D&D 3.5e Good Alignment Goblin Wizard Question

[Kryses]

Hey guys, new poster here, so if I do something wrong with asking this, please let me know so I can fix it.

Anyway, on to my question.

TL;DR - I need a legit, believable reason for a goblin to be a wizard and not evil.

I'm relatively new to D&D, I just started playing a month or two ago and I rolled a gnome wizard necromancer who was out for revenge and all this. Anyway, he died. A worg ripped his throat out in combat.

So I have to reroll my character. I decided to go with a wizard again, but I want to be a goblin this time. However, I don't have a very good reason for a goblin to not be horribly evil or a wizard. Goblins seem to, according to 99% of the things I've read, just be that obstacle that no one worries about that blocks them from getting to actual foes worth something.

My group's DM told me if I can come up with a believable reason a goblin would be a wizard and not something to be killed on sight, he'd let me roll it, but I'm drawing a blank.

Someone has to have something up their sleeve, no?

[Crasical]

Hey guys, new poster here, so if I do something wrong with asking this, please let me know so I can fix it.

Anyway, on to my question.

TL;DR - I need a legit, believable reason for a goblin to be a wizard and not evil.

I'm relatively new to D&D, I just started playing a month or two ago and I rolled a gnome wizard necromancer who was out for revenge and all this. Anyway, he died. A worg ripped his throat out in combat.

So I have to reroll my character. I decided to go with a wizard again, but I want to be a goblin this time. However, I don't have a very good reason for a goblin to not be horribly evil or a wizard. Goblins seem to, according to 99% of the things I've read, just be that obstacle that no one worries about that blocks them from getting to actual foes worth something.

My group's DM told me if I can come up with a believable reason a goblin would be a wizard and not something to be killed on sight, he'd let me roll it, but I'm drawing a blank.

Someone has to have something up their sleeve, no?

Your goblin is a wizard. As such, he has a decently high Intelligence Score, which means he's fairly bright. Which means that he can see there's not really any profit in being a mook to be slaughtered for XP. Which means he needs to get strong. For a wizard, that means he needs resources, magic, support, allies. Maybe he wasn't actually 'good' originally but he could see the benefits of having a reputation as a 'harmless' goblin, and eventually decided he actually liked helping others.

[Dessembrae]

Joe the goblin was the youngest and smallest of his litter, the runt. His whole childhood he was taunted and picked on by the other goblin children. He was short, even for a goblin, and almost deathly gaunt. The other goblin children called him Skin-And-Bones and threw garbage at him wherever he went. Wherever he went, that is, except for his uncle's treasure hole, a modest cave in an out-of-the-way corner of the tunnels that Joe's tribe called home.

His uncle's "treasure" was hardly worth the name, an assortment of clothing, obscure tools, a couple of stained and torn maps, and a vast assortment of books. Nothing worth much, even by goblin standards. Most goblins couldn't read, especially the indecipherable scratchings penned by the big folks. Most goblins, including Joe, could speak the common tongue, but couldn't understand the concept or purpose of reading and writing. These books had been collected as trophies, proof that his uncle's hunts were successful. Joe spent hours upon hours staring at the pages, searching through the books to look at the pictures. One day Joe recognized a word. The scribbling underneath a picture of a dragon in one of the largest leather-bound tomes was familiar somehow... On a whim Joe searched through one of the first books he had read, where he remembered seeing a full-page picture of a dragon. Sure enough, in bold letters at the bottom of that page, was a brief description containing the same set of symbols he had seen in the first image. The word "dragon."


Joe had always been pretty bright. He had to be, to survive the harsh treatment he was forced to endure from the moment of his birth. He knew that the word he recognized on the images of dragons must be "dragon." He realized that with enough work, and enough books, he could teach himself to read. In a singular act of daring, he snuck into town one night, all by himself, and broke into a shop that had a lot of books in the window. He shoved all the biggest ones in a bag, and hastened to leave. On his way out, he happened to notice a roll of parchment, an inkwell, and a pen sitting on the countertop. He grabbed those too and returned home.


In the months that followed, the rest of Joe's tribe practically forgot about him. Every waking hour was spent in the shallow cave full of treasures. Treasures in truth. In less than a month Joe had learned fifty words, and identified half the letters and the sounds they made. A month later and he was reading fluently, poring through historic records, alchemical reference tables, biographies, and textbooks of all kinds. His mind devoured the knowledge like a fire devours paper. He didn't need anything else, just more books. He made more and more trips to the shop in town, and other shops, stealing as much as he could without risking capture. One day he brought home a very special book.

A book, of magic.

Edit: I guess I kind of left out an explanation of why Joe's a good guy.....


A few more turns of the moon, and Joe had not only learned how magic works, he had actually MADE it work. He could summon a globe of light, or move objects around. He could even make a tiny flickering flame, no bigger than a candle's, and throw it effortlessly. The first time he managed that he set a pile of books aflame, much to his chagrin. Unfortunately moments earlier, one of his brothers had been sent to fetch him, as the tribe's hunters had found food. His brother saw everything. He told Joe that he was going to tell everyone, and they'd see that Joe wouldn't be lookin at no stupid books no more, no he wouldn't.

Joe did the only thing he could. He fled. He couldn't face the questions he would be asked, and he dreaded the question of what the elders would scheme to use him for. No, he would not be a tool of those bullies. The world wasn't all hard and cruel and nasty, he knew it wasn't. There were cities where people lived in peace and guards made sure noone hurt anyone, ever. Places where humans, elves, dwarves, and others all lived together. Maybe there'd be a place for him there. Maybe he could even find a teacher to help him learn more about magic! There were magical colleges out there, after all, where powerful wizards instructed classes of neophytes in various arcane rituals.

Joe set out, to find civilization. To leave barbarism behind, and in it's place find a world of peace, order, and magic.

[Feint's End]

There you already got 2 good ones. Another one is you just being raised by members of another race. Goblins are not inately evil ... it's just their society that screws them up.

[CaladanMoonblad]

*shrugs* short and sweet backstory; Fun times with a Helm of Opposite Alignment (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/magicItems/cursedItems.htm#helmofOppositeAlignment), which led to university training via scholarship (the university has since changed its inclusive language). Make sure to wear your "Civilized Goblin Badge" at every opportunity, having won special dispensation with the local courts.

Even use 2 ranks for Profession (Barrister). Your GM might like that. Plus, you can practice law.

[Morty]

Have you ever played an elf who's not Chaotic Good? Or a halfling who's not Neutral? That's all the reason you need to play a non-evil goblin.

[Alienist]

I'm in a 4th edition game where I have exactly this scenario.

I introduced my Goblin Wizard with a 20,000 word back story that involved him going to university in the Feywild, and being told that to complete his doctoral dissertation he had to go out and join an adventuring party in order to get a pass for the practical course he took in dungeoneering (thinking that it would be easy credits) and bring back a book of vile darkness.

So he's blatantly using the party to achieve his own agenda, and they know it and love it.*

Also, at some point according to WoTC goblins became red, yellow and orange, which was a big WTF moment for me, so I insist that he's a different kind of goblin because he's (a) from the feywild and (b) green.

*on the other hand, I've also played with groups that are the polar opposite, as soon as they know you've invested effort in coming up with a backstory they'll go out of their way to kill you off.

He likes to use his cantrips to clean things (the mortal realm is very mucky), and changes his scent (minty fresh, apple etc, though why big folk don't like the smell of mouldy leaves is beyond him, after all it's all just vegetable matter that fell off the plant and is dying)

Other things he doesn't like are the way that time passes on the mortal plane, e.g. "Time flies when you're having fun", and "when you're bored time slows to a crawl", which he refers to as the rule of maximal temporal perversity.

Also, walking everywhere is so tedious. And you get dirty. And because it's tedious time slows down and it takes 10x as long as it should.

On introduction, I used Storm Pillar to find out if they were 'friend material' or not. Since in 4th ed it only damages 'enemies'. (Cheesy, but in a good cause)

Also, if he fails at this he has to go and become a shoemaker in the fey wild (like the other fey goblins from his city (NB: does not apply to all goblins, just this particular tribe) - that's another thing, he's an _urban_ goblin, not a wilderness goblin).

-----

Another goblin magic user PC idea I had (3.5 this time, so less OT) is Eberron specific. In Eberron the goblins had a glorious empire which lasted for tens of thousands of years (and which the hobgoblins take credit for these days, lanky scumbags). Then it got into a long war of attrition with aberrations from another dimension, and then after they won that the filthy humans came along and stole all their land and cities.

So what he is, is an Archivist who seeks the old knowledge from the glory days of the empire in order to overthrow human rule and liberate the goblins and restore the empire. Strictly speaking this makes him Chaotic Evil (from a human point of view) and also Lawful Good (from a goblin point of view)

-----

Do something useful for the party. So long as you're useful, they have a reason to keep you around.

Even Smeagol had his uses.

[BowStreetRunner]

A good wizard found him in the smoking ruin of a goblin village that the wizard's party had just destroyed in battle. Unwilling to intentionally harm an innocent, the wizard carried him off to a monastery where he would be cared for. The wizard visited the young orphan often, and when the child grew and showed great intelligence, the wizard took him on as an apprentice and finished raising his young protege himself.

[Clistenes]

The Al-Qadim campaign setting has the Sewer Goblins. Those are goblins that were enslaved by humans for generations, working as sewer workers and chimney sweepers and rat catchers and similar things. They were selectively bred to be peaceful and obedient, so they eventually became lawful good.

Nowadays not al Sewer Goblins are slaves, but they keep living in the sewers because they don't know anything else.

If your DM allows you to translate that origin to his campaign, it's easy to justify your goblin being good. And it should be easy to find a backstory about how he learned to be a wizard: Maybe a good wizard taught him magic as an experiment to see if goblinoids can cast arcane spells.

[erikun]

The reason for a goblin to become a wizard would be obvious: so that he doesn't become some walking XP for an adventuring party or some footstool for an orc horde. Sneaking around and stabbing others hasn't worked for the goblin people for the last X-hundred years, and your character has little reason to think that he'd be the one who suddenly makes it work.

Being good is a bit trickier, but the most sensible reason for doing so is that it allows him to work with humanity rather than against it. There are lots of angles to play with this one. He could be sniveling and cowardly, wanting to avoid outright animosity from the humans he spends time around. He could be haughty, considering his wizardliness to that precedence over his golbinhood. Or he could be a bit of a snark, making rather snide comments about what humans routinely hunt down and butcher anytime someone tries to bring up that "All goblins are evil."

Oh, and as a small-sized wizard in 3.5e, you might want to consider Invisibility + Fly + summons as a preferred method of offense. Perhaps with some Reduce Person, Expeditious Retreat, and some wands of useful spells (Lesser Orbs, Scorching Ray, Web) as other means of keeping away and still participating.

[Big Fau]

You could look into Eberron, since goblins once ruled an entire continent for 11,000+ years (and fended off both an elven and an alien invasion, but that's a different issue).

[Kryses]

Well, I talked to the DM and gave a slightly modified version of Dessembrae's ridiculously helpful and inspiring answer and he said he'd allow it. It even fits with an encounter he was planning later on, so woot woot! I get to be the goblin!

Thanks so much, everyone. You guys are pretty eff'ing awesome.

[Feint's End]

On introduction, I used Storm Pillar to find out if they were 'friend material' or not. Since in 4th ed it only damages 'enemies'. (Cheesy, but in a good cause).
That's not cheesy, that's just not using rules the right way. Spells that target enemies take your perspective of who is a friend and who is an enemy so basically you only gonna find out if you are friendmaterial for them instead of the other way around. If you dm rules otherwise it's pure houserule (and unrealisic along the way .. I mean think if you use that spell against somebody you intend to kill and he really likes you ... is he an enemy?)


Strictly speaking this makes him Chaotic Evil (from a human point of view) and also Lawful Good (from a goblin point of view)
Meh ... I disagree. It makes him probably Lawful Evil in the eyes of humans. Also alignments shouldn't be from perspectives. Sure ... Lawful Evil can be good for other goblins but it still stays lawful evil if he slaughters everyone opposed to his cause.
If he has a decent amount of control and is civilized (Seems so from your descreption) he would probably be lawful neutral but pretty sure lawful (Bringing his society back to old greatness).

That is by the way no intend of insulting you but mere passages of your text that annoyed me a bit. The overall message of your post was pretty good and indeed gave some good examples for OPs question.