u/JC_VanHelsing

Also ignore Ireena's DM

Been trying this style with the portraits of my campaign's PCs, let's start with the tank, Rutilia Wulber (Rita for friends).

• Ancestry: Lightfoot Halfling
• Background: Buckaroo (homebrew)
• Class: Barbarian - Silent Fury (homebrew)

Rita is a young drifter from a rural town in the Purple Hills, she grew up in the family farm and participating to the town's winemaking business, but she was always kind of a social outcast due to spending more and more time in the wilderness, learning the secrets of survival from beasts and fey.

The traumatic incident, and the time she unlocked her Rage, happened after a local winemaker brought back some saplings, purporting they'd bear fruits that would brew into amazing wine...he was right, but the gulthias saplings also sprouted a horde of blights, who decimated the town to water the trees with their blood and rot their corpses into fertilizer, Rita was able to kill the blighted winemaker and flee, ending up in the Cloakwoods.

After several years of living isolated, she slowly found new friends among the creatures of the woods and the nearby communities, working as a herder...until the blight of Gulthias manifested in those woods as well, but just as she rushed to bring a blessed tonic to heal the elder trees, she was swallowed by the Mists.

With her INT of 12, Rita is the most knowledgeable member of the party.

Also she is the one who adopted Pimpus.

Some other scribbles I did in my attempt to design my own version of Ireena.

On the right, how she typically looks, on the left when her aasimar powers manifest (another character will have similar halo and eyes...) and in the center her travel outfit.

I come back with a new artwork for my DMing of Curse of Strahd, this time with a portrait of my version of Ireena.

Her name is Irenya Kolyanova, and she is a nerdy tomboy with a passion for reading (she purchased dozens of books from Vistani merchants) and swordplay, her life was fairly uneventful beyond the occasional nightmares (due to remnants of her past lives) until she was visited by the Devil Strahd.

Unlike regular Ireena, Irenya is an aasimar rather than a human, her celestial heritage awakened when she was bitten by Strahd the second time, and manifests in creepy omens like her hair flapping like wings, a halo of bloody runes behind her head, and extra eyes sprouting on her face.

Statblock-wise, her highest stats are Strength and Intelligence, due to the PCs lacking either (two of them have STR 8, and the Barbarian is the one with the highest INT) and aside from fighting defensively she can cast a few simple support spells.

Hello everyone, I got an idea for a homebrew class and I'd like to ask for feedback.

The class in question is the Jester.

• Domains: Bone & Grace (the Jester is an agile trickster)
• Starting Evasion: 12
• Starting HP: 6
• Class Item: A deck of cards or a pair of hand puppets

The Jester is a Bone/Grace support class, whose features revolve around Stress.

On one side, the Jester would fill a niche of the Stress Healer, clearing Stress from allies, and on the other, the Jester would stress adversaries out, so they can’t use their features.

I know that the Bard is the current class with Stress-clearing features, but the Jester has two main differences:

• It is a more physical class, instead of casting big magic it focuses on mobility thanks to the Bone domain, prancing around the battlefield to assist allies and annoy adversaries, especially in the case of the Harlequin subclass, that makes the Jester even more nimble;
• Its abilities may not be as powerful as the Bard’s, but that’s because they are supposed to be used more often, instead of doing a big thing once and then needing a mimir, I’m not much a fan of how most of the Bard’s features are once-per-rest.

Furthermore, the Jester would interact with failed rolls, as part of its support role, by compensating for bad luck, and thematic coherence, for a fumble can be at least amusing.

The Jester’s Hope Feature is somewhere between the Seraph’s Life Support and the Assassin’s Grim Resolve.

• Light-Hearted: Spend 3 Hopes to clear 2 Stress from an ally within Close Range.

The Jester’s main Class Feature is its main tool to clear and mark Stress.

• Comedy of Errors: When either you or a creature within Close range fail a roll, mark a Stress to crack an especially funny joke about it (player is encouraged to actually come up with one). Either an ally of your choice clears Stress, or an adversary of your choice marks Stress, equal to half your Tier, rounded up.

As of now, the Jester would have two subclasses:

• The Harlequin takes inspiration from acrobatic court jesters and the Arlecchino mask of Commedia dell’Arte; this subclass it emphasizes the Bone domain, becoming harder to hit, bound over obstacles and dance around the battlefield, furthermore the Harlequin has a focus on clearing Stress from allies and let them spam features;
• The Scaramouche takes inspiration from the Capitano, Scaramuccia, and other ‘cowardly braggart’ masks of Commedia dell’Arte; this subclass emphasizes the Grace domain, basically a front-line bullsh*tter that disrupts adversaries, for the Scaramouche’s focus is marking their stress and prevent them from using their features.

Furthermore, I have some extra fluff:

Inventory

• TAKE: a torch, 50 feet of rope, basic supplies, and a handful of gold
• THEN CHOOSE BETWEEN: a Minor Health Potion OR a Minor Stamina Potion
• AND EITHER: a half-smiling, half-frowning mask OR your mentor’s canovaccio

Character Description

• Clothes that are: colorful, tacky, obscuring, patched-together, mismatched, skimpy, tingly
• Eyes like: carnations, earth, endless ocean, fi re, ivy, lilacs, night, seafoam, winter
• Body that’s: broad, carved, curvy, lanky, rotund, short, stocky, tall, thin, tiny, toned
• Skin the color of: ashes, clover, falling snow, fi ne sand, obsidian, rose, sapphire, wisteria
• Attitude like: a public menace, a trickster, an ingenue, a chicken, a comedian

Background Questions:

• What grand experience has inspired you to leave your old life behind and walk the path of the travelling entertainer?
• There is a tragic event in your past, that you choose to conceal behind the mask of comedy. What is it, and how it still haunts you?
• Your antics may be irriverently undignified, but there is a subject you would never joke about. Which subject, and why?

Connections:

• Did you enjoy my performances, before we got to know each other proper?
• What is the one joke between us, that cracks the both of us up every time?
• You’re still salty at me over a past prank at your expense. What did I do?

What do you think?