So weirdness occurred last session and the game we were planning to do didn't happen (which was a bummer...I was looking forward to it). Instead the DM sort of threw us a bunch of more or less pregens (with some input as he went about making them). But we pretty much got what we got.
The upshot is I have a character who belongs to an organization that hunts anyone who practices arcane or divine casting and forsakes it's use seeing that mortals can't be trusted to wield that kind of power.
So what does that mean? The way I figure it, it puts me at odds with not only the PCs, who are gonna' see my guy as some sort of sociopath, every mage and cleric in the setting, probably the gods too...really. Plus the casting abilities my character has are no go, and really I can't concience using potions, magic items, holy water...even alchemical stuff?
Normally I'd be all too happy to hug this nuke of a character all the way to the ground, whooping with diabolical glee, but part of the setup for this game is to meet new gamers in town and give some love to the local gamestore by supporting it's local game night, and my character's antics during the two hour intro already seemed to have folks uncomfortable. I don't know these guys very well and want to make a good impression. I certainly don't want to come across as "that" guy.
I could probably scrap the guy...but that feels like quitter talk. I'd rather take the concept and do an end run around it and try to make something playable and fun out of the core idea, while trying to figure out how to keep him from being a homocidal jerk who refuses to use any of the gear he needs to pull his weight in the group.
Play it for laughs.
Have him "hunt down" all these mages and priests and whatever and then have him get all biblical on their asses. Literally. Start preaching at them that they're unnatural distortions of existence and are worshiping abominations.
Then have him hilariously take swipes at them with the most ineffectual weapon possible or see if you can voluntarily take a hefty penalty to hit.
Make him a moron who doesn't know magical items are actually magical and think their special powers come from moon dust or some nonsense.
All in all play him as the buffoon that occasionally (when it's needed, like in combats or important diplomatic situations) shows a frightening level of competence someone with his level of idiocy should never be able to reach.
Perhaps reveal him later as someone who was pressed into joining this organization, can't leave it without being hunted down himself, and is just obfuscating stupidity so he can lead a mostly normal life without routinely committing murder or being hunted down himself for using magic/items and betraying the tenets of his organization.
Or as an alternative to the last paragraph, play him as a magnificent bastard who's obfuscating stupidity so the party doesn't treat him as anything other than an amusing buffoon, and just secretly tell the GM your character sneaks off and murders the people you ineffectually swiped at before just before you leave a place, telling your party you're going to get a drink or something, or even just sneaking our while everyone's asleep. Your character can use magic and magical items beyond his obfuscation because A.) The order allows any means necessary to wipe out magic, even fighting fire with fire if necessary and/or B.) Your magic comes from something else (not the gods or any other outsiders, and it's not normal magic either) that is deemed the only acceptable force by your order.
Sounds like it'd be fun to play to me. Is he an Inquisitor, perchance?
Mind you this is an every 3.5 book sorta' campaign so it's not all Pathfinder stuff.
He's a human 5th level Hexblade / 1st level Occult Hunter. The Occult Hunter is the tough part.
My thought is to go with the whole broody hexblade thing, and since they don't get their powers voluntarily (apparently as kids they're victims of weird phenomena that they eventually figure out how to control) that when it got bad enough he started manifesting his power as actual spells (5th level) he sort of freaked out and ran to this extremist group that wants to purge all magic. He blames magic for everything that's happened to him and itches for payback. I like the idea that his magic manifests on its own when he's pushed into a corner (he Hulks out) but ends up flavored from all his childhood trauma and comes out really twisted and nightmarish. Thinking spells like Cause Fear, Hideous Laughter or Disguise Self (to assume distorted horrible Silent Hill forms maybe). Elsewise I'm thinking of playing him as a likable cad with a weird ideology. Maybe downplay his super hatred of magic to something he talks about or just gets irritable around rather than steel getting drawn every time.
What do you think of that? It still makes him unwilling to use magic items, potions, etc. but at least he feels more colorful than campaign wrecking.
I dunno.
So when you first saw what you were going to play, you began thinking about how a personality would fit the mechanics. You came up with a really cool character concept that worked as far as RP, but it ended up making people uncomfortable.
Now that you have your character concept set, you're trying to figure out ways to change it so that people aren't as uncomfortable with it. This generally means making small changes to the character so until you've accomplished what you need to do.
My advice: don't make small changes to the character. Make large ones. Take a step back and start from the 'how can a personality fit these mechanics' step all over again. Come up with something completely new while also keeping in mind that you're trying not to be scary in public.
Then go to the table and say "My character's personality is interesting, but not a good fit for this environment. So I've given him a new personality." Play from there.
It will require a little extra effort on the part of the other players to get use to your re-skinned personality, but it will also send a message to the new people. "I am not the character I was playing. You can feel comfortable/safe in this game."
Because really, you WANT a large change over a series of smaller ones. That gives the impression of someone who realized he was pushing boundaries and stopped rather than the creepy guy who learned how to better hide his creepiness.
Large changes are fine too. I just want to pull up from what feels like a character nosedive. The big elements seem to be:
1) Sociopathic: Need to take the Occult Slayer (hates magic & divine stuff enough to want to kill them all) and Hexblade (unfriendly selfish mostly evil butthead) and somehow softshoe this into something that's fun to play off of/not scary
2) Doesn't Pull His Weight: If I don't use magic at all then that means one less spell and two less special ability uses (hexing enemies) plus an ambient hex-like effect from a shadow familiar I could call forth, as well as no magic items, potions, etc. to help the group. That's a lot of resources to be denying everyone, so I'd like to come up with a way to still help out that doesn't make things worse by making him look like a huge hypocrite.
This character reminds me of a character from the Gathering Dark(Magic the Gathering Book). She was a priestess(in a world where priest don't in theory have magic) who hated magic but had magic. She was convinced that these where miracles sent to her to destroy all magic users. She crusaded about trying to smite down all the casters she could until she ran into a school of ones that new how to use their powers a hell of a lot better then she did. You still use magic but you are delusional about where it comes from. Might not work because even divine magic pisses you off but you could find some other justification for the slightly demented mind(its not really magic its your mind, lucky things happen for no reason, your opponents have mishaps, ect). Not only will all casters hate you but you get the added bonus of making them want to face palm out of frustration of your hypocritical ignorance while your doing it)
Maybe, riffing off the "mortals can't be trusted to wield magic" it's more of a suspiscion/trust issues thing than it is about magic being bad.
So magic weapons, restorative potions and especially magic negation effects (like dispel magic, antimagic fields and disjunctions) would be prized--because their effects are controllable and limited. I could see whole segments of the organization made up of retired casters who now Hatori Hanzo style, craft magical items as a way of atoning for their past magical hubris.
Items they capture in the field are turned toward the war effort or broken down if they are too powerful to be trusted in mortal hands.
I really am sort of liking that...
I'd sort of hope not to make this guy delusional--"craazy" gets done a lot and not terribly well. Plus it's harder for other PCs to have meaningful roleplay with "the craazy guy" because you can't have any traction with someone like that. They believe whatever weird thing for no reason and so argumentation passion nor logic is never gonna' change his mind. So why try?
I want to try and give him a real beef. Something tangible that he can believe in and fight for and defend (verbally as well as...stab-illy)
I've been rolling around a perspective regarding it that runs like this:
Can you really ever trust someone who can mind control you, or strike you deaf or blind, or make you insane, or turn you to stone--who can push or pull you between planes. And without the same kind of power what can you do about it? Nothing. It puts the caster in a position of control and the non-caster in the role of his servant. There is no promise that a wielder of occult power can make that you can trust, because there's no protecting yourself from them. They say some words and the meteors come raining down. You must rob them of their power. Those whose power comes from spellbooks and components can destroy them and put away their occult studies or die. Those whose power comes from gods can choose to offend those gods and cut ties forever or die. The psion whose power comes from the mind alone must die, for there is no other way to curb their power. It's not a pleasant path to have to walk, but it's that or be a slave to occult powers.
That should work wonderfully, especially if you take time to 'preach' this philosophy a time or two, and convey the mentality of your character to the other players.
Hope your group doesn't have any other casters in it, though.
I guess my point is your party is going to trust or like this char anyway. Would you? No caster is going to deal with you at all. So if you can find a way to play a char that is some what likeable he's a bit delusional. He doesn't have to be chewing the scenery crazy. He fundamentally misunderstands one part of reality. The others trying to convince your char their wrong could be a lot of fun. If you play it in a funny way you can make good cooperative role playing rather then the stand offish char your likely going to end up with. Just my two cents.
Well today's the day. We'll see how session 2 turns out. My intent isn't to be stand offish. I'm hoping to play him as a likeable scoundrel--sortova' Sawyer from Lost kinda' guy. He's kinda' rough and has a doctrine that ruffles people's feathers, but it's a condiment--not the food. Hopefully for the most part he's an entertaining fun character with a bit of a hard-bitten cynical sense of humor who's actually willing to bond with people and learn what's going on with them--and not always just the mysteriously emo stranger leering out of the shadows in the back of the inn. Or worse, the "AAIEE!" Guy who's always drawing his weapon to murder-train some poor bystander just going about his business...because his dog told him to.
I think I've got enough ideas here to take another stab at it.
So we had the game last night and it was so much better. It was kind of a slow session cooling our heels and exploring town waiting for the markets to open to talk with the town's prefect--so lots of opportunity to talk. Lots of shady magic alchemist drug dealer types and weird street preacher conmen made good illustrations to prove my point and when the party's bard, ninja and paladin get abducted by the drug dealing alchemists off to their demiplane lair, returning the next morning with weird tattoos, my guy's position starts to seem less crazy to everyone. I tried to still play up the kind of brooding cynicism, but was able to find reasons to strike up conversations and have some really good roleplaying moments. I was a little worried last week, but I think things are actually going to work out just fine.