A Dwarven Raised Drow? Yours For The Asking, With The Adopted Trait!

In Pathfinder, every character gets two background traits. They give you little, mechanical bonuses, but they're also supposed to represent your character's unique history. If you have Viking Blood, for instance, then it traces your heritage directly to the Land of The Linnorm Kings. It also gives you a +1 bonus on Intimidate checks, and makes Intimidate a class skill for you. Reactionary represents someone who has lived a life on the edge of violence, and it gives you a +2 bonus on Initiative checks. One of the most unusual traits in the game, though, is called Adopted.

In short, Adopted says you were raised by a race not your own. The benefit is that you can immediately choose a race trait you normally wouldn't have access to because you are not a member of that race.

Belkar always knew there was something different about his big brother. He could never put his finger on it, though.

 

That benefit is fun, but there is another advantage to this trait; it gives you a probable explanation for unusual races being found outside of their typical haunts. Even better, though, it lets you explain why you have a member of a particular race that just doesn't seem to fit their usual mold.

A Halfling Village Raised WHAT!?

We know halflings as open-minded, kindly, neighborly folks. They like their food, their pipe weed, and a fairly simple life. While not all halflings we know fit that Tolkien stereotype, imagine an idyllic village that does. There are small-sized lanes, small-sized farms, and homes built right into the rolling landscape. But at the end of the village, there's a huge hill that's been hollowed out. More of an artificial cave, it's made of raw timbers, and huge stones that dwarf the rest of its neighbors.

And sitting on the porch, a thumb tucked behind his suspenders and his pipe in his mouth, is Boram Broadback. And while he might dress like his neighbors, talk like his neighbors, and act like his neighbors, it's pretty clear he isn't like them in a significant way. Boram is a bugbear.

Annalise! It's eating your last serving platter!

 

While Boram still has violent urges, and he was a rowdy child, the patience and caring of his adopted parents, along with the value the village placed on his sheer size and strength, turned him into a chaotic good character who values friendship and community as much as a barrel of ale, and a thick haunch of beef. As well as a chance to crack skulls, when necessary.

This sort of scenario is a great way to justify your unusual PC race, and to make something that isn't bound by the conventions of a given race's culture. For example, say you want to play a drow. Was this drow raised by surface elves, who cultivated her like a tree to make sure she didn't grow in certain directions? Or was the drow raised by dwarves, and thus took on their characteristic brusqueness while also learning their values and industrial talents? Perhaps you want to play an ogre. Were you taken in by a group of human soldiers who raised you as their unit mascot until you eventually grew into a capable fighter on your own? Or were you taken in by a traveling family? Perhaps raised by a witch who made you his surrogate son?

If you're interested in unique story, it's also important to remember that more common races can also be adopted into uncommon situations. For example, you might want to play a human raised by orcs, creating a kind of Tarzan situation where the wayward child has to compete with an adopted family who is bigger, faster, and stronger than he is. This might lead to him becoming superhuman by the standards of most average people. Or, say you were a gnome adopted as a kind of pet by a drow household. Your value as a trickster, and a spy, could completely alter that gnome's views and understanding of the world, in addition to granting them a unique racial trait.

Make Something That Fits Your Game

Perhaps the most important thing to remember when contemplating the possibilities of the Adopted trait, and the associated stories it could bolster, is that you need to make a character for the game you're playing. For example, the drow raised by dwarves would fit quite well into a game that will go to the Darklands. You might even be able to pull a reverse Old Testament and reveal that this drow is a long-lost child of a powerful noble house.

However, that's a situation where your peg can be tailored to fit into a round hole with the party. If you can't cut the corners off a square peg, though, then set the concept aside, and wait for a game where it would make more sense. At the same time, though, don't be afraid to shake up the traditional formula. Just because classes and races have certain archetypes associated with them, that doesn't mean you can't blaze your own trail.

That's all for this week's Fluff installment. If you want to make sure you don't miss out on any of my future updates, follow me on Facebook, Tumblr, and Twitter! Lastly, if you want me to keep producing great content just like this, consider becoming a patron of mine. Head over to The Literary Mercenary's Patreon page, and pledge at least $1 per month. This helps me keep the train rolling, and it will get you some sweet swag to boot!

That One Time a DM Tried to Run "City of The Spider Queen" For an Evil Party

Many years ago, when I was still finishing up my degree, a friend of a friend said he wanted to run my regular group through a pre-written 3.5 Dungeons and Dragons adventure. The adventure, as the title may have given away, was "City of the Spider Queen," which takes place during a particularly dark time when Lolth appears to have abandoned the Drow, and the Underdark is currently in chaos. The party, composed of 10th level characters, is supposed to travel to the Underdark at the behest of a public official, and do their best to protect those living in the world above from the horrors that lurk below.

That isn't how this particular story goes.

 

I was working as a security guard at the time, so I had many hours to contemplate different character concepts. I considered putting together a Dungeon Delver, since it wasn't that often I got a chance to operate in the Underdark. I thought about a ranger who specialized in hunting the Drow on their own turf, using alchemical items and unusual weapons to capture and interrogate them. I considered clerics and sorcerers, barbarians and fighters, but lurking in the back of my head was a darker concept. Something that I knew would never see the light of day in a sensible DM's game.

 

Also, for the record, 5 Tips For Playing Better Evil Characters might be right up your alley if you'd like to try something like this at your own table.

How Sensible Was Our Dungeon Master?

The four players lugged our stacks of 3.5 books to the host's apartment early in the afternoon, and started making characters. Since it was my first time talking to our new DM, I went through the usual questions players should ask in order to be sure they're within the proper parameters. What books are allowed and not allowed? What races can we choose from? Are there any banned alignments, classes, etc.?

"Go nuts!"- DM's last words

 

Our new DM, clearly not sensing any danger, told us we could take anything out of any 3.5 book published by Wizards of the Coast. He was a widely-read player, or so I'd been told, so I decided to ask for the keys to the nuclear arsenal, and checked if we could use The Book of Exalted Deeds. He said sure, that shouldn't be a problem. Then, because I was feeling snarky, I asked if he was also allowing The Book of Vile Darkness. You know, the one that says quite clearly this is meant for DMs, and player access should be extremely restricted.

He said sure, anything we wanted to do, he could roll with.

The Monsters Rise

There was a moment of silence while I processed what he'd said. I then confirmed that he was not, in fact, joking, and that he was allowing us access not only to evil-aligned characters, but to the tomes of eldritch horror that are typically kept under lock and key behind the DM screen. He said that if we wanted to play evil characters, he was cool with that.

The Drow won't know what hit them.

 

I shared a long glance with two of the three other players, and through the odd, psychic link you share with people you've gamed with for a while, we all jumped feet-first into the dark side. Over the next hour or so, we assembled a team of dark defilers that, in any sensible game, would have been the high-level villains. Aberius Retch, a wizard alienist who worshiped the Great Old Ones was my contribution. A mad ascetic, the DM not only let me take the feats to speak the Dark Speech (and teach it to my pseudonatural familiar, in a mark of extremely poor judgment), but allowed me to possess a Bag of Devouring. Retch believed that this bag, far from being a curse, was a direct gateway to his master's belly. And, as a devoted follower, it was his duty to make regular sacrifices.

In addition to the crazed spellcaster, we had a priestess of Loviatar. The pain-worshiping cleric not only bore a full torturer's regalia, but she had the Mark of Evil featured prominently on the side of her neck. Bringing up the rear was a debased creature known only as Sange, who reveled in murder, rape, and all forms of torment and destruction, and who was a half-orc poisoner rogue with levels of the Animal Lord prestige class. We had the full spectrum of evil alignments, with the cleric as lawful, the wizard as neutral, and the rogue as chaotic, but we had something more than that. We had goals, drive, and intelligence. The wizard wanted to uncover ancient lore, and convert the Drow to the worship of the Old Ones. The priestess had a similar notion regarding her church, and wanted to use the wizard's arcane knowledge and ability to call shuddering abominations from the void to her advantage. Sange was smart enough to know who had the brains, and whenever he did as those two bid, he always got to have his fun.

Our fourth group member, after listening to this conversation and hearing about the group we'd created, insisted he was going to play a hound archon paladin. We managed to persuade him to play a lawful neutral dwarven defender instead, after pointing out that we didn't want the whole first session to be player versus player.

Our Faith in The DM Starts To Fade

The whole time we're building these characters, we're sharing our backstories with the DM. He's nodding his head, and I'm starting to get excited. He's making a few notes, and I'm assuming that he's altering bits of the campaign as it stands to better fit such a bizarre party. So, we all finish spending our gold, and take our seats around the table. Then we start getting the intro to the campaign... an intro which is clearly assuming we are not a band of evil bastards, and that we are here to take up the struggle for good and justice.

"You approach the mayor's house." Wait a minute... are we in chains?

 

The intro, for those of you who don't know, is a group of adventurers answering the mayor's call for aid in a town near a passage into the Underdark. Now, given what I've just told you about the party, this could easily have been modified to fit us. The three of us being led in under guard, and in irons, was the simplest way to go. The DM could even have made the neutral dwarf our jailer, and our overseer for a Suicide Squad style mission, where the villains are told to put their powers and talents to a good end.

That didn't happen. Instead, the DM is reading us the same dialogue we would have gotten if we were a group of paladins. The party starts moving around his office, clearly ignoring him. We get no reaction. Sange starts breaking things, because that's what he does. The mayor continues reciting his lines, like an animatronic president. The guards aren't called in. The rails continue. Rather than pushing the point, we decide to head off to our adventure, and away from this land where the people elected a malfunctioning android as their mayor.

Things didn't vastly improve, though. Like most pre-written campaigns, the game assumes that loot, and heroism will be your motivating factors. We obviously lacked the latter, but surprisingly we also lacked the former. The wizard was an ascetic, the cleric was uninterested in treasure, and since gold didn't bleed, cry, or grant sexual release, even Sange wasn't interested in it. Especially if it meant lugging it around all over the place. The dwarf, who on paper appeared to be the most sensible and sane member of the party, began breaking open crypts to find as much stuff as possible.

Seriously, bro? Show some class.

 

What made matters worse, though, was that the DM hadn't altered the challenges or monsters to deal with the toys we'd brought to the table. Traps were found by forcing captured enemies to walk ahead of us, or set off by low-level summoned creatures who opened doors on our behalf. Monsters who weren't a direct threat to us were ignored, or walked past, and Diplomacy, followed by Intimidate, was our opening bid when dealing with the first groups of Drow we found. It didn't work, of course, but adding the pseudonatural template to a mid-level summoned monster can wreck absolute havoc on a group dependent on poison and sneak attacks to be effective.

At the end of the first session, we'd used a minimum of our resources to bypass half a dozen encounters, and to destroy anything that got in our way without mercy, or care. Even worse, though, we chose paths and methods which made no sense to the DM, despite knowing who we were and what we did pretty well by this point. The result was that we had a blast, but he was sitting there with a look on his face not unlike that of a freshly converted cultist. Confused, with his mouth hanging open slightly, and staring around him as if he'd entered another world.

We recognized that look, and were completely unsurprised when that was the only session of the campaign we got to play.

The Moral of The Story

There is a dual moral here. The first is that when you are running a game, and your players tell you that you should probably disallow access to certain tomes, it's a good idea to listen. Especially if it's quite clear that the direction they're going is not the direction the campaign you're running is meant to go in. Secondly, while taking advantage of a DM can be fun, it's something you shouldn't do if you want them to keep running a campaign. Especially if you have an inkling that the things you're going to do are really not things they're prepared for, even if they say they are.

Third, if you're going to run an evil party, make sure they all have the same goals. There was not a single instance of in-fighting, betrayal, or plotting among these powerful, wicked characters, and it made them a force to be reckoned with.

As always, thanks for stopping by this week's Table Talk feature. If you've got a story of your own that you'd like to share, I'm always open to putting someone else in the limelight for a bit. Also, if you'd like to help support Improved Initiative, why not stop by The Literary Mercenary's Patreon page to become a patron and get some swag? As little as $1 a month is all it takes to keep the content coming. Also, if you haven't already, why not follow me on Facebook, Tumblr, and Twitter?