How should I role-play this character?


Advice


LG Male Aasimar Monk

Stats:
INT: 10
WIS: 17
CHA: 8

Used for PFS.

What I have so far:

This aasimar character, Hordac, is Garuda-blooded. Instead of growing hair, he grew feathers. This and other bestial traits led to a hard upbringing. Being tormented and bullied relentlessly, he became more and more socially isolated and withdrawn until he literally isolated himself on a mountain where he trained and meditated for 4 years in solitary.

Having grown into adulthood, Hordac is incredibly beautiful with his soft features and graceful cardinal/gold feathers, but is terrible with people. His own experiences as a victim and his isolation have led him to be very direct and uncouth in social situations. When questioned or criticized for this, he often points to the arbitrary nature of social exchange.

He is only really comfortable in 1 on 1 talks, and even then initiates only tentatively and can become quickly hostile if he faces any level of racism or is reminded of past trauma.

He is much more likely to make insightful singular statements occasionally than actually engage in a discussion.

----------------------------------------------------

That's what I got. Any suggestions for retroactive change are welcome as well as some help fleshing him out.

Questions I don't know the answer to:
-Why did he become a Pathfinder?
-How does he introduce himself?
-What country is he from?
-Being a multi-class monk/rogue implies extreme familiarity with human weak spots; when and how did he learn this?


He became a Pathfinder when settlers started moving into the wilderness around his mountain. Worried that he would become surrounded (and that they would eventually move up the mountain too), he instead decided to take a risk, become a Pathfinder, and find somewhere even more secluded.
I would have him introduce himself with a nod, typically. If someone actually needs to know his name, he probably would introduce himself with something along the lines of: "I'm Hordac." Nothing more.
I don't actually know Golarion well enough to answer your third question. Sorry.
Here's a counter-question: why'd he go up the mountain? When he was bullied as a child, he would fight back (this is where his monk background comes from). Of course, being an aasimar, he probably has an instinctual aversion to pain. He learned to target weak spots to end fights quickly (the rogue background). He got quite good at this. Eventually, he hurt one of the bullies. Very badly. While Hordac doesn't know if the bully died or not, he still went up the mountain to keep himself away from other people; on the one hand to protect himself, but on the other hand to protect them. He probably still feels guilt from that fight to this day.
I hope this helps!


@SanKeshun: Great post! Seriously, that is some awesome material.

I like the idea of him being forced from wherever he settled though circumstances such as the one you named. That makes sense. Perhaps he lived along the border of Belkzen, a mountainous region, and encountered an orc scout/raiding party.

I don't like the idea of him fleeing because he hurt someone, and especially not feeling guilty about it. With 17 Wisdom, I feel he would see it differently. Wise people reflect on their mistakes, learn from them, forgive themselves and move on. Thus, a wise character burdened with guilt from hurting someone who in actually really deserved it doesn't jam.

Once you become superior to your bullies, you teach them a painful lesson one time, and they never bother you again. In fact, I have witnessed this. All you have to do if prove you aren't weak, and they pick on someone else; it seems that Hordac could have also reached this conclusion and held nothing back... I'll think about it.

If he hurt someone and then CHOSE to leave, I could see that. It could be that once he developed, he reached a level of skill and fitness that essentially put him above them. After teaching them the aforementioned lesson, perhaps he felt he had the freedom to finally leave whatever awful place he was in with a sense of closure... but they why would he go in solitude? Perhaps there was a different reason that he learned Iron Mountain archetype and also is bad with people...?

He also specializes in non-lethal combat actually, so I couldn't see someone dying easily as a result of his action. Although perhaps he specialized in non-lethal AFTER this happened...? I could see that too...

Okay, I think what would make sense is if he lived in one of the more seedy cities in Varisia like Riddleport. Varisia is adjacent to Belkzen, so it works with the idea of him living in a mountainous area in which he was disturbed.

I could use a few more ideas on why/where he started travelling and how he learned to target weak spots.


I'm also toying with the idea of him being 1/4-1/8 Orc.


I think 1/8 Orc could be nice. Not enough to change the mechanics, but an interesting bit of flavor.
Additional ideas about why he started travelling: To further hone his skills; to leave the bullies behind and seek out new lands; to see if other people are jerks too; to try and find someone he could connect with; to escape all the people he couldn't connect with; to seek out people like him; or to keep developing his connection to the world around him (one of the aspects of the Wisdom score). Or, you know, any combination of those. Or something else.
As for the targeting weak spots: when he was in the wilderness, he may have learned by hunting animals; to help intimidate the bullies; as an idle curiosity in anatomy; to desensitize his own pressure points; as a useful way to practice accuracy and precision; or remind himself through a sting of pain that it is the physical world that matters - that mere insults are unimportant.
I think you're leaning toward a slightly darker character than I originally thought, and am curious how optimistic you intend Hordac to be. Being Lawful Good, I would assume that he has faith in the general goodness of people, but what I'm hearing more now is that he has lost his faith in people (though not in the world). Is that true?


SanKeshun wrote:

I think 1/8 Orc could be nice. Not enough to change the mechanics, but an interesting bit of flavor.

Additional ideas about why he started travelling: To further hone his skills; to leave the bullies behind and seek out new lands; to see if other people are jerks too; to try and find someone he could connect with; to escape all the people he couldn't connect with; to seek out people like him; or to keep developing his connection to the world around him (one of the aspects of the Wisdom score). Or, you know, any combination of those. Or something else.
As for the targeting weak spots: when he was in the wilderness, he may have learned by hunting animals; to help intimidate the bullies; as an idle curiosity in anatomy; to desensitize his own pressure points; as a useful way to practice accuracy and precision; or remind himself through a sting of pain that it is the physical world that matters - that mere insults are unimportant.
I think you're leaning toward a slightly darker character than I originally thought, and am curious how optimistic you intend Hordac to be. Being Lawful Good, I would assume that he has faith in the general goodness of people, but what I'm hearing more now is that he has lost his faith in people (though not in the world). Is that true?

More good content to work with, thank you!

I had a talk with my friend and I think I'm ready to make some conclusions on the character.

As is always for me, I'm going to leave some flexibility in the initial "final" draft so I can flesh out some of his backstory through role-play; I prefer to get to know my characters over time rather than have everything set in stone from the beginning.

Anyway, about the "darkness" in his character... general when I make Monks they tend to be like that. I prefer my disciplined characters to learn discipline through a difficult life instead of sitting in a monastery. In life, when someone is forced to learn self-learn discipline, it isn't pretty, hence the further inclination to the emergence of a darker aspect.
His isn't that bad compared to my other monk; her back-story is that she's from Galt and it's all kinds of f***ed up. Ahem.

Also, I myself am an autodidact, so not only do I have an easier time role-playing autodidacts, but it also works fairly well for a Pathfinder/adventurer origin.

Anyway, character details:

Hordac is 1/4 orc, but it isn't very apparent. His boyhood home was comprised of an intelligent half-orc single-father who was distant and demanding. I will leave what happened to the mother open to possibility.

He grew up in Riddleport. Riddleport is NOT a good place to grow up; the nature of the local has enough flexibility to assume bullying would be commonplace, especially for those that stand out to the extent Hordac does with his feathers and whatnot.

For the way the bullying progressed, I'm sticking with what I said earlier, except I'll use a quote from American Gods, majorly cut down:

"In spring of his thirteenth year the local kids had been picking on him, goading him into fights they knew he could not win after which Shadow would run, angry and often weeping, to the boys' room to wash the mud or blood from his face before anyone could see....
He had grown so fast. In September, he returned to school to discover that the boys that made him miserable were small, soft things no longer capable of upsetting him. The two who tried it were taught better manners, hard and fast and painfully, and Shadow found that he had redefined himself: he could no longer be a quiet kid, doing his best to remain unobtrusively at the back of things."

That book is really, really good by the way.

Basically, Hordac had a similarly defining event. After this event, he felt that Riddleport had nothing more to offer him and that he had a sense of closure over his own safety and personal identity, e.g. "I am an aasimar and I don't fear it because anyone who has a problem with it can taste my fist." These reasons led him to the decision that he wanted to travel away from the city. Due to his aversion to social contact he ended his brief expedition in solitude in the mountainous regions of eastern Varisia. Hordac is a Garuda-Blooded assimar, and it says specifically in the description of them that "Plumekin are drawn to high, mountainous regions"; as such this choice of location wouldn't be unusual or surprising.

My friend made the suggestion for Hordac to be, or at least act, slightly autistic. What he meant by this was for Hordac to interact with others that way; infrequent eye contact, misinterpreting social queues, one-word answers, situationally tone-deaf comments, etc. The thing I reminded my friend of though is that Hordac has high Wisdom, not high Intelligence. Therefore, he is observant and intuitive about what he learns and goes by instinct over analysis. Ultimately, it isn't really misunderstanding that leads Hordac to alternately act out of turn or withdraw from social situations, it's deep distrust of people and their motives. He has a hard time accepting anyone has benevolent motives when they interact with him. I mean, he grew up in friggin' RIDDLEPORT in additional to his abysmal personal experiences. (Growing up in Riddleport would also explain the roguish talents he has like disable device etc).

Hordac being Good or Neutral is still something I'm trying to decide. I myself enjoy playing good characters a lot more. This is a game. I don't really feel the need to criticize myself or grow a more nuanced idea of a character or character development; really, the goal I have for myself is role-playing challenges instead. I've been trying to make and play characters beyond straight white males such as myself for a while now(gay, other races, different gender, etc). I considered gender-flipping Hordac, but it wouldn't really work for many reasons, the biggest being that women simply don't bully each other the way men do, nor do they resolve the bullying in a way that would have Hordac develop the way he needs to have his skill-set.

Focusing in unarmed combat could simply be a casual obsession of his; again I should mention the idea of autistic tendencies. It still seems odd to me that he chose this of all things to focus on while living in SOLITUDE, but hey, semantics. It could easily be any of the explanations you provided, and it's not like he's planning on explaining it to anyone anytime soon.

The pinnacle of his pre-adventurer character development was his decision to leave his solitary life, however. It was a choice. After so many years, he felt he needed to travel more. Some kind of urge to leave what he had behind. This urge was actually the urge to socialize and be around people, but he would hardly conclude or recognize this as the reason. As opposed to making the somewhat lazy concession "and eventually he became a Pathfinder" I had an idea formulating that he was barely over the southern border into Nirmathas when he witnessed an adventuring group of particularly good chemistry in a town/tavern, and found to his surprise that his first thought was: "I wish I had that."

Coming back to the good vs. neutral alignment quandary, Hordac wants to believe that people are good, and in his heart he does. But, I don't know if this makes him "good"; his motivation is still ultimately for the sake of himself. His 2-3 year long training to be a Pathfinder(which all Pathfinders have by the way; see Seekers of Secrets) would definitely teach him some sense of cooperation, though I expect him to have learned that he accepts his role mostly silently. Choosing to put his neck on the line for others would indicate goodness, but I'm not sure when and why he would do that. I guess I'll have to wait on his alignment until after I start using him more often, but he'll be neutral for now.

One more thing that's worth mentioning about Hordac is how his social behavior doesn't mesh with his looks. He looks very striking and unique, and often gets exactly the kind of attention he doesn't want wherever he goes. He feathers are a remarkable cardinal-and-gold color, and he himself is tall with soft features aside from his nose, which is more thin and slightly beak-like. Him being a gorgeous man doesn't really mesh with his Charisma score, but it honestly doesn't have to, and I feel that it will make him more interesting to play. As a concise package, think of his personality as Gerome from Fire Emblem: Awakening, for those of you that know who that is.


Wow. Long post there.

I think this sounds great. I don't see anything I would tweak. Have fun playing him, I sure it'll go well. I especially like the addition that he does not prefer solitude, but that he simply does not understand any other way to be.

And yes, American Gods is an excellent book.

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