I have two questions regarding character motivation

[Jon_Dahl]

Why so many adventurers are orphans, but so few aim to raise enough money to pay for two True Resurrections?
Why those who have living parents never want to buy anything nice for their parents (https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/football/article-6241313/Manchester-City-starlet-Phil-Foden-buys-new-2m-home-mum.html)?

[Crake]

Why so many adventurers are orphans, but so few aim to raise enough money to pay for two True Resurrections?
Why those who have living parents never want to buy anything nice for their parents (https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/football/article-6241313/Manchester-City-starlet-Phil-Foden-buys-new-2m-home-mum.html)?

Well, to the first question, presumably because the afterlife is probably quite nice where the parents are, or simply because, if they grew up as orphans, they likely don't have that strong a connection to their parents.

To the second question, that seems to just be your table, my players buy things for their NPC families all the time.

[Psychoalpha]

I'm going to chalk it up to other DMs being so stingy with rewards, either in general or because they're terrified going over WBL is going to drastically unbalance their games (lol), so having extra wealth for non-adventuring things is pretty rare?

That's just the impression I get from some of these threads.

Though for the first question, another answer is: The same reason people choose to play characters with scars or disfigurements despite... you know, magic being a thing. If you resurrect your parents you're not playing an orphan anymore.

For my part, I rarely lean into family stuff for my characters. They're either alive and well somewhere distant, or they lived a full life and went on to their afterlife in the natural course of things and probably wouldn't want to return so my character doesn't give it much thought. I'm sure it says nothing about my RL relationships with my family. ;)

[Cygnia]

More often than not on my end, my character's parents are usually bad guys I'm fighting against in some way.

[MaxiDuRaritry]

A lot of adventurers are orphans because it's a very popular trope. It explains why the characters are out on their own instead of caring/working for their families.

A lot of adventurers stay orphans because it's hard to take one's family hostage if they are already dead. That, and there're time limits to resurrection magics, as well as limitations on bringing them back based on how they died, so resurrections, especially the ones available in the early/mid game, can't be used. And the later ones tend to be very expensive.

[Quertus]

Why do orphans never resurrect their dead parents? To answer that question, ask why the player made them orphans in the first place. Whatever your answer (so that the GM wouldn't have family to use against them, because they want to play an orphan), see if resurrecting their parents wouldn't invalidate their reasons.

Once you've ruled that out, there are other possibilities. In Placia - one of my custom campaign worlds, and the home world of Quertus (my signature academia mage for whom this account is named) and several other of my PCs - orphans become wards of the state, and are likely to receive placement in Imperial training universities. Like if Hogwarts had a built-in orphanage. To receive Imperial training on Placia, the easiest ways are to be talented, be wealthy/nobility, or to be an orphan.

Depending on when they died, and how long it is until the PC gains Resurrection powers, they might have grown accustomed to and accepted the loss of their parents - or might not have really known their patients in the first place.

Or maybe the player just doesn't believe in Resurrection, feels that it cheapens death. And Death likely does not take kindly to being cheapened. :smallamused:

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Why do PCs not buy nice things for their living relatives? I mean, mine do all the time. My 20th level character will send a Dragon corpse/skeleton back to their fledgling Necromancer younger siblings all the time. And you should see all the artifacts and "leftover items" Quertus has passed along to his kin when I played them. :smallwink:

[Fizban]

Because unless your DM considers parts of the PCs backstories as primarily the player's realm and won't be messing with them unless given permission, any sort of parents or family or friends are considered a liability. The only character I have full control of is the one I'm playing, and I'd rather not have other characters I write being yanked around, so why bother?

But on the subject of money- how many people write their characters with any measurable endpoint in mind? Unless you know what level the DM is ending the campaign at and then synchronize your goals with that, a defined goal means that either you meet your goal before the campaign is done and then have no reason to finish it, or you finish the campaign and you haven't met your goal. Neither is satisfying. You can plan that after your goal is met you'll continue with the rest of the party because loyalty/duty/whatever, but that can all fall apart when everyone else is on their third new character and they're all mercenaries you don't actually care about and there's clearly an unlimited supply of replacements so why should you stick around?

From an in-world perspective, any orphan that has managed to survive and thrive well enough to become an elite PC-classed adventurer, has demonstrated that they've sufficiently got over being an orphan. Surviving as an adventurer requires being in the now, and essentially requires investment of 100% of your profits to continue (as long as the DM is moving to higher level challenges- an adventurer that stops seeking higher level foes is effectively retired).

[Quertus]

But on the subject of money- how many people write their characters with any measurable endpoint in mind? Unless you know what level the DM is ending the campaign at and then synchronize your goals with that, a defined goal means that either you meet your goal before the campaign is done and then have no reason to finish it, or you finish the campaign and you haven't met your goal. Neither is satisfying. You can plan that after your goal is met you'll continue with the rest of the party because loyalty/duty/whatever, but that can all fall apart when everyone else is on their third new character and they're all mercenaries you don't actually care about and there's clearly an unlimited supply of replacements so why should you stick around?

This sounds like a good summary of why I really don't get why many people so tightly bind characters to campaigns. I strongly believe in characters having motives - as many as the Content allows. But the timing on achieving these goals vs the ending of a campaign are rarely in sync (barring contrivance). So why would you choose the unsatisfying answer of tying a character to a particular campaign, when their "run" is likely not exactly that length?

[King of Nowhere]

At my table we have a player that builds characters with a specific objective.
Problem is, once he fulfills that goal, he has no drive anymore with that character.
He changed two characters so far, and he'd like to change again. we asked him not to because the rest of the party has been very stable and it's become very tightly knit, and it was getting harder and harder to insert new characters without breaking immersion.

I prefer to have some nebulous goal that can never be reached completely. My monk is essentially insecure and fights to prove his worth to himself. This way i ensured that he always have a drive to adventure, until i decide otherwise.



And you should see all the artifacts and "leftover items" Quertus has passed along to his kin when I played them. :smallwink:

"Dear mum, merry christmas!"
I'm gifting you this +3 full plate and +4 parasite bane mace. I'm sure you'll find them useful if you have another roach infestation"

[Particle_Man]

Some campaigns are pressure cookers. Like you would love to help, or even spend time with, your parents, but you have to save the country/world/plane from an imminent threat right now, and when that one is dealt with, there is another imminent threat, and another, and another, etc. It is why some adventurers start at level 1 at age 16 and become epic by age 17. :smallbiggrin:

[GrayDeath]

Well, as most of my char5acters are not Orphans (2 exceptions were a Warforged in a Setting where all people able to create themw ere dead, so kind of, and an Outsuder from a specific palce that simply was no longer accesible), Ic ant answer that from personal experience.

But ing eneral: Too little time, dont want their enemies to have leverage, simply dont KNOW who their aprents are/were come to mind.

[sleepyphoenixx]

Why so many adventurers are orphans, but so few aim to raise enough money to pay for two True Resurrections?
Why those who have living parents never want to buy anything nice for their parents (https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/football/article-6241313/Manchester-City-starlet-Phil-Foden-buys-new-2m-home-mum.html)?

Aside from the issues with resurrections already mentioned there's also the fact that it'd probably take most adventurers years to earn enough money to buy True Resurrection(s).
By that time their parents very well may not want to come back, no matter the circumstances of their death. The world has moved on, their kid is clearly doing well for him- or herself and they've probably gotten pretty comfy in their afterlife, assuming they haven't already been assimilated into the plane.

As for buying your parents nice things assuming that they're not adventurers themselves any reasonable gifts would be trivial expenses for a reasonably high level adventurer.
Even a very nice house and decades of paying a handful of servants don't match the cost for a good suit of mid-level magical armor or a mid-tier magical item.
They don't exactly need +5 armor or spellbooks or whatever and giving them anything too valuable would just make them targets for thieves or worse. Not to mention that those things (or the gold from selling them) is probably better used on keeping their child alive instead of buying them things they don't need.

Sure, if you grew up in the slums, your family are somehow still alive, your relationship with them is good and they aren't too proud to take money from you you may buy them a nice little house once you've made it, but that's a lot of if's.

The way i see it death would be treated pretty differently when you know there's an afterlife and it's reasonably pleasant for most people who don't go out of their way to be evil, perhaps even preferable to the standard of living in your normal D&D world.
The only people who'd want to be raised would be the ones who feel like they still have some business to finish before moving on and those whose choices condemn them to one of the less pleasant afterlifes.
The former will probably lose that desire once enough time has passed and the latter likely don't have anyone who'd want to rez them. Or that they'd want to be rezzed by, depending on the unpleasantness of their afterlife.

[Quertus]

The only people who'd want to be raised would be the ones who feel like they still have some business to finish before moving on and those whose choices condemn them to one of the less pleasant afterlifes.
The former will probably lose that desire once enough time has passed and the latter likely don't have anyone who'd want to rez them. Or that they'd want to be rezzed by, depending on the unpleasantness of their afterlife.

The former - if they really cared - would res themselves as ghosts.

Do note that, in D&D, the latter constitutes roughly half the populous.

[sleepyphoenixx]

The former - if they really cared - would res themselves as ghosts.
There has to be more to becoming a ghost than that.
Perhaps a combination of a sense of duty/responsibility and willpower that most people simply don't have, but there has to be something.
If anyone who cared about something in life could come back as a ghost just by wanting to the world would be full of them.


Do note that, in D&D, the latter constitutes roughly half the populous.
Not really. Just because most evil afterlives aren't what good people think of as pleasant doesn't mean that evil people may not be quite content in them. Or at least not less so than they were in life.
The best example i can think of would be FR's Umberlee - yes, her afterlife is a pirate-themed hive of scum and villainy, but i imagine most of her worshippers quite like it that way.

Imo the people who are really desperate to be rezzed are the ones who somehow offended their god, those who lost their soul in some kind of infernal bargain and in FR the faithless (who, iirc, can only be rezzed before Kelemvor condemns them to the wall, so they really can't afford to be picky).

Any other evil people have to consider that whoever tries to bring them back may well be worse than whatever afterlife they're in, especially with them owing their benefactor the costs of doing so.
There may be exceptions - lawful evil or neutral evil beings may have loyal friends or followers who care enough to bring them back - but i figure they're just that: exceptions.
In most cases anyone who'd be in a position to do so is likely also in a position to benefit from their demise and, being evil, would have no problem doing so.