Post/Author/DateTime	Post
torqboy1080 04-26-04, 09:33 PM	hey, I'm having trouble coming up with good ideas for my gnomish bard. His stats are: 11 14 10 10 10 17 He uses a light crossbow for range, or mebbe a shortbow and a morningstar in two hands for defense. but his main weapon is his voice. he sings (the dm is giving me bonuses on my perform check if I actually sing, lol). I want to have him be able to mesmerize people with music and like later do suggestions. I might take leadership with him at lvl 6. He's CN, for deities, I was thinking Olidammara or Fharlangn, and I was thinking of calling him "mesmerino" or something. I need some motivations for a traveling bard to be traveling, singing to everyone he meets, and joining a party. and what could some goals be for him? This is a really role playing intensive campaign, so I need some good ideas, and I know someone out there is chock full of them. so thanks in advance.
Nedlum 04-26-04, 10:21 PM	Mesmerino? The name needs work, I fear. It seems to me that, especially if you chose Fharlangn, he'd be a guy with a real zest for life. A rambler who can't stay, who always wants to see what's beyond that next horison, who needs to taste every food, bathe in every river, live every life he can while he's living. Cause when he's gone... However, he might grow lonesome on the road, with nothing but his lute and his memories to keep him company. There could be more to the latter then the former; perhaps he wanders to escape. He tries to escape the law, but escaping himself is something else. So when one day he sees a jolly company of fellow travelers (the PCs), he joins with them. The only thing that this doesn't work in is the whole mind control aspect. But the background could help. Perhaps he's inherently controling. He feels a need to prove himself better then the rest. It could be that he's used to being shouted down, and so he's learned to be heard through arcane force.
LiXinjian 04-27-04, 09:31 AM	Oh, I disagree: Mesmerino is great! GREAT! As soon as I read it, here's what popped up in my head.. I see a wagon pulled by a stubborn donkey that's peeing every half hour, because it's got the compulsion to drink from every puddle of water it sees, which slows the wagon quite a bit overall during its travels. On the side of the red wagon are printed the words: "The Great Mesmerino - You'll be amazed! You'll be astonished!" The wagon goes from town to town, and its owner is a diminutive gnome who constantly yells at his mule, yet who always finds the time to smile at passersby in a half-hypocritical kind of way, just before starting a tune to conceal his irritability. That wagon is all he owns. Inside is a whole lot of theatre props, scattered here and there in large piles. Somewhere within all this mess, the Great Mesmerino sleeps. Perhaps The Great Mesmerino owns a small, domesticated monkey, too? Regardless, the gnome is barely earning a living with his hypnotism tricks, and his act is only midly entertaining (and that's being nice), but all that's going to change very soon. See, the Great Mesmerino has realized (lesser) people would pay well to escape from the drearies of life if they could only be persuaded that they have achieved some degree of success. He can be the gnome to give them what they want, or let them believe they have anyway, and control their thoughts and dreams thus. So, that's why he's on the road now: to meet people, to discover what dreams of success they cherish, then to make their fantasies come true with his mind-controlling spells and illusions. He's a wandering con-artist, really, albeit a down-on-his-luck loser of one. He makes people's fantasies come true, but his drug is not of the kind you can buy on the corner of the street. Oh, Mesmerino would make a great villain, I tell you! His decrepit wagon, the ridiculously-small number of attendees to his shows, the frustrations he feels for his less than mediocre lifestyle, the hatred that burns inside of him for those who cannot appreciate his talent... and for those who do, too. A great villain indeed, but not terribly hard to vanquish in battle. Still, his motives are clear: he wants fame, recognition and fortune. His followers [leadership] are street urchins, young felons who herald his arrival by distributing flyers and scouting out possible threats. They also set up the tent where he performs and generally act like a touring singer's technical team. Mesmerino's act his very lacking, but somehow, everyone likes it. Key skills would be Bluff, Disguise, Sense Motive, Perform (Oratory - 2 ranks max because he sucks at it), Perform (other). Key feats? Persuasive, maybe. Hey, if this idea strikes your fancy, run it through Trydan's character creation process and see what else you can come up with. Hope I could help out here...
Trydan 04-27-04, 10:39 AM	LiXinjian, as always, has a really neat concept. But I was thinking along different lines. What we have here is someone who sings, and who is in an adventuring group. So, assuming there is no way of stopping him from singing (he is a bard, after all), then there are three burning questions... Why adventure? Why in a group? Why that group? Well, firstly, I think that the reason of getting more "material" is a poor excuse to start adventuring. I mean, isn't it easier to just ask the real heroes what it was like, as they arrive back at the village tavern? Hmm... but what happens when one such adventuring group goes to leave the tavern (where Mesmerino was performing/staying) and as they go to leave a soothsayer walks in the door, goes straight up to them, and decrees: "Ye be doomed!! Yes... you" (points at adventurers) "and your paths will be haunted by the curse of the raven and your number will be dispatched, one by one, thus as the raven would pluck the eyes from a corpse... unless.... unless..." (the soothsayer pulls a handful of stinking entrails from his travel-pouch and throws them on the floor) "... unless, you take him with you " (The soothsayer points at Mesmerino - who is shocked). Outside, lightning flashes, and there is a clap of thunder. The soothsayer gasps, cries "The prophecy is fullfilled... I have delivered... the... message". And then he falls down dead. There is deathly silence, then all hell breaks loose, as everyone in the tavern starts talking and pointing and everything, all at once. The adventurers thought the soothsayer was a nutter, and so left the next day on their adventure without taking the gnome. But the next morning, they awoke to find one of the party members dead, with his eyes plucked out. Everyone else was fine, albeit it completel rattled. So, there was nothing for it, go back and get the bard. The bard was not necessarily happy about all of this, but a brandished flail made him change his mind. And yet somehow, the brandished flail didn't make him stop singing.
LiXinjian 04-27-04, 06:06 PM	The gnomish bard could be behind this whole soothsayer trick, too. After all, he is into mind control... But that would bring us back to the initial question: why adventure, and why with that group in particular. It kinda defeats the purpose of Trydan's whole suggestion. Perhaps Torqboy1080 could tell us more about the campaign and the adventuring group, so we could find something that'd fit better?
torqboy1080 04-28-04, 12:27 AM	Well, our dm is big on roleplaying, because most of our prior campaigns have involved metagaming to some extent. The action in the campaign is a little intense(e.g. blood golems formed from the battered bodies of village children as we watch) We're basically a neutral/chaotic good party. half-orc monk, big on grapple; kinda silent elven ranger, big on bows (total legolas clone) human rogue, big on slitting the throats of foes with his bladed gauntlet elven rogue, big on sleight of hand and daggers, and punching daggers possibly a cleric or arcane caster - dunno yet, he hasn't really joined and me. I thought of some possible personalities the suave, sincere, gentleman the slippery, oily, snake charmer, able to bend words and minds with equal ease and the flippant, vain, metrosexual if you guys could help me come up with more of these or refine the ones I have, and mebbe suggest some mannnerisms or habits, that would be great. thanks a lot