Main Character
Say what you want about paladins, but those dudes know what they want out of life. They’ve got a clear motivation of “smite the wicked and serve the gods,” and it’s built right into the class description. In fact, if you’re playing any class with an inherent relationship to gods/fiends/eldritch-entities-from-beyond-time-and-space, then you’ve got a potential character arc laid out for you from Level 1. All those Faust-inspired warlocks in 5e get to deal with the devil. Sorcerers get to grapple with their ancestry. Clerics are blessed with a wide variety of deities to hang out with. These relationships between PC and Powerful Entity are practically begging to be explored. A word of caution though: Even though it’s possible to make a story out of these built-in hooks, you’ll want to avoid relying on them.
When there’s a big fat motivation sitting right there in front of you, it’s easy to turn it into a crutch for character. Sure you can build a solid “Amy the paladin becomes the herald of Bahamut” storyline into your game, but that has nothing to do with the character and everything to do with the class. A fighter or a rogue by contrast have to figure out their place in the world. They get to make up a mercenary company or a hardscrabble youth or an internship as a caravan guard that’s got nothing to do with their class features. And if you find yourself fighting the urge to push up your glasses and say, “Um, actually Colin, a paladin can do that too,” then you understand my point. Like every other element of the game, character classes can inspire story. If that’s the only thing inspiring your story though, you’ll find yourself telling the same tale over and over again. That gets old in a hurry.
So by all mean, set your guy on that epic quest to ascend to Olympus all Disney’s Hercules style. Just remember that there are more stories than the default, and that the other members of the party ought to get a few of them as well.
THIS COMIC SUCKS! IT NEEDS MORE [INSERT OPINION HERE] Is your favorite class missing from the Handbook of Heroes? Maybe you want to see more dragonborn or aarakocra? Then check out the “Quest Giver” reward level over on the The Handbook of Heroes Patreon. You’ll become part of the monthly vote to see which elements get featured in the comic next!
Ah the Gods, Demons, Eldritch Thingys and other you can pray too. Of course it does limit the Character a bit, but it Provides so many opportunities. Whats the Relationship with the Deity? Is he a Devote Follower of his Deities cause? Is he wrecked with doubt, with most of his Prayers unanswered? Is he Fanatic hell bent of spreading the Word of his God? Are the two Constantly bickery, but not able to leave one another? Does the Priest maybe Hate the God he worships, but is forced to follow him anyway?
There are so many ways, to build that Connection to the Divine. I personally like the “Always Bickering” connection the best. This works of course most plausible if you pick a very minor Deity/Demon Lord/Elritchy wohrshipped by almost no one. That makes for some Great comedy, even if the other Players can only hear half of the Conversations. The only thing to be careful is to not overuse it and take too much Screen Time, then it becomes annoying.
I’ve always wanted to play an Oradin…
http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?257365-PF-Oradin-Mini-Guide-Or-How-to-be-a-Healbot-minus-the-bot
…with two gods bickering over him.
“No, honey. You should heal that poor little bunny.”
“GET IN THERE, LAD! SMITE THOSE BASTARDS.”
What I’m getting at here is that yeah, you should probably know what your relationship is to your Powerful Entity pal. That doesn’t have to be the only or even the main thing going on with your character though.
Two Gods,…that sounds awesome!
Well of course, it isn’t the only Point of the Character (or shoudn’t), I agree with you, but it’s one damn interesting one to play with. Even on completly mundane Characters you can have devoted People, who KNOW their Deity exists, even if they don’t get answered. (Or they believe they get answered but they really don’t.)
I’ve got a couple of pals playing a magus and a cleric in my megadungeon game. They’ve got a shared backstory where the magus gets visions from the cleric’s moon goddess from time to time, and I’d meant for it to be a jealous-inducing thing for the cleric. The players never quite picked up that plot thread though, and I never really tried to force it. Still think it could be a cool idea to have a mundane connection to a god though.
I like Oracle, because where Paladin and Cleric might be the sword and shield of their deity, Cleric is just sitting there going “What the **** did you do to me!?”
You don’t even have to know what their purpose is. Their god could just be like “That guy. I call dibs on him… hmmm… he needs something… OH I KNOW! I’ll give em fire hands! Oh… ooohhhh right, mortal. That is gonna hurt for a while… um… guess I could talk to him… later-ish.”
I think it’s important to ask players in your campaign for some backstory. If they aren’t good at that sort of thing, then help them flavor up their sheet. Is the Brawler a savant, able to make up feats on the fly?
Did he watch a lot of gladiatorial fights growing up and remember their moves?
Maybe the starting point for your Fighter is at the end of a long rut…
Maybe your Rogue has come to worship Abadar and, well… is stealing from bad guys REALLY all that bad? After all, there’s more than one way to smite a fat-cat.
That’s why I like a little light Wizard Quiz to start my campaigns:
https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/wizard-quiz
Every time I see the name Faust, I do a double take.
>_>
Faust.
*runs away giggling*
*steals all your doubles*
I have the opposite problem, i’m bad at weaving in even the stereotypical class stories. I tend to think of the main adventure as the defining adventure for the character, so character-specific quests are few and far between. It doesn’t help that every Curse of Strahd character is cut off from their homeland, either.
For inspiration, you am want to have a look at Campaign Traits. They usually have a built-in description that helps to plug a character into a story, and they are often generic enough that they can apply to more than their intended campaign.
Traits in general help with this too… was your character adopted from an orphanage? Take Adopted, and then pick some other race to raise them. Have a look at that race to see how your character fits in to their society. They never got adopted? Child of the streets. Sleight of Hand is now a class skill.
I know you can pick traits based on what you need, but they can also inspire.
MSK is a 5e kind of gamer, but I still think this advice is solid. I used the 5e background traits…
http://engl393-dnd5th.wikia.com/wiki/Backgrounds
…to help a Pathfinder buddy of mine zero in on some character hooks. Using the ridiculous wall of Pathfinder traits for the same purpose…
http://www.d20pfsrd.com/traits/
…is an equally cool idea.
I definitely use backgrounds (and XGE’s new This Is Your Life section) for my character, but as a DM i’m just struggling to keep everything flowing.
I did manage a little bit so far; two of our characters are descendants of previous PCs who died in Death House, and i’ve had the new party encounter their spirits. Still, that’s not so much a quest as a detail.
One technique that Laurel likes to use when she runs is to make a bullet point for each PC. It could be something minor that takes 30 seconds to resolve (“There, in the street! It’s your dead relative! Wait… No. It only looked like them.”) or the crux of the session (“You notice hair is sprouting around the wound were that wolf bit you last session.”) The point is to give everyone something that’s “just for them” in every session. Seems to work for her. And as a bonus, it doubles as a way to keep everyone’s backstory in mind session to session.
That is excellent advice. I’m eager to try it.
I like the fluff that comes with lots of prestige classes. I know with my players if it suits the plot i like to ease the prereqs and suggest it to them. I remember the band of gunslingers out to try to tame wild wastes liked being the selfappointed sherrif as a shieldmarshal. Or after being captured by a kuthite cult letting them cope with it by becoming a pain taster.
Good on ya for exercising your right to a GM’s handwave. That kind of thing tends to make the game more fun for players.
Wait, why is Oracle flipping the angel/archon/azata/[insert other good outsider here] off? She got blessed with holy magic!
http://www.d20pfsrd.com/classes/base-classes/oracle/oracle-curses/
Haha, right. Also paladins do get a ton of amazing features with almost no downside
Honestly though, I kind of started off this comic with the idea that “some characters turn into main characters while others get relegated to comic relief.” Hence Oracle’s reaction. The blog kind of turned into its own thing in the writing.
My fellow party members have always been good about diversity of backstory, even with deity-based classes.
One party has a pretty generic Paladin, but his player is completely new to the entire concept of tabletop RPGs, so he needed a simple character to ease him in. At least he’s a Catfolk, so that’s different. One Paladin we have in my other party is a Holy Gun with 5 levels of Musket Master Gunslinger. He’s a 56-year-old gruff cop who spent most of his career as a sniper before ending up at a desk job and joined the party as an excuse to get back in the field. I love the look on people’s faces when I tell them of a Paladin sniper (who will, at later levels, take levels of Ninja for Vanishing Trick). The Paladin code says you must fight honorably; it does not say you have to fight fair. Another player has a Cavalier/Paladin build built around buffing others and loaning teamwork feats while doing the standard Halfling-mounted-on-wolf thing. For characterization, the player is deliberately playing him as Lawful Stupid (player’s words), constantly shouting “EVILDOERS!” and otherwise acting like an idiot with a black-and-white understanding of the world. This has led to some interesting roleplaying, most notably the fact that the rest of the party has thus far proven unwilling to follow the instructions of this clearly crazy man who showed up out of nowhere (the PC is a new arrival because the player was bored of his old character, the Dwarf grappler Monk who dresses like a luchador and thinks he’s an eagle. This player likes a certain type of character.).
In two different parties, I’ve had two different female Sarenrae Clerics with similar names (Anya and Reyna) by two different players, and each one has been different as well. One was a classic Dwarven Cleric whose main roleplaying feature was being the straight woman to our collection of incompetent weirdos. The other was a human born to Samsarans, who became a healer Cleric and started adventuring to deal with her insecurities from being a non-reincarnator born into a society of reincarnators. Mechanically very similar, personality-wise pretty different.
One of my backup characters is a Dark Tapestry Oracle who uses her natural affinity for dark magic and her connection to the Great Old Ones/Outer Gods to fight back against the forces of darkness and corruption. Despite her connection to Chaotic Evil entities, she’s a Lawful Neutral worshiper of Irori, as he helps her maintain control over the dark powers. Even the transformation from an Elf into a Fetchling by decades of exposure to dark magic hasn’t shaken her determination to fight back against the source of her powers. In other words, an Oracle actively working against her patron’s will.
Lastly, one of my parties has an Inquisitor played by a Warhammer 40k player, so you can guess how he acts (“HERESY!”). What makes him atypical is that he is a Wyvaran that worships Smiad, “The Pitiliess Dragonslayer,” empyreal lord of Dragon-hunting with the symbol Slain Dragon. Coincidentally, said Inquisitor’s name is Hippocrates.
On an unrelated note, did anyone else notice that Paladin’s angel-thingy friend looks quite a lot like a recolored Thief?
“EVILDOERS!”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6GD8JeilDPA
And are you saying that all outsiders look alike? Because if you are…
I’m just impressed at how Thief’s Bluff and Disguise skills have come along.
You need to play an Evil Fanatic Cleric some Time! It’s really satisfying to yell “POWER! UNLIMITED POWER! IN THE NAME OF ZURA! MWAHAHAHAHAH!”while Channeling negative Energy all around you. Laughing like mad is mandatory.
It feels,… Liberating!
What do you call this art style? I love it.
Cheers! I’ll see if I can’t get my artist on here to talk about herself. I suspect that the noodle-arms are Pendleton Ward though: http://www.rotoscopers.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/adventure_time.jpg
Ah, the divine connection. Probably the most interesting take I’ve seen was a guy in 3.5 who mechanically wanted to play ghost rider and did a pretty good job at that (can’t recall the exact build sadly). He then came to me with a basic backstory outline and asked for my input. After some back and forth, he settled on a backstory where GR managed to sell his soul to three different entities at the same time: Asmodeus, the Queen of Air and Darkness, and an Empyreal Lord. All wanted his soul and hated each other, but couldn’t reach a deal with each other and refused to back down, so they basically gave up and let him decide who he would gravitate towards…though each would also try to guide him to their path, subtly so as not to draw the ire of the others. Even better, he was CN and had aspect of his character that each loved and each hated. Unfortunately the DM loved the backstory but hated the mechanics, so the guy decided to shelve it for later and I didn’t get to see it in play.
What I want to know is how he got a motorcycle.
Angel is about as awesome as Thief’s nightie. Someday I swear I’ll find it in my wallet to gain access to HoEF
You know, I hadn’t really thought about it, but I guess her name would be Angel. Canon accepted!
We got this Second String Characteritis bad on Wrath of the Righteous. Just some commentary that I’m sure I’ve commented before.
I’ve felt that paladins specifically act as good seasoning for everyone else’s main storylines, almost to the point that offering their moral compass becomes their storyline and you can save their actual main character-ness for last in the group, when it makes more sense for deity level folks to have a stake in the party at all.
Do non-paladin types have a go-to late game storyline? I mean, what is the stereotypical late-game plot arc for a rogue or a fighter?
Love interest.
We never got that far. We didn’t manage to retake Drezen before it fizzled out, so I’d trust Iron.Hare’s input. I don’t like to read up on adventure paths before I play them, so I may NEVER KNOW.
This brings to mind the wonderful character named CASE (Custom Autonomous Security Enforcer or something like that) that was in a game of Alternity I played way back when. He was a robot who could do basically anything. He could throw cars, was fireproof, basically bulletproof, had sensors for every situation, and was just generally awesome at everything. But here’s the weird thing. He was GREAT to play with! His player was one of the best I’ve ever gamed with, and made sure everyone had a blast! He was https://1d4chan.org/wiki/This_Guy to a T, and it took me looking back on the game several years later to realize how power-built CASE was. Anyway, the game eventually started to focus on CASE quite a bit. We helped him get some upgrades, find and reunite with his lost love (who was actually a berserk robot named WAY who we sort of had to perform brain surgery on in combat) and then eventually helped the two of them have a kid (that was actually a giant robot named BEST). And despite how much of the time CASE was being the main character, I still look back on the game as one of the best I’ve ever been in. So I guess its just a matter of getting the whole party invested in everyone’s characters.
I think it can be easy for GMs to just let the inertia of “never split the party” serve as motivation for PCs when it’s “not their storyline.” Sometimes that’s not enough though, especially since character motivation has so much to do with a player’s long term investment in a campaign. It’s all about giving the PCs reason to stick together. That’s why I like to jot down individual “story arcs so far” for each character every few months. That way I can make sure to throw a PC some love if they’ve been out of the spotlight for a while.
For example, if it’s CASE’s story at the moment, maybe BEST imprints on the wrong PC and believes it to be their parent for a few sessions. Give ’em a reason to stay engaged!
Sadly the game was rushed to a conclusion because our GM was shipping out with the navy. However, up next was our martial artist’s story, who had betrayed his masters to help us defend a city.
Right on. Thought experiment time. If you were GMing that game, how would you hook the other characters onto the martial artist’s storyline?