How do you excuse a dragonwrought Kobold?

[Ryulin18]

I love the age benefit of the DW Kobold. Who can deny having a +3 to each mental stat not being awesome?

But how would you work it in to your back story? How can you possibly say that your Kobold has been around for 120 years and not become PC's experience?

My excuse is that I was locked up to be worshipped by my clan or kobolds. I escaped when a shadowy figure handed me a letter (which all the PC's got) and told me to be at the location in 2 weeks.

[maxrz]

Well, in a campaign I ran not too long ago, it was a Frostburn campaign. My buddy said that he was a rogue in town (not the class, the noun) and he was just a beggar and a scoundrel for the longest time until he finally was given a job by the mayor to go hunt down these neanderthals..

He was a Warlock... He also ended up killing the mayor... But that's how Steven did it :)

[Telonius]

I love the age benefit of the DW Kobold. Who can deny having a +3 to each mental stat not being awesome?

But how would you work it in to your back story? How can you possibly say that your Kobold has been around for 120 years and not become PC's experience?

My excuse is that I was locked up to be worshipped by my clan or kobolds. I escaped when a shadowy figure handed me a letter (which all the PC's got) and told me to be at the location in 2 weeks.

Could be he made like Sir Robin whenever danger reared its ugly head. I believe this is technically known as the Rincewind Maneuver.

[TypoNinja]

I always keep in mind the nature of adventuring as a career option rather than from the perspective of a player of a game.

Adventuring is a career choice, an adventurer in the space of a few months could make more money than a modest business does in a few decades. If he survives. Adventuring typically has a pretty high fatality rate, the PC's live because the PC's are heroic, even for adventuring parties.

So adventuring is very lucrative, but very high risk. Not good odds of surviving to enjoy your retirement. So its typically not the first option for most races, Humans are different. We're weird little bastards. But most of the other races would tend to view adventuring as either an unjustified risk, or a passing fad that children indulge in (Dungeon crawls, the new goth!) if they are longer lived.

So its fairly plausible for someone to have done their 'day job' for years, or even decades, before some kind of catalyst event made them consider adventuring as an option even after many years of a more mundane existence.

In my own case, I had a Fang Dragon who is 22 years old, but still a wyrmling. The Draconomicon states that dragons use stored energy from what they eat to power their transformations as they get older, my little Fang Dragon has a very rough childhood, The Underdark being not a nice place to grow up alone. He spent most of his life fighting starvation rather than monsters. Not enough food, no growth. I joined an adventuring party after I got caught trying to steal their trail rations and they promised food for my help. Half an hour later it was fresh Halfling and a side of Giant Cockroach for dinner. I never ate so good :P

The point being, Adventuring doesn't necessarily have to be the first thing thing a character has done, doubly so for caster types. If your prime abilities are mental rather than physical there is no pressure on you to take advantage of youth. A Fighter is at his peak quite young, but a wizard gets more potent with age, and more likely to be sent out to represent his orders interests than a brand new apprentice.

Flavor is easy to generate, a Druid might spend years in solitude until something forces her interaction with the outside world, ditto monks. A wizard might stay in his college for decades until his order decided they needed him to fetch a McGuffin. A sorcerer usually manifests at puberty, but doesn't have to. Imagine a Barmaid who after getting pinched one too many times sets some poor perv's hair on fire. A fighter could spend his entire career training recruits or pulling Garrison duty until the keep he's based out of is sacked and he sets off seeking vengeance, similarly Barbarians are common in tribal societies, but tend to also not leave the tribe unless some even forces them to.

Don't think of what the Class does while adventuring, think what skill set that class has that would be best suited to a mundane profession.

[King Atticus]

In the back-story for an upcoming desert kobold character for a FR campaign I'm playing in, I have him being Dragonwrought and from the Stonelands where his tribe had lived in seclusion for time beyond memory serving the silver dragon Li Fendicol who returns every couple decades to propagate and collect the items that the tribe acquires by scavenging, taking what other groups steal while on border raids and discard in the waste, and sets aside as a tribute, in his 125th year the Zhentarim decided to use the Stonelands as a base of operations and cleanse it of all other groups. They decided to unleash mad beholders to clear the land and wiped out his entire tribe (save him). He escaped and fled to the Northeast and into the Desertsmouth Mountains where he runs across the powerful yet reclusive mage Relumar who takes him under his wing and helps him awaken his innate magical power.

It has enough actual FR info gleaned (read plagiarizer) from online sources to make sense and a physical environment that fits the desert kobold varient needs and because Cormyr claims that region it allows me to take the feat (FRC version) education so I can get all the knowledge's as class skills so I can qualify for my PrC later-on.

Oh, back-stories, you're my favorite thing...ever

[Alleran]

Could be he made like Sir Robin whenever danger reared its ugly head. I believe this is technically known as the Rincewind Maneuver.
I laughed out loud at that, and the others in my office are giving me funny looks.

[Hirax]

Energy drain

[Novawurmson]

Spoiler if you have not read/played at least the first book of "Kingmaker (http://paizo.com/pathfinder/adventurePath/kingmaker)."

There's a kobold in it that's actually a reincarnated gnome. Live a lifetime as one race, get reincarnated as a kobold!

[pwykersotz]

Cloistered Cleric. My Dragonwrought Kobold has spent a lifetime studying and now wishes to spend his final years spreading the knowledge he has acquired.

[Ingus]

Do stuff, make children, live your life until, as a elder, you must take responsibility and face a danger no one else can.

At the end, you're a Dragonwrought, blessed by your ancestor, and you must take responsibility

[Rubik]

My "Venerable" Dragonwrought kobold is actually a 10 year old boy whose parents conceived him in an illithid breeding pit, who then had most of his mind wiped and his body "adjusted" with draconic parts before he was rescued (and subsequently enslaved) by the evil empire that destroyed the illithid hive.

[Ryulin18]

My "Venerable" Dragonwrought kobold is actually a 10 year old boy whose parents conceived him in an illithid breeding pit, who then had most of his mind wiped and his body "adjusted" with draconic parts before he was rescued (and subsequently enslaved) by the evil empire that destroyed the illithid hive.

...:smalleek:

[Axier]

Vutha Kethrend, my DW Kobold spent most of his years training soldiers and shoring defences. Later on in life, during several battles (Mind you, we did not start at level 1, but 6.) against Gnomes, he saw something that changed him; several young recruits tearing apart an innocent mother in front of her children. Bittered by this harsh treatment of innocent life, he questioned the clerics, only to recieve the same answer for everything... Because on diety sleighted Kurtlmak, the entire race is therefore at fault. This makes sense for Kobolds, they are community driven, and their actions are generaly as one, but compairing what he knew of Gnommish society, they are more individualistic. Seeing no reason to fight an enemy just because of one god, he became enraged and sought peace in his heart. He began to pray to Io; "O' great father of dragons, your children have lost their peace. Help me find a way to bring peace to the children of your children. There is no need for senseless violence." After meditating for days in solace (Which also doubled as my greater rite of draconic passage), he heard Io's reply, "My children shape their own future. Go forth my child." After exiting his chamber, he walked into the all-watcher's chamber and said, "I shall leave this place, and when I return, you will be given a choice; see the path of peace, or fall under the weight of vengence." Exiled from his clan, he sought to champion Io, and find a way to bring peace to the wayward children of Glittergold and Kurtlmak.

P.S. 18 Swarmfighting kobolds is fun, and would have loved to make it happen.

[Ryulin18]

18 Swarmfighting kobolds is fun, and would have loved to make it happen.

My party found a very easy way of dealing with them. Master of many forms turned into an ooze and swamped them. To catch the ones trying to escape, I cast a force cage around him.

Cue 14 rounds of hilarity.

[Rubik]

...:smalleek:And yet he's still better off than the rest of the members in the party.

[Callista]

And yet he's still better off than the rest of the members in the party.
Wow, talk about angstfest. Hopefully nobody drowns in emo. On the other hand... it could be kind of fun to have a bunch of messed up people trying to pull it together and do something useful with their lives. It's more of a victory coming from someone who has to claw his way up from *below* the everyday-joe level. So, y'know, to each his own.

There's no reason why a character needs to have been out fighting despite a long life. I've had characters starting at middle age and 1st-3rd level. They were simply busy doing the usual things--work the farm, raise a family, in my middle-aged gal's case be the teacher/midwife/general busybody for a small town... Nothing particularly dangerous or challenging. If I'd wanted to be strict about it I guess I should've had something more like a low-level Adept instead of a 1st-3rd level PC class, but it's not a big deal mechanically or flavor-wise, and my DM would've balked at an NPC class anyway, considering how it'd have unbalanced the party. You don't want to have 5 levels of Commoner-type dead weight to drag around and worry about not killing while still challenging the party wizard.

So yeah... you had a peaceful life, that's all.

[Rubik]

Wow, talk about angstfest. Hopefully nobody drowns in emo. On the other hand... it could be kind of fun to have a bunch of messed up people trying to pull it together and do something useful with their lives. It's more of a victory coming from someone who has to claw his way up from *below* the everyday-joe level. So, y'know, to each his own.Well, he has one of the worst backstories, but he was "adopted" by a humanitarian high in the evil government who is working to change the laws to less grotesquely awful ones (as he has no illusions that he can change an entire society by himself). His present is better than most, but there are echoes from his past reverberating through his present.

THOSE are quite unpleasant.