Maho-Tsukai
2011-02-04, 07:34 PM
In an upcoming game I am going to be playing a character who is LOOSELY based on the idea of combining a Frankenstein-esc mad scientist with a necromancer. The character in question is going to be a cloistered cleric who follows an "ideal" rather then a god. This character would be part scientist, part priest, blending spiritual mysticism and an almost religious veneration of undeath and necromancy with hard scientific knowledge to create a sort of magical Dr. Frankenstein who toys with corpses and animates undead in an attempt to both understand the truth of life and raise himself to "godhood" by creating life. His "ideal" is more or less that the only difference between mortals and gods are that gods can create life and thus to ascend to being more then a mortal one must both understand the nature of life itself and ultimately, create life.
He would be very much spiritual but also be logical and scientifically minded, having extensive knowledge of anatomy, biology and other sciences related to the living and the dead. He would also, however, not care for morality. He would claim to be neither good nor evil and to him morality is merely a construction of the human mind, "good" and "evil" being subjective terms that are dependent on one's viewpoint and personal bi assess. Thus, I don't know what aligenment to place him as. He's certainly no good-aligened hero, but he dose not outwardly seek to harm people and do evil either. He dose not go out of his way to make people suffer or even s Sure, he crew others over in the name of bettering his own life. He's too concerned with his quest to play god and one day create life to go around being a **** to people. In fact, despite his rather disturbed nature if he finds you to be a useful ally or just an interesting person he may go out of his way to help you in a time of need, though most of the time he's too focused on his own work to care about helping the world.
So, yeah, he may be a bit messed up in the head and has no qualms about playing god and using lots of necromancy spells but despite the spells being evil he actually dose not see what he dose in that manner and believes that eventually necromancy will reveal to him the secrets of how to create life itself, which is his ultimate goal. Thus, on the evil/good axis I am stuck on what he would be alignment wise..
As for law/chaos, again, this area is very shades of gray as well. He frankly has no concern for the law, but likewise dose not believe that law is bad and he dose not actively seek to break laws and/or champion liberation. He is the kind who for the most part will follow the laws but when it benefits his work to break some laws(like say digging up some bodies from the local graveyard for future use.) he will not hesitate to do so. Much like good and evil, he really could care less about the law and lack of therefore...however, beyond the issues of actual legal laws he has a very lawful way of doing things. He's very patient, shrewd and organized. Everything he dose is carried out in a meticulously orderly, systematic, logical and scientific fashion. So while law in the sense of laws created by governments ect..really matters little to him he tends to operate in a very "lawful" manner and is anything but unorganized and spontaneous like most chaotic characters are.
So, I have three questions...The first is thus: seeing how I describe this guy, what alignment would you place him at? As for the second, I would love for this guy to be able to use a scalpel as his melee weapon of choice if he ever got into melee somehow. He's not a melee focused character and thus I don't want to make him be built around fighting with scalpels(and I see the scalpel as being used more when I RP his use of the heal skill then for actual combat.) and having things like death attack to simulate striking vital places but I would like him to be able to use a scalpel in a pinch just as a wizard can pull our his dagger in a pinch. So, is there any 3rd party or homebrew stats for scalpels? If not, then what would be a good already existing D&D weapon to refluff as a scalpel? The final question is without going into D20 modern, what knowledge skill would be used for knowledge of anatomy, biology and other life sciences? I assumed knowledge (Nature) but is there another, better knowledge out there to allow access to information about these areas?
So, do any of you have any answers for my three questions?
He would be very much spiritual but also be logical and scientifically minded, having extensive knowledge of anatomy, biology and other sciences related to the living and the dead. He would also, however, not care for morality. He would claim to be neither good nor evil and to him morality is merely a construction of the human mind, "good" and "evil" being subjective terms that are dependent on one's viewpoint and personal bi assess. Thus, I don't know what aligenment to place him as. He's certainly no good-aligened hero, but he dose not outwardly seek to harm people and do evil either. He dose not go out of his way to make people suffer or even s Sure, he crew others over in the name of bettering his own life. He's too concerned with his quest to play god and one day create life to go around being a **** to people. In fact, despite his rather disturbed nature if he finds you to be a useful ally or just an interesting person he may go out of his way to help you in a time of need, though most of the time he's too focused on his own work to care about helping the world.
So, yeah, he may be a bit messed up in the head and has no qualms about playing god and using lots of necromancy spells but despite the spells being evil he actually dose not see what he dose in that manner and believes that eventually necromancy will reveal to him the secrets of how to create life itself, which is his ultimate goal. Thus, on the evil/good axis I am stuck on what he would be alignment wise..
As for law/chaos, again, this area is very shades of gray as well. He frankly has no concern for the law, but likewise dose not believe that law is bad and he dose not actively seek to break laws and/or champion liberation. He is the kind who for the most part will follow the laws but when it benefits his work to break some laws(like say digging up some bodies from the local graveyard for future use.) he will not hesitate to do so. Much like good and evil, he really could care less about the law and lack of therefore...however, beyond the issues of actual legal laws he has a very lawful way of doing things. He's very patient, shrewd and organized. Everything he dose is carried out in a meticulously orderly, systematic, logical and scientific fashion. So while law in the sense of laws created by governments ect..really matters little to him he tends to operate in a very "lawful" manner and is anything but unorganized and spontaneous like most chaotic characters are.
So, I have three questions...The first is thus: seeing how I describe this guy, what alignment would you place him at? As for the second, I would love for this guy to be able to use a scalpel as his melee weapon of choice if he ever got into melee somehow. He's not a melee focused character and thus I don't want to make him be built around fighting with scalpels(and I see the scalpel as being used more when I RP his use of the heal skill then for actual combat.) and having things like death attack to simulate striking vital places but I would like him to be able to use a scalpel in a pinch just as a wizard can pull our his dagger in a pinch. So, is there any 3rd party or homebrew stats for scalpels? If not, then what would be a good already existing D&D weapon to refluff as a scalpel? The final question is without going into D20 modern, what knowledge skill would be used for knowledge of anatomy, biology and other life sciences? I assumed knowledge (Nature) but is there another, better knowledge out there to allow access to information about these areas?
So, do any of you have any answers for my three questions?