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A Too Long Introduction
A while
back I
wrote up some short biographies for characters I thought about using in a 5th
edition game of Dungeons and Dragons.
While I ended up using only one of them and have since moved on to
running a game rather than playing in one.
However, and let’s be honest here, the most fun there is in Dungeons and
Dragons is making a character.
Since I
like doing it, I figured I would make a chart in Excel and start checking off
class/background combinations, by the end of this writing exercise I will have
156 character ideas. I have decided not
to include races, subraces, sub classes, or the backgrounds from supplemental
materials. Just the Players Handbook…
FOR NOW.
For fun, I
will also give a numerical rating for whether I think something is
“Interesting”. There are characters that
are so common as to be arch typical or even cliché, but maybe there is a reason
they are so common, because they are just that intriguing. Feel free to disagree or offer your own
suggestions and objections in the comments.
If you
would like to share some of your own unused character ideas, do so in the
comments, maybe use this format (maybe get it to catch on, I like its
simplicity) and try and keep to a shorter length, you don’t want people to
“tldr” your stuff.
One more thing
worth mentioning, I will make an effort to include a variety of different
fantasy races in my character creation. I
have written before that I could run an entire fantasy world with just
humans and see most fantasy races as too bland to be seen as meaningfully
different from humanity (elves, to me, are too often played as just tall humans
with pointy ears). I also know that this
is not an opinion shared by most and I want to try and expand my own horizons.
What Have I Got?
Wanderers.
I recommend
as a DM, that if you have the luxury of having your players making characters
as a group, picking a theme of 1-5 words to serve as an inspiration seems like
a good idea.
I decided
to choose a theme for all of the characters I made today to illustrate this,
that of the Wanderer. It is an easy
theme to work with in Dungeons and Dragons as most adventurers have to go to a
large number of places to go on a wide variety of adventures. That being said, I managed to get 3 of them
to fit a subtheme of “Exile”. They are
out and about, but not super happy about it.
Maybe I am feeling too brooding these days.
Name: Katarina Othronus,
the Exiled Diaspora
Class: Barbarian (Wolf
Totem)
Race: Half Elf
Background: Outlander
History: My mother’s
ancestors were once good people. Our
homeland was vast and shielded from the world by white and violet mountains to
the east, and the glittering sea to the west.
Then the Sea People came. Our
glittering sea once full of little fishing boats was replaced with the burnt
red of a sun setting on water full of bodies and burning sails. Our city was sacked, and while once upon a
time those mountains seemed impassable, my people fled thru their tight paths
to the land of my father’s people, the Elves.
Goals: My elf
side sees the length of time stretched out before me and my clan, a century has
passed since the humans fled from the Sea People, and in another century,
unable to grasp that there is no return they may fade from this world,
forgotten.
My human
side, filled with burning human blood, can’t let that happen. I feel within me the anger of thousands of dead
ancestors killed in my homeland. I feel
the rage of many thousands more lost in a land unknown to their forbearers. I see in the night the packs of wolves moving
thru the forest and know that my pack, my people, must go back to our homeland,
we must not simply fade from this world.
Rating: 4/5
(please leave your own numerical score for these in the comments)
While “Outlander”
and “Barbarian” go together like bacon and eggs I think that greater depth can
be plumbed by contextualizing the “Outlander” as someone in exile, the
Barbarian’s rage as the rage of their ancestry, the totem of wolf being taken
up as a symbol of unity, and the mixed heritage providing internal conflict. All of these elements together allowed me to
take something that could have been the 10,000 Barbarian from the land of
Barbarians and instead create something much more original. This is a person who wants to reclaim a
homeland they have never been to, while at the same time belonging to another
homeland that sees such efforts as a small thing compared to the vast history
of the elves.
Name: Ribbles, the
Bawdy
Class: Bard
(Lore)
Race: Gnome
(Forest)
Background: Sailor
History: I would
like to think of myself as something of a pioneer. If I am not the inventor of insult comedy,
something I did while cooking roast pig in an island port full of Summer Elves…
Well, if I am not the inventor then I am at the very least a truly lauded explorer
and developer in the field.
I have
traveled to dozens of ports and talked with every prostitute, gambler, drinker,
and ne’er-do-well I can find to find better, more disgusting ways of making
people laugh at themselves. Sometimes
they laugh so hard it hurts.
Goals: I am
composing my manifesto. It will be the
longest and most comprehensive book ever written on the topic of insults. Drawn from port towns all over the world,
from as many languages as I can interact with, and with etymology to explain
how new words and insults evolved in such a hazardous environment.
Ports are a
breeding ground… and not just for bastards like you, but for language. People
from all over the world enter these colosseums of vulgarity to do battle with
beasts of insults, most of which are just colorful ways of calling each other “ass”. Once I
have my book altogether, I will compose the single greatest insult I can, the
best ever made, and I will use it on the concept of humorlessness itself. I will kill it dead, giving everyone in the
world a good chuckle at how impotent and shit such things are.
Rating: 3/5
I have no
idea how I managed to come up with a gnome writing a manifesto on insults, that
idea poured out of my brain in all one sitting.
The only difficulty I see with this character is that the person playing
them has to be able to say clever insults, or at least poetic ones. I know that I can do that, half of the NPC’s
I play are sarcastic in such a fashion, but most people will just come off as
attention seeking edge lords, and will bring down the room by being mean
instead of funny.
Name: Dain of No
Clan, the Honorable Exiled
Class: Rogue
(Assassin)
Race: Dwarf (Hill)
Background: Soldier
History: Dwarves
are “Honorable”. Dwarves are “Forthright”. Dwarves are “Unsubtle” and “Brash” and many
other adjectives that do not couple with the word “Assassin”. There is a reason for that. Dwarven commandos, dubbed “Sharp Flints” are
a well-guarded cultural secret by the clans.
“Sharpened of the Darkest Stone” is the call to action, and the ability
to push that sharp stone into the throats of the clan’s foes is the mission.
After the
last conflict, the King refused to call it a war, I was granted “Honorable
Exile” as reward for my time in the Sharp Flints. My actions during the war were considered so
beneath the honor of the Dwarven people that I could not be allowed back into
the society whose safety I had helped secure, but so noble was my sacrifice
they would not punish or damn me in their histories.
Goals: My name
will be written on a black stone tablet and kept in a vault, secure till the
times of judgement when the Lords of the Caverns return to guide the Dwarven
people into the next world. When they
come, the tablets will be broken, and I shall join my people in the next world. My honor and place in the clan restored. As for right now, I am free to use my sharp
stone on all the wicked fools and villains I find. Let’s go find some.
Rating: 2/5
Let’s be
clear, the role of “Soldier” is not meant for certain classes. The Rogue is typically drawn to Criminal and
Charlatan backgrounds, those seem like the most logical for a class based
around stealth and opportunism. The
subclasses for Rogue are also not suited for the role of a conventional
Soldier. This is not the sort of
contrast that leads to creativity, this is the sort of contrast that just doesn’t
really fit.
Since I had
to make such an odd fit, I looked for the race that would have the biggest
break culturally and then worked to connect the dots. Dwarves are not typically Rogues but are often
Soldiers, what if even their Rogues were seen as a type of Soldier? Did it work?
I don’t know. I could not come up
with goals aside from, “do good till I die and go to heaven”. Which is admittedly weak. This is definitely the weakest individual
character of this lot.
Name: Karg
Class: Paladin (Vengeance)
Race: Half Orc
Background: Criminal
History: In this Kingdom,
I am a crime. I represent the pollution of
the good, natural, noble blood of the populace by the foreign menace who wish
to rape the women, and emasculate the men.
I am the product of rape according to the laws of this Kingdom. Never mind my mother’s happy tears on the day
of her wedding to my father. Forget the
years of secret love and devotion.
Ignore the endless aching sobs she cried next to the spot where they
burned my father’s body. She was the
victim, he was a criminal, and I am the crime.
I am a
crime by birth.
My father
was tied to a tree, to die of exposure over the course of days, and then his
body burned in a pit. He came to me in
dreams when I was young, to play games, give me the hugs I had never gotten,
and to teach me to farm. They were all
dreams of a man I never met and will never have the chance to live up to. He was a peaceful person. Strong enough to work a farm and forge. Strong enough to be in love.
Goals: I will have my revenge on the bigots who
destroyed my father. Vengeance for the
little boy I was. I will burn this toxic
dump of a kingdom to the ground. I will
mount the head of the King on a post and throw garbage at it. I will kill until there are no more of them
to beg forgiveness from my wrath. When
they are all gone, maybe, just maybe… I will find some peace in the afterlife. On a little farm, a child again, hugged tight
in the arms of my father to live the life I was denied.
Rating: 5/5
This, I
think, is one of the intersections that has been made a little too easy in 5th
edition. In previous editions a Paladin
was required to be a paragon of virtue and as such the only way to make them a
criminal was to assume the government declaring such a thing was evil, Sheriff
of Nottingham style.
5th
edition though, provides a much greyer form of Paladin. This option is what I have chosen to do
here. The path of Vengeance is the most
personal and least good of the Paladin subclasses in the players handbook, but
at the same time it does ostensibly have an end goal that can be reached,
Revenge. Once the character has their vengeance,
the question of where they go and what they do from there is intriguing and
something that could make for a cool story in the context of a game.
If you are
a fan of science fiction I feel I should point out that most of the inspiration
for this character was G’Kar
from “Babylon 5” (the name is an anagram). G’Kar was defined by vengeance for nearly two
whole seasons before having a religious experience and shifting tracks to
become one of the spiritual heroes of the series; in fact, his quest for vengeance
was so tied into his persona, the villains of the show did not see him as
useful in the long term because he had no aspirations beyond vengeance, and
they wanted to align with those who had vision for the future.
I
have talked about “Babylon 5” before, but as it relates to Alignment in
Dungeons and Dragons, I highly recommend the show (the first 10-12 episodes are
pretty weak, but everything after that till season 5 is considered some of the
best science fiction ever produced).
Another
small bit of inspiration? “Born a Crime” the title
of Trevor Noah’s book on growing up mixed race in Apartheid South Africa.
Outro
What do you
all think? Do you have a request for a
class/background combo? Did you play one
of the combos I have featured and want to share your spin on it? Post in the comments.
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