D&D 5E Ideas for building/playing a "research-focused" character?

[Alex319]

I'm about to start a new campaign and I have a somewhat interesting idea for a character concept.

My idea is that the character is a scientist that is researching topics relating to adventuring. For instance, things like:

- What types of acids/poisons/spells/etc. work best on what types of monsters?
- Why are traps designed the way they are? How do traps that are e.g. in long-lost tombs still manage to work for so long without maintenance?
- Can we understand monster physiologies such that we can e.g. figure out how to make poisons that are targeted at certain categories of monsters?
- Can we develop new types of weapons, spells, or alchemical items?

Examples of how this might play out in games include:

- Suppose that another character puts a candle in a flask of oil, lights it, and throws it at an enemy, and this explodes in a blast that rivals actual alchemist's fire [this actually happened in a game I was in earlier]. My character would try to replicate this improvised weapon and test it, and might try to commercialize this invention if it seemed to actually be as powerful as alchemist's fire at lower production cost.

- Suppose that in a certain situation my character makes a ranged attack and receives disadvantage, and in a similar situation in a later fight makes the attack and does not receive disadvantage. She might try to understand what made the disadvantage occur in one situation but not the other, and try to set up similar situations in future fights to test hypotheses, in hopes of more fully understanding what causes disadvantage so she can fight better the next tie.

- After fighting a particularly unusual creature or a creature with a particular special power, she might dissect the creature to understand what about its physiology gave it that power.

- During battles she might try to use a variety of different attack types against different monsters so as to get more data on how different attack types perform against different monsters.

This character will be played primarily in a series of three-session "mini-campaigns". These campaigns are not "sandboxes" so it will not be possible to go on a completely different path.

The questions I'm looking for answers on are:

- What character class should I choose? I am thinking a wizard because that has the most options for trying out different kinds of spells and is the most "academic-study-based" character class in the PHB. y original concept for this character was an alchemist - experimenting with new concoctions, trying to harvest materials from different monster types and terrain to make new items - but all the alchemist classes I can find in UA and homebrew material online are mainly focused on bomb-throwing and reskinned spellcasting. I'm hopefully trying to find a character class that is more focused on the research and experimentation aspect rather than just direct combat.

- Does anyone have any experience with playing this kind of character in actual games. What are ways that you could pursue these kinds of goals while still staying within the confines of a non-sandbox format (or preferably even an Adventurers League format, if I wanted to make a similar character for Adventurers League play?)

 

[Ovinomancer]

You need to ask your DM, not us. This concept requires a lot of work and buy in from your DM. I'd tell you nope, not inventing a scientifically detailed and determined world for you to experiment on. D&D isn't that kind of game.

D&D already has a huge DM overhead -- ie, the amount of work a DM has to do to present the gane. This kind of play drastically increases that overhead. Some DM enjoy that, some (me) don't have time, interest, or both. So, any responses you get here are meaningless unless your DM has buy-in.

 

[FrogReaver]

Be a wizard. Be overly focused on your research. Put yourself in danger in order to achieve your goals. Have your character make lots of assumptions and prove them wrong or maybe right.

Remember your character goal is about gathering data not creating a consistent theory of everything in that data. That also frees up the DM to make a ruling on what you are doing and not worry about consistency. By all means try to make as many theories for how things work up as you like. Expect all of them to be wrong. That’s the fun with this style of PC

Don’t bog down the game performing 100 experiments on every creature after combat. Maybe do 1 or 2 things and take note of your observations and move on. If the dm will let you shorthand your experiments then run as many as you like. If I was DM I’d have a background research skill for you and have you roll it to experiment. Your roll determines your findings but not all dms will do that

I have played a mad scientist style wizard before. It was very fun.

 

[Umbran]

So, basically, you want to create a character that gains the meta-knowledge of game mechanics through empirical research?

Don't ask us. Ask your GM. I'd have several issues with it - 1) the temptation to use meta-game knowledge, and 2) the fact that the world you are adventuring in has *magic*, and so many of the tings you are looking into will be opaque to the scientific method, 3) the adventuring life is not a controlled environment in which to apply the scientific method, 4) the game world is not so detailed as to make this easy for the GM to support.

I mean, unless you don't mind that your character is usually *wrong* about things, like most real-world medieval scholars were. Then, just pick a class and pretend to find things out and make stuff up, just most of it is wrong.

- Suppose that in a certain situation my character makes a ranged attack and receives disadvantage, and in a similar situation in a later fight makes the attack and does not receive disadvantage. She might try to understand what made the disadvantage occur in one situation but not the other, and try to set up similar situations in future fights to test hypotheses, in hopes of more fully understanding what causes disadvantage so she can fight better the next tie.

Nitpick - you character doesn't know they had "disadvantage". The character in the game world sees the result - hit or miss - not the number of dice rolled to produce that result, because the dice *don't exist* within the game world. Similar for damage - the character doesn't see the damage done, they see flames, and the monster dies or not. The character in the game world doesn't know about discrete hit points or Armor classes, or that success or failure is doled out in 5% chunks from a d20, or that stats are quantified with modifiers...

- After fighting a particularly unusual creature or a creature with a particular special power, she might dissect the creature to understand what about its physiology gave it that power.

There does not have to be a physiological reason for it. There's *magic*, which does not require supporting physiology to manifest.

- During battles she might try to use a variety of different attack types against different monsters so as to get more data on how different attack types perform against different monsters.

This one is fine, though the issue of uncontrolled conditions and number of trials will get in your way. A combat lasts only a few rounds one round you use fire, another, you use cold. The cold rolls high damage, the fire rolls low. The character doesn't know about the dice rolled - at best they see the cold does more than the fire this one time. It doesn't generalize. And how many trolls do you really fight in an adventuring career? A couple or a few?

 

[aco175]

Be careful that the research is not coming off as questioning the DM or attacking him for a bad decision. Your example of having disadvantage on an attack and not on another of similar means could come off as poking jabs at the DM and ruin the fun for everyone.

You also need to think about having most of the research in the background or during downtime. You want to share the spotlight and not take over gaming time. Other players get bored if they listen for 20 minutes on how you want to go shopping for items or roleplay testing new inventions. Perhaps you have a lackey that can handle most of the shopping and testing.

I would play a mage or some sort, most likely wizard. The high Int. score and knowledge based proficiencies make a good choice. You could be a gnome, but that may be obvious. Perhaps a dwarf questioning magic and looking for a more long-term solution to problems, thinking that magic will fade someday. I can see some of this being fun in certain campaigns.

 

[Mistwell]

I would probably just point you to the Artificier class and leave it at that.