River is so totally an Epic Lvl Monk/Dervish! by EmmaZule

FIREFLY UNIVERSE

River is so totally an Epic Lvl Monk/Dervish!

POSTED BY: EMMAZULE
UPDATED: Monday, September 10, 2007 11:10
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VIEWED: 3983
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Saturday, September 8, 2007 2:12 PM

I am SUCH a nerd.

But here it goes: my friends and I have been playing D&D for a few months, right? And I'm creating Gestalt (two classes at a time) "Paladin of Freedom"/Bard that worships a music/dance-lovin' diety, right?

So someone recommended I look into maybe later on taking the Dervish prestige class, as listed in The Complete Warrior sourcebook, right?

And - I kid you not - basically the Dervish boils down to this:

A dancer-turned-warrior, who uses their dancing (you have to have at least three "ranks" in Perform (dance) just to do it) as a basis for a beautiful, graceful, unpredictable, somewhat acrobatic fighting style that can basically a certain number of times per day turn go into a "whirling dance of death". Using slashing weapons. As in, using SWORDS.

And I thought about it for about ten seconds, tops, before I said:

OH MY GOD THAT'S RIVER TAM!

River's basically an epic-level (above lvl 20) Monk (martial artist) with tons of skill points put into Perform (dance) and Tumble, with multiple levels of Dervish on top of it!

And me?

I am one of the world's biggest nerds for noticing it.

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Saturday, September 8, 2007 6:00 PM

BROWNCOAT2007

... *smacks face and starts laughing after pulling a Mal "blink"* Dude... sad part is, I can so TOTALLY see that, but I don't play D&D... does that make me MORE of a nerd for haveing a clue what your talking about but not playing the game?.... ah well... who cares, gave me a new idea for another RPG (except this one is on PC not dice) based of A D&D and makeing me a River clone type character

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Monday, September 10, 2007 10:37 AM

EMMAZULE

Quote:
Originally posted by BrownCoat2007:
... *smacks face and starts laughing after pulling a Mal "blink"* Dude... sad part is, I can so TOTALLY see that, but I don't play D&D... does that make me MORE of a nerd for haveing a clue what your talking about but not playing the game?.... ah well... who cares, gave me a new idea for another RPG (except this one is on PC not dice) based of A D&D and makeing me a River clone type character

I think you're only necessarily SLIGHTLY as big a nerd, per se, because for the most part I think I explained it in detail. But yeah...

...what's hilarious is, I realized I didn't even think about the following:

1.) if you have the Two Weapon Fighting feat, you can, obviously, fight with two weapons at once (or do something else with on hand)- which could definitely be used with the kind of Reaver weapons she picks up in the BDM, and from what I read of it, CAN be used with Dervish's little "Dervish Dance" ability, that of course being the aforementioned "whirling dance of death" ability. (Feats are an extra trick or whatnot that you get to pick for your character to have picked up, which you gain about every three character levels in D&D, 'cept you get one when you start, too)

2.) D&D's Monk class is basically the hand to hand martial artist class - which means it's more based on Asian monks than European ones. Osiris, IIRC the planet the Tam family's from, it would seem is one of the ones that're more Asian-influenced, too. (Did I mention an epic level monk who's constructed properly is practically unstoppable in hand to hand, depending on what it's fighting?)

3.)There's also a little thing in D&D called "psionics". They're basically, well, psychic abilities. XD

Making the whole thing even weirder, though, are the following:

1.) There was once a thread over on the Giant in the Playground gaming forums about "what would they be if they were in D&D?" We got a few Joss fans on there apparently, so both Buffyverse and Firefly 'verse were brought up.

Nobody EVER brought up Dervish for River, even though they brought her up! Pretty much the consensus on River was, if the BDM version of her is compared to the other characters, she's "clearly the Game Master's girlfriend".

Which is funny, 'cause it's true! (They even say in the actual Serenity RPG sourcebook how they had to basically tone down her abilities in order to make it balanced!) On an amusing side note, it was realized that Giles from the Buffyverse is clearly a Bard. ;) (And not just because has skills points in Perform (sing) and Perform (guitar), either!)

2.) It was on those same forums that I was introduced, albeit tangentially, to the fact that there exist, based loosely on Wizards' D&D rules, "D20" (normal D&D), "D20 Modern" (slightly more modern, still fantasy but allows for gunplay which normal D&D isn't really built for), and "D20 Future" (SF/fantasy that allows for cyborgs and, yes, spaceships) gaming systems. One day I caught somebody seeking advice on creating a "Firefly-esque" campaign setting for a non-Serenity RPG system (a lot of gamers used to the D20 systems find the lack of specifics in the Serenity system to be a little frustrating, and have been known to "homebrew" their own stuff using setting details from the RPG or series itself, paired with D20 system rules). There, they were advised to combine elements of D20 Modern (for gun rules) and D20 Future (for the ships).

Now, you realize what this means, right?

Utilizing only regular D&Dverse sourcebooks, your own knowledge of the show, and an extremely easygoing and willing GM you CAN, in point of fact, create a duplicate of River Tam in-game!

I am such a total nerd for knowing all this.

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Monday, September 10, 2007 11:10 AM

BROWNCOAT2007

lol, that'd be wicked cool

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