Advice for RPing an 8-year old prodigy sorceress NPC?


Advice


So, one possible side quest in a campaign I'm running may have the party coming across a woman and her 8-year-old daughter, who are on the run / in hiding. The girl's father is an arcanist and an influential noble who made a deal with the Fey for more power, and promised them his first-born child. The mother found out before it was too late, and took off with the girl. They've tried to go into hiding, but the father and his agents are still looking for them, and staying low-key has become more difficult; the girl has manifested sorcerer powers, and can't always control them when she gets emotional.

The girl is a young half-elf that has the powers of a 5th level sorceress, and has 16 int and 18 cha. I'm trying to decide on a personality for her. She's unnaturally clever for her age, but I don't want to just play her like an adult.

Any thoughts? Tips?

Grand Lodge

Highly intelligent, but in a child-like sort of way. Earlier D&D versions added sub-stats like Intelligence-Knowledge is things already learned and another substat reflected how easily new things are learned. She should be SCARY at the latter, but less of the former.

Mischevious + Intelligent. Her quest for knowledge means she does things like cast invisibility/alter self to spy on adults to find out whats really going on vs doing as shes told.

Does she truly know/understand why dad is coming after her? She may actually think mom is bad (shes got a lot of rules) and dad is really just misunderstood; he's coming to save her after all.

Boiling Blood might be a good spell for her thematically when she gets excitable.

Most 5 year old think dream that animals can talk, maybe she actually can. How would that reflect among other children her age; would they think she is weird/behind them in maturity?


An 8 year old doesn't have a long attention span for anything they're not specifically interested in. They get bored easily, they get distracted easily, they're hungry all the time, they get upset easily, and while they are not to bad to reason with, they are somewhat selfish as opposed to going along for the greater good. They are inexplicably shy with some people and friendly with others. They can cling to mommy one minute and ask someone they like to be their boyfriend the next.


As a child, most of her experience is probably going to come from her known interactions. While she might not know what a robber is by experience, she will have likely heard of "bad men" who " want to steal mommy's jewelry". She could infer that a bar could be dangerous because it smells like one of their hired servants who drank frequently and was moody and violent.

Since she was from a noble family, it's very possible that she was tutored from a young age and has had plenty of books and written material at her disposal. She knows things, though at that age, it's unlikely she'll be making the larger connections and planning accurately. In a way, she's book-smart and not people-smart or tactically smart. At that age, she won't be making decision so much as reacting. She'll probably listen to adults who aren't obviously out to harm her.


8 years old for a Half-Elf? Remember that a 20 year old Half-Elf is the equivalent of a 15 year old human.
Anyway, Prestidigitation with probably give you tons of ideas. Vanish and Invisibility are good "I'm scared" spells. If you get into anything that deals damage, though, people are going to start dying pretty quickly, and you don't want her to go through that.

Grand Lodge

Pathfinder PF Special Edition, Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber
Michael Haneline wrote:

So, one possible side quest in a campaign I'm running may have the party coming across a woman and her 8-year-old daughter, who are on the run / in hiding. The girl's father is an arcanist and an influential noble who made a deal with the Fey for more power, and promised them his first-born child. The mother found out before it was too late, and took off with the girl. They've tried to go into hiding, but the father and his agents are still looking for them, and staying low-key has become more difficult; the girl has manifested sorcerer powers, and can't always control them when she gets emotional.

The girl is a young half-elf that has the powers of a 5th level sorceress, and has 16 int and 18 cha. I'm trying to decide on a personality for her. She's unnaturally clever for her age, but I don't want to just play her like an adult.

Any thoughts? Tips?

Although it's not the same genre, Cybergeneration has a lot of useful ideas in roleplaying very young heroes and setting an appropriate tone.


Her spell list should probably be a mix of direct incapacitation, mobility, and illusions. Illusions (silent image, ghost sound, ventriloquism) are for when she's in control and wants to mess with people, mobility (fly, invisibility, jump, etc.) for when she wants to get away, and direct incapacitation (color spray, glitterdust, hideous laughter, blindness/deafness) for when she can't get away. I don't know about you, but I haven't seen kids who genuinely want to set other people on fire or electrocute them until they die.

If she's the sort of person who still carries some kind of memento around or has a familiar or enjoys animals or something, considering packing in a summon spell.


If you've read Firestarter by Stephen King, that might be a good reference. The little girl in the book is much smarter than she should be for an average girl of her age, and she's manifested some powers that aren't normal at all and is struggling to deal with them while being on the run. I don't think it's painfully long, and you certainly wouldn't have to read the entirety of it to get the idea.


Bloodrealm wrote:

8 years old for a Half-Elf? Remember that a 20 year old Half-Elf is the equivalent of a 15 year old human.

Anyway, Prestidigitation with probably give you tons of ideas. Vanish and Invisibility are good "I'm scared" spells. If you get into anything that deals damage, though, people are going to start dying pretty quickly, and you don't want her to go through that.

Oh right, forgot about that. I guess she'd be 10, then.


If you have time.
Go read the first book or two of Young Wizards by Diane Duane. Nita is almost exactly that sorta character.
Kit in that book is also a great example.

Just subsitute their character and replace the baddie in tho books with the baddie in yours and itll give some interesting personalty traits.

Plus these are wonderful boooks

Grand Lodge

Pathfinder PF Special Edition, Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber
Aestereal wrote:
If you've read Firestarter by Stephen King, that might be a good reference. The little girl in the book is much smarter than she should be for an average girl of her age, and she's manifested some powers that aren't normal at all and is struggling to deal with them while being on the run. I don't think it's painfully long, and you certainly wouldn't have to read the entirety of it to get the idea.

I believed it's implied that it's the same character grown up in Hellboy.


Aestereal wrote:
If you've read Firestarter by Stephen King, that might be a good reference. The little girl in the book is much smarter than she should be for an average girl of her age, and she's manifested some powers that aren't normal at all and is struggling to deal with them while being on the run. I don't think it's painfully long, and you certainly wouldn't have to read the entirety of it to get the idea.

Thanks for the recommendation. I downloaded the novel and am about halfway through now.


The Elsa character from Disney's Frozen could work as a template too.


VRMH wrote:
The Elsa character from Disney's Frozen could work as a template too.

I assume you mean the scenes where she's a child? Unfortunately, we don't see enough of that to really base a personality on, I think.


I would look to ang from the last airbender series (not the movie) for an example of this concept done fairly well.


Pathfinder Rulebook Subscriber

To cover her lack of control over her magic, make sure you avoid targeting spells in the most tactically appropriate way.

For example, let's say she can cast Color Spray. Maybe her mom is right beside the person she wants to take out. A skilled caster would aim off to one side and catch the target on the edge of the cone to avoid hitting the mother. This little girl, on the other hand, doesn't have that fine of control and puts the target right in the middle of the cone.

This likely leads to an unconscious mother, which will of course upset the girl, but she'll quickly switch to ecstatic as her mom recovers from the spell.

Out of curiosity, what bloodline are you going with for the girl?

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