Rexus Victocora as a pc?!

[Dryder]

While preparing the AP, I thought that the history of Rexus could also fit for a pc. This way, a pc would have a real reason to oppose Barzillai Thrune.
The pc could also be the one who wnated to contact the other pcs at the protest at the very start of the pc.
Only the

Spoiler:

key the decoding of the documents must be taken care of.

What do,you guys think - is this a good idea or not?! I think, it would invest the pcs far more into the AP...

[Eliandra Giltessan]

I think you could handle the item in the spoiler by having it take less time so he could do it in his off time. My biggest concern with this would be the 7 con.

[Dryder]

Oh, I would let the player roll his own stats. I would only use Rexus' backstory.

[Eliandra Giltessan]

In that case, I think it would work very well and be interesting, assuming a player wanted to play Rexus.

[firegazer]

Aw! I'm so glad our group wasn't the only one to do this. Actually, technically, our monk was Rexus's older brother, and I highly recommend the idea.

Spoiler:

The PC, Tiernan Victocora, was a full-on member of the Many Steps Monastery. We did an intro session detailing where everyone was during the Night of Ashes-- Tiernan and Rexus were separated at the time, and neither actually knew whether the other was still alive until the protest in Aria Park. It was honestly pretty intense. Two of the other PCs were commoner rabble-rouser type friends of Rexus who helped him hide from some suspicious Hellknight types that night, and later find his brother.

We just finished Turn of the Torrent, and we're still enjoying the vengeance quest + sibling dynamic. With Rexus's utterly crappy Con score, his brother keeps trying to push him into a support role, but Rexus both wants to participate more fully in order to avenge his parents, and is having trouble with his older brother's brand new anger issues, which have turned Tiernan into someone he's not sure he likes as much.

So, uhm. To be shorter and less breathless, this has been a fantastic idea, and I'm really glad we did it. I hope you get a similar experience.

[Dryder]

Wow, cool!
I might borrow this idea.

As one of my players want's to be a member of a noble house (taking that Noble Scion feat), I thought I could just give him Rexus' backstory. The player can, of course, come up with any class and character concept he likes, but will be a member of the Victocoras.

Spoiler:

Thus, when he fights the Zombies, that might just get more intense as well...

If Tiernan was a member of the ManyStepsMonastery, how did you kept him from checking into the Fantasmagorium too early?! Especially, if there are a few days between the Night of Ashes and the Protest?

I am still pondering with the idea, of having another family member being imprisoned in Deepmar, and using that module as a rescue mission...

The opportunity is just too good to let it pass. I am glad, this already worked for a group like yours. I was hoping to hear something along those lines.

[firegazer]

Regarding your spoilerific question:

Spoiler:

I tend to run my games pretty sandboxy with some IC hints when something might be too tough to do immediately. Tiernan tried to check on the Fantasmagorium, but saw redactors there, and knew he couldn't handle them alone. He had to go looking for his family elsewhere in the hope that some of them had escaped (which was true, as he found Rexus at the protest). This coincided with OOC GM info to the extent of 'you don't want this character to die in prologue, I assume, so you don't try to fight them all, right?' The player was good-natured about that. (That said, had he tried, I probably could have had him captured, let him play Rexus for a bit, and had him rescue his brother later.)

When Tiernan told the full group about it later, they decided to take some time to plan accordingly/gather some allies. This with some pretty blatant OOC talk that went like 'If you want to try it anyway, feel free, but it's going to be very rough.' My PCs are pretty good about controlling their characters and not the other way around, though, which I understand is not everyone's group dynamic.

As an aside, Tiernan knew the monastery was sitting on some seriously bad news items, but his face when he read his mother's soul time and found out about the Book of the Damned... priceless.

Hope that helps some.