On Iko, and Why She Isn’t Working
So Plotline started a D&D game, running Dragon of Icespire Peak. Being a fool, I made a non-tabaxi character in the form of Iko, a half-elf (eladrin) draconic bloodline sorcerer, whose main gimmick is teleporting around blasting stuff. Her main inspiration was “Tracer from Overwatch meets Akko from Little Witch Academia,” a talented-but-troublesome would-be wizard who has a tendency to break stuff and make stupid mistakes, but manages to pull through in the end. In combat, the idea is that she would pop in, annoy baddies into tilting or chasing her around, and then pop out again, which is the Tracer angle.
In play, it has not worked. Like, even a little.
Roleplay wise, she’s a big snooze. Sirfox’s paladin dominates any social interaction scenes, to the point that even Iko’s draconic heritage doesn’t cut the mustard with dragons. In combat, she’s a damp squib, very rarely even landing a hit when she does finally manage to get into position, and even more rarely being a hit that the badguys notice. I end up spending the whole session in audience mode and frustrated.
It’s an odd place to be in. Obsidian had the whole freaking universe revolve around her, to the point that I finally had to stop playing her because I felt like it was hurting the group. Shade-Of-the-Candle is dynamic and moves scenes forward, is usually at least competent in a fight, and can be situationally devastating. To have a character just be a non-performer the way Iko has been has left me kinda nonplussed.
Some of the problem, I think, is that I just don’t enjoy wizards. My own personal power fantasy, fueled by a life of being clumsy and overweight since childhood, is to actually be able to run and jump and punch evil in the face with a body that doesn’t suck. Things like flying or shooting fire out of my hands, just don’t resonate with me. It’s also part of my general distaste for flashy magic and high-level superheroes. I can enjoy them in small doses, but they’re not where my heart is. But when you combine that with a build that also doesn’t work, and a character dynamic that ALSO also doesn’t work, and you’ve got a character that just isn’t pushing my buttons.
So as the group takes a break for December and we start looking at where things might go in the future, I’m thinking about what to do about Iko. I think she’s going to have to be retired and replaced with something else, but what? I don’t want to just clone Shady and drop her into Plots’s game, for several reasons. But I do want to get back to a character that I’ll find more interesting and will hopefully be more effective.
First, I think I need to just admit that non-tabaxi characters make me snooze and make it a tabaxi. Second, they need a personality that will make things happen. If this campaign has had one sticking point, it’s that we’ve spent a lot of time dithering and looking for the plot, instead of creating one. So the character needs an agenda. And finally, they need to be a martial type and a build that can actually be effective at the table. To keep them from just being a Shady clone, I’m looking at monk, ranger, or fighter. The personality is being a little harder to find, because I haven’t worked out an idea that speaks to me yet. My first idea was a Van Helsing-ish “monster slayer,” sort of “What if the assassins from Assassin’s Creed had the mission of killing dragons instead of authoritarians?” I’m not sure I could make that sustainably interesting, tho, and it’s not really a character that would work well in a group context.
Whoever it is, needs to be a mover and shaker and a coffee achiever, because Iko’s passivity is leaving me dejected.
-The Gneech
[…] musing on why Iko wasn’t working for me, I noodled around with some ideas. One, which I’m pretty sure I lifted from Jim Pruitt of […]