Cad Goleór Game Interest Check

[Nomadic]

Ghostman what are your thoughts for your character? Because I see ALOT of overlap between our skills and our personalities and I don't want us to be fighting over the same tasks/roles.

[Ghostman]

We do seem to come up with similar characters :P

I see Laidir as a kind of aggressive diplomat, leaning on intimidation and appealing to people's sense of honor more than sucking up to them. Favours straight-forward approach to things over trickery or stealth. In battles he might switch between a supportive role (ie. using bardic performance, spells and ranged attacks) and going toe to toe with foes, depending on situation.

[Nomadic]

We do seem to come up with similar characters :P

I see Laidir as a kind of aggressive diplomat, leaning on intimidation and appealing to people's sense of honor more than sucking up to them. Favours straight-forward approach to things over trickery or stealth. In battles he might switch between a supportive role (ie. using bardic performance, spells and ranged attacks) and going toe to toe with foes, depending on situation.

Haha that's pretty much Robhartach, the only difference being that you're guy also can play a supportive role. Robhartach is headstrong, brave, and persuasive and I was hoping to play the sort of informal group leader with him using his presence and sense of bravery to get people to see things his way. Mechanics wise I plan on playing him as the frontline warrior with a focus on dual-wielding a shield (shield bash) and blunt weapon. So the question is what do you want to do here? I really don't want one or the other of us to overshadow the other. If it was just stats we could work around that by using our skills in different ways but it also seems that character personalities are also identical which means there's serious potential for meta-conflict between us and I don't want that.

[Steerpike]

It could lead to a very interesting dynamic as the two strong-headed personalities vie for leadership while my own character probably ignores them.  Will make for a challenging but potentially fascinating situation.

[Seraph]

Mechanics wise I plan on playing him as the frontline warrior with a focus on dual-wielding a shield (shield bash) and blunt weapon.

Interestingly, in Irish Celtic lore, there was a feat of arms sometimes known as Shield-Rim (or something to that effect) where you used a shield with a blade on its edge, and attacked with it.  I think it's more or less covered by the D&D/Pathfinder feats for attacking with shields, but it's worth knowing, and later on, if you like, it might be possible to acquire such a shield for those purposes.

[Nomadic]

It could lead to a very interesting dynamic as the two strong-headed personalities vie for leadership while my own character probably ignores them.  Will make for a challenging but potentially fascinating situation.

I'd love that, what I was concerned about is metagaming conflict since we have two characters filling the exact same slot almost to the point of being clones and that does worry me. I'd like Ghostman's take on it though. If he really wants to keep his character the same I'm gonna need to start over from scratch with a new character which is fine but I need to know.

Oh and SH that sounds pretty dang cool. Actually if ghost really wants to keep his character the same I may rework mine to be even more in line with shield based combat but we'll see.

Edit: ghostman if you want to we can see about making this work but me and you are gonna want to talk about it so we have an idea of how we're going to work our characters together so that they compliment each other instead of crashing into each other. Stat wise perhaps you or I could slightly alter our characters. Alternatively fluff wise we can think about how our characters act differently from each other. I just think it'd be better if we didn't have clone characters... Well unless you want to rework our backstories so we're actually identical twins. That would be hilarious.

Actually I'm really liking that last idea. Would you be averse to a bit of background reworking between me and you so that our characters actually are twin brothers?

[Steerpike]

The only problem with that seems to be the very cool time-travel element of Ghostman's backstory.  What if Laidir was an ancestor of Robhartach, i.e. Robhartach is technically like his great-great-great-grand nephew or something?  Just throwing out ideas, feel free to totally discard them!

[Nomadic]

The only problem with that seems to be the very cool time-travel element of Ghostman's backstory.  What if Laidir was an ancestor of Robhartach, i.e. Robhartach is technically like his great-great-great-grand nephew or something?  Just throwing out ideas, feel free to totally discard them!

That's actually rather amusing, have them meet for the first time and realize how eerily similar they look and act. Say that Laidir is actually Robhartach's great great great uncle or something to that effect. Basically Laidir's oldest brother is Robhartach's great great grandfather and he happened to own an iron brooch with an otter on it, a mark of their family passed down for generations. When Laidir sees the brooch being worn by Robhartach he's going to flip.

[Steerpike]

Heck Laidir is 15; that's hardly too young to be sexually active in an iron age Celtic culture, and as far as I know there wasn't a lot of Puritanism surrounding pre-marital sex.  Robhartach could thus conceivably be Laidir's descendant.  All this is, of course, totally up to Ghostman and you...

[Seraph]

The only problem with that seems to be the very cool time-travel element of Ghostman's backstory.  What if Laidir was an ancestor of Robhartach, i.e. Robhartach is technically like his great-great-great-grand nephew or something?  Just throwing out ideas, feel free to totally discard them!

It's not QUITE time travel, but near enough.  Celtic tales about travels to the Otherworld frequently involve time flowing differently.  Centuries can pass in what feels like days.  Alternately, on some rare occasions, they can spend years in the Otherworld, and find that no time at all has passed at home.  Everything from chasing at full speed after a figure that seems to be walking slowly, but never gaining any ground, to dancing in a faerie circle, to waking to find that everyone you know has been dead for 100 years are classic to faerie stories.

[Ghostman]

Say that Laidir is actually Robhartach's great great great uncle or something to that effect. Basically Laidir's oldest brother is Robhartach's great great grandfather and he happened to own an iron brooch with an otter on it, a mark of their family passed down for generations. When Laidir sees the brooch being worn by Robhartach he's going to flip.

I like this idea! Although we'd need to change things so that they haven't been living in the same village for years, if we want to play out their first encounter in game.

Heck Laidir is 15; that's hardly too young to be sexually active in an iron age Celtic culture, and as far as I know there wasn't a lot of Puritanism surrounding pre-marital sex.  Robhartach could thus conceivably be Laidir's descendant.

He is intended to be 15 at the game's start but was much younger when he fast-forwarded in time. I could change this part of his background, but it would then necessitate other revisions. He would have to have been trained as a bard before the leap through time, which undermines the concept of a simple shepherd-boy who acquired talent for the bardic arts & magic via being fairie-touched.

This would make his relationship to Robhartach more interesting and dramatic, though. It's certainly worth considering.

[Steerpike]

Good point about the bardic training and timing.  The time 'jump'/otherworld jaunt could have happened very recently, but then it's harder to justify his bardic skills.

[Nomadic]

Say that Laidir is actually Robhartach's great great great uncle or something to that effect. Basically Laidir's oldest brother is Robhartach's great great grandfather and he happened to own an iron brooch with an otter on it, a mark of their family passed down for generations. When Laidir sees the brooch being worn by Robhartach he's going to flip.

Not at all, Robhartach has been living out in the woods with his master for several years at least. You might have made your way back to the village after he had already left for his apprenticeship. He would only very rarely come into town for anything as that is what his teacher normally does leaving him to tend to the house. It's very possible that they've never met, or even seen each other yet.

[Steerpike]

Since we're discussing how characters will interact and such, I wonder what the relationship with Wyrgan has characteristically been for both both Robhartach and Laidir?  Neither seem to be cruel characters so it seems unlikely they'd bully him, especially considering Laidir is a fair bit older (how old is Robhartach?).

[Nomadic]

Since we're discussing how characters will interact and such, I wonder what the relationship with Wyrgan has characteristically been for both both Robhartach and Laidir?  Neither seem to be cruel characters so it seems unlikely they'd bully him, especially considering Laidir is a fair bit older (how old is Robhartach?).

Robhartach is 12. He probably hasn't known Wyrgan well enough to form an opinion (negative or otherwise) of him as he doesn't go to the village much. If anything he probably would consider Wyrgan a bit odd and disconnected but he's the sort of person that would likely grab someone like Wyrgan by the arm to go have fun whether they wanted to or not. Note that his concept of fun involves climbing trees, sparring and wrestling, and getting into places that he probably shouldn't be (exploring caves, skipping from rock to rock over rapids, sneaking into the larder when the cook isn't looking, etc). As such I imagine the results would be him dragging a strongly protesting Wyrgan into trouble completely oblivious to any insults or hexes Wyrgan happens to hit him with.