Post/Author/DateTime	Post
#1 cdiddy1980 Jul 31, 2015 21:02:01	I'm about to join a new DD 5e group that's starting up. I want to play a Wizard named Gertrude the Gray. Her backstory is this: She is 92 years old, and all her life she's wanted to be a full blown Wizard, but year after year and decade after decade she kept flunking out of Wizard school, until now. Is this vyable?
#2 mellored Jul 31, 2015 22:13:30	sure.
#3 Nevvur Jul 31, 2015 23:03:32	Sounds awesome!    There's no good reason to dismiss the character concept out of hand, but "session 0" is especially important for unconventional characters like this. It's a curve ball your DM might not have anticipated, and Nanna might not mesh well with the other players' concepts. Make sure the DM is planning a session 0, and if not, convince him to do so.   (and if either you or he don't know what it is, hopefully someone around here will provide a link with some guidelines)
#4 spanglemaker Aug 01, 2015 0:00:05	Gertrude doesn't sound that unconventional, she sounds pretty cool.   There can be lots of reasons why she wasn't able to become a Wizard earlier,most of them can be associated with Life. Maybe she had family commitments, such as having to nurse an elderly relative or a sick child. Money issues, maybe she was forced into an arranged marriage, or fell in love. Her husband might enforce the Obey part of their marriage vows.    Nanny Ogg, a little known witch from the Disc World, has vast connections, a higher charisma than her intellect and obvious proficiency in Intimidation (partly learned through experience with the famous Granny Weatherwax, who can intimidate bandits within the bandits own territory).    Just because Gertrude is 92, doesn't mean that she has to have an 8 in Str, Dex or Con. I might purposely nick the concept,but do an Elderly Martial character. Ethel, Mother, Grandmother and Fighter with her cousin Agnes, who is a Brothel Madame, and Rogue (both at level 1). Backgrounds could be Guild Artisan, Entertainer, Noble possibly modified. Ethel would probably have some proficiency in Insight and Medicine (having to patch up the bairns), Agnes could be a shrewed business woman, her reason to adventure in her 90s, is that her daughter can be trusted to run Paradise and she feels finally able to fulfil her childhood dreams of adventure.   Session 0, is not necessarily needed especially if you are an experienced group, but it certainly can be fun, plus it helps the group to bond. Obviously it's not a show and tell, unless the characters want to open themselves up to each other. We never had a session 0 in the campaign I am currently playing, which started as Encounters. The characters are growing organically and forging bonds between them. But obviously every group is different and if you have the chance or opportunity for a session 0, then go for it.   Thank you for Gertrude, I'd like to see her build
#5 Sepok Aug 01, 2015 10:11:26	I like the backstory, but if you want "flunking out" to be a core part of the character, you need to consider why she was always flunking out for decades.   Does she have a low INT, and just didn't get it? There is no INT requirement for being a single-classed Wizard. But if you go below 13 you won't be able to multiclass. If you give her a low INT score her spell hit/DC will be terrible. You can get around this by focusing on non-save spells, but there are not a lot of those. Could she really be a Sorcerer? If she's always been interested in magic, maybe she was born with it and whoever told her about magic as a child only knew about Wizards. She could start as a Wizard, struggling with an INT-based approach to magic, and later find out about Sorcerers...and then everything clicks in her head. Then she starts taking levels of Sorcerer. She would need a 13 INT and high-CHA for this option. But if she managed to not get kicked out of wizard school for decades, she must have been good at pursuading people anyway. Did she really graduate? Maybe the school got tired of her and just gave her a diploma. Give her the "Magic Initiate" feat as a variant human at first level and maybe have her work towards Arcane Trickster or Eldritch Knight. This would work with the low-INT option above. How did she afford Wizard school for decades? Was she a bored noble/rich merchant...magic was a childhood-endulgence that continued too long? Is she from a highly magical family? They kept transferring her to different schools to hide the non-magical family black sheep? Did she work at the magic school, and taking classes for free was a benefit? Maybe that's why it took decades...with her work duties it took her a year to complete a single class.
#6 Mad_Jack Aug 01, 2015 12:47:54	5th edition has no rules for aging penalties or retirement ages for characters.    As mentioned above, your mechanical approach to building the character and the personality of the character are going to have a lot more impact in-game than the fact that she's a senior citizen.   However, you will want to make sure that your character concept meshes well with the general tone of the game you're playing in - i.e., the "Session Zero" discussion where the party and DM figure out what kind of game they want to play and the mood therein. In a party of dark, angsty teenaged murder-hobos a determined senior citizen who finally graduated wizard school in their retirement  might not work so well.
#7 cdiddy19802 Aug 06, 2015 21:55:48	Wow so many good ideas and things to mull over. Sorry for the delayed response, but this site would not send me a forgot password link for me to reset, so I eventually just created another account.    I am not sure how I will go about a Wizard now, without going low on her int score. Here's the reasons why I can not dump her int score. 1. The DM is making us roll stats using the four roll method, meaning you roll four sets of six and take the set that has the best array. Chances are I'm only going to have one really awesome high score. 2. I can not do the "she is really a scorceror" thing becuase the DM has banned Sorcerors from game, and has banned Dragonborn. I can probably convince him to let me do Sorceror though, given the backstory, but that would still make me have to dump int some.    So here are three main ideas I have come up with.    Idea 1: She was poorer than poor but smart and was able to land herself in Wizard school, thouhg she felt like an outsider from day one. In her bid to be accepted by her peers she pushed herself too hard and literally fried her brain to the point she cast a spell that went terrible wrong due to her mental fatigue/overdoing it. This had horrible ramifications as it killed many of her class mates and teachers (maybe she burned the school down too, in the process??). She was arrested and sentenced to prison for 75 years. Whilst in prison she was smart enough to figure out a way to get wizard books and other wizard paraphelinia smuggled in, and slowly, very very slowly, over the course of decades and etc,  was able to get a firm knowledge of it. She eventually got good enouhg to the point she could have easily just escaped the prison, but she had too much guilt over what had happened. She intended to serve her time fully, without any type of early release offered to her if it should come, and she vowed to someday use her magic for good to actually do something positive with it and her life. When her sentence was up she was released and she immediately went to take the Wizard exam/test/whatever thing. Out of pity for the old hag, they allowed her to do it, and she passed. That is where her journey begins.   Sidenote: If I go with this idea, I plan on having her name some of her spells after those whom she accidentally killed, or maybe lace their name in as part of the utterances she does when casting a spell. Also, my friend is going to play a protection fighter type, and we have designed a carrier thing where she will climb into so her old ass can be carted around by him hahahah (she is 92 years old, 4'1o", 90 pounds).    Idea 2: Very much identical to idea 1, except she killed someone of importance and not by accident. He or she was causing a problem or doing something violent that needed a switft reponse, so Gerturde, being strong and steady with a weapon and taking no **** off anybody, stepped in and handled business. In doing so, thouhg, she was arrested (or taken prisoner depending on what I come up with) and has been in some form of prison every since. While serving her time, thouhg, she kept up her martial practice here and there. not nearly as much as she'd like to, but in order to survive in there she needed some form of retaining her fighting ability. Recently she was released (or escaped) and is trying to make the most out of what little bit of time she has left (or is on the run lol).    Idea 3: Our DM has said someone must play a Cleric. However, since such class is unpopular and nobody ever wants to play it, he will allow whoever plays the Cleric to also play another character of their choosing. So I am thinking of making Gertrude a Cleric who has spent her whole life in the Temple and never really been too far out and about on adventures. That is, until now. Be it visions from her god or whatever, she sets out at 92 years old to help save the world. Her god is good to her too, and biddens a personal protector/bodyguard to her. This man is strong and often violent when needed, so I am thinking maybe a Goliath barbarian or a Paladin or a eldrich knight fighter. This personage in battle will stick near Gertude unless she instructs him to help out the party, which will obviously happen a lot.    I'd love to hear you thouhgts on it and any other ideas I could play into these.
#8 Yunru Aug 07, 2015 10:31:47	Your DM sounds like an arrogant ass, banning things simply because he doesn't like them. One with little to no understanding of 5e from the sounds of that "there must be a cleric" requirement.
#9 mellored Aug 07, 2015 10:57:46	Yunru wrote: