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 I Brought Calvinball to a Changeling LARP

So, we finally finished The Saga of Majenko (all 10 parts of it), so I thought this week we could all use a Pathfinder palate cleanser. For those who don't know, in addition to slinging dice across a tabletop, I'm also a fan of World of Darkness live-action games. I've been an on-again-off-again player in Mind's Eye Society's Changeling: The Lost venue. While I currently play in the Chicago venue, the story I'd like to tell took place in DeKalb, back when it was a hopping place to be. And, I like to think, it shows the sheer willingness of some members of the ST staff to run with any concept that came their way.

No matter how oddball it was.

And boy did WE have a doozy.

Of Changelings and Calvinball

For those of you unfamiliar with Lost as a game, let me give you the crash course. You are a mortal who was stolen by a being of god-like power called a True Fae. While in their realm, you were twisted and altered to become something else. You managed to escape, in time, and find your way back to the real world. What you find is that the world has become strange to you, and you now have to make a new life for yourself, altered as you are by faerie magic.

So, it's basically a modern-day fairy tale with a heavy dose of cthonian horror. Solid? Solid.

As a player, one of the things that appealed to me most about Changeling in the new World of Darkness setting was that you could do nearly anything. You want to play a comic book character who finds himself in the real world, and uses his powers to fight injustice? You can do that. You want to play a slick-talking businessman whose words can cloud people's minds, and who can read the skeins of fate in order to turn every investment into solid gold? You can do that too. Psychotic homeless shapeshifter? Bounty-hunting wolfman? Dragon who is also a prosecuting attorney? These are all concepts you can make right out of the gate, with no special permissions from the storytellers, and no paperwork required.

The idea I had was a little stranger, and I got two friends to go in on it with me.

Don't hate the players, hate The Game.

One of the big things that Lost took from Irish mythology was that True Fae love games. Games are how a lot of mortals end up getting taken in the first place, and it's also how a lot of changelings end up escaping their keeper's clutches. What I wanted to do was to create a sport that would appeal to the nonsensical, solipsistic nature of the True Fae. A game where the rules could change from one breath to another, and where players would need to operate at a level of superhuman skill in order to follow all of the constant fluctuations of fouls and goals. A game where winning once would be a triumph of will, and where never losing was all-but-impossible.

In short, I wanted to play Calvinball, from the comic strip Calvin and Hobbes.

To drive the ridiculousness of the idea home, the team of players we had were serious business. Two ogres and an elemental, all of them rippling with muscle, and with a fanatic devotion to their sport typically only seen in certain World Cup games. They called it The Game, and were confused no one else had ever heard of it. The Summer Court, who was in full attendance, wanted to play.

The three players agreed, handed the referee's whistle to the mute Harlequin from the Winter Court (because who else would we possibly give it to?), and we all turned to the storyteller.

This Was Where The Magic Happened

Some storytellers would look at this, and shake their head because it wasn't serious enough. Others would look at the backstories, realize that one of the unshakeable rules of The Game in Arcadia was that the losers were put to death, and decide this was too serious (even if the Aztec-style victory celebration was no longer a requirement now that they'd escaped). The storyteller running this particular game gave us a huge smile, and said, "All right, let's do this!"

Queensbury rules, motherfuckers!

The storyteller added up each team's physical stats, athletics dots, and bonuses gained from activated powers, as well as kith and seeming blessings. Then he pulled randomly to decide how the rules were going to affect each team. We were tied. Then we started spending Willpower. When that was said and done, we were still tied. Then, before there could be a deciding victory one way or another, an outside force (another player who wasn't in the competition at all) swooped down, and stole the ball.

For the first time in the history of The Game, there was a tie. Not only that, but in a venue where outsiders are looked upon with distrust (and occasionally with outright hostility), three new PCs with no ties and no history were immediately embraced as if we were all long-lost friends.

Which really goes to show that sometimes all it takes is a zany idea, crazy players, and a brilliant storytelling staff, to create some truly remarkable memories. Also, in case you were curious, that was not the last time The Game was played in that particular venue.

As always, thanks for stopping in to listen to my ramblings! If you're more of a Pathfinder or tabletop player, rest assured, I've still got one or two more stories up my sleeve. If you'd like to support Improved Initiative, then stop by The Literary Mercenary's Patreon page. All it takes is $1 a month for me to keep getting hot, fresh content right on your screen. Also, if you want to stay up-to-date on my latest, then follow me at Facebook, Tumblr, and Twitter.

The Littlest Titan (Explaining Massive Damage, and Massive Weapons)

We've all shared a table with one of those fighters at some point in time. During the days of 3.5 it was the guy who dual-wielded greatswords with the Monkeygrip feat. In Pathfinder they're the Titan Maulers, Titan Fighters, and any other melee specialist who looks like they're compensating for something by using a sword nearly as big as they are. In older editions it was the fighter with the tetsubo or the giant's bastard sword. Regardless of what form they take, though, these combat brutes combine overwhelming strength with the capacity to reduce most opponents to little more than cooling meat with a single swipe.

If you've been looking for a new spin on this archetype, though, I've got an idea for you.

Carry A Big Stick

In order to get the most mileage out of this idea, you need to pull out all the stops for your damage dealing capabilities. High strength, a barbarian/fighter combo with the Titan Mauler and Two Handed Fighter archetypes, Power Attack, Furious Focus, Vital Strike, all that good stuff. If you can wrangle an unusual race like an Ogrekin, then go for it. Any bloodlines, Rage Powers, etc. that will give you strength bumps, like the Infernal Bloodline for bloodragers, or just taking Dragon Disciple, are also options. If at any point you hear a voice that says, "yeah, I could take that feat to really buff my damage, and combine it with this class archetype that multiplies everything by two, but that feels like a little too much wooge," this is the time to ignore that voice and go for all the cheese. You're not just a fighter with a big sword; you're Memnoch the Sunderer, whose blows can cleave opponents in twain through even the finest armor.

You get the idea.

If you're looking for a way to crank up the damage, let me direct you Pathfinder's One Hit Wonders: Tips For Building A Bigger, Badder Brute. Also, due to a recent change in the rules, it seems that the Titan Mauler can, indeed, now use a Large-sized greatsword. So remember that.

The Runt of The Litter

To townsfolk, and even to fellow adventurers, the Littlest Titan is a Herculean figure. With an unbreakable, iron grip, and the strength to wrestle giants to the ground, his prowess and raw might are breath-taking. To the tiny titan himself, though, he never sees what he does as exemplary. It's always just good enough, or just barely acceptable, no matter how awe-inspiring or impossible the physical feat he just performed is.

The reason is because he was not raised among men, so he has no frame of reference for what men are supposed to be capable of.

That guy in red, for example, was flung halfway across the Inner Sea.

 

Who raised the Littlest Titan, and how, is completely up to you. Was he a deformed baby, left to die of exposure in the wilds, but instead adopted by a tribe of ogres who mistook him for one of their own? In which case he would always have been delicate and sickly, according to his adopted family, and he would always strive to be stronger, faster, or more skilled than they were, even if he would never grow to match their sheer, physical size. Maybe brutal treatment taught him brutality in kind, making him a vicious warrior who takes no prisoners, or who eschews all weakness as something that should be killed. Maybe it taught him compassion, and he defends those who lack even his "little" strength.

With the sheer variety of creatures and races in Golarion, this concept can be spun hundreds of different ways. A human with Ogrekin blood could, according to the chart in the back of Bastards of Golarion, display bulging muscles or a deformed limb that speaks to inhuman ancestry (if you want the flavor, but couldn't convince your DM to give you a full-on Ogrekin character). A tiefling might be taken from the crib, and forced to contend with devils and demons in possession of gifts and powers he would never be able to match. A child from the Land of the Linnorm Kings might be taken in by fire giants, shown how to work their forges until eventually his body raises to the challenge of wielding such large tools. Frost giants or storm giants may also work as a surrogate family, skewing the character's view of the world so that he constantly views himself as little more than a child in the face of what he expected to become. The blood of dragons flows through many, and those who were acknowledged by their sires may have grown up in the presence of power the likes of which few people truly understand. Elemental races like the Ifrit, or even the animalistic might of orcs, could lead to offspring who only share half their sire's blood, but who are determined to be accepted as strong by those who bore them.

It's also important to ask how the character acts, now that he or she is adventuring. For example, would the half-orc who was constantly towered over by bigger members of the clan be unable to turn down a challenge to prove his strength (no matter how ridiculous or obviously impossible)? Would the Oread boast loudly about his prowess in order to hide his insecurity, spinning the personal myth of The Mountain Who Slays as a way to insulate himself from the nagging voice that he'll never be more than a pebble?

It's your character, but with such a strange back story it's important for you to have the full road map of who they are, where they were, and what brought them to where they are now.

That's it for this latest installment of Unusual Character Concepts. What do you guys think? If you want to help support Improved Initiative, then head over to The Literary Mercenary's Patreon page to toss some change in my cup. If you want to keep up on my latest updates, then follow me on Facebook, Tumblr, and Twitter too!

The History Behind Your Favorite Monsters

Fantasy roleplaying games pull a lot of their monster rosters from world mythology. Whether it's giants or kobolds, goblins or gargoyles, these games have been using myth and legend as free idea buckets for decades now. As a result players have actually come face to face with fragments of cultures ranging from Europe and Africa to the furthest corners of the Asian continent without even knowing it.

This week on Moon Pope Monday we're pulling back the glossy curtain, and showing you just where some of your favorite creatures come from and how they've become what they are today. Now, in no particular order, let's start with...

Ogres

Pictured: A Re-Enactment

Ogres populate a huge variety of fairy tales, and they have the unique ability to make an entire party's collective asshole pucker. Strong, vicious, and usually pretty stupid, ogres are actually the direct result of a linguistic translation rather than a particular myth or legend.

The word ogre seems to come from the Italian word uerco, or orco. It was originally used to refer to demons in a translation of the 1,001 Arabian Nights from Arabic to Italian. There were a lot of steps along the way, but this translation eventually led to the term ogre being applied to specific people-eating giants in fairy tales. For a more complete history of the term, check out this article.

Speaking of demons...

The Difference Between Devils and Daemons

One of these things is not like the other...

Dungeons and Dragons was the first game I ever played that made it clear demons and devils were very different kettles of fish. In game terms one was lawful, the other chaotic, but both were found outside of reality in places of pain, suffering and torment. So, a lot of imagery from the big 3 Abrahamic faiths.

What I didn't know was there actually is a difference between devils and daemons.

The word daemon (spelled with the a) refers to a creature that is between man and god in old Greek. Hercules, and all of his half-god kin, were daemons. Devils in this case referred to genuine divine beings who had no blood of humanity in them at all. For more on this unique bit of language, read this article here.

The Ifrit

Fire It Up!

While they're now a player race in Pathfinder, Ifrit are bad, bad news if you're on their shit lists. Fire elements and djinn, we know them as desert spirits that are resistant or immune to fire, that come with a slew of spell-like abilities, and who can cut a party to slivers before they're really sure what's happening.

This isn't too far from the source material, actually.

The Ifrit, and their many alternative spellings, are taking from a combination of the Koran and Arabic mythology. Powerful spirits of fire created by God before man, these beings of fire are nearly immortal, possess great speed and strength, and are immune to weapons that are not magical or holy. Bad news for parties who can be stymied by damage reduction. Perhaps the most famous of the Ifrit is the one who fell the hardest, called Iblis or Shaitain in the Koran. More on him here. For more general information on the Ifrit as a people, check out this article.

The Succubus and the Incubus

50 Shades of Will Saves

Sex always finds its way into a roleplaying game. Whether it's the bard seducing his way into the queen's castle, or a cavalier fighting for his lady's honor there's at least as much sex in fantasy games as there is in real life. Usually more. Most of the time it's glossed over, but there are two creatures who take this uncomfortable topic and fashion it into a barbed spear made of confused libido and frustrated arousal; the incubus and the succubus.

The incubus and the succubus come from old Jewish lore stretching back to Adam's first wife Lilith. Supposedly Lilith wanted to be equal to her husband, and when Adam denied her that, she fled. She refused to return, or to accept her place in God's kingdom, and so she became a creature who preyed on men in their sleep (more about Lilith may be found in this article). Using their seed she would give birth to monsters called the lilim (more on them here). The succubi followed in their mother's footsteps, seducing men in their dreams and stealing their seed to give birth to ghost babies. Incubi were even more terrifying, having sex with women as they slept and getting them pregnant with half-human, half-daemon spawn called cambions.

In case these creatures weren't already scary enough for you, read more about the incubus and the succubus here.

Trolls

This is the lowest CR we could find.

Considered ogres bigger, bridge-dwelling cousins, trolls have a long and storied history. Though their decadent descendants are busy getting belly jewelry and starting fights on the Internet, trolls go back to Scandinavian folklore. For those who are familiar with Norse mythology the two main contenders in the myth cycles were the gods and the giants; the former representing the divinity of man and the latter representing the primal earth. Some giants were trolls, and in this case trolls could be seen as lesser representations of the primal. Human heroes like Beowulf could fight trolls and win, and they were used often as villains or as neutral representations of earth in fairy tales.

For more information about trolls, check out the full article.

Elves

My elf eyes see three viable targets.

Elves have been a player race for most of the history of fantasy roleplaying, and that's largely due to their prominence in Tolkien's Lord of the Rings. The games that defined the genre drew heavily from LOTR, and they used a lot of the mythology present in those books. What a lot of folks don't know is that Tolkien was drawing on the works of the ancient skalds (more on them here), and that the elves we know are actually part of Norse mythology as well.

Light elves or dark, these willowy, impossibly skilled and nearly immortal forest and cave dwellers were knows as the Alfar (or the svartalfar for those who lived beneath the world). They were a lesser rank of divinity, and they answered to the god Frey and his sister Freya. At the last battle they stood with the gods against the giants and provided some heavy artillery.

So yeah... elves are not to be messed with. For more about the Alfar, check this article out.

The Zombie

The inclusion of the gunslinger was not a fluke.

The undead have been a huge part of roleplaying games for decades, and we can thank the success of the film Night of the Living Dead for the presence of the shambling, moaning corpses that we've had to mow down from level 1 to level 4. While this film might have been instrumental in making the walking dead part of pop culture, it draws on a much older tradition.

For those who don't know, zombies come from Voodoo. Voodoo is a religion practiced largely in Haiti, the Caribbean, and parts of the American south. More about that here. The zombie in this case is a human being who is fed a mind-altering substance, and then buried. The person is dug up and kept on a steady drip of chemicals, which makes the person subservient and thoughtless, ready to do anything commanded by the master. These soulless people felt no fear, no pain, and seemed to know nothing of their former selves were terrifying to behold. It wasn't until pulp horror and Hollywood got hold of the idea that zombies felt compelled to eat human flesh. We're still not sure what's up with that.

For more information about the zombie, check this page out.

The Ghoul

She's waiting till after the funeral.

Ghouls have gone through a lot of iterations, and in most roleplaying games they're seen as servants of vampires a la Renfield, of they're sub-human cannibals who feed on the dead after digging them up. The second one is pretty close to their original myth, but still no cigar.

Ghouls are a kind of djinn, and are seen as particularly heinous practitioners of magic and desecration. Often invisible, ghouls take pleasure in stealing offerings left for God, including the bodies of the dead. The word eventually made its way to England, where its primary definition was changed to a grave robber. Still no word on whether or not British ghouls were eating what they dug up.

For more about ghouls, click this link.

The Golem

You are sixteen kinds of screwed.

A spellcaster's worst nightmare, golems are creatures constructed from magic, alchemy, and a touch of insanity. While versions made with flesh and bone, wood, stone, mud, and a dozen varieties of metal have all been created over time, these mystical guardians actually come from the dust of Rabbinic lore.

According to Jewish tradition a powerful Rabbi can use the secret knowledge of the names of god to follow in his footsteps. The rabbi creates a man from clay, and then gives him life. The golem is bigger than mortal men, as well as stronger, tougher, and faster. These golems have no souls, and as a result tend to have no voice. The only way to destroy them is to eliminate the runes that bring them to life, or to somehow break the spell that makes them live. Historical legend has it that several golems were created to protect Jewish settlements, including one where this mud man killed Nazis for weeks until he was finally destroyed by his maker for becoming too bloodthirsty.

For more about golems and their history, click here.

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