Finding Flavor for a Viking (Fighter)

[George Demonspawn]

I am currently picking up my first ever PFS character and he seems awfully bland. He is a third level Human Viking (Fighter) with Thunder and Fang. Great physical stats. Slightly above average Charisma. Terrible Intelligence and Wisdom.

I feel as if my other characters have great premises and have a personality, but this character seems a bit too generic, so I was hoping for some inspiration.

The dumb, unwise brute who lumbers through doors is fun for a little bit, but the schtick gets old. He took Profession(Sailor) and Intimidate, if that helps.

Side note: My other flavorful characters are a Celebrity Bard who tries to woo women and bring his band to the forefront of the Golarion music scene; a Champion of Irori who has founded his own Iroran temple based on strength, boldness and Perform(Gunshow)/Profession(Bodybuilder); and an Explosive Missile Mindchemist/Gunslinger Bounty Hunter who uses infused alchemical cartridges to bring home the target dead or alive.

[Major_Blackhart]

Well, there's lots you could do potentially with this character. The Viking Archtype is surprisingly badass, and I'll be honest I never thought of using Thunder and Fang. That's pretty awesome.

What's his background in general? Shoanti tribesman of some sort? With a class like that, you could easily write something up that he was a gladiator in Kaer Maga after leaving his own tribe for the excitement of the big city, maybe give him a minor drug addiction to boot, something he picked up in the dens of that awesome ancient city.

There's really a lot of opportunity for this type of a character in terms of build and feats. Are you going to go grand intimidation machine? Shield fighter extraordinaire? You should definitely consider picking up a good bunch of Rage powers, like Reckless Abandon for instance, so you don't need a feat like furious focus. There's just a TON of options for this character really. And you could decide if you wanted to buff his charisma like crazy and make him not only an intimidate debuffer but also you could pick up the Spirit Totem rage powers and give him a bit of a pallid aura, letting him do a bit more AOE damage. Maybe he became an addict in order to escape the screams and whispers of the dead that he sees around him constantly? Maybe he's a paranoid nutjob because of all of this, sees enemies around all corners, and mutters to himself, talking back to whatever ghasts haunt him?

[Argus The Slayer]

I like the gladiator background idea. With the low INT/WIS I'd be inclined to go with a gladiator that took a few too many shots to the head. He mumbles a lot under his breath, talking to himself, but every once in a while he comes across very coherently, maybe a little Rain Man-esque (above average CHA?) - having an uncanny knack for making friends and putting people at ease (diplomacy?). Maybe he is searching the world for his True Love, looking to rescue his princess (when he finds her) from the crazy world of Golarian's cities and take her back to the serenity of the Shoanti tribal lands.

[spalding]

Dude you are a viking -- you eat ninjas and S%*& pirates. What more could you want?

[Krodjin]

Don't get too hung up on the numbers on the page.

[williamoak]

I'll second krojdin. Your character is what you want it to be. The numbers are abstract representation of ill-defined psychological concepts. So have fun with it!

[Little Skylark]

If you're going ex-gladiator i'd make up a backstory where he was a gladiator, and good at it, with one friend.
His friend wasn't as good a fighter as he was but he was smart, he was always telling your guy to get out of the fights and go adventuring. That way he could do some good in the world and make a lot more money.
One day he had to fight his friend. You can have this go different ways, he could reject at first but eventually start fighting because they treaten to kill them both, or they could execute his friend, keeping him alive as a price fighter, but his friend ends up dead. Afther this he escapes and does as his friend said, he starts adventuring.

You could have him repeating smart things his friend once said. "As (insert friend name) always said you have to get the blood of your sword if you don't want your blood on a sword."

Let us know what you come up with!

[DM Under The Bridge]

Verily I agree with the last two posts.

I've played a fighter/barb as a sometimes cowardly neonate cultist of Lamashtu from Galt, with a fatalistic streak (all his friends had died, twice, to Lamashtu and other dark forces), who just happened to be on the way to being one of the finest swordsmen in the region. Man, that chap had issues and a complexity to him.

[nate lange]

Abraham spalding wrote:

Dude you are a viking -- you eat ninjas and S%*& pirates. What more could you want?

that's awesome, i literally LOLed...

@OP- i'm not sure exactly how low your int/wis is but that could definitely be a good starting point for a background/motivation (which obviously shape personality). some kind of massive head scarring could be a sign that he wasn't always functionally retarded... couple that with some kind of amnesia and clue about his past and he could be driven to discover who he was and/or what happened to him, or pair it with an awareness of how different he is now than he used to be and either a desperate desire to discover some means of going back to that or an all consuming need for revenge.

[Baron Ulfhamr]

How low is LOW? Remember, a score of 10 is average, 8 only slightly below. The fact that adventurers (far above the norm for a given race) have stats up to and exceeding 18 skews this perception disproportionately.

Low INT? Maybe he has little formal education, focusing on practical and martial skills. Low WIS? Maybe he's a bit naive and trusting. Perhaps it's a cultural difference(i.e. people in his land don't lie- or at least not to him). Maybe he was a big deal in his homeland and has no appreciable reputation in Absalom yet, and is running afoul of myriad social blunders (WIS and INT based blunders).

Don't let the numbers rule you!

[Ciaran Barnes]

This is a role-playing issue, not an issue of ability scores and character class. Role-playing can take a lot of work, but it gets easier with time. The more you put into it, the more you will get out. I know, I know... all very generic sounding advice. However, I can't explain in a forum post how to get inside a charater's head and pretend to be them. If you look around you'll find many, many posts and web pages on how to. They are a great place to start learning.

[nate lange]

Baron Ulfhamr wrote:

Remember, a score of 10 is average, 8 only slightly below.

i'm not sure that's an entirely accurate assessment... an 8 is low enough that you are incapable of learning as much as a normal person. my understanding has always been that (in systems rooted in the 3d6 bell curve for stats) each point of Int is roughly equivalent to 10 points of IQ- so a 10 would be 100 IQ (which is average), and the majority of people will have 9-12 (over 70% of all people fall between 90-120); that means if you have a 7 Int your roughly equivalent to Forrest Gump (which is why i used the somewhat technical term 'functionally retarded').