Post/Author/DateTime	Post
Flyzoola 07-25-05, 03:25 AM	Well, here is some info on him. a gnome that was raised by halflings in the art of theaviry, confusion, at stealth attacks. Ark is a gnome that was abandoned by his parents while he was a baby. Halflings happened across him and took care of him, clothed him, and trained him. He became a silvertounged trickster and a smooth infiltrator. He has very good social skills. he is a prankster (gnome trait), and has a good sense of humor. He can always find the good things in life. He adventures to test his limits and for the thrill of fighting. . What is known about his is that he was raised by halflings after they found him as a baby crying on the road. He was an energetic young man in his earlier years that was always getting into mischief. His "parents" taught him the arts of the rogue at a very early age. When he was only 20, he was arrested 5 times for pickpocketing and general mayhem. He escaped the prison and wondered around for a couple of weeks before coming back home, only to find that his parents had been killed by the local government. Enraged, Ark plotted a revange against the governor. He disguised himslef as a salesman and entered the house and learnt all the ways in and out. Later that night, he came back and assasinated him and his wife using his father's knife. Ever since then, he's been wondering around living off of comissions by government officials.He is an expert con artist that has swindled countless upperclass men out of their money. He has a very cheerful personality that hasn't been changed by his bloody past. He loves getting into fights with people bigger than him just because "he can". His mouth gets him into trouble a lot but he uses it wisley to also get out of trouble. Can anyone help me with his story to make him more unique?
Need_A_Life 07-25-05, 07:43 AM	It's good so far; my advice is simply this: adjectives. They determine the nature of a story and its quality. He is a con artist who uses sleight of hand to pull of tricks that magicians in the real world do, he uses his spell-like abilities sparingly but will use them if he belives it to be worth it. Remember, Sleight of Hand can substitute Perform in certain types of performances...
Flyzoola 07-26-05, 01:49 AM	thanks for the help. I wanna give him more dimensions, but I'm not very good with writing stories. Any more help?q
madpiper 07-26-05, 02:48 PM	I do not know how well, my opinion is taken here but I love creating writing so I tend to be in here reading. Your characters history is choppy at best. At first you talk about a gnome whose personality is centered on fun and pranks. Bad event happens and now you have an assasin for hire. While I understand that dramatic events change a character dramaticly, I feel that it would be better to weave a consistant personality trait through out the character history. So instead of getting all John Woo killer , why not have him go more the route of the joker. Showing his darker side with pranks that kill? This way you can maintain the joking personality but then Frank Miller's Joker can show up and go all psychotic serial killer when their friends and family get hurt. So, if you took my advice or opinion or total crap (depending on how you feel) you could have gnome that killed this govenor with terror inspireing violent "pranks" that resulted in his death. This could set you up character wise to go, rogue/Wizard(sorcerer) to arcane trickster. or something along those lines. Illusion and pranks go together and Arcane trickster will improve both classes abilities somewhat at the same time. Hope this helps.
XrP-Leon The Second 07-29-05, 03:45 AM	Here's a little history I made for you. If you have questions about it or anything, PM me.Ark is a reclusive gnome, and doesn't interact well with others. Dirrectly that is. Ark Smallfoot is a prankster at best and a violent trickster at worst. He loves stealing thngs, setting up traps, and causing general confusion among townsfolk, but let's see how he got this way. Ark had, to say the least, a bad past. His parents, for some unknown reason, deposited him at a crossroad in, more or less, the middle of no where. Luckily for him, two halflings, husband and wife, happened upon his little basket that he cried away in and promptly adopted him. He grew up with the two halflings and their five children, three boys and two girls, in a decently small village. They were between two and five years older than Ark. Ark himself was rather weak and feeble, and the boys liked to beat up on him, while the girls ignored him, since he was "weird". He began training himself to be able to run away, hide, and sneak around so as not to get beaten up. That's when he found his calling: a prankster. By the time he was twenty, and still conciderably young for his race, he had been jailed five times for stealing and general mayham. He began setting up little traps and devices to cause missery to his oppressors, and, getting good at this, became more bold. He would instigate fights between the brothers, and watch gleefully from the shadows as the fought, sometimes word lashing, sometimes punching. He got it in his head that he would just fight people larger than him, since he could so easily outsmart them, albiet he isn't that wise, and sometimes get a black eye for it. Then came the fire. He had set up a nifty little trap that involved kerosine and Richard's (the eldest brother) butt. But it went wrong. Through some missfire in his plan, he burned down the entire house, killing most of the inhabitants, except one brother and sister, who were off in a corn field together. He stood there, amazed at the fire, and became facinated. The constible and the voulenteer firefighters, however, were not. This time, Ark wouldn't get out of jail for quite some time. Ark sat in the town's jail for only a week, and was then taken to a city's jail, where he sat for over a year. He brooded and brooded, and began plotting how to get back at the men that had imprisioned him. During his prision sentance, he learned a little more to his trade: if they notice you, they'll scream, so stab them before they yell. The more he thought about it, the more he seethed with anger, and the more he seethed, the more vicious the plots became. When he was released, he spent months setting up the scene. He had scouted the area, possing as a sales person, a mercinary, and a butler. He knew the ins and outs of the mayor's house (which was quite big, as it was also the confrence house). Slowly, over his time of scouting, he set the traps. Some nights he would come in with a file, sometimes with rope, locks, buckets, whatever he needed, and placed the items or defilation of property in unnoticable places. By the time the trap was set, he had been out of jail for four months. The trap would kill the mayor for ordering his arrest and transfer, and he would be able to slip out unnoticed and free. Finally, he set off, having nothing to base his home upon; he had no one to exact revenge upon, no one to care for him, and no one to love. He set off with his small amounts of thieve's tools and asorted items, off for adventure. I would advise this for this story: Alignment NE, or N. He isn't lawful, obviously, unless it may be benificial, and doesn't seem to care about the general good of people. He isn't chaotic, since he plots out his traps so well and carefully, and he might be evil but in an uncaring way. So, I change those allignments to NG, N, NE, LN. Prestige classes: Exemplar (Complete Adventurer), Thief-Acrobat, and possibley Assassin. Skills: I would take Slieght of Hand, Hide, Move Silently, Craf: Traps, Disable device, and bluff, among others. Feats: That's open to you, really, but Silenced Strike might fit this. Race: Works great for this, now you have a plot reason for having such developed sences. Over all: Your decription was rather choppy, and seemed like it was poorly put together, at best. That's ok, not everyone is an author. I hope you (or someone else) can find a nice use for this story, although it's 2:45 AM, and I'm tired, so it's not the best. After re-reading it, I skimmed over some parts that I Wanted to make deeper, but I didn't due to lack of sleep and the sake of shortness. [re-edit]Don't you love that your DM is so carring at such early hours of the morning? Now leave me alone![/re-edit]
XrP-Leon The Second 07-29-05, 03:58 AM	:PI'm used to writing character backgrounds. Part of it is that I took your ideas that were good, and interlinked them, like the pyromaniac and the traps. He wasn't always a piro, but the traps led to it. Same with the whole rogue thing: you said he was abandoned and then adopted, so I put him in a harsh enviroment that would shape him to what you wanted to be, One of the major things about character histories is that, unless in the right element, they seem so.. unnatural. (Note: I'm his DM, and knew a little more of what he wanted than what he posted)
Flyzoola 07-29-05, 04:00 AM	I will def be using this story! I just... am wordless! thanks!
XrP-Leon The Second 07-30-05, 01:19 AM	How do you add an Image?