In How To Be we’re going to look at a variety of characters from Not D&D and conceptualise how you might go about making a version of that character in the form of D&D that matters on this blog, D&D 4th Edition. Our guidelines are as follows:
- This is going to be a brief rundown of ways to make a character that ‘feels’ like the source character
- This isn’t meant to be comprehensive or authoritative but as a creative exercise
- While not every character can work immediately out of the box, the aim is to make sure they have a character ‘feel’ as soon as possible
- The character has to have the ‘feeling’ of the character by at least midway through Heroic
When building characters in 4th Edition it’s worth remembering that there are a lot of different ways to do the same basic thing. This isn’t going to be comprehensive, or even particularly fleshed out, and instead give you some places to start when you want to make something.
Another thing to remember is that 4e characters tend to be more about collected interactions of groups of things – it’s not that you get a build with specific rules about what you have to take, and when, and why, like you’re lockpicking your way through a design in the hopes of getting an overlap eventually. Character building is about packages, not programs, and we’ll talk about some packages and reference them going forwards.
Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End is an anime about what happens after an adventure is over and the player character with all of their level 20 powers wanders the world keeping their brains from being pickled by the feelings of losing all your friends. It’s a well-regarded, critically acclaimed series, and it’s clearly resonating with a lot of people. It’s a story about grieving and loss and finding your own purpose, as well as a story about connecting to your own emotions, and recognising the way your own life can pass by you.
It is also a story about a petite smug elf who turns into animated gifs really well.
Normally, in these articles I talk about a character who can be reasonably represented from the game start by the character build I propose. The idea is that you can just pretty much take what I offer and while it may lack in some significant way to start with, the character you have still looks mostly like they should. In the case of Frieren we have a pretty significant gulf to cover when talking about representing her in 4th edition Dungeons & Dragons.
The Greatest Mage of a Generation
It’s pretty much text in Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End that Frieren is one of the most powerful mages in the world. In almost all mundane contexts people are familiar with, Frieren is the most powerful thing they’ve ever met. The story still shows some real powerhouses that hang around alongside Frieren’s level, and I have all sorts of concerns about how the show represents power, but we can just take it as read that in the context of the show, one of the things that defines Frieren’s character is that she is very powerful. When I wrote about Being Harrowhark Nonagesismus, I talked about how representing a character as powerful is a problem when talking about a more mathematically balanced system like Dungeons & Dragons (4th edition).
Frieren, in the anime, can blow up mountains. She is a powerful character in the vein of a videogame hero who has finished the main quests and has all the equipment and late-game special powers, coming back to round out early quests in the starting game. You aren’t going to be able to make any build in a TTRPG like Dungeons & Dragons that works like that, without the Dungeonmaster specifically making some really weird accommodations and honestly, I don’t think you should want to. One of the best things about 4th Edition Dungeons & Dragons is the way the system interactions handle so many decisions that would be complex to interact with and adjudicate and instead reduces them to cold, simple math.
That means that any representation of Frieren for this kind of format begs for a compromise. There are story routes around it! For example, your Dungeonmaster might allow for a form the story takes where your character has to maintain their power at a lower level, or hide it somehow, or even give it up as part of the story. That’s a kind of compromise to talk about with them, and it’s entirely up to your table how to handle that sort of thing. I can’t help you judge that.
For myself, what I want to recommend is a series of compromises that you can use to explain things without any special say-so from the Dungeonmaster.
The important thing, to me, is not perfectly replicating the greatest living mage in history, but rather, capturing the vibe. And therefore, what is the vibe?
Examining Frieren
We learn a lot about Frieren, in detail. Much of the story is a slow boil of examining her, as a person, and also her powers, as she handles them and thinks about them. This gives us a reasonably strong impression of her mental state and we can infer things about her physical state.
Here’s a new struggle in 4th edition D&D. Frieren is an absolute wuss, and her mental stats aren’t that great either. For her to be really strong or nimble seems out of type, since she is clumsy and weak, and while she displays a lot of signifiers of being smart (collecting and reading books constantly) her judgment is famously bad, as is her ability to understand what people tell her. Also her ability to convince other people of things, or to express complex ideas or her own emotions are hilariously bad.
We are dealing with a truly swagless elf here.
Oh sure she’s cute, but she’s also an absolute bozo.
One of the things about her powers is that they’re expressed very widely as arcane magic. It’s a force in the world, it’s fed by ‘mana,’ people can have an individual handling of it, and you get better at it by learning things. It is as much as any given magic system can be, arcane magic, and that means any Frieren build wants to be built around the arcane source.
Glossary Note: Conventionally, the term used in D&D for this mechanical package is race. This is the typical term, and in most conversations about this game system, the term you’re going to wind up using is race. For backwards compatibility and searchability, I am including this passage here. The term I use for this player option is heritage.
Also: Elf. She wants to be something ageless, because being very old (eventually) is part of the point of the character. Whatever she is, probably wants an Intelligence bonus. Also, we don’t see Frieren teleport much, so the Eladrin is actually likely an almost but not quite option.
The Basics
First of all, the three different builds that I propose here are all built around the Deva. It’s an intelligence-secondary heritage, and you can put your 8 in Wisdom, and a 10 in Strength. They get extra languages and they are functionally immortal, which can mean you can play with your Frieren being a ‘time abyss’ character. This is not the best or only option for each one, but it’s a place to start.
Second to that, all three of these classes have been picked because they begin with the feat ritual caster. There’s a host of small magical effects that spellcasters can do that all fall under this space, and ritual casting is done by buying up materials for their use, and buying the rituals themselves. It’s a great way to add Frieren-ness to this Frieren, because she’s going to be able to go to new locations and see what new spells and rituals they have.
For themes, because Frieren has a widely diversified range of damage types, a few of the normal go-to examples are out. The theme I’d recommend for this version of Frieren is a Scholar. That’s a theme that adds a lot of stuff that isn’t very obvious; there’s a power for focusing on and spiking an opponent out, and throwing up a defensive shield, with Use Vulnerability. On the other hand, it also gives you access to all languages, and that’s pretty strong for representing the immense breadth of Frieren’s knowledge.
Beyond that, we have three build options that are about trying to compromise with the vast power of Frieren and her stats.
Compromise 1: Young Frieren
First things first, it’s not hard at all to represent a Frieren at the start of her adventure. Not young per se, because even the Frieren at the start of her adventure with Himmel was nearing on nine hundred years old at the youngest, but rather, a Frieren who is, in your case, just a Frieren who isn’t that powerful yet. Since the point of Frieren is her grappling with having achieved everything that matters to her and then seeing the things that mattered go away, this might not land. It is nonetheless, the simplest place to go for a Frieren when you’re focused on her being an arcane wizard who knows a lot, and attacks people with her intelligence.
For this, I opt for the Deva Wizard. Frieren uses something that could be negotiated as a Staff, Rod, or Wand; of those types, I think it’s best to go with a Staff. Staff Expertise has the most common applications; it protects you from attacks of opportunity when you cast spells.
Compromise 2: The Image of Frieren
Another option is to approach the story of Frieren as someone who has done things one way, and is now doing them another way, which involves building and maintaining social connections instead of ignoring them. Basically, it’s the transition from ‘blaster caster’ to a leader archetype. My advice for this is to make a ranged, intelligence-based arcane magic user, which is unfortunately, the Artificer.
I say unfortunately, because the single best power available to Artificers, and the thing that tends to determine how everything else works for them, is the 1st-level At-Will attack Magic Weapon. Magic Weapon is a power you want to use every chance you get, but it is only a weapon attack. Now, personally, I can compromise on that – get a crossbow, make it look a little funky, and play maybe, a senior Frieren who’s been injured and relies on a device. Or maybe talk to my Dungeon Master about if I can have a ‘crossbow’ that’s more like a staff.
Compromise 3: The Botomless Well
This is the biggest compromise but I think it gives the best option with the fewest questions. Specifically, the idea here is to play with the idea of a Frieren who can go all day; someone who isn’t reliant on big splashy dailies. It’s about a character whose power can be so overwhelming it literally dismays enemies, and this is an at-will power that will be worth using your whole career.
The problem is it’s not an Arcane power source.
The power I’m talking about is the Psion power Dishearten. Dishearten is absolutely cooked, it is a fantastic power. It does reward you building for Charisma as well as Intelligence, but it’s an area effect attack that shows your true power to opponents and dumpsters their ability to attack you in response. I think Dishearten is so good for representing Frieren comparing power sheets to her opponent and it’s an attack she can do all day every day, to represent that bottomless wellspring of power, that I think that the Psion is the best place to make a Frieren.
At least, if what I care about is that feeling of relentless power.
Junk Drawer
There are a few other options. Nothing that pulls all the factors together or solves the problem of Frieren being very powerful. Sure, there are choices that make a character feel very powerful – some of those Wizard dailies feel very strong! – but they aren’t good at supporting the intelligence base. The problem is that the character is a little lacking in depth, conceptually, beyond the idea of ‘is a very powerful mage,’ and well, how do you play with that idea? She’s much more about the ways she’s deficient – not physically powerful, not tough, and not wise.
Conclusion
The important thing is understanding your own wants. Any build you make is going to be a thing you should be comfortable playing with, that lets you try and do the things you want to do when you sit down to play the encounters that make up the story space for your game.
Also some of you probably saw the subject and went ‘oh please’ and I just gotta say, look, talk to your local gender clinic.
