Why does anyone become a parent in D&D?

[Sir Chuckles]

Se here I am going over applications on a PbP game, and I realize something. I'm half way through page three, and only two characters so far have non-dead parents, one not mentioning family at all and the other only having one dead parent. So it leads me to this question:

Why would anyone in the D&D universes become a parents, knowing that there is a massive chance that they will die a violent premature death to give their child an adventurer's backstory?
Second, how lucrative of a job would a child therapist have in such a world?

/notaseriousthread

[LunaLovecraft]

Perhaps the sex-pregnancy connection hasn't been found yet.

Those parents who do live are subject to the Divine Maestro's whims to make their child cry.

[Darkweave31]

Because sex is fun and contraceptives weren't as good back then.

As for therapists, not very lucrative since the alternative therapy is genocide of goblins and kobolds, which is not only free but often even pays the patient.

[torrasque666]

Hence why I play Warforged. No need for parents. Or a family. Though I always seem to end up getting one during the campaign. Damn Halflings/Vampires!

[SimonMoon6]

This is really only problematic if your child grows up to be an adventurer.

As long as you make sure your child never does anything important, you should be fine.

[Sir Chuckles]

This is really only problematic if your child grows up to be an adventurer.

As long as you make sure your child never does anything important, you should be fine.

No, it doesn't work that way.
You die because Orcs/Undead/bandits/whathaveyou kills you, and your kid somehow either becomes a slave (half the applications were slaves at some point) to the bandits, is spared, or is saved by a wandering dude who becomes his teacher. Then you're either completely forgotten about or his teacher dude dies under similar circumstances and the kid inherents all the fancy equipment.

[Vhaidara]

Hence why I play Warforged. No need for parents. Or a family. Though I always seem to end up getting one during the campaign. Damn Halflings/Vampires!

Hey, warforged can totally go vengeance murder on the D'Canniths. I've got that going for at least one warforged.

[Yogibear41]

Your Level 20 fighter decides to retire and raise a family, has child, you begin playing as that child from level 1. Father gives his child his +5 greatsword and +5 mithral full plate armor. Level 1 fighter now has amazing stuff.

[Cowardly Griffo]

Well, if you die of old age you can never get resurrected. But if you die of good old fashioned bandit-murder, you can hope to get raised some day–presumably by the point that your adventuring children have grown so powerful and bored that they actually have time to remember you, so when you get raised you can also become immortal, like your children are. You get to spend your endless twilight years reaping the benefits' of your progeny's adventuring career and complaining that they never called (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/magicOverview/spellDescriptions.htm#calling) you enough when they were younger. And in the interim, while you're waiting for that to happen, you get to spend your time vacationing on a nice outer plane somewhere.

So ultimately you become an adventurer's dead parents because it's a good retirement plan.

[Zanos]

I really don't think it's that important. Even if your parents aren't alive you're a mature adult who is living their own life and they really shouldn't come into the picture all that frequently.

Unless you have a DM who loves to use backstory NPCs to screw with characters. Having the BBEG go after your parents/family/lover is even more cliche than having dead parents.

[ArqArturo]

Birthright (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birthright_%28campaign_setting%29) played on the idea that your character was the scion of a divine entity, and therefore the head of a nation, so you could create a house which subsequent (his or her progeny) would descend from.

[AuraTwilight]

Maybe it's because "Parents who die to create a backstory for PC children" is statistically nonexistent when you realize each set of four or five adventurers more or less exist in their own independent universes from each other.

[Coidzor]

Se here I am going over applications on a PbP game, and I realize something. I'm half way through page three, and only two characters so far have non-dead parents, one not mentioning family at all and the other only having one dead parent. So it leads me to this question:

Why would anyone in the D&D universes become a parents, knowing that there is a massive chance that they will die a violent premature death to give their child an adventurer's backstory?
Second, how lucrative of a job would a child therapist have in such a world?

/notaseriousthread

Well, there's adventurers who want to adventure while pregnant in order to cause arguments both at the table and then on forums, I suppose. There's goblins and kobolds who want to provide moral quandaries for adventurers if they should succeed in killing them. There's Orcs who want to make more Orcs so they can Gruumsh all the Elves.

And because the Orcs have basically no ability to self-regulate their population whatsoever, which is why the swarm like locust into hordes every so often.

There's Drow Matriarchs/Matrons who do it to show that they can be pregnant and survive assassination attempts and raise a child to the point where it no longer would make them look bad if the child died.

There's dirt farmers who need the 'free' labor. Certain brothels that cater to those with a fetish for pregnant women...


I really don't think it's that important. Even if your parents aren't alive you're a mature adult who is living their own life and they really shouldn't come into the picture all that frequently.

Unless you have a DM who loves to use backstory NPCs to screw with characters. Having the BBEG go after your parents/family/lover is even more cliche than having dead parents.

Or the BBEG being your parents. ALL OF THEM. ALL 8 TO 16!

[torrasque666]

Hey, warforged can totally go vengeance murder on the D'Canniths. I've got that going for at least one warforged.

Aye, I know. Our DM had us actually meet Merrix D'Cannith. It was all our party could do to hold him back. The ones who started to upgrade him into a Juggernaut tried to take his mind, and thus he hates all Cannith dragonmarked.

[Vhaidara]

Aye, I know. Our DM had us actually meet Merrix D'Cannith. It was all our party could do to hold him back. The ones who started to upgrade him into a Juggernaut tried to take his mind, and thus he hates all Cannith dragonmarked.

He tried to force souls into mine. Emphasis on force. Ended up making her an Incarnum powerhouse.

[torrasque666]

For relevance, his non-juggernaut levels are in Archivist. He's mostly focused on Intelligence. So his mind is pretty damn important to him. Would have gone psion probably if our DM didn't disallow psionics(new system to him. and considering how much we wrecked his last campaign using Vancian casting, I can understand his apprehension.)

[Sith_Happens]

Why would anyone in the D&D universes become a parents, knowing that there is a massive chance that they will die a violent premature death to give their child an adventurer's backstory?

It's quite a small chance, actually. Yes, a lot of PCs seem to have dead parents these days, but PCs are a miniscule portion of the overall population.


So ultimately you become an adventurer's dead parents because it's a good retirement plan.

THIS POST. I LIKE IT.

[Snowbluff]

My parents? Mine aren't usually dead, but my characters don't tend to keep in touch. Usually they either want to leave the nest or are sick our their parents.

Spouse, on the other hand... :smalleek:

[Sir Chuckles]

It's quite a small chance, actually. Yes, a lot of PCs seem to have dead parents these days, but PCs are a miniscule portion of the overall population.

To back pedal a little, it is almost never just the parents who die. It's usually a whole village wiped off the map, or a plague damaging a large city, or an entire caravan.

[Coidzor]

My parents? Mine aren't usually dead, but my characters don't tend to keep in touch. Usually they either want to leave the nest or are sick our their parents.

Spouse, on the other hand... :smalleek:

Well, you know, it's pretty normal for spouses to want to kill one another. Actually ACTING on it is the true mark of an adventurer. Or a deranged individual.

It's just lucky there's no refrigerators in D&Dland, or women getting shoved in there might've become a real problem at one time.

[ArqArturo]

To back pedal a little, it is almost never just the parents who die. It's usually a whole village wiped off the map, or a plague damaging a large city, or an entire caravan.

Or a party of evil murderhobos.

[Coidzor]

Or a party of evil murderhobos.

Or, y'know, murderhobos with the wrong questline. XD Or who took the wrong turn at Menzobarrenzan.

[Snowbluff]

Well, you know, it's pretty normal for spouses to want to kill one another. Actually ACTING on it is the true mark of an adventurer. Or a deranged individual. Is there a difference? :smalltongue:


It's just lucky there's no refrigerators in D&Dland, or women getting shoved in there might've become a real problem at one time.

I'm an equal opportunity fridge stuffer.

[Slipperychicken]

Why would anyone in the D&D universes become a parents, knowing that there is a massive chance that they will die a violent premature death to give their child an adventurer's backstory?

To give your kids the chance they need to live like homeless people, find vast wealth, blow it all on weapons, die by falling into a pit trap containing a gelatinous cube, and then have their still-warm remains unceremoniously looted and left to rot by their closest allies. That's every parent's dream, right?


Well, if you die of old age you can never get resurrected. But if you die of good old fashioned bandit-murder, you can hope to get raised some day–presumably by the point that your adventuring children have grown so powerful and bored that they actually have time to remember you, so when you get raised you can also become immortal, like your children are. You get to spend your endless twilight years reaping the benefits' of your progeny's adventuring career and complaining that they never called (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/magicOverview/spellDescriptions.htm#calling) you enough when they were younger. And in the interim, while you're waiting for that to happen, you get to spend your time vacationing on a nice outer plane somewhere.

So ultimately you become an adventurer's dead parents because it's a good retirement plan.

Since when do adult PCs ever shell out gold to resurrect the parents who died in their backstory?

[Rubik]

I had a LE blue psion/constructor who hated his parents -- indeed, his entire clan. Goblins don't react well to those who are born different, and you don't get much more different than a homosexual, ridiculously intelligent, blue-skinned master of the mind. And one who reacts rather violently to being bullied.

[Alex12]

It's just lucky there's no refrigerators in D&Dland, or women getting shoved in there might've become a real problem at one time.
Races of the Dragon, pg 124. Angriz's Chest.

Since when do adult PCs ever shell out gold to resurrect the parents who died in their backstory?
I'm totally going to try doing that now.

Also, the table doesn't give a number, but I bet sacrificing your own child to the dark gods gives you a huge bonus to the Knowledge(religion) check.

[gomipile]

There are only ever four PCs at a time, and their backstory appears out of thin air as it is needed anyway, right?

[Rubik]

There are only ever four PCs at a time, and their backstory appears out of thin air as it is needed anyway, right?Sir Poley is now cemented forever as a cornerstone of D&D mythology.

[Thanatosia]

Strange things D&D has in common with Disney.

[toapat]

It's just lucky there's no refrigerators in D&Dland, or women getting shoved in there might've become a real problem at one time.
Races of the Dragon, pg 124. Angriz's Chest.

Blue Ice chests as well. hell it says right in the material description the typical use of the material is as mundane refridgerators.


Strange things D&D has in common with Disney.

Marvel was only bought by disney. Besides Frozen how many protagonists have both parents dead?



The paladin my avatar is based off of has her parents and sister alive. Granted she plans to brutally execute them on the palace balcony in a couple of decades but they are very much LE tyrants who are the reason shes a paladin. her fiance is in sigil being a Succubus in hiding

[Cowardly Griffo]

Since when do adult PCs ever shell out gold to resurrect the parents who died in their backstory?
I'm totally going to try doing that now.Since now, apparently. :smallcool:

[Chronos]

For what it's worth, my most recent character did have a still-living mother, or at least did when he left home. He even writes to her occasionally. As for his father... Well, he's never met him, but he would probably have eventually become one of the party's villains if the campaign had gone on long enough.

[SimonMoon6]

To back pedal a little, it is almost never just the parents who die. It's usually a whole village wiped off the map, or a plague damaging a large city, or an entire caravan.

Well, in that case, there's no reason not to have kids, unless only villagers with kids are being killed. Everyone's gonna die anyway, so you might as well have kids who might avenge you.

I mean, if you try not having kids, then you just know your next-door neighbors are gonna have kids and that will cause the whole village to be wiped out. The only solution would be to engage in a systematic sterilization of all adults (and slaughter of all existing children) and I hardly think that's practical or desirable.

[sleepyphoenixx]

When you're a successful craftsman or trader you eventually want a heir to inherit your business. Or maybe you're a farmer and need some cheap labor and a plan for retirement.
Then the ungrateful little hellspawn get it in their heads that making a honest living is "boring" and that hard, steady work is "for NPCs" and go out in the world to get themselves killed by orcs or other such things.

Chances are all those "oooh, my parents where brutally murdered by orcs/bandits/drow/other monster" backstories are just wannabe adventurers trying to be cool and dramatic.

[Psyren]

This trope is hardly limited to D&D - almost every RPG has Doomed Hometown (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/DoomedHometown) for instance, and when your parents are good, they tend to die as well. (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/DeceasedParentsAreTheBest) (The bad ones tend to live longer, both for the eventual drama when the hero confronts them and as an impetus for the hero to not refuse the call. (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/RefusalOfTheCall) Fable does this, Zelda does this, both Dragon Ages do this etc.

[RolkFlameraven]

Marvel was only bought by disney. Besides Frozen how many protagonists have both parents dead?

Besides the stuffing of women into refrigerators being something that DC did with Kyle Rayner Green Lantern, did Marvel start that too?

Off hand I can only think of Tarzan, Snow White, Cinderella and Quasimodo with both dead biological parents.

After that if you're a mom in Disney well, good luck, I can only think of three living mothers, and one who dies on screen. I think Mufasa is the only father to do the same.

[toapat]

Besides the stuffing of women into refrigerators being something that DC did with Kyle Rayner Green Lantern, did Marvel start that too?

Both parents dead is common for any superhero and what was being referenced.

However, the note should be to not include "parents died of natural causes after kid reached adulthood a few years back" and only include "parents were killed while as a kid, leaving the now badass orphan behind" going by the first most major marvel heros fit the rule, while going by the second marvel is alot less egregious then DC who seems to have a pre-requisite of Orphaned as kid to become a superhero.

[thatryanguy]

Marvel was only bought by disney. Besides Frozen how many protagonists have both parents dead?


Well, if we count parents that are never seen, Snow White, Cinderella, Belle, Beast, Huey Duey and Louie, Tarzan, Aladdin, Simba, Lilo, Bambi, Tiana, and very few of the rest have Both parents alive.

[Coidzor]

Sir Poley is now cemented forever as a cornerstone of D&D mythology.

Wait, what?

[gomipile]

Wait, what?

Rubik got my reference to Sir Poley's fanfiction.

[Talya]

Se here I am going over applications on a PbP game, and I realize something. I'm half way through page three, and only two characters so far have non-dead parents, one not mentioning family at all and the other only having one dead parent. So it leads me to this question:

Why would anyone in the D&D universes become a parents, knowing that there is a massive chance that they will die a violent premature death to give their child an adventurer's backstory?
Second, how lucrative of a job would a child therapist have in such a world?

/notaseriousthread

I think most D&D settings are primarily populated by the illegitimate children of male adventurers and tavern wenches or prostitutes.

[Dienekes]

Because sex is fun and contraceptives weren't as good back then.

As for therapists, not very lucrative since the alternative therapy is genocide of goblins and kobolds, which is not only free but often even pays the patient.

Out of curiosity, if we're going by strict D&D rules as written, does sex get people pregnant? Because if not, perhaps the parents don't have any choice in the matter and kids just sort of pop up and you just have to pray they're not adventurer material.

[atemu1234]

From a roleplaying perspective, probably the same reason you or I would, the desire to procreate and have a child.

[SimonMoon6]

Out of curiosity, if we're going by strict D&D rules as written, does sex get people pregnant? Because if not, perhaps the parents don't have any choice in the matter and kids just sort of pop up and you just have to pray they're not adventurer material.

Does the stork have an entry in the Monster Manual?

Or is there a cabbage patch magic item related to the bag of beans, perhaps?

[Rubik]

Wait, what?You absolutely, positively, must read this (https://www.fanfiction.net/s/8096183/1/Harry-Potter-and-the-Natural-20), if you haven't already. No excuses.


From a roleplaying perspective, probably the same reason you or I would, the desire to procreate and have a child.So, not one whit whatsoever.

If you're talking to me, anyway.

*Shudder*

[torrasque666]

Out of curiosity, if we're going by strict D&D rules as written, does sex get people pregnant? Because if not, perhaps the parents don't have any choice in the matter and kids just sort of pop up and you just have to pray they're not adventurer material.

Book of Erotic Fantasy is a thing. You never specified WoTC RAW only.

[toapat]

Well, if we count parents that are never seen, Snow White, Cinderella, Belle, Beast, Huey Duey and Louie, Tarzan, Aladdin, Simba, Lilo, Bambi, Tiana, and very few of the rest have Both parents alive.

cant count parents that are never seen.

Beast is immortal and so doesnt count

Simbas mom never dies and is seen in the pride under Skarr

Aladdin's mom isnt retconned away and so should be assumed to still be alive.

pretty sure one scene of Lilo and Stitch has Lilo's mom arguing about visitation rights.

[Phelix-Mu]

Well, if you die of old age you can never get resurrected. But if you die of good old fashioned bandit-murder, you can hope to get raised some day–presumably by the point that your adventuring children have grown so powerful and bored that they actually have time to remember you, so when you get raised you can also become immortal, like your children are. You get to spend your endless twilight years reaping the benefits' of your progeny's adventuring career and complaining that they never called (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/magicOverview/spellDescriptions.htm#calling) you enough when they were younger. And in the interim, while you're waiting for that to happen, you get to spend your time vacationing on a nice outer plane somewhere.

So ultimately you become an adventurer's dead parents because it's a good retirement plan.

I am going to have to add this to the chapter in my head on Commoner optimization. This is possibly the best way to optimize commoner that I've heard lately, and certainly the one that involves the least resources/chickens/Orcus.

As for a more serious reply for a non-serious thread, I think that this trope/meme/trend is overdone. I actually like having loved ones/parents/etc around so the DM can screw with them. At least for my good-aligned characters, having close relationships is usually part of their character, and thus typically an area for the evil bastards in the campaign to muck around with, and I'm fine with that (as I'm generally a mature gamer comfortable with intense emotional stuff). What's the point of being good if I can't protect those dear to me from x or y? (slightly sarcastic there) And personal subplot? That's fun for me (and when I DM I love to tailor plot to the characters, to give them vested interest and so forth...makes the game feel less impersonal, imho).

So I personally don't understand why people want to kill off their character's family in their backstory. It's a good motivational aspect, to be sure, but rather rote and cliche. Especially what with all the aforementioned video games that have main characters that have exactly this thing going on.

[nedz]

I've just started playing in one game where everyone had character backgrounds with family etc. — first thing that happens is a Volcano destroys the city, well actually several islands too, a la Krakatoa.

I seem to recall one campaign I ran which I started by destroying the PCs home village in a plague — the PCs were the only survivors. I even guilt tripped the Cleric into help spread the plague.

PC's parents are just not meant to be.

[Telonius]

Raising a child successfully in a D&D environment has got to be something like a CR 40 encounter. Yeah, high risk, but the XP reward would be massive.

[torrasque666]

cant count parents that are never seen.

Beast is immortal and so doesnt count

...

pretty sure one scene of Lilo and Stitch has Lilo's mom arguing about visitation rights.

Beast is in no way immortal, either physically or chronologically. He had until his 21st birthday to find love or die, and he nearly dies from a stab wound.

They explicitly say that Lilo and Nani's(who you probably mis-remembered as her mom) parents are dead.

[Telonius]

Penny, from "The Rescuers," is an orphan. So is Pete from "Pete's Dragon." (Live action/animated mix, but Disney).

EDIT: Almost forgot a big one - Arthur, from Sword in the Stone.

[lytokk]

For some reason, this whole thread gave me an amusing thought, Kid adventures to find a way to bring parent back from the dead. Kid only finds a druid who reincarnates parent. Parent is now younger than kid. Cycle continues for centuries, so long as neither of them ever die of old age, with a pact to kill the other if it looks like death by old age is inevitable.

[SVentura77]

I guess my experience turns the theme back on itself a little bit. Instead of becoming an adventurer because the parents had died, the party became parents because they had killed the previously existing parents...

The druid in my campaign became a parent out of pity. The party massacred a group of grimlocks while adventuring only to find that the grimlocks were protecting a nest filled with infant grimlocks.

Every party member grabbed one to save it from starvation, though most were lost fairly quickly as the NE wizard convinced the others to let him hold their children. He ended up using many of them for trap discovery.

However, the druid did fairly well for quite some time raising the little meat eating monster. She even picked up an ioun stone for him so as to not have to feed him and kept prestidigation prepped for poopy diapers.

That all ended rather poorly one day when she tried (poorly) to use some dynamite in close quarters while the baby was strapped to her back. She survived the resulting blast; the little monster-baby did not. I guess it all worked out since she now has a rotting grimlock baby strapped to her back that she treats (due to her grief) as if it was alive, thus hastening her spiral into madness.

So to answer the original question: People become parents in D&D so that DM's can twist their good intentions into evil.

[Slipperychicken]

Raising a child successfully in a D&D environment has got to be something like a CR 40 encounter. Yeah, high risk, but the XP reward would be massive.

If we judge encounters by the amount of daily resources it consumes, then raising a kid to be 18 years old would be like 6,750 CR-appropriate encounters.

[bulbaquil]

1. Not everyone is an adventurer. In fact, all things considered, only a tiny fraction of the population is.

2. It's normal for parents of non-adventurers to get killed/captured/etc. through things like wars, disease, plagues, bandits, raiders, slavers, unjust criminal accusations, etc.

3. The causality works the other way. The trope is that you become an adventurer because your parents died. You generally do not raise your kids expecting them to become adventurers. Non-parents are equally as susceptible to all the things listed in Point 2 - they just don't leave behind any children to go adventuring in vengeance of their deaths - so you might as well have kids if you were going to do so anyway.

4. The goddess of fertility demands you have children. Perhaps it's sinful not to marry and have children - do you really want to risk your immortal soul just on the off chance that your kids are destined to become adventurers?

5. The king demands you have children. We need more soldiers, producers, and taxpayers, y'know; it's your duty as a loyal subject to the crown. He thus decrees abortion and contraception, whether magical or mundane, whether safe or unsafe, illegal.

6. Parents of PCs are NPCs, and as such tend to be genre-blind. They don't know they're in a "high fantasy RPG setting"; they just know they're in Golarion or Faerun or what have you, the same as you live on Earth. Unless you've actually experienced it, these tales of adventurers saving the world from epic evils are... just tales the bard spins on Friday nights, effectively fiction as much as they are in the real world.

7. People like having sex. Condoms break. Prophylactics fail. The GM rolled a natural 100 on the fertility check and "you're having kids no matter what."

8. School? What's that? College tuition? What's that? Child labor laws? What are those? After infancy and toddlerhood, children tend to be net contributors to the family's income, not detractors therefrom.

[SimonMoon6]

cant count parents that are never seen.

Beast is immortal and so doesnt count

Simbas mom never dies and is seen in the pride under Skarr

Aladdin's mom isnt retconned away and so should be assumed to still be alive.

pretty sure one scene of Lilo and Stitch has Lilo's mom arguing about visitation rights.

And Huey, Dewey, and Louie's parents are definitely in an ambiguous state, with Della Duck having given her children to her brother Donald for as long as the trio's (unnamed and unseen) father remained in the hospital (after the kids hijinks went awry). It's possible that their father died, but not clear. And when Donald was asked if he had a sister, he said "Yes," not "I did but she died," so it's possible that Della Duck is still alive.

[Sith_Happens]

Out of curiosity, if we're going by strict D&D rules as written, does sex get people pregnant? Because if not, perhaps the parents don't have any choice in the matter and kids just sort of pop up and you just have to pray they're not adventurer material.

Sadly, I suspect that this does in fact fall under the "like real life unless otherwise noted" rule.

On the bright side, Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting has a pair of 100% effective contraceptive herbs, and the one for women only costs ~2 copper per day on average.

[Zombulian]

Well, if you die of old age you can never get resurrected. But if you die of good old fashioned bandit-murder, you can hope to get raised some day–presumably by the point that your adventuring children have grown so powerful and bored that they actually have time to remember you, so when you get raised you can also become immortal, like your children are. You get to spend your endless twilight years reaping the benefits' of your progeny's adventuring career and complaining that they never called (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/magicOverview/spellDescriptions.htm#calling) you enough when they were younger. And in the interim, while you're waiting for that to happen, you get to spend your time vacationing on a nice outer plane somewhere.

So ultimately you become an adventurer's dead parents because it's a good retirement plan.

I like this a lot.

[AMFV]

Well for one thing, adventurers are rare, and kids are pretty good at being slower than you if you're both being chased by Orcs or Zombies or what have you.

[Spore]

The answer is OF COURSE because mundane characters who make up for 99% of the population can't cast clones and their age penalties SUCK to stay fighter, rogue or any physical class. Their players (from our or other universes) decide to hook their characters up to provide a fresh generation of 1st level adventurers.

[Coidzor]

You absolutely, positively, must read this (https://www.fanfiction.net/s/8096183/1/Harry-Potter-and-the-Natural-20), if you haven't already. No excuses.

My god... That's amazing. :smallbiggrin:

[Graypairofsocks]

Sadly, I suspect that this does in fact fall under the "like real life unless otherwise noted" rule.

On the bright side, Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting has a pair of 100% effective contraceptive herbs, and the one for women only costs ~2 copper per day on average.

There is also Bestow Curse.

[Rubik]

My god... That's amazing. :smallbiggrin:Tell me something I don't know.

Lots of fantastic fanfics out there.

You just have to find them.

[Vhaidara]

Tell me something I don't know.

Lots of fantastic fanfics out there.

You just have to find them.

I've only had time to read through chapter 2, so I still can't tell if you're omitting blue text or not, but I will give it this:
10/10, better than My Immortal.

[Psyren]

10/10, better than My Immortal.

Isn't that like saying "tastier than pus?" :smalltongue:

[Friv]

Marvel was only bought by disney. Besides Frozen how many protagonists have both parents dead?

You must be joking.



Two Dead Parents
* Snow White
* Cinderella
* Sleeping Beauty
* Penny (The Rescuers)
* King Arthur
* Mowgli
* Aladdin
* The Beast
* Quasimodo
* Tarzan
* Emperor Kuzko
* Milo
* Princess Kida
* Tiana
* Elsa
* Anna

One Dead Parent

* Dumbo
* Bambi [Technically one parent is just absent forever]
* Ariel
* Simba
* Belle
* Jasmine
* Pocahantas
* Mulan
* Jane
* Jim Hawkins
* Lilo

*EDIT* Just saw this:


cant count parents that are never seen.

Beast is immortal and so doesnt count

Simbas mom never dies and is seen in the pride under Skarr

Aladdin's mom isnt retconned away and so should be assumed to still be alive.

pretty sure one scene of Lilo and Stitch has Lilo's mom arguing about visitation rights.

Beast is specifically not immortal - he has to find love by his 21st birthday. Terrible, I know.

Aladdin is specifically listed as an orphan in his opening song, with the line "I'd blame parents except he hasn't got 'em". It eventually transpires that he has one living parent, but his backstory did not include him.

I did not remember the visitation rights line.

[ibtfu]

Your applicants are probably of an age where they want to break free from their parents. What better way to accomplish that than killing them?

[Zombulian]

I've only had time to read through chapter 2, so I still can't tell if you're omitting blue text or not, but I will give it this:
10/10, more attractive than underwear skid-marks.

Fixed for you.

[Daishain]

Out of curiosity, if we're going by strict D&D rules as written, does sex get people pregnant? Because if not, perhaps the parents don't have any choice in the matter and kids just sort of pop up and you just have to pray they're not adventurer material.
References to mating habits are in most of the expanded race descriptions, and pregnancy pops up a few times as well. Barring where magic gets involved (such as the dragon's proclivity to mate and reproduce with EVERYTHING), it is very strongly suggested that reproduction works at least almost exactly as it does in our world. At least in terms of the overt mechanics, who the hell knows what the D&D world uses in place of DNA.

And then theres the BoEF, while it is normally ignored by pretty much everyone, it is an official rulebook. And it pretty directly, and graphically, confirms the above.

[MagpieWench]

1) Sleeping beauty's parents aren't dead, just asleep.

2) none of my current characters started play with dead parents. My CL16 bard killed her own father (it was an accident, he looked like the bbeg, and could not be rez'd due to bbeg's actions). relationship with mother bad due to teenaged rebelliousness which has led to interesting story and a fear of reestablishing relationship.... :-)

My other characters are pretty much "bye! Off to see the world now!"

[Runeclaw]

And then theres the BoEF, while it is normally ignored by pretty much everyone, it is an official rulebook.

It most certainly is not.

[Zombulian]

And then theres the BoEF, while it is normally ignored by pretty much everyone, it is an official rulebook. And it pretty directly, and graphically, confirms the above.

Hahaha no. No it is not. It *is* hilarious though, and worth a read.

[Rubik]

I've only had time to read through chapter 2, so I still can't tell if you're omitting blue text or not, but I will give it this:I omitted blue text, because blue text is not warrented.

Quite a literal statement, meant to be taken as I gave it.


10/10, better than My Immortal.Twilight is better than My Immortal.

And that's terrible. (http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/lex-luthor-took-forty-cakes)