Pregnancy and newborns...

[Son of the Serpent]

Hi, my playgroup got new situation. One our party member is pregnant... So my question is - how usual is it in yours play, how did you deal with it.

we are playing DnD 5, and She is Wild Sorcerer, so she can't cast, because mutating is in game... especially in crit fails.

Ive had pregnancies happen a couple times. Only twice for an actual pc and not an npc. Im a sucker for realism. So are my players. We dealt with it exactly as one might expect one would if this was all real. The npcs have had all manner of outcomes you mght expect. Fairly normal ones typically if we ever touched on them again. Except for in one instance. We had a pc that got an npc pregnant one time. But he was a pixy of noble birth. Not a prince or anything crazy. The child (a half pixy) was whisked away by fey at birth and he had to kidnap it back to give to its mother.

In the case of pc's, which live a much more dangerous life on average than the typical d&d villager or what have you, one pc was retired for 2 ingame years (after which the pc's sister cared for the child) to avoid the high likelyhood one or both would get killed due to beng far more helpless whole pregnant, and one did not take the advisable route. They were grievously wounded in tge abdomen and had to have an emergency caesarian. The baby died several months early. Later a different pc got 3 wishes from an efreet. The female pc had been keeping the bones of her child. He wished for her baby to be "returned to its mother". Bad choice of words. Realizing his error in panic he then in the blink of an eye asked for the baby to be "resurrected". That caused the undead horror that was about to unfold inside her to stop. He was quick enough to save the day. Now there was the problem that she was still pregnant again though. Thinking over his next request carefully he said "cause the two of them in good health to proceed to the point of time in gestation at which the current pregnancy would reach full term and allow the birth to proceed normally". Way better wish than his first one.

The direct answer for the record is "pc causes npc pregnancies are uncommon but occasional and pc pregnancies are exceedingly rare seeing we only had it happen in campaigns i dm twice across multiple IRL decades and just a few more times i didnt recount in other dms' campaigns."

 

[DrunkonDuty]

My question is: Is the player okay with being nerfed for 5 game days?

If they are, carry on.

If they are not then consider not doing it this way.

Look, I don't know your game table dynamic. But I assume you wouldn't be posting this question if everyone is okay with the situation. I think your table should make making sure everyone is okay with this situation your first priority.

 

[Son of the Serpent]

My question is: Is the player okay with being nerfed for 5 game days?

If they are, carry on.

If they are not then consider not doing it this way.

Look, I don't know your game table dynamic. But I assume you wouldn't be posting this question if everyone is okay with the situation. I think your table should make making sure everyone is okay with this situation your first priority.

I know you are addressing OP but this may be useful info. In my players case the answer would be yes. They suggested it. Although 2 years is not 5 days in my campaigns typically. They played an alt character and used the oppirtunity to have the pregnant and new mother character do butt loads of research.

 

[uzirath]

I think this is missing the point entirely.

The question is not whether a pregnant super hero is a stretch. The question is whether or not pregnancy should be consequential.

The post I quoted was responding to another post about whether there should be an "a priori reason not to" allow a pregnant character in an action-adventure. My intent was to prod the notion that "realism" should dictate that the baby be especially vulnerable in the womb of a protagonist. Sure, if I were pregnant, I would not run around with a sword fighting dragons. But I wouldn't do any of that anyway. If I'm engaged in a fictional story that presumes that dragons can fly with absurdly small wings and shoot lighting from their mouths and that heroes can conjure fireballs from thin air (and survive when they explode), it doesn't seem like any sort of stretch to say that pregnant Conan's womb has a lot of hit points.

When it comes to what's consequential, that's part of the contract at the table. I've never played at a game, even in hardcore realistic GURPS games, where most consequences weren't ignored. The group should decide together what types of things should be consequential. Again, I'm simply suggesting that making sex and pregnancy more consequential in a fantasy game is not required by notions of realism.

And since you are admitting to your skepticism here, allow me to confess that I'm highly skeptical of your post and motivations as well.

???

I'm a bit baffled here. Perhaps I misspoke and implied that I was skeptical toward you or toward the specific campaigns of any individuals in this thread. If so, I apologize. That was not my intent.

 

[Son of the Serpent]

Also the class sort of matters if you are heavy on realism.

The following assumes that the pregnancy is not at its very earliest stages.

A pregnant druid might not be all that helpless. Might even be just about as powerful as normal. Maybe give them an occasional small negative to certain saves. Nothing too bad really.

A pregnant fighter though? Useless. Practically helpless. Literally a massive net negative. Will likely increase party death total even when not counting that individual more than just having one fewer party member.

I would definitely caution allowing pc's to get pregnant unless at the beginning of the campaign everyone agreed it was kosher. Because oh boy is it crippling to some classes.

 

[DrunkonDuty]

A pregnant fighter though? Useless. Practically helpless. Literally a massive net negative. Will likely increase party death total even when not counting that individual more than just having one fewer party member.

I would definitely caution allowing pc's to get pregnant unless at the beginning of the campaign everyone agreed it was kosher. Because oh boy is it crippling to some classes.

This episode of OOTS says otherwise.

587 What to Expect When You're Expecting Assassins - Giant in the Playground Games

 

[Son of the Serpent]

This episode of OOTS says otherwise.

587 What to Expect When You're Expecting Assassins - Giant in the Playground Games

Its certainly amusing.

But pregnant female fighters (up to heroic levels arguably) are literally less useful than an untrained 8 year old boy with a stick in many situations.

 

[Son of the Serpent]

Ive even statted the differences once upon a time (that's why my reply was oddly specific.)

 

[DrunkonDuty]

Never having been pregnant I can't say exactly how debilitated I'd be.

But @Tonguez post above gives a pretty good example of a real person not letting being in actual labour get in her way.

So as to exactly where you want to draw the line in your superhero fantasy game is your choice. Me, I wouldn't penalize a pregnant character in any way.

 

[Doug McCrae]

It's only happened, or come close to happening, to two of my PCs. In a 3e D&D game the GM rolled to see if my necromancer became pregnant by her boyfriend. Fortunately she didn't. I'm not sure how it would've been handled if she had.

In a Champions game my PC, Dog Girl, married Magni, the Norse god of strength, becoming God Girl. She had 9 boys and 9 girls (iirc) because those are very saga-rific numbers. But it happened in downtime so it doesn't really count.

EDIT: I also played in a one off that was inspired by the British 70s TV show, Ace of Wands. One of the PCs started the game pregnant but mysteriously became not pregnant when we travelled to a dreamlike Otherworld and we searched for her missing child.