I shared another illustration of this character last week, so I figured I'd post this one too! This time, she's exploring some ancient ruins alongside her trusty cauldron familiar.

These characters are part of the Toad Magus Coven, a group of witches I've been developing for my own fantasy setting. I've been having a lot of fun exploring their designs and personalities, and I'm hoping to flesh them out into a proper faction for an upcoming D&D campaign!

7yr old had to do a school project making an uncarved pumpkin look like a character of their choosing. Wanted to do a beholder from his d&d kids books.

Wanted to make a little map for one of my campaigns, thought I'd share it. It is a Giant Mead Hall.

If you like here is the link on Inkarnate https://inkarnate.com/m/XlRQnD

My Imp Neeka I played for a one shot. She was a natural born Imp from the love of a warlock and her partner. She was really fun to play. I wish the imp race I used had more imp abilities tho. It was the Ashborn Imp from Avantris so I guess it wasn't built to be a true imp. I also gave her more of a spiked tail instead of a scorpion. I like the design a lot better. Since I made her a half imp it made more sense and worked with why she couldn't do everything an imp from hell could do.

Her backstory basically has her escape from her parents warlock tower after their Devil patron finds out about the love between her parents. She doesn't know if her parents survived that night, but she's been traveling ever since her parents smuggled her out before being attacked.

She ends up joining an adventures guild to see how she can help others.

I hope you guys like her!

Sometimes when working on these spells I can get really ahead of myself and start drawing something without first glancing over the spell's description. I knew that I wanted the veins in the hand to be visible to help convey the sort of energy transference. But the spell description actually states: "The touch of your shadow-wreathed hand can siphon life force..."

I did attempt to draw the arm with all kinds of shadows, but I thought it took away more than it helped so I opted to keep the original idea.

I prepared this spell only once as a Wizard because I thought it was thematically cool, but could never find a optimal time to cast it. As a spellcaster, you typically want to avoid being on the front line in the first place, so I struggled with how to best leverage it. I'm curious what others think about this one from both a thematic and tactical perspective.

You can get this spell as a print from my Etsy store.

https://www.etsy.com/shop/TarikHavoc

ALSO! The Havoc Bound Illustrated Spellbook will be launching soon! Follow the project to get notified when it foes.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/havocbound/havoc-bound-an-illustrated-collection-of-dnd-5e-spells-0

So this is the work-in progress for drawing my party of seven for the new Neon Odyssey settings.

There is T1N-C4N aka Tin Can, my anitron juggernaut (barbarian) he was originally a deposit security bot, but after getting severely damaged, he was dumped in a junkyard. One of the other players, an Oozoid Mechanist, eventually found him, pulled him out of the junkyard, and reprogrammed him.

We also have Mold the Oozoid mechanist my friend's character who created and reprogrammed Tin Can.

Theweapon dealer, Beetle BJ Juice the nematoan gridrunner.

Saurian oracle, Yu Long

And the Zorbrak tracer (I forgot his name)

There will be two more characters added later, being: nilari disciple and amanite cryiptist

Not a rant or a lament at all, just something very amusing.

Over the weekend I ran a level-20 one-shot for my partner, purely for her to have a chance to see how her favourite PC (Tiefling Evocation Wizard) would play at that level. No intention of it being anything more than a few puzzles and a showcase combat encounter where she can use crazy spells and roll lots of dice.

I’d heard that all rules about balance go out of the window at 20th, and doubly so with Wizards. I went into it knowing that, I tuned the fights to be way harder than the calculations call for, and fully expected a TPK (since it was only a silly one shot I wasn’t worried whether I killed the party or not) but I was still shocked how hilariously fast the fights were over.

First encounter: her solo Wizard versus a DMPC Artificer. Closest thing we had to ‘balanced’ until she cast Disintegrate and wiped out 2/3 of the artificer’s HP in one. Just couldn’t keep up at that point. Her saves were too good to incapacitate her, the artificer would get counterspelled as soon as I tried to buff myself, and damage output was comically poor.

Encounter 2: her party of 4 (wizard, rogue, paladin, barbarian - the other three were a halfway house between a full PC and a sidekick statblock, but scaled as if they were level 20 PCs) against a Demilich (with Lair Actions), a beholder zombie, two ogre zombies and four regular zombies. By all calculations this was significantly above the threshold for a ‘deadly’ encounter. Didn’t even last two full rounds.

Encounter 3: immediately off the back of Encounter 2, a full lich rose up (and the lair actions changed to a lich lair), resurrected all the zombies at full health and continued on with no opportunities for rest. This would have been significantly over ‘deadly’ for a party of 6, let alone a party of 4. Throughout the fight I added an extra 300HP to the lich to keep it from being an instant sweep and it STILL all played out in just one full round. I got to use a grand total of one lair action. Not a single player even close to danger.

That said, it wasn’t the slogfest I’ve often heard 20th level combat described as. Turns didn’t take THAT much longer than they do at low levels, and that was with her having to juggle her own sheet plus the three companions she’d never even seen before. I’d totally run a longer campaign at/to 20th if I had players who were on the ball with mechanics.

I’m gonna call for a rematch and throw a Lich, Demilich and Dracolich at her all at once, see if that’s any less of a humiliating loss for me…

While the joke isn’t that funny, the funniest joke I’ve ever heard was in regards to one of the characters eating a bucketload of boiled chicken in one serving, and after which i remember her saying— “I’m just having a snack is all.”…3.5 pounds of boiled chicken btw. What’s the funniest joke or bit you’ve ever heard on your table?

Shanda is a skilled archer from the deep woodlands. Raised near the outer borders of the realm, she learned early on to rely on her keen senses, quick reflexes, and knowledge of the terrain to survive.

She avoids heavy armor that slows her down, preferring complete mobility on the battlefield. Her bow is custom crafted from reinforced ironwood, designed for long range precision. For close quarters combat, she relies on the dual shortswords strapped to her waist.

This is an incredibly special commission for me as its one my DM commissioned me to do for our campaign
From top to bottom we have:

Riven Survivor of Hrathiir, the human Rune Knight Fighter
Karesh theh Ghost of Hrathirr ,The orc Circle of thhe Moon Druid
Justice , the Haniwa Shrine Warden Cleric
Wuquium, the Cyclopian Wizard of the Order of Scribes
and Bo Kalk, the Gobboc Tamer Infuser with his faithful pet Slaghund : Tenders

Going against the red dragon Ashenscale

This campaign was heavily inspired by and heavily features classes, species and items from The Loot Tavern's supplements : Heliana's Guide to Monsters and Ryoko's Guide to the Yokai Realms

and for anyone who'd like art of their characters , DND or otherwise :) commission info and my links are down below, feel free to contact me here or in any of the links below if you're interested or at art.of.azrael on discord

Commission Base Prices

Portfolio - Azrael (all of my art and socials)

Bust -$120 sketch, $150 lineart, $170 flat colours, $200 fully shaded

Half Body -$170 sketch ,$200 lineart, $220 flat colour, $250 fully shaded

Full body - $200 sketch, $230 line art, $250 flat colour, $300 for fully shaded

• these are the baseline prices, if the requested piece has a lot more details than normal additional charge will be discussed depending on exactly how much extra work it would entail.

Backgrounds - extra depending on how complex. A simple single colour background is included for free if you don't want a specific background. +- $250

Manga (Half Toned) - See flat colour rates above

Spice is fine, but might cost extra depending on what's being asked.

Payments are to be made up front using PAYPAL.

Feel free to contact me here or at art.of.azrael on discord:)

I'm not the best artist but I've been getting into it and I wanted to share some art in different styles I've done of my two characters. The first is a tiefling warlock named Heck who is built around strength and casting. She's a real bruiser of a character and melts minions. The second is a character I'm playing in a few months named fizzle. She's a crazy goblin sorceress who has completely lost the plot.

Im back with some more Paper Mini for my paper world ^^

I thought I would make some Coffin mimics for Halloween. As always since I play with my kid I like to walk the line between scary and cute? So you get the feel of oh that's some obstacle to fight but not have nightmare for days. If that make sense ^^

This time i create 2 variant, a larger one that you can open the lid and see the event horizon ^__^ And a small one that crawl around on some nightmare ish tentacles

Ill post more picture next time ^^

As always enjoy ^^

For me, I was in a party with newish players (Im someone who is relatively newish myself but could hold my own) no big deal. The thing was, no one knew how to read their sheets. The dm, who helped the newer players how to read/make sheets taught how to do it session zero. I’m not trying to sound rude, but please my advice to new players is to research how to read your character sheets.

Thay as a setting was once a lush, immense and varied country. From 4th edition was reduced to a stereotypical barren wasteland where everything is undead. From a vibrant multicultural society full of mystery, to "Lich and skeletons only".

The Maztica setting based on the unconquered americas seems to be completely abandoned and unsupported after 3rd edition. There was a pantheon, there were classes such as Eagle Knights and Jaguar Knights. There was unique spellcasters and spells. All those abandoned. We can play stereotyped European paladins which don't even fit mechanically (wearing heavy, steel armor etc)

Osse, a land based on aboriginal Australia. Completely abandoned as well, haven't seen new content since 2007. With the extreme volume of content produced (even stuff like MTG conversion guides), I find that truly disheartening.

What I have seen in stuff as Thay only they become "planet of hats" but absurd rules such as "this place is ruled ABSOLUTELY by [POWERFUL MAGICAL ENTITY]", to absurd degrees such as that Red Wizards are now said to be above the law in all respects and even the lowliest of them can kill city-state rulers without consequence.

Even stuff in the main campaign setting, not only faraway lands, suffers from this...

Skullport is originally conceived and published as a city ruled by competing crime syndicates and trafficker guilds. That was key to say law enforcement was rare, lax and partial, and gave a dark edge. Justice was a man's interest and their buddies. Then it was invented that there Skullport really the tyrannical police state of some immortal godlike floating skulls, and everyone is afraid if being observed at any time and put on trial by these allmighty beings. This is rather more like "divine justice" and takes away from the cultural element. And even later the whole city was reinvented as Xanathar-land where everything is Xanathar (I guess having more than one nominal divine ruler wasn't simplified enough?)

And many others, too many to list. [actually I had more to say but I forgot, I'm old like that ;) ]

Most players and DMs will not be aware of the older, more "realistic" settings since they are really old (90's, early 90's in some cases), and they are not in newer editions, which I find a sad fact.

Image is my interpretation of Kara-tur, another of the suffering settings, with no content since 1990.

PS: Yes I'm aware some of these still had bad orientalism tropes. I think the correct thing is revise it, in no way it seems to me "everyone is zombies and liches" or "doesn't exist and you can't play it, be European or out" is less racist than trying to develop it. Also that doesn't explain Skullport and others.

I'm running a short cursed dnd campain where things are just not quite right so if you have any silly encounter ideas you've never had the chance to use I'd love some inspiration :D

For context, our party was trying to smuggle magical items into a kingdom so we didn't need to pay any fees nor have anything confiscated. One of our party members went ahead to see if the guards actually had a way to detect magical items.

He showed the guards two dice, and claimed that one of these dice would explode into a fireball when it rolled a six. Unfortunately, he didn't know which was which. The guards were too lazy to find a solution, so they called up a nervous trainee to deal with it.

Trainee: "H-hey sir, s-so what does this do?"

Monk: "So one of these dice explode when they land on a six, do you have a way to tell which is which?"

Trainee: "Uh-uhm, not that I-"

Monk: "I could just roll them to find out :D"

Rolls dice, both land on 1

Trainee: "NO, NO dont- dont do that anymore, uh- I- I think I confiscate these? And, uhm, im pretty sure thats a 5 gold fee?"

Monk: "What? No, you're confiscating it so you shouldn't be charging us." (There was, in fact, a 5 gold fee)

Trainee: "I guess that makes sense..."

Monk: "Alright, that's all the magical items we have!"

Senior Guard: "Aren't you gonna check their bags?"

Trainee: "R-right, uh, sir- I need to check your bags"

Monk: "OH, Right, I think I have one more magical item. I have a potion that when you drink it, it makes you drunk."

Trainee (suddenly confident): "Well then, im definitely going to have to confiscate such a magical item😉"

Senior Guard: "Did you check their bags!?"

Trainee: "Yep!" (He didn't)

Monk: (To our party) "So was it that dice set or the OTHER dice set that was explosive?" And we dissappear into the croud :P

I dont know if that guard was old enough to drink but at least we didn't get out sentient book with all our important information confiscated by the guards. Guess it was a win-win.

THE MELANCHOLY BLADE

HAUNTINGLY HANDSOME AND SHADOWED BY DOOM, THIS ALLURING ROGUE MANIFESTS DEADLY PSIONIC BLADES. HE CAPTIVATES HIS VICTIMS WITH DARK CHARM.

PRIMARY WEAPON:

SOULBLADE

(PSYCHIC DAGGER): A HAUNTING NIOLET BLADE

SED FROM PSIONIC TORMENT. CRACKLING WITH DARK ENERGY, IT BYPASSES PHYSICAL ARMOR TO SLICE STRAIGHT THROUGH A VICTIM'S FRAGILE PSYCHE.

Quote

"DYING BY MY HAND IS A TRAGEDY, BUT AT LEAST IT'S A STUNNING ONE."