Pathology in D&D [Archive] - Wizards Community

Pathology in D&D [Archive] - Wizards Community

Post/Author/DateTime Post
UnnaturalLump
03-16-08, 05:22 PM I have recently made a new Gnome character (My fiancé managed to get me into a race that isn’t a monster class for a change!) anyway, going with the gnomes delightful curiosity and enquiring minds I decided that one of her goals in life was to find the ‘truth’ behind existence, the reasons, the origins etc.
So I figured I would make her a pathologist (well, her class is Bard but they’re jack of all trades and my fiancé assured me I could take the ‘genetic engineer/scientist’ route with a bard).

My reason for posting is for some kind of advice perhaps on how I would go about incorporating that level of science and technology into a D&D setting.
I know gnomes are good engineers with technology, so it wouldn’t be too hard for her to perform autopsies in a lab of sorts… though I personally find it hard to obtain much info on how a character would go about that sort of thing.

Sorry if this seems a little silly, I am fairly new to D&D really… just trying to develop my character more before taking her on the one-on-one my fiancé has planned for me.

Thanks for any comments in advance.
JulesCARV
03-16-08, 09:05 PM I probably shouldn't be giving mechanical advice on the character development boards, but I would urge you not to play a bard, and switch to being an archivist (http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/ex/20051007a&page=3), if your DM will allow it. Alternatively, being an egoist psion (http://www.systemreferencedocuments.org/35/sovelior_sage/psionicPsion.html) is another one that, IMHO, fits more than bard. I hate to be bombarding you with weird, non-core options when you're new to D&D, but even being a ranger might be more fitting (the favored enemy features could represent knowledge of monstrous anatomy, etc).

Bards are great, and I love them, but they're not "jacks of all trades." They are focused on mind control, social interaction, and boosting the party's abilities. They can fascinate people with a song with nearly irrestible save DCs, play their lutes to boost the power of the whole party, know information of obscure topics, and more, but they can't do everything.

For instance, they don't have heal as a class skill. If you're using heal for autopsies, determining cause of death, etc, I think that that's a blow against a rather important part of the character concept.

Also, bards are generally oriented toward charisma. Intelligence is a moderate priority. Wisdom -- the key skill for heal, as well as many investigative skills like spot -- is a low priority for bards. Even if you can afford good intelligence and wisdom, unless you also have good charisma -- no, three good ability scores isn't impossible -- you'll be crippling your character, with poor spellcasting and stuff. However, do you really want your character to be charismatic? Do you see her as a smooth-talking, charismatic socialite as well as a scholarly pathologist?

Contrast this to being an archivist, for instance: intelligence is a high priority, and wisdom a moderate priority. Heal is a class skill. They get bonuses for putting lots of into knowledge skills. They have access to all sorts of divinations like... erm... divination which can answer questions. They get healing spells which can do things like cure diseases (the best bards can do at healing is get rid of hit point damage and poison -- no diseases, no raising dead, etc) And so on and so forth. Also, in terms of pure feel, the archivist is a scholarly seeker of knowledge, not oriented toward being very social, being good at playing the flute, and other things that make of the key "feel" of bards.

Anyway, if that's the take your character is going for, I think that it could be neat (even if I object to bard as a class for it). No one in D&D, not even gnomes, have really advanced technology in the sense we think of it. Still, pathology is possible -- just harder.

Anyway, "how a character would go about that sort of thing" is a very important part of your character. There are many routes, imagine the difference between these two pictures of your character.

Marsa felt a giddy feeling in her stomach.

The results in her notebook were clear: it worked. Her medicine for Blinding Sickness really worked. Of the fifty subjects given the medicine, forty-seven recovered within a week. Of the fifty given slightly bitter-flavored water, only twenty-two had. It was then that she heard a knock on the door to her office in the Guild of Healers.

She got up to answer it. It was one of her subjects, the half-elf Thamior Meliamne.

"Am I interrupting anything?" he said.

"Nothing very urgent. What brings you here?"

"I just wanted to thank you for curing me of the blinding sickness. I wanted to help you with your work, so I've decided that after I die, I want to give my body to your research project."

"Well, if you want to donate your body, I have some contract forms somewhere in this office... ah, here they are, but first I should tell you something."

"What's that?"

"Now that this study is over, I thought I'd tell you that while almost all of the treatment group recovered, many in the control group -- the ones getting the placebo -- did too. I don't know which group you were in, but it's possible -- about a one-third chance -- that you got better on your own, and that I didn't cure anything. I don't know whether that affects your decision to donate your body or not, but I just didn't think it would be right to let you sign anything while you were any possibly false conceptions that I had saved your life or anything."

The half-elf pursed his lips, before saying "I want to do it anyway."

"That's very good of you. You can read, right?" she said as she handed him a form.

"Yes."

"Okay. Take a few minutes to read it carefully, and if there's anything you don't understand, ask me."

She waited, continuing to look over her notebook.

Eventually, Thamior had finished, and signed the contract. Marsa did likewise.

"Now, this second sheet -- it's a letter of credit, for ten gold pieces, that you can redeem at the Kurduk Bank."

"I don't want this. I just wanted to donate the body."

"I can't just accept your body without giving you one of these, but if you'd like, you can just rip it up, which would save the treasury of the Healer's Guild some money. Or you could just give the gold back to us as a seperate donation to the Guild. It's up to you."

Thamior nodded. "Well, goodbye then. Thank you."

"Thank you, both for participating in the study and testing whether the medicine works and for your pledge of your body today. Goodbye."

Thamior walked out of the office.

Marsa felt a giddy feeling in her stomach.

Autopsies of humanoids, she had done. The corpses of human bandits, orcs, an unlucky halfling who had attempted to pickpocket her: she had pried apart their bodies, investigating the intricate framework of bone, blood, and flesh, now still in death.

As for vivisections, she had done those as well. She had snatched stray dogs and cats from the streets, nailing their feet to her worktable as they whimpering in agony. She cut away their living flesh, seeing their hearts beating as rapidly as the flutter of a bird's wings, seeing their lungs rapidly inflate and deflate. Sometimes she saw the progress of various diseases she had infected them with on their living bodies, as she left them to germinate for a week, a month.

Yet today she felt giddy, because this was her first chance, not to conduct on autopsy on a humanoid, not to vivisect and animal, but to vivisect a humanoid! She had long wondered what she might learn, but had not had the chance, until now.

The prostitute who was putatively named "Bella" whimpered through her gag, but there was nothing she could do to escape the grip of her burly half-orc research assistant, Trommel. Even if Trommel had not been twice her size, her strength had been reduced to nothing by the scorpion venom running through her veins.

"Well, lie her on the table," she told Trommel.

He did as he was told. Marsa took some large nails and a hammer, preparing to secure the subject to the table.

Anyway, this goes way, way beyond what's appropriate for a conventional D&D game, but if you were doing something more modern (something where magic coexists with the modern world, like a sorta Harry Potter setting), then you could look at the pseudoscientific paper titles thread (http://forums.gleemax.com/showthread.php?t=840989) for inspiration. Although not much is really relevant to your concept, I admit.
Chaosepoch
03-17-08, 03:39 PM I'll be running the game so I will take this opportunity to weigh in.

During introduction I did introduce her to the PHB classes only, for simplicity. I have outlined the difference between wizards (scholarly lore-wielders) and bards (knowledge of the people). Now, considering she is going for a gnome, I did highlight these two classes primarily but have avoided the RoS substitution levels. The character background with a small but friendly neighbourhood gnome community would develop more of a gnomish traditional than a radical class.

I'm not objecting to the HoH splat, despite the nature it traditionally places on the campaign. Granted, archivist is a good lore-master in its own right, but its heavy relation to the divine is something the PC is looking to avoid, hence darting away from the cleric.

Personally speaking, I say bard is useful from a stat-perspective as it provide high skill points, many places to put them and variable attack and casting abilities. For the purposes of knowledge, the archivist 4+int skill points are balanced out by the bard’s 6+int. Also, with someone who I'm going to introduce in a solo campaign, I would like to avoid too much specialisation in a particular area and definitely avoid the DMPC.
JulesCARV
03-17-08, 06:42 PM Well, so long as you understand that the character will have heal (likely the skill for autopsies and such), search (for detailed examination), and handle animal (if any animal experiment subjects are used) as cross-class skills, and that the character will be better at a perform skill like singing, playing the flute or harp, reciting poetry, or the like, than at skills necessary for her scientific work like heal, that's fine. In that case, the pathologist characterization could just be a background, somewhat like the role of profession ranks in fleshing out character backgrounds: it wouldn't really need to play a role in the character's mechanical capabilities -- it could just serve as a motivation sometimes and act as something of a hobby during downtime.
Drackthor
03-17-08, 10:28 PM Marsa felt a giddy feeling in her stomach.

Autopsies of humanoids, she had done. The corpses of human bandits, orcs, an unlucky halfling who had attempted to pickpocket her: she had pried apart their bodies, investigating the intricate framework of bone, blood, and flesh, now still in death.

As for vivisections, she had done those as well. She had snatched stray dogs and cats from the streets, nailing their feet to her worktable as they whimpering in agony. She cut away their living flesh, seeing their hearts beating as rapidly as the flutter of a bird's wings, seeing their lungs rapidly inflate and deflate. Sometimes she saw the progress of various diseases she had infected them with on their living bodies, as she left them to germinate for a week, a month.

Yet today she felt giddy, because this was her first chance, not to conduct on autopsy on a humanoid, not to vivisect and animal, but to vivisect a humanoid! She had long wondered what she might learn, but had not had the chance, until now.

The prostitute who was putatively named "Bella" whimpered through her gag, but there was nothing she could do to escape the grip of her burly half-orc research assistant, Trommel. Even if Trommel had not been twice her size, her strength had been reduced to nothing by the scorpion venom running through her veins.

"Well, lie her on the table," she told Trommel.

He did as he was told. Marsa took some large nails and a hammer, preparing to secure the subject to the table.

Anyway, this goes way, way beyond what's appropriate for a conventional D&D game, but if you were doing something more modern (something where magic coexists with the modern world, like a sorta Harry Potter setting), then you could look at the pseudoscientific paper titles thread (http://forums.gleemax.com/showthread.php?t=840989) for inspiration. Although not much is really relevant to your concept, I admit.

The fact that a story like that is rattling around in that head of yours scares me very, very much, Jules.
Chaosepoch
03-18-08, 02:02 PM Well, so long as you understand that the character will have heal (likely the skill for autopsies and such), search (for detailed examination), and handle animal (if any animal experiment subjects are used) as cross-class skills, and that the character will be better at a perform skill like singing, playing the flute or harp, reciting poetry, or the like, than at skills necessary for her scientific work like heal, that's fine. In that case, the pathologist characterization could just be a background, somewhat like the role of profession ranks in fleshing out character backgrounds: it wouldn't really need to play a role in the character's mechanical capabilities -- it could just serve as a motivation sometimes and act as something of a hobby during downtime.

Yes, but if the core mechanics were used from a mathematical perspective, she would end up with a wis-build druid or pelor/nerull cleric!

Now that I think about it, the only ones we haven't suggested are the melee types and the rogue!
JulesCARV
03-18-08, 03:27 PM As I mentioned, I think ranger would also work pretty well, but enough of my whining about mechanics.

Anyway, the "pictures" I offered for UnnaturalLump's character are ones which most obviously differ by alignment: good, scrupulous scientist type vs. evil, ruthless scientist type. However, there are other ways in which this character could be different.

I suppose the most obvious question that comes to mind is, why is she adventuring? Why isn't she doing her research in a lab? (I'm assuming that that won't be ChaosEpoch's adventure.) One possibility is... I dunno, maybe her views of pathology drove her out of her community. Maybe they found conducting autopsies offensive? So she had to get out and doesn't have a fixed address at this point. Another possibility is that maybe she's hit some sort of wall in her research, and she thinks that the solution involves creating some precision instrument or somesuch (for... I dunno... measuring tension in muscle cells embedded in collagen matrices for her research on muscular distrophy?) which is outside of her field of expertise, so she's seeking out some famous dwarven precision instruments maker hoping to get his help -- but on the way, she gets into all sorts of wacky misadventures!
Terjon of the Blue Rose
03-20-08, 04:33 AM I would think bard would work out quite nicely. Remember your still dealing with middle age's genetics. That largely means developing extended list of geneaologies, extensive inquisitions into the strength of various traits through family histories, and lengthy studies involving the likelyhood of those traits being passed on. Early genetics focused rather heavily upon simple plant traits and the results of cross-breeding. As such a fascination with half-elf and and half-orc characters, and even more so in their progeny, would suite the character nicely. With such a route you travel seeking out knowledge in reference to various family lines you have already developed extended notes on. You probably look for noble families in particular as they likely have the best records of family lines.

If you really have your heart set on autopsies and the like I would suggest making them the hidden secret of the character. Autopsies were heavily frowned upon in many middle age societies and in a D&D world quickly earn you a reputation as a necromancer or worse. Take into account the fear people have of the unknown in a world where magic has a very real place. To make matters worse it would be very difficult to promise people results from science when magic can cure and gods directly intervene in people's lives, providing them with clear "truth" of the natural order.
Sakon22
03-21-08, 12:39 AM Aw, now I want to play a Necromancer pathologist.

Read the class section of the players manual and chose the one you think best for the character your thinking of. I, myself, would go with some sort of spell caster rather than a bard, given that they are usually the most learned and scholarly ones in most settings with the magical means to do a wide variety of experimentation.
UnnaturalLump
03-22-08, 02:22 PM To be honest, having thought about it I am not too keen to have a bard, it took a lot of persuasion from Chaosepoch but I am still unsure if that’s the class I want to take...
UnnaturalLump
05-27-08, 07:31 AM I ended up going with the bard in the end, I really loved all the ideas thrown about in this post – I suppose it’s now up to Chaosepoch to set the scene and get this game on the road.

Post/Author/DateTime	Post
UnnaturalLump 03-16-08, 05:22 PM	I have recently made a new Gnome character (My fiancé managed to get me into a race that isn’t a monster class for a change!) anyway, going with the gnomes delightful curiosity and enquiring minds I decided that one of her goals in life was to find the ‘truth’ behind existence, the reasons, the origins etc. So I figured I would make her a pathologist (well, her class is Bard but they’re jack of all trades and my fiancé assured me I could take the ‘genetic engineer/scientist’ route with a bard). My reason for posting is for some kind of advice perhaps on how I would go about incorporating that level of science and technology into a D&D setting. I know gnomes are good engineers with technology, so it wouldn’t be too hard for her to perform autopsies in a lab of sorts… though I personally find it hard to obtain much info on how a character would go about that sort of thing. Sorry if this seems a little silly, I am fairly new to D&D really… just trying to develop my character more before taking her on the one-on-one my fiancé has planned for me. Thanks for any comments in advance.
JulesCARV 03-16-08, 09:05 PM	I probably shouldn't be giving mechanical advice on the character development boards, but I would urge you not to play a bard, and switch to being an archivist (http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/ex/20051007a&page=3), if your DM will allow it. Alternatively, being an egoist psion (http://www.systemreferencedocuments.org/35/sovelior_sage/psionicPsion.html) is another one that, IMHO, fits more than bard. I hate to be bombarding you with weird, non-core options when you're new to D&D, but even being a ranger might be more fitting (the favored enemy features could represent knowledge of monstrous anatomy, etc). Bards are great, and I love them, but they're not "jacks of all trades." They are focused on mind control, social interaction, and boosting the party's abilities. They can fascinate people with a song with nearly irrestible save DCs, play their lutes to boost the power of the whole party, know information of obscure topics, and more, but they can't do everything. For instance, they don't have heal as a class skill. If you're using heal for autopsies, determining cause of death, etc, I think that that's a blow against a rather important part of the character concept. Also, bards are generally oriented toward charisma. Intelligence is a moderate priority. Wisdom -- the key skill for heal, as well as many investigative skills like spot -- is a low priority for bards. Even if you can afford good intelligence and wisdom, unless you also have good charisma -- no, three good ability scores isn't impossible -- you'll be crippling your character, with poor spellcasting and stuff. However, do you really want your character to be charismatic? Do you see her as a smooth-talking, charismatic socialite as well as a scholarly pathologist? Contrast this to being an archivist, for instance: intelligence is a high priority, and wisdom a moderate priority. Heal is a class skill. They get bonuses for putting lots of into knowledge skills. They have access to all sorts of divinations like... erm... divination which can answer questions. They get healing spells which can do things like cure diseases (the best bards can do at healing is get rid of hit point damage and poison -- no diseases, no raising dead, etc) And so on and so forth. Also, in terms of pure feel, the archivist is a scholarly seeker of knowledge, not oriented toward being very social, being good at playing the flute, and other things that make of the key "feel" of bards. Anyway, if that's the take your character is going for, I think that it could be neat (even if I object to bard as a class for it). No one in D&D, not even gnomes, have really advanced technology in the sense we think of it. Still, pathology is possible -- just harder. Anyway, "how a character would go about that sort of thing" is a very important part of your character. There are many routes, imagine the difference between these two pictures of your character. Marsa felt a giddy feeling in her stomach. The results in her notebook were clear: it worked. Her medicine for Blinding Sickness really worked. Of the fifty subjects given the medicine, forty-seven recovered within a week. Of the fifty given slightly bitter-flavored water, only twenty-two had. It was then that she heard a knock on the door to her office in the Guild of Healers. She got up to answer it. It was one of her subjects, the half-elf Thamior Meliamne. "Am I interrupting anything?" he said. "Nothing very urgent. What brings you here?" "I just wanted to thank you for curing me of the blinding sickness. I wanted to help you with your work, so I've decided that after I die, I want to give my body to your research project." "Well, if you want to donate your body, I have some contract forms somewhere in this office... ah, here they are, but first I should tell you something." "What's that?" "Now that this study is over, I thought I'd tell you that while almost all of the treatment group recovered, many in the control group -- the ones getting the placebo -- did too. I don't know which group you were in, but it's possible -- about a one-third chance -- that you got better on your own, and that I didn't cure anything. I don't know whether that affects your decision to donate your body or not, but I just didn't think it would be right to let you sign anything while you were any possibly false conceptions that I had saved your life or anything." The half-elf pursed his lips, before saying "I want to do it anyway." "That's very good of you. You can read, right?" she said as she handed him a form. "Yes." "Okay. Take a few minutes to read it carefully, and if there's anything you don't understand, ask me." She waited, continuing to look over her notebook. Eventually, Thamior had finished, and signed the contract. Marsa did likewise. "Now, this second sheet -- it's a letter of credit, for ten gold pieces, that you can redeem at the Kurduk Bank." "I don't want this. I just wanted to donate the body." "I can't just accept your body without giving you one of these, but if you'd like, you can just rip it up, which would save the treasury of the Healer's Guild some money. Or you could just give the gold back to us as a seperate donation to the Guild. It's up to you." Thamior nodded. "Well, goodbye then. Thank you." "Thank you, both for participating in the study and testing whether the medicine works and for your pledge of your body today. Goodbye." Thamior walked out of the office. Marsa felt a giddy feeling in her stomach. Autopsies of humanoids, she had done. The corpses of human bandits, orcs, an unlucky halfling who had attempted to pickpocket her: she had pried apart their bodies, investigating the intricate framework of bone, blood, and flesh, now still in death. As for vivisections, she had done those as well. She had snatched stray dogs and cats from the streets, nailing their feet to her worktable as they whimpering in agony. She cut away their living flesh, seeing their hearts beating as rapidly as the flutter of a bird's wings, seeing their lungs rapidly inflate and deflate. Sometimes she saw the progress of various diseases she had infected them with on their living bodies, as she left them to germinate for a week, a month. Yet today she felt giddy, because this was her first chance, not to conduct on autopsy on a humanoid, not to vivisect and animal, but to vivisect a humanoid! She had long wondered what she might learn, but had not had the chance, until now. The prostitute who was putatively named "Bella" whimpered through her gag, but there was nothing she could do to escape the grip of her burly half-orc research assistant, Trommel. Even if Trommel had not been twice her size, her strength had been reduced to nothing by the scorpion venom running through her veins. "Well, lie her on the table," she told Trommel. He did as he was told. Marsa took some large nails and a hammer, preparing to secure the subject to the table. Anyway, this goes way, way beyond what's appropriate for a conventional D&D game, but if you were doing something more modern (something where magic coexists with the modern world, like a sorta Harry Potter setting), then you could look at the pseudoscientific paper titles thread (http://forums.gleemax.com/showthread.php?t=840989) for inspiration. Although not much is really relevant to your concept, I admit.
Chaosepoch 03-17-08, 03:39 PM	I'll be running the game so I will take this opportunity to weigh in. During introduction I did introduce her to the PHB classes only, for simplicity. I have outlined the difference between wizards (scholarly lore-wielders) and bards (knowledge of the people). Now, considering she is going for a gnome, I did highlight these two classes primarily but have avoided the RoS substitution levels. The character background with a small but friendly neighbourhood gnome community would develop more of a gnomish traditional than a radical class. I'm not objecting to the HoH splat, despite the nature it traditionally places on the campaign. Granted, archivist is a good lore-master in its own right, but its heavy relation to the divine is something the PC is looking to avoid, hence darting away from the cleric. Personally speaking, I say bard is useful from a stat-perspective as it provide high skill points, many places to put them and variable attack and casting abilities. For the purposes of knowledge, the archivist 4+int skill points are balanced out by the bard’s 6+int. Also, with someone who I'm going to introduce in a solo campaign, I would like to avoid too much specialisation in a particular area and definitely avoid the DMPC.
JulesCARV 03-17-08, 06:42 PM	Well, so long as you understand that the character will have heal (likely the skill for autopsies and such), search (for detailed examination), and handle animal (if any animal experiment subjects are used) as cross-class skills, and that the character will be better at a perform skill like singing, playing the flute or harp, reciting poetry, or the like, than at skills necessary for her scientific work like heal, that's fine. In that case, the pathologist characterization could just be a background, somewhat like the role of profession ranks in fleshing out character backgrounds: it wouldn't really need to play a role in the character's mechanical capabilities -- it could just serve as a motivation sometimes and act as something of a hobby during downtime.
Drackthor 03-17-08, 10:28 PM	Marsa felt a giddy feeling in her stomach. Autopsies of humanoids, she had done. The corpses of human bandits, orcs, an unlucky halfling who had attempted to pickpocket her: she had pried apart their bodies, investigating the intricate framework of bone, blood, and flesh, now still in death. As for vivisections, she had done those as well. She had snatched stray dogs and cats from the streets, nailing their feet to her worktable as they whimpering in agony. She cut away their living flesh, seeing their hearts beating as rapidly as the flutter of a bird's wings, seeing their lungs rapidly inflate and deflate. Sometimes she saw the progress of various diseases she had infected them with on their living bodies, as she left them to germinate for a week, a month. Yet today she felt giddy, because this was her first chance, not to conduct on autopsy on a humanoid, not to vivisect and animal, but to vivisect a humanoid! She had long wondered what she might learn, but had not had the chance, until now. The prostitute who was putatively named "Bella" whimpered through her gag, but there was nothing she could do to escape the grip of her burly half-orc research assistant, Trommel. Even if Trommel had not been twice her size, her strength had been reduced to nothing by the scorpion venom running through her veins. "Well, lie her on the table," she told Trommel. He did as he was told. Marsa took some large nails and a hammer, preparing to secure the subject to the table. Anyway, this goes way, way beyond what's appropriate for a conventional D&D game, but if you were doing something more modern (something where magic coexists with the modern world, like a sorta Harry Potter setting), then you could look at the pseudoscientific paper titles thread (http://forums.gleemax.com/showthread.php?t=840989) for inspiration. Although not much is really relevant to your concept, I admit. The fact that a story like that is rattling around in that head of yours scares me very, very much, Jules.
Chaosepoch 03-18-08, 02:02 PM	Well, so long as you understand that the character will have heal (likely the skill for autopsies and such), search (for detailed examination), and handle animal (if any animal experiment subjects are used) as cross-class skills, and that the character will be better at a perform skill like singing, playing the flute or harp, reciting poetry, or the like, than at skills necessary for her scientific work like heal, that's fine. In that case, the pathologist characterization could just be a background, somewhat like the role of profession ranks in fleshing out character backgrounds: it wouldn't really need to play a role in the character's mechanical capabilities -- it could just serve as a motivation sometimes and act as something of a hobby during downtime. Yes, but if the core mechanics were used from a mathematical perspective, she would end up with a wis-build druid or pelor/nerull cleric! Now that I think about it, the only ones we haven't suggested are the melee types and the rogue!
JulesCARV 03-18-08, 03:27 PM	As I mentioned, I think ranger would also work pretty well, but enough of my whining about mechanics. Anyway, the "pictures" I offered for UnnaturalLump's character are ones which most obviously differ by alignment: good, scrupulous scientist type vs. evil, ruthless scientist type. However, there are other ways in which this character could be different. I suppose the most obvious question that comes to mind is, why is she adventuring? Why isn't she doing her research in a lab? (I'm assuming that that won't be ChaosEpoch's adventure.) One possibility is... I dunno, maybe her views of pathology drove her out of her community. Maybe they found conducting autopsies offensive? So she had to get out and doesn't have a fixed address at this point. Another possibility is that maybe she's hit some sort of wall in her research, and she thinks that the solution involves creating some precision instrument or somesuch (for... I dunno... measuring tension in muscle cells embedded in collagen matrices for her research on muscular distrophy?) which is outside of her field of expertise, so she's seeking out some famous dwarven precision instruments maker hoping to get his help -- but on the way, she gets into all sorts of wacky misadventures!
Terjon of the Blue Rose 03-20-08, 04:33 AM	I would think bard would work out quite nicely. Remember your still dealing with middle age's genetics. That largely means developing extended list of geneaologies, extensive inquisitions into the strength of various traits through family histories, and lengthy studies involving the likelyhood of those traits being passed on. Early genetics focused rather heavily upon simple plant traits and the results of cross-breeding. As such a fascination with half-elf and and half-orc characters, and even more so in their progeny, would suite the character nicely. With such a route you travel seeking out knowledge in reference to various family lines you have already developed extended notes on. You probably look for noble families in particular as they likely have the best records of family lines. If you really have your heart set on autopsies and the like I would suggest making them the hidden secret of the character. Autopsies were heavily frowned upon in many middle age societies and in a D&D world quickly earn you a reputation as a necromancer or worse. Take into account the fear people have of the unknown in a world where magic has a very real place. To make matters worse it would be very difficult to promise people results from science when magic can cure and gods directly intervene in people's lives, providing them with clear "truth" of the natural order.
Sakon22 03-21-08, 12:39 AM	Aw, now I want to play a Necromancer pathologist. Read the class section of the players manual and chose the one you think best for the character your thinking of. I, myself, would go with some sort of spell caster rather than a bard, given that they are usually the most learned and scholarly ones in most settings with the magical means to do a wide variety of experimentation.
UnnaturalLump 03-22-08, 02:22 PM	To be honest, having thought about it I am not too keen to have a bard, it took a lot of persuasion from Chaosepoch but I am still unsure if that’s the class I want to take...
UnnaturalLump 05-27-08, 07:31 AM	I ended up going with the bard in the end, I really loved all the ideas thrown about in this post – I suppose it’s now up to Chaosepoch to set the scene and get this game on the road.