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Ideas for Future Characters
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, sub races, 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?
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 that
since I have a Cleric and Druid this week that a good theme would be, “Faith”.
(Originally, last
episode’s Warlock was going to be
included in these, but I took way too long to write these out).
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| I have found (while looking for an image that worked), Drow might be the most sexualized fantasy race ever. |
Name: Sverre Ashe
Class: Cleric
Race: Dark Elf
Background: Entertainer
History: I recall
the time of my youth, when I wandered in darkness. The cold and wet and miserable dark. Stalked by beasts not of the night, but of dark. True darkness.
My family, my clan believed that
darkness was not just all around us, but within us. From skin to skeleton. From skeleton to soul. That our goddess ruled us with cruelty, and
that we deserved such treatment. We were
of the dark, in the dark, and we deserved nothing better.
It was in a time of wandering the
wet stone halls of the underdark that I met someone. I can only describe them as “someone” for
they were many things. Like a candle
flame flickers casting shadows fantastic and macabre, the features of this
someone moved and shifted. Being now a
thing with one arm, now with one leg, now with twenty legs, now a pair of legs
without a head, now a head without a body: of which dissolving parts, no
outline would be visible in the dense gloom wherein they melted away.
It was there in that murky endless
gloom that Someone spoke at length to me about the nature of them and me. About the cost of cruelty, about the pain of
living. And in a span of time that felt
like forever, a time that felt like home, sitting all alone beside this One. This one asked, “Have you heard the good
news?”
Goals: I am no
longer under the delusion that cruelty is a fact of life. Cruelty is an abomination. I am no longer under the misconception that
suffering is somehow ennobling.
Suffering is untenable.
I wish to no longer be part and
parcel with the darkness of the world and instead bring the good tidings of
that Someone who led me out of the darkness.
To share with people the news that they are not alone, that walking with
them in the darkest times of their lives is someone who wants to tell them how
much they matter and to not lose hope.
And to that
end I put on my show. Prostilatizing before
the masses as eloquently as I can about my own story, and asking for whatever
contributions they can spare to help spread the word.
Rating: 3/5
I know I
leaned much harder on the “Cleric” side of things more so than the
“Entertainer”, but I think that most religious entertainers tend to downplay
their role as entertainer in favor of the religious aspect of what they are
doing.
I chose a
Drow because I think that their having a religious turn that leads them away
from Lloth is always interesting. There
is a reason Drizzt Do’Urden (spelled it right on the first try) is so
compelling, same as the X-Men, Angel from Buffy, or Finn from Star Wars. Being a good guy when the whole world says
you aren’t and doing it because you believe in a moral right that guides you…
That’s nice.
This
actually started out much more cynical, a parody of Joel Osteen, and his
strange (even creepy) affectation. But I
am in a less cynical mood these days, so I toned it down.
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| Though, it might just be elves in general. It is hard to find an elf woman who is not stacked. |
Name: Fínín
Class: Druid
Race: High Elf
Background: Guild
Merchant
History: I have
spent a lot more time among humans and dwarves, far more than the typical
member of my race. I think that most
elves can never get past the earthy smell of the other civilized peoples. But I think that aversion has robbed my kin
of a valuable perspective on things. And
this has made elves, as a society, terrible at trade.
Humans have
an almost singular grasp of the concept, something I have studied with rapt
attention for decades now. Simply taking
the time to tend an ancient hedge near a human town along a river has allowed
me to see trade at work and it is dazzling.
Take two groups, one loaded down
with butter, the other’s coffers bursting full of dry bread. Each sees the other as possessing a treasure,
and each trades heaps of their own stores for a pittance of the other’s, along
comes hungry tailors burdened by too many pants and shirts, a naked candle
maker, a tanner in need of light, a thirsty smith, and a brewer who wants a bit
of each. It is magical that they, with
such short lives, find the time to sort thru all of the wants and needs in such
a manner as trade. It is a beautiful
madness.
And all of
it facilitated by the movement of little bits of metal with the words, “Taken
in Good Faith” stamped on them next to a crown or an eagle. Money is perhaps the key to human nature? Who’s to say?
Goals: You know
what I like about money? I can stack it
on a table. I can hold it in my
hands. But what humans and dwarves and
other races often forget is this, “you can’t eat gold”. Wealth, real material wealth comes not from
hording shiny rocks but from the creation of materials that everyone wants, but
that don’t last forever. I have the
patience for such things.
Being a
druid gives me access to growth. To the
bounty of the natural world. I can make
things people eat by the bushel. And as
an elf I will live long enough to see my investments mature. To investments I shall sow coins like seeds
in the fields, and they in turn shall grow into orchards of golden fruits.
Rating: 4/5
Call me
crazy, but the idea of an elf druid, two concepts that scream, “one with
nature” would become so infatuated to the idea of money, a concept wholly of
civilization, that they would seek to exploit their magical nature powers for
material gain… That is a total subversion of both those things and fits
entirely with the Merchant aspect of the character.
Maybe I
went to far with a blathering endorsement of the free market, but as I am
playing this more like a parody, that might not be as “endorsing” as you
initially think.
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| Can you spare a little something for the faith? How about for an apple? Wanna buy an apple? |
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.
