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How A Half-Baked Character Concept Rose To The Level Of Godhood
I have been playing D&D for about 20 years.
This story occurred back in the early days of college and has shaped every game I have
run since.
In this game, it was summer, and myself and some friends had gotten together for what
we had intended to be a light-hearted and mostly jokey D&D 3.5 campaign.
What we got instead was what would become a very intense campaign that most of us to
this day laud as one of the greatest campaigns we had ever played.
The premise was deceptively simple: each of our characters was going to be a Dragon.
We could pick any kind of dragon to play.
We would all be granted the ability Change Shape so we could masquerade as humans in
the world of Faerun.
We were meant to be an advance scouting party, determining if it was the time for Dragons
to return en-masse and take over the world.
We had an extremely diverse group, ranging nearly all the alignments and various flavors
of dragon.
We also got to take character levels on top of our DM's homebrewed system for spending
money to forcibly increase our age categories, so we knew from the start that this game was
going to be really overpowered.
I decided to lean into this as hard as possible.
I did some research and found that it was generally accepted at the time that one of
the craziest things you could do was play a Tome Dragon, a dragon from the Dragon Magazine
that had exceptional casting capabilities, and give it the Spell-Hoarding Psychosis,
another Dragon Magazine addition.
This made for an extremely powerful spellcaster with a literal psychotic focus on collecting
arcane knowledge.
For class levels, I decided to pursue Artificer, as this would let me do more than just wizard
things, and would provide an easy source of magic items to the party.
I ended up dubbing this creation "Vehafor Arcaniss", which meant "Craft Magic".
This creation would eventually be dubbed "Hafer" by the party, and would be the source of much
consternation for my players in future campaigns.
Even in the midst of playing this definitively power-gamer character, I could not help but
throw in some roleplay.
I leaned heavily on his psychotic nature for easy roleplay fuel, and, furthermore, I gave
him a single-minded drive.
He wanted to pursue the source of all magic -- True Magic, as I had dubbed it.
Neither Arcane nor Divine, it simply was.
Credit to my DM, he definitely let me pursue something that probably did not exist.
Our campaign lasted most of the summer, and we rapidly scaled in power, both in class
levels and dragon age categories as we used our draconic might to overpower most of our
foes.
We also got to experience some incredible roleplay as we had to navigate different political
courts, all while hiding our true natures.
We also ended up forming an official adventuring company, and made a name for ourselves as
efficient, if somewhat brutal, adventurers.
There are so many moments from this campaign that deserve their own stories, but right
now, we are here to talk about Hafer.
As we grew near what would become the end of the campaign, our DM worked to try and
tie up several of our personal story hooks and goals, my own included.
This came when we encountered a Titan who had access to "True Magic".
We managed to talk him down from combat, and I entered into an extensive bartering session.
He wanted my entire collection of spells and magic items in exchange for the knowledge.
This battled against my psychosis, and I gave it up to a throw of the dice : would my insanity
prevent me from giving up, a low roll, or would I seek out my ultimate goal and rebuild,
a high roll.
Natural 20.
I gave up my hoard of spells, scrolls, magic items and assorted goods to the titan in exchange
for the knowledge.
My DM then informed me that I had lost all of my spell slots from any class or source.
Instead, I was now using a modified spell point system, where any spell slot I had,
gave me a certain number of spell points, which I could spend to cast a spell from any
spell I had access to.
More importantly, they were gained or spent at a simple ratio: spell level squared.
So, a first level gave me 1 and cost me 1 point.
A 9th level gained me 81, and cost me 81.
He specifically stated that I could spend these points in any number, as long as I followed
that ratio, even casting beyond 9th level spells.
One final crucial detail would come into play.
In this campaign, the DM had ruled early on that we, as Dragons, could "stack" metamagic
effects.
Usually this was used for Empower, letting us repeatedly boost lower level spells to
much higher effect.
The Titan, after granting me this knowledge, handed over all my personal effects.
A realization dawned on the Titan: I may have become more powerful than he was anticipating.
The titan attacked, trying to kill me before I had a chance to react.
In a moment of sheer madness, or brilliance, depending on who you ask, I dumped all of
my power into a single spell.
Magic Missile.
Empowered as much as possible.
When the math shook out, the spell did something to the effect of a billion points of damage.
As everyone around the table, including myself, sat in pure shock at what I had just done,
the DM came out of his trance and acted quickly.
My single spell utterly destroyed the Titan, but it also tore a hole in the fabric of reality,
and in the fabric of the Weave, the source of magic on Faerun.
The Goddess of Magic, Mystra, appeared in that moment to destroy the source of the rent.
However, the DM made a second call as Mystra had appeared.
Hafer, in his moment of pure calamity, had done something that should not be possible,
and was granted a single Divine Rank.
My shock increased as the DM announced this, because with my knowledge of the system, I
had a moment of pure understanding.
Upon gaining a divine rank, deities would gain a Divine Salient Ability, only one of
which mattered to me at that moment.
Arcane Mastery.
This ability would mean that Hafer would essentially gain knowledge of every wizard spell that
ever had, did, or ever would exist, and could create new ones at the speed of thought.
Hafer, suddenly overflowing with knowledge, could not react as Mystra shunted him from
the plane, forever banning him from returning to the Prime Material Plane of Faerun.
This mattered little to him, for in that moment, his psychosis was suddenly satisfied.
His desire to know everything Arcane had been realized.
The table sat in silence as I explained this to them, and what followed was a rapid debate.
Did Hafer simply die, having realized his life's ambition?
Or did his psychosis now twist, compelling him to not simply KNOW all, but to RECORD
all?
I ultimately settled on the latter.
Deciding that his Spell-Hoarding Psychosis, coupled with his now limitless knowledge of
Arcane spells, would compel him to forever record the spells, every spell that had ever
been created, and every new spell that his incredible intellect could conceive of, even
ones that should not be possible.
And so, Hafer now sits adrift in the cosmos, in his own personal dimension, an endless
library of magical knowledge.
Forever compelled to keep writing, his own insanity leaking into other dimensions as
he passes them by, leaving impressions of himself in his wake.
The great glowing dragon, with a massive tome, sits before him, ever-writing, ever-thinking,
ever-smiling.
Woe to those adventurers who might come across him, for they may leave with great riches,
or be burdened with horrible curses, all at the whims of a truly Mad God.
Hafer would make a great villain for those foolish enough to try to steal his arcane
knowledge.
Have you ever had a character ascend into something as epic as Hafer?
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