A hat screams at you about D&D and how to make it weird.
Pointy Hat (also known as Antonio Demico) is an artist and YouTube creator, focusing on Dungeons & Dragons. He specializes in creating homebrew content, with the specific purpose of giving it a twist that feels fresh within the constraints of the game, hence the name of his first and most prominent show, "D&D with a Twist". Other series he's known for include:
- "Tip of the Hat", which provides advice to both DMs and Players on how to make the game itself more enjoyable and fresh (essentially, "D&D with a Twist" applied to D&D itself).
- "Which Lich", which focuses exclusively on liches, making a powerful undead monster based on each class.
- "Drag-On Race", which is the same concept as Which Lich, but with dragons.
, his Twitter page can be found here, and his Twitch channel can be found here.Tropes:
- Berserk Button: Alignment rules, or as the Hat calls it, "my dread nemesis". He sees them as restrictive and limiting roleplay. Dragons in official D&D lore have a similar treatment - not helped by them being part of the title - but he has now the Drag-On series.
- Foreshadowing: Watch for the word itself flashing in the background of the video to try and figure out the upcoming twist.
- Knight Templar: From his Cleric video, Mercedes is the devout leader of the Church of the All-Seer, dedicated to eliminating corruption wherever it hides through any means necessary. It just so happens that those means usually involve torture.
- Non-Human Sidekick: Inverted. Pointy, the living hat, refers to his real life self, Antonio, as his "Human Familiar."
- Our Liches Are Different: The point of "Which Lich" is to brainstorm a lich based on each player class. Hat lists a few necessary criteria for what makes a proper D&D lich: they have to deliberately choose being undead, they have to perform a ritual in order to become a lich, they need a phylactery, and they have to be an active villain to does villainous things in order to remain an immortal lich (ie, not sitting on a throne all day waiting for the heroes to defeat them). His list so far:
- Artificer: The Necromaton is defined by their phylactery, a robotic vessel constructed by the would-be-lich that would eventually house their immortal soul and a biological component necessary to anchor them in lichdom. Even as a Mechanical Abomination capable of creating more machines to act as their backup vessels, they remain bound by the need for flesh to remain a lich, and since flesh decays faster than steel, this leads them to regularly hunt victims as raw materials to continue staving off death.
- Barbarian: The Scourge is a warrior who pledged to their pact of lichdom by becoming entirely driven by anger and hate, eternally stuck in a blinding, searing rage that destroys their mortal body but still persists when they become undead. Their phylactery is anyone who themselves have a violent hate towards the lich — most likely survivors of their wrath desperately seeking revenge — always ensuring that even if slain, the lich will live on in the hearts of the wrathful.
- Bard: The Intoner achieves immortality in part through their Magnum Opus, an arcane song that is spread to be remembered by those who hear it, with those who hear it themselves becoming a phylactery ensuring the lich never dies. Upon becoming a lich, however, they become unable to perform the Magnum Opus ever again, and thus have to rely on the living to continue spreading it around, maintaining the Bard's metaphorical and very literal longevity.
- Druid: The Blight is a Druid so committed to protecting the natural world that they literally become one with it in order to impose retribution on those seeking its destruction. From the ritual initiating them into lichdom, their phylactery is not a single object, but a place that becomes known as the Death Bloom, the ever-expanding consciousness of lich and landscape working together to spread its influence while infesting, corrupting, and eventually destroying those who oppose it.
- Fighter: The Death March originated as an ancient warrior who has slain countless lives before claiming his own, and continues slaying greater foes even in undeath. Playing into the militaristic aspect of Fighters, The Death March amasses an army of the undead by conscripting those they have have bested in combat, subsequently making any one of them the lich's potential phylactery, and thus making the "lich" a massive collective of the undead constantly searching for new members.
- Ranger: The Carrion Hunter consists of a Ranger who pair-bonds with an animal companion as they complete an extensive hunting ritual together, culminating in them claiming their final marks: each other. Not only do they both become liches, they also become each other's phylacteries, enabling them to remain as an immortal hunting duo that will never truly be alone for long.
- Sorcerer: The Hierarch takes the notion of Sorcerers being defined by their bloodline to an extreme, undergoing an arduous ritual to bind their very souls to their blood, and thus transferring a part of their soul directly into their descendants, making them walking phylacteries and puppets. While the lich's power will diminish over generations, they rectify this by fostering a chosen heir and focusing all their magic potential into them before usurping their body and starting the bloodline anew.
- Running Gag: A few.
- From earlier episodes: He. Hates. DRAGONS!! No, he will not make a dragon video, stop asking!
- Mentions of the Shadowfell are usually accompanied by a suddennote music change.
- Many Unusual Euphemisms he uses to not get demonetized by YouTube make consistent appearances across videos.
- Voluntary Shapeshifting: Pointy seems to be able to shift his form at will, from merely making his eye look different to changing his colors to even growing new extremeties, like a tail and horns for his Devil form, or Angel wings and a halo for his Angel form.
Mmmmmmwah!
