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View Full Version : Tips for RPing an 8-year old prodigy warlock NPC?



gadren
2015-07-27, 09:01 PM
So, one possible side quest in a campaign I'm running may have the party coming across a woman and her 8-year-old daughter, who are on the run / in hiding. The girl's father is a warlock and an influential noble who made a deal with the Fey for his power, and promised them his first-born child. The mother found out before it was too late, and took off with the girl. They've tried to go into hiding, but the father and his agents are still looking for them, and staying low-key has become more difficult; the girl has manifested warlock powers, and can't always control them when she gets emotional.

The girl is a young half-elf that has the powers of a 5th level warlock, and has 16 int and 18 cha. I'm trying to decide on a personality for her. She's unnaturally clever for her age, but I don't want to just play her like an adult.

Any thoughts? Tips?

UPDATE:
Some other info that may be useful:
She is 8 in terms of appearance and maturity. (Because she's a half-elf she's actually like 10. Don't worry about that.)
She has not had these powers all her life. She basically gained 5 warlock levels in the past 2 months and I imagine it scares the **** out of her.
The 18 charisma is also new as well (she had 13 about 2 months ago) but she's always had the high int.
She's not a malicious child. In fact, compared to other children she'd been quite the goody-two-shoes.

Oberon Kenobi
2015-07-27, 09:50 PM
If you can, hang out with a kid or three that's around that age for a day. Second best would be to try and remember what third grade was like for you. Either one will serve you better than message board advice (or Hollywood, heavens forfend).

In my experience, kids that age are curious, naive and independent enough to get into trouble, mature enough to have a full set of opinions about things they've been exposed to, too young and lacking in hormones for sadness and anger to be more than fleeting, and too young to think of their parents as people instead of gods and monsters.

Self-preservation is mostly fear of punishment from mom and fear of the monsters under the bed, both of which might be a problem for a girl with 5 PC levels. If she has even a lick of meanness in her, she's going to be scary, because she doesn't have any ethical center of her own yet aside from listening to her parents (if that) and taking care of things she's personally invested in (toys, pets, friends, etc.); forget burning ants with a magnifying glass, she can turn cats and dogs into smoking piles of meat with a flick of her wrist.

'Clever' at that age mostly boils down to an active imagination and picking up skills pretty quickly; complex problem solving and lateral thinking generally requires more experience than they have.

Mr.Sandman
2015-07-27, 09:56 PM
kids that age have no concept of social politeness. Example: She can tell the Paladin and Wizard have a thing for eachother, everyone can, its obvious, but a kid that age would would say something about it without thinking. As she is incredibly intelligent, perhaps have her make some Knowledge checks about the players, learning some semi-secret things, and just bringing them up like it is nothing. Kids can be pretty self centered, her secrets she can keep, probably is being on the run an all, other people's secrets? Not so much.

Sorry for the formatting, posting from a mobile device.

gadren
2015-07-28, 07:12 AM
It's been pointed out to me that half-elves age at 75% of the rate that humans age.
So the girl would probably actually be 10, not that that probably makes much difference.

Lvl 2 Expert
2015-07-28, 07:54 AM
It's been pointed out to me that half-elves age at 75% of the rate that humans age.
So the girl would probably actually be 10, not that that probably makes much difference.

So she's "counted the days" 10 now, and thus developed to the point where a human would be at around 7.5 years into its development? Or is her birth still 8 years ago in which case she'd mentally be 6?

Without having a clear grip on the answer, I'd recommend against that last one. Children that young are a bunch of crybabies, if you'll excuse me the pun. It'd be a bit different in a world of hardship and adventure, but the ones I've met are very much "keep a close eye on them" children. 8 year olds are much more adventurous and less scared of things. They also have much better motor skills and all sorts of other abilities, like a better developed sense of humor and other social antennae. They also are harder to fool. A 6 year old will feel really proud if she figures out that coin wasn't really behind her ear, after the 7th time you pulled the trick, rather sloppily. An 8 year old might see it the first time if your execution is off. All in all most 8 year olds aren't really good at anything yet, but they've got a good set of tools to start learning. 6 year olds are still grappling with the basics: basic motor skills, reading and writing, what's real and what's not, how to treat people (six year olds are often very nice, but they're kind of the same brand of nice to everybody they're not actively scared off or really close with, 8 year olds are much better in figuring out who they like or not, who they pay respect to and who they want to annoy today).

The hard part is, she's level 5. I've been convinced that a level 4 D&D character with typical PC stats is about equal to a real world Olympic athlete (if they are optimized for doing what that athlete does), and usually with a broader set of abilities. Level 5 characters in our world are legends. Newton, Einstein and Hawkins might be level 5 wizards or experts or whatever scientists are in an analogy between our worlds, Genghis "please don't kill me" Khan was a fifth level warlord or something. Almost anyone you'll ever meet is a level 1 or 2 commoner or (in the modern day with our education and stuff) expert (and everyone claiming to be level 2 is bragging and should put his money where his mouth is :smallamused:). If this girl lived in our world, with that level and those stats, she wouldn't have met anyone yet who was even close to her equal in anything she's good at, barring maybe her father if she met him. And she'd know it. She'd probably be unbearable. Imagine that one kid who was convinced he was like a genius or something because his parents kept telling him that and he scored 150 on an IQ test, except this girl can actually walk the walk and is smart enough to know the difference. If the setting you're playing in has higher level characters as a common thing that exists whe's a lot less likely to end up like that.

It gets a bit better if her stats are treated as "this is how they will be when she grows up". Any even mildly realistic 8 year old is not going to have the superhuman force of personality and social skills an 18 in charisma (and whatever skills she has that are attached to it) implies. If you play her as charisma 14 or so she still inspire respect in about every normal person she has a conversation with, but she can still relate to them, although she might seek the company of adults and socially gifted people where she can because the rest of her age group is still giggling about how fun boogers are and how girls are icky (bear with me here, I've only got firsthand experience as an 8 year old boy, not as a girl). Similarly, playing her intelligence as 12 or 13 means she can still come up with any plan any of us could come up with, but it would still allow for child-like gaps in her knowledge and thinking patterns. When she gets emotional, speaks in weird voices and starts throwing spells around, that's when you can play her for her full stats. If she ends up getting older during the campaign maybe let her become the know it all caster she was always meant to become somewhere around age 12 to 14 or so, those people are close enough to adults that you could realistically sell it, especially in a girl who has plenty of experience fending for herself by then.

Crap, this has become a wall of text, hasn't it?

noob
2015-07-28, 08:04 AM
According to dnd the highest level people are commoners but they are not the most powerful ones but there is cities with epic level commoners way more often than cities with anything else at epic level.
In fact if you look the dnd distribution of levels according to the manuals high level commoners are really frequent.

Tiri
2015-07-28, 08:51 AM
too young and lacking in hormones for sadness and anger to be more than fleeting, and too young to think of their parents as people instead of gods and monsters.

I don't think this is true. I remember being both sad and angry for not-inconsiderable periods of time around that age, and most eight-year-olds I know are past thinking of their parents in that way.

gadren
2015-07-28, 04:40 PM
So she's "counted the days" 10 now, and thus developed to the point where a human would be at around 7.5 years into its development? Or is her birth still 8 years ago in which case she'd mentally be 6?
Let's just says she's 8 in mind and body for simplicity sake, despite whatever the chronology is.

(I'm not really sure if half-elf's emotional development is supposed to be as slow as their aging? It's always been one of those odd vague things about long-lived races in 3.5. Are 30-year-old elves as mature and intelligent as me but live in the body of a 4-year old? I always liked 4e's ecology better in that regard, where everyone matures at the same rate until they hit adulthood.)


The hard part is, she's level 5. I've been convinced that a level 4 D&D character with typical PC stats is about equal to a real world Olympic athlete (if they are optimized for doing what that athlete does), and usually with a broader set of abilities. Level 5 characters in our world are legends. Newton, Einstein and Hawkins might be level 5 wizards or experts or whatever scientists are in an analogy between our worlds, Genghis "please don't kill me" Khan was a fifth level warlord or something. Almost anyone you'll ever meet is a level 1 or 2 commoner or (in the modern day with our education and stuff) expert (and everyone claiming to be level 2 is bragging and should put his money where his mouth is :smallamused:). If this girl lived in our world, with that level and those stats, she wouldn't have met anyone yet who was even close to her equal in anything she's good at, barring maybe her father if she met him. And she'd know it. She'd probably be unbearable. Imagine that one kid who was convinced he was like a genius or something because his parents kept telling him that and he scored 150 on an IQ test, except this girl can actually walk the walk and is smart enough to know the difference. If the setting you're playing in has higher level characters as a common thing that exists whe's a lot less likely to end up like that.
In the campaign PC levels are a very common thing. She is already more powerful than the majority of people, but it'd be easy to see there are plenty of people more powerful than her, even for her age. It is also worth noting that she gained those 5 levels and the boost to charisma pretty much all at once in the past couple months, though she was unnaturally smart before that.


It gets a bit better if her stats are treated as "this is how they will be when she grows up". Any even mildly realistic 8 year old is not going to have the superhuman force of personality and social skills an 18 in charisma (and whatever skills she has that are attached to it) implies. If you play her as charisma 14 or so she still inspire respect in about every normal person she has a conversation with, but she can still relate to them, although she might seek the company of adults and socially gifted people where she can because the rest of her age group is still giggling about how fun boogers are and how girls are icky (bear with me here, I've only got firsthand experience as an 8 year old boy, not as a girl). Similarly, playing her intelligence as 12 or 13 means she can still come up with any plan any of us could come up with, but it would still allow for child-like gaps in her knowledge and thinking patterns. When she gets emotional, speaks in weird voices and starts throwing spells around, that's when you can play her for her full stats. If she ends up getting older during the campaign maybe let her become the know it all caster she was always meant to become somewhere around age 12 to 14 or so, those people are close enough to adults that you could realistically sell it, especially in a girl who has plenty of experience fending for herself by then.
Well, for one there are children in the real world who are exceptionally for their age. There were those 8-year-old twins that got into highschool a few years ago that could do calculus and read at a college level. Two, this is a fantasy world, and she has a supernatural boost. She isn't a "realistic 8 year old", she's got powerful magic in her blood. I'm not planning on her putting max ranks in all her social skills and becoming better than the party bard at negations, but her words probably have a bit of fey-enchantment-type suggestion behind them.

That being said, two sets of stats (one for being in a relatively normal state and one in a fury state where all her powers are active) is not a bad suggestion.

Lvl 2 Expert
2015-07-29, 02:04 PM
Well, for one there are children in the real world who are exceptionally for their age. There were those 8-year-old twins that got into highschool a few years ago that could do calculus and read at a college level.

And they're probably unbearable little buggers.

Either that, or I'm just yealous. ;)

A better way to approach it might have been to speculate at what age she sort of would mentally function with boosts like that. It's not so much about being a realistic 8 year old, she's just not going to be a very typical 8 year old. But than again, when were adventurers ever typical normal people?