How much back story for a low-level PC?

[Neonchameleon]

Apparently we have completely different ideas on what wizards and liches are.

I believe that very few people are wizards, that it takes a lot of hard work and study to become a powerful wizard (and that most powerful wizards are old). Ten years isn't nearly enough the slow way - and the fast way, pushing yourself past your limits almost every day, is one very few people survive. Liches are the most paranoid and death fearing of amoral wizards - which means they are normally those who take the old way.

You apparently believe that just about anyone with motivation can become one in a few years from any starting point. There are lots of motivated people in the world - how common are tenth level wizards? Because including apprenticeship, if your argument is that everyone can become one, there are going to be a lot of tenth level wizards in their mid 20s. Now either you have a really high magic world or something doesn't make sense. Or something is eating all the high level mages (itself a plot, admittedly).

As for age and experience points. Apparently someone who sat on her tush all day doing nothing that would gain experience points for thirty or so years has suddenly become someone gathering them at the rate of an adventurer. To me, this reads as a personality transplant. (And raising a couple of kids is challenging. We've got Exps for Skill Challenges and Exps for Gold coming into play depending on your edition.)

Your claims that you aren't changing anything that was already there are about as true as they would be if a picture of the character was presented and because only the head was on the portrait you claimed that you were doing nothing inconsistent by making them a tentacle monster from the neck down, without anyone ever having remarked on this. OK, so you have not erased one single line from the original portrait. This doesn't mean what you've done hasn't trampled all over the spirit of that portrait.

Edit: And if "Bitter and angry attitude" foreshadows becoming a lich then there must be thousands of the beasts out there. (Throw in death and arcana-obsessed and you've about reached the starting lines).

 

[Mallus]

Apparently we have completely different ideas on what wizards and liches are.

Probably.

Personally, I think think wizards and liches are fiction. Therefore, the only requirement for turning someone into one is an act of imagination and a few keystrokes. Of course, this may strain credulity, but isn't that to be expected in stories about wizards and liches?

 

[Desdichado]

Apparently we have completely different ideas on what wizards and liches are.

Quite probably. Luckily for me, my interpretation is the one supported by the rules (and therefore the implicit setting) while yours is something that you have to manually change about how D&D settings work. Which, if you want to do, more power to you. I change all kinds of assumptions about the settings in most of my games. But for reference, I'm referring to a more "standard" D&D paradigm, since otherwise anything I say will be irrelevant to the discussion with someone else from another group than mine.

And your analogy is also, again, false. I'm not saying that just below the Mona Lisa she secretly had a tentacled monster body. I'm saying that since your PC knew her, she went out and changed. Those tentacles grew since the last time you saw here. That's why your constant claims of rewriting are, quite frankly, nonsensical. Failing to make that really pretty critical distinction causes your arguments to not make any sense.

 

[Raven Crowking]

For the record, I never once disagreed that foreshadowing wouldn't make this kind of surprise a much better one. Neonchameleon seems to think that I have, but I'm in perfect agreement there. Foreshadowing would greatly improve this.

Well, that's pretty much all of my objection, then.

A PC's family/friends/home town is not the PCs. All of these things are fair game for the GM. The GM is well advised, however, to make the twists he adds cooler than the player expected (although not always to the benefit of the PC!!!!!) so as to make the player glad for the background provided.....but as to whether it should be "fair game" to pull something like this off at all, well, I agree with you.

It is fair game.

Personally, I think think wizards and liches are fiction. Therefore, the only requirement for turning someone into one is an act of imagination and a few keystrokes. Of course, this may strain credulity, but isn't that to be expected in stories about wizards and liches?

Erm.

In most cases, adding fantastic elements requires the frame of the story, apart from those elements, be cohesive enough to prevent the :rollseyes: reaction from the reader/audience. This is true in an RPG, also, IMHO and IME. Perhaps moreso, because the players are expected to engage with the fiction far more than the reader/audience of a novel/story/movie are.

Speaking of which, I finally managed to track down and read what seems likely to be the source of the D&D lich. The skeletal remains of a wizard appears in Gardner Fox's Kothar - Barbarian Swordsman. Apparently, this undead creature can cast hold person, as well as several other spells, and is referred to as a "lich". Gardner Fox was admired by Gary Gygax, who also knew him in person.


RC

 

[Desdichado]

Personally, I think think wizards and liches are fiction. Therefore, the only requirement for turning someone into one is an act of imagination and a few keystrokes. Of course, this may strain credulity, but isn't that to be expected in stories about wizards and liches?

I agree with this, but I can certainly see how many, many D&D players would not. There are specific rules for who can become a lich and how to do so, and a lot of gamers like those rules to be consistent lest they feel like they're too disconnected from the setting in which the game takes place to make intelligent, rational and reasonable decisions in behalf of their characters.

:shrug:

Speaking of which, I finally managed to track down and read what seems likely to be the source of the D&D lich. The skeletal remains of a wizard appears in Gardner Fox's Kothar - Barbarian Swordsman. Apparently, this undead creature can cast hold person, as well as several other spells, and is referred to as a "lich". Gardner Fox was admired by Gary Gygax, who also knew him in person.

Huh. Cool find! :win:

 

[Raven Crowking]

Re: Liches. I might take the time to transcribe the relevant sections to a new thread, just for those who are interested. The same book also mentions sylphs (and the description ties in very well with the AD&D 1e sylphs) and a few other things that made my Gygaxsense tingle.


RC

 

[NewJeffCT]

Geez, the change could have been subtly foreshadowed, and I even joked about it when the woman emailed the background to me - though, not out & out saying she was now an undead and a lich. I just had not mentioned it on here, as I did not think it relevant.

I even told her out of game that the bitter & angry mom has had 10 years to instill her hatred on the sister left behind to care for her... and, when the PC arrived in town, the sister did mention in game that the mother had gotten even more hateful and resentful towards the end, and had taken to reading this mysterious book she had acquired. The book radiated evil, but the sister could not convince the mom to give it up and that after the mom's death, the book had mysteriously vanished.

The biggest surprise was that it was almost a year later out of game that the lich entered the picture. I think after nothing happened immediately in game, they kind of put it out of their minds, even though it was probably 2 months of in game time.

 

[Neonchameleon]

Quite probably. Luckily for me, my interpretation is the one supported by the rules (and therefore the implicit setting) while yours is something that you have to manually change about how D&D settings work.

How so? Yours is one which means that the entire section on guidelines of expected power levels in various areas must be trashed. Or are you simply looking at the page which says the DM controls the game?

But for reference, I'm referring to a more "standard" D&D paradigm, since otherwise anything I say will be irrelevant to the discussion with someone else from another group than mine.

See below for a standard D&D paradigm. Or look up the expected character levels by area from the 3e DMG (mine's with a friend) and tell me that that isn't now thoroughly destroyed.

And your analogy is also, again, false. I'm not saying that just below the Mona Lisa she secretly had a tentacled monster body. I'm saying that since your PC knew her, she went out and changed. Those tentacles grew since the last time you saw here. That's why your constant claims of rewriting are, quite frankly, nonsensical. Failing to make that really pretty critical distinction causes your arguments to not make any sense.

Except what you are saying changed includes her personality (she became a driven and dedicated magical researcher and spellcaster), her stats (notably Int), and her capabilities (notably cash and resources). From the 2e Monstrous Manual: Lich:
Intelligence: Supra-genius (19-20).
"They were originally wizards of at least 18th level"
"In order to become a lich, the wizard must prepare its phylactery by the use of the enchant an item, magic jar, permanency and reincarnation spells. ... must be of the finest craftsmanship and materials of not less than 1,500 gold pieces per level of the wizard. ... craft a potion of extreme toxicity which is then enchanted with the following spells: wraithform, permanency, cone of cold, feign death and animate dead."

She'd better have been working damn hard to pull that little list off in ten years. Even simply raising 27,000GPs for the cheapest possible phylactery is asking a lot for most NPCs. Frankly, changing into a tentacle monster from the neck down is a whole lot more plausible - when personality, capabilities, and stats have changed like that (especially personality) about all that's left is name and memories.

 

[Dausuul]

You know, I think the lich-mom argument is pretty much played out at this point. I'm not seeing anybody's opinion changing much.

Maybe we could move on? There must be other things in this thread for us to wage scorched-earth forum warfare about...

 

[coyote6]

Maybe we could move on? There must be other things in this thread for us to wage scorched-earth forum warfare about...

I'd rather it diverge into talking about how the guy that created the JSA and wrote "Flash of Two Worlds!" (thus putting the idea of the multiverse into comics) also appears to have been the inspiration for D&D's lich and maybe sylph. That'd be awesome thread drift.

Speaking of Gardner Fox, Dr. Fate's original background (archaeologist's son that found an Egyptian wizard's tomb) was pretty skimpy, but got pretty impressive later (agent of Nabu, one of the Lords of Order).