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Here are some ideas about how to give your or your players PC's a better shot at survival.

Can you share any ideas with you fellow gamers too?????

The Family; A Strategy of support for your PC.

In the creation of new RPG PC’s for any game you need to adopt strategies that will lead to your PC’s success in the future. If the average player tries to establish a family dynasty of successful PC’s he/she can soon have a force that will allow for a better survival rate for their favorite PC and family members.

The Family need not all be of one class although historically in Fantasy the favored family classes are fighters, thieves (mafia), or mage stock. This strategy is not fool proof but it will allow the PC to draw other family members into the same games. These PC’s will mutually support each other over others in the group, although each will maintain their own role and role playing style. The family will have its squabbles as all families do, but even estranged family members may come through if death of the family member is the alternative.

It is also useful when the PC is trying to find protection after making strong enemies. If the arch duke is out the kill a PC family member they may think twice it the rest of the family is in high standing or of great power in their area. You don’t kill an arch mages nephew and not expect a few years as a toad (at least) because of it.

To those who say family means squat; I only have to point out that historically humans pass on skills throughout history. In medieval England the class system was repressing system that allowed very little moving up in society; as the family would of course want to keep skills in the family and away from other people. To control a professions access in a society is to form a monopoly of it and charge higher prices as the family works together to keep the costs of their skills high. The Free Masons may be a sample of a group of families that are trying to do just this. Keep it in the family or families to charge higher prices and gain more status.

With a family or families joining together to form an adventuring dynasty they would try to diversify to cover a wide amount of class skill sets. The family (s) will try to cover all the classes: Fighters for melee skills, Clerics for connections with the church, Thieves for spying reconnaissance and assassination, Psionicists to gain mind powers in the family, and finally mages to use the art to further the families overall goals. The mages, clerics, and psionicists will all be in high demand for other adventuring groups as well as the family groups.. The same group can also do spell research and magic item creation to help out other family members in their careers.

The final component you need to master as a role player will be to role play each family member that you are allowed to PC in a game session. This is difficult but hardly impossible for a moderately advanced player. How many of us have role played a missing session members PC when he is absent. Not as he/she would of course, but if you can role play 2 PC’s who says you can’t do 3 or more. Just keep in mind their makeup and skill set and you can do a lot with such a challenge.

This strategy does not mean instant success, but if you have a cousin in your outfit in war you can be sure he will be one of the first ones by your side to help you when you are down.

Player Character Augmentation: Psionic Endowment; Open Your Mind!!

Another sometimes forgotten PC augmentation is the ability to gain a Wild Psionic check at the characters original creation. The extra power that it will give a non-psionic class will always be of a great surprise to those who target the PC with wild psionic talents.

What I had always found disheartening was that such powers were so rarely granted by the dice. You could roll for a year and probably only end up with a few wild psionics. It seems that the game creators felt the same way. In late 1st edition the Dragon Magazine released an article that allowed for the use of Deryni for a PC or NPC race in the game. Part of the psionic skill set was a power known as Psionic Endowment that would activate a set of wild psionics in a PC after their original creation.

As the game evolved the Psionicist Class came about and once again the games creators at the time made sure that there was a way to activate a PC with latent psionic potential. This time the psionic power was set in a class of psionics known as Meta-Psionics in the science known as Psychic Surgery. This once again releases the potentially psionic PC’s latent talent in the form of a Wild Psionics which are randomly rolled for.
Within the science it is labeled as a Special Operation, but it is not listed as an Optional rule although psionics in general may be considered as such by individual DM’s. This means that is games where psionics are a part of the play, and that this skill would conceivably be granted to high level psionicists.

As with all people these NPC’s should be motivated by money, so if the PC can afford to spend a large sum many of such psionicists would be willing to grant the Surgery for those that they find to be acceptable candidates, which may be a personality and alignments type of choice. Also if you have a Psionicist in the family the PC might have access to the power through such relationships.

There is a whole group of psionic creatures in the game so I have always felt it was an integral part of the game. There are races like the illithid that have an entire society based on the use of psionics that they use to enslave lesser races as servants and as food sources in their society. I think that some of these societies might have some recourse to the fact that certain birth abnormalities occur from time to time. The illithid society might have off spring occasionally had innate potential to become psionic but have failed to manifest their powers. They would create a device that could activate their latent psionic skills. Though there are Psionicist Illithids they may not be common for a society that has innate powers. For those who don’t have access to such and individual I think they would create a device that would be able to activate latent psionic powers in their offspring.

I also think that is theoretically possible to use such a device to activate latent psionic talent by the same means. This device might look something like the one below.


Headband of Psionic Endowment: (made of 12 1” squares of ultra illithid skull connected with wires of the purest mithril and each etched with an adamantine rune of power. Each square also has alexandrite gemstones of the finest quality of the stones worth 500gp each. These stones are attuned to grant luck and favor so the device can successfully endow the wearer with Psychic Surgery. The device allows the device wearer to unleash any psionic potential that the PC might latently possess. Even if the PC fails the first wild talent roll they may use the device once per year until they acquire the mind powers later in their career. This power is manifested as a bright white glow that pulsates as the Psychic surgery procedure takes place. The PC is entirely debilitated for 24 hours after the procedure as they become comatose after the 15 minute procedure takes place.

Value: 55,000 gp Experience Value: 7,000

What ideas can you offer the up and coming gamers out there to help their player characters better survive that nasty ol' DM.

Oh wait thats me!!

Later



The riddle of steel???

Pass on the ideas to the next generation!!