| Syrix |
Okay, so this seems like the best place to put this and I don't have high hopes that I'll get ideas in time for the campaign this coming Sunday (though I will stockpile them for future sessions.) I have a character that needs help with downtime activities and I'll illustrate my dilemma, if you'll bear with me as I regale you with (hopefully not) excessive backstory.
BACKGROUND: The character is a very rich and fulfilling one that I stumbled upon while frustratingly throwing character ideas at the DM hoping to have one stick. Skipping past the point in which I was about to run a Troll character (a Tiefling "Phallic Knight" whose sole purpose was to turn the campaign into an endless stream of inappropriate innuendoes) I finally settled on a Changeling Witch (Gravewalker archetype) after I read up on the race after picking it out of a short list of acceptable races. After deciding on the character and picking some core attributes (feats, etc) I started to get an idea in my head based off of some of the Changeling racial features that my character was going to be alot like the Witch enemy from the Left4Dead video game franchise, only less infected.
(To those not in the know, and no desire to do research, the Witch is a slender female enemy character characterized by constant crying and being in the middle of the path. The goal is to avoid startling her, as she turns from a crying oddity into a homing death-dealing bullet sponge that deals alot of damage with her claws, and takes a lot of punishment.)
As I was pondering this character one evening, I decided that I liked her as a Barbarian better since the rage and damage buffs and rage powers complimented her turning into a frenzy of claws and death. But I had already built some of her Gravewalker class features into her backstory, plus I liked the idea of her having a duality of personality and changing from a raging machine of death to a calm and collected, if evil, persona that used Magic to compliment her rage (Enemy's Heart anyone?)
So, getting to the main attraction, I decided that my character was going to be dark. Evil, but also with a defining back story that explains why she was the way she is. For the younger eyes, I will spare the complete story, but she comes into our campaign at the age of 18 after spending more than half of her life being abused by her father to the point of developing a dichotomy of the mind, and after spending two years on her own wandering after separating with her father (or rather, her father from his life, and his hand from his body which is what her Spell Poppet is crafted from.)
She is primarily detatched from reality, spending most moments as an aloof, almost egregiously autistic person, only developing interest in things that would grab her attention (loud noises, shiny things, large gatherings) and largely doesn't interact with people (not even the party.) And believe me, they've tried. (They try talking to her and she is largely unaware. Ive developed a bit of a scary character. Noone knows what to expect from me.)
Now she is far from an mindless. There is a person in there, and she is capable of flashes of inspiration, but largely mumbles in a made up language, approved by the DM, to best describe her Aphasic ramblings. When she does speak Common, it's through another hyperbolic aphasia, this time with a juxtaposition of words that I decide at whim. It has developed a bit of character interaction between myself and another member of the party who has taken to writing down whatever I say and attempts to sleuth out what each word means and what. It's an excellent bit of roleplaying that has gotten us each awarded bonus XP by the DM.
My character, Ludila (which is... Well just Google translate the name and humor yourself), has fleeting periods of lucidity (though I aim to expand it over time so there is at least a reasonable amount of face time with Ludila proper.) When she is lucid, she is a bitter soup of hatred from the years of abuse that she endured and, to be honest with myself, honestly expect her to meet her end either with a T.P.K., ending the campaign, or my death at the hands of the party after attempting said T.P.K.
Anyways, getting back to brass tacks. (Thanks for hanging in there. There's alot more, but for the sake of space and legibility, I'm being sparse.) My character being a disturbed and detatched character doesn't have alot to do during downtime, no axe to sharpen, arrows to make/buy, no profession/craft to make money from. Just random acts of acting out (I caused the DM to AFK (table?) After miming killing a stray cat with which to paint a turnip for a town festival, in her own demented way. Apparently I ended up painting the cat and decorating the party's base of ops. And the DM promised me a campaign of more action, less diplomacy, though I don't mind either. My character is fast running out of things to do around town that aren't repetitive, and the DM is known to punish severely party splitting or else I'd just strike out on my own. But short of causing things to happen (releasing a pissed off ghost, releasing a guy imprisoned for several years deep underground in the starting town, etc) and causing an event that the party HAS to respond to, the rest of the party seems to be stuck in this town, and short of talking out of character and driving the party onward, I can't force them to move on from the safety and comfort of home.
So what I'm asking for is ideas of things to do during downtime (perhaps character building in some fashion?) That fit my character so I don't have to break the fourth wall and direct the party to do what my in game character is (in character) wanting to do, but unable to convey.
EDIT: I forgot to add that at the moment, burning down the party's home base/town tavern is an option on the table, if a bit drastic, and while I am playing an "insane character," I'm trying to go more for the aloof and a bit creepy "Kafka-esque" rather than "Heath Ledger Joker." There is a small, small (repeated ad infinitum) chance that she could develop a close enough bond with this party that I don't eventually T.P.K., or even attempt it, and I don't think burning down the party's base or putting us on bad relations with the town in which it is kept would be ideas supporting that highly unlikely but desirable end.
And I will still need downtime activities should the party need to siesta another week or two in any future town we visit. So please help me brainstorm!
| Scott Wilhelm |
To flesh out your crazycakes character, you have already honed some lovely obsessive behaviors to disturb the party. To add depth to your character, the thing I see as clearly missing is a central motivation. Give her a goal. Your insane character's goal doesn't have to make any sense at all, it doesn't need to have anything to do with the reality of the game world. It can be anything, the crazier the better, and later, you just change it completely.
Have her carry around a random object and tell everyone that it is her father transformed into __________ by the evil wizard ____________. And you go to temples and local wizards looking for help breaking the spell.
Give her a quest to collect a bottle of sunshine to slay her evil, vampire sister. "NO! not a Daylight Spell! She's too powerful for that! It has to be real sunshine!"
Or maybe she needs a bottle of sunshine, tears from a particular kind of spider's abdominal eye, troll fart gas, 4 gloops of water from a dark well, mix them in a left-handed teacup over a mesquite and locus wood fire at a temperature 13Kelvin stirring clockwise every 5 minutes and and counterclockwise every 4 minutes for 48 hours, and that will perfect the global arial shield that will keep out the flying saucer men.
The last time I had a crazycakes character, she began as a simple magic user who, initially for minmaxing reasons would collect samples and speccimens from everycreature the party killed for performing magical research. Then she started to delve in to a GM house rule allowing her to cast spells of numbers and levels that she didn't know, were too high level, or after she had already cast her daily allottment of spells. But whenever she did, there was an undisclosed probability that she would suffer a random abberation. The first was that she was obscessively secretive. At the table, I started drawing random and very elaborate sigils on the side of the GM's map (dry erase board, dry erase marker), and when anyone asked me what I was doing, I said, "NOTHING!" Sometimes, I would mispronounce things on purpose and if anyone in the party corrected me, I would snap, "That's what I said!" Later, the GM told me my character's digestion couldn't handle anything except blood. She purchased a pig that she would bleed at mealtime. The pig got lost in one adventure, and so she took a prisoner from a group of orcs. Her name was Claire, the party called her Creepy Claire. The GM said she was the best villain he had ever had.
Is your character going to have a catchphrase? How about "don't Call ME CRAZY!"?
| Syrix |
I am glad to see that this is not a fresh broken pathway, however my character does have a character goal, but it's mostly out of my hands. As part of the Changeling's racial story they recieve a "calling" at their coming of age to seek out their mother and possibly embrace their hag heritage, turning into a Hag themselves. Her patron spirit (Insanity), who refers to himself as Patron (which is one of the three reasons I have given for her referring to her spell poppet as Papa, verbalized as puh-pah) is her guiding force towards finding her mother, instructing her to reunite Mama (muh-mah) with Papa. In fact, it was the only reason I could compel her to stick with the party (because as Ludila put it, "Papa said.")
I would like to expand upon it and not just leave it up to the DM's complete discretion (thusfar I "control" my Patron's communique with her) as to the where and when the party should find Mama to reunite with Papa. But as I've said, the DM punishes party splitting very heavily. While I wouldn't care as my character, I'd rather see this through to completion.
That said, the main thing I'd like to point out here is that she's crazy, but in a soft way. She's more "shy" and aloof and autistic rather than outwardly being crazy (Neutral more than Chaotic). She doesn't really converse with the party, she doesn't really respond to people talking to her (she mostly just stands and stares. Even when she does talk to them, she avoids eye contact (unless I forcibly make eye contact to emphasize a specific acting out: The other evening I turned to one of my fellow PCs and in an as yet unseen mannerism, put my hand to his face and broke the fourth wall by telling him "Don't worry the little boy died in his sleep." Referencing a previous campaign in which that same player caused a thieivng boy to die by casting sleep on him while he was backing down the two story ladder by which he reached us.) It failed to unnerve him, but I hope to use this trick again on another of our party members and possibly an NPC as a psychic attack on the DM.
Also of note, I managed lucidity in a situation in which one of the party members forcibly handed me a sponge and demanded that I clean up my mess (decorated cat) it startled the DM (and got me XP) and unnerved the whole party.
