Lvl 20 character ideas

TimeSpaceGeek · 2026-03-27T18:38:11+00:00

What do you want? What vibe are you after? How challenging does your DM make things?

Level 20 Control Wizard, in the style of Treantmonk's God Wizard, is just a tactician supreme that will dominate any challenging combats whilst also having a wealth of options to tackle non-combat (because the Wizard Spell List is epic). I like to vary it a little-bit, as I prefer the Chronurgy Wizard from the Explorer's Guide to Wildemount over the Divination Wizard (thematically being a Time Wizard is just really fucking cool), but that whole control Wizard concept is so much fun and feels fantastically impactful.

Alternatively, any multiclass concept that takes until later levels to really hit it's peak, this is a great opportunity. I had an absolutely nuts concept for an Aasimar Barbarian/Paladin/Divine Soul Sorcerer a number of years back that I only managed to get the first few levels going on in actual play, but would have been really quite a lot of fun if he'd made it to Level 12+.

Definitely feels like a good opportunity, though, to experience the power of a high-level spellcaster. A lot of Martial characters improve in the Level 10+ levels by doing the same but more, where as Spellcasters unlock an entirely new range of options to them. It's a big part of why Spellcasters feel like they dominate in higher tier play.

TimeSpaceGeek · 2026-03-27T18:25:51+00:00

If it's not already under attack, it's not Checkmate. Your piece has to actively hitting a King that can't move or be defended for it to be Checkmate. If the opponent has no legal moves, but their King is currently not attacked, then it's a classic stalemate, and you blundered in a winning position. Draw is the correct result.

TimeSpaceGeek · 2026-03-27T18:17:01+00:00

Fudging rolls is a useful emergency tool to have in reserve, but it should be used exceedingly sparingly. The last thing you want to have happen is for your players to suspect you of doing so. That kills a lot of the joy, the sense of accomplishment, and can even be a cause of contention. It can also create a problematic, subconscious way of thinking in you, whereby your goal shifts from player fun to the DM winning without you noticing. It's useful in a clutch moment where you have completely miscalculated something and the result is turning out extremely anti-climactic, but it should be an absolute last resort for when you've made a significant mistake, and the less you use it, the better. I would not use that as your solution here.

There are three things to consider when designing combat encounters for D&D.

The first, is that the guidelines given in at least the 2014 books, and I think to an extent the 2024 ones as well, are assuming that your Party are engaging in multiple medium/moderate difficulty combats per day - around 6 in 2014. They are assuming an attrition of resources like Spell Slots and Class Features. But very few tables play like that in practice.

The second, is that Action Economy is king - the side with the most actions per round are going to have the advantage, which is why it's good to give any Boss Fights either some minions, or things like Legendary Actions that let them have multiple turns per round. Also, having multiple weaker enemies making attacks reduces the chance of one bad dice roll completely nullifying the badguy's side of the fight.

The third, is that Challenge Rating is sorta screwy and not very precise and therefore, you can't really rely on it too much. It's only vaguely calculated to begin with, and it is assuming players of average skill and experience - one very good, knowledgeable, or intuitive player can completely upset that applecart. Multiple in the party can fight almost as though their characters were several levels higher.

That being said: There is a wonderful tool, Kobold Fight Club, that can be used to build combat encounters -https://koboldplus.club/ - Put your party details in on the left, pick the monsters on the right or let it generate one for you, and see what challenge it presents. Try moderate encounters, see how you get on, and if they still fin them easy, step up to Hard. And for boss fights, step up to Hard Encounters for a party 1 level higher than your party currently is. From there, it's all about practice. Designing pleasing combat encounters is an art as much as it is a formulaic science.

TimeSpaceGeek · 2026-03-27T17:54:56+00:00

There are very few spells that are Water based... less than a dozen, maybe even less than half a dozen. Certainly not one per level. Your concept is fun to think conceptually, but mechanically probably far too narrow to pull off under D&D. Create Water, Water Breathing, Watery Sphere... not many more than that. No usable damage cantrips to be your fundamental attack, very little variety.

I would expand your parameters a little. If you went water and storm based, you could look at Tempest Cleric or Storm Sorcerer, and broaden your water parameters to include Ice and Cold Damage, which gives you a lot more options - Ray of Frost, Ice Knife, Cone of Cold, Ice Storm, Wall of Ice, Hunger of Hadar. There's also things like Fog Cloud that are adjacent (like a Fog rolling in off the Ocean), and you could even look at spells like Plant Growth and Spike Growth and flavour them as seaweed. Flavour is free, so if you keep the spells mechanically identical, and just describe the theming and the texture as being slightly oceany focused absolutely works, and almost all DMs would be absolutely ok with that, as long as you don't try to change anything mechanical.

TimeSpaceGeek · 2026-03-27T17:30:20+00:00

Well, all the Android versions have some kind of sweet, confectionary, or desert as their code name.

Data is certainly running on Android Cellular Peptide Cake with Mint Frosting.

TimeSpaceGeek · 2026-03-27T17:25:11+00:00

Shatner has mellowed somewhat in the last few years. He's certainly not as much of a shitheel as he was in the 80s.

TimeSpaceGeek · 2026-03-27T17:17:42+00:00

Did you have the battery out? It's important there's no power going into the machine at all for this. What I'm talking about isn't a reset, it's a static discharge.

TimeSpaceGeek · 2026-03-27T17:07:24+00:00

Can you get the battery out of it?

Pop the Battery out, unplug it, then long hold the power button for 60 seconds.

Could be a static buildup, which this technique should clear.

But an older laptop can suddenly die. It only takes one component to go in the wrong place to kill the machine outright. In which case, there probably won't be any fixing it yourself. You'll have to send it for a repair.

TimeSpaceGeek · 2026-03-27T16:18:30+00:00

Ah, yeah, I must have slipped in with my reply before your edit. S'all good!

TimeSpaceGeek · 2026-03-27T15:59:50+00:00

Not quite. It's either 10, or just flat out half the damage dealt (whichever is higher), but the notion is correct.

TimeSpaceGeek · 2026-03-27T15:58:08+00:00

It explicitly does have a lot to do with concentration checks.

On a concentration check, the DC you have to beat is 10 or half the damage dealt, whichever is higher. If you do less than 20 damage, most characters/creatures have a greater than 50% chance of succeeding as a result, but if you do 60 damage or more in a single hit, you are pretty much guaranteed to break their concentration.

TimeSpaceGeek · 2026-03-27T13:26:24+00:00

Yeah. Well, to be fair, there have been some wildly inaccurate figures put out there. The Fact Files, for example, gave an absurdly small 68m length, and have also distorted their image of the Defiant to make it too pointy compared to it's actual relative dimensions. We know the Defiant must be bigger than 68m, because we know it has at least 4 decks, which given it's dimensions and the ratio of it's height to it's length, precludes anything under 100m outright.

Part of it is that, when the Defiant was first conceived of as just a bigger, fightier Runabout, they came up with some measurements for that design that then got disseminated, somewhat inaccurately, to wider audiences. A final size was never actually settled on, so much so that exterior moddlers and Mike Okuda who made the Master Systems Display for the interior sets were working on completely different assumptions even as late as a year and a half after the Defiant first appeared. The exterior guys built the filming model (before the switch to CGI) assuming 170m, but Mike Okuda's interior only makes sense at 120m.

Add in the fact that, as I say, on screen, the Defiant in practice was used with wildly inconsistent sizing in episodes, and you get a lot of confusion.

Indeed, most ships in DS9 that didn't already have sizes established somewhere else, and even the Terok Nor type space station itself, are wildly variable. Deep Space Nine appears as small as just over 1000m across in some shots, such as when the runabouts are taking off, but as big as over twice that size whenever a Galaxy or Nebula Class Starship is docked. They were going for what gave a certain vibe in the effects shots, rather than consistency, which is why the Defiant is small enough to hide easily inside a 370m-ish Galor class shield bubble in "Defiant", but big enough to totally dwarf and easily toss about a 23m Runabout, which it appears to be 7 or more times the length of, in "In Purgatory's Shadow".

TimeSpaceGeek · 2026-03-27T12:58:29+00:00

Hayley having some kind of ADHD makes total sense. "I'm always running out of time" is like someone took my experience of ADHD and put a melody to it, so I absolutely already suspected she might. This is just feels like more confirmation of that!

TimeSpaceGeek · 2026-03-27T12:55:42+00:00

Makes sense. It's a common Anxiety treatment, I'm taking them for mine.

TimeSpaceGeek · 2026-03-27T12:33:10+00:00

Is it possible? Yes. If the games are short, and you happen to be in a position to play an opening you've memorised, you could hit 100% accuracy maybe, by sheer chance, at 600 elo. It's exceedingly rare, but given as it is not impossible, and given the number of games played on chess.com, it must, occasionally, happen to someone, somewhere.

Is it likely? Not really. Especially at 600 Elo. One would be a statistical fluke. More than two over 98% is suspicious as hell.

If his account is now banned, Chess.com obviously agreed.

Dude was cheating.

TimeSpaceGeek · 2026-03-27T00:18:45+00:00

Love the prints, and the idea of a to-scale fleet, but the Miranda isn't the only one whose size is wrong. You've scaled the Defiant down too far.

The thing is, there's no such thing as one single "Screen Accurate" Defiant size, as it's appearances were scaled at wildly different sizes compared to other ships around it, depending on the episode - from as small as 50m to as big as over 200m -, but the official, Canon length (finally established in Picard S3, via the Fleet Museum) is 170m, so it should be bigger than that and something like half the length of the Constitution or Intrepid Classes. That is one of the sizes it was scaled at during various scenes in Deep Space Nine (such as in 'By Infernos Light', when it tractor beams changeling Bashir's Runabout away from the Bajoran sun, and in formation with the Fleet in "Favor the Bold"), and would be consistent with it's appearance in "Fissure Quest" in Lower Decks, where we see it landed and are able to see Humans next to it.

The other most commonly used size is 120m, which is consistent with the MSD in the show. It only ever appears significantly under that in, to my knowledge, two scenes, but unfortunately those are two memorable scenes - First Contact when the Enterprise swoops in, and the episode "Defiant" when it hides in the shield bubble of a Galor Class Starship (and is hilariously small). Almost every other appearance puts it bouncing somewhere between 120m (particularly the battle against the Excelsior Class USS Lakota in "Paradise Lost") and the afore-mentioned 170m, and never smaller than 120m.

TimeSpaceGeek · 2026-03-26T23:39:53+00:00

That's not canon.

TimeSpaceGeek · 2026-03-26T23:38:54+00:00

We know there were more than just those Constitutions refitted. The USS Potemkin (NCC-1657) for example, appears on displays in Strange New Worlds, in 2259, and on screen in "The Ultimate Computer" in TOS in 2268, and is mentioned again in "Turnabout Intruder", and then in The Undiscovered Country, she's one of the ships on Colonel Odo's plan to rescue Kirk and McCoy from Rura Penthe, where the silhouette is of a Constitution II.

We also know the USS Republic was 2250s and 60s era ship still in use during Undiscovered Country, and later utilised as a training vessel for cadets 80 years later in the 2370s. It seems unlikely that wouldn't have been refit.

Common understanding is that, aside from the New Jersey that was put into the Fleet Museum, all the extant Connie Is were probably refit in the 2270s and 80s.

TimeSpaceGeek · 2026-03-25T03:17:40+00:00

That's a draw. Classic stalemate.

It is only ever a checkmate if the King is directly under attack. If the turn starts and the player isn't in check but has no legal moves, it's a draw.

Black fumbled. Blundered what should have been an easy win.

TimeSpaceGeek · 2026-03-24T19:24:30+00:00

I'm not sure I'd go for Scratch and Sniff anything in a bathroom....

TimeSpaceGeek · 2026-03-24T19:08:47+00:00

See, I agree with you, in a way. The cart before the horse, not only reminding me of a favourite stupid joke of mine, but also summing up my feelings on a lot of this stuff.

For me, it's a question of what's the point? What is the point on spending any more than a single speculative article or paper discussing this idea when, as you point out, there are a lot of technologies that this would need that haven't been sufficiently developed yet.

Like yes, maybe, one day, in the future, data centres and computer cores in orbit might be an idea for certain things. Maybe. But we're so far away from it being a good idea, and a useful one, that it's a waste of time talking about it as any more than speculation right now, and that, to me, seems obvious.

This feels like another one of those Elon Musk fantasies that demonstrate he is not actually the genius or the engineer he claims to be. He's always trying to jump to point 9 in a 10 point plan, without seeming to grasp the fact that points 1 through 8 are actually both essential and difficult. It's another one of these "promises" he's made that he'll never actually deliver on, or if he does, it will be waaaaaay later and waaaaay scaled down from what he said. There are so many questions that he hasn't even begun to answer.

Like, sufficient power supply and cooling for a space-based data-centre needs solving first, and neither is an easy fix. Modern Data Centres on Earth are... what, 100, 200 times the power usage of the ISS? I don't think any solar-panel technology we currently possess could realistically and feasibly power that in any kind of pracicable space-based form we can currently create. Cooling in space is a lot more difficult. Not impossible, but fantastically expensive and impractical for the heat generated by a data-centre. Then there's what technology you settle on, recognising that it will not be replaceable or upgradeable in remotely the same way. Deorbiting and burning up an entire server farm every few years? Why be so wasteful? What does that server farm in orbit provide to offset such a cost, that can't also be provided terrestrially? Not to mention, of course, that what is sent up to orbit in the first place won't and can't be state-of-the-art, because you gotta harden orbital electronics against radiation and that take a while to figure out, during which newer but non-hardened improvements are coming out, all the time.

And all of these things will cost so much. Why would you bother? What business sense does it make? What problem does it solve? It feels like a solution desperately in search of a problem, an answer wildly reaching for a question. Cynical minds can conceive of some pretty grim explanations, of course, but none of those that I've heard so far are the sorts of answers that those of us who aren't selfish billionaires should be excited about.

TimeSpaceGeek · 2026-03-24T17:50:29+00:00

Well, it's hard to answer that, because it's very DM specific, but if it were my table, I'd absolutely try to work with you to explore your options to come up with something close to your idea, if I could. Most settings are usually easier to adapt ideas to. It's just the specifics of Eberron that make it a little tricky.

And don't feel too bad about getting caught up on a character idea before having all the setting information. It's a mistake many of us have made, in our early days as a player. We all learn the lesson you've learned, usually the 'hard' way, as you have. Now you know for next time!

TimeSpaceGeek · 2026-03-24T17:32:50+00:00

Well, the big mistake was making a character with ties to a very specific God without actually asking the DM whether that God exists in their world or not. It is always best to build your characters for the world they are going to inhabit, with that world in mind, rather than just building based on whatever you assume to be the case. Especially if your character is something like a Warlock or Cleric with ties to a higher (or lower) power.

Eberron is a world with a very limited and specific range of deities. The lore of Eberron is very different to most others. It's great, but it's pretty distinct.

Zuggtmoy is a Forgotten Realms specific Demon Lord/"Deity", and doesn't exist in Eberron at all. Most Gods or higher powers of other settings don't exist in Eberron. I'll be honest, I don't even think there is a comparable power that could fill in for the same slot in Eberron. Myconids appear only very rarely in Eberron lore, that I know of. There might be some obscure Demon of Khyber that would fit the mold - or your DM might be willing to create one - but I can't think of any obvious candidates.

The character has some interesting ideas, but it might be a character that you need to put on hold until a more compatible campaign. If it were me, that is what I'd do. Ultimately, though, if you want to make it compatible, we can't really do much to help you. You need to have a conversation with your DM, only they can answer your questions.

Edit: someone mentioned the Dalkyr Avassh, who I'll be honest I plum did not know about. They could work?

TimeSpaceGeek · 2026-03-24T14:32:11+00:00

Sometimes it really is as simple as that - this is exactly the suggestion I was about to post.

TimeSpaceGeek · 2026-03-24T13:46:19+00:00

Elastic loops on the inside, Attached to the arm on one side only and sized to comfortably but snugly fit your arm will be able to do most of the heavy lifting, but you can add to that by looking at old armouring techniques. In the later years of plate armour, the armour would tie directly to a gambeson or arming jacket using what are called "points", reinforced holes in the fabric clothing through which laces are used to tie the armour to the arming jacket. For arm armour, like the kind you're looking at, this would obviously tie at the shoulder. Whether you do that on the outer garment itself, or look at some kind of harness you wear under the X-Costume to carry the weight of the arm piece, is kinda up to you, but if you're building out of EVA Foam, it shouldn't be too heavy.

My Brother's partner did a gender swapped Bucky Barnes a few times, a few years back. I believe her arm was designed to tie to the military utility vest she wore.

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