All it took was one picture in the Player's Handbook.
Alyssa's table
Back when my wife Angela and I owned a spin studio, one of our instructors, Aimee, brought a friend named Alyssa to class. Alyssa caught me at the front desk afterward and said, "Hey, I hear you DM. I've never played, but I bought the core books and I'm super interested." I've been running D&D for years, so that was all I needed to hear. Say less.
A little while later the group met up at Vigilant Bar in Austin for a session zero, the first night of what became Taking D&D for a Spin!. Everyone built their characters, and Alyssa's wild magic sorcerer, Yssala, was the heart of the table from the start.
The inspiration
Alyssa designed Yssala on Hero Forge, working straight from the Wild Magic Sorcery art in the 2024 Player's Handbook.
The details she wanted
The purple sword came from the summoned bound weapon spell in Skyrim, the blade you can conjure on the fly (reference). She also wanted a touch of necromantic power, which is where the skull comes in.
I ended up homebrewing a small rule around that blade: she can conjure it as part of casting True Strike, which normally needs a separate weapon already in hand. It was too good a compromise to pass up.
Painting it
I tried to match the Player's Handbook picture as closely as I could on the Hero Forge mini. I really like how the face turned out. I think it's my best attempt yet at painting makeup on a tiny, tiny face lol.
The orange highlights were some of the trickier work. Keeping them in a clean straight line was tough, because the book art has that detail on the vest but the Hero Forge sculpt had no texture there to mark off a separate section. I ended up freehanding the whole thing, and I'm glad with how it came out.
The basing
I also really liked the basing on this one, even if it does hide some of her feet from the angle in the photo. Army Painter sells a cut grass flock: you paint a little Elmer's glue onto the base, dip it into the loose fiber, and it makes a really cool grass effect. Her shoes, which you can see in some of the working shots, only really show when you look at the mini from the top down.