Character Creation Rules

[TheFred]

The Premise

Your characters are (probably) demigods, Immortals, the offspring of the divine. However, there is also an option to be a sidekick, mentor or monster; each as slightly different rules.

Here is the story thus far:

A group of legendary heroes were assembled to rescue Princess Jacintha of Karos who was kidnapped under mysterious circumstances. They did, tracking the villains to an abandoned watchtower close to the border. They put up surprisingly little resistance, facing only a pair of ineffectual guards and a slightly addle-brained character calling himself Kalabanos.

The heroes were then called upon to assist a village far to the north of Karos, apparently largely abandoned by the nation's rulers and beset by shapeshifting beast-men. During this time, our stalwart adventurers were also informed that the rescue of Princess Jacintha had been a ruse! The Princess they rescued was a magical facsimile, with the real now one for good. With no leads, however, our characters decided to continue on their current mission, and hope that Fate would provide a means to rescue the real Princess.

Unfortunately, the characters have begun to suspect that matters are more complex than they seem. The villagers they've gone to assist seem intent upon wiping the wolfweres from their hideout, an old silver mine, perhaps in the hopes of finding more silver; they claim that Artemis, Goddess of the Hunt has ordained their mission. The wolfweres, however, have purportedly begun a ritual to summon the power of the dark god Malar.

Previous threads, including setting information, can be found on OGMW (I'm in the process of transferring relevant stuff over).

Normally, I would seek a story-appropriate way to introduce any new characters. However, for ease, I'm minded just to slide them into the story here. Two groups have just assembled outside the silver mines, and any other characters could have travelled here with the group that the current two PCs were not in (being retconned back into the hunt earlier on). I am, however, open to other suggestions as to how to introduce new PCs.

What I Would Like in an Application

Honestly, there are no hard and fast rules here; it's up to you to convince me that your character is right for this game. However, here are some things I'd like to see:

Mechanics: You don't need to have spent every last skill point and gold piece, but at least a well-defined sketch of the mechanics is important. See below for mechanics information.

Background: I don't want a background. Backgrounds are things like "My character lived at 4 Privet Drive and had parents who died and was really boring". This is a game for epic heroes; I want a Legend. Aeneas carried his crippled father out of the burning city of Troy in his "backstory". In order to drink from the Well of Wisdom, Odin ripped out his own eye to make a suitable sacrifice. Hercules strangled snakes with his bare hands when he was a babyImagine how much bad writing we could have avoided if Harry Potter had just strangled Voldemort's snake from the get-go!.

Description: Physical descriptions are often boring, so make it short or keep it interesting, but players need to be able to identify each other. Pictures are cool but not a must-have. I would like to know about your character's personality and mannerisms, however.

Hooks: Even if you just want to put bullet points, any Evil DM Plot Hooks are a big bonus.

Gear: Let's take the opportunity to think about gear a bit. Did you just deck yourself out like a D&D Christmas tree, or did you forge this mighty sword yourself with meteoric iron you won in a battle from a mighty warrior-maiden? Are these Boots of Flying the winged sandals of Hermes himself, which he lent to you so that you could get to gym class on time?

Intro: The premise is that you were recruited by the Priestess of Artemis, Hypsilla, or one of the villagers, to help defend the good folk from monster and/or slaughter innocent endangered species for looking at them funny. However, a line or two saying how you got here wouldn't go amiss.

Mechanics

IMPORTANT: Please make yourself aware of all the House Rules!

Level: 6, with 20,000 XP (so +5k XP)

Abilities: 32-point buy

Sources: Any 3.5 Wizards, 3.0 with updating as necessary, reflavouring/adaptations with approval, I don't like homebrew but maybe on a case-by-case basis if you're desperate (but to make my life easier, try to keep it simple please)

Races: Any - but if you're looking for something esoteric, consider the "monster" option (see below)

Classes: Any

Alignment: Any - I'm imagining a party of heroes, but it's possible that you might be in it for fame, money or the goodwill of the mighty. Or, you could be secretly evil. So long as you can work together, though, it's all good. Note though that one of the current characters is a Saint.

HP: Max at L1, average thereafter (e.g. d4 = 2.5, d6 = 3.5, etc, halves don't count but carry over)

Gear: Spend 18k on one or two unique signature items. Half anything left over, add 1.5k, and keep that or spend it on mundane gear and/or trinkets (scrolls, potions, wands and other consumables, low-value - probably <1k - wondrous items, etc).

LA Buyoff: Not allowed, given the options below for reducing LA.

Flaws and Traits: Traits are cool (up to 2), and up to two flaws are potentially permissable. Note, though, that you are supposed to be mighty heroes, cleaving orcs in two with single blows, your immaculate, shiny hair blowing in the wind! Flaws are for people who want to min/max, not heroes!

Edited October 30, 2023 by TheFred (see edit history)

[TheFred]

Immortals

The whole point of the game is to be Immortals, so I expect most people will want their characters to be, and it would kind of defeat the purpose if nobody in the party were one.

 

Deific Parent

Who was your godly parent?

We're using a mash-up of deities for this game so your options are pretty open: the 3.5 PHB, real-world mythology (Ancient Greece/Roman, Norse, Egyptian etc) and a few from the Forgotten Realms. If you're interesting in something unusual, just ask.

Because of this mash-up, two things to note: firstly, there are many overlapping deities, so there may not be a single "god of the sea" or "god of war" but several competing ones that are worshipped in different areas or by different groups. Secondly, some deities are merged - so Apollo is Corellon Larethian and is a god of the elves as well as god of all the other things Apollo is god of, and just as Hades might sometimes get called Pluto, maybe he also gets called Jergal by the D&D bods.

Also note that some deities have featured in the story so far: Apollo and Gruumsh have made a cameo appearance, there has been reference to Pan, and the players are currently embroiled in a proxy feud between Artemis/Diana and Malar.

Finally, this is a game inspired by Ancient Greek mythology; there are better gods and worse gods, but they all have a bit of an "orange and blue" mortality; even those purportedly aligned gods from D&D are probably more somewhere in the middle, treating mortals like ants. Remember: the ancient gods were petty and cruel, and plagued mankind with suffering! A big theme of Green mythology is that anyone who gets mixed up with them basically loses out, regardless of whether they really deserved it or not.

Anyway... once you've picked your parent, tell me a little bit about them and your relationship with them. Remember that you don't have to follow them as a worshipper - in fact, that might be less likely, if you've seen the cranky side of them at 2 in the morning. You could even be a Cleric of a totally different deity, you rebel (though Favoured Souls probably get their power from their heritage).

Note: If you want to use a deity without published D&D material one them, we can work to figure out some domains or something if necessary.

 

Divine Rank

As Immortals, you're treated as having a Divine Rank of 0 - but, for this game, we're not using the Deities and Demigods rules. Rather, you get the following bonuses:

Damage Reduction: You have DR 1/magic or adamantine per two character levels. At L10 this becomes DR/epic or adamantine. At L20 it becomes DR/epic. This stacks with DR from most sources.

Spell Resistance: You gain SR 5 + your character level. If you get SR of at least this amount from another source, you may instead increase that SR by 2.

Fire Resistance: You get Fire Resistance 5.

Immortality: You are immune to aging effects. You cannot die from starvation or thirst (but you can still suffer from and be disabled by them). You do need to breathe.

Fast Healing: You have Fast Healing 1.

 

Special Power

In addition to the above, you get one thematic option of your choice to distinguish yourself from other demigods - a "superpower", if you will.

Signature Ability: You gain an ability modelled after an at-will or continuous spell or power of up to L3. This is either an SLA or a (Su) ability, and some eyeballing is necessary; some things are more powerful than others when made at-will, and likewise short-duration things are more powerful made continuous than long-duration ones. For example, I'm less likely to allow continuous Wraithstrike than continuous Tongues or even Nondetection. I reserve the right to rebalance these, and maybe add some kind of "immunity for 24h if you save" (especially to something like Suggestion).
Should we be fortunate to level up loads, we can maybe increase the power on these too (an at-will L1 spell gets redundant when casters could prepare like 100 L1 spells if they so wished).

Superior Attribute: Hercules possessed a strength the likes of which the world had never seen. Now you, too, can have a +6 racial bonus to any single ability score of your choice!

Domain Access: You gain a domain granted by your parent. You gain the granted power as a Cleric of your character level. You may cast each of the spells (up to the highest-level normally available to a Cleric of your level) once per day. You can apply these to any casting class you have when you cast spells, or you can cast them as Cha-based spells with a CL equal to your character level (or you can mix or match), whichever is better. Thus, a Rogue 1/Wizard 4 could treat these as Wizard spells, using Int as the primary stat, but with a CL of 5 (and would still be able to use the L3 spell). They are still counted as spells, however, and you can cast one spell from a higher-level slot or with metamagic if you so with.
EDIT: These slots are in addition to a Cleric's normal domain slots. A character with more domains can use these slots to cast spells from those other domains instead (as if they are simply additional domain slots).

Inhuman Heritage: You may reduce by 1 the LA of a thematic template you take. For example, the child of the God of Mind-things might be Phrenic. The child of a demonic god might be a Half-Fiend (as well as being a demigod).

Special Cases: Half-Fiend and Half-Celestial are +3 LA templates (which this reduces to +2), but the DR and SR granted by these is subsumed into your existing versions. Instead, you treat yourself as two levels higher for determining these.

Edited October 15, 2023 by TheFred (see edit history)

[TheFred]

Sidekick / Mentor

So maybe you don't want to be the child of a god and have AWESOME POWER at your fingertips? Well, that's OK, all great heroes need someone to carry their gear sidekicks and the like.

If you wish, you can play an absolute normie, a mundane with no godly powers. To balance this out a bit, you can start at L7, with +6k XP (so 27k total).

Even with the bonus level, normies probably aren't as powerful overall as the Immortals - but this lends itself to something like a powerful Wizard who mentors the young heroes through their trials (for whom, actually, getting higher-level spells is probably a bigger deal anyway), or perhaps a Rogue-ish sidekick who, whilst less capable, fills a niche role that the others rely on. The relative lack of power has to be something you're OK with OoC, though it can be something you play up IC.

Note: I'll pick the party based off the applications I get, but I don't want all sidekicks, obviously. That would be stupid.

 

Monster

So you're not a demigod, but you're still a creature of legend.

Well, first off, you need to explain how you're getting involved with this story. Maybe you joined one of the heroes after he defeated you in a wrestling match, despite you being a Giant and him a puny human (or so you thought). Maybe you show yourself when the adventure starts because you know something useful, or are motivated by a desire to get in the good books of those with divine favour. For a humanoid or someone able to disguise themselves, this is easy. For a many-headed tentaclebeast, however, it might be more difficult.

Mechanically, you can have a +1 LA for free. If your race has racial HD (which don't grant casting), you may additionally start one level higher. If you want to play a particularly high-level critter, we can work out some kind of Savage Progression, and I may houserule exceedingly strong or weak monsters in an attempt to "balance" them a bit.