One of the nice things about a sorcerer is that their spell-casting is based off of charisma. That means that you don’t end up being a spell book caster, like a wizard can often be played; instead, you can play a character whose magic is sourced from something bigger than life. My mental picture is similar to Shiny Chariot from Little Witch Academia — someone who is a showperson who wants to make people have a great time, so they put on big shows. Now, that isn’t the only way you can play it, but since you’re going to have a lot of charisma, there will always a slight element of showmanship, or of people deferring to you, but that might just be because you are a man or woman of the people and are easy to approach. Or maybe you cast wild magic and you are just the crazy uncle whom everyone loves and wants to spend time with but who they don’t take too seriously.

Another big thing for the sorcerer is the idea of meta magics. These are ways that you can focus your magic, and are one of the biggest mechanical parts of playing a sorcerer. Maybe you are a careful caster who has area of effect spells, but you can mold your spells around your allies so that they don’t end up being hurt by your magic. Or maybe you are all about letting the world burn, or at least all of the evil zombie horde burn, and you are casting twinned spells and covering the whole battlefield in fireballs.

There are many other directions you can take it, as well — let’s look at a few examples:

Growing up in the wild, there wasn’t that much to entertain yourself with, which was okay, because mainly you just needed to help around the house. But when you got a chance to go exploring, you did, and found that there were caves nearby to explore. One day, you found a glowing stone in one of the caves. Being a young kid, you didn’t think much about it, so you immediately went and touched it. It transported you somewhere — you really aren’t sure where, and you weren’t sure for how long, but when you came back to the cave, ten years had passed, and you now had powers that you didn’t have before. It was scary, and there were things happening that you couldn’t control.  You had to leave your village behind, and seek out answers and how to control your magic.

Class Archetype: Wild Magic
Background: Sage/Folkhero

There were legends in your society that there was some great power in the storm. The storms would come down over the mountains with the fury of the gods, and they always brought destruction. When one of these massive storms came through, it destroyed your family’s house and killed your parents. You were taken in by the church, and that is where you learned more about the storms. The storms became more frequent and more powerful as time went on. One day, when you knew a storm was coming, you slipped out of where all the other acolytes had hunkered down and walked into the face of the storm. It seemed like the storm was angry with you, or with someone. You spoke to it, and it spoke back to you. You asked what was wrong, it told you, and you offered to help. When the storm passed, most of your village had been destroyed, but you were still standing, and had new powers. You now have a quest from the storm that you’re going to need help completing.

Class Archetype: Storm Sorcerer
Background: Acolyte

As a young child, you were sent to the church by your parents, like all seventh children — with so many siblings, there wasn’t any way for your parents to support you. You joined the standing army of the church and were supposed to be trained to be a paladin. But the gods never spoke to you, and you never got the powers. But the church didn’t give up on you; they never let someone they had trained go. But you became a simple infantryman while watching others gain powers and become paladins. There was a horrible battle that you were forced to fight in, and the rest of your unit were killed. You weren’t sure how you survived, and as you sat among their corpses, you cried out to the gods to strike you down as well. Then, you heard it — an answer. The answer was no. You were called to be a scion of the gods, and you felt a strange power well up in you. When you returned to the army and told them what had happened, you were kicked out of the army as a heretic. Now you need to complete a mission for the gods and prove yourself to the church.

Class Archtype: Divine Soul
Background: Acolyte/Soldier

Have you played a sorcerer before? What type of sorcerer have you tried? Do you find the meta magics too confusing? What was your sorcerer character’s origin story?

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I’m here to tell you that those are two awesome tropes (though don’t steal from your party), but there are a lot of other options for the rogue. The rogue is a skill monkey — you have more skills to start out with than other classes, and you get more expertise, which means you are really, really good at some things. So, while you can make it so you are really, really good at being a thief, you can also be a rogue who is better at many things. Leaning into a background, you can use your skills to be the face of the party, or to be a con man. You could be one of the smartest rogues out there who is sneaking into places to acquire more knowledge.

Mechanically, you’re going to end up being sneaky and focused on dexterity. This is because you have your sneak attack, which you get when you have advantage on your attacks or are attacking someone who is engaged in combat already. This allows you to dish out a lot of damage once per turn, even more so if you are an assassin-type rogue. Other than that, you really are the skill monkey who can become an expert at something. A word of caution with being a skill monkey — try to pick something that the rest of the party doesn’t have. Being good at stealth is great and probably can overlap with others’ skills, but if you have a monk in the party who is really good at sneaking as well or is good at deception, don’t step on their toes. Since you can pick most any skill, it’s better to just pick a different one. Rogue is generally the class that people go with when they want to be Batman, because you can kind of be Batman if you want to.

So what are some backstories you can go with?

Growing up on the street was tough; you had to lie and steal for a living. One day, you stole from someone and suddenly found yourself under the eyes of the local thieves’ guild. This was actually pretty great, because soon you were working with a crew, and you knew more people. Things were going well until something seemed to take over the leader of the thieves’ guild. They changed, and you don’t know how or why. Your missions started to become weird, and you stopped making money like you had been before. More and more members of the thieves’ guild changed as well. You need to find help outside the guild to figure out what is going on and save your city before the guild destroys it.

Background: Urchin (or Guild Artisan)
Class Archetype: Thief

You grew up in a small shipping town. It was a nice little town and grew larger as the town became a bigger shipping port. That attracted some unsavory sorts, including pirates. One day, the town were raided — most people hid, but you were working at the warehouse and weren’t able to get away. The pirates shanghaied you. The first few years on the ship were horrible — you got all the jobs no one wanted. But as time when on and pirates left or were killed, you got more and more responsibility. After five years, you were one of the top pirates on the ship. The captain got sick one day and passed away shortly thereafter. There was infighting among the pirates about who was going to take over, but you didn’t take part, because you knew where the captain’s secret stash was. Now you need help getting to it, but if you can, you’ll be rich, and you’ll be able to get your own ship and crew.

Class Archetype: Swashbuckler
Background: Folk Hero(?)

Your family was always a family of thieves. You’d travel from town to town, scamming people out of their hard-earned money. You didn’t do it to people who didn’t have much money to start out with — only to the rich. That gave you enough to live on. One night, a scam went wrong, and you got separated from your family. You were caught by the noble lady you and your family were trying to scam. You were still young, so she took pity on you. Instead of throwing you in jail or having you killed for trying to scam her, she offered you a position. Instead of being a thief, you were going to help protect her against any other thieves and con artists that might show up. It was a great job, and you left your life of crime behind, until someone stole the lady’s jewels and left two pieces among your belongings. Now you’re on the run, and you need to find out who framed you, which is probably something you can’t do on your own.

Background: Criminal
Class Archetype: Inquisitive

The noble of your town was not a good person, and they have a personal vendetta against your family. You were part of the highest-born family other than theirs, and they were constantly paranoid about your father stealing their title. Your father was never interested in that, but when you left to go to university, you got news that your parents had been killed in a “hunting accident.” You knew that wasn’t the case, and you spent some time in college studying so that you’d be able to take over your town and get revenge. While studying, you spent plenty of time also learning how to use weapons and to be able to kill without being seen. When you become a noble, you can hire someone to kill for you, but until then, and with the noble of your town, you want the revenge yourself. But to get in and kill them, you’re going to need help.

Background: Sage
Class Archetype: Assassin

When playing a rogue, have you stolen from your party? What have been some of your favorite rogue moments?

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Mechanically, it comes down to their ability to deal extra damage by using punches as extra attacks or being able to jump in and out of combat quickly using their ki abilities. Monks can often do minor magic with their ki points, but they aren’t generally considered a magic-focused class, and they are going to be spending most of their time in the fray. People often play them as ninja characters, like Nimrose was in Dungeons & Flagons. Her main weapons were shuriken and nunchaku. However, there are plenty more ways to play a monk, and with the different class paths a monk can choose from, they can look very different depending on how you want to play them. How a monk uses and manipulates ki is really how you determine what type of monk you are and where you fit into a monastic tradition. While a monk following the Way of the Shadow is a ninja-/assassin-style character, a monk following the Way of Tranquility gets features that allow them to use ki, but not for violence.

The monk is also interesting because so many backgrounds can work with it. We’ll look at some possibilities in my backstory ideas:

From a young age, you’ve been trained to be an assassin. You don’t know who your parents were, though you assume they are dead because you ended up living with a relative who hated you. Eventually, you ran away and decided that you could make it on your own on the streets. Things weren’t as easy as you hoped on the street, and one cold night, you found your way to a monastery. They let you in and gave you a place to live. They saw in you the potential of someone who had learned to sneak around on the streets, and they started training you and brought you into the shadow organization that the monastery housed. The code of your monastery now leads you still as you take jobs and are asked to kill. The master of your monastery was killed recently, and you’ve taken it upon yourself to right the wrong and find out who killed him.

Tradition: Way of the Shadow

Background: Urchin

As a scout for the army, you’ve seen killing for years. You’ve tried to avoid as much battle as you can, but that wasn’t possible. You don’t want to see death anymore, and you’ve taken it upon yourself to find a peaceful way of life. On the higher reaches of a mountain, you found a place where you could spend time with others who were like-minded, where you could try to find inner peace. A dragon has also found this mountain, and as one of the few of the monastery who has spent time in the world before, you feel it is your duty to help find those who can rid the world of the dragon. Maybe if you can help others, they will in turn help you. Hopefully they understand that you just want to help without hurting anyone.

Tradition: Way of Tranquility

Background: Soldier

As a youth, you joined a monastic order and loved your life in solitude. Training and self-discipline are things that meant the most to you. You hadn’t realized that there were those leading your order who sought to bring back an ancient deity. This deity had been locked away for a reason, and when you found out what was going on, you didn’t know what to do. You ran away, going to a city on the far side of the continent. You started drinking, and you weren’t sure what meaning you had in your life anymore. Now you believe that you were sent here to find those who can help stop your order from bringing back the deity — after you have another drink.

Tradition: Way of the Drunken Master

Background: Acolyte

Your parents sent you away at a young age to learn the arts of a monastic order. This is normal for your family; your father before you had gone here, and that is where he met your mother. That was how it had been for the generation before, as well. The grace and fluidity of the order helps train your mind and body for the life you were supposed to have ahead of you. Then you got the news that your parents had been arrested, accused falsely of having stolen the treasures from a town where their troupe was performing. You left, your training nearly complete, and are headed there to free them and prove their innocence.

Tradition: Any

Background: Entertainer

Have you had a chance to play a monk before? Did you lean into the Eastern traditions that are inherent in the class, or did you seek to play something different?

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The Bard

When I think of a bard, I think about a wandering storyteller/musician who goes from town to town and tavern to tavern playing and telling stories for their meals, rooms, and drink. Or, on the flip side, I think of someone who is in the court of a noble, telling them stories at their fancy parties and keeping them entertained while the drinks keep flowing.

In Dungeons and Dragons, this is usually the case, and in general, I’d say that you would likely end up as the first type of bard, who then joins up with an adventuring group in hopes of getting the best story ever. In our Dungeons and Flagons game, during the very first episode, Tate is telling this magnificent tale about how Nimrose, Finja, and himself had defeated a horde of dragons. Now, this wasn’t true at all, but he was demonstrating why he would fit well into the party, and that’s how I worked it to get the party together, since Nimrose and Finja already knew each other.

Mechanically speaking, the Bard is going to be a charisma-based character, and probably the face of the group. They cast their spells based off of charisma, and they can eventually become really good at skills like persuasion and deception and other skills that are generally meant to charm the pants off of people, for good or ill. This also lends itself to creating a character that is probably more chaotic neutral in alignment, because they are capable of manipulation. However, you’ll want to be careful that you don’t let chaotic neutral become chaotic evil while still having your character pretend they aren’t bad. The chaotic neutral bard would be the jokester of the group, or the person who is going to say something off-the-wall, or who might start to go overboard when fighting someone who is evil.

So, why might a bard join and adventuring group?

I already gave the reason that Tate did, which is to get a new story. That would be one pretty easy and common reason. Another reason might be that the Bard already has a story, like a long-lost treasure or long-lost city that they are looking for, and they need an adventuring group to help them find it so that they’ll have another story to tell. Finally, I think that protection is a valid reason for a bard to join an adventuring group as well. While a bard is usually able to hold their own in battle, in terms of the story they generally aren’t the strongest characters, and they would probably want someone else to do their fighting for them. Stick them with a fighter or a ranger or someone else who can protect them on the roads, and that makes a lot of sense as well.

What are some backstories I could use?

I’m going to pull first from Tate’s backstory:

You could be the fourth son or daughter of a noble and not be entitled to any land. So you have a good life, but you’re bored and you want to do something more. You start traveling around and listening to stories, and eventually you just start telling those stories again and turning that into a way of life. Your family doesn’t like you because being a bard is degrading, and you don’t like them either because they just want you to be lazy at home and do nothing, or maybe they wanted you to join the church (or a D&D equivalent).

Or maybe, after years of being a soldier, you’re too old to do that anymore. You’ve always been social, and you’ve started telling stories around bars, and people started buying you drinks. Now you’re traveling around telling stories of battles you’ve been in before, but that’s given you the itch to get back out and kill a monster again. So you’re looking for that new story to tell, and better yet, to help create, but you need some help now, as you’re a bit older. This would be a non-traditional build, as you’d still have pretty high charisma, but you’d probably put more into strength and constitution than you would dexterity, which would normally be a bard’s secondary skill. Remember that finesse weapons can be wielded with either strength or dexterity.

Or perhaps in another scenario, you’ve spent years as a bard, but what people don’t realize is that you’re a bit of a criminal as well. Nobles don’t pay much attention to you at parties when you’re performing, and even though they pay you well, you leave with a little bit extra at the end of the night. There have been a lot of scullery maids and butlers getting in trouble and being blamed for what you’ve done, but that’s their problem. You’ve heard of an item that would basically set you up for life if you could get it, and there’s going to be a big celebration coming up at the place where it’s kept; now you just need to get invited and find some people who can help you get it out.

That last one seems to describe a bit more of an evil character, but you could also spin it as you’re helping the poor with what you liberate from the wealthy. Or maybe there is a kingdom that you do this in because their armies killed off your family, and you want to get revenge on them in your own way, so you’re stealing from every noble who was part of the war that killed your family and destroyed your village.

And one last idea:

People like bards, and while they remember your face and the stories you’ve told, people don’t think much of you or suspect you. The fact that you’re a member of a resistance is something that you keep hush-hush. You’ve been in houses of nobles and heard stories that no one else could get, as your music opens many a door. Now they’ve asked you to find out some information hidden away in the manor of the king, and you’re going to need a little help doing it.

Have you played a bard? What sort of backstory did you use?

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