I love D&D, so when it came time to reboot my original story from the childish first draft it came from it was a ntural fit to include elements of my brand new obsession with it. (I basically wrote the first draft at a time in my life when mentally I was that kid from the vine swinging an umbrella screaming that he has the power of god and anime on his side, dark days were those)

I debated making Alverd a Battle Master at first, because with leadership comes tactical flexibility and the power to command the battlefield. But Alverd was a rank and file knight, never reached the point in his training where he would've been taught such things and besides, thinking is supposed to be Kuro's strength. While Champion is boringly straightforward, it makes sense; Alverd isn't the focus, just the glue that sort of holds the group together. He hits hard, fights hard, tanks hard, and keeps his party safe as a typical vanilla sword and board hero. The decision to make it so he keeps his feelings bottled up inside is there to ground him and give him a side of vulnerability and relatability that challenges the previous assumption that nothing gets under his skin.

Wizards are not my class of choice, or any dedicated spellcaster for that matter. I have a terrible memory, so remembering tons of spells with ridiculous effects is a nightmare for me. Kuro is great as an evocation wizard because he's not going to take spells that require me to remember giant blocks of text, it's mostly just "point at bad guy, bad guy goes boom, what flavor is explosion?" What makes Kuro an interesting character to me is that he takes spells and finds out of the box usages for them, which is always a hit or miss thing in D&D; sometimes you get that Dungeon Master who listens to you explain how a well-aimed Fireball can trigger an avalance from the explosion that wipes out an army climbing a mountain, but sometimes you also get that fuddy-dud DM who can't use their imagination for beans. Lucky for Kuro, God is rooting for him, but He is gonna make the poor sucker work for his wins.

Describing what rage was like was such a fun concept for Alicia. I like the idea that rage isn't something that barbarians control so much as just point in a direction and let it run wild. In that way, rage isn't so different from magic, which makes her interactions with Kuro and Sheena so much more nuanced and fun, and in that way they might find common ground just like a real D&D party. Her tsundere behavior comes from my personal love of the character trope, and I always get mad when I see ignorant tryhards dismiss it as a "one dimensional" character identity. Tsundere are people and they deserve love and respect too.

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Sheena was born out of several weird character concepts that I've seen in my years of playing tabletop; the spoiled rich girl thrust into the real world without daddy's money and a spellcaster who firmly believed that magic was the solution to everything. I had just started watching the sublime anime My Next Life as a Villainess: All Routes Lead to Doom and the idea of a hyperaware yet oblivious protagonist was also very appealing to me; what makes the Sorcerer class so interesting is that it doesn't have any natural advantage over the Wizard, instead relying on the use of tactical flexiblity to enhance their magic to work in different situations, a trait I think Sheena would need to survive her many assassination attempts.

Monaco is not a typical rogue, as she likes to get in close and personal. As a Mastermind, her deal is about setting her foes up to be taken advantage of by her allies, which is why she never works alone; Rogues are infamous for going off on their own in D&D, so the idea that this party's rogue likes to run with the pack makes her an interesting subversion in my mind. We have yet to see her fight, but I'm looking forward to seeing what you guys think of her.

Deotra...let's not go there. No need to let the fox out of the bag just yet.

Yuzuruha was the last character I played in a dedicated campaign and sadly she never got to see it through to the end (the DM was a nightmare who allowed his girlfriend to be the main character and ejected me when I called him out on how he allowed her to talk down to me when I called her out). Even more tsundere than Alicia and quick to anger, she nontheless had her own code of honor that wasn't something that could be explained in a single sentence. I'm glad she gets to make a little cameo in this game in this Asia-inspired country but she is a minor character that won't be joining the group permanently. Samurai is a lesser played subclass in the game but when built correctly you can do obscene amounts of burst damage with one; my jerkass former DM derisively said that she was basically just a shounen anime protagonist and to that I agreed, because the angrier she got the more powerful she became.

Again, sorry about the delays and I hope to get my life back on track soon (don't we all in these trying times). There will be a post this weekend and then a three week gap until the next chapter, and no concrete info on when the edits will resume. Hopefull when summer ends and the heat dies down things will get better.

Thanks for sticking around.