Zenfox: Thanks for the help, it's greatly appreciated :) I'll make some adjustments and put it all in his alias. (Might ask you to give it a once over when I'm done, if that's alright)
Hi there! I struggled with my original concept so I wrote up something else I had on my mind. I'm going to put some stats to the character, but that shouldn't take long (I just need to find the perfect moment when the kids are knocked-out ;))
Concept: The loveable simpleton.
Spoiler:
Memento Mori: Hank didn't have much use for memories. He was never accused of being bright and clever. Hank often got lost in the dim of the 'what ifs', his consciousness trailing off from the task at hand with his brain desperately trying to hold on to what it was he was supposed to remember but without fail, failing.
As such Hank wasn't the type to draw any sort of meaningful conclusion to a train of thought or experience. The most he would reflect on was usually how he could've been so stupid as to forget that one important thing he was to be doing, undermining his self-confidence and setting himself up for failure next time.
There is, however, one sliver of a memory clinging to the insides of his dome like the leavings of peanut butter in a near empty jar.
He remembered sound of the boots hitting the floor, rhythmically tapping away to the haunting tunes of the three-stringed banjo. People were clapping along and some even started dancing. The air was hot and thick, smoke and sweat and laughter.
For the first time in his life, he felt like he belonged somewhere. Not necessarily in this particular water-hole, or amongst these hillbillies, but in the moment. He was part of the music and it flowed through him into the night.
Hank smiled with abandon back at the crowd and everyone could clearly see his two missing teeth. They were loving it. The fool turned out to be a decent guitar player and they were whooping and hollering to edge him on. Hank moved his fingers faster, frantically increasing the tempo while pounding his boot into the makeshift stage.
He didn’t see his older brother come back in. If he had he’d have missed a beat for sure. He knew Travis didn’t like it when he touched his things. Hank didn’t want the stupid to rub off on his brother either, and normally he wouldn’t have dreamt of taking up Travis’ guitar, but this night the crowd had been rowdy and they convinced him that if they didn’t hear a song soon they’d throw the brothers out of town and burn their instruments. Hank didn’t want them to burn Travis’ instruments, so he had climbed up on the stage like a scared little mouse. Intimidated he’d started the song he knew how to play best, the tune his father had taught him all those years back.
It was good he didn’t see Travis, because it meant he didn’t see the ashtray come flying his way neither. He got knocked out cold for the rest of the night. His brother was a mean drunk, and sure didn’t like it when Hank touched his things.
Greatest Fear: To be left alone, all alone.
Worst Nightmare: Hank usually sleeps pretty sound. He’s a simple fellow and loves to doze, kip and slumber. He’ll sleep peacefully through a thunderstorm and has a soft, wheezy type of snore. As such, he doesn’t care much for nightmares. He used to suffer from them a lot more often, but since he doesn’t travel with his brother anymore and joined the posse, luckily, they have been few and far in between.
The worst nightmare Hank knows is one where he sits in a cage. He watches helplessly as figures, sometimes people he knows like his mother, dance around a tied up dog and inflict random cruelty upon it. The dancing intensifies, the cruelty increases, until the dream speeds up dramatically and the dog escapes to attack Hank. It was Hanks first dog, his favourite friend in the world. Every time he sees a dog that looks like it he can’t help but try and connect with it, but the shadow of the dream spoils the moment.
Death Wound: A cut throat. Hank was keeping watch. He sat with his back against a tree and he had carved crude figures from sticks. He kept himself occupied by playing with them. The stick figures resembled a couple he had seen in town. Two rich and pretty people. They were dancing and romancing at the moment, with Hank smiling and in his own world of make belief, when the blade came out from the dark and cut his throat wide open.
This looks like a lot of fun! I used to love doomtown and played deadlands in it's older version with pulling cards if I remember correctly. I'd have to see if I can find this savage worlds version, but I'm going to try for sure :)
Edit: Currently I'm thinking of basing a character on the cover of 'blauwbloezen nr54, Miss Walker'
General Build:
-Class: Ranger
-Race: Shifter
-Background: Urchin
Personality:
-Primary Motivator: Survival
-Outlook: Cynical
-Integrity: The ends justify the means.
-Boldness: Brave, but a calculated risk taker. Snow isn’t stupid. He’s been burnt too often.
-Conformity: Heterodox
-Religious Adherence: Orthodox, Snow is superstitious and doesn’t take chances in matters of the faith.
-Favourite Topics of Conversation: The sky, the breeze, the smell of fresh bread. How to get from point a to point b the quickest. Criticising the City Guard.
-Quirks, Habits, and Oddities: Fidgety, Nervous and Skittish. Snow is not the greatest at social interaction. Surprisingly patient when there’s food to be had.
-Hobbies and Enjoyments: Running rooftops, messing with the Guards, Sharing food with the orphans and homeless.
Background:
-Where were you born and where did you grow up? Snow grew up in the Sharn slums.
-Where and with whom did you learn your trade? A gang of orphaned children. Thieves and cutthroats, it was a nasty scene.
-What is the most important event that shaped your personal path? Meeting Jim d’Jorasco, he patched Snow up after he’d been beaten senseless and left for dead. Snow would do anything for Jim.
-What did you do during the Last War? Rooftop running and slumming it in the Slums. Snow has never left Sharn.
-What is your wildest dream or goal? How do you wish to be remembered? To be seen as an actual person, and eat a warm meal every night. To have people in the street greet him like he sees them do to each other while he watches from the shadows.
Allies, Contacts, and Rivals:
Choose from the following list one ally (someone that will likely help you), one contact (someone that you know), and one rival (someone that will likely hinder you), and explain for each, in one sentence, the reason for this relationship:
Ally - Jim d’Jorasco: male halfling healer
Jim saved Snow’s life, and Snow has been protective of Jim ever since.
Rival - Kavill: male shifter Watch investigator
Kavill arrested Snow once, and hates the reputation Snow gives Shifters. He’s extra hard on him.
Contact - Timbal Grasstooth: male halfling fence
Snow occasionally sells the odd trinket at Timbal’s. He’s part of the old gang Snow used to run with, but there’s no love lost between them. Their relationship is purely business.
Awesome :) Bookrat, congratulations!! Hope it all went as smooth as these things can possibly go. In about exactly one month (although you never know of course) I'm hoping to update the game with a post straight from the hospital as well ;)
Wuliev: I like the questions, they make sense and dig deep.
I could see his hexblade tricks spring forth from his heritage. He's just learned to harness them for what he considers 'good' with help from tutors.
Roscoe definitely defines subjectively for himself what denotes a witch. Roughly someone who exerts power over another through magic, either arcane or divine, with the intent to hurt, harm or control. Although a good part of his bag of tricks springs forth from his bloodline.. he fights with a mix of that, the handbook of Avacyns warriors and the tricks he picked up hunting witches. He's not scared of using the enemies nastiness against them.
Most of the rest of his personality is a lot of a hopeful naive soul of someone who desperately needs to find good in humanity with a sprinkle of a cynical realist who's seen what people are capable of.
He needs confirmation from others that he matters as a person. He's got these good and evil lines pretty deeply defined for himself so he knows which side he's on. His heritage made that he feels the need to defy his obvious devil-spawn destiny. His crusading is really him rebelling against it.
He's afraid of not being able to avoid the dark destiny his dad planned for him, though to be frank he doesn't even know what that is. That's his biggest fear. The other thing would be to have no meaning in the grand scheme of things. He needs to belong.
This is what I was thinking "crunchwise", but it's all flexible and interchangeable:
Str 8, Dex 10, Con 12, Int 14, Wis 14, Cha 17
Skill proficiencies: Arcana, Investigation, Insight, Stealth
Feat: War caster (Next level possibly picking up mage slayer feat)
Invocations: Eldrich blast, Mask of many faces
Pact of the blade
Innistrad is a great plane! A tiefling witch hunter sounds cool too!
Would you try to serve the church of Avacyn, or perhaps a splinter demon cult?
How do you live among the rigid humans with your demonic appearance? Have you learned tricks of the barony's glamer, or perhaps your differences are overcomeable by traditional cosmetics? Cathar hat, stuff tail down pants, etc.
And what of your lineage? Demonblooded men are few and far between. Are you a child of the brash sorcerer Tibalt?
If you are of the Church of Avacyn, what beliefs do you find yourself cherishing and fighting for? Do you harbor any resentment for their culture of harsh uniformity and shame?
Also, the timeline from which you hail has a bearing on this. If you lived during or after Emrakuls' invasion on the plane, you may find yourself being more easily accepted by the humans, as they've seen their families warped by the otherworldly taint, in droves.
I was thinking of him serving Avacyn as Cathar. Adopted as a baby by an inquisitor, high up in the ranks. That would have given him the protection needed to grow up comfortably around the clergy. It would also have given him the entryway into becoming a member himself. The uniform would have given him the confidence needed to move around in the world, regardless of his looks. (He'd developed his mask of Many faces none-the-less)
The timeline does play a large part in this, and I personally really like the idea of the gap left when Avacyn dissapears. The darkness and unrest that follows... The Cathars going full Spanish inquisition on the population and getting their morals and ideals twisted.
I imagine an inquisitor that was so forward thinking as to save a tiefling baby and raise it like her own might find herself in a bind with her culture turning even more xenophobic than usual.
Her honor would have been questioned, and she'd have stepped down and maybe gone into hiding. But it would fit Roscoes background pretty well if she'd been locked away by the cult-gone-mad.
He wouldn't have been able to get to her, and all around him his own people were starting to do things that went completely against everything Avacyn stood for as he saw it. Cathars were running wild, dispatching random judgement to the people fueled by greed and lust.
Roscoe would have been so disillusioned by this that he turned against the new modus operandi of the church. He would see himself as part of the true believers. That Acacyn hadn't abandoned them would play a big role in this state of mind.
Everywhere where he would encounter Cathars having wild witch-hunts, burning innocent people for crimes imagined, Roscoe would hunt them down.
I see him knee-deep, distanced from the church, plowing through rain and mud hunting the corrupt clergy. Loneliness for company, but he's too obsessed with following his feelings to notice.
He's a witch hunter, taking down traitors of his faith as he sees it. He punishes those that take their frustrations and weaknesses out on the innocent.
I didn't know about the sorcerer, but it fits great. The image I had found for Rosco turned out to be Tibalt so that's cool. He would have been one of Tibalts spawn, found by the inquisitor.
That's what I have in large lines, I'm curious to hear your thoughts on it.
Awesome! I was considering Innistrad as a home-plane. Are you familiar with it? I found a 5e adaptation for it here: http://d1bf78c87087c77d76ca-be4120a00702a7d33079a120750230c5.r45.cf1.rackcd n.com/Plane%20Shift%20Innistrad%20SFG_2.pdf
I'm looking to blow life into a tiefling witch hunter.
Hey gang! I'm reading up atm. Missed the thread over here.
Dude1:
Bricklayer - Trowel (1d4), a bag of dry mortar
Skinny Pete
Is a bricklayer. He lost a bet, and had to work the weekend to lay the foundation for a new christian church.
He started work, digging, and found a sioux origin jewellery, and corpse, and more corpses. Pete shrugged, pocketed the jewellery and started laying bricks.
Pete claims he has no way of knowing it was a ancient sacred indian burial site.
Pete's life would never be the same...
Dude2:
Trapper - A skinning knife (1d4), bear trap
Jean-Paul 'JP Grizzly' LaRoux
A bear of a man, its no coincidence people started calling him grizzly. Huge hands, great beard. JP was a lumberjack (TO BE CONTINUED)
Dude3:
Hunter - Civilian rifle (1d12), a compass
Dude4:
Servant - Brass candlestick (1d2), a letter of recommendation
Physical Description: Standing over seven feet tall, and weighing over three hundred pounds Gorgon strikes a hulking and bulky figure. Gorgon has a crocodile like head with a double row of spikes running from the top of his head, all the way down along his spine and over a large strong tail. His green scales are a soft-moss green hue, and his eyes are muddy brown. He's got the makings of a predator, and seems alert wherever he goes. Gorgon carries himself with pride.
He wears armour crafted from his most dangerous prey and wears it like a badge of honour.
Personality Trait: I’m driven by a wanderlust that led me away from home, and I place no stock in wealthy or well-mannered folk. Money and manners won’t save you from a hungry owl bear.
Ideal: If I dishonor myself, I dishonor my whole clan.
Bond: My family, clan, or tribe is the most important thing in my life, even when they are far from me. Gorgon once worked for Davra Jassur, a Zhentarim "troubleshooter" recruiting promising new talent for the Black Network. She helped him get your start as an adventurer, and he owes her for that.
Flaw: Don’t expect me to save those who can’t save themselves. It is nature’s way that the strong thrive and the weak perish.
Gorgon grew up in a harsh swampland, born into a small tribe of Lizard-folk. As only son of the Chieftain he grew up capable, strong and fat. And a little entitled.
Gorgon Lockjaw is one with nature and is no stranger to the dark side of it, accustomed to a brutal world that is as violent as it is unforgiving.
Gorgon believes in a sacred bond between hunter and prey and that it's the point of life and death. He delights in the hunt, doesn't shy away from bloodshed and savors the fear of his prey.
When he engages in a hunt, Gorgon will often shoot a prayer to Malar, to pray for the necessary skills to hunt his prey. He doesn't fully realize Malar is a evil God. It's simply the God his father taught him to pray to. Gorgon isn't of evil breed and when he hatched he turned out to be quite the levelheaded Lizardfolk, thankfully missing the cruel streak his father ruled with all this time.
When he came of age, his father sent him away on walk-about, as is customary for his people. This journey is meant to broaden the young lizard-folks horizon, and it's the last step before assuming rulership of he tribe. It's a time of growth and self reflection. Two things young Gorgon could use plenty of.
