Playing a mute character

One campaign has ended, or at least gone on haitus, and a new one is starting. I am considering playing a mute character. Does anyone have any experience in this area?

First some background, but if you are not interested in the gory details you can skip to the questions below:

The campaign is centered around a powerful thieves guild, and all the player characters have levels of rogue or bard. My idea is a half-orc who has been mute for as long as he can recall. He was an orphan, raised by the guild and trained as a bodyguard. The guild also taught him a form of sign language. He was then sold as a slave to an important noble, where he excelled as a guard of the estate and eventually of the noble himself. He remembers little of his life before slavery, and does not know that he was planted by the guild.

Years later, the guild has reason to assassinate the noble, and bring down his house. A bard, working with the guild, gains the confidence of the noble and arranges a meeting. Now serving as the noble's personal bodyguard, the mute is easily manipulated by the bard, who uses the sign language the half-orc forgot he even knew to plant a powerful suggestion. The mute deals the killing blow to the noble, setting about the fall of his master's house and thereby freeing himself from slavery.

The bard takes the mute under his wing, and reintroduces him to the guild, where they continue to work together as a diplomat and his bodyguard.

The bard will be another player character, probably the only one who knows the sign language and is able to communicate with my character. The half-orc is weak willed (CHA 6) but intelligent. He does not know how to care for himself in the outside world, and relies on the bard for any needed social interaction. He understands the common tongue, but can not speak for himself. He will be the muscle in a mostly finesse and social-skill based party.

QUESTIONS:

• Will it be a pain at the gaming table for me to remain in character, only communicating directly with the player of the bard PC?
• Will it get on the nerves of the other players that it is inconvenient to communicate directly with my character?
• Any suggestions for handling this situation? Or suggestions that I don't do it at all?
• Any rules-specific suggestions, uses of skills, feats or even prestige classes that might be helpful?

Thanks in advance for any help and advice you care to give.

JoeBlank said:

One campaign has ended, or at least gone on haitus, and a new one is starting. I am considering playing a mute character. Does anyone have any experience in this area?

QUESTIONS:

• Will it be a pain at the gaming table for me to remain in character, only communicating directly with the player of the bard PC?
• Will it get on the nerves of the other players that it is inconvenient to communicate directly with my character?
• Any suggestions for handling this situation? Or suggestions that I don't do it at all?
• Any rules-specific suggestions, uses of skills, feats or even prestige classes that might be helpful?

Thanks in advance for any help and advice you care to give.

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1) Yes. If your character is able to communicate freely with one other player's character, then your options are for both of you to go into another room every single time your character communicates (which will be very disruptive) or for you to simply say in front of everyone what your character has told the bard (which effectively eliminates the problem of being mute, at least while the bard is around).
2) Yes. See above.
3) I wouldn't try it. For an short-term npc or pc it would be an interesting change of pace. For a long-term character, it will either get old fast or will end up being ignored for the sake of gameplay.
4) If everyone in the party takes ranks in the sign language your character uses, then the problems mostly go away. Your character still has problems communicating with npc's, but so long as at least one player character is around, that won't be a huge problem. The DM could even throw the occasional situation at you where your character can't use sign language for some reason, creating an interesting problem if you know something the others need to know.

I GM'd a Champions campaign years ago where one character was mute. It sounded cool in concept, but the execution simply didn't work. The player ended up mostly ignoring the problem at the game table to avoid slowing the game to a crawl.

BTW, if you're playing online, this might work well. You could IM only the GM and the other player (assuming his character is nearby). The problems in tabletop play would not apply.

Mute does not mean deaf. There is no reason why people should not be able to speak directly to the mute and be understood.

It's simply a matter of the mute not being able to "speak" to anyone except those that understand his form of sign language. Heck, you might as well call it Thieves' cant.

I think it also depends on your personal proclivities in as a player. I tried to play a character once who was very non-verbal and had difficulties getting what he wanted to say across, but I had a lot of difficulty as I am a very verbal person and my natural insticts are to jump in and take the lead in discussions.

While I've used blind players (most for the Unseeing from Warrens of the Ratmen), I will say that yes being mute doesn't mean you're a deaf-mute. Just mute. Communication can occur IF the player decided to maybe be telepathic. Would make for a cliched but still interesting telepath, one that only speaks through thoughts and images.

Watch alot of old GI Joe episodes. You know Snake Eyes? He's mute. He is also a bada**. Taking a few cues from Silent Bob could possibly help too.

Remember, just because you're mute doesn't mean you can't convey simple messages even without the use of sign language. "I gesture for you to follow me." or "I point out where our mark will be having dinner later tonight, according to what I overheard from the kitchen staff." That sorta thing works just fine. Mute character just require getting a little used to, but they're not -too- big of a hitch.

Deaf-Mute on the other hand, can be a big headache. And fully blind characters.. ugh.. don't even get me started.

While it's of no help for your character concept, two ways that a mute character can work is if a/ the sign language 'interpreter' is the PC's cohort, or b/ the PC has a talking familiar (raven, parrot, etc).

That way, the PC is mute... but everything doesn't need to be relayed through another player at the table. The PC's player can take the part of the cohort or familiar relaying the information.

There's still potential for it to be a handicap in situations where the cohort or familiar are somehow unavailable, which lets the player occasionally experiment with working around the limitation... but since it's only occasionally, it doesn't get to the point of annoying people.

Alternatively - again, for a higher level campaign - a deaf-mute character with a telepathic intelligent weapon or a pseudo-dragon familiar could still communicate, with his telepathic companion relaying both ways.

-Hyp.

Painfully said:

Mute does not mean deaf. There is no reason why people should not be able to speak directly to the mute and be understood.

It's simply a matter of the mute not being able to "speak" to anyone except those that understand his form of sign language. Heck, you might as well call it Thieves' cant.

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In the situation detailed by Joe Blank, I don't see any problems with the other players talking freely in front of this player. As you've noted, the character is not deaf. The problem is this player speaking freely in front of the others. Yet to play the game, he has to speak now and then, if only to explain to the GM what he is doing. As Cordo mentioned, it can be very difficult for many players to both play the game and stay within the limitations of the character.

Hypersmurf said:

While it's of no help for your character concept, two ways that a mute character can work is if a/ the sign language 'interpreter' is the PC's cohort, or b/ the PC has a talking familiar (raven, parrot, etc).

That way, the PC is mute... but everything doesn't need to be relayed through another player at the table. The PC's player can take the part of the cohort or familiar relaying the information.

-Hyp.

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I agree - an excellent suggestion. This very neatly addresses my concerns about gameplay, while still allowing the character to be mute. A clever GM will be able to place the character (and, therefore, the player) in difficult situations now and then, but they'll be memorable rarities, instead of every-single-game problems.

Sir Whiskers said:

I agree - an excellent suggestion. This very neatly addresses my concerns about gameplay, while still allowing the character to be mute. A clever GM will be able to place the character (and, therefore, the player) in difficult situations now and then, but they'll be memorable rarities, instead of every-single-game problems.

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Unfortunately, it's useless for an ex-slave half-orc bodyguard, who is unlikely to have henchmen of his own, and even less likely to have a familiar

-Hyp.

QUESTIONS:

Will it be a pain at the gaming table for me to remain in character, only communicating directly with the player of the bard PC?
Will it get on the nerves of the other players that it is inconvenient to communicate directly with my character?
Any suggestions for handling this situation? Or suggestions that I don't do it at all?
Any rules-specific suggestions, uses of skills, feats or even prestige classes that might be helpful?

Click to expand...

Does your character know how to read and write?
If so, then he can scribble a note to another character. (Or on the ground, with chalk on a surface, etc.) This is dependant on whether the other characters can read, of course.

This was how I handled a character that was *pretending* to be mute (but also knew sign language).
Since none of the party knew sign language, I would point at my other hand and mimic writing a note on a note pad (along with some scribbling sounds). Then I would show my palm to the player of the character that was to recieve the message, and say out loud what I wanted my character to convey.

This worked well until the time I forgot to make my miming gesture and just started talking to an NPC.
Since the NPC was undead, the other characters immediately assumed that my character was an oathsworn who had sworn never to talk to the living...so it worked out fine in the end.

Hope that helps some.