My first character I ever really played in a tabletop RPG was a female half-orc ranger nearly about 12 years ago. She was built in 3.0 and, over the years, got updated to 3.5 and then Pathfinder. This character is 16th, almost 17th level, and recently, after a tumble with a half-orc Bard going by the name of Carlos, Man of Love, my Portia found herself pregnant.
I'm wondering how I should run this? Has anyone else played a character that got pregnant before? What did you do? Should I retire her?
Further more, how should I roleplay this as a male playing a female character? I should also add, that Portia's sense of identity is already a little... loose, as she spent a few years of her life as a man, due to a cursed belt that was mis-identified by the arcane casters. Should this time as a man have an significant impact on her pregnancy?
GM's how have you handled PC pregnancy? Did you kind of ignore the issue and hand waive it? Did you impose any mechanical penalties?
I've never had a PC become pregnant, but on the several occasions that a "fertility" check was required, I had the mother and father each roll 1d20+ConMod and then combine the results vs a DC of 36 (which has roughly the same chance as reallife). Two Nat20s are autosuccess.
As for pregnancy, I'd probably just have permanent medium load after the first trimester, and permanent heavy load after the second.
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First, decide whether you actually want to deal with this in your game. If you'd rather not deal with your character becoming pregnant, talk to your GM and see if you can come to a reasonable hand-waving or ret-con.
If you'd still like to go through with it, I would suggest that you research how pregnancy affects the body. Hint: it's not a pleasant experience. Probably a lot of penalties that only get worse as time goes on.
Then, your character can decide whether or not they want to keep the pregnancy. If not, there are plenty of herbal abortifacients that are appropriate to Pathfinder's setting, including night tea from the Adventurer's Armory. There's also magic and hand-wavium.
A shook-up sense of gender identity may affect how she relates to her pregnancy, but that's something you'll have to decide based on her character. I'd probably wager that her traumatic violent experiences as an adventurer and the dangers a pregnancy would pose to her in a less-than-optimal-for-fighting physical state would weigh FAR more heavily on that, though.
You don't need to retire her, I think, but giving her some narrative time off if she continues to later stages of pregnancy or actually gives birth is probably appropriate. Again, if you'd rather not retire her, talk to your GM and see if they'd be willing to just say, "Hey, cool, it never happened, you can keep adventuring like normal now if you don't want to deal with it."
Does it matter if your player or GM becomes pregnant? :P
First, decide whether you actually want to deal with this in your game. If you'd rather not deal with your character becoming pregnant, talk to your GM and see if you can come to a reasonable hand-waving or ret-con.
If you'd still like to go through with it, I would suggest that you research how pregnancy affects the body. Hint: it's not a pleasant experience. Probably a lot of penalties that only get worse as time goes on.
Then, your character can decide whether or not they want to keep the pregnancy. If not, there are plenty of herbal abortifacients that are appropriate to Pathfinder's setting, including night tea from the Adventurer's Armory. There's also magic and hand-wavium.
A shook-up sense of gender identity may affect how she relates to her pregnancy, but that's something you'll have to decide based on her character. I'd probably wager that her traumatic violent experiences as an adventurer and the dangers a pregnancy would pose to her in a less-than-optimal-for-fighting physical state would weigh FAR more heavily on that, though.
You don't need to retire her, I think, but giving her some narrative time off if she continues to later stages of pregnancy or actually gives birth is probably appropriate. Again, if you'd rather not retire her, talk to your GM and see if they'd be willing to just say, "Hey, cool, it never happened, you can keep adventuring like normal now if you don't want to deal with it."
I actually intend to go through with it. My GM actually forgot about it as we took a 3 year hiatus while he finished college, and I remembered it. Anyway, I suspect my GM will probably want to go through it as well, as his most beloved character also got pregnant while adventuring, and gave birth to daughter. He ended up playing his character's daughter in another campaign years later, so I think he'd be quite keen on the idea.
A lot of fort checks for the Nauseated condition and Con damage/drain
I'd say it would be advisable to have a reasonably long downtime.
As a player, I've only recently considered pregnancy as part of a character's existence. My answer? All the abortions.
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Back when I was playing AD&D 2e, two of the PCs got married in-game and had a baby. I handled it as a plot element rather than a game mechanics element. I advanced the clock two years, and the PCs left their young daughter with a nanny when they returned to adventuring.
I don't.
Yeah, I don't.
But if you do, just consider what your character would actually do. I'm assuming by level 16, your character knows where babies come from. So what was her plan for this inevitability?
It doesn't happen.
It happened only once. Someone had sex with the local werewolf. I was asked if it was possible so I broke out the ole Book of Erotic Fantasy chart and rolled for it. The adventure continued and the pregnancy (and marraige) happened during downtime in between sessions. A fight between two of the players over 'playing twilight' because said werewolf was alignment ambiguous which broke up the game due to out of game social conflict between the players.
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I use rubber.
And NPC in Rise of the Runelords was asked how many children he had from all his dalliances. His answer(at least as the GM put it) was "I'm on the lamb", meaning he used a medieval 'rubber'.
We had a character do it purposefully in Way of the Wicked as an alternative to kidnapping the king's relative (needed his bloodline for a sacrifice).
I don't know all his plans, but he started out with very minor penalties and increased them every 1/2 trimester (though the pregnancy was accelerated by a contract with Asmodeus).
I think it started with a few minor penalties to initiative and the like, and eventually became a medium load, and dazed for the first round of combat (hormones).
Can't remember what else atm though.
Doesn't happen.
Unless the players ask for it as a story line, just don't do it. There's no reason for it unless you actually want to restrict female characters in your games.
Here's why:
In history, a significant portion of magic (and later science) was devoted to controlling reproduction: we have have more surviving examples of spells/charms/prayers/etc. for controlling fertility (in both directions) than we do for making crops grow or curing sickness. It's been one of the biggest concerns--and industries--in human society since we started keeping records (and considering that most of it was handled by the gender that didn't keep the records, it's possible that it was even a bigger industry than weapons and armor). Growing up in modern times where we have reliable contraception methods, we don't realize how big an issue this really was.
If you're in a world where magic actually works, this would have been the first endeavor of most schools of magic--if for no other reason than it's where the money is. Who the heck would waste time creating a floating disk spell (since you can always just get a cheap pack animal to carry your stuff) unless the "fertility problem" had already been dealt with?
But none of source books deal with "daily hygiene" questions: no one has to make a "go to the bathroom" roll (with armor check penalties) or make a saving throw vs. gingivitis if they don't brush their teeth (and I don't see any dental care kits in Ultimate Equipment). Contraception falls under this category. If you're not having your party make profession cook/craft food/survival rolls to make sure they don't get parasites from undercooked meat, then don't deal with pregnancy, either.
Of course, if you never want to have a female character in your games, then go right ahead.
Unless the players ask for it as a story line, just don't do it. There's no reason for it unless you actually want to restrict female characters in your games.
Here's why:
In history, a significant portion of magic (and later science) was devoted to controlling reproduction: we have have more surviving examples of spells/charms/prayers/etc. for controlling fertility (in both directions) than we do for making crops grow or curing sickness. It's been one of the biggest concerns--and industries--in human society since we started keeping records (and considering that most of it was handled by the gender that didn't keep the records, it's possible that it was even a bigger industry than weapons and armor). Growing up in modern times where we have reliable contraception methods, we don't realize how big an issue this really was.If you're in a world where magic actually works, this would have been the first endeavor of most schools of magic--if for no other reason than it's where the money is. Who the heck would waste time creating a floating disk spell (since you can always just get a cheap pack animal to carry your stuff) unless the "fertility problem" had already been dealt with?
But none of source books deal with "daily hygiene" questions: no one has to make a "go to the bathroom" roll (with armor check penalties) or make a saving throw vs. gingivitis if they don't brush their teeth (and I don't see any dental care kits in Ultimate Equipment). Contraception falls under this category. If you're not having your party make profession cook/craft food/survival rolls to make sure they don't get parasites from undercooked meat, then don't deal with pregnancy, either.
Of course, if you never want to have a female character in your games, then go right ahead.
Once they found out it exists EVERY character, male or female carries night tea. Especially after that mess with Shayliss in Rise of the Runelords.
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To the original poster's question: Pregnancy experience varies wildly.
I had a really easy pregnancy, and I suffered from "morning sickness" (randomly) about 6-7 times in the first four months. In the last 6 weeks, my heartburn was so bad that I had to sleep in a recliner, and I only got a few hours of sleep a night at that. I was only in labor for 11 hours from the moment I was induced to delivery.
On the flip side, I know women who were sick nearly every day through 6-7 months. My friend was in labor for 36 hours before they had to switch to a C-section. I know two different women who were on complete bed rest from month 4 on: if they were out of bed, they were in a wheelchair.
The biggest issue that an adventuring female would face is weight gain: your clothes and armor will not fit when you put on 45-60 pounds and your body shape changes dramatically. I went from a 34B to a 36DD and put on 10 inches on my hips--neither of which changed after I lost all the pregnancy weight. There will be some variance, but every woman will gain a significant amount of weight.
Second issue is probably the risk to the fetus. Fighting monsters is not a recommended activity at any stage of pregnancy. The first 4-5 months is actually pretty risky, and after 7 months, you need to refrain from high impact activity: riding, running, aerobics, etc.
@Gwen, there is actually tooth powder in UE in a grooming kit. Your point stands in that no rule actually calls for bathroom checks but you can generally get pretty detailed in your gear, if you want.
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I've never had a PC fall pregnant, but various NPCs have throughout the years. Only one of them routinely went on adventures with the PCs, though, and she just kept on going as normal until the 3rd month. I'd advise that if you wish for your character to have a child, you should probably do it with timeskips and/or downtime. Adventuring while pregnant brings about all sorts of problems both from a rules perspective, and from a practical one.
My character is already pregnant, and I'm okay with that. It's something we've risked happening with every female character. As I said in a previous post, the GM's favorite character had a daughter and he ended up playing the daughter as a character in a separate campaign.
Thanks to the time differences between a demiplane we have access to and the material plane (6:1), she's now 6 weeks pregnant even though she only fell pregnant a week previously on the material plane. Boy will the Daddy be surprised, huh?
We're aware of the issues and risks to the baby, fighting monsters is not exactly conductive of good health for anyone involved. I will look more into penalties and things should fighting become an issue. I come from a large family myself (second oldest of 5) and I have five nieces and nephews with two more on the way. So I'm well aware of what pregnancy can do to a woman.
Mechanics wise, I'm looking at the sickened, fatigued and nauseated conditions as the ones to pay attention to the most. Possibly with things like, as the pregnancy advances, she'll gain a permanent 'fatigued' condition without the aid of magic. Or a constant state of 'sickened' that can't be removed, with a chance to advance to nauseated from strong smells or quick movement. The nauseated condition could be helped with magic to reduce the sensation, but the sickened condition would persist despite magic (short of removing the child anyway).
I'm a little torn on the sickened condition, because through-out most of my family's pregnancies, the mothers never really had to deal with bad morning sickness. But I've also been to the doctor's appointments with my sisters and he said that some people experience it, some don't, and some only experience it during certain stages of the pregnancy. Possibly rolling a percentile to see if she experiences morning sickness during a given trimester?
As for clothes and weight gain, I'm looking towards a magical solution. Simply enchanting her armor to resize to fit her throughout the pregnancy, should she ever need it.
I've never had a PC fall pregnant, but various NPCs have throughout the years. Only one of them routinely went on adventures with the PCs, though, and she just kept on going as normal until the 3rd month. I'd advise that if you wish for your character to have a child, you should probably do it with timeskips and/or downtime. Adventuring while pregnant brings about all sorts of problems both from a rules perspective, and from a practical one.
I agree, I'd rather not adventure during downtime if I can help it, but my GM is fond of interrupting downtime. Just because our PCs plan on not doing anything during a time period, doesn't mean the enemies we've accumulated aren't going to sit by and let time pass. There's been many an occasion when we've been interrupted during downtime by attacks from dragons seeking revenge, or assassins from one of our Wizards' mother who is basically an archmage in service to hell... Christmas is an awkward time of year for him.
Even if I plan on putting the character into downtime mode, I suspect that she'll still be put into a dangerous situation, because that's the nature of the GM. He likes to run more of a 'living world' and, at the level we're at, we've made a lot of enemies who try and keep tabs on us. If they discover she's pregnant, they may launch on attack while she's pregnant as Portia is the main beatstick of the party.
I've never had a PC fall pregnant, but various NPCs have throughout the years. Only one of them routinely went on adventures with the PCs, though, and she just kept on going as normal until the 3rd month. I'd advise that if you wish for your character to have a child, you should probably do it with timeskips and/or downtime. Adventuring while pregnant brings about all sorts of problems both from a rules perspective, and from a practical one.I agree, I'd rather not adventure during downtime if I can help it, but my GM is fond of interrupting downtime. Just because our PCs plan on not doing anything during a time period, doesn't mean the enemies we've accumulated aren't going to sit by and let time pass. There's been many an occasion when we've been interrupted during downtime by attacks from dragons seeking revenge, or assassins from one of our Wizards' mother who is basically an archmage in service to hell... Christmas is an awkward time of year for him.
Even if I plan on putting the character into downtime mode, I suspect that she'll still be put into a dangerous situation, because that's the nature of the GM. He likes to run more of a 'living world' and, at the level we're at, we've made a lot of enemies who try and keep tabs on us. If they discover she's pregnant, they may launch on attack while she's pregnant as Portia is the main beatstick of the party.
Have you considered using that demiplane you mentioned to speed up the pregnancy process? Seems like shortening the time you are vulnerable is a good plan.
I feel this is an interesting topic. I played a character that was an evil half-demon paladin varient who seduced a polymorphed dragon wizard and my GM approached me outside game asking if my half-demon pally wished to bear a monster-child. I said if I have to retire my character then no but if we could get through the next few months finish what we set out to do. The dragon was the headmaster of a Mage college and had no alliances with our party or our enemy and my character thought that a child may help sway the dragon to side with us as we were starting a war. Mind you this was a high level campaign that ended soon after we killed the ruler of the monster nation and took over the county by "saving it" because we needed an army. The DM ruled that if we return to that setting our evil characters succeeded in thier goal and my character DID give birth to her little monstrosity and it would be a major villain.
Have you considered using that demiplane you mentioned to speed up the pregnancy process? Seems like shortening the time you are vulnerable is a good plan.I've never had a PC fall pregnant, but various NPCs have throughout the years. Only one of them routinely went on adventures with the PCs, though, and she just kept on going as normal until the 3rd month. I'd advise that if you wish for your character to have a child, you should probably do it with timeskips and/or downtime. Adventuring while pregnant brings about all sorts of problems both from a rules perspective, and from a practical one.I agree, I'd rather not adventure during downtime if I can help it, but my GM is fond of interrupting downtime. Just because our PCs plan on not doing anything during a time period, doesn't mean the enemies we've accumulated aren't going to sit by and let time pass. There's been many an occasion when we've been interrupted during downtime by attacks from dragons seeking revenge, or assassins from one of our Wizards' mother who is basically an archmage in service to hell... Christmas is an awkward time of year for him.
Even if I plan on putting the character into downtime mode, I suspect that she'll still be put into a dangerous situation, because that's the nature of the GM. He likes to run more of a 'living world' and, at the level we're at, we've made a lot of enemies who try and keep tabs on us. If they discover she's pregnant, they may launch on attack while she's pregnant as Portia is the main beatstick of the party.
I did, actually, but when I brought this up, another player, one of the wizards, said it probably wouldn't be a good idea. See, the wizard had taken a feat called "Brushed with Greatness" or something like that. It lets him sense when a being or object of CR 20 or higher is within a certain amount of distance of the Wizard. He said that he felt the presence of an incredibly powerful being in the distance in the demiplane and he felt "sense of encroaching doom". It didn't seem to be coming from the demiplane itself, but was bleeding over into the plane from another plane.
As we spent time there, the wizard said that this 'feeling of doom' only grew stronger the more time we spent there. Either whatever was radiating the feeling was growing stronger, or getting closer, he couldn't tell. So we decided to leave the plane earlier than the Wizards had planned to do so. As soon as we left the plane, the feeling stopped, and he felt safe again. Well... safer, anyway.
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They also grow up into complete and utter murderhobos from their entire common-sense and nurturing being at the hands of frickin adventurers, but that's a minor glitch.
Tels, As a GM, I would say pregnancy is fine as long as you follow two rules: 1) Know your players, their comfort level and sensibility, and 2) Have fun with heroes (or villains). Otherwise, you invite peril and risk ruining your campaign and possibly friendships.
Using pregnancy to punish a player is bad DMing and falls into the pregnancy trap trope that is awful for all involved. (sometimes for something they probably didn't say explicitly, i.e. did you write gloves down on your items list for handling poison? did you write down all your contraception?) I have probably acted as a bad DM here once, but not in the way you expect as I tried to turn things around with the trope. I would have quashed it if the group was uncomfortable in a second, but it was quite a hit.
I have one experience with pregnancy in a campaign. I knew my players and went with the fun and interest of my players and their characters. When the player of Attilles, the LE half-elf cross-blooded arcane draconic sorcerer 14, proclaimed that,
"I wanna hook up with Tiamat because Tiamat is the coolest of all dragons. I would have her babies."
So I decided to up the ante and have him be miraculously implanted by Tiamat, for a live birth. He was warned that birth could kill him as the spawn would grow to huge size before birth. The ensuing shnenanigans were hard to summarize in a single short post.
In the end, an attempt to abort the fetus by an alliance of 4 of the party members against two (Attilles and Diriaz, PC brothers) involving the wizard Zebulon attempting what became known as the Z section, which teleporting inside, grabbing baby after separating unbilical cord, teleporting out. The Z section was teleleporting inside Attilles, who was polymorphed as a huge red dragon (maintained through a DM-exception on permanency). Once inside, he found the child deadly. After surviving the first round of attacks by 5 heads, a sting with a DC 24 fort poison of 1d8 con which failed for 8 con damage, he grappled the tiny-sized version of an Aspect of Tiamat (Races of the Dragon 3.x) and tried to teleport out. He died inside the Wizard man. I had never seen a player die inside another player.
The reason Attilles survived the high damaging and high fortitude save agony from a birthing an oversized monstrous creature eating inside was that he was in an unholy birthing pool in the inside the holiest temple of Tiamat in my campaign that granted regeneration. He also possessed two orbs of dragonkind, Red & Void. It led to a final battle where Aspects of Tiamat and Bahamat along wiht the other high leveled characters fought for all the world in a large battle mounted on dragons.
The relevant thread started by the player whose character became pregnant is on the following link.
Our group ignored the penalties entirely and then hired a Half Celestial Tyrannosaurus Rex as a nanny. Isn't that the standard these days?
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If the character wants to be a mother, one of two things should happen:
1-The group takes some downtime, baby is born, nanny hired, adventuring resumes.
2-Magic is used to speed up birth. Baby is born, nanny hired, adventuring resumes.
Or, I guess, retire the character.
Perfect use for Leadership feat, I would say.
In our Kingmaker campaign, my character, the Queen just had her sixth child.
We added a Conception Check to each Kingdom Turn right after the Monthly Stability Check, for any character who is checking.
We use the Conception % from the Book of Erotic Fantasy.
Game effects are from the same BoEF, more or less as follows;
1st trimester - no game effect.
2nd trimester - -1 all combat & saves, -25% move, +1 ACP.
3rd trimester - -4 all combat & saves, -50% move, +4 ACP.
Penalties to saves are mostly combat-wise and nauseous related.
For purposes of role playing, she doesn't adventure during the 3rd trimester or the 1st month afterwards.
Due to GM Shenanigans, the normal birthing method is to go to DEFCON ONE in the castle whenever the Queen is due!
Isnt the 'game' meant to be fun? Having a PC becoming pregnant doesn't sound fun to me - just sounds too much like real life! Don't get me wrong I love my kids, but I roleplay for escapism, don't you!?
I've only had it happen once in all my years of running/playing. I had a female player who met a balor who was a master of illusion magic. He automatically appeared as her ideal man, and she lusted after him (her choice). She let nature take its course and I wanted to introduce a cambion into the game. Her pregnancy happened over the course of 9 hours instead of 9 months (so she wasn't out of the game), and then daddy-dearest appeared and absconded with her son. The cambion son turned into her absolute favorite npc, and after she and the other PCs "rescued" him from his father, he adventured with the group.
I've never done anything similar since, though.
Isnt the 'game' meant to be fun? Having a PC becoming pregnant doesn't sound fun to me - just sounds too much like real life! Don't get me wrong I love my kids, but I roleplay for escapism, don't you!?
I don't consider this detracting from my fun though, it helps me get more into the game. I appreciate it in games when details like this are taken into account as it helps my immersion. This actually makes the game more fun for me. I relish the roleplaying challenge, I'm just not sure how to handle it in game, should mechanics become an issue.
I have seen the Book of Erotic Fantasy pop up a couple times, and I know I had a PDF of that at one point. Seems I may have to track one down again, if only to see what it says about pregnancy. *shudder*
The time scale of a campaign matters in regard to how you handle pregnancy. If you plan to have years go by, then you can use downtime to take care of the matter and (if the campaign goes on long enough) make the children into interesting NPCs or even PCs when they are old enough. Of course, you might want to limit the range of races in such a campaign (as several generations of humans could go by while waiting for a single elf child to mature).
For a more standard campaign, there simply isn't time to deal with such matters for a female character that you intend to continue playing throughout the few months of game time that would cover the party's entire adventuring career. If the character is intent on retiring, pregnancy is as good an excuse as any. If the player wants to keep playing the character, you should probably handwave away such issues.
Well, for the actual pregnancy part: remember that your life now revolves around protecting that thing in your belly until it's ready to come out. Exposing yourself to danger regularly would complicate that. There's obviously no in-game rules for it, but imagine how every hit you take could potentially be a blow or slash across your belly. Any falling damage would risk damaging the baby. Poisons, venoms, and diseases could all potentially be lethal to the little bean in your belly... In my opinion, going adventuring while you know you're pregnant is bed parenting. No real mother would willingly endanger the life of the child she's carrying. And that's just the psychological part. As others have said, physical tasks will become impossible. No more Acrobatics or Strength checks when you're 6 months pregnant, and so on.
Once the baby's out, that's your choice. Hire a nanny and hit the road again, or retire at least until it can take care of itself somewhat (or at least, doesn't need you in order to stay alive).
Well, for the actual pregnancy part: remember that your life now revolves around protecting that thing in your belly until it's ready to come out. Exposing yourself to danger regularly would complicate that. There's obviously no in-game rules for it, but imagine how every hit you take could potentially be a blow or slash across your belly. Any falling damage would risk damaging the baby. Poisons, venoms, and diseases could all potentially be lethal to the little bean in your belly... In my opinion, going adventuring while you know you're pregnant is bed parenting. No real mother would willingly endanger the life of the child she's carrying. And that's just the psychological part. As others have said, physical tasks will become impossible. No more Acrobatics or Strength checks when you're 6 months pregnant, and so on.
Once the baby's out, that's your choice. Hire a nanny and hit the road again, or retire at least until it can take care of itself somewhat (or at least, doesn't need you in order to stay alive).
Oh, I understand this. My character didn't even know she was pregnant until part way through the trip to a demiplane. I knew, of course, but not my character.
I'm wanting to know how people handle pregnancy, should something occur. I have every intention of protecting the child and avoiding adventuring if it all possible... but I know my GM. Every single time he's given us 'downtime' about 1/3 of the way into it, something happens and downtime is over.
I mean, my character was using a +1/+1 double axe, +1 amulet of nat armor and +2 armor up until the trip to the demiplane. She's 16th level and still doesn't have any of the stat boosting items. We've simply never gotten a chance to acquire them because the GM has interrupted every moment of peace we've ever had.
Or, you know, not given us any treasure. One of the two.
Not to join the chorus here, but both as a player and a GM I just wouldn't, at least not during the campaign. If someone wants to have children after a campaign, or have a child in their background that's fine, but no parent in their right mind goes adventuring pregnant.
Some of the suggestions I have liked is a temporary character though, or simply retiring the character.
I've said multiple times so far that I'm not going to go adventuring. If any encounters or 'adventure' happens, it will be because the GM forced it upon me, not because I sought it out.
I know "not getting pregnant" is, technically, one way to handle it, but it doesn't really help me much. I'm looking more for responses from people who've actually dealt with pregnant PCs in their game, not just saying, "we don't do that".
I mean, if someone is asking a crowd of people how to build a treefort, and if you've never built a treefort before, or have no knowledge of how to build one, would you enter the discussion on building treeforts?
Or there's another forum on the board talking about a magic scroll of ''transfer pregnancy.'' See if they'll let you use that.
Lol, really? I might have to look into that...
I play my character's cohort while she is unavailable for adventuring.
He was created to be the husband, father and spare character.