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Changeling and Warforged(?) Build and Backstory Suggestions?

5th Edition

I'm trying to decide between a few different character concepts for the next 5e D&D game my partner is running. One of the character concepts I'm considering is already pretty fleshed out, and I'll probably still talk about her because I love her, but the other two, I'm struggling with.

(For context, the campaign starts because the gods are pretty much all dead except for a select few, and the idea is to either restore or replace the gods by the end of the campaign. The absence of Mystra specifically is making magic go haywire in a variety of ways, including making it that most spells require a roll on a magic table until enough fragments of The Weave can be brought back together. We are also using gestalt rules, so I'm basically taking 2 classes at the same time, and homebrew is allowed so long as I get DM approval first. And we're starting at level 4.)

  1. A changeling who functions as a "daughter", protector and errand girl of a coven of hags. I'm loosely basing this backstory on Pathfinder changeling lore where changelings are drawn to their hag mother when they reach a certain age. In this case, though, when this changeling got to her "mothers", she made a deal with them that, in exchange for letting her remain the way she is, she'd act as their assistant and the first line of defense against adventurers who may seek to harm them so they don't have to expend energy on trivial things. That did seem to be a deal that worked for them, but the moment the gods died and the hags magic was no longer a reliable means to keep her there, she left as fast as she could. She knows the hags will be searching for her, though, so she stays in the form of a half-elf and joins the quest to bring the gods back for the sole purpose of giving her an excuse to stay far away from the hags. I imagine they're either actively searching for her or pushing her to bring godly power back to them so they can become goddesses. (Currently playing around with the idea of Archfey Warlock in addition to either a Fighter, Rogue or Bard subclass, but I'm open to anything.)

  2. This construct was made to serve a wealthy family, specifically their young daughter. She only knowing two things about her purpose when she first awoke: teach the young girl to dance, and love her like she was an older sister. Unfortunately, despite genuinely loving the little girl, years passed and she never was good enough to be loved and accepted by her. She only grew more distant and resentful over the years, only to one day snap and tell the construct "You can't replace her!!" As it turns out, the construct was made in an effort to take the place of the family's eldest daughter, who was both the best friend and dance instructor of her younger sister. The knowledge of all of this weighs on the construct's mind for some time, but that's nothing compared to the horror she experiences when the gods die, the weave is fractured, and the magic that makes her function breaks, causing her to short circuit and injure her charge. She brings her to the family healer and runs away before she can be thrown away, feeling like a failure and not knowing what to do with herself. That's when she gets the call to help bring the gods back. Before her is an opportunity to perhaps fix her malfunctioning problems. Or, maybe even better, perhaps she can ask the goddess of magic, be it Mystra or someone else by the end of it, to change her into a flesh and blood person so maybe her charge, her student, her "sister" can finally love her back. (I'm feeling like Bard could be one of her classes, but I don't know for sure. Also, can you tell I was inspired by Pinocchio for this one?)

That's all that's really necessary to read for the sake of this post! I'm gonna go ahead and include my final character that I'm thinking about because I just enjoy her, but I'm more concerned about the first two right now.

[Bonus: Nitala Opalseeker was always more feisty and brash than the average deep gnome, and her family knew that she would get into trouble rather easily if they didn't encourage her to keep out of business that wasn't hers. They did what they could to curb her natural roguish tendencies and encourage her to be a Bard or maybe even a Cleric like her father. None of this becomes relevant until the day they decide to leave the Underdark, mostly due to drow oppression, but also partly due to Nita's mild allergy to mushrooms (which she still occasionally eats anyway). During the trip, a few deep gnomes are caught and kidnapped by drow and duergar slavers, including Nita's father. Once on the surface, the deep gnome refugee group takes a ship to get to another gnome settlement, but a storm wrecks the ship, leaving very few of the deep gnomes alive. Among those are Nita's mother, another deep gnome she views as an older brother, and Nita herself, all thanks to a kraken with a beef with the ocean goddess and a draw to the fire and spite in this deep gnome's heart, telling her telepathically that she'd "owe her a favor when the right time comes" before saving her. That experience alone curbed Nitala's rebellious spirit for a while, and she actually spent time trying to be a Bard in an effort to make her mother happy after everything they went through. That only lasted for a little while before she decided to study magic as in depth as she could, both because she didn't want uppity scholarly mages claiming she didn't know what she was talking about when it came to magic and because it kept her awake so nightmares featuring the ship wreck and the kraken didn't plague her sleep. That eventually wasn't even enough to satisfy her, though, and she finally decided to follow her brother figure out of town one night without telling her mother where she was going. Fast forward to now where she's had her own adventures with her "brother", but now, the gods have died, and her patron as called in her favor. Nita is to find Umberlee's godly power and bring it to the kraken, but Nita, who really doesn't like her patron very much, plans to take the petty route and claim godhood for herself just for the sole purpose of taking her patron's dream away from her. (I know she'd be a Fathomless Warlock and some kind of Bard, obviously. Just need to choose a Bard subclass.)]

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Since this is all flavor, there's no real difference between the two until you decide what class and actual background you'll be playing.

Choose your class, then pick whatever of the two fits better with your class.

The reason I say this is: You wouldn't play a Warforged Wizard, right? The CON bonus does darn near nothing for you except a bit of help on Concentration but if you played a MotM Changling, you could use the +2 to stat for INT. Meanwhile if you decide you want to play a fighter for example, the Warforged makes sense.

Warforged were created exactly for what their names mean. War. They were all created to fight in the Last War. They don't really run on magic anymore, so the "on the fritz" thing doesn't work super well. No one knows how they were created but it's pretty organic now, for the most part.

If you really want that same backstory, you could probably change the race to Automaton if your partner is cool w/Homebrew. There's also an Agile Body version that gives you +1 to dex. and fits the dancer role.

Edited

The entire point was that I'm having trouble choosing classes for either of them and I was telling the ideas I have so far because I was hoping that would help narrow down the possibilities somewhat. I do like the Automaton, though, so that does help. :)

I apologize. It seemed more like you couldn't decide between which background you wanted, not just the class and whatnot.

If you do automaton, a wild magic sorcerer would be very cool. Especially with the concept there of having their magic already going a big squirrely.

If you do the changling, College of Spirits Bard would be fantastic. Maybe even the spirits of the dead Gods will deign to speak to...or through...you.

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