Bad Dog
In case you were wondering what happened to the cute puppy from Antipaladin’s last appearance, never fear. He’s gone to a g̶o̶o̶d̶ bad home. Puppies and evil are only tangential to today’s discussion though. What I’d really like to talk about is characters struggling against their own natures.
As you may have noticed, Antipaladin has a hard time being evil for evil’s sake. That’s his shtick after all. It’s also an interesting way to tackle character development. So often when we sit down to roll up a new PC, we concentrate on the end-of-arc version of the hero. This monk will avenge his master. My barbarian will claim her birthright as chieftain. My mage will pursue power at any cost. We picture the ultimate triumph of our characters because we empathize with them. We inhabit them as alter egos, and so begin to conceptualize their goals as our own. There’s not anything wrong with that per se. Immersion is great, and gods know I chase that dragon myself all the time. Consider the benefits of stepping back though. What happens when we design characters from the other end of the character arc?
Maybe that monk will only avenge his master after a bout of drunken depression. Perhaps your barbarian needs to do some slumming before taking her throne. That mage of yours may strive to save his soul, fighting his baser impulses for most of a campaign before surrendering to the dark side. In each case, I submit that these characters are interesting because of the journey rather than the destination. Designing PCs this way—at the bottom of their arc rather than the top—can add longevity to your PCs. And if you do live to triumph, it will make it all the sweeter.
On to today’s discussion question: When you’re rolling up a new PC, do you try and leave room for character development or do you prefer playing your concept straight out of the box? Have you ever realized your PC had nowhere left to grow? Let’s hear your tales of internal struggle and striving heroes in the comments!
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Its around 50/50 for me. For example my bard, cleric, and ranglock characters were more at the beginning of their stories, while my clardlock, necro wizard, and goliath ranger were more at the end of their arcs.
Which were easier to play? Did your end-of-arc dudes have a tough time becoming three dimensional?
Besides my goliath ranger possibly, that was my first character since i got back into table top games so my memory is a tad bit fuzzy and i might be wrong, i would say its indeed harder to make them feel fully fleshed out.
When I created my first pathfinder character, I added something for the DM to use whenever for development.
The character ran away from home, and his dad is a high-ranking member of the empire. As well as a half-dragon. He ran away because he was sick of politics. But now he’s also terrified of dragons, because any dragon could’ve been sent by his family to find him.
Help me follow your thought process here. Is it the half-dragon afraid of dragons thing? Is that the internal struggle you were banking on?
The character’s dad is a half dragon. He’s a quarter-dragon effectively. He’s afraid of dragons because of his dad.
So in 5E terms what subclass is AntiPaladin? Oath of Conquest, Oath of Vengeance? OathBreaker? That UA Oath of Treachery that was basically designed to be a wrestling heel but got abandoned by the designers?
Also; does the dog have a name?
Dude doesn’t have a 5e equivalent. Same way Warlock doesn’t have a Pathfinder equivalent.
Honestly, I regret putting Warlock behind the pay wall as a Handbook of Erotic Fantasy thing. That’s the only class that really says “Look at me I’m 5e.” Everything else seems to be a subclass, which is kind of hard to work into Handbook-World given our “there’s only one of each class” gimmick. I’ll have to see about reaching into Unearthed Arcana for other options.
As for the pup, check the scroll-over text.
Warlock as we know it is actually from 4E. (With origins in a 3X splat, but that one is so far removed from the 4/5E Warlock that it’s a different beast)
Thematically (If not mechanically, I don’t know how MathFinder witches work) you could argue that Witch is a Warlock.
It’s weird that you don’t have a Warlock considering they’ve been core in the 2 most recent editions, as opposed to Sorcerers who were thrown into 3X as a last-minute afterthought, weren’t core in 4th, and were made core again in 5th as opposed to something that fills more of a unique space like the Warlord.
Here’s the UA that introduced the Oath of Treachery:
https://media.wizards.com/2016/dnd/downloads/UAPaladin_SO_20161219_1.pdf
It owes its’ design to the original fan Anti-Paladin from Dragon Magazine back in the AD&D days. I have no idea if that’s anything like PF AP.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3_olkV4g75c
Warlocks can actually be found in 2e as a Wizard variant in Player’s Option: Spells & Magic.
https://www.tribality.com/2016/10/20/the-warlock-class-part-zero/
3.X splat is Complete Arcana
Mm, when I make a PC, I generally start with ‘what race are they’, ‘where are they from’, ‘what’s their goal’, ‘what’s the defining trait of their personality’, and ‘what are they good at and weak at’. Not necessarily in that order.
On the subject of evil…I’ve been sitting on an idea for an evil character recently; race and class aside, their goal is a fairly neutral ‘become a legendary magical beast hunter’. How his evil manifests is that in his worldview, common ordinary people, regular monsters, et-cetera, don’t matter at all; he’ll be civil, even kind, to his fellow PCs, the king, some people with a lot of money or noteworthy abilities, but he thinks nothing of robbing the homes of peasants, killing guards or servants who stand in his way, practising new techniques or spells on innocents, or capturing and torturing foes for his own amusement (“I think I can get it to scream in A# if I do this…”).
Rather than making a conscious choice to be villainous, it’s ingrained in his psyche that except for a few ‘main characters’, people are…not really people, just things to be toyed with. Like the various mooks and random monsters and one-line villagers you’d encounter in an RPG, there’s nothing wrong with torturing and slaughtering them in inventive ways or ransacking their houses for cool treasure.
Things like the cleric giving money to the poor would really confuse him, because “But why? Are you going to hang around to see what happens?”
I think that your ‘what’s their goal’ and ‘what’s the defining trait of their personality’ points are intertwined in terms of this discussion. The dude wants to be a hunter of legendary beasts, but he also has a superiority complex. I would suggest that, if you wanted to add a bit of complexity to his arc, this character could start off with an inferiority complex. What would this guy be like at level 1, getting beat up by street thugs and rabid wolves? As he levels up, he’ll slowly become mechanically superior to more and more monsters and NPCs. In effect, he’s got to earn his sense of superiority.
I think this guy could make an interesting character either way, but there’s a bit more depth to the character if you put “looks down on everyone who isn’t a god” on a shelf and come to that defining personality trait through the course of play. As a bonus, he’ll be a likable underdog at the beginning of the game, and only turn into the “can we still adventure with this psycho?” evil character once he’s already got in good with the rest of the party.
Depending on whether you want the character to develop out of that trait, you may want to go a bit further and play the character as legitimately suffering from something like psychopathy which could manifest in exactly this way of “not seeing anyone else as a real person”.
Admittedly, that route won’t be for everyone, nor every group, and it will run headlong into a “does illness equate to evil alignment” question, so it’s one to really ensure everyone’s on board with first. I can also see parallels to real world issues such as historical treatment of leprosy, so it could be interesting to explore.
(In my head, this could be an interesting look into a character who is “Good” and genuinely thinks they are helping and doing the right thing, but actually committing Evil acts because they don’t actually understand what Good means. Or vice versa, a character determined to be carpet chewing Evil but who doesn’t commit truly Evil acts because they don’t see other people as worth actually bothering with)
I once had a concept for an Evil character whose goal was to become rich and famous, and she had concluded that the best way to do that would be to become a powerful adventurer and save the world from stuff. Her evilness manifests itself in the fact that she does “good” things for purely selfish reasons. The advantage of this approach is that even if she is Chaotic Evil, she can still work with the party without sabotaging the other players, and even attempt to save their lives and stuff, because they are assets that are useful to her. Thus I get over a common hurdle with Evil PCs in that they are terrible team players. The downside is that it’s quite possible that since she believes it is in her interests to act Good most of the time (at least in front of other people), then in practice she might not end up looking any different from a Good or Neutral.
Though I have always dreamed of this character running into the following situation:
Antagonistic Antipaladin: “Ahaha! I have you now, hero! Smite Good!”
My Character: “Smite this.” stabs
Was she ever at risk of accidentally becoming good? That’s the sort of internal conflict that sparks my interest as a GM.
I had a character I was starting to play in the FFG Star Wars RPG that was like this. She was looking to start her own smuggling company/band of neer-do-wells. She was very charismatic (eventually going to become a duelist) and extremely anti-slavery, despite the fact her family (all of them Twi’leks) made quite a bit of money in the trade.
This situation is why I can never take Antipaladins seriously. They are supposed to be the evilest and most despicable guys around, but the whole “equal and opposite to a Paladin” thing ruins it. How am I supposed to take a guy seriously when, if he does a single not-dickish thing, he has to go beg for forgiveness from his boss or risk being stripped of all of his powers. Good and Evil just don’t function in an equal-but-opposite manner.
In the Shadowfire setting, which I mentioned creating before, there’s a bit of backstory where the lich villain at the center of the backstory created a giant army, and his most elite forces were the Antipaladin Corps, composed of, well, Antipaladins. During the Great War, the Antipaladin Corps faced off against a roughly equally-sized task force of Paladins and were torn apart, because the Paladins could use effective teamwork and healing, and the Antipaladins couldn’t.
Evil may triumph because Good is dumb, but Good will triumph because Evil is a terrible team player.
I’ve never seen an Antipaladin in play, but I’ve got to think that they’re less cartoonish in practice. Healing an ally sounds like a neutral act to me, you know? Self-interest and all that.
Personally, I like the image of an Antipaladin struggling against temptation. Sentiment-is-weakness type stuff. To me that’s a better mirror to the paladin struggle.
I assume that Antipaladins in practice are more like Sith – they can have teams and stuff, but the fact that their powers literally come from dickishness makes backstabbing and infighting a serious problem. If you focus on the definition of evil as selfishness, then Antipaladins are likely motivated by a desire to be “strong,” and are willing to sacrifice anything to get to that point. After all, if you have a philosophy of “the strong have the right to do whatever they want”, then you’d want to be as strong as possible. The most interesting character thing you could do with an Antipaladin is to focus on WHY they ended up that way. Were they a victim who decided “Never again”? Do they believe that the “strong take advantage of the weak” thing is just how the world works, and therefore they need to account for it? Perhaps there’s even a twisted Greater Good thing going on – for the species to improve, the weak must be stomped out, and the strong sacrificing to protect the weak is just weakening everyone as a whole. Lots of interesting possibilities, if you do it right. I mainly mock the class because on the surface it seems so cartoonishly ridiculous.
Also, for the record, the Antipaladin Corps were willing to heal each other, but unless they are undead, Antipaladins lack the natural healing abilities of Lay on Hands/Channel Positive Energy that regular Paladins have, so mechanically speaking, Paladins are better at healing.
A lot of my characters I like to start with an overall concept and then build from there. My favorite character that I’ve played in some time in DnD was my LN Duskblade/Hexblade follower of Weejas. She did the standard muder hobo stuff, but carried a scythe and wore lots of black and red. A lot of folks assumed she was evil even when she was doing good acts. It was an interesting challenge to play a character who was seeking knowledge, and bringing justice, and really REALLY hated the undead, but looked like some kind of anti-paladin/bringer of doom.
Eventually she became the only member of the party who was still around to finish the quest to bring back a cure for the poison that had the king in a coma. Along the way she built some strong friendships, and became a mentor for a young woman who would become a guard sergeant. In many ways she was like the demon huntress in Diablo III.
I think playing characters without growth is really boring. Or trying to prevent character growth/change no matter the odds. Those types of people are few and far between in the real world!
Emergent narrative in action. Always fun to see. 🙂
I tend to strike something of a middle ground, by giving my characters an objective that will take time to accomplish, and an occupation directly related to that, that guide their act early on. For example, my Witch was searching for her mother, and so she joined a group of mercenaries. The whole travelling around to find job thing mercenaries do was perfect to look for someone, and it gave her something to do right now since, well, it’s her job now, and she has to do it well.
Another character liked nature and her motivation could mostly be summarized as “want to see cool stuff”. So she was working as a guide.
That way, I have room for character development (how that job is working for the character? How does the character react to the campaign’s event? etc) and still have a clear goal to work toward.
It works for me at least.
I like that guide idea. I often struggle with ways to flesh out nature-themed characters since they seem like natural loners to me. Wanderlust is a solid hook for the type.
You can give your characters a job that involves people to avoid that. Guide is one, but you could also have a rescuer for example, or simply a ranger that trains others.
Another choice is a researcher of some kind. Like an entomologist. Go out in the field, find some cool bugs, then go back to civilization and discuss your findings with your colleagues.
As long as you have an occupation that involves interacting with people, the “natural loner” aspect shouldn’t come up I think.
On the actual subject at hand, I have many times mentioned the completely natural evolution/character development that my Magus, Bellona (my first PC ever) has gone through, reinforced by mechanics, no less. Her starting backstory was that she had been raised and trained to be a heroic knight (by the order of knights who found her as an orphan), but had screwed up badly and exiled herself until she could do enough heroism to restore her reputation. However, as an explanation for how she ended up a prisoner of the goblins the other PCs were fighting (how the character was introduced), I explained that she had tried to fight them single-handedly, and gotten wrecked. So there’s room for character development right there. Then, due to a combination of terrible rolls and poor AC (STR-based light armor character) she consistently got the crap beaten out of her. This continued until I got a good understanding of Spell Combat and resolved a combat with half of the kills. From there I got Mirror Image, Snake Style and Displacement, shifting from a damage-dealer to a damage-absorber, capable of withstanding enormous numbers of attacks. Bellona also evolved from a combat-aggressive hothead (she once pursued a fleeing enemy way WAY ahead of the rest of the party) into a more thoughtful and responsible de facto team leader, creating plans, motivating other PCs, getting new recruits up to speed and keeping everybody focused. She unlocked the power of Focus (how I characterize the bloodrage from her level of Bloodrager – a brief burst of adrenaline that lets her push herself to the edge of her physical limits) and gained religious faith in Milani, the goddess of hope. In summary, though mechanics, roleplaying and my own evolution as a player, Bellona has gone from an impulsive, violent teenager wanting to be a hero for selfish reasons to a smarter fighter, wiser leader and more mature person overall. And I love her for it.
I love how much you tied combat to character in this character. So many people struggle with the “combat starts, RP stops” issue, so it’s nice to hear about a first-time player nailing it.
Well, it probably helped that the character development of “become better at the game” naturally links with a first-time player’s path. Bellona has 12 WIS and uses two different types of sword – she has no business being a Snake Style build (though she still gets 25+1d20 on Sense Motive now). Her 16 CON barely gives her any business with Bloodrager levels. If I was building this character concept from the ground up with what I know now, I’d never put her together this way. But the thing is… she works. She works, not because I planned her that way, but because she GREW that way. And having a character grow alongside you is an amazing experience.
I spend a fair amount of time helping new players build characters, and I sometimes wonder if I’m depriving them of a part of the experience by doing that. I mean, I try to help them figure out what they want their character to be and then give them mechanics options to do that, and I’ve never been against doing something cool over something optimal… It may be my love of learning systems, researching all the pieces, taking them apart and then putting them together in weird ways that let me get this experience. I mean, what normal player looks at their struggling Magus and says “I know what this needs – a Bloodrager level and Snake Style!”?
I always try to do some character development. Once in Godbound my death-bound god was searching for some people, it looked like random people, and he simply killed them on sight. Then one of the last of his unknown list appears and drama follows when his dark and troubled past and his dark and troubled nature are not enough to make he kill that one last guy, his brother.
More like the case of antipaladin was other of the characters i once make. I make this guy like any other of my characters, then i have an idea, instead of make a lot of other people suffer for his actions i make this guy with the idead of making him suffer for his actions. I speak with the GM and together we give my character a list of things to do, and objectives to accomplish them. Nothing strange here, until my character discover that to achieve the things he wanted he needed to do a lot of nasty and counterproductive things. He dropped the girl he loved and who loved him so he can get revenge, after saving her from some evil noble. He duels and kills his master to save his own apprentice, then the apprentice reveal to be demon in disguise. This character, Gustav i think, was like antipaladin, he was not a evil guy, not in the hearth, maybe devious, amoral and nasty, but not evil, he used to have good intentions, but the universe, and the GM and me, keep him making useless sacrifices to get what he wanted. Playing this guy was a lot, if highly masochistic, fun. We take the Law of Equivalent Exchange and dangled it just in the face of this guy. We make him a cosmic plaything, and keep him struggling between what he wanted and what he needed to do. So much fun, so much drama, Wizard would have loved to meet my character.
I think you would get on well with Laurel as a GM:
https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/drama
Cool of you to talk that mess out with a GM ahead of time. I think it’s always a good idea to discuss possible paths for a character to make sure development goes in a mutually interesting direction.
We, the GM and me, talked that ahead of time, not only to prepare things, also to not take all the spotlight of the other players. I did things, we did things and he even throw a surprise or two at me. Rereading the old drama comics, we were us, the GM and me, who would have say “Best day ever” poor Gus would be getting a bottle of false hope thinking that this time things would go differently. Hahahaha, my little cosmic plaything 🙂
Also good to hear of you, i was worrying.
Prepping to move across the country. Apologies if my response time is below the usual two-minute mark. 😛
What ever became of Gus? He seems like the sort of guy that got BAD ENDING.
Do you remember Fullmetal Alchemist? The Protagonist, Edward, loose an arm and a leg. Gustav would have say about him; “Lucky bastard”. That say my little cosmic thing dosen’t have a that bad ending. By the time the campaign was ending he have already earned a semi-unjust name for being a backstabbing dick. He died when a girl that the party was protecting gets fatally wound, he give her his own heart, so she can live and told her to never let anyone to say that Gus never have done any good for nobody. Kinda sad ending, but good ending anyway.
Nice. Seems like a suitably dramatic way to go. I think that Wizard would approve.
Hmmm. I’m a bit all over the place when it comes to designing characters.
Some are “I was just a normal dude yesterday before all this mess started”, some are at various places in an arc (though I don’t tend to think about “arcs” per say but I’m sure if I bothered and tried that’s what I’d certainly find).
I’m actually playing a Blades in the Dark game where I’m the sole player playing four characters and each one is on a different part of their “arc”. One is simultaneously fresh off the boat as it were while also being part way through a different kind of arc. One is at the start of “I have a goal, let’s get to that”. One is right in the middle of things. And one effectively already ended a major arc in their story and what’s going on in the game now is their answer to “now what?”
For that last character, is there any sense that you lost out on something interesting by completing their arc? Or is the “now what” phase as compelling as the original conflict?
None at all. They play a much more interesting role in the party dynamics as a result. And it’s good to have a relatively “stable” character (in terms of what they’re trying to do, not personality per say) to direct the others instead of having the typical party dynamic of every character trying to pull things in their own direction.
Of course for me it’s always more about the character interactions (with other PCs or NPCs, both are great) or enjoying the events as they play out than it is about going out of my way to try to make some kind of particular story play out with a character. If a character doesn’t have some big goal, I just enjoy the nuances of them rather than the big stuff.
So I suppose the lesson might be, “Have an arc in mind, but don’t tie yourself to it.” In the same way that GM notes always have an asterisk saying, “Throw this away when they go off the rails,” knowing a direction for your PC and then giving it all up seems like the same sort of move players need to make from time to time.
Who knows what evil lies behind Patches the Unkicked’s cute facade. At best, puppies are Chaotic Neutral and at worst Psychotic Terrier (really should be an alignment jk).
A buddy of mine is running a Dungeons: The Dragoning oneshot. I’ve been struggling for a suitably ridiculous character concept. I think he search may be over. :3
I have to admit all of my Characters are rather Static, they won’t change much over the Course of a Campaign. They might grow here and there, change some Habit, learn a few new Tricks, (or Life lessons), but generally they stay more or less the same.
For me it’s the little things. For example there was that one Time where my Wizard got saved by his Familiar alerting the Party that when he was trapped by a Madman, who tried to build him into a Wall!
He wasn’t paricularly Cruel to his Familiar, but he also wasn’t nice to him. (He pretty much Orderd him around like a Servant.)
After that he bought his Familiar a Barrel of Booze, and since then always keeps a bit of Alcohol handy for his Familiar.
It’s not that they are now best Friends or something, but since then my Wizard has gained some Respect for his Familiar.
It wasn’t like the Order of the Stick where Varsuuvius and his Raven eventually grew into buds. But my Wizard and his Spider, now have a somewhat healthy Workrelationship. (In Essence, my Wizard is now a resonable Boss, who treats his Familiar like an Employ.)
My Characters kinda never had any great Arcs for them, only Expierences that changed them a tiny bit.
Hm, might be because i am a rather Static Person myself, who only slowly adapts to new things.
Well hey, if it works for you it’s all good. If you wanted to make the shift a bit more extreme, you could parlay that wizard’s familiar experience into a broader “my lessers are also worth of respect” theme. A few quests helping abused peasants resist tyrannical lords and you’ve got a new motivation on your hands. Maybe the wizard even begins looking into gaining a lordship himself because “the little people ought to have a wise ruler.” Lots of directions to go with that!
Damn, why didn’t i think of that. Thanks.
I usually have a goal in mind, but I’m willing to have some character development in between but I don’t actively pursue it.Instead if the circumstances present a compelling enough reason,I allow it to happen.
I was playing a CN Barbarian out to get revenge on the evil empire who destroyed his father’s kingdom. So ostensibly I was on the side of good, but my way of helping was… explosion inducing. I’d use my immense strength to carry around barrels of explosives and detonate them once we were done raiding enemy castles, intent on reducing the empire into a pile of ashes…. which didn’t sit well with my allies who wanted to be the rulers of the new empire once they beat the evil out of it. Our DM who knew of certain.. tastes… that I had provided a chance for character development by making one of the evil generals have a little daughter who refused to leave the castle, making a last stand with her guards. I’d either have to blow up a little girl along with the castle or give up… I gave up.
I threw the explosive into the sky, and so moved by my gesture the little girl joined us and she kinda became my moral compass. Instead of lugging around barrels of explosives, I had a little girl on my shoulder. The DM was lucky that he knew I was a lolicon. Eventually I did have my revenge on the empire, but not by blowing it up. The little girl became the empress, and parceled out lands to the other PCs, while I became her guardian turning NG in the process and losing my Barbarian powers. It wasn’t the original outcome I had planned for, but I was happy with it.
Here’s to alignment changes!
It kinda’ depends. I have two approaches to character design, but the most common one is best summarized like this:
“Huh, y’know what would be cool, is if I could make a character that ”
From THERE, I think about how to do it mechanically, and then I think about what sort of person would make “cool thing” their primary deal. My brawling Elemental Ascetic wound up being an orphan-turned-bandit who upset EVERYONE’S preconception of what a Kineticist is by playing more as a Rogue with powerful telekinesis with a little bit of Fist of the North Star flavor thrown in (he had a feat that made all unarmed attacks cause bleeding and had Deathwatch Eyes, so if anyone he punched was in critical condition, he’d loudly proclaim that they were already dead).
But also as an artist, sometimes I’m making a game version of a character I’ve already created, and it’s matter of fitting the character concept to how a game system handles those concepts.
Nope. I think you pretty much nailed it: https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/original-character
I know how you mean, but no one at the table saw it coming.
However, if I’d have done an avatar inspired bender, they’d have seen THAT coming from a mile away.
Hey, there’s nothing wrong with templating off of an existing character. The real trick is growing and expanding beyond the initial shtick, which is what this comic is all about.
What direction do you picture this kineticist developing in?
I feel like my characters start at the bottom or as part of a longer journey concept (e.g. getting better and better at telekinetic powers)…and then I get bored between sessions and start thinking about the top, middle, and occasionally the mechanics of how the hell a sapient Reflection made of ice, shadow, and illusion magic can be affected by Medicine checks anyway.
And then sometimes I realize that my first player character I played for multiple sessions could make a great endgame BBEG if I just took my ideas for her arc and then tweaked some things…