Backstory help

[Sudain]

Hello,

Thank you guys for all the help you guys provide. :)

I'm going to be a wizard 5/fatespinner 5/initate of the 7 fold veil starting at level 6/7. Abjuration focused specialist who would later on play with planar bindings. I've had the backstory of he sold his soul, but the DM's thinks that complex and would rather not deal with it. Which is fair.

But this leave me with a good character build and no reason why he devoted himself so strongly to abjuration. Or why he's out and about adventuring now. Best I can come up with right now is it was a family tradition and now that's he's 60-70 he wants to go see the world on one final hurrah before he dies. I really don't have any other ideas on where to take this. :(

Can you guys help with a couple ideas or guiding questions? Thanks in advance,

[Phelix-Mu]

Hmm, well about selling your soul...

The mechanics can be complex, and good rules can be found in Fiendish Codex I (for demons) or Fiendish Codex II (for devils).

If it's just for role play, you could just have (OOC knowledge) been tricked by some sprite or pixie into "selling" your soul. While your character has thus believed he sold it, and acted as such, he really didn't, thus, no complicated rules implication.

You are a human, I assume, so quite old. If you did "sell your soul," you may have found some kind of desire for redemption/salvation in your old age. Now you travel to find some god or good cause that you can help with in order to redeem yourself. On the other hand, age and coming death might make you paranoid about an expected trip to the Nine Hells/Abyss in the afterlife, so now you seek some ultimate abjuration to protect yourself from the wrath of your fiendish overlords. This stands to be quite interesting if you have not actually sold it.

If you actually want to have sold it, just have the baseline implication be that, when you die, your soul goes to the Nine Hells/the Abyss, and so you can't be resurrected/raised. Not without a quest by the rest of the party to rescue your soul, which can also be quite interesting.

[Agincourt]

So abjuration is largely defenses against magic or destruction of magic. Think about why your character hates magic or is afraid of magic. The word "abjuration" suggests a strong antipathy to magic. (Abjuration: Noun; 1. A renunciation on oath; recantation, esp. of heresies. 2. An official repudiation on oath of any ecclesiastical or political principle. Shorter OED 5th ed.)

Maybe your character had something extremely bad happen to him because of magic. Helpfully, this could also be the same reason you started adventuring so late in life. Perhaps your wife was murdered by kobold sorcerers. You previously led a quiet life as a peasant, but now you hate magic (or are extremely afraid of it) and have dedicated your life to defenses against it.

I can give you more ideas if you can expand on why you chose this build.

[MasterFu]

What if he spent all this time studying abjuration to cheat some sort of family curse?

[Toy Killer]

well, first, lets define your character's motivation and work backwards:

1) I need to be able to defend myself
Because I plan on going somewhere dangerous
Because I my rival hits harder then I do
Because I cant let myself be exposed
Because I need to know that I can

2) I want something nearly unobtainable
Because I need it for my goals
Because it's valuable to me
Because it was stolen from me
Because I won't let it be used against me
Because it's a test of mastery

3) I don't want this life I live
Because now is a good of time as ever to enact my plans
Because I could make more money doing something else
Because I need something different to be happy
Because I will be murdered if I keep this up
Because I want to show the world what I'm truly capable of


This is a basic formula I like for making characters. The core and personality drives can be different (I picked three core drives, Survival, Desire and Environment, with five personality bullets to help etch out a possible character concepts [in this case, a schemer, a greedy type, a Joseph Cambell Hero, paranoid wreck, and 'Anime kid' show type] but they can all be tweaked and mixed and matched).

Drive comes from outside and in. I can look at the mapping of possible drives and see {I need to be able to defend myself, because I can't leave myself exposed} and it jumps out at me as a tortured soul, or maybe someone who is a little less then confident in himself. Either work for the build of the character.

I can also see {I want something nearly unobtainable, Because it was stolen from me} and envision a wrathful Magicker who is going to teach a foolish demon why he shouldn't trifle with the affairs of mortals, Or a hero out looking for his true love in the mists of the Astral plane, taken from him by Githyanki pirates for tampering in their plans.

once you establish the motivation, you just need to sit back and start answering the obvious why's that pop up until you have enough detail to make a story that needs to be continued.

[Duke of Urrel]

How about this: For most of his long life, your wizard was the servant of a powerful master, managing all of the master's defenses as his official arcane abjurer. But now, you've retired from that career and want to see some action at last.

Better yet, maybe you were a slave, and you have only recently become powerful enough to break away to freedom. You are interested in extraplanar travel and extraplanar allies in order to avoid the pursuit of your former master and to take revenge, respectively.

Or mix and match: You once proudly served the kindly king of Such-and-Such, but his successor is a horrible tyrant with world-destabilizing powers, so you've quit to help defend the popular resistance and to seek extraplanar help to restore peace and justice to the once happy kingdom of Such-and-Such.

[Sudain]

Hmm, well about selling your soul...

The mechanics can be complex, and good rules can be found in Fiendish Codex I (for demons) or Fiendish Codex II (for devils).

If it's just for role play, you could just have (OOC knowledge) been tricked by some sprite or pixie into "selling" your soul. While your character has thus believed he sold it, and acted as such, he really didn't, thus, no complicated rules implication.

You are a human, I assume, so quite old. If you did "sell your soul," you may have found some kind of desire for redemption/salvation in your old age. Now you travel to find some god or good cause that you can help with in order to redeem yourself. On the other hand, age and coming death might make you paranoid about an expected trip to the Nine Hells/Abyss in the afterlife, so now you seek some ultimate abjuration to protect yourself from the wrath of your fiendish overlords. This stands to be quite interesting if you have not actually sold it.

If you actually want to have sold it, just have the baseline implication be that, when you die, your soul goes to the Nine Hells/the Abyss, and so you can't be resurrected/raised. Not without a quest by the rest of the party to rescue your soul, which can also be quite interesting.

I agree, we looked into to that and even the baseline implication was too complex for the DM so I'm thinking I'll have to give it up. Though being convinced he sold his soul when he didn't could be a great twist. It'll be interesting/dicey when I routinely start cast other plane to ask "Who has my soul?" and I keep getting the answer, "You". :)


So abjuration is largely defenses against magic or destruction of magic. Think about why your character hates magic or is afraid of magic. The word "abjuration" suggests a strong antipathy to magic. (Abjuration: Noun; 1. A renunciation on oath; recantation, esp. of heresies. 2. An official repudiation on oath of any ecclesiastical or political principle. Shorter OED 5th ed.)

Maybe your character had something extremely bad happen to him because of magic. Helpfully, this could also be the same reason you started adventuring so late in life. Perhaps your wife was murdered by kobold sorcerers. You previously led a quiet life as a peasant, but now you hate magic (or are extremely afraid of it) and have dedicated your life to defenses against it.

I can give you more ideas if you can expand on why you chose this build.


I chose this build because I felt I had to go for powerful planar bindings to keep up with the power gaming in the group. Once that's established I went with fate spinner to help make those more successful. Then initiate to further provide defenses against the outsiders he's going to be pissing off. From here I needed to tack on a back-story skeleton of why he was so obsessed with playing with outsiders and defensive magics. Selling a soul tends to dive people to desperate means so that seemed like a natural choice.


What if he spent all this time studying abjuration to cheat some sort of family curse?

That's partly how I'm going to spin the back-story as he spent the vast majority of his time studying. Family curse, interesting idea.


well, first, lets define your character's motivation and work backwards:

1) I need to be able to defend myself
Because I plan on going somewhere dangerous
Because I my rival hits harder then I do
Because I cant let myself be exposed
Because I need to know that I can

2) I want something nearly unobtainable
Because I need it for my goals
Because it's valuable to me
Because it was stolen from me
Because I won't let it be used against me
Because it's a test of mastery

3) I don't want this life I live
Because now is a good of time as ever to enact my plans
Because I could make more money doing something else
Because I need something different to be happy
Because I will be murdered if I keep this up
Because I want to show the world what I'm truly capable of


This is a basic formula I like for making characters. The core and personality drives can be different (I picked three core drives, Survival, Desire and Environment, with five personality bullets to help etch out a possible character concepts [in this case, a schemer, a greedy type, a Joseph Cambell Hero, paranoid wreck, and 'Anime kid' show type] but they can all be tweaked and mixed and matched).

Drive comes from outside and in. I can look at the mapping of possible drives and see {I need to be able to defend myself, because I can't leave myself exposed} and it jumps out at me as a tortured soul, or maybe someone who is a little less then confident in himself. Either work for the build of the character.

I can also see {I want something nearly unobtainable, Because it was stolen from me} and envision a wrathful Magicker who is going to teach a foolish demon why he shouldn't trifle with the affairs of mortals, Or a hero out looking for his true love in the mists of the Astral plane, taken from him by Githyanki pirates for tampering in their plans.

once you establish the motivation, you just need to sit back and start answering the obvious why's that pop up until you have enough detail to make a story that needs to be continued.

Humm... I will have to give this more than cursory thought.

1) I need to be able to defend myself
Because I cant let myself be exposed
2) I want something nearly unobtainable
Because it was stolen from me
3) I don't want this life I live
Because I will be murdered if I keep this up

From there, maybe a pinch of insanity(or being tricked).

Thank you guys, this is helpful. :)