Desdichado
Hero
[3.5] Most bizarre—yet playable—character concept
I thought about making this a contest, but I don't want to judge it, so I'll just throw it out there as a challenge you can attempt to meet (or not) as you choose. Here's the deal. We've got a lot of rules in place for 3.5 now, and with a lot of rules, that means a lot of options. I had a very bizarre character concept idea recently; bizarre enough that I'd have to approach my DM about making a few tweaks to the mechanics to allow it, but it interested me nonetheless. I thought I'd post it and see what y'all all think, as well as invite you to post your ideas. After all, that way I can steal your ideas for interesting and intriguing NPCs in my current game, at least.
Here's the rules:
My character idea (kudos to Sean for thinking of the basic idea of this first) is an ape. Sadly, the rules for awakening an animal with racial hit dice and then playing them as a PC are sadly lacking from Savage Species so I had to think of something that was a good enough mechanical fit that I could rename as an ape.
Is this an awakened ape? If so, who awakened him? Bolgani Kerchak remembers his childhood going back to a very young age, so if he was awakened, it must have been while he was in infant apeling. Maybe he's not an awakened ape at all. His own personal belief is that he is a human soul trapped in an animal's body by some curse. He's just romantic enough that he'll never seek out a divination or any other such magic to find out, though—if he's wrong the truth might be harder to face than he's willing to deal with.
Bolgani is fairly dapper; he never appears without a pair of brass spectacles on his nose (he can't read well without them), a powdered wig and tricorner hat, and baggy silk pants. He carries a sword on a baldric around his shoulder and often wears a chain shirt in combat. When he speaks, its in a surprisingly erudite and illustrious sounding accent; he sounds a bit like Hugh Laurie playing Bertie Wooster, as a matter of fact (I thought about giving him Leadership so he could get a cohort names Jeeves, but that's just silly.)
With his group of friends (the party) he takes one of two tacks when entering a public place; either pretending to be a trained ape as a pet or performer of one of the party members, or in a friendly environment, telling his story as a man cursed to spend his life in a gorilla's body. He has few joys in life other than furthering his education, enjoying the sociality of those few who accept him, drinking fine liquors and hiring prostitutes desperate (or drunk) enough to spend the night with him.
His melancholy comes from his adoptive family; as far back as he can remember he was raised by a country gentleman, who may not have loved him, but was curious about his nature and treated him well, giving him a fine education and some of the other finer things in life as well. As he approached adulthood, a sting of witch hunters raided his country manor and his adoptive "father" was hanged on the spot after evidence of slave trading, human sacrifice and the worship of Demogorgon was discovered in the cellar. Bolgani still doesn't believe it, but whether it was true or whether his "father" was framed, either way Bolgani lost his faith in human nature and is in many ways already dead inside. This has made him become calloused to the plight of others around him, and he has no qualms about using his unusual skills to perpetrate any crime that he can get away with and get paid for, to drown his emptyness in ale and whores.
To represent Bolgani mechanically, I struggled with trying to use the ape stats and the awakened spell from the core books, but found that it really didn't quite work, since there was no LA for doing so. I could have made one up, but I decided to instead represent him with orc stats, use the orc paragon class from Unearthed Arcana with a few minor tweaks, and only after taking those three levels allow myself to advance in regular character classes. Bolgani is a rather heavy ape, and so is not necessarily a better climber than a person would be, but he always keeps his ranks in Climb maxed out. The orc paragon class eliminates the light sensitivity "feature" of being an orc at first level, so I don't need to worry about that not fitting the concept. The Elf slayer class ability at 2nd level doesn't work for a gorilla, though, so I decided to substitute that with the scent monsterous ability, which apes do actually have.
After taking the three levels of orc paragon and filling out the "ape" stats for guy, I'll take two levels of ranger and then segue into the Assassin prestige class.
I thought also about making him a magic user of some kind; just to go against type, since you'd expect a big hairy gorilla to be a combat guy, not a scholarly mage, but honestly; I just don't like playing magic users enough to do that, so I could be bored with the character if I had to use him for a long haul.
Anyway, that's my character, Bolgani Kerchak (names cribbed from Tarzan of the Apes—of course.
What other ideas have you got?
I thought about making this a contest, but I don't want to judge it, so I'll just throw it out there as a challenge you can attempt to meet (or not) as you choose. Here's the deal. We've got a lot of rules in place for 3.5 now, and with a lot of rules, that means a lot of options. I had a very bizarre character concept idea recently; bizarre enough that I'd have to approach my DM about making a few tweaks to the mechanics to allow it, but it interested me nonetheless. I thought I'd post it and see what y'all all think, as well as invite you to post your ideas. After all, that way I can steal your ideas for interesting and intriguing NPCs in my current game, at least.
Here's the rules:
- Official Wizards of the Coast products only. I know; lots of bizarre ideas in third party material, but we also open the door to stuff that could be difficult for others to find.
- I said bizarre, not silly. I want characters that can be played straight without seriously disrupting the campaign or the gaming group.
- I find conceptually bizarre characters much more interesting than mechanically bizarre characters.
- If you ignore any of these rules, I reserve the right to type "FAIL" in gigantic red letters in response to your post.
My character idea (kudos to Sean for thinking of the basic idea of this first) is an ape. Sadly, the rules for awakening an animal with racial hit dice and then playing them as a PC are sadly lacking from Savage Species so I had to think of something that was a good enough mechanical fit that I could rename as an ape.
Is this an awakened ape? If so, who awakened him? Bolgani Kerchak remembers his childhood going back to a very young age, so if he was awakened, it must have been while he was in infant apeling. Maybe he's not an awakened ape at all. His own personal belief is that he is a human soul trapped in an animal's body by some curse. He's just romantic enough that he'll never seek out a divination or any other such magic to find out, though—if he's wrong the truth might be harder to face than he's willing to deal with.
Bolgani is fairly dapper; he never appears without a pair of brass spectacles on his nose (he can't read well without them), a powdered wig and tricorner hat, and baggy silk pants. He carries a sword on a baldric around his shoulder and often wears a chain shirt in combat. When he speaks, its in a surprisingly erudite and illustrious sounding accent; he sounds a bit like Hugh Laurie playing Bertie Wooster, as a matter of fact (I thought about giving him Leadership so he could get a cohort names Jeeves, but that's just silly.)
With his group of friends (the party) he takes one of two tacks when entering a public place; either pretending to be a trained ape as a pet or performer of one of the party members, or in a friendly environment, telling his story as a man cursed to spend his life in a gorilla's body. He has few joys in life other than furthering his education, enjoying the sociality of those few who accept him, drinking fine liquors and hiring prostitutes desperate (or drunk) enough to spend the night with him.
His melancholy comes from his adoptive family; as far back as he can remember he was raised by a country gentleman, who may not have loved him, but was curious about his nature and treated him well, giving him a fine education and some of the other finer things in life as well. As he approached adulthood, a sting of witch hunters raided his country manor and his adoptive "father" was hanged on the spot after evidence of slave trading, human sacrifice and the worship of Demogorgon was discovered in the cellar. Bolgani still doesn't believe it, but whether it was true or whether his "father" was framed, either way Bolgani lost his faith in human nature and is in many ways already dead inside. This has made him become calloused to the plight of others around him, and he has no qualms about using his unusual skills to perpetrate any crime that he can get away with and get paid for, to drown his emptyness in ale and whores.
To represent Bolgani mechanically, I struggled with trying to use the ape stats and the awakened spell from the core books, but found that it really didn't quite work, since there was no LA for doing so. I could have made one up, but I decided to instead represent him with orc stats, use the orc paragon class from Unearthed Arcana with a few minor tweaks, and only after taking those three levels allow myself to advance in regular character classes. Bolgani is a rather heavy ape, and so is not necessarily a better climber than a person would be, but he always keeps his ranks in Climb maxed out. The orc paragon class eliminates the light sensitivity "feature" of being an orc at first level, so I don't need to worry about that not fitting the concept. The Elf slayer class ability at 2nd level doesn't work for a gorilla, though, so I decided to substitute that with the scent monsterous ability, which apes do actually have.
After taking the three levels of orc paragon and filling out the "ape" stats for guy, I'll take two levels of ranger and then segue into the Assassin prestige class.
I thought also about making him a magic user of some kind; just to go against type, since you'd expect a big hairy gorilla to be a combat guy, not a scholarly mage, but honestly; I just don't like playing magic users enough to do that, so I could be bored with the character if I had to use him for a long haul.
Anyway, that's my character, Bolgani Kerchak (names cribbed from Tarzan of the Apes—of course.
What other ideas have you got?
Last edited:
