Manipulative personality help

[Evad]

I'm playing 2nd edition
I got bored playing characters that are just 'me' in the game, so My new character is something new for me. She is a 1st lev mage, who is going to be a sneaky, manipulative person, who will do little fighting herself, but charm or trick others to do "her bidding".. This very contradictary to my own personality..

any advice?

 

[Dice4Hire]

Make sure the other players are cool with it.

 

[Cyronax]

Read wikipedia's entries for sociopaths. Its the personality of many criminals and dropouts, but also many successful politicians and business elite.

Also since your playing a mage and a female with the manipulation thing, focus on Enchantments and Illusions. I'd also push for finding henchmen and hirelings.

C.I.D.

 

[Piratecat]

Don't trick and charm your fellow PCs; that's just going to make the players cranky. Instead, ask the GM if he can supply you with "red shirt" NPCs now and then for you to charm. More fun for everyone.

 

[TerraDave]

This approach does fit with the spells that are there, and this being 2E you can specialize to get a few more. Also, you of course want higher charisma, and will want to get, as PCat says, "redshirts" through henchman.

For other PCs, just play like any low level magic-user and let them do the dirty work. Play "manipulative" but don't over do it. For NPCs and especially opponents, no holds barred.

One small thing, there may be cases where you want to charm when others in the party want to fight. Charming can actually be more effective...

 

[Cyronax]

Or you could be over an over top manipulator like this guy:

All you need is a warforged minion/sidekick and you're goood to go.

C.I.D.

 

[Dedekind]

Try reading "The Sociopath Next Door." It has a lot of vignettes that show how petty (or terrible) someone with an anti-social disorder can be.

However, watch out for the inter-party strife!

 

[nedjer]

Tend to go more for the assassin with a mission/ profit orientated/ scheming kind of evil rather than a siren. 'It's business' seems to slot into play quite easily.

Often run a few sidelines, get players into a fight to use it as a distraction (but give them a share after), cut deals with opponents and double cross them - not the party. There are times we've been on the run and they should've handed me in for getting them into hot water. But they haven't, so far.

 

[Thornir Alekeg]

If you have the right players, you can do some intra-party manipulation, it just needs to be out of combat and not actually harmful to the rest of the party. A player in my old group had some similar ideas for her Mage. She did a lot of manipulation of the big, strong, males in the party to do things like carry her equipment for her. The top one was when she managed to convince one PC to give up his tent he had bought with his starting equipment money (You wouldn't want me to have to sleep out in the cold rain, would you? I might not be able to speak my spells correctly if a catch a cold...No, sharing a tent with a man would not be at all proper for a lady). The players understood what was going on, but had a lot of fun playing it up with their PCs, especially when she played one of the men off the other.

 

[Marius Delphus]

Perhaps you can rationalize a "hands off the other PCs" dogma -- your character notices the other PCs are *already* doing things that dovetail nicely with her goals, so overtly manipulating them would really be counterproductive (lots of effort wasted and lots of risk incurred for little relative gain).

That said, I'd recommend an enchantment/charm specialist wizard for this concept. Make sure you and the DM work together to delineate and understand the limits of her spells, to avoid any misinterpretations about what your character can do. The character will probably lean heavily on a small number of spells, so it's to your benefit to learn them inside out.

You might want to think of a broader or farther-reaching goal than simply being a sneaky and manipulative person. It's a swell roleplaying hook (given, as above, that it doesn't cause intra-party friction), but *why* is she sneaky and manipulative (other than, for example, "she has a high INT and CHA and it works for her")? Work both ends of the spectrum -- what is her ultimate goal, on the one hand, and why has she decided she needs to go about it by being sneaky and manipulative, on the other?

HTH. GL and HAND.