What about a bloodline (Unearthed Arcana)? Or, you could try and work with your DM to modify the Petitioner template (Manual of the Planes) to function as a PC.
Edit: Or play as a Tiefling :)
Or ask your GM. If you've come up with sufficient background as to why your character is not evil, your GM may allow it.
Although if I were the GM in question I might say, "You can be good, but understand if you meet evil outsiders, they will recognize you as 'fallen' and target you." Of course, that does not mean I would then make every fight with evil outsiders because that would be mean and stupid, but when it made sense for evil outsiders to show up, that would get played out.
As for fictional characters, the only non-evil fiend I can think of off the top of my head is Fall-from-Grace from Planescape: Torment, the Lawful Neutral Succubus (she is full blooded fiend, not half-blooded). (If you are not familiar with her, she was a demon who was sold into slavery to devils. She learned the devils' orderly way, but rebelled against both their and her own race's cruelty, and has tried to channel her natural dark passions toward academic pursuits, running "the Brothel of Slaking Intellectual Lusts" in Sigil.)
As Are also mentions, not all tieflings are evil (Torment also gives us Annah, the chaotic neutral tiefling, who's a pretty good tiefling archetype); if you're just creating the character, making the character a tiefling would probably work best. Or talking of bloodlines, take a level or few of Infernal Sorcerer if it suits your concept.
Okay, the other 2 posters have some great replies, but I've got 2 thoughts for you as well:
D&D Branded Fiendish Codex 1 (lords of the nine hells):
The Hellbred race. If you're looking at being someone who made a deal with a devil, this is your guy. There are 2 varieties dependent on the type of character you want to make. Again, check with your DM.
Now, for third party, Fantasy Flight Games' Mythic Races book details a "fallen" evil outsider as a Risen Demon race. I don't have the book in front of me, as I'm borrowing someone else's computer at the moment (thus not @ home), but the idea is essentially what DeathQuaker posited out. A full-blooded fiend wants to do good... therefore becomes this.
Outside of that, Tieflings are the best way to go, IMO. They get you less restrictions than a full half-fiend, and (provided you have access to it), the book Races of Faerun details a few feats to increase the power level of a Tiefling to closer to a half-fiend. (Add in the Infernal Bloodline Feats from a few sources, or the Devil-Touched feats from the Fiendish Codex, and you've got a right dangerous character).
I hope I helped here, now off to work :)
/d
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Monte Cook wrote an FR novel titled The Glass Prison at the close of the '90s.
The protagonist is a Cambion who, upon reaching the Dalelands from the Abyss in the novel's intro, struggles with his intrinsic CE nature while progressively coming to the realization that he is also intrinsically Good and wants to be Good all the way, divorcing himself from from his paternal blood (by confronting and ultimately battling it in the personification of his grandfather, a Balor).
That may be the best character from D&D fiction of a Half-Fiend who is good.
I can't add any further examples - DQ beat me to Grace, which is where my brain generally goes first on the subject of non-evil fiends - but I can add some experience I've had in gaming:
Having spent several years playing multiplayer Neverwinter Nights on various servers, I've seen a handful of Half-Fiend PCs about. A good chunk of these were either non-evil from the start - having been "raised by a parent/mentor who helped them fight their blood" or something along those lines - or had started evil and moved up the scale due to in-game events. Most stayed at neutral rather than making it all the way to good, but I can think of at least one example (a half-succubus cleric who gained the favor of a good goddess and was able to make it all the way to CG).
Having such experience I tend to be a bit more lenient about the "automatically changes to evil" line in the text, if given sufficient reason. I'd talk it over with your DM and see if s/he can be persuaded likewise. Otherwise, lots of good suggestions above.
The fiendish template might be more viable than half-fiend then.
Curious--what's the race/class build so far?
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Curious--what's the race/class build so far?
NG Male human bard 7/fighter 1/ eldritch knight 2
Concept: Braveheart meets Han SoloRole: Ranged combat (revolver), party face, party leader (Leadership feat: 8th level human melee ranger as cohort)
The campaign is world-building focused: secure a fortress, forge alliances, mitigate wars. We're picking up where we left off, just after returning from a quest that took us into hell.
The impetus for wanting a hellish influence is that to travel through hell we were forced into an agreement with a fading vampiric devil: essentially we allow him to feed on us (restoring some of his power) and in exchange we get to move more-or-less unmolested to our destination. The devil showed up again after we accomplished our mission as we set off toward the exit, offering us a chance to re-up and leaving us little choice in the matter. Hit-point- and Level-drained, we slogged our way back to the portal, teleported home, then spent just about emptied the coffers fixing everyone.
I figure that kind of experience would take a toll on even a hardened adventurer.
I'm looking a half-fiend-like template that doesn't require an alignment change. (I wanna keep the character NG, but have something to reflect his time in hell.)
Also, can you think of any fictional characters that might represent such a class? (Hellboy comes to mind, but that's not quite right.)
The other posters volunteered the mechanics you might use, and I don't have anything to add to that beyond the obvious (i.e., use the half-fiend template in the MM and skip the alignment requirement).
But your post interested me b/c later this year I'm going to try and create a PC based on the Damian Hellstrom character (Marvel comics, aka "Son of Satan"). He won't be NG by a long shot, but he won't necessarily be evil either. For fun, I also want to create a PC based on Etrigan (DC Comics). Etrigan's father was Belial in the comics I believe, which would technically make him half-devil, but the comics didn't have the devil/demon distinction D&D made...
Hm... Probably adding a class level of a different class would not be of much benefit to you at this point.
My suggestion would be to go with the Fiendish template, as opposed to the Half-Fiend (it's under Monster Advancement in the Bestiary/PRD). It's not as powerful, but gives you some appropriate resistances, etc. and doesn't have an "always evil" requirement.
I'd also say in the situation described, as GM I might give everyone not a standard template, but everyone gets one minor "mutation" so to speak from their time in hell and proximity to the demon they let drain them. Sort of like a tiefling's physical characteristics--one person grows scales (+1 Natural Armor bonus), another person grows a third eye (+2 to sight based perception or something), etc. Not shift their alignment but maybe quest the party to remove the "hell taint" from their souls (detect Evil currently pings on the characters just slightly, even though they aren't evil).
Hi Tom! I think I might have just the template from you. Here are my risen half-fiend and risen fiend templates from my house rules. I hope you find them useful. :-)
"Half-fiend, Redeemed
"Occasionally a creature born of an evil outsider and a mortal will utterly reject her fiendish heritage, becoming unscrupulously good. Sages refer to such creatures as redeemed half-fiends. A redeemed half-fiend gains the same physical traits as any half-fiend, including ability score bonuses, wings, flying speed and maneuverability, and energy resistances. Unlike her evil brethren, however, a redeemed half-fiend gains the supernatural and spell-like abilities of a half-celestial.
"Fiend, Redeemed
"Even more occasionally a fiend will, after centuries of evil, suddenly experience an epiphany and repent of his evil past, adhering thereafter to a life of strict goodness. Sages refer to such fiends as redeemed fiends. Redeemed fiends rarely, if ever, get away with their redemption without paying a price. The closer the fiend has been to some great fiendish power, the more likely that the redeemed fiend will pay a price in loss of hit dice and power, and the greater the loss if he suffers it. The loss of power sometimes includes the loss of immortality, transforming the redeemed fiend into the form of a redeemed half-fiend, who must then start anew, perhaps even at 1st level, to build power for goodness.
"The redeemed fiend robbed of immortality typically retains a great deal of the knowledge he had as a fiend and thus possesses much more than a one who inherited the redeemed half-fiend template. Any knowledge skills in which he had ranks as a fiend remain class skill for the redeemed fiend turned half-fiend. The redeemed fiend also gains a number of ranks in each knowledge skill equal to the lesser of the number he had in the skill as a fiend and the maximum number of ranks possible for a character of his new level. Divide the remaining ranks in each knowledge skill, if any, by 4, and apply the result as a racial bonus to that knowledge skill.
"Wilgamet, a pit fiend serving an evil deity, suddenly renounces his evil and prays to the deities of good for redemption. Before he can escape, however, the evil deity learns of Wilgamet’s redemption and manages to strip Wilgamet of all racial hit dice and steal his immortality. As a pit fiend Wilgamet had 21 ranks each in Knowledge (arcana), Knowledge (the planes), and Knowledge (religion), and 2 ranks in Knowledge (nature). As a 1st-level character, Wilgamet the redeemed fiend gets the half-fiend template and starts with 4 ranks, the 1st-level class skill maximum, in Knowledge (arcana), Knowledge (the planes), and Knowledge (religion), and 2 ranks, the number of ranks he had as a pit fiend, in Knowledge (nature). Dividing the remaining 17 ranks each in Knowledge (arcana), Knowledge (the planes), and Knowledge (religion) gives Wilgamet a racial bonus in each of the three skills of +4. Wilgamet gets no racial bonus in Knowledge (nature).
"Painful Healing: While the redeemed fiend gains the benefit of racial bonuses to Knowledge skills, he suffers a particular penalty: whenever he uses a spell, spell-like ability, or supernatural ability cure someone beside himself, he might take equal to the amount of curing he gives. First he rolls to overcome his spell resistance and if he fails he does not take any damage. If he succeeds at overcoming his own spell resistance, he gets to takes damage. On a successful Fortitude saving throw he takes half as much damage as he cures; on a failed saving throw he takes damage equal to the damage he cures. Whether or not he makes his saving throw he suffers pain that a careful observer might see flash across his face.
"Someone using a detect good spell on a redeemed fiend will detect a good aura radiating from him as normal for the spell, but someone using detect evil will also detect a dim aura of evil, as the taint of centuries of evil lingers.
"A redeemed half-fiend of either type retains the half-fiend’s physical features, except for the eyes which glow bright like those of a half-celestial, albeit tinged with sorrow and often deep regret or shame."
©2006–2010 David B. Levenstam
I'm looking a half-fiend-like template that doesn't require an alignment change. (I wanna keep the character NG, but have something to reflect his time in hell.)
Also, can you think of any fictional characters that might represent such a class? (Hellboy comes to mind, but that's not quite right.)
Something like a 1/2 Slaad template?
Arcane-Blood Template? (outsiders use arcane spells alot)
Corrupted Template (usually evil so you can be neutral easily)?
Nagpa (more a divine curse though)?
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Redeemed Stuff
I like these ideas, but they aren't quite right. It's not a fallen guy trying to redeem himself, but a good guy feeling the influence of evil.
Corrupted Template (usually evil so you can be neutral easily)?
Yeah, corrupted. That's the word I was missing in my description. Where's this template?
Green Ronin's Advanced Bestiary has a couple of templates that might suit. The "Broken Soul" template is applied to creatures that have been tormented beyond endurance or even beyond madness. Their suffering brings them strange power, but leaves them scarred with an enduring hatred of their torturers and fear of capture or powerlessness.
The "Devil-Bound" have contracted with a devil, gaining certain abilities, but doomed to fulfil their hellish bargain.
"Ravenous" creatures suffer from unnatural hungers, "hungry fer victuals" they "couldn’t raise nor buy". The proper diet makes them quite tough...
Redeemed StuffI like these ideas, but they aren't quite right. It's not a fallen guy trying to redeem himself, but a good guy feeling the influence of evil.
Corrupted Template (usually evil so you can be neutral easily)?Yeah, corrupted. That's the word I was missing in my description. Where's this template?
I thought I posted a reply last night but I found that it was unposted and when I hit post I'd been gone too long and it wouldn't let me so I've lost it.
You could still use the redeemed fiend template for the statistical aspect of what you're trying to do. Maybe you could tell us more about him. Why is he feeling the influence of evil?
The corrupted template appears in Dragon 350 p46. You can find a summary in DnD3.5Index-Templates.pdf available at http://crystalkeep.com/d20/.
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You could still use the redeemed fiend template for the statistical aspect of what you're trying to do. Maybe you could tell us more about him. Why is he feeling the influence of evil?
I posted that above, but long story short, he made a deal with a devil and some people got hurt 'cause of it.
The corrupted template appears in Dragon 350 p46. You can find a summary in DnD3.5Index-Templates.pdf available at http://crystalkeep.com/d20/.
Thanks!
You could still use the redeemed fiend template for the statistical aspect of what you're trying to do. Maybe you could tell us more about him. Why is he feeling the influence of evil?I posted that above, but long story short, he made a deal with a devil and some people got hurt 'cause of it.
The corrupted template appears in Dragon 350 p46. You can find a summary in DnD3.5Index-Templates.pdf available at http://crystalkeep.com/d20/.Thanks!
Thanks for the link, Tom. I originally read only your initial post and then replied quickly to try to help while I had a minute's breathing time. Having read the background and seeing that you were considering a half-fiend in the first place I'd still say go ahead and use the redeemed half-fiend concept: the physical attributes of the half-fiend with the spell-like abilities and good alignment of the half-celestial. :-)