do you say and how do you roleplay casting a spell that is stored in a crystal? This is so neat, I wanna do something similar!
I really like the imagery of uncorking a vigorously shaken champagne bottle, as a means of casting a spell (and perhaps also incorporating the necessary material components that you have in your possession
I'm glad you like it!
Jr. is an autognome, so being mechanical he has a sort of revolver mehanism built into his forearms which contains the gems. I tend to roleplay as him saying something along the lines of "I've always wanted to try this one!" or "Pretty sure this is the one which makes them go away" or something like that as he fires them. The firing system I've styled like a gun - a hammer comes back and then strikes the gem, sending a pulse of magical energy through Jr's arm and manifesting as a spell which comes from his hands. When he gets wildmagic, I roleplay that he picked the wrong gem, or combined more than one into a disaster/brakthrough moment. For getting new spells, Jr. has a whole bag of thse gems stashed away, so when he levels up he picks out a few new ones that he likes and gives them a whirl!
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My Yuan-ti Sorcerer casting poison spray by tilting their head back and squirting the venom out of their fangs
Coffee is a must, sleep is a must, and DND is a must, in that order.
I have an idea for a lizardfolk necromancer paleontologist. He uses his magic to animate the skeletons of dinosaurs, so for animate dead he would be animating dinosaur skeletons. For chill touch, he summons the ghosts of long dead dinosaurs to attack. His familiar would be a small animated dinosaur skeleton which would just be a reskinned normal familiar that is undead. His arcane focus would be an ammonite fossil amulet.
I also have an idea for a Dr. Frankenstein-like character that I would probably never play but may use as an NPC. He would have several lightning spells and shocking grasp would be used to give life to his creations. He would either have a crawling claw as a familiar, or a frankenstein animal named jigsaw because it is pieced together from different animals. The zombies he gets from animate dead would be flavored more as smaller Frankenstein-monsters that he has made. Create Homuculous would be similar and his ultimate goal would be to find a book of flesh golems.
I may have a three page doc listing spell flavours for my late-night kind of classes, it was intended for my Twilight cleric but I've used some of it for my Stars druid and Gloomstalker ranger. Some of my faves include:
My cleric has a little constellation book of their own, with many constellations associated with a form of magic.
I like to give a mundane equipment / nature vibe to all my Ranger spells in order to get the “Aragorn” style.
So when I cast Goodberry, I flavor it as my Ranger finding and collecting special fruits that only him is able to locate.
When I cast Ensnaring Strike and Entangle, I flavor both as my character throwing a special Net that he learned how to use from the elves, and it’s made from a special type of plants who provides the “silk” to sew it.
I have never used Hunters Mark yet, but this is easy to flavor it as a keen eye who identified a weak spot in a given enemy.
Recently I flavored Aid as a tonic juice made from the Goodberry special fruit that can be drunk or inhaled when I throw the flask over my allies.
Last but not least, my favorite spell: Pass Without a Trace. I flavor it as my Ranger helping allies to be more sneak by covering part of their bodies with mud, adding some leaves and similar things to make them more stealth.
Not so much a flavoring but a funny bit of roleplay, all my bard's Vicious Mockery casts involve quotes from this: Shakespeare Insult Generator
His magic mouth enchantments look like raven's beaks when cast on plain surfaces, while his dimension door looks like a fancifully gilt birdcage door.
For my Kobold rogue, he's a blade juggler by occupation, so I flavor his Booming Blade as a series of flips and tosses of his main hand weapon (his version of "brandishing the weapon"). His juggling then picks up so much speed that the weapon appears to blur and buzz like a whirring propeller before he attacks, transferring all the weapon's pent-up energy into the target.
I just started playing a Warforged and renamed some spells to give them a SciFi theme, Toll the Dead became the Ultrasonic Brain Buster, Produce Flame became Flamethrower, Guiding Bolt a Plasma Blaster, The Irish club cantrip I can't spell became a Shock Baton. (Magic Initiate Primal, Btw). Goodberry immediately got renamed Scooby Snaks by the group.
The idea is he's a member of a spelljammer ship that crashed and stranded him.
So, since this thread started I've finally gotten to actually play as the Tiefling Artificer I wrote about way early in this thread, and I've managed to do a lot of flavoring with him even though we've only played up to level 4 so far.
So, right off the bat, his Tiefling spells have proven interesting. As a Mammon heritage tiefling, he has a heavy gold theming, right down to his horns looking as though they were made of pure gold (although any horn that gets separated from his body immediately blackens and crumbles). So when he casts mage hand it appears as a gold, glowing, monstrous, clawed hand that looks ragged and torn at the wrist, and appears to be constantly dripping spectral coins that vanish before they hit the ground. He has control over it, but is clearly wrestling with the hand constantly when it's conjured, and once it completes any functions he's actually using it for the hand then immediately tries to grab the nearest shiny object it sees... the DM decided that it doesn't just grab these items, but actually absorbs them and sends them to Mammon. The Mage Hand even comes out on its own if he gets drunk, and when casts Floating Disk it appears by the mage hand flipping a spectral coin into the air that expands and grows into a massive coin with the symbol of Mammon on it... and again the hand starts stealing things if he doesn't immediately dismiss it.
That aside, the rest of his spells come from being an artificer, and rely heavily on a metal gauntlet he wears on his left hand that is very deliberately designed to look like a Power Glove. As in, a "So Bad" NES power glove. The buttons are swapped for switches and levers, and the d-pad is instead just a cross-shaped handle attached to a rip cord that is used to activate various spells. The most obvious are Shocking Grasp and Guidance... he hits a few switches, moves his hands to a specific position, then pulls the rip cord to make the gauntlet spark with electricity and activate different effects. For Shocking Grasp he extends two fingers in a "Devil Horns" gesture, pulling the rip cord and unleashing electricity in a taser-like fashion. For Guidance, however, he puts his hands in a "Hang Loose" gesture, with thumb and pinky extended... touching his thumb to the center of his forehead (or the forehead of a willing ally), giving them a jolt of energy that helps them on their next skill check. It's been pretty fun to occasionally have characters react with shock and confusion to see him suddenly zap himself in the forehead before attempting a task.
Other than that, I've tried to come up with a few ideas for how his "magic" works. The Mending spell actually uses Chronal manipulation, basically doing limited time reversal on inorganic material to restore objects to their original state. The same concept applies to Cure Wounds, but because organic material is more complex and sensitive, it requires an actual spell slot to activate and control. Catapult works basically like Syndrome's little stasis beam from The Incredibles... he fires a beam of hard light that's strong enough to grip an object, then just whips it in the direction he's sending it. For Faerie Fire he activates a lens on his gauntlet to release a laser array similar to what you might see from a motion sensor, then he yanks the rip cord which locks the laser lights in place (which is also how his Magical Tinkering works when he displays images on a surface).
Any ritual spell is accomplished by sticking an allen wrench into his tools and cranking it for ten minutes to build up enough kinetic energy to make up for not using a proper spell slot... for detect magic, he charges up his goggles to activate a scanner and a magical display on the goggle lenses. Alarm involves putting a crank on his gauntlet and turning it to provide energy to convert into hard light that turns into an actual long wire that encloses the space of the alarm spell, while Identifty is mostly just described in-flavor as very closely examining an object until its nature is uncovered.
Finally, for concentration the basic idea is that any spell he casts that requires concentration requires him to constantly make adjustments to the switches and levers on his equipment to keep things stable and active. So when his concentration is broken it's not just that the damage broke his mental concentration so much as it distracted him enough that he either hits the wrong switch or fails to turn a lever at the right time to keep all of this unstable magic safely active.
He's also a Battlesmith, and we spent the first several levels with him constantly experimenting with an invention he was working on that was eventually revealed to be his Steel Defender. I just liked leaning into the idea that his Steel Defender was something that required time and effort to create and is the culmination of all the studies he has made in his backstory leading up to the start of the game itself. It's essentially his most valuable invention, and at this point he's experimenting to figure out just how intelligent it actually is, and also trying to figure out how to actually manufacture them efficiently enough to sell them.
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Warforged Straight Hexblade
Eldritch Blast: Arm transforms into cannon. Blast with cannon.
Chill Touch: Disintegrator Prototype. Limited anti-healing property.
Mending: Repair Protocol. Fingers transform into repairing tools.
Hex: Homing Blast Package. Further attacks trigger small disintegrator discharges. Bad for enemy morale (penalty on skill checks)
Armor of Agathys: Reactive Cryogenic Blast Field. (Freezing Aura with explosive packets on the warforged’s skin)
Blur: Visual Field Distortion Protocol. (Components around the torso emerge and distort the warforged’s image.)
Hold Person: Paralyzer Beams
Counterspell: Disruption Protocol - wide-pattern magic-distorting blast rends all attempt at weaving the spell
Fly: Multi-levitation panels open across the warforged’s body and billows their clothes and cloak dramatically as they fly. Casting on another person involves rapid-deployment levitation attachments.
I played an orc necromancer - Nox the Bonecaller - whose every spell was reflavored to some sort of necromantic incarnation, like ... oh, I don't know, turning Firebolt into Soulbolt and so on. That's not to say I changed anything functionally, no necrotic damage on Firebolt for instance. It was all just for the fluff.
He'd also make most of his decisions by asking his ancestors and rolling bone dice to 'hear' their answers. Also, he'd foretell the future based on my own loose assumptions about plot - or just random guesses. This turned into a fun minigame of Nox explaining away his many, many incorrect predictions.
Blanket disclaimer: I only ever state opinion. But I can sound terribly dogmatic - so if you feel I'm trying to tell you what to think, I'm really not, I swear. I'm telling you what I think, that's all.
I was once playing an Armorer Artificer / Battlerager Barbarian multiclass. Basically a very angry dwarf covered in a full body suit of spikes. As one of their cantrips I picked up Thorn Whip for those instances when I could not quite close the distance at the start of combat. Whenever I cast that spell, I reflavored it as a spiked chain coming from my suit, kinda like scorpion from mortal combat.
Three-time Judge of the Competition of the Finest Brews! Come join us in making fun, unique homebrew and voting for your favorite entries!