Developing an NPC

[ZeroSpace]

I've got an NPC mostly statted up that I want to use as a villain, however I want to make said character have some traits that would make him seem like a tragic villain. The main aspect of his stats that factor into his persona is his levels in Ur-Priest. My backstory thus far is that he lost someone close to him (wife, for example) and when he tried to have that person raised, the ritual failed spectacularly. Not only did the spell fail, but the holy symbol of the priest casting the spell suddenly exploded, the shrapnel killing the priest as well as disfiguring the npc's face. He viewed this as the gods being so offended by the npc's desire to bring said person back, that not only did they disallow the spell, but they killed the priest, and scarred the npc's face just to punctuate their displeasure. At that point, his psyche snapped, and he started down his new path of stealing magic from the gods as a show of defiance and vengeance.

Some details for the exact campaign I'm developing him for; all the gods save one have been destroyed, and an entity comparable to gods seeks to destroy all existence. The priests holy symbol exploded as a result of magical backlash, due to attempting a powerful divine spell as the god was suddenly killed.

I'm still working on this characters motivation and goals; I'm asking for some ideas on how to either make him as a character more tragic, or ways to actually show this side of him.

Edit: For what it's worth, the build stub for this character is Duskblade8/UrPriest2/MysticTheurge5.

[Garryl]

I have to wonder how many other priests died from spontaneous holy symbol combustion that day. In a world with any reasonable population, it should be quite a few. Don't mind me, just running some numbers for the fun of it.

(click to show/hide)

14400 rounds/day
Say, about 2% of the population is a divine spellcaster of some sort able to cast divine spells.
Assume 3 spells cast/day/caster, on average. It's probably a lot higher, since that's only 50% of the spells of a 1st-level Cleric.
Each spell counts for 1 round.

#casters exploded/total world population = 0.02 casters/person * 3 spells/caster/day * 1/14400 days/round * 1 round
   = 1/240000 casters exploded/person in the world

A population of 1 million should have about 4 exploded priests on average.

[ksbsnowowl]

But garryl, how many of the would-be priests in the world instead still worship their dead gods?  3.5 has methods to do so.  Your numbers only work straight up if all the clerics in the world worship the only remaining god. (Which may be true; depends how long it has taken for all the other gods to have been killed.) And presumably it was only "powerful" spells that could cause backlash.  Perhaps that means 4th level spells and higher?  Maybe only resurrection magic?

Not a bad analysis to start; it just has too many assumptions.

Zerospace, how emotionally/interactionally broken is the ur-priest character?  One place to look in D&D lore for inspiration is Strahd von Zarovich from "Expedition to Castle Ravenloft."  Has he become a recluse like Strahd?  Or has his hatred lead him to seek out servants of the remaining god?  (If I am understanding you correctly, the god that died, thus causing the holy symbol explosion was the second-to-last good god, and one final one still remains [else wise, where is the ur-priest stealing his spells from?])

[ZeroSpace]

Well ksbsnowowl, the god that caused the holy symbol explosion was not the second to last god. Well... sort of.

To keep it short, the pseudo-god was released from a prison by some followers, who are the typical crazy cultists. The PG then began destroying the gods in attempt to sunder the fabric of reality. At first the gods were only destroyed one at a time, but after a few were gone the rest realized what was happening. Some went off on their own to slay PG, but failed. Eventually it got down to the last third of the pantheon, minus the one survivor in the present, who made an attempt to seal PG, at the cost of their own lives. The holy symbol god was in that last batch that died.

As for where the urpriest draws his spells from... I was thinking of having him draw from the dead gods. To him, he sees himself as having been wronged by the gods; he sees the death of the gods as karma, on a deific scale. They wronged him, and now they've paid the price. The fact that he is now using their powers to cast down what is left of what they stood for is one final slight against them.


...You know? I think just talking this out has helped me flesh the character out a little. Because now he's striking me as being quite badly unhinged.

I think I want there to still be some shred of sense and good left in him, just enough so that if say there's a paladin or some such in the group, they may be tempted to try and redeem him.

I will admit that I'm still not 100% on the details here. Just working out ideas.

And garryl, it would take more than just some random orison to trigger the symbol kaboom. Just enough to make it so that he would be more or less unique in his holy symbol-acne. Regardless, said Holy Symbol-Acne will be his unholy symbol of urpriestness, as it were.

[ksbsnowowl]

Nothing more to add right now, but just wanted to say it sounds cool.

[Shadowknight12]

As a random bit of fluff, play up the scar thing. Give him a wand of Disguise Self (or Alter Self, or ranks in Disguise) to make sure he never reveals his true face to anybody. Another bit of fluff can be diamonds, since those are the key components of all resurrection spells, so he might loathe the sight of diamonds (especially if the explosion also blew diamonds onto him as shrapnel).

His calling card could be frequent use of Desecrate, Unhallow and Dispel Magic to get rid of the few (and rapidly dwindling) Hallowed and Consecrated areas in the game world.

[phaedrusxy]

Another bit of fluff can be diamonds, since those are the key components of all resurrection spells, so he might loathe the sight of diamonds (especially if the explosion also blew diamonds onto him as shrapnel).

This sounds awesome.
Remember this guy?

[Shadowknight12]

This sounds awesome.
Remember this guy?

Thanks!

And that's the guy! I had him in mind while I was writing that, where was he from? I kept racking my head trying to remember where I'd seen him. He was a villain in a cheesy action movie, wasn't he? One with Steven Seagal or Val Kilmer?

[ksbsnowowl]

He's the villain from one of the James Bond movies... forget which one, but it was one of the Brosnan ones. (Die Another Day?)

[Shadowknight12]

Oh, yeah, that's true. It was the silly one with Halle Berry the ice palace I'd love to live in.

[ZeroSpace]

Thank you internet, thank you. Now whenever I use the NPC, I'll be reminded of that god-awful 007 movie.   

Edit: Does anyone have a suggestion for what to name the guy? Naming NPCs/cities/whatever has always been a weakness of mine, and I frequently make use of name generators when I can.

[Elevevated Beat]

Do you like your names to have a special meaning with relation to the character?

Examples

• Cietfelud (excluding the marks above letters) is a character. Her main schtick in the story is as a deceitful so and so. Her name is an anagram of said trait.
• Aquila (latin for "of, or like, an eagle). This particular character has aquiline features, and is his kingdom's avian expert.

Or are you fine with just cool sounding names?

[Shadowknight12]

A few suggestions (mix and match as you please):

Syrath the Godthief (formerly Syrath Darhvan).

Ivnan Wrathborn (formerly Ivnan of [A City In Your Campaign]).

Uriel Godbane (formerly Uriel Kalaris).

Tharus the Unmaker (formerly Tharus Smithson).

Garad Durresh.

I went for phonetics more than meaning.

[Elevevated Beat]

As Shadowknight12 has done, titles or compounding words after the name are a good way to spice it up a bit.

I've created a few characters that are part of a sect known as the Crimson Prophets. Each of the high ranking members have something along the lines of "of the Crimson Earth" after their names. (Similar to .hack//sign's "of the Azure Sky" and "of the Azure Sea" characters)

You may not even have to have the typical naming style for this guy.
Orisini style names (Raymond E Feist's books) like Elks Call at Dawn, or Laughter in His Eyes, or Talon of the Silver Hawk are different and, imo, pretty cool if they're used judiciously.

Does he have a title that he prefers people to use when addressing him? That can impact what type of name he has as some names will sound better with certain titles than others.

[ZeroSpace]

Well, I do already have a title ready for the npc; Knight-Heretic of the Devourer ( the pseudo-god). I'm looking for an actual name for the npc, something to refer to him by. And no, the name doesn't need to be particularly symbolic or anything, nor even very impressive itself, as his title will be doing that.

Edit: Elevevated Beat, my NPC will typically only use his title when it's time to throw down. I like the earlier idea of using a hat of disguise to conceal his features, and between that and having a decent Bluff score, means he doesn't need to reveal his allegiances unless he wants to. 90% of the time he will just go by, for example, Dave, as opposed to Dave, Knight-Heretic of the Devourer.

[Elevevated Beat]

This may be a PITA to get across what I mean, but... What kind of name would he have? Regionally and/or racially. Asian, English, Russian, etc. Using DnD regions/races though.

It may be going into more detail than you would generally do, but I figured that seeing as you're asking the boards, this character may have a particular attachment to you for w/e reason.
Here's some off the top of my head.

Accerra, Al-Khidr, Bosanko, Cole, Haakon, Hrutt, Jacobus, Kazuya, Kelstar, Malik, Shanmugam, Trane, Zussino.

[ksbsnowowl]

Give him a good, strong Viking name!