Family Ties
First of all, I would like to take a moment to acknowledge the fact that Wizard runs like a muppet. That done, I’d like to talk a bit about eldritch bloodlines.
If you’re not familiar with D&D lore, sorcerers wield magic thanks to their kooky origin stories. The 5e Player’s Handbook mentions “the touch of a demon, the blessing of a dryad at a baby’s birth, or the taste of water from a mysterious spring” as possible choices. These are colorful, flavorful options for creating a sorcerer to match your vision. They are also total bullshit. Sorry 5e, but these fairy tales are nothing but a pleasant fiction: a fanciful effort to lend a veneer of respectability to the class. Come on, sorcerers. We’re all adults here, and you’re not fooling anyone. Just put on your big-boy robes and admit that, at some point, one of your ancestors did the nasty with a dragon.
Maybe great-grandma was drunk. Like…really drunk. Maybe the dragon was especially handsome. Who knows? I’m certainly not going to judge. There are much worse things in the multiverse to have sex with. And if you happen to be a Pathfinder sorcerer, then you’ve probably got some of that “much worse” swirling around in your veins. There’s the Cthulhuesque aberrant bloodline, an undead bloodline, the super-gross pestilence bloodline… Heck, if you want to take the crossblooded option, you can even wind up the direct descendant of a swarm of bugs and David Bowie.
My point is that you (assuming you are a sorcerer) should embrace your weirdness. Be proud of your orc/psychic/kitsune heritage and love who you are. You’ve probably got the Charisma to pull it off. And if not, you can always sic Granny on the mean kids at magic school.
Question of the day then: What is the weirdest origin story you’ve ever encountered? Did it add to the game, or did it simply come off as bizarre?
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One player from way back in the day started his bloodline with paramecium. That’s right, he went cell by cell to describe how he took form. His ancestors took residence in the belly of the tarrasque for centuries before they were unceremoniously deposited (along with some ‘mostly used’ adventurers) next to the Boiling Pits, where creatures go to evolve or die. These ones evolved, and turned out mostly human with just a little BZAOW BZAOW PEW PEW PEW mixed in.
Dead ranger, dead alchemist, and paramecium.
These were the ingredients chosen
To create the perfect little adventuerer
But Professor Boiling Pits accidentally
Added an extra ingredient to the concoction–
Tarrasque poo
Thus, a sorcerer was born!
this is gold
The weird origin stories in the party are often mine and at the moment I have no metric by which to judge them as my sense of these things has just been thrown off by making a pirate elephant.
I’m not kidding. Here see for yourself: http://www.myth-weavers.com/sheet.html#id=1045134
(I mean yes, the game is a “we’re all playing elephants” game so it’s not like the legendary Bear story. But I probably significantly raised the bar for how weird we’re going to be with the backstories for the game.)
Personality, Ideals, Bonds, Flaws, Background… I giggled at each and every one as I mentally replaced “adventurer” with “a fucking elephant.”
Yeah, I normally ignore the Personality/Ideals/Bonds/Flaws thing and just work on the backstory but on a whim I decided to take a look and they gave me more joy than they ever have before.
Ive had an old game in 3.5 where i made a sorcerer who was the “chicken lord”, ridiculed because he lacked talent and every spell he did ended up inolving chickens (like instead of a fireball, it was a flaming exploding chicken), my GM letted me get away with contacting a being that gave me cybernetic powers, thus was born the army of awakened cyborg chickens lead by the cyber chicken lord. While not exactly “weird”, its probably one of my craziest stories that i enjoyed the most
I have located footage of your character in battle:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bLDTfpLgAKU&t=2m48s
Probably not the weirdest by a long shot, but I have a character that’s the direct daughter of a Succubus. She’s not even a Sorcerer, but instead the sweetest, kindest, purest heart Bones Oracle you will ever meet…. right up until you piss her off, at which point her touch will cause your flesh to strip right off you.
Oh yeah, and this is the same Oracle I mentioned in the last comic. Really one of my longest-running characters.
I thought you said you were a pally?
It’s the other one (I’m currently involved in about 8 games because PbP allows that… and apparently I never mentioned the other one was an Oracle last comic. Whoops.)
It’s not origin per se, but my funniest character background from 5e is my Conjuration Wizard, Usidor.
His backstory is that 10 years before the start of w/e campaign I insert him in, he suffered a stroke. It didn’t physically impair him, but it left him a little…unhinged. He may or may not have sold his soul to a demon at some point (I love to let the DM decide that one), so his ultimate quest is to “defeat the Dark Lord!” (the demon he supposedly sold his soul to). He’s an arrogant sod, who speaks…slowly…and…loudly…to…stupid…people. Who is everyone besides him.
But the shining moment is when he gets asked my someone who he is. Cause then, he launches into the most extreme diatribe you have ever seen. “I am Usidor! Wizard of the 12th realm of Ephesius! Master of magical delights, manipulator of light & shadow, devourer of chaos, CHAMPION OF THE GREAT HALLS OF TERROCUS! The Elves know me as Phinyane Yellok, the Dwarves know me as Zonanan Hoogstangies, & in the Northeast, I am known as Gasmwaynus Maystar. And there may be other secret names you do not KNOW about!”
Lost my shit at that last line.
I love the idea of characters with canned speeches. My Runelords barbarian (the one pictured in the “extras” page up top) has a number of nautical sayings ready to go for half a dozen different situations. The real trouble is remembering them in the heat of the moment.
On the flip side of that coin, we have my 1/2 Orc Barbarian Krusk. Krusk is a special sort of stupid. He has a 5 INT & 9 WIS.
My best gaming moment with that idiot came when I was gauging the local store to see if it’d work for me. The DM was playing a herald of a god (the party was supposed to stop a death god from returning), who told us earlier, “If you have any ?s at all, raise your hands.” Note the specifics of what he said, because this WILL come back to bite him in the ass. The herald was going on & on about the powers we would need to defeat the god. He said, “If you can reseal the god away again, you will be given anything your heart desires. We will give you numerous accolades, and boons to your heart’s-” Both the herald & DM paused, as they see 2 hands suddenly get raised in the air. In a flat monotone, he goes, “What?” I put my hands down & asked, “What that mean?” The whole table lost their shit.
My aforementioned barbarian is actually pretty smart. Something like a 12 Int I think. It lead to one of my more difficult metagaming moments. We were fighting an incorporeal undead at low level, and I was the only one that had yet found a magic weapon. In other words, I was the only one that could actually damage this thing. Happily I remembered that there were magic arrows in my quiver that the rogue could use as improvised daggers.
Now here’s the question: does a 12 Int barbarian in the middle of a rage have enough presence of mind to toss those magic arrows to the rogue?
Playing dumb in a tactical game is HARD!
My advice would be that yes, an above-average smart guy in a fury would use any bit of vicious advantage he could claw at to defeat his hated foe. Even if that means helping out the small annoying sneaky one who should STOP RELYING ON MY FLANKS WRAAAGH.
“Annoying sneaky one” is Laurel. She refers to my PC as “flanking partner” rather than his proper name.
I refer to people who hide behind Krusk to avoid being hit as “cannon fodder”.
Hey man
Hello From the Magic Tavern’s pretty sweet
#treesistance
Usidore is a character from that podcast, by the by
Never realized. I’m desperately trying to catch up on Critical Role at the moment, so my intake otherwise is limited. I’ll have to check out Usidore’s antics when I finish the current pod…probably several eons from now. 🙁
Not my character, and not a bloodline, but take a look at the Puffin Forest guy’s character’s origin story:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ZCIh_3b5K8
I played a sentient talking cat rogue, named Miss Tiddles. Based her stats on a common house cat with only slight tweaks, particularly to int and str to enable her to walk upright. Her con was a garbage fire. She was created by the Spellcaster from a retired adventuring party as a “favor” to the dying Fighter to help guide his youngest, and dumbest, son to success… That’s right, I made Puss in Boots! It turned out the Spellcaster was actually a Rakshasa in disguise and was working to make an army of magical cats. Miss Tiddles was his greatest success, but also his greatest failure, as she was the only one he has never been able to control. She ended up killing him.
The DM nerfed my hit dice because she was a cat and my HP was agonizingly low, even the wizard had better stats.
However I turned the tables by killing Death using the mcguffin poison on my class, (SNEAK ATTACK!) after half of the party was killed. Resulting in her becoming the new God of Death, and therefore capable of killing any other gods in the story.
There was a whole campaign which nobody took seriously because we didn’t trust the DM to follow through (it died after a single session). Basically everyone had a wacky character and backstory, to some extent or another.
I was playing a child-druid raised by bears (VERY loosely based on the myth of Atalanta, which is not a typo).
Another player played a fiery, manipulative sorceress who fell in from another world.
One player was planning to play a corgi warlock (forest gnome stats, except without hands) with a pixie familiar, but changed his mind and played a naïve centaur cleric instead. I was disappointed.
Finally, one player played a town guard who was saving up to buy a pig so he could propose to his sweetheart…except he was actually a doppelganger who killed and replaced that guard. (Which didn’t come up because the game ended in one session. And possibly the DM hadn’t read his character backstory.)
Well this is weird. Laurel is literally playing that character right now. Everything except the gnome stats. We’re rocking the Dungeons & Doggies supplement from Steamforged for this one.
idk if this counts but I have an ahem experienced sorc who canonically has f*cked himself (Time god shenanigans)
Is that the source of your bloodline powers?