Bouncing a Char Concept off the Boards...

[vulcan_idic]

Hello,
I had a High-Power/Epic Char concept the other night that I just thought I'd bounce off the boards. The character is derived from a tale of forbidden love (a la "The Scarlett Letter" or "Romeo and Juliet"). The mother is from a remote, evil villiage that has long interbred, mingled, and made pacts with denizens of the dark realms. The mother, on a long undercover mission to lands which live under the light fell in love with, and he with her, a man she later discovered to be an Angel in disguise. After a few clandestine meetings, they were forced to stop seeing one another or face dire consequences, but each remained deeply in love with the other for the rest of their existances. Nine months later, unbeknownst to the father and father unknown to the villiage, the character is born. The character grows up to be a warlock with great inborn powers, but there is conflict in his blood - one side from his father, one side from his mother's people - and in his upbringing - one side his mother's secret guidance (which has been changed and altered through her love of his father) and the guidance of the villiage he grows up in. As he begins to attain maturity he flees his villiage in an effort to escape the darkness, and run and fight towards the light... but can he overcome the evil inside of him?
He has a long road ahead of him. His people will likely try with all their might to turn him back to the darkness, or - failing that - destroy him, particularly as they will likely suffer at the hands of their devilish and demonic associates as long as he is uncontrolled. And should he find his way to a good place, should anyone discover where he came from or see his carefully hidden devilish/demonic traits they will likely distrust him at the very least, or, more probably form a Frankensteinian-type mob and try to kill him unless he can escape it. Come to think of it this might occur something like the trial of Teal'C in the first season episode of Stargate SG-1 "Cor-Ai" where Teal'C refuses to escape his trial for former misdeeds he did while in the service of Apophis.
I imagine the character (still sketchy at this point, more a concept than anything else) as a half-celestial tiefling warlock who begins as a chaotic neutral character, but is fighting to become a chaotic good creature and defeat his inner devils/demons.
I look forward to hearing what you all think...

 

[yennico]

I like your story of half-demon who must fight his half-demonic nature. I played in a campaign a half-demon who must fight the minions of his demionic father who was a demon prince. This campaign ended before the concept behind my character could full revealed.
I have an idea for another character who must fight his nature. An evil mother sold his unborn child to the shadows (or shadow godess) so the child got the shadow template. He is not evil, but he likes the shadows etc...

Sadly I think your concept is only good for an NPC and not as a PC because this concept will not survive an adventure.
You want to know why?
Your concept has two weaknesses.
Look at the statistics:
You want to play an half-celestial tiefling warlock.
The attributes:
Tiefling: +2 Dexterity, +2 Intelligence, –2 Charisma
Half-Celestial: Str +4, Dex +2, Con +4, Int +2, Wis +4, Cha +4
so you get: Str +4, Dex +4, Con +4, Int +4, Wis +4, Cha +2
You also get some neat other special abilities.
This sounds cool but for your boosted aattributes and abilities you get your LA, the first weakness.
A tiefling has LA +1 and an half-celestial a LA +4, so your warlock level 1 starts in a party of level 6 characters. He must survive CR 6 challenges.
Spellcasters do not gain much advantages from attributes boost through templates as fighting class through ST or Con boost. IMHO Spellcasters need levels instead of LAs through templates.

The second weakness is that your GM must allow the warlock. Not every GM owns the Complete Arcane book or a GM may think the warlock is overpowered and does not allow it.