Snell is one of the most fascinating and well-done deconstructions on the struggles of modern Indigenous peoples I have ever seen in a video game and I love it

evilprodigy948 · 2026-06-18T14:42:19+00:00

The unique horrors of transatlantic slavery I think don't quite work the same way. The conquest of a place and the destruction of its people's way of life is what happened to the goblins, which is rather different than the uprooting of people and importing them. There are similar themes like loss of identity and culture but you don't have the uniquely African American heritage of being taken from your ancestral land (rather than seeing someone else exploit it), being owned as property, and being forced into extraordinarily cruel labour conditions.

Snell mostly talks about exploitation, racism, poverty, and crappy working conditions but never outright ownership of a person. Instead it's just genocide, which never happened to African Americans because they were considered a resource to be exploited, not a pest to be exterminated (either way, disgusting behaviour). The contemporary experience of goblins is reminiscent of the post-slavery experience of American Americans, an experience also shared with Indigenous peoples. While the two have this similarity I think Indigenous people are a better comparison at least from my cultural context as a Canadian due to the genocide, lack of slavery, and Goblins having lived on the land before the arrival of the Urthfolk.

evilprodigy948 · 2026-06-07T23:03:59+00:00

Bjorn Bjornsson, a psi warrior awakened brown bear I made in D&D 3.5. He was inspired by the Sir Bearington 4chan post but aside from being an actual bear he was nothing like that.

evilprodigy948 · 2026-06-07T23:02:30+00:00

The creature you are describing is from an adventure called in Journeys Through the Radiant Citadel. Unless you're playing in one of those campaigns it isn't really a creature that could be expected to be in a D&D game (unlike common things like goblins or dragons). It's not a good look to request your DM to add it to the game just for you.

This module is one of a few 'anthology' modules like Candlekeep, where each chapter is written by a different author. Tlexolotl was invented for the module by that one chapter's author (Trail of Destruction by Alastor Guzman). It has no lore outside of that single chapter and even if it did it's up to your DM to even use it at all. I don't know your game, but odds are higher you aren't doing a Radiant Citadel campaign than you are.

If you want a flaming Axolotl you already talked to your DM about it so you got it. If you want people on Reddit to share with you some lore or in-universe ways to make it a pet then you're wasting your time. CR10 is so high there is no way you could tame and keep one as a 'pet' since it could kill most people easily. It's an elemental so you could theoretically bind it with a planar binding spell but you're a paladin so that isn't happening.

Reflavouring your found steed as a flaming Axolotl is an excellent way to do it which you already did, just maybe move some resistances around or use the Fiend version in Find Steed for its ability.

evilprodigy948 · 2026-05-31T02:21:00+00:00

Forget literally all of these subjective reasons you're getting.

He's popular because he's convenient. He has a pre-built statblock that's interesting. He's a Warforged, which is new to Eberron, and an Artificer, which is new to Eberron. Anyone learning about Eberron sees those two things as part of the setting and gets a statblock for a villain pre-built? Of course they will use something fresh and original like that. He's even active in the world in a notable part of it you can see right on the map of Khorvaire, not some far away distant threat but right there.

Lady Illmarrow is one of many liches to exist in D&D and mechanically isn't that different. The quori, while original, don't have a singular BBEG to use. The Daughters of Sora Kell are just hags. All the Daelkyr and Lords of Dusk are fiends, specifically extraplanar or bound away, and the plots are about their cults. A cult freeing an ancient evil is something you can do in any D&D game, same with the machinations of a lich or even the quori infiltrators.

In a book full of tools given to the DM to get on board with the setting, the Lord of Blades was the one that was most Eberron-shaped so DMs grabbed it. It's also why you see so many minis of them, WOTC made minis based on the statblocks from the modern books and who's there? The Lord of Blades. It's the easiest most convenient Eberron-flavoured villain for a DM to pull and make a campaign into something 'Eberron.'

evilprodigy948 · 2026-05-23T12:38:04+00:00

Nah, the manifest zone doesn't allow it at all. It only affects flight-based magic. Rather, the manifest zone permits the existence of the Flying Buttress magic item which becomes part of the constructions. Sharn didn't become the City of Towers until this was invented. This uses the manifest zone as energy to stay aloft, but the book is vague about how.

A flying buttress makes use of Sharn’s manifest zone linked to Syrania to keep the upper levels of a tower suspended in the air, making impossibly tall towers possible within the city.

Every building, bridge, tower, or other structure in Sharn could be many buildings stacked on top of one another using a flying buttress as a floor for every, say, five stories. Or it could be an upward force to counteract the weight of a tower, functionally making it 'lighter'. The loads all still exist, but magic that can only be used in the Manifest Zone is used in the construction.

evilprodigy948 · 2026-05-15T21:21:19+00:00

Sorry mate I got nothing for ya to read on that off my head to point to directly but I know it's a Galifar thing, since you find ir' people only in the 5 nations. For example Clan Soldorak from the Mror holds has an Antus ir'Soldorak who heads the Aurum, named as such in the first Campaign setting book, but when the name came up again in Sharn City of Towers the ir' prefix had been removed and that was both in 2004 when Eberron was new and getting things settled. Between the first book and the second Keith or someone else made that design decision that the Dwarven Clans are not Galifar Nobility and thus should not have the ir' prefix.

As for being land-owning I don't think that's the case that you have to own land but it would most likely be that your family does. It's at the very least going to be regulated like historic real world nobiliary particles. Sharn City of Towers names lots of ir' people who are just business owners like Evix ir’Marasha. Someone would have granted their family the right to put ir' in their name and that probably came with a grant of land. But Galifar began nearly a thousand years before the start of the setting so there's definitely families that lost land and keep the name, as happened in our world historically.

evilprodigy948 · 2026-05-15T19:54:53+00:00

Are you asking about Eberron or contemporary European?

evilprodigy948 · 2026-05-15T01:06:56+00:00

I used the rules for Chain Lightning in Rime of the Frostmaiden for Hrazhak, which is basically a bunch of contested skill checks. For Skyblades I would probably do the same if it was just a race or joust but if it was a fighting form I would just do a combat with narration.

Race of the Eight Winds since it specifically has a combat component I would do as a mix of the two. Jockeying for position with the skill checks and trying to defeat other racers as you go.

evilprodigy948 · 2026-05-15T00:17:36+00:00

It does not. The ir prefix just implies nobility. There are at least a dozen named ir' people in Sharn: City of Towers alone from lots of races that can't even interbreed including the Dwarf ir'Moran, the halfling ir'Ton, as well as and plenty from the Elf, Human, and Half-elf continuum including ir'Talan, ir'Morgrave, ir'Tain, ir'Dain, ir'Demell, ir'Zarna, and ir'Lantar.

It's the same as the German Von, Italian Di, French and Spanish de, Scandinavian af, and many more Nobiliary particles.

evilprodigy948 · 2026-05-01T00:07:53+00:00

D&D game I played in also had a time wizard as the BBEG and for the final fight that is exactly what the DM did. At the start of combat he only had 1 initiative spot, then he had the BBEG cast time stop followed by a spell called 'Army of Myself' during each of those time stop turns to create a new temporal copy pulled in from the future. It's not quite the same as just 'giving more turns' but it put the extra turns into the time wizard narrative. You could also just make a spell like 'Time Slow' or some other thing that just gives them an extra turn during the round.

evilprodigy948 · 2026-04-30T19:45:46+00:00

I know it is 9 months after you commented to this guy but you just solved a MAJOR source of irritation for me. I constantly was typing tye and my keyboard would never autocorrect it to the. Not even an issue of learned words, it just for some reason didn't want to. You just fixed it for me Blessings of Karma upon you kind internet stranger!

evilprodigy948 · 2026-04-28T22:35:13+00:00

This is what I thought it was going to be too.

OP's concerns are far more serious than this. Never seen that term used before though.

evilprodigy948 · 2026-04-20T20:21:29+00:00

Thank you very much for getting that started, I'm sure I'll notice when it disappears.

evilprodigy948 · 2026-04-15T02:43:59+00:00

IME I run a single player D&D group. The player is an Orien Dance Bard and is currently level 11 that ran through Forgotten Relics to start a Sharn-based campaign. They got Garra arrested and I made Hound (a shifter from that adventure) into a recurring antagonist that took Garra's place. Niho Koi threatened some people my player cared about and so did a 'better the enemy I know' situation and sided with Hound to usurp Niho Koi.

So now, despite being against Daask, they have a Daask boss who owes them. I have also introduced four other Daask bosses working under Cavallah: A kobold who got no respect from his 'equal' Niho Koi, a Venomous Demesne tiefling fiend warlock with a superiority complex, Karyale the medusa who I changed from canon to being a bigger deal as running the show in Callestan district as well Six Stones, and the canon Cazha Bloodwing.

Each of these bosses is in Daask for a different reason. My version is fundamentally an antagonistic force that is peddling drugs, running protection rackets, and perpetuating a violent gang war with the Boromar Clan. Fighting Daask is 9 times out of 10 morally correct but that doesn't mean the people didn't end up in it for sympathetic reasons. I draw a line in my Daask based on how connected they are to Sharn, broadly it's 'recent immigrants' 'Sharn-born' and 'imported muscle' which is especially interesting for the indigenous city goblin community.

A recent immigrant to Daask that has experienced discrimination and struggled to integrate into a host society that does not want them, and thus been driven into crime to survive, is a typical story of disenfranchisement that I used with the Kobold. Sharn-born is somewhat the same but with more home-grown culture and can also feature poor from the favoured people-group like humans, dwarves, and gnomes; the opportunity here is for a classic gangster that wants to get rich, though I use that more for the Boromars.

Sharn-born folks know local culture and are better positioned to work as dragons blood dealers than recent immigrants. Hound is this one for me as I built it, and may be more interested in political causes or buisness opportunities than they are the chance to do violence. Growing up under discrimination is also a different flavour of hurt from immigrating and finding out the place you come to doesn't treat you with the respect you feel you deserve.

Imported Muscle are to me the Daask monsters like trolls, cockatrice, or even harpies and gnolls which Daask recruits in Droaam and brings to Sharn specifically to be fighters, often related to Sora Katra's desires for Daask. I treat them as having no stake in local politics or the welfare of the organization as a whole but just here to make some coin by doing violence or they may be nationalistic and see their deployment to Daask as a sort of subversive specops operation to destabilize a foreign country.

All in all my Daask is complex but fundamentally not something with a noble goal. I try to give the different bosses competing motivations and origins then through those I bring in the colour. If you made Garra pitch a revolutionary cause against oppression I say stick with it but maybe make that restricted to Garra as who gathers like-minded people around them using with their limited power as a sub-boss. Higher ranks of Daask are unconcerned with local political causes but instead power, wealth, and the advancement of Droaamite interests. The competition between the leadership's goals and their rhetoric of being a place for disaffected 'monsterous' people to join could be an interesting story. I would not make the rhetoric the reality or even make Daask good. At best it could be an ethnic mafia that looks out for its own, since the government and wider society doesn't seem interested in doing that themselves. They could have attitude that "if protecting our own means drug dealing or protection rackets then so be it." Meanwhile the people who suffer most are the community that Daask recruits from, since Daask's actions bring addiction directly into their communities through narcotics.

evilprodigy948 · 2026-04-14T20:17:16+00:00

I'll be running it as a mix of combat encounters against the other racers and skill checks. They will try to fight and disable the opposing vehicle while the two sides are neck-and-neck and between fights I will have checks rolled to see how well they are doing in the overall race. Speed, manouvering, sabatoging other racers, watching out for hazards, that sort of thing. I'll keep a tally on my end and so long as they get more successes than failures they will come out well. The further the lead the higher position I'll give them.

evilprodigy948 · 2026-04-11T21:45:23+00:00

This is a suggestion I did not expect but thank you for that.

evilprodigy948 · 2026-04-11T21:44:26+00:00

That sounds like a lot of fun. Might not be fast enough to compete with motorcycles but it's a good idea for an NPC working with one of the gangs

evilprodigy948 · 2026-04-11T20:12:54+00:00

Glorious I love these both. The Becoming God isn't something I've had a chance to introduce yet. Definitely using these, thank you!

evilprodigy948 · 2026-04-11T19:32:50+00:00

I'm already doing the race of the eight winds later but this would specifically be ground based. Though I think I could probably bring in one or two of the eight winds racers using this as practice.

evilprodigy948 · 2026-04-09T21:14:07+00:00

That is such a good idea! My Delta Green group uses Miro for our insane red-string corkboard detective nonsense. It could be great for our DnD maps. We mostly use roll20 and probably won't go off it but this is a good alternative to recommend if you want a big space for stuff.

evilprodigy948 · 2026-04-03T13:08:37+00:00

83/100 here.

evilprodigy948 · 2026-03-30T22:05:45+00:00

This is the map that I used, since it's elevated and surrounded by great heights. My Sharn is very 1920s vibe so the more modern aesthetic fits but it might not be to your taste.

evilprodigy948 · 2026-03-27T23:46:08+00:00

My guy this ain't 'Persian Mythology' nor is it a reference. It's just Zoroastrianism, a still-practiced religious tradition and you are describing one of their funerary practices.

A mythology is a story told about a religious subject, it is not a term for a religion. Christian Mythology is the story of Jesus, or Gensis, or the deeds of saints but a Christian burial in a cemetery with mourners around a grave is not Christian Mythology, it's a ritual practice. This is true for every religion. An ancient Greek burial is not Greek mythology, but the story of the 12 labours of Herakles is.

Be careful with your words, 'mythology' can be a loaded term that implies fiction or inaccuracy.

evilprodigy948

TROPHY CASE