That moment I'm after....

[big teej]

greetings playgrounders,

we've all had the experience: making a new character and at some point, maybe before you started, maybe this inspired the idea, maybe as you were picking out a class, who knows

but at some point, your had an idea of a "defining moment" for your character.

something you REALLY wanted to happen in his career. that ultimate crowning moment of awesome, the "I no longer care what happens, because this makes it worth it" type momment.

I come to ask you "what are these moments for you? and how many have you realized?"

my first one was way back when I rolled up my first Knight.

Roche Smoulderbeard, Dwarf Knight of the Order of the Mountian Shield.
while reading up on the fluffyness and class features of the Knight, it came to me.

it's a well established cliche, but humor me.

the armies of darkness are encroaching on the last bastion, the heroes have discovered a slim chance to stop it all, but they cannot leave the bastion undefended.

one of their number steps forward and volunteers for suicide.

"ye lads go on and stomp on that wee lich. I will hold them here."

and then the story diverges, on one side, we have this one individuals last heroic defense, a dam holding back the monstrous hordes. and on the other, his fellow heroes working to stop the Ultimate Evil.


this also crops up as
"you go on ahead, I'll deal with him"
or
"go, escape, I will hold him here"



and that is the moment I am after at this time.

what about you?

what moments have you chased as a player or as a character? how many of them have you reached?

were they worth it?
did they fall flat in the face of what you'd built them up to be?

[Serpentine]

One of my current characters is based on one image: a ricketty old man, bent and grey with age, creaks his way along a road leaning heavily on his staff. A bunch of young louts surround him, sneering, and prepare to rob him. He raises his staff, and one of them throws some sort of ball at him that disrupts whatever spell he was about to cast. Laughing at their cleverness, the thugs move in. One grabs the elderly man's shoulder... and suddenly his arm is broken. The man spins with impossible speed, his staff - upon second glance a very heavy, practical thing - a blur as it cracks bones and donks heads. Surrounded by groaning bodies, the man chuckles to himself, and advises the would-be muggers in a surprisingly young-sounding voice that they think twice before seeking to abuse a poor, defenseless old traveller.
This hasn't happened yet, but at some point he should have an opportunity to have a grand reveal of his fancy-pants wings at least. We've only just started.

Another character, I had in her background that she was kidnapped by demons to fight in the Blood War (she was a succubus/elf tiefling). Her succubus grandmother eventually rescued her, but she was very, very broken, near-mad for some time afterwards. She still has some degree of PTSD, and tends to snap at unpredictable moments. The snapping part did actually come up once: she snuck up on another character when he was playing a knife game and startled him, causing him to stab his own hand. He was not impressed, and as soon as his hand was fixed, he gave her an uppercut to the chin. She, in response, leapt on him and tried to smash his stupid smug face in. Before she could do so (curse his high Dexterity...), another character employed some creative item use*, and calmed her down.
At some point, I hoped we'd end up in the Hells. If that happened, she would have a crushing mental breakdown. She would collapse, and rock back and forth in the fetal position, and mutter things like "no, not again, not again, not this" and so on. Eventually she would get a hold of herself, stand up... and have switched from her usual Chaotic Good self to a mercenary, survive-at-all-costs Chaotic Neutral-bordering-on-Evil. She would go into pure survival mode, try to get all her companions out but if worse came to worst everyone was expendable if it meant she could escape.
A little sad that never came about... Ah well, someday.

I once had one event that was sort of a defining moment for the whole party (I forget what one of the characters did, though, so I'll just ignore that one for now...). We were trying out some Arabian type stuff, and were wandering around some desert. We were climbing over yet another sand dune, when suddenly it moved. It rose up over us, and suddenly there was this humungous... thing, sort of like a mushroom covered in eyes with 3 arms and 3 big stompy legs. In response:
- The gnome Illusionist cast Invisibility and disappeared.
- The elf Rogue dove under the sand and Hid.
- The half-orc Rogue/Catlord, faced with some gigantic terrifying thing, torn between her cowardice and the desire to protect and stay with her friends - who had suddenly and without a word disappeared on her - danced in place for a moment frozen by indecision, then tapped her heels together, activated her boots' Haste, and cheesed it.
The DM (the elf) told us later that we could probably have taken this monster pretty easily, but it was just such a perfect showcase of the sorts of characters they all were.
Later the other two caught up to the half-orc at an oasis, and tried to push her in the water... The elf went in instead :smallamused:


*It was an Acorn of Returning which, when held by a non-Druid, caused an entangle-like effect on the holder. Said Druid stuck it in her fist as she raised it to punch the elf again, and suddenly she was bound by vines. I was a little disappointed I didn't get to actually hit the guy, but I was impressed by the creativity.

[QuidEst]

Heh, I'm working on a character that well be like that in-character. They'll go to considerable lengths to complete the setup for a joke, pun, or prank. They're also at least partially aware of their medium, even if they ignore it most of the time. She'll probably do untrained DC-0 spot checks on the number of walls regularly. As soon as there's no fourth wall, she'll take advantage of it. Probably to make fun of me. Ultimate goal? Ascension. Not to godhood, to DM-hood, with me as an avatar.

[HappyBlanket]

Oh man. So much. I have a rule for my characters; if I can't solidify my perception of a character's... Well, character, in a few defining moments, then I have to admit to myself that my understanding of the character is flimsy and flawed, and therefore unfit to play.
...Actually, now that I think about it, I don't really use that rule any more... I should really start again.

Anyway, a few from when I did freeform (Well... Not sure if freeform is the right word... We had rules, and a "dm" of sorts, but we didn't use a system like d&d) roleplaying.

In a roleplay where roughly 24 individuals were born with dominion over an element (I use this term loosely), I was playing a character who had inherited the domain of magical Light; which apparently manifested as lasers, shields, and healing magic. She was named Marcelyn, and her predecessor, meaning the person who maintained this domain before her birth, had used his powers to lead a crusade against villainy and corruption, and yadda yadda, so on, etc. In doing so, a religion (which quickly degraded into a cult) by the name of the Lux Aedes was formed in his honor, and when he died, it was the organization's duty to find his heir, so that she may be groomed to continue his legacy.

And that's when the roleplay started. Marcelyn is in her late teens, and has lived her entire life under close supervision by the Lux Aedes. The organization has kept her secluded in her tower, and has made her comfort one of it's top priorities... alongside teaching her how to be a hammy, merciless, knight-in-shiny-bloody-armor killing machine... And yet, somewhere on the way, she instead developed into a naive, rainbow barfing, plucky child who believes in her fairytales more than her history books. Mostly a result of the organization's perception of itself more than anything. Anyway, point is there's lots of Power of Love involved here. Shenanigans, catastrophe, etc as Marcelyn is ordered outside her tower for the first time, ordered to single handedly slaughter an invading army (she thought she was supposed to talk them out of it. Really nicely).

...Anyway, that description went longer than it should have, and I was kinda hoping to mention some other characters, but I'll get to the point; I had two critical events planned to shake Marcelyn's perception of the world a bit. One would be her first murder.

She spent the majority of her battles taking a completely pacifistic role as the party Chick (she was taken hostage in her first battle, not surprising anyone, herself included. She was also tied to a horse against her will thrice in two days). In combat, she trapped her opponents with forcefields and such, but never killed them. My plan was to introduce a situation where those tactics wouldn't work, and that, to save her friends, she would be forced to kill someone.

...I know that doesn't sound very dramatic when you consider d&d adventurers who kill evil things by the hundreds, but for the happy-go-lucky girl who never left her tower, it was a pretty big deal.

So would begin her slow descent from "Friendship and love can overcome anything, and everyone deserves to be loved" to "Love is a lie, peace is impossible, and I'm not going to bother with either." Cue a rather horrific battle in which she razes a few dozen soldiers by melting their armor into their flesh, complete with nihilistic violent ranting.

I'll end here, but I should mention that I intended her interactions with her friends to pull her back... Not all the way back to "bad things don't exist!", but at least back to trying to bring peace and love, despite her obstacles.

...Heh. Whenever I type about my old roleplays, the amount of words I type begins to rival my old posts.

[big teej]

Oh man. So much. I have a rule for my characters; if I can't solidify my perception of a character's... Well, character, in a few defining moments, then I have to admit to myself that my understanding of the character is flimsy and flawed, and therefore unfit to play.
...Actually, now that I think about it, I don't really use that rule any more... I should really start again.

that's freaking brilliant.... I need to go do that to all my characters.

[QuidEst]

Oh man. So much. I have a rule for my characters; if I can't solidify my perception of a character's... Well, character, in a few defining moments, then I have to admit to myself that my understanding of the character is flimsy and flawed, and therefore unfit to play.
I don't know if I require it for my characters, but yeah, I definitely define a lot of them with a little mental video clip.

I have a pair of "high-end lowlifes" that I'm considering translating into D&D. Their defining moment was carrying out a hit on a mob boss using a birthday balloon. (He treated his birthdays as a big event- so they delivered the balloons and helium tanks with a booklet of fun tricks, including blowing the candles out with the helium, since it's inert. Except it was hydrogen and oxygen premixed to the same buoyancy.) It showcased the duo's skills rather well- Twitchy, the silent brilliant one, came up with the plan plus a contingency, and Scralt, the social one with a knack for demolitions, set it up and made the delivery. Something like that gives the characters credibility and helps keep them on track.

[Rodimal]

In our current campaign I'm playing two characters. Brothers. Ren (a human Duskblade and my characters) and Jaren (a half-elf cleric of Corellon, he's just kinda there to heal us, although he's got War as one of his domains). Jaren has just been kinda in the background mostly, very soft spoken IC (unless there are Orc involved) as he is basically an NPC under my control because she thought we needed a healer and I said I'd do it. At least until the last game session anyway.

After the session before that I decided I really didn't want to play two characters anymore, so I let the DM know I wanted to kill Jaren off in the most spectacular way possible. That leads into the end of our last session. During the session we were inside a Monk Temple dedicated to Shar and came under attack by it's owners. We slaughter them and search the Temple. During this I decide this might be a good time for Jaren to go out in his blaze of glory, so after rolling to confirm I'd actually go through with IE communing with my God, I cast Dispell Evil on the temple's alter.

Weeellll That attracts the attention of said Shar who attempts to smite my ass (as expect). Instead of just doing it however, My DM played it straight up (as if I wasn't trying to suicide the character) and rolled for divine intervention ......97%..... so instead of death Jaren ends up plucked from the falling temple and put outside right in front of his grieving (and now pissed off brother)!

Ren then proceeds to call him every name in the book (and some he made up on the spot) and beat him into unconciousness. So instead of death, Jaren impressed Corellon so much with his bravado and willingness to sacrifice himself that he's now the same alignment as said God and has the Divine Champion PrC in his future (just as soon as I reach 11 lvl so I can get Heal). So now, completely by accident, Jaren has become also my character instead of just a character under my control....

Oh and later at the Tavern celebrating our victory, our female party thief whose been trying to get said Cleric drunk since the campaign started finally succeed and they ended up going back to her room after he kissed her (surprising them both).

Best failed character suicide attempt ever!!

[Andreaz]

My current 3.5 character is a leader-type warrior (a warblade). When building her backstory, I put her in the service of a noble that was murdered under her guard because she was involved with someone who she discovered to be a fiend in disguise.

One of the "big three" of her life goals is to find that fiend.
And declare she still loves him/her/it.