FIVEY: Recreating Trophy Characters!

I wanted to memorialize the characters that Sandro and I played during Nova's play-test sessions for Bridewell and Hiss, the summaries for which you can find on her blog. The latter adventure was also just released on itch, so check that out! I can vouch for how fun and insane they both are. :)

Anyway, Sandro's character Ferdrek perished while dealing a killing blow to a snake god. It was an utterly fantastic moment that none of us anticipated, precisely the kind of thing for which we play elfgames. That doesn't mean I can't miss him, though! So, here's my attempts at recreating Sandro's Ferdrek and my Ursaline using my homebrew heartbreaker FIVEY.

Ferdrek

Ferdrek has the 'disinherited noble' background and the 'champion' occupation. Using Nova's D&D-flavored house rules for Trophy, he was also of the fighter-equivalent class. In the context of Bridewell, we decided that he was the last heir of a family that once ruled somewhere far away (and that we were passing through the cursed land in order to reach his birthright kingdom). Ferdrek's four skills were commands, ferocity, presence, and appraisal. I think that Sandro most often utilized commands and presence, and less often ferocity; on the other hand, I don't think appraisal ever came up.

Ferdrek's build is very straightforward. I would consider his level 0 template to be the noble background, and his level 1 template to be the veteran background. These are associated with the etiquette and authority skills, which basically encompass Sandro's most-utilized Trophy skills except along a somewhat different axis (with etiquette representing his more well-mannered side, and authority his more violent or commanding side). I think the associated feats are also pretty thematic; I especially like "Good Name", and I imagine that Sandro would put it to good use.

On a side note, I think the deed to the family summer home would be a fun starting item for Ferdrek.

Ursaline

I don't think I really played Ursaline how I generated her! We decided that she was some kind of priestess-druid who was raised by bears and trained to perform rituals in order to protect their habitat. For some reason (we left it up in the air), she was invested in Ferdrek's ascension to his family's throne and served kind of like his herald or whatever the term is. Her Trophy skills were alchemy, rituals, symbols, and mimicry. Although the skills technically are not synonyms for each other, I found myself feeling like they practically covered the same ground. Ursaline also has the Heal ritual from Nova's aforementioned house rules, since it's what I picked from her being of the cleric class.

Since Ursaline wasn't a well-defined character to begin with, it was more difficult to translate her to FIVEY; it felt more like I was creating her from scratch. For certain, I was going to give her the acolyte background as her level 1 template, which would cover her clerical abilities; I really like the idea of Ursaline spending her evening blessing a friend in order to heal them or better protect them against harm. For her level 0 template, I eventually decided on the barbarian background; I think that her alliance with Ferdrek could be conceived of as somewhat strategic, in that maybe if he takes the throne then her land will be freed of its current occupying power. This gives her the "Rage" feat which I think is thematically really interesting, especially since one does not usually associate it with "squishy" characters.

I think if I were not using the default stat assignments, I would swap Ferdrek's CHA and INT, and then swap Ursaline's STR and DEX. Was just being lazy, though, and seeing how they felt! (I will eventually give the noble CHA instead of INT, but I wanted to make sure each stat was equally represented on the under-construction background table).