D&D 5th Character cards - Verity, Level 3 Warlock

Rounding up the Highcliffe City Guard, I decided to add an infiltrator-type character, the kind of that can walk amongst the underworld with ease and disappear without a trace if needs be. And these things come easy for a certain flavour of Warlock.

As the concept was a character with a shady past trying to redeem herself, giving Verity a Criminal background was almost compulsory, and it rounded up her skillset nicely. And with the Pact of the Tome, she has access to a wide variety of spells to expand the utility.

But what really makes the character shine in an intrigue and investigation type campaign are her Warlock powers and invocations. With Mask of Many Faces, she can blend in or disappear in a crowd, Gaze of Two Minds allows her to mentally track a willing collaborator, and Awakened Mind lets her to communicate telepathically with anyone. In a way, these abilities could be seen as OP in this type of campaign, as they can be used to sidestep quite a bit of legwork. but then again that can be said of almost any kind of magic. And as the character still has to do things to get results, getting herself deliberately into harm's way, I feel that this kind of character would give more to this kind of campaign rather than making things trivial. And the fact that one can create this kind of character straight out of the core set of rules -without any clunky multiclassing, to boot- is a good indicator of the versatility of the 5th edition D&D.

Besides, since Verity is a NPC, I can use her to deliver information for the PCs to act upon, and not to worry overtly how she could have acquired such information, as I have decent abilities to fall back on.

'Roguish with a dash of magic' is probably my most favourite character archetype, and I could see myself playing a character like Verity. And although she's built a bit like a one-trick pony, there's still breadth in her abilities to be of use in multiple situations.

D&D 5th Character Cards - Merilee, 3rd level Wizard

What any Watch Constabulary that wants to actually solve any crimes needs is Perky Forensic Examiner, and in D&D, that calls for a Wizard. Specifically, one from the School of Divination. Merilee is all about research and finding things out. She's a bit reluctant to go out on the field, but even there her Portent ability can be of significance.

Like the rest of the Watch members, Merilee was built with default ability scores. She was given the Sage/Librarian background, to really drown herself in digging out any and all esoteric tidbits from the Grand Library of Hieronymus. But although she can be a bit bookish, she's also quite outgoing, especially in familiar company.

Like Wilf, Merilee was raised in an orphanage. She does not quite know who her parents are, but she has made some educated guesses about them, based on her heritage, and has come to a conclusion that her mother was an elven debutante from one of the Nine Houses, and her father a young Neheniri merchant. She has a nice stipend from her parents to live by, enabling her to have her own house in town - which is in process of turning into a library, gradually. She has also noticed that her elven heritage alone cannot keep her all slender and willowy, but that she has to watch what she eats quite closely, despite her sweet tooth. And the fact that Shimmie seems to have an endless store of dates, spiced nuts and pastries with him and is eager to share does not help matters.

Of all the characters so far, Merilee was perhaps the easiest to stat. I think the default scores do give a good spread to play with, and yield to quite balanced characters stat-wise. I was at first a bit meh about the different traditions for wizard, and I still think that there maybe should be a bit more mechanical difference between them, but I have to say I like the roleplay potential for the Diviner's Portent ability quite a bit. No matter how you roll, those stored rolls can be used to good effect. Well, rolls of 10-11 may not be so useful, or at least can be circumstantial, but generally it is a nice little concept.

 

D&D 5th Character Cards - Shimmie, 3rd level Fighter

Next up on the Oldgate Constabulary, I deemed that the PCs might need some extra muscle from time to time, and decided to give them a fighter companion. Here I had a bit of a problem with the ability scores, as I did not quite want to go with the 'tough, dumb brute' archetype, although Shimmie here clearly veers to that direction. But rather than being the drooling 'Yes, Boss' doorstop, Shimmie is streetwise rather than booksmart, and although he bores easily with theory and extensive planning, he can and does use tactics. I also see him actually reinforcing the stereotype intentionally, to gain edge against less savvy opponents. I am somewhat tempted to actually bump up the mental stats a bit, and lower the Dexterity score.

Shimmie was also created using the default ability scores. And since his backstory was inspired by the Midnight Oil song Jimmy Sharman's Boxers, I gave him a slightly modified  Gladiator background, although in a way a Folk Hero might have worked as well. And like with Wilf, for the ease of play I chose him the Champion fighter archetype, which gives mostly static bonuses.

Although Shimmie is rather easy-going and even cheerful in familiar company, he's quite reluctant to talk about his past before joining the Watch, for which he has quite respect for.

I'm also considering implementing a house rule that allows the final blow to render the target unconscious rather that dead to only apply to weapons causing bludgeoning damage. Any other weapon can be used in this way too, but they are less suited for it and thus attacks to knock out are done with disadvantage with these weapons.

Wilf Mulberry - Digital colouring

After I was satisfied with the outlines, it was time to splash on some colour. In Photoshop, this usually involves building a whole bunch of masks to isolate different areas, and their numbers tend to go up as the drawing is in progress. In Procreate, this kind of process is fortunately not needed, as it is very simple to just turn an area you have just coloured into masked, isolated instance.

So instead of creating masks, I first made separate layers for each piece of clothing, skin, hair, etc. After everything was applied a flat colour base, I then alpha-locked each layer, essentially masking out everything else from that layer. In this way no matter what I would thereafter do with the colouring of that particular item, the results would be applied only to that predetermined area, and it made using texture bushes for example very neat and simple. And although I could not find a way to set a brush to Multiply or Screen as I used to in PhotoShop, it was just as easy to make new layer, make a selection based on the layer I wanted, and then to set the whole layer on Multiply, Overlay or whatever I wanted, and then merge that layer with the previous one. Working with layers instead of masks felt a bit weird at first, but pretty soon it became a natural way to work.

And just as with PhotoShop, I found that I tinkered way too much with minutea. I need to devise a simpler, more efficient way to apply shadows and highlights to the base colour, be done with it, and then texture it for my liking. But apart from that, I find Procreate a very user-friendly tool, and I especially like the fact that I can use it wherever I have iPad with me. For example, I dabbled with this image a bit while waiting for my wife in a car. I did not have my stylus with me, but colouring works quite well even with just your fingers, especially if the layers are properly alpha-locked beforehand. But as with any digital painting tool so far, the hardest thing for me is to realize when a piece is ready, when it is time to stop.

Digital Inks - Wilf Mulberry, take two

After the - let’s say less than stellar - first outing with the Jot Touch, I’ve had more experience with the stylus, and have grown more accustomed to it’s qualities. There’s still a bit disconnect with how I would like it to perform, and what it actually does, but I’ve grown a lot more confident with it, and the variance of style compared to traditional ink and paper does not bother me that much anymore. One thing I found that was quite a good exercise for both fiddling with the brush styles and the flow of the strokes was to try some calligraphy with the stylus. These exercises helped to drive home the differences and how to alleviate them.

But although the process - and the result - was smoother than before, there’s still a lot of room for improvement. I still had to do some lines several times over, although a big reason for this was that the sketch was less clear than I could hoped for. Also I still haven’t had to nerve to tear off the screen protector, partially because it might not be the cause of some of the issues I’m having, and for other uses the iPad is utilized, I think the protector is a good idea. Although it is starting to peel off at the edges a bit already, so I guess I’m just waiting for an organic moment to remove the protector film and then to see if it has any effect.

So, here’s the second attempt at Wilf Mulberry. Besides the difference in style, I also this time tried to account for the fact that I intend to colour the drawing at a later date, and thus the detailing and texturing was left to minimum. In a way, I kind of like the rougher, less polished first attempt, and that sort of style might work pretty well for some purely black&white drawings, perhaps with some rougher set of brushes as well. But for as a base for the coloured artwork, the more polished style works better, I think.

Digital Inks - Wilf Mulberry, take one

Getting the Adonit Jot Touch Pixelpoint stylus was one thing - learning to draw with it was whole thing entirely. As I have mentioned, I'm not a complete stranger to digital drawing tools, having had a small Vacom pad back in the day when Macs still had their own interface for peripherals. But even then I did not even dream of actually drawing with it, at least for anything like line art. One of the reasons was simply that I liked - and still do - the tactile feel of using a real ink pen on paper, and those early Vacoms just could not offer that kind of precision and feedback I wanted. It had it's uses in colouring the illustrations, sure, but I never took the steps required to take it any further.

With Procreate, I decided to give the digital drawing another shot. Even though I mostly do stuff just to amuse myself these days, more often than not I end up using my drawings in one digital format or another, so getting there as soon as possible just makes sense. Well, okay, I also thought that I was perhaps a bit behind the times. Can't have that, now, can I?

The sketch layer if in light blue.
This way, I found it was easier
to tell the sketch apart from the inks.

So there I was, sitting with a stylus in hand, trying to find the courage to begin. 5th edition of Dungeons & Dragons had rekindled my interest in RPGs, so I thought that the most natural thing for me to get my feet wet was to draw a character portrait. I had made a quick sketch of a Gnome investigator, Wilf Mulberry, scanned it and imported it to the iPad. Then, using the stylus just as I would a regular ink pen, I started to draw the ink lines.

Pretty soon I realized that although drawing with stylus was kind of similar to traditional drawing, it still was a totally different tool and would take some time to master. The first hurdle was to was to customize a brush that would function somewhat similarly to the ink pens I'm used to. I also noticed that unlike pen and paper, fast strokes are easier to make and trace much more smoothly that slow, long ones. This is something I have found hard to adjust to, as it is quite counterintuitive to me.

Also, at times when I change drawing angle or orientation of the pad, new lines after that may be a couple of millimeters off. Since this happens also when I'm using my finger, this might be a limitation in the iPad itself, or might have something to do with the screen protector I've applied. It's annoying, but not a dealbreaker, especially as it is so easy to undo any 'wrong' lines. Too easy, in fact. I'm a bit worried that I grow too accustomed to 'editing' the lines. That's one thing I like about traditional inks, every line you make is a commitment.

These are, however, just minor niggles. Although the first drawing was a bit rough, it was still manageable and most importantly, ended up looking like something drawn by me. Inking in Procreate does take some adjustments to my regular style, but for example the fact that I need to learn to make more faster and decisive lines is something that will likely improve my style and workmanship on the whole. I also noticed that I might need to make my initial pencil sketches a bit more accurately than previously, so that I don't have to guess and redraw so much during the inking. The whole process was perhaps not as smooth as I would have hoped for, but neither was it discouraging, and I'm pretty sure this will not be the last time I'll dabble with digital inks.

Procreate - most fun I've ever had with finger painting

Traditional inks coloured with fingerpainting, I haven't had this much fun with digital painting since I can't even remember when...

Ever since my wife and I got ourself an iPad, I've been itching to actually use it for something - anything, really, other than just as a glorified surf board. I wanted to try some drawing applications, and after searching for a while decided to give Procreate a try, since it seemed to get some nice reviews. The price was not too bad, even for something I might end up disliking, and the ability to export the work done in Procreate as actual, layered photoshop document sealed the deal for me.

Now, actual digital painting has always been beyond my grasp, so naturally I first wanted to try the program for something I would otherwise do in photoshop, like colouring my inked illustrations. aSince I still haven't dared to upgrade my venerable Mac Mini to Yosemite and hence can't fully utilize iCloud for syncing, I opened one of my inks via dropbox, and made that into a new document in Procreate. And much as I would do in photoshop, I then changed the layer containing the outlines to multiply, and then made a new layer for the colours. After that, it was just selecting right kind of shapes and sizes for the brushes, and swipe, swipe away with my fingers.

From the start, everything felt surpsisingly intuitive. Sure, there were things I had to check from the manual, such as making selections and locking -essentially masking - layers, but the main function of the program, drawing itself, felt very intuitive from the start. Zooming in, rotating, colouring and texturizing, then zooming out to get the big picture and zooming in again -that's how a paint program should function, and for the most part Procreate functions really well. Also the ease of use is staggering. If I want to make some adjustments, I can do that while laying on the bed or on the couch. also the feel and working style are more natural, more like traditional drawing, than with a Vacom and photoshop.

Eventually, I ended liking Procreate so much that I purchased a high-end, pressure-sensitive stylus, Adonit Jot Touch Pro, to actually do some drawing with Procreate. I still have some kinks to smooth out with that, to get the flow and feel of regular freehand drawing, but I'm on my way getting there.

More info on Procreate can be found here: