Looks like 5es REALLY back on the menu, boyz!

I did it. Last night I got a phone call from the guy at church who I was talking to about my D&D t-shirt, and he invited me to jump into his campaign this Saturday afternoon. I think it plays most weeks, and it’s only been going for a little while; apparently the characters are only second level. Or, well… at least he wants me to make a second level character. I presume everyone else is too.

Apparently he was a feeling a little off because another group that he’s playing in (he’s running this game) is a circus of super exotic races he had asked for a bit more traditional. For this game he got as a player line-up a human ranger, a human rogue, a human barbarian and a hill dwarf cleric. My first thought was also a human ranger or barbarian before he texted me that info, since I love the good old fashioned human outdoorsman archetype, but I was hoping he’d let me run a different kind of alternate ranger. But after seeing the line-up, I thought maybe something a little different was in store. He told me that a more exotic race given how “bland” this line-up was might be good, and that the rogue’s player (his adult son) will be getting married and moving out of state at the end of the year. But still; I’m thinking that some magic is what’s needed, so I created a fire genasi sorcerer. Rolled it up in D&D Beyond, since you can do that for free, although I didn’t find the application really all that intuitive, unfortunately. I even gave my son-in-law a call to check over my work. We’ll be talking a little bit tonight. Still waiting on some feedback from the DM on what to do about equipment and money, but in the meantime I did a pretty straightforward conservative estimate; some basic first level non-magical stuff along with a few healing potions. If I can upgrade anything or have a bit more money than my very cheapskate estimate, I can cross that bridge when I get there.

Here's a few options to choose from for my appearance. 

I’m calling my guy Vanze Maledictus, a riff off of some SWTOR character names that I’ve used already. I still have some time to tinker with it before I send him a draft to review. I picked the noble background, and decided that Vanze was born to a life of privilege. He and his twin sister Vanisse used to run around their father’s manor causing all kinds of trouble. But while Vanze was more of a good-natured and likeable scamp, his sister had a much darker edge, and may well have been a full blown sociopath from the get-go. Upon reaching her middle-upper teen years (I dunno; seventeen, or so?) she chafed so badly under the rules of her father than she made a fiendish pact bond, became a warlock, and burned her family estate to the ground to escape, caring little (or least not showing that she cared) that many of the family servants and even their parents died in the blaze. Vanze was away at the time, but arrived in time to confront her at the conflagration. His own sorcerous powers had not yet come into their own, so he was badly defeated and humiliated in this confrontation, and his sister left him, presumably to die himself. However, in the end, he was not seriously physically harmed. He moved in with his extended family for a time, and when his magic came, as it does to sorcerers, he declared his intention to find his sister, wring an explanation from her for her actions and bring her to justice, or at least some kind of reconciliation for all of the trauma that she caused. 

However, to be perfectly honest, Vanze is only of average intelligence and has little practical experience with the real world, giving me the opportunity to play him up as kind of arrogant, although not really deliberately; he just really has no idea what real life is like, and doesn’t understand the practicalities of sometimes even very basic everyday tasks. He’s kind of got a devil-may care swashbuckler attitude with a bit of an edge, kind of like the Three Musketeers, cares mostly about his immediate group that he’ll be latched on to as well as his family, or what remains of it, and is a bit callous, although not necessarily intentionally, towards the needs and wants of anyone else. He’s also full of really impractical suggestions and ideas, because it never occurs to him that they are impractical. 

In addition to this, I found a copy of the PHB on Amazon. I’m not thrilled with buying anything from Wizards, but I’m buying this from some third party at less than $20, so I doubt WotC will see a single dime from my purchase. But I figured if I’m joining a 5e group presumably long term, I better bite the bullet and get the game. Or at least the PHB. We’ll see if I bite the bullet to get anything else or not, but I can probably get the other two of the core books for more or less the same price.