Post/Author/DateTime	Post
Living_Chaos 12-19-07, 04:08 PM	So I just keep coming back for more. Over and over and over again, I make characters made that will never really go to use. I do intend on using this character however. He is a dwarven Cleric or principal, not religion (so not patron deity). I'm still choosing domains (working Domains are Dwarf and Cavern), with Warpriest as a prestige class a little further on. Currently he has the flaws Loudmouth (-2 to Diplomacy and Move Silently) and Clumsy (-2 to Balance and Move Silently), in case anyone was looking for quircks. His history I'm not so sure about, I've been so busy lately that I haven't even had time to think. I would imagine that the reason for is spiritual but not religious Cleric-hood would mean he had a bad experience with religion. He detests it when people ask him for healing, and always asks for a drink after. Also, he carved a holy symbol himself (to reprisent his personal ideals) which is (currently) the Sun rising over a mountain, that is curved crudely like a fang. Instead of wood they are made of stone, and he prefers heavy armor to looser "weakling armor". I was also thinking that he was off-balance from taking a really hard hit to the head, rather than from drinking, or anything like that. Any help is appreciated. Thank you for compensating for my laziness XP
JulesCARV 01-17-08, 04:23 AM	First of all, the flaws you're using strike me as excessively mild flaws. A general rule for flaws is that if you take a flaw and a feat, and the feat improves the same thing that the flaw makes worse, you should come out behind not taking the flaw or the feat. For example, a feat can provide +2 fortitude, while a flaw provides -3 fortitude. A feat can give +2 to listen and spot, while a flaw gives -4 to listen and spot. A feat can give +4 to initiative, while a flaw gives -6 to initiative. That aside, I guess I'm not sure exactly what principle your cleric is supposed to be serving. I guess I could see him as part of some team of dwarven cavern-fighters with an strong sense of unit cohesion, team spirit, etc. The principle he serves is something like the 9th Cavern Infantry Squadron. The attitude of living to serve his unit could be psychologically tantamount to a religious faith, which is the important thing about a non-religious cleric who serves a principle. So I suppose the question is, if he has such faith in his unit, why's he living as a lone-wolf adventurer rather than fighting with his unit? Maybe he was originally from a dwarf community: let's call it K'razath. K'razath was essentially a theocracy ruled by the clergy of Moradin. Surrounded by goblinoid enemies, K'razath relied on a small, elite, fanatically devoted corps of warriors known as the Cavern Infantry Squadron to neutralize goblin threats. The Cavern Infantry Squadron was sent on missions to go deep behind goblinoid lines, destroying supply lines, command chains, and taking goblin homelands by surprise, operating with virtual total autonomy. Your cleric joined the Cavern Infantry Squadron, putting more faith in his fellow warriors and their collective strength than in the dwarves' gods. Shortly after your cleric joined the Cavern Infantry, a goblin conquerer, the self-styled Field Marshal Zilthemiz, brutally conquered nearby goblin tribes, uniting them into a single powerful, centralized dictatorship. However, the still-independent goblinoid tribes were beginning to form a loose confederation to oppose her and retain their independence. Zilthemiz needed to make a conquest which would put all questions of her own legitimacy as rightful ruler of all goblins in the region to rest. She believed that conquering K'razath once and for all would establish her as an invincible military leader whom the rival goblin tribes would regard as futile to oppose. Zilthemiz used a variety of unorthodox tactics to undermine K'razath, using a corps of specially trained wizards to move invisibly and teleport unpredictably through the underdark. She took caravans of supplies from the surface, such as food, by surprise, seizing their contents and enslaving the merchants. She launched a daring raid to destroy K'razath's granaries, leaving them with little more than a week's supply of food. The Cavern Infantry Squadron was deployed, but Zilthemiz tracked their movements magically, and avoided direct confrontation with the fierce warriors whose reputation for invincibility she did not underestimate. Although the Cavern Infantry Squadron broke into Zilthemiz's base, they found it abandonned and hastily stripped of anything of value. The magic users within the Cavern Infantry Squadron attempted various countermeasures to make themselves untrackable through either divination or more mundane reconaissance measures, but nontheless, they were rarely able to confront the goblins directly on their long sortie. Eventually, they headed back to K'razath, hoping to participate in a more conventional offensive against Zilthemiz's main armies, but they discovered that the high clergy of Moradin had come to an agreement with Zilthemiz. They had agreed to acknowledge Zilthemiz as sovereign, pay an annual tribute of 1/5th of the community's manufactures and mining products, and fight alongside her army in wars, so long they were pemitted to keep their own faith in their gods, and they were largely permitted the right to administer their own justice amongst themselves and keep their own way of life. However, Zilthemiz believed that, if its members were permitted to live, the Cavern Infantry Squadron would be a source of trouble to her and her plans. They would never give up their independence as dwarves or prostrate themselves to their goblin conqueror. As such, Zilthemiz laid a trap for the Cavern Infantry Squadron on their return, with the intention of killing every single dwarf in the unit, taking none as prisoners and letting none escape. The trap evaded detection, and the squadron soon found itself ambushed and fighting for its life. The spellcasters in the squadron who could communicate with the central Church of Moradin that served as K'razath's command center found taht K'razath still stood, but refused to send any reinforcements. The squadron understood that they had been betrayed, left to die in acquiescence to their conqueror's wishes. All of the squadron was killed, with the exception of your cleric. He had received such a severe blow to the head at the hands of a bugbear's warhammer that the goblinoids assumed he must have been dead (a lapse which, when discovered by Zilthemiz, cost several goblins their lives). However, he survived, although he was reduced to crawling for some time, and only regained the ability to walk after several days, and even now has yet to fully regain his balance. He fled K'razath, and felt bitter hatred for the Church of Moradin for the betrayal of his unit. He extended this, to a lesser degree, to all who professed their faith in a deity, for he felt that they were too ready to betray their fellows for the sake of their god and church. Although he began to drink heavily once he arrived at a safe community, and he no longer knew the purpose of his life with his unit destroyed, he nonetheless fervently clung to the ideals of the Cavern Infantry Squadron, and its fervent, victory-or-death dedication to defense of dwarven independence.