Epic Motivation
At long last, I can divulge the secrets of the Patreon poll that precipitated Paladin’s quest. You can check the full results right here, but the important bit is this: When asked how Paladin should go about squaring his Lawful Stupid alignment with a morally gray world, our Quest Givers settled on the following option: “Embark on a quest for demigod status so that he can make his own paladin code.” And boy-howdy am I glad it went that way! That’s because of a little concept called “epic motivation.”
Today’s rant is in keeping with last week’s Exalted theme. That’s where my use of “epic motivation” originates, and it’s something that’s proven useful even beyond the borders of Creation. Lemme quote the source so that we’re all on the same page:
Most mortals have relatively mundane and unexceptional Motivations such as “become wealthy,” “marry someone nice and have a happy family,” or “live a quiet life on a tropical island.” Celestial Exalted are Chosen specifically because they have the seeds of greatness within them. The Chosen of the Sun (and all other Celestial Exalted) cannot have mundane or pedestrian Motivations—by their very nature, Celestial Exalted are epic heroes, and their goals must be similarly epic.
The idea is to pick a goal with the potential to redefine the setting. Maybe you want to kill a deity. Perhaps you’ll become the defender of an entire nation. Or end slavery everywhere. Or steal the very stars from the sky. It’s all possible, and it’s all the correct scale.
One of the best epic motivations I’ve seen at the table was Laurel’s spectacled owl lunar. She wanted to help every last one of the traumatized demigods in the setting live healthy, well-adjusted lives. In addition to diplomancing all an sundry, she set about creating a franchise of supernatural spas for the purpose. (Nothing says your goal has to be achievable, after all.)
Real-world mythology has examples for us too. Snorri Sturluson tells us The Tale of Utgarda-Loki. There our heroic Asgardians have to out-eat wildfire, race against thought, drink the ocean, and wrestle old age (among other challenges). Not even Thor can complete such ludicrous tasks, and that impossibility is the point. It’s the attempt that’s heroic.
Whether you’re shooting for the epic-level fantasy of Exalted or the human-scale heroics of D&D‘s level-1 adventures, you still need a reason to go out and be a hero. It’s your primary goal, and it ought to take many sessions worth of struggle to accomplish (if it’s possible at all). No doubt this isn’t what Paladin wants to hear right now. But if he’s going to try and rise to the pantheon, he’s going to need to set his expectations accordingly.
So how about it Handbook-World? What is your PC’s epic motivation? We’re looking for stuff that’s a bit beyond “fortune and glory” here. If your current character could do literally anything, what would it be? Outrace the sun? Become their own warlock patron? Unlock the secrets of immortality? Whatever the big-ticked IMPOSSIBLE THING happens to be, tell us all about it down in the comments! And if you don’t have one, get in the spirit of the thought experiment and make one up! You just might be surprised at the new directions it can take your campaign.
GET YOUR SCHWAG ON! Want a piece of Handbook-World to hang on you wall? Then you’ll want to check out the “Hero” reward tier on the The Handbook of Heroes Patreon. Each monthly treasure haul will bring you prints, decals, buttons, bookmarks and more! There’s even talk of a few Handbook-themed mini-dungeons on the horizon. So hit the link, open up that treasure chest, and see what loot awaits!
Well, well, well…
Maybe Big Purple isn’t a huge jerk and she didn’t nerf Paladin’s powers. (She looks a lot prettier in close-up, by the way.)
Maybe it was his inner conflict.
Well played!
Paladin loosing powers because of self doupt and not actual alingment violation… oh boy, we’ll only have the fanatics left as representatives for the class. Oh well that’s what Oath of Redemption is for… or just go for conquest or vengeance and burn the heretic.
> She looks a lot prettier in close-up, by the way.
Y’know, “Deity whose skin is the night sky” is a time-honored classic, but I’d never seen stars used so effectively as freckles before!
Yeah, it has been since the days of Nut, at least.
The use of star-freckles is nice and fresh, though! Props to Laurel.
Laurel has a thing for freckles. She still likes to talk about her ghost-blooded character who was stabbed to death in the face by a pen:
https://www.deviantart.com/fishcapades/art/Pen-Sketch-78101788
What are the gods if not an externalization of human conflict?
What is the fantasy genre, for that matter?
I have a Blood Hunter who dreams of removing the concept of Undeath from existence. She’ll settle for killing as many Undead as she can find though.
I wonder if there’s a way to do that? Can you edit a portfolio from the pantheon?
I imagine you can. I mean, obviously every pantheon will have a god of fingles. But it’s said that there are realities where the creators simply forgot to include fingles altogether, and yet sapient (kinda) life still muddles along somehow. So their pantheons will be missing one of the key portfolios, just because no one knows it ought to exist.
(Apologies to Terry Prachett)
It’s too early and it’s been too long since I read that one. Thought you’d made a typo, then though I was having a stroke.
My Rogue: Become a Genie Noble–> Create infinite wealth, food, and wine, grant wishes, have a massive mansion full of magical beings to serve your every whim, then never be in it the darned thing because you’re off showing off your powers. …While simultaneously remaining a halfling, because why change perfection.
My Cleric: Complete every trial of every hero and monster-slayer of Greek Mythology (without dying tragically, of course), thus proving that he is the equal of all of them and truly the greatest hero to ever seek Zeus’ attention. …and marry a princess and become king by his own hand, because most of the top Greek heroes do that, too.
My Assassin/Bounty Hunter: Kill all evil gods, everywhere. (This would presumably make most of the more meddlesome good deities less annoying, too, as they’d have nothing to wage war against.)
My multi-classed Bartender: Make. Everyone. Happy.
You know…in D&D, only the last one is impossible.
Actually, I take it back—the last one is technically possible in letter by killing a LOT of people to reduce the size of “Everyone.” Not in spirit though.
I always wondered if the genies get sick of all the wealth and luxury. Like… At what point does wishcraft become tacky? Or is there a special premium placed on “real” goods?
Never actually played the character, but I had a concept for an Abyssal Exalted who was going to deal with the Neverborn problem… basically, he wanted to apply the principals of exorcism on grand scale, to the Neverborn themselves.
I figured that this would basically require developing absolute mastery of necromancy, finding allies who could provide similar mastery of sorcery (presumably Solar or Infernal Exalted), maybe involve some powerful Fair Folk, etc. It would have been a justification for pretty much any action within the setting, and turning things upside down in a way that would create endless opportunity for other PCs of almost any kind.
Sadly, like many such epic concepts, I’m unlikely to ever have a chance to play them… and honestly, would struggle to live up to such a monumental goal.
My buddy once defeated a Neverborn with Zeal. Convinced the big lug that Creation had been destroyed, thus releasing its fetters. Always thought that was a pretty good use of the “you do the thing” charm.
My drow cleric’s ultimate goal would be to redeem every dark elf. She isn’t quite sure how to do that at the moment, but that’s no reason to just give up! Well okay, “impossible” might be a small reason.
In a campaign I’m DMing, the chronurgy wizard’s goal is to become such a threat to the cosmic order that he draws the attention of Primus itself. Which, given his chosen school of magic, isn’t actually all that unrealistic come to think of it.
As a pacifist monk tank, this is actually easy for me – and ironically timely as I just died in the game and two attempts to resurrect me failed and from a narrative standpoint, the DM has been talking with me about what I think that means…
My ultimate quest to find total balance and ultimate peace in all things, even conflict. And it seems I have found it… so quest complete? Except I know both in character and out, that I am not done (we still have a clear and final goal in the campaign we are playing that has yet to be resolved). I also know both in game and out that my friends in the group want my character back.
So what is a monk dedicated to peace and balance to do? Well… come back and make sure that his friends are also at peace and feel balanced in their lives! Now… how to come back! (It is being discussed and we will figure out something next session… hopefully!)
My first real Exalted PC had the desire to break the lies of the Impergium. The Dragonblooded are not destined to be our enemies, it is the lies they follow that lead them to this fate. Break the Lies and perhaps something new can grow from past. As an Eclipse, I thought it was a fine goal.
My current Exalted PC is much more humble; destroy all Evil. Specifically, he wants to bring Justice, not Vengeance or Mercy, because only then can we we all get what we deserve. His most recent visit to Yu Shan might have suggested that Evil Gods exist and can be punched to death, so we’ll see where that goes.
Outside of Exalted, my current Pathfinder character is a dwarf cleric who is currently saving the world but seeks to restore/find the Lost Sky Citadels. He’s not thinking of trying for a High King of the Dwarves only because he thinks he would be a terrible ruler. He wouldn’t be terrible, but he would need a lot of retraining to get to that point.
An old PC of mine had a quest to restore his familiar to Fey Demi-godhood. Little shit might have been Evil, was never sure, but it certainly was going to get me in hot water with a lot of Fey people.
I maintain that he shouldn’t have fallen. In PF1 terms he’s a Paladin and therefore has to be LG. In 5E terms he’s a Devotion Paladin and has concrete tenets. Attempting to defeat the evil plan by redeeming an evildoer doesn’t clash with either of those. If anything it’s doing what all good Paladins do when faced with a false moral binary and Kirk-ing it.
I’ve often seen it theorized that Paladins don’t draw their power from the gods, but from the strength of their own convictions. This lines up mechanically, but story-wise it means a Paladin won’t fall unless *they* believe they should fall. Which is why Goddess here is confused: he wasn’t stripped of his power for doing evil, he lost it himself due to lack of faith in himself (assuming I’m right).
Personally I am off the opinion that while a different paladin could have done the same actions without falling, Paladin himself couldn’t due to a different internal mental state.
The key here is that Paladin didn’t stand between Fighter and Necromancer as a part of an attempt to redeem an evildoer, or to even to save his beloved while still foiling the evil plan. In his mind he choose to aid the evil plan because in his own mind killing one of the casters was the best way to foil the ritual but he wasn’t willing to let Necromancer die.
Which is to say he fell for performing an “evil act” that only was so due to his own mens rea.
My favorite example character for this one is probably Smyler, whose main goal was the incredibly vague “go down in history”. So basically, he planned to rearrange the setting in some way, but wasn’t picky how. His default option was working to become a pirate king that ruled the entire ocean, but was always on the lookout for anything that would make a name for himself, good or bad. (Also, he planned to wipe the Sahuagin empire from the face of the planet at some point).
Ruin (in their heroic iteration), who was partially inspired by the challenge to “make an edgy redemption/devotion paladin” (albeit not built for D&D), is trying to atone for their own sins. A task that would be much less impossible if they hadn’t spent literally one thousand years racking up sins while convinced that they were on the right side (spoiler alert: if your boss’s plan involves the “ruination” of all life, you are probably not on the right side). Their devotion to this cause has pushed Ruin to greater and greater acts of heroism.
Ruin in their villainous iteration is much more ambitious, though. Having given up on redemption, their goal now is to eradicate the galaxy-spanning empire as a political and cultural entity. Which they’ve been doing one planet at a time, by destroying enough infrastructure to cause a temporary societal collapse and then retreating. Much of the time, the empire simply rebuilds, but sometimes the planet gets abandoned or snapped up by another nation/alliance. As long as Ruin keeps applying pressure, the empire can’t expand like it once did, and the psychological pressure on the citizens is growing as well.
Deirdre, aka Lady Stormfire, aka Queen B*** of the Wild Fey, intends to dethrone both the Winter Court and the Summer Court of the Feywild, taking both positions herself. Such a war will likely throw the seasons into disarray and cause untold havoc on the mortal world, but she… hasn’t really thought about that, to be honest.
Is Big Purple the interviewer, or is she also looking into getting that Divine Herald gig?
She is the interviewer.
I predict a “Gift of the Magi” outcome from this, if Necro has similarly ambitious alignment-shaking goals.
>_>
The problem with epic motivations is, my group almost exclusively plays pregen adventures. Killing a god or ending slavery or stealing stars is a fine motivation, but if you’re hiking around the continent slowly realizing you need to fight this giant king, or if you’re hiking around the continent coming across random signs of an ancient empire rising from the ashes, it’s not a particularly applicable one.
I can already hear people saying “This is what Session 0 should be for,” but not everyone likes giving away the big plot twists in session 0. And if you’re going to say “Well then don’t include big plot twists in your TRPGs”…tell that to the module authors.
> The problem with epic motivations is, my group almost exclusively plays pregen adventures.
> I can already hear people saying “This is what Session 0 should be for,” but not everyone likes giving away the big plot twists in session 0. And if you’re going to say “Well then don’t include big plot twists in your TRPGs”…tell that to the module authors.
Preach on great brother!
In pregen campaigns, I like to give characters motivations that feel grand and epic in their own eyes, but can be slotted into pretty much any campaign plot (especially if I’ve avoided spoilers on what the campaign is actually about.)
The gypsy con artist who dreams of pulling some last great swindle that will make him a legend. The elderly-farmer-turned-druid who has extended family all over the region and will put his neck on the line time and again against the rising-evil-of-the-moment just so his loved ones won’t have to. One of my favorites was the factotum who was the setting’s equivalent of an archaeology PhD candidate.
She had a season or two to kill before the next big dig her mentor had planned, and had made a drunken bet with a rival student about who could score the biggest find on the minor “side digs” they’d lined up to fill the time. So when she fell in with the expected random band of traveling hobos, every ruin they explored was, to her, an expedition to get publishable results and WIN THAT DAMNED BET! (Yeah, she was vaguely aware that they’d also upheld something, or thwarted some other thing, or both…but more importantly, “This belongs in a museum! A better museum than that crappy statue Larke found!”)
Fortunately, Teague wasn’t a very GOOD archaeologist, because a good one would have slowed every dungeon crawl to…well, to a crawl, by insisting on not disturbing the site. She was more from the Indiana Jones school of cinematic archaeology. In fact, she sometimes wondered aloud if she ought to have attended that lecture on historical site preservation at last year’s conference, instead of sneaking off to the bar with that guy in the fedora…
From the Patreon Poll, Did Option II refer to
Her Majesty, Queen Scratchypaws of the Demon Web Pits?
Or did it mean Magus?
Queen Scratchypaws of the Demon Web Pits:
https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/meanwhile-in-the-abyss
Magus:
https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/trojan-catgirl
(I need to figure out how to do links properly)
That second link is not Magus. That is clearly and distinctly Bad Cat!
“She stole poor Magus’ brain; she’s the Kittycat of Sin;
The prime material plane is now her prize to win.
Perhaps you’re into pain; if so, let the fun begin.
She’ll purr at this, meow at that;
You’re just a bug, she’ll squash you flat, Bad Caaaaat.”
“Corral you and she’ll trap you, just like a laser dot
After one quick pause to nap she’ll launch her fiendish plot
Your heroes and your villains are tangled in her knot.
Now run and hide, you silly rat,
You’re all my cat toys, signed Bad Cat.”
My mistake. I’d forgotten we were calling her Bad Cat.
No worries; it gave me a chance to make up silly lyrics. (And I suppose I should link the Bad Horse song, rather than assuming everyone already has it stuck in their head for eternity):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VNhhz1yYk2U
Thinking about your original question…if it had been decided that Paladin goes after a demon monarch, his initial target would have to be the hapless…well, catspaw, Queen Scratchypaws of the Demonweb Pits, rather than the actually-evil Bad Cat. It’s just way funnier if he doesn’t know the truth than if he does.
Interesting….. This is something I’m admittedly very weak on. My most successful is my current character who I first made 3 dramatic values (challenge, money, and linguistic bigot) and then the rest of the character from there. Take a guess which one is the most memorable. 🙂 But there is no epic motivation, no drive other than she knows no other life other than risking it day by day.
Starting from an epic goal is something I’ll have to try next time around. Something that has the potential to change the setting… I like how you phrased that. Thank you. 🙂
In one of my games, there is a Spiritualist who is trying to get immortality through undeath behind the rest of the party’s back. I’m not sure it’s going to go well, but fun things have already happened along the way. (He’s on a sidequest to get a thing to pay for the resurrection of a villain the party killed before – again, without telling the party.)
Another PC in that group is on a crusade against the culty religion that raised her. The diviner she consulted told her “to kill a church, you must kill its god”, so that’s her goal now. (Fortunately, though she doesn’t know this yet, the church’s god isn’t a true deity, so it’s an easier proposition than she thinks it is.)
This is what I loved about playing the mad neuroalchemist Doktor Krauss. The man was a complete bastard 90% of the time, but man did he embody the “go big or go home” ethos. The overriding goal to which he devoted every last milligram of blood, sweat, tears, and build resources — to clone a new body around the alchemically suspended brain of his beloved wife — was literally impossible, according to both the established science of the pseudo-Victorian steampunk setting and the game rules of the very-low-magic Pathfinder variant our GM was using. But what the hell was Victorian-era science fiction all about, if not railing against the boundaries of the impossible and pushing them back by sheer force of will?
Of course, there’s always a Terrible Price to Pay for Hubris, and Krauss could read the balance sheets; he simply folded the price into his calculations and worked on. If his soul was damned and his body and brain destroyed by his own experimental reagents, those were perfectly acceptable losses, so long as his final collapse occurred just AFTER he had cracked the key puzzles and passed that knowledge to capable and trusted associates. To live to see Leah awaken would be a wonderful bonus, should it prove possible. But that she WOULD awaken was, in his mind, no less an established fact than the existence of phlogiston, or of the very aether!
(And hell, maybe that would just mean it was her turn to repair him. Leah had been, in her own much more ethically sound fashion, just as prone to brilliant madness as her husband.)
My Paladin has a very sneaky motivation. Homebrew has the gods power based on the amount of worship they receive. She prays to Tyr (norse) and is in the process of pushing his worshiper base past Odin. She helps an area, doesn’t ask for a reward, tells them about Tyr and has a small temple built. She hangs around until the main temple sends a priest out to take over and then rinse and repeat. She was actually my third character back in 1979 and is running around several other DMs worlds with my ranger, who was my first character.
So with a hat tip to Rhodon who is looking to stand on the Tree of Life itself by the end of book 3…
My Nocker Sullivan has been down in the dumps for a while, largely because I didn’t really know what to do with him next. All the main storyline for the chat is right now is stuff that neither Sully nor myself are particularly interested in, and I’ve made a pretty good mark on the environment itself already so… I guess I’ll just coast for a while. Live life loudly, go die proudly, death in battle is something Sully’s intimately acquainted with.
But the next time I supplemented my volume with a good old @everyone (which I hope does nothing on here 😐 ), Sully’s liege lord came stomping down into the forge, blazing mad…you won’t find a fire elemental Sidhe like him without a lot of searching…and proceeded to ask Sullivan what his fooken deal is. ‘The mortals can hear you a mile, this is supposed to be an abandoned church!, and you’re pulling yourself as far away from the other fae as you can. That’s not good.’
A conversation is had, because Sully really likes his liege, and he realizes a couple of important things, notably that surrendering to fate counts as surrendering, and that’s the one thing that this fae soul is incapable of. So he decided to Fight Fate. Now he’s driven to improve himself even farther by finally getting started on his artifact armor, get that final superhuman point of Strength 6, maybe create a Freehold Defense Golem, fight every fight, win every fight, and say Fuck You to Fate by dying in his bed at a ripe old age. Will it work? We shall see! All of the monsters in the swamps surrounding New Orleans are made of kevlar and hate, and the dice gods are fickle (but fair).
It’s kinda that moment when you realize that you just stepped up to the plate of your next power level’s arc and things just got interesting again. Didn’t even need an uncle to swoop in and take my firstborn kid for a joyride.
Don’t look at my last post, but I basically told the same story twice. 😐 Well, it’s the new thing that I’m enthusiastic about. It really would have been a downer to lose steam with Sullivan, so I’m glad we dodged it.
This talk about epic motives is nice and good, but even if Paladin is looking for divine intercession to resolve things his motivation ultimately wont just amount to: “marry someone nice and have a happy family”? As is the guy may wrestle the gods, topple the laws of good and evil, change the very nature of necromancy, but still he does because he wanna go out on a date with a girl. All the epicness isn’t motivation there are just goal to accomplish he very mundane motivation 🙂
My epic and neigh-unattainable goal is to one day play in an Exalted game.
I swear, every time I hear about this system it sounds cooler and more fun, and I’m left baffled as to why more people don’t bring it up or run it! I’ve gotten close to the, “Hell with it, I’ll run it myself!” threshold a few times, but I know that way lies Forever DMing, and I want to play around in this kind of system!
Exalted is absolutely my favorite system, but I’m betting it’s popularity never got off the ground because it has a lot of mechanical flaws that you have to deal with. If you get around to running it, I highly suggest rule-of-cooling through a lot of the broken parts and it ends up amazing! Rules-as-written, however, is a different story.
I have one character I’ve used a couple times, whose life’s goal boils down to “steal the heart of the Pirate Queen.” That is to say, he had the hots for the *Goddess of Piracy*, and wasn’t going to let something as tiny as “I’m a mortal, she’s literally a God” get in his way. He’s not even a Divine magic user, originally he was a Fighter and a later incarnation got remade into a Rogue. He was just a mortal man shooting for a girl way out of his league.
> whose life’s goal boils down to “steal the heart of the Pirate Queen.”
Doktor Krauss pauses with the tumbler of Celden whiskey halfway to his lips. “You probably intend that phrase metaphorically,” he tells the stranger in the adjacent seat at the bar, “in which case I can only advise that you express your thoughts with less poetry and greater precision.”
“However, if you meant your words literally, then there a number of surgical approaches that we might consider…” He glances down at the “What Would Leah Do?” bracelet on the wrist of the hand holding the whiskey; their old mutual comrades had insisted on crafting it for just such thorny situations.
“…that we might consider to be off the table entirely,” he finishes with a sigh, “as they would be wrong.”
“Rules are the preferences of those in charge.” -Greg Campbell
I DM´ed a campaign where I had made a group of Hobgoblins that had grown tired of following evil gods and causes. And while the good gods were a no-go (Due to the whole millennia of warring against them thing), they still wanted to try and turn to good. The main issue being that they didn´t really have all that much cultural knowledge of what that entailed, as the structures they were used to were build around Lawful Evil values of rooting out weakness, blind obedience and so on. They were also well aware of the danger of simply following one charismatic leader, having worked for their fair share of Dark Lords (Who had all been terrible to them and met terrible ends). They were also aware that power corrupts, and even a kind and just leader might grown despotic as he has to deal with the stress of government and dealing with the terrible people you can run into during it (See Game of Thrones power players, or Parks and Recreation town meetings for ideas).
But what if you could take a bunch of different leaders, thinkers and so on, that were seen as good, kind and just by their people, and then plug them into a machine that fused their thoughts together. While also regularly resetting their minds, so that they would always keep that spark of goodness and nativity that made them good.
And so the God Machine was born. If the Hobgoblins could not find a God that they thought fitting, then they would build one. By kidnapping the leaders, philosophers, artist and other important people of the “Good” forces, jack them into a giant hivemind machine, that they would then consult with questions relating to morality, government and so on.
The players first encountered this concept when they were tracking down a group of hobgoblins that had kidnapped a local elf lord, known for being just and wise. They captured one of the hobgoblins, and interrogated him, and during this he revealed their mission. My players then decided that, that was a great idea and immediately freed the guy so that he could lead them to his group so that they could help them escape. They continued doing adventuring things, but would be on the look out for people who seemed like good candidates, and would at times get a side quest to nap someone who seemed like a good candidate.
The campaign, sadly, fizzled out before the realization that taking away all the competent leadership for the forces of “good” meant that they weren´t really prepared when the Liches, and their army of traditionalist hobgoblins, decided that now would be a great time to invade.
Apart from that my two most ambitious goals as a player have been my Mesmorist Cult Leader, who sought to ascend to true godhood, and my Cleric to Selune, who lead a “Werewolves (And other werecreatures” are our friends!” campaign.
I’m currently playing an elf who is the son of a humble fisherman. His goal to change the common opinion humans have of elves. In this setting, humans think all elves are snooty nobles. But as my character is fond of pointing out, someone has to take out the trash. And it sure isn’t the elven nobles.
He’d also like to change the opinion of dwarves toward elves, but he suspects that would be harder than moving a mountain.
I’ve done the “become a god” thing before, as every D&D player probably does – the great part there was that one of the other players chose “stop my morally dubious party from becoming gods” as _their_ own epic goal.
But anyway, an example I like is for one of my current characters, ina story set at the dawn of time in a fantasy world, who literally wants to tell (and star in) the world’s first heroic epic. Meta-epic-motivation! That, and convincing his patron that the world is actually a really nice place and shouldn’t be destroyed.
Sadly at the moment, all my current games are dead. So I’ll just list the goals of my last three characters.
Zephyranthes of House Rose (mechanically a Human Artificer, but IC essentially a Paladin) wanted to just be accepted by knightly society as an equal… and to maybe get everyone to adopt the use of modern cutlery for the sake of cleanliness.
Lady Runa of House Ouss’viir (a Half-Orc Bard) wanted to go on grand adventures and see the world. In part to see the world she never got to experience in her restrictive home before her marriage, but largely to do something with herself after becoming a widow (and distract herself from her grief).
Ink (a Whisper), had the goal… or rather I had the goal for her without her knowledge, of transforming herself into a god…. or whatever else would result from the attempt. As far as she was aware, her goals were to achieve magical knowledge, wealth, position, and power. And aid her legal guardian, Lord Scurlock, in his contest with a demon…. in her spare time.
Paulie Dingle (gnome summoner) wanted to map out the entire multiverse.
Kraaj (half-orc inquisitor of Desna) wanted to change his alignment from CN to CG and feel like he actually earned the G.
V’toll (drow paladin of Selune) wanted to become a trusted member of the community and help set up a commune for fellow male drow refugees.
Nym Pendragon (human cleric of Chauntea) decided that adventuring was too much for her so retired to try and make a community garden large enough to feed every poor person in Balder’s Gate.
Rayna of Clan Midnight Sun (triton barbarian) wants to take down a particular god of ice and storm, preferably with a punch in the face.
Sara Manda (kobold based tiefling(succubus bloodline) [class varies by incarnation]) wants to bed both Bahamut and Tiamat and steal their hoards.
Elizabeth (LG Cleric of Sarenrae / Dragon Barbarian) fights an internal struggle against her own rage and instincts to be a better person. She suffers from a split personality due to her internal divide, with the second identity being contained within her mind- but free to torment her from within, as she can’t shut out her own thoughts. *”I fight to save those who can’t, or won’t, save themselves- even if that someone is me.”*
Vazre (though, to be fair, this is an npc, not a PC. NE Elf Artificer / equivalent class in different systems) wishes to avenge herself upon fate itself as retaliation for what she sees as forcing her into an unforgivable situation (destroy a populated planet or allow its people to be hunted like animals by a nearly invincible enemy) *”You do not speak to me of mercy or compassion. You have not SUFFERED AS I HAVE.”*
Lem Nerane (Last name included to differentiate herself from Lem, the iconic bard for Pathfinder, TN Wizard) believes she’s uncovered a method to perfect the magics that Nethys used to ascend to god-hood- and seeks to study and learn until she knows for sure. She doesn’t know if she’ll use this knowledge yet, but she wants to know. *”Of course I’ll fight. Someone else would get it wrong.”*
Emmiri (CG Inquisitor of Lubaiko, Goddess of Upheval) grew up a slave until her and her mother broke free during a riot. Emmiri fights to free all who are chained, even those who “justice” would say should remain so, such as the nations where slavery is still legal. *”It was not the gods of good and justice who freed us. In flame and fury, our freedom was forged.”*
I like Lem’s rationale.
Reminds me of a Spider Robinson character explaining his choice to meddle with past timelines, which in that setting had the potential to retroactively erase the universe: (roughly paraphrased) “It was clear from examining history that some entity had *already* meddled with it. That entity must have been either myself, or someone else I trusted less, there being no third category.”
There are very few characters I play with grandiose dreams, goals, and plans. I prefer to play those grounded in humanity (well, mortality, whatever). One character in particular bucked that norm though.
Malvin Firel was a Wood Elf Ranger/Cleric/OrdainedChampion/SeekerOfTheMistyIsle/SacredExorcist in a 3.5 game that lasted about a year and took us from level 5 to level 20. He was introduced as a multiclass Ranger/Cleric, and his favored enemy was Undead. His home was destroyed by a necromancer while he and his master were out patrolling the woods. When they returned, they found a few stray undead wandering the village, and he vowed to end the necromancer.
When he eventually succeeded, it wasn’t enough and he made a further vow to Corellon to end undeath in all forms to protect elves from that threat forever. He ended up reaching 8th level spells by level 20, and was recognized by his patron deity as a mortal champion, though of an unusual calling for one of his clergy.
Ultimately, had we continued the story, he would have invested in becoming a demigod, one who would ascend only after death, and with his extended lifespan would spend centuries hunting down undead wherever they roam. He’d become a patron of those that fight undead and those that would protect their kin from harm.
I do believe that my current barbarogue mountaineer would try to climb every mountain in the outer planes, without achieving any of the personal alignment development normally required to do such things.