Filling in a Winged Tiefling Divine Soul Sorcerer Character Sheet and Background

Class: Divine Soul Sorcerer

For a few years, I’ve been eyeing the Divine Soul Sorcerer (DSS) class from Xanathar’s Guide to Everything. I didn’t have a character in mind yet, but the class felt like there was some interesting storytelling and roleplay space to be explored. A good friend and fellow roleplay enthusiast invited me to play in his new D&D 5e campaign which opened the perfect opportunity to bring a DSS to the table and develop a deep character.

Class was my starting point for this character and that is about all I had. My objectives were simple: Build a DSS whose background and trajectory embraced the DSS concepts. No need to meta-build for combat, the DM is roleplay-heavy and his combat is forgiving. The DM also permitted me to bring anything in the official materials to the table and possibly to homebrew if needed (with collaboration). #freedom

Then came the hard part: who was I creating?

I didn’t name her until much later, but for the sake of this post I’ll start referring to my character as Kordicia [Kor-dee-see-ah] (she/her)

Choosing a theme or topic for a character can help flesh out a nuanced character. For external reasons that I’m not diving into here, I chose her theme to be “Identity”.

My character map starts to look a bit like the below graphic. I have Kordicia (Character), Identity (Topic/Theme), and Dungeons & Dragons (Setting). Between Kordicia and the Setting are questions that include, “Who is Kordicia as a D&D character?” Between Kordicia and the Topic are questions like “What’s her relationship with Identity?”. Between Identity and the Setting, “How does her Identity interact with the Setting?”

I don’t actually make makes like the graphic above while working on characters, the graphic is just to help illustrate the strategy. Every two things have an interaction. If you put four things on a map, you’d have 6 interactions. The number of interactions goes up quickly, so a map like this isn’t really great in practice.

Kordicia is a Divine Soul Sorcerer, a spell-casting class in Dungeons & Dragons with a connection to the divine that differentiates from Cleric or Paladin. And unlike a Warlock, Sorcerers are born with power; they draw it from within meaning they are entirely independent.

Kordicia is going to struggle with identity. She has no pact, school, oath, or domain to lean in on for identity. I don’t want to go too tragic, so I wanted to give her a decent/ good childhood and a feeling of belonging with just a hint of “otherness” that can be explored. I wanted to also have some of her identity challenges already resolved in her backstory so she felt three-dimensional on day one.

One more note regarding the class choice: The Xanathar’s Guide to Everything flavor text suggests that a DSS, because of their independence from any organization and their potential ancestral claims, is viewed as a threat to established hierarchies. The DM was going to love that (sarcasm).

Race: Winged Tiefling

Using the flavor text from the material, I figured a race with wings would be cool and flight speed is nice (I got this DM approved). I found the Winged Tiefling, a variant described in Sword Coast Adventurer’s Guide. Tiefling really feels like the obvious choice for the DSS and sometimes obvious is okay. Being a Tiefling in most D&D settings already comes with some identity challenges; people see the horns, eyes, and other attributes and sense your fiendish ancestry.

Later on in character design, I chose to go with feathered wings that look demonic. I’ll get into the why more in the background section.

Background: City Watch Investigator

Both choices of DSS and Tiefling put Kordicia into the “other” category in her world’s perspective. To offset this, I needed to have her part of an organization that was agnostic (no DSS conflict) and gave her purpose. I picked the Investigator variant of City Watch from Sword Coast Adventurer’s Guide. I asked the DM for the name of the largest city in his world that I could be from and stuck it in my notes: King’s Heart.

Turns out that the city is very diverse, including Tieflings, so I could lessen the isolation of her race in her background story. The adventure wasn’t going to be set in King’s Heart but the DM had an easy in for me: Investigating the murder of an important King’s Heart citizen living in another city.

The DM also approved a simple homebrew item that is essentially a variant of the Bullseye Lantern but can be lit using the Light cantrip and improved range (80/160). I essentially got Kordicia a magic flashlight which felt right for the premise. I think these are now standard-issued equipment for the City Watch in his homebrew world.

Kordicia: Bones & Flesh

So I’d gotten to that point where the top part of the sheet was mostly filled out. The DM doesn’t require alignment (a rule I like) but for the DSS, I did actually need to choose an alignment because it determines your “Affinity” spell. I was between Good, Law, and Neutrality but figured I’d come back to that.

At this point, I had some serious backstory to develop. The first question that came to mind was:

Why Did She Join the City Watch?

She would have been drawn to the sense of belonging and the identity provided by wearing the uniform. She might have been motivated by community service, justice, good pay, or power over others; this secondary motivation would point towards alignment.

I personally am motivated by community service and so decided to play into that. She would be a “good” aligned character. I decided that justice is an ideal as well.

Why Community Service

The meta reason doesn’t help me build her backstory, I needed an in-world reason. I gave her parents who were charitable in nature. It’s been a few months so I don’t remember exactly why but I decided that her mom was a Paladin and died on the battlefield when Kordicia was 15. Her mom was away a lot because of her oath so Kordicia was raised mostly by her dad. He was a mission worker focused on caring for the city’s poorest. Kordicia grew up helping the mission work and received an informal but thorough education from her father who was well educated.

Why Not Paladin?

I realized that she might have considered pursuing the path her mom did. I think she somewhat resented her mom’s oath. Kordicia’s divine connection was undeveloped but she still felt it, so I considered if she would have tried becoming a Cleric.

That put me on a strange path through the history of D&D lore. How does one become a Cleric? The materials don’t seem to have an official answer or there are multiple paths. Clearly, it’s unimportant to mechanics which means it’s creative space for me. Kordicia left home at 16 to try becoming a Cleric. “Try” is the keyword. A level 1 Cleric has a “Divine Domain”, so I figured there was a way of testing if the domain had stuck. She trained for 18 months, the expected timeframe, and failed to gain a Divine Domain. She kept training for another 3 months and retested. Again, failed.

Rumors swirled that the Life and Light Domain deity was rejecting her for her fiendish bloodline. This wasn’t 100% wrong… she wasn’t getting called on because the deity couldn’t for the reason of her inherited divine power.

How Did She Inherit Divine Power?

Neither Tiefling nor DSS requires that the genetic connection to the divine being be very immediate. The character’s great, great, great, great grandma might have rolled in the hay with a charming devil. While I was happy with her having two loving parents in her childhood, the “Doorstep Baby” trope with “Mysterious Parents” was also alluring. The good news was that I’d already established that her mom and dad were kind people, so I made it so she was abandoned at a temple and adopted by the parents who raised her.

Who are Her Biological Parents?

I’ve not answered in my backstory who her biological parents are. Have I said this before? Sometimes intentional empty space in the narrative should be kept, especially in a collaborative medium like tabletop roleplaying.

However, I’ve created some hooks to work from. First off, I chose feathered wings that are off-white to give an angelic vibe. The wings have sharp points and she has horns, so that points towards fiend blood. She has pale-white skin, red eyes, and light-gray hair. She’s clearly a mix of fiend and celestial.

Finally, What is She Like?

I might have leaned in on the detective noir, Dresden, Constantine cliches a bit hard. Kordicia drinks distilled spirits and is hardboiled. She’s got manacles and will arrest when possible, but she’s also willing to kill when needed. She’s now level 4 and has Command and Suggestion to aid with arrest and de-escalation. She’s a mix of utility, healing, area control, and a bit of offense.

Kordicia also has a fraught relationship with religion, people of faith, and anything in the divine realm. She made quick friends with a Monk who shares a community service background. She quickly butt heads with a cleric she viewed as performing a pompous ceremony when labor was what the refugees needed. She just recently spoke poorly about a god adored by dozens in the room because that god had been “sleeping”.

Kordicia does not make friends wherever she goes. If they don’t mind the horns, they probably don’t like her black-and-white view of the world. She speaks her mind. She respects authority she sees as being proactive to help people and is quick to judge others. Kordicia will be a threat to the established hierarchy even if she has no divine claim. She will light someone on fire one round and heal someone in the next. She is an intelligent investigator and an empathetic comrade. Kordicia is badass.

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