Archpaladin Zousha |
The question is in the thread title. I still struggle to actually realize characters in play because I get stuck in the character creation phase trying to figure out which things like Class or Archetype fulfill the RICH SYMBOLIC MEANING I've built for the character in my head while not being too clichéd or too like the iconics andI'mdoingitagainAAAAAGGH! D:
Chromantic Durgon <3 |
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Don’t make them rich and symbolic, make then people.
Imagine a boring person, in a boring village, with a boring family, with a couple of special things about them. Just like everyone has a couple special things about them.
Maybe they’ve got an identic memory and voracious appetite for books. They’d read every book in the village by the time they were 10.
Maybe they get on better with animals than people. Maybe they knew intuitively what plants needed what flourish and which ones needed to be kept out of the garden.
Then pick something that happened to them, a landmark moment in their life. Their village is attacked, or washed away in a storm, or a powerful wizard came through the village and marked them out for greatness. Or a green man visited them one day or a travelling circus came to town and they joined it and ran away.
Then work out what that person would be like, how that event would effect/change/scar them.
And that’s it. They don’t need to be a metaphor or a symbol.
Mathmuse |
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Overthinking is a way of life for me. But part of the fun of overthinking is testing theory against practice. You need to get your characters into practice.
By more thinking, of course.
Pathfinder 2nd Edition is a compromise between descriptions and mechanics, and it favors the mechanics. For example, a fighter is a master of weapon combat. How does PF2 represent that? Via mechanics. It gives the fighter expert proficiency with both simple and martial weapons when other warrior classes gain only trained proficiency. Later the fighter can become proficient with a few advanced weapons. Fighter feats deal almost entirely with combat techniques.
Building a character is like decorating a gingerbread man. You can imagine the gingerbread man as a jaunty swashbuckler, but all you can do is paint a jaunty smile on its face with frosting and add a peppermint stick as a sword. The goal is not a picture-perfect swordsman. Instead, the goal is for other people to exclaim, "Ooh, he's a swashbuckler!" when they see the gingerbread man.
As a GM I build my non-player characters to carefully fill a plot need, so let me instead use the player character of my wife, who has a great love of roleplaying, Her halfling rogue character Sam is an escaped halfling slave from Nidal, a horrific land of dark magic, and his master used to experiment by exposing his slaves to magical essences to see what would happen. He injected Sam with red dragon blood and nothing happened, so Sam was relegated to tending animals instead. Hence, my wife gave Sam Animal Whisperer background. For class, Sam had learned to keep his head down and avoid notice, so my wife made him a rogue with Scoundrel racket, deceptive rather than deft. At 2nd level, the dragon-blood injections finally had an effect on Sam via Sorcerer Multiclass Dedication, with a red-dragon Draconic bloodline.
That was his past. At the beginning of the campaign, he was a stable boy and goat herder for the local blacksmith, still keeping his head down. When the Ironfang Legion invaded his village his boss mistook the invaders for raiders and sent Sam to herd the goats across the bridge out of town so they would not be stolen. But Sam helped hold the bridge as refugees crossed it, using Deception more effectively than his shortbow, as the other PCs worked to blow up the bridge to prevent pursuit.
At 2nd level, hiding in the dangerous Fangwood Forest while the Ironfang Legion sent a few patrols across the river to search for escaped refugees, Sam's [i[Charisma 18[/i] score let him keep the refugees calm and organized. He stopped avoiding attention and became a leader. As a PC, he was a trickster for the people, telling lies to help others. He took the Magical Trickster feat at 4th level. Sam's journey from timidness against the evil of the world to heroism to make the world better was a character arc my wife had planned from the beginning.
Each of those italicized words written on Sam's character sheet--halfling, Animal Whisperer, rogue, Scoundrel racket, Charisma 18, Sorcerer Multiclass Dedication, Magical Trickster--is the title of a chapter of his Hero's Journey. His full backstory is the chapters themselves, but the character sheet has only the titles which are interpreted as mechanics.
Thus, Archpaladin Zousha, take the backstory of your character and put titles on the chapters that interpret the backstory via mechanics. Then you will have a playable character.
Chromantic Durgon <3 |
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You can also start with a concept and work backwards.
An example would be a a 5e character i made recently. I decided I wanted to make a Mary poppins reference, so I started with the idea they’d be named for P.L.Traverse who wrote Mary poppins. And I’d also been looking for a reason to make a cleric that worshipped the twilight domain. So I had that I mind.
I thought I’d like her to lead with a first name, so I decided in Pamela L.T.
I asked, what does L.T stand for, Little Traveler came to mind, so why would she be called that? She mustn’t have a surname, so perhaps she’s an orphan. Perhaps she used to run away a lot, hence little traveler.
Why would she run away? She wasn’t like the other kids, why not? Different race maybe? So what race could have a nice orphanage, that gives kids affectionate names like little traveler. Well I went to the twilight domain now, see if any races had gods that fit, and they did, the master of the halfling pantheon in a goddess of motherhood.
So it’s a halfling orphanage but she isn’t a halfling. Let’s make her a half elf, just different enough and works with the mystery parentage.
So I know her childhood, but what is she now? Well she’s the mistress of the orphanage of course, and a cleric to Yondalla.
But that begs the question, why would she leave her orphanage, we need an inciting incident. Yondalla also have protection of territory within her domain.
So Pamela protected something, the halfling village she lived in. From what, goblins, why not? But something happened, two of the older boys died helping her defend the village. So why would that make her leave?
To bring the, back perhaps? Perhaps she’s heard legends of clerics powerful enough to raise the dead, so she leaves to become powerful enough to do the same.
And there I have it, Pamela L.T, a twilight domain cleric of Yondalla, who used to ran an orphanage, defended her village from a band of roaming goblins, but has left with the hope of becoming powerful enough to cast true resurrection.
All from wanting a twilight domain cleric with the initials P.L.T
Mathmuse |
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What do you mean by 'rich symbolic meaning'?
One way to tell as story is as an allegory, in which fictional figures express truths though symbolic meanings in their design. Wikipedia describes allegory as, "As a literary device or artistic form, an allegory is a narrative or visual representation in which a character, place, or event can be interpreted to represent a hidden meaning with moral or political significance." Perhaps Archpaladin Zousha invents characters by adding symbolic meaning like in allegory.
For example, a druid can symbolize nature. Yet a combat druid has a deadly side, too, so let's borrow symbolism from the Greek myth of Persephone, a nature goddess who married Hades, god of the underworld, and became queen of the underworld and represents death of vegetation in winter and its rebirth in spring. She is also associated with the pomegranate fruit, which symbolizes fertility. We can pile more symbols onto her backstory, and have a rich backstory without stepping one inch toward making character-build choices.
Except that I am an old hand at making characters, so my mind immedately jumps to druid Persephone ought to have Leaf Order as a goddess of plants. And when she casts goodberry we can say that it transforms the berry into a magical pomegranate. We make her human because she is based on a myth without elves or dwarves or halflings, but make her divine via aasimir versatile heritage. Leaf druids gain a Leshy Familiar, which does not fit the Greek story--or does it? Though leshy familiars do not get a heritage, we can flavor it with a Leshy Heritage. A fruit leshy could be a pomegranate, a fungus leshy could represent death, or a root leshy could represent underground and surviving through winter.
Persephone's background symbolize a young goddess. Would it be a religious upbringing like Acolyte? Would she have expecations on her as a Chosen One? Perhaps she is on Golarion as an Emissary of Olympus. Does her intimacy with nature make her an Herbalist? I am just scrolling through the backgrounds and only up to the letter H. Ah, Pilgrim background appeals to me as a plot hook. Persephone is on a pilgrimage to wander Golarion as a mortal. Her Pilgrim's Token is her own holy symbol, a branch with an unopened bud.
The pieces fit together in a jigsaw puzzle of matching the symbols in a backstory to symbols in PF2 mechanics. When a choice comes around that has no symbolic meaning, such as her Dexterity score, then chose for good playability instead.
Archpaladin Zousha |
One of my favorite characters was built by seeing how many contradictions I could pile into one character. I ended up with an Android (emotionless feat), Toymaker background, agnostic, LG, Fervor Witch.
Just reading that made my perfectionist-brain ITCH! DX
Don’t make them rich and symbolic, make then people.
Imagine a boring person, in a boring village, with a boring family, with a couple of special things about them. Just like everyone has a couple special things about them.
Maybe they’ve got an identic memory and voracious appetite for books. They’d read every book in the village by the time they were 10.
Maybe they get on better with animals than people. Maybe they knew intuitively what plants needed what flourish and which ones needed to be kept out of the garden.
Then pick something that happened to them, a landmark moment in their life. Their village is attacked, or washed away in a storm, or a powerful wizard came through the village and marked them out for greatness. Or a green man visited them one day or a travelling circus came to town and they joined it and ran away.
Then work out what that person would be like, how that event would effect/change/scar them.
And that’s it. They don’t need to be a metaphor or a symbol.
That CAN be done, and I've even done it before, but I find it hard to get a character beyond a rough sketch and determine something like a proper class. Ancestry and Background? That part's easy. But class always seems to be what I get hung up on, especially when the concept could conceivably work with several different classes.
What do you mean by 'rich symbolic meaning'?
In all honesty, Mathmuse kind of hit the nail on the head with their explanation: I can come up with a concept like "Okay, I'm making a character for the Age of Ashes adventure path, and my hypothetical GM is letting me put the Half-Elf heritage on a dwarf for fun. I like the idea of a person from two worlds exploring the two sides of their heritage and how they blend and contrast, and the Player's Guide says both elves and dwarves play into the overarching story. I really like the Haunting Vision background, it kind of reminds me of that song I enjoyed, "I See Fire," one of the only parts of The Hobbit movies that was actually good. So this "dwelf" has grown up with horrifying visions of fire and destruction...how might his dwarf and elf parents help him cope with that? Maybe they tried to teach him how fire is natural and helpful, that it can be used for creative purposes too, like forging? Forging is a sacred act for Torag worshipers, is there an elven equivalent? Yes! Yuelral holds natural, uncut gemstones sacred, and that makes for a nice contrast with Torag's artifice! Maybe he takes the Syncretism feat to represent that! But...what class should he be? I don't wanna use Cleric because the visions are supposed to be of Dahak, whom he doesn't actually worship. Getting power from gods you don't worship through association has precedent with Oracle class, and there IS a Flames mystery that feels thematically appropriate, but I feel like that doesn't lean as much into the creative aspect, it's a blaster caster, I wanna at least use a sword. There's also the Ashes mystery from Blood Lords, but that almost feels TOO on the nose. Maybe he could be a Druid of the Stone Order and use the Order Explorer feat to get Flame Order as well? It wouldn't be as squishy as Oracle, and it'd have both fire AND more to do with plants and crystals. Nothing says prophetic visions are limited to Oracles after all, but then there's not much divine emphasis. Wyrmblessed Sorcerer leans heavily into the dragon aspect, but I feel like it almost does it TOO much, and that it'd be more appropriate for him to worship, like Apsu or something, and Apsu doesn't really care about elves or dwarves. What about Magus? Yuelral also teaches about responsible magic use, and Magus is the only way to gish without multiclassing...but it's also not very religious. Psychic? Oscillating Wave is all about fire...but it's also about ice too, and I don't think Age of Ashes really does anything with ice thematically, not like Quest for the Frozen Flame anyway. And I still have to figure out if I can use the Crystal Keeper archetype that's pretty much written FOR Age of Ashes, and I don't know if the GM is allowing Free Archetype so I should assume I'll have to multiclass into it normally, and THAT means I have to be careful about multiclassing into other things like maybe Swashbuckler or Champion to add more swordsmanship stuff..." and on and on and on.
It's hard to assemble that metaphorical jigsaw puzzle when you're still trying to figure out what all the pieces are.
Dancing Wind |
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It sounds to me as if you are underthinking your characters, not overthinking them.
You've got mechanics, but you don't have any personality.
What would their dating profile look like? How many cousins do they have? What's their favorite holiday? What's their favorite drink?
You might find the technical decisions easier if you knew who these characters were in-world, beyond just jumbles of game mechanics.
Mathmuse |
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Getting power from gods you don't worship through association has precedent with Oracle class, and there IS a Flames mystery that feels thematically appropriate, but I feel like that doesn't lean as much into the creative aspect, it's a blaster caster, I wanna at least use a sword.
The character concept does scream of power from a haunted vision beyond the gods, the heart of Oracle class. But look beyond the Ashes and Flames mysteries. Ancestors could rally behind the dwelf. The Cosmos could be calling. Perhaps the dwarf-elf protects Life against the fire. I find that reading a class guide, such as Divine Gift: A Guide to the PF2e Oracle or Pathfinder 2e – The Oracle Handbook, can spark my imagination. For comparing other classes, I found the guidebooks via Zenith Games' Pathfinder 2nd Edition: Guide to the Guides.
The Charisma ability flaw on dwarf ancestry would hurt an oracle, except that a rule change from several weeks ago allows any ancestry to take two free ability boosts and no flaws, so the dwarf-elf can have a boost to Charisma for oracle.
Sigh, none of the spellcaster classes are strongly creative, unless you consider a songwriting bard as the right kind of creative. Making items is more for alchemist and inventor. Fortunately, Alchemical Crafting, Magical Crafting, and Tattoo Artist are skill feats and not restricted to a class. And multiclassing to bard is an option.
As for a sword, Elven Weapon Familiarity trains the dwarf-elf in longsword and rapier. And that would be a nice call-out to the mixed ancestry.
Archpaladin Zousha |
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Dating Profile: Detail-oriented, good with his hands, able to nerd out about smithing techniques, herbalism recipes and the natural beauty of minerals for hours, perpetually tired because the nightmares make sleep inconsistent, and has strong moral reservations about needless death and destruction, since he sees enough of it in his nightmares that he doesn't want to bring more into the waking world. I don't know how dating profiles actually look.
Cousins: Admittedly haven't thought beyond his immediate family, but he DOES have two younger brothers.
Favorite Holiday: Crystalhue, even though it's technically Shelynite, he deeply appreciates the exchange of handmade gifts.
Favorite Drink: White wine, especially chilled.
Hilary Moon Murphy Contributor |
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I dig the backstory. I love that both Torag and Yueral have attractions for him, and the whole fire and forge thing.
So who was your dwelf raised by? Did both parents raise him? Has he spent time with both sides of the family? Is there anyone he's close to?
Then consider who your dwelf is NOW. Yeah, they're haunted by fire visions, but what do they do as their day job? Why are they adventuring? Do they have a sense of humor? What are their quirks? What are their flaws?
Remember that not all your flavor has to be fully matched by your mechanics from day one.
SOME COMMENTS ON YOUR CLASS IDEAS FROM THE RABBIT HOLE
HELPING PRUNE DOWN THE IDEAS
First, talk with your GM. Ask, "Are you using free archetype?" That way you'll know.
Second, look at what the rest of the party is building.
Third, pick your top three options. Talk with us about them, and we'll help you narrow it down. When in doubt roll for it. If you hate what you rolled for and decide you can't do it, you've eliminated one possibility.
SOME THOUGHTS ON HYPOTHETICAL GMs
You wrote about a hypothetical GM, and that is I think the biggest problem here. You are trying to create this character in advance of an actual game, right? My guess is that you're doing this so that you can be ready with it if a PBP recruitment thread for your desired AP comes up.
But while GMs will want some backstory, going beyond a couple paragraphs is more than most PBP GMs will read.
I've done PBP recruitments as a GM, so here is what I'm looking for:
1) Someone who has a clear idea of their character's personality (flaws, quirks and all) and can bring it forth.
2) Someone who has a clear idea of how they contribute to the team.
3) Someone with a history of roleplay in PBP (if they are not brand new.)
4) Someone who knows what their character does mechanically and how they help people.
5) Generous players. This is tough to define, but I look for players who move gameplay along, provide hooks for other players, and just help a game keep moving.
Leomund "Leo" Velinznrarikovich |
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It sounds like you don't know what you want, except for the dwelf. So start from dwelf. Stop thinking about that for the moment.
It sounds like you like the Haunting Vision background. Go for that. It gives you training in Religion (could be significant) and Dahak Lore. You're probably not going to worship Dahak, so why do you have Dahak Lore? You don't have to answer that now. But keep it in the background thoughts. Lastly, it gives you student of the canon. That skill feat makes reference to being faithful to a specific faith. So, what faith is that?
You want to at least use a sword. Noted.
You want to use Crystal Keeper. Okay, the prereqs are trained in society (nothing particularly special about that) and elven lore (not necessarily significant, but it could be). The archetype heavily implies a scholar type character. It also leans heavily on Yuelral. Looks like you just answered the faith question, Yuelral.
So what do we have so far?
A dwelf that worships Yuelral, wields a weapon, and is probably a scholar of sorts. What classes fit with this concept? Cleric is a big one. The visions are not necessarily from Dahak. It could be that the visions are from your deity to push you toward where you were chosen to be.
Your method seems to be to draw lines wildly between options. I would instead suggest finding aspects of the character that you want to be the case, for symbolic reasons or not, and then figure out how they can be made to fit together. Utilize the aspects of the options that you want to guide you.
Hilary Moon Murphy Contributor |
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Dating Profile: Detail-oriented, good with his hands, able to nerd out about smithing techniques, herbalism recipes and the natural beauty of minerals for hours, perpetually tired because the nightmares make sleep inconsistent, and has strong moral reservations about needless death and destruction, since he sees enough of it in his nightmares that he doesn't want to bring more into the waking world. I don't know how dating profiles actually look.
Cousins: Admittedly haven't thought beyond his immediate family, but he DOES have two younger brothers.
Favorite Holiday: Crystalhue, even though it's technically Shelynite, he deeply appreciates the exchange of handmade gifts.
Favorite Drink: White wine, especially chilled.
We cross-posted, but I love these answers.
Doug Hahn |
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The question is in the thread title. I still struggle to actually realize characters in play because I get stuck in the character creation phase trying to figure out which things like Class or Archetype fulfill the RICH SYMBOLIC MEANING I've built for the character in my head while not being too clichéd or too like the iconics andI'mdoingitagainAAAAAGGH! D:
Focusing on mechanics over RP is a valid way to play a TTRPG too. If that's what you enjoy, then you don't need to push it.
If you want to improve while staying focused on game mechanics, consider forgoing backstory altogether. Focus on frontstory instead. Be on the lookout for in-game opportunities to RP and make up your backstory as you go. This takes pressure off character creation while helping your PC actually fit into the campaign world.
This is how I build my PCs. I focus on mechanics, planning everything out to the maximum level of the campaign. I then spend a few minutes on very broad-strokes backstory. At the table, I try to capitalize on frontstory opportunities and watch the character grow through the campaign.
Pip Hip Hooray |
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I do love how characters grow over time. This character, Pip, started out as a Barrister because it was a charisma background that sounded like it made for fun roleplay and I was making a bard. I decided that she had a mwangi background because of the avatar I found -- cool green hair and a nice bronze skin tone. The facial features matched too.
Since she was going into the Envoy's Alliance faction (the faction devoted to helping other Pathfinders), I always have her introduce herself this way: "My name's Pip, and I'm from the Envoy's Alliance Legal Defense Fund. I'll be your legal representation today."
Soon, I was using Legal Lore everywhere I went, and when I got a riding dog, I named him Bailiff. Later, when I was playing in one of Doug's games, we went to Bhopan and I realized that was where Pip's grandmother was from. Especially since everyone in Pip's family loves and talks to animals.
Being in Bhopan led to Pip getting more fey-flavor, and turning part-dryad. She's been growing and changing ever since, even though her base is all Core Rulebook. I like it when a character has a grounded profession that I can lean into, and when they're from somewhere really specific. Pip isn't just from Absalom, she's from the Westgate neighborhood where her family has been training Badgers for years, as pet badgers (so long as they are leashed) are allowed everywhere in Absalom. Sometimes the best backstories are simple ones.
Chromantic Durgon <3 |
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Dating Profile: Detail-oriented, good with his hands, able to nerd out about smithing techniques, herbalism recipes and the natural beauty of minerals for hours, perpetually tired because the nightmares make sleep inconsistent, and has strong moral reservations about needless death and destruction, since he sees enough of it in his nightmares that he doesn't want to bring more into the waking world. I don't know how dating profiles actually look.
Cousins: Admittedly haven't thought beyond his immediate family, but he DOES have two younger brothers.
Favorite Holiday: Crystalhue, even though it's technically Shelynite, he deeply appreciates the exchange of handmade gifts.
Favorite Drink: White wine, especially chilled.
This dating profile screams Druid to me a lot. I think the clash is with smelting thing, cause druids and metal and all that.
So what about introducing a wrinkle, his parents tried to introduce him to smelting to show him fire isn’t to be feared, but it didn’t take, maybe it scared him, maybe it felt violent.
He dives into his elvish heritage looking for answers and finds Yuelral, but it’s not in the making of jewels that he finds comfort.
It’s jewels in their raw unhewn form than speak to him.
He never does get over his fear of fire, but he gains an appreciation for nature and rocks. Cut to, rock Druid.
You probably could do a sword, but you could do Shillelaghs and later stone spear.
Also as others have said, a cleric of one god being sent visions by another adversarial one is a totally valid concept.
Oracle also works, but minuses to Cha would make that real clunky. You couldn’t rely on anything with a DC or spell attack roll.
Edit: you could even take wave as a second order, as a direct challenge to flames you see in your visions.
Hilary Moon Murphy Contributor |
breithauptclan |
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It is an official change to the character creation rules though. So GMs are fighting an uphill battle to forbid it.
But yes, in home games, the GM can houserule any rules that they don't like. Though they may find themselves without players if the players don't agree to it.
Chromantic Durgon <3 |
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Chromantic Durgon <3 wrote:either you play with the Gm or you don’t.But that's the thing. If a GM can't give any better reason for it than "Well I just don't like it, and I don't care that it makes your character concept not work" then my response is probably going to be to find a different GM.
As if they’re abundant, growing on trees, all over the world DMs just begging for a group of 3-5 friends to play pathfinder in their campaigns lol.
Do you always assume the only reason anyone who ever disagrees with you’s only reason is “just because”
breithauptclan |
Do you always assume the only reason anyone who ever disagrees with you’s only reason is “just because”
Of course not.
But you also haven't actually listed one for these GMs in question either.
And I am not able to think up any on my own - the concept of forbidding a valid character creation choice for a different person's character just seems a bit odd to me.
So I currently don't have any other reasoning.
It is just 'meh, some GMs don't like the rule so they won't let you play a Dwarf as a high CHA class'. Because reasons.
graystone |
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Chromantic Durgon <3 wrote:either you play with the Gm or you don’t.But that's the thing. If a GM can't give any better reason for it than "Well I just don't like it, and I don't care that it makes your character concept not work" then my response is probably going to be to find a different GM.
What I've heard is that it makes all ancestries samey and gets rid of the distinctions between them and that they wanted an ancestry pick to be meaningful. I've only had it happen once, so it's a sample size of 1.
breithauptclan |
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What I've heard is that it makes all ancestries samey and gets rid of the distinctions between them and that they wanted an ancestry pick to be meaningful.
Well, that's at least a reason. Not one I can get behind though.
Because after that, instead of a character's ancestry choice being samey, all class choices for a particular ancestry are samey. No high CHA classes for Dwarves. Unless you want to play suboptimal.
breithauptclan |
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If I came to a table and wanted to play a Dwarf Oracle instead of a Dwarf Cleric and the GM says that I can't use the alternate ancestry boost rule - because it would make the character's ancestry choice too samey...
You can play your Dwarf Oracle, but only if it is nerf'd. Or you can just play a Dwarf Cleric like the game intended - just like everyone else.
I would probably rather not play at all. I'll look for a different table even if it takes years.
Because that sounds like a GM that is on a serious power trip taking that much control over my character right from the session 0.
What other printed rules are they going to just blanket forbid? What other choices for my character are they going to prevent?
graystone |
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graystone wrote:What I've heard is that it makes all ancestries samey and gets rid of the distinctions between them and that they wanted an ancestry pick to be meaningful.Well, that's at least a reason. Not one I can get behind though.
Because after that, instead of a character's ancestry choice being samey, all class choices for a particular ancestry are samey. No high CHA classes for Dwarves. Unless you want to play suboptimal.
Well, they still allowed the old voluntary flaw system so you could still start with an 18 cha dwarf [flaw boost and free boost in cha] and even without it, you could still start with a 16 [taking free boost in cha]: So I'm not really seeing the 'oh no, I can't play a dwarf bard/sorcerer/ect'.
Doug Hahn |
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Or deliberately blocked it from my memory. Which is what I think I will do with this one too.
You are wiser than I. The announcement errata blew up and spurred several large threads full of arguing. They probably removed a bunch of stuff because some of it got heated/political.
Anyway, it's up to the OP's GM; I'm sure they have the ability to improve their RP skills in either case.
Chromantic Durgon <3 |
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Chromantic Durgon <3 wrote:Do you always assume the only reason anyone who ever disagrees with you’s only reason is “just because”Of course not.
But you also haven't actually listed one for these GMs in question either.
And I am not able to think up any on my own - the concept of forbidding a valid character creation choice for a different person's character just seems a bit odd to me.
So I currently don't have any other reasoning.
It is just 'meh, some GMs don't like the rule so they won't let you play a Dwarf as a high CHA class'. Because reasons.
You never asked, you just assumed they couldn't possibly have one and ploughed on.
The reality is for a lot of people those racial traits are very closely tied to D&D type fantasy worlds.
Elves are dextrous but frail, dwarves are group and hardy, Orcs are strong, halfings have an easy charisma about them.
If a dwarf lives inside a mine his entire life, and an elf skips among the trees, how is it that both naturally just as dextrous as eachother?
How is every Gnome just as strong as every orc.
Of course there were always out-liars, a gnome stronger than the average orc, after all, a gnome could have started with 14 strength, to an orcs 12, thats entirely possible and makes sense to a certain extent.
But now you're telling me that the strongest possible Orc is exactly as strong as the strongest possible gnome, is exactly as strong as the strongest possible elf is exactly as strong as the strongest possible dwarf... suddenly things are stretching.
Its disrupting, not only an established (and reasonably popular fantasy) it also challenges verisimilitude.
Maybe I can get behind the idea that a dwarf is no more genetically predisposed to be wise, or grump than a halfling. But it is somewhat challenging to imagine a Orc is no more genetically predisposed to being strong than a gnome.
Personally I don't care, people can build their characters how they like as long as its within the rules. Heck if it makes sense I'm quite happy to bend the rules, in pf1, one of my favourite characters concepts was a Naiad watersinger only it was only available to undine, I had waved that cause it made sense to in my opinion.
But to pretend there is no possible valid reason why someone might object to the idea of completely homogenising every race in the book beyond recognition. And to say any objection to you doing exactly what you want with your character means a power tripping GM seems slightly over the top to me.
Its always been within a GMs preview to not use every single bit of published material if they didn't want to.
Doug Hahn |
Chromantic Durgon <3 |
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The relevance is I suggested baring in mind some DMs don’t like the new ancestry ability score rules when creating your character.
Since OP doesn’t actually know their DM yet it seems prudent to me to at least keep options open for if they want to stick with old ancestry ability scores.
Like the Druid or cleric or if they’re set on oracle, avoiding relying on DCs and spell attack roll reliant play styles.
graystone |
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** spoiler omitted **
Really failing to see what relevance beating this dead horse has for the OP.
Because stat allocation is important for characters and the base ancestry he's thinking of has a -2 cha and some suggestions for class have cha as a key stat. It was then that the new stat rules can fix that and then someone mentioned not every DM follows them and then someone asked why they'd do that...
So it really does lead back to the OP's character.
breithauptclan |
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It is just kinda astonishing to me.
The argument against following the official rules includes:
You can play a Poppet Swashbuckler as long as you take a penalty to your key ability score.
You can play a Poppet Swashbuckler as long as you pay for your 4th key ability score by paying a penalty in two other scores.
you can play a Poppet Swashbuckler as long as you just avoid using attack or save based spells so that you don't run into penalties for it. Wait, hold up.
But even after all of that, the idea is still that you want to rewrite the rules so that I can't play a fully effective Poppet Swashbuckler because it doesn't match up with what you think a Poppet should be allowed to be. Or that by some strange twisted logic, lowering the effectiveness of certain ancestry/class combinations is going to make character choices end up being less 'samey'.
Hilary Moon Murphy Contributor |
Ravingdork |
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I mean, you could go through all the hard work of implementing everyone's advice.
OR
You could give your overworked brain a vacation and simply ask ChatGPT to write your character's story for you.
It takes me weeks sometimes to fine tune a build and character concept. So when I needed to turn over a Kingmaker character in under 24 hours, ChatGPT allowed me to turn this over in just under an hour.
All I did was tell it to do the following: "Using bits of information from the Meet the Iconics articles from Paizo as inspiration, write a short story about Alaric Ravenwood, a young politician hoping to jumpstart a new river kingdom."
Then it was off to the races.
Hilary Moon Murphy Contributor |
Archpaladin Zousha |
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So, Archpaladin Zousha, how do you feel about your character? What are you looking for?
I've been mulling over this thread for a few days (also, holy buckets this ran away!), and I'm seeing I should have trusted my initial instinct of Flame Oracle more. I'll admit I have quite a bit of insecurity about what I think is good writing or is cool, and that's a big source of my anxiety.
Archpaladin Zousha, as soon as I saw this thread title, I said to myself, "I bet Archpaladin Zousha's the OP." :D
(I used to enjoy your posts on tailoring PCs to APs in James Jacobs's Ask thread.)
Oh god I have a reputation now...
Ravingdork wrote:ChatGPTCongratulations RavingDork for actually providing a workable answer to the original posters proposition.
Asking a forum of over thinkers on how not to over think was an interesting choice.
I dunno, some people seem to be able to come up with fully realized concepts they're confident in in a matter hours, while I'll agonize over them for literal years...
Trixleby |
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I'm sure people will strongly disagree with me, and I will probably come across poorly but ultimately: The best way to stop overthinking about your characters is that nobody else cares.
I've found, that ultimately, it's only for yourself. Sure some people might humour you and read your backstory or whatever, and I'm sure a handful of people will chime in to say, "Not, but actually, reading other people's character backgrounds is my favorite part of TTRPGs!" but ultimately, in the grand scheme of things, nobody cares. Nobody will know. Almost nobody will probably read it.
So with the weight of the entire world as your audience off your shoulders, because nobody is looking, now you can just do what you like. Pick what you think is cool. Nobody else is looking at your character sheet, unless you show them, and as long as your character is "good enough" and isn't causing any obvious problems at the table...nobody is going to know the difference. Nobody will know if you *meant* to be an Oracle or a Druid. They'll just see the Oracle at the table who uses their curse to do stuff sometimes, maybe throws out a heal, maybe casts a fire spell...and what little or greater amount of RP you do.
That's it. I mean that's my experience, but I don't know anyone I know in multiple tables who has shared their backstory, or expected anyone to know, or who brought it up, or anything. Nobody has examined anyone else's characters...it's just like "Oh there's the murder clown who steals stuff, but he always does something funny and is useful in combat so *shrug*. He doesn't cause any major problems." That's the attitudes all the people I've played with have.
Every table is unique of course. However the only thing I can really say is: it's all for you anyway. Make the thing YOU like and YOU'RE happy with because nobody is going out of their way to care or to know or to look unless you're putting it in their face on purpose.
Mathmuse |
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I'm sure people will strongly disagree with me, and I will probably come across poorly but ultimately: The best way to stop overthinking about your characters is that nobody else cares.
I've found, that ultimately, it's only for yourself. Sure some people might humour you and read your backstory or whatever, and I'm sure a handful of people will chime in to say, "Not, but actually, reading other people's character backgrounds is my favorite part of TTRPGs!" but ultimately, in the grand scheme of things, nobody cares. Nobody will know. Almost nobody will probably read it.
I care.
I care about how your character will fit into the party and work with the other player characters. A true backstory tells me how. (Unfortunately, I also have seen players whose character was a different person from their backstory, because their roleplaying did not live up to their intentions.) The backstory also tells me how to adjust the plot to make the game more meaningful to the character.
For example, in my Ironfang Invasion campaign mentioned above in comment #4, the party also has an elf ranger named Zinfandel Mondavi with Whisper Elf heritage. The name is a joke, because the player noticed that Zinfandel, a kind of wine, sounded like an elvish name. Zinfandel's parents are winemakers and his twin brother is named Primitivo. The player gave me a written backstory:
Shiraz and Marsala Mondavi appeared to be simple, quiet elves, living a peaceful life in war-torn Cheliax - but appearances can be deceiving. They discovered that people relaxed and spoke more freely over the excellent wines and fine food they were so skilled in preparing, and that their unusually sensitive hearing - even for elves - helped them sometimes catch secrets that were carelessly dropped, as servers went unnoticed. They chose to help Molthune's bid for independence from the oppressive rule of Cheliax, and felt they could do much more by gathering and passing information, so they did. It was perhaps even more dangerous than fighting openly - for had they been caught, they would've faced a very slow and painful death.
Shortly after Molthune gained its independence in 1632, Marsala shared the news with her husband that they would soon be parents ...
The player looked over the detailed map of southern Nirmathas provided with the 1st module and decided that Shiraz and Marsala Mondavi had moved to a village named Radya's Hollow on the edge of the Fangwood Forest, well north of the beginning of the adventure at the village of Phaendar.
Months later I was reading ahead in the 3rd module and discovered that the Ironfang Invasion will conquer Radya's Hollow and kill all but two of its inhabitants. But we had not yet reached the date when Radya's Hollow would be invaded. The party had proven unusually capable. I decided to pass news to them that an Ironfang army had destroyed the village of Redburrow and was marching northward to Radya's Hollow.
They broke off their adventure in the 2nd module and jumped to the 3rd module. Not only was this two levels ahead, but I decided that they would have to face a full-sized conquering army rather than the leftover post-conquest situation written in the module itself. The entire army was a Beyond-Extreme-Threat, but since it was marching in a long column, they could ambush it in a canyon and retreat up the walls and into the hills if necessary. With their ambush they defeated the front of the army before the back of the army could reach them in one of the most glorious battles of the campaign, so the threat was never overwhelming.
The Ironfang Legion had to give up their plans for the northern Hollow Hills. And the party had a safe village for depositing refugees and captives they rescued when they returned to the 2nd module.
All because I could not kill off a character's family without giving the character a chance to save them.
Note that my range of caring is narrow. I care about nothing beyond the feelings and behavior of the player characters. For example, I do not care about the wartime heroism of Zinfandel's parents.