Café de Nuit

We all love Ravenloft. That's why we are here. Not everyone is able to get a game together, though. And many of us here are the guys who RUN the games, making it even more difficult to actually just sit down and play a fresh character concept. So why don't we share them? That way these character concepts can live and breath outside of the confines of our minds and our penciled in character sheets collecting dust in our boxes in the attics or in some obscure folder buried deep within My Documents. Share with everyone here a character concept, as simple or as polished as you have it, that you always wanted to play, but never got the opportunity to do so.

I'll go first, as I suppose is right. I've always wanted to play a linguist, someone who has devoted their lives to traveling the mists and the Core, going to new and exciting places, and learning every language they can, and even more so, writing them down and teaching them to others. While the concept is pliable for lots of characters, I've had one in mind for a while now.

Omar Bouhakim was a brilliant, and obedient, young man in Phiraz, Pharazia. His intelligence became noticed by his god and king, Diamabel, granted his family permission to send him into the mists to learn and help set up a reliable port for trading with Pharazia. So he travelled, and found himself in Dementlieu, where he enrolled in University and changed his surname to "Desereau", which is High Mordentish for "son of the desert". While still devout to his god and king Diamabel, he wishes to leave the confines of the university and travel the mists to learn more.

I'll throw in with my eternal avatar, Professor Mortimer Wachter, who I tried on two separate occasions but the campaigns didn't take off. Allergic to dust, weak with a sword, and bookish beyond all belief, I thought he would be a fun non-hero-type. I imagined him as a less brawny Indiana Jones, with a knowledge of history that bordered on the amazing. He is not a complete pushover and he has a passionate side that runs deep, particularly for one Port-a-Lucine diva who he believes he lost to the advances of d'Honaire. He has been written up completely in the Malodorous Goat Netbook, if anyone still has that. 2e stats I believe.

I think this is a cool idea, Deewun. I always thought a thread for PCs in our games would be a helpful resource to help populate this world. Consider your linguist stolen!

Strahdsbuddy wrote:I'll throw in with my eternal avatar, Professor Mortimer Wachter, who I tried on two separate occasions but the campaigns didn't take off. Allergic to dust, weak with a sword, and bookish beyond all belief, I thought he would be a fun non-hero-type. I imagined him as a less brawny Indiana Jones, with a knowledge of history that bordered on the amazing. He is not a complete pushover and he has a passionate side that runs deep, particularly for one Port-a-Lucine diva who he believes he lost to the advances of d'Honaire. He has been written up completely in the Malodorous Goat Netbook, if anyone still has that. 2e stats I believe.

I think this is a cool idea, Deewun. I always thought a thread for PCs in our games would be a helpful resource to help populate this world. Consider your linguist stolen!

That's what I was hoping for! One man's never played PC is another man's useful NPC.

I very much like your professor. I loved that in 2nd you could make non-hero characters, with a little bit of thought (and the wonderfully designed thief and later Artiste). Consider him in the banks as well.

In 2nd Edition, Mort was actually a bard with the loremaster kit. In 3rd edition, he was an expert. All of his spells were of the information gathering variety; he had a gun for offense, no need for magic missile!

I actually found 3rd more appealing for the NPC classes. 0-level fighters running all over the place seemed a little silly. WHen I updated House on Gryphon Hill to Pathfinder, I found the townsfolk really popped off the page with their classes, even if it was weird that the shopkeeper had 86 hp!

Marielle Andrukevicz was the party medic in the last campagn; the guy who had played clerics his entire gaming life decided to play a character based on Minsc from Baldur's Gate, and no one felt the need to pick up the mantle. She was a part time GMPC who had a decent backstory, but the only thing my players ever asked her was "Can you heal this for me?"

Born in Dorvinia, Marielle was raised in an Ezran convent and taught by Anchorites of the Port-a-Lucine sect (they are the equivilent of Jesuits, in my campaign). She became an anchorite herself at the age of 17, although she became chastised for her disapproval of the Nevuchar Springs sect, leading her to leave her homeland and search for understanding of the goddess in her own way. She found many allies among the Mordentish sect, and considered them the moral opponents of the Nevuchar Springs sect. In Mordent, she met a group of adventurers and adopted them as her little flock, offering guidance and healing in the name of Ezra. She waited in the town of Kelee, Tepest and did not follow them into the Shadow Rift, from which they have never returned...

Strahdsbuddy wrote:In 2nd Edition, Mort was actually a bard with the loremaster kit. In 3rd edition, he was an expert. All of his spells were of the information gathering variety; he had a gun for offense, no need for magic missile!

I actually found 3rd more appealing for the NPC classes. 0-level fighters running all over the place seemed a little silly. WHen I updated House on Gryphon Hill to Pathfinder, I found the townsfolk really popped off the page with their classes, even if it was weird that the shopkeeper had 86 hp!

Amen to that. See also my rant on NPC levels/classes here. I love 3E NPC classes and the way that with 3E you can build NPCs much more flexibly than in 2E. (BTW why did the shopkeeper have 86hp ?)

I also love converting 2e characters to 3e. Your character Mort, sounds to me as if he could be converted with the Scholar PrC from HoL. Or maybe the Bardic Sage variant from UA ? He reminds me of Theodoric the Book a Ravenloft NPC I converted from a 93 Trading card.


So now finally for two characters still on the sheet:

The first is a still unfinished conversion of a 1992 Trading Card Ravenloft NPC: Killeen the Spy a 2e 11th level elven thief (spy kit) from Falkovnia. The background on the card read: Killeen will never forget the bitter years of slavery forced upon him by the cruel Vlad Drakov of Falkovnia. One dark night he escaped, and he has since made his living by acquiring information for those who will pay him for it. I found the concept of the NPC so interesting: A elven ex-slave from Falkovnia and spymaster for hire who probably goes around in disguise all the time. I can almost picture Alanik Ray, the Great Detective, interacting with him in a delightful story of smoke and mirrors. The conversion came quite naturally to an elf Rog5/Spymaster7 (PrC from Complete Adventurer). Also I gave him the Unseen feat from VRA which just seemed to fit perfectly for him and is an awesome asset for a spy. But as you may well know building characters in 3e can be quite fiddly and I never quite finished his stats. If I ever do I plan to post him to the 3E NPCs thread.

Another great unfinished NPC of mine is a Valachani werepanther who escaped becoming one of Kharkov's Enforcers. He started as a 2E urban ranger and eveloved to a 3E Rog/Rgr/Moonchild(a PrC from Gaz4) with his feats themed to the moon/were motive: Cat's Eyes(Gaz4), Nine Lives(VRA), Lunatic(RLCore). If i ever complete the fiddly bits I'll post him to the 3E NPC thread and call him Catmanjim

Both would also make great PCs imo.

You see my (N)PC ideas appear to be more crunch driven, but it is the theme and story that this crunch evokes that fascinate me.

Again, i D/med all the time, so the majority of my PCs are really NPCs. I had an idea for a creature called Ilion who was a greater broken one and Markov's greatest achievement. He was created from two separate beings: an amazingly rare white lion from the Wildlands and the famous game hunter Markov hired to capture him. After the transformation, Markov took a father's interest in Ilion, teaching him everything he could, and even capturing a Lamordian tutor to fill in where Markov's own intelligence fell short. Ilion had flashbacks constantly from both his lion memory and his human memory, as well as the sedative-free day when they became fused. He hated Markov, but feared him. He stowed away on a supply ship and reached the Core intent on finding his simple homeland again. He kept his furry face and hands hidden under a cowl and gloves and posed as a beggar mostly, though he would pump some people for information on the nameless land he was trying to get back to. People thought he was another Mist-led maniac whose homeland existed only in his own mind.

I had his poetic demise all planned out as well: He finds the Wildlands with the help of a stout ship's captain, yet when he enters the jungle again, his human nature has dampened his lion's senses and he is attacked from behind and overcome. His last sight is of a powerful white lion standing over him; the same cub he had defended from the hunters on the day of his own capture.

The Giamarga wrote: Amen to that. See also my rant on NPC levels/classes here. I love 3E NPC classes and the way that with 3E you can build NPCs much more flexibly than in 2E. (BTW why did the shopkeeper have 86hp ?)

OK, maybe not 86. If you look at the possession lists in I-10, you will see certain villagers statted up as fighters, since the NPC class was nonexistent in 1st Edition and they probably wanted them to be a little tougher to kill for maniacal PCs who just want their equipment back. So when I converted the adventure, I re-rolled all Hit Points as well, using Commoner or Expert as a base class usually.

Parvis Soddenter, a farmer. is Ftr8 with 52 hp in I-10. Sterling Toddberry, the miller, is Ftr9 with 63 hp. Sure I don't want these guys killed, but I believe d10s were used for fighters in 1e, so dialing that back seemed like a good idea. In Pathfinder rules, Parvis becomes Com8 with 26hp and Sterling is Com9 with 27hp (I also rolled the rest of their stats so CON was a factor). Sure their hp was cut in half, but most 1st level adventurers would think twice about starting a bar fight with these two.

There were some npcs i left alone, like anyone that sounded like they might have a reason to have a class other than commoner. I left Tobias Kenkinny as a retired Ftr10 with minor brain damage from years of campaigning (rolled a 3 INT) because it made sense in-story. I always found that random stats were helpful for fleshing out npcs. (She only has 2hp? why is that?)

This is WAY off-topic so I'll stop there. Suffice to say I find NPC classes to be a great tool.

Well, aside from my namesake (who Walked with Halflings many, many years ago...), there are two 'Lofters I've never had a chance to use in tabletop Ravenloft but that I've always had a soft spot for-

Alexander Weathermay- His entire schtick was that he is actually about as old as the Domain of Mordent- one of the first children born after it joined the Demiplane. Catch is, he got lost in the Mists, and has popped out a long time later. This was in part because while I love the feel of Mordent, I made him at a time when I was none too keen on guns in my D&D. Thus, Alexander, who was a Ranger, carried a Composite Longbow around (yeah, it doesn't fit the cultural tone of even the earliest Mordent we've seen, but between False History and aristocratic sensibilities... Yeah), fought with a hanadaxe/dagger combo at close range, and spoke with curiously antiquated diction. The highlight was going to be that after getting his bearings, he would eventually bump into his indirect descendant George.

Just liked the idea of a Mordentish man who was consistently stunned, not by horrors of the night, but by modern marvels.

(I later used a version of him in a Pathfinder campaign- "Rise of the Runelords." About all that survived the transition were the name, character class, and archery)


Up next- a sneaky, sneaky multiclass- the twins Celeste and Angelique Delacroix. Well-born young women from Dementlieu, they made a habit of pretending to be a single person (Celeste). While Celeste was a social-skill monstrosity of an Aristocrat (Pathfinder finally got me out of 2E and into the semi-modern world), Angelique was a Rogue with a hefty dosage of deception skills and a nasty hand with a dagger. They were a fun concept, but I don;t know that I could get more than one good story out of them...

I've only been a player in Ravenloft a handful of time, and aside from a pregen character at a con, always in PBEM campaigns, none of which went very far before sputtering out. So here are two of my PCs from PBEMs that never got played for more than a few encounters each:


Stropa Dridakov (A 2e mortu Arcanist, made just after I devoured VRGttV, lvl 1 for one campaign, lvl 8 for another)
Stropa was once a member of the Canjar tribe of the Manusa Vistani. He traveled the mists, amazed and frightened the giorgios, and like most vistani, had a haughty disdain for those he saw as lesser than The People. Like all Canjar, he was a wizard, but he also had a more than usual curiosity about the world around him. While most vistani simply accepted the Lands of the Mists as their travelling grounds, that wasn't enough for Stropa, he was compelled to delve into the very nature of the Land, and took up the practice of the arcanist, constantly trying to learn about the Mists, the Land, and it's inhabitants.

Stropa was contantly berated for this by his older brother, Gavren. Gavren often warned him, "Those who look too far into the Mist find it hard to look back out of them." Stropa loved his brother very much, and would try to oblige him, but his curiosity was too much for him, and he would resume his studies whenever he thought Gavren would not notice.

During the tribe's journey through Nova Vaasa, a giorgia named Tyece came to Stropa's camp, and was offered shelter. She was a priestess of some giorgio religion, and Stropa paid her little mind, although he found her wooden staff quite interesting, for it was covered with many ancient runes, which he thought might pertain to his studies. Gavren however seemed inexplicably drawn to this woman, and he conversed with her at length. In the morning, Gavren announced that Tyece was on her way to Mordentshire where she lived, as the tribe was, and he had agreed to let her accompany them. The Raunie, Madame Katya mildly scolded Gavren for speaking for the tribe, but allowed his decision to stand.

On the journey, Gavren and Tyece grew quite close, much to the disgust of Stropa. A week away from mordentshire, Stropa strayed from the caravan, in search of a component of a spell he was working on. It was agreed, he would meet them just outside mordentshire in a week.

When he returned to the tribe, late in the evening, he was greeted with a horrific sight. A few hundred yards from the vardos, he found the body of his beloved brother, Gavren. Gavren's eyes were open to the stars and his mouth was frozen mid-scream. The splintered remains of a wooden staff were driven through his heart. The runes on the staff were enough to identify the killer as Tyece. Enraged, Stropa quickly buried his brother, and without stopping at the caravan, went into the city in search of vengeance.

He quickly found her home, through questioning the locals, and found the door unlocked. Tyece was sitting at a table, staring blankly at Gavren's moon-jewelry necklace. Stropa's anger blinded him, and after a short struggle, he killed the giorgia who had betrayed his brother. Throughout the encounter, she never said a word.

Returning to the Vardos, he related his tale to his tribe, and was astonished at their disapproving looks. Madame Katya calmly told him the truth behind the story. Gavren had been attecked and killed by a vampire, and risen as one himself. The tribe would have destroyed him themselves, if Tyece had not been brave enough to do it herself. For acting as he had, ignorant and uncaring of the facts, he was declared karash, banished.

Stropa left the tribe, shattered, and settled in Mordentshire. He swore to himself that he would never again take a life. A promise which he has kept to this day, 10 years later. Soon the static burn took him, severely damaging his body [as evidenced by the low physical stats]. He was mortu. For most practical purposes, he became what he had once hated, giorgio.

In one of the two PBEMs I tried to run Stropa in, he was paired up with another PC in Mordentshire to start with, an idealistic young priest who didn't quite believe in the supernatural. I was looking forward to playing that dynamic out, the odd couple of investigators, old world-weary crotchety experienced Stropa who'd seen all the horrors of the world first hand, and his buddy the young charming buddy, the Scully to his Mulder. Sadly, that one never really got off the ground, and I don't even remember the other character's name, deity, or who played him. For all I know it could have been one of you guys.

Areklief Kingswaaren (3e LG Human Cleric (Lawgiver, Law/Bindings) 4)
Areklief Kingswaaren was born to a poor family in Nova Vaasa, and orphaned by a plague at an early age. The local church of The Lawgiver took him in, and he grew to be a rather mediocre Priest of The Lawgiver. When Areklief was 20, someone donated a golden, jeweled dagger to the church. When priests started dying mysteriously, Areklief surmised that the dagger was cursed. His search for information on it led him to a small local Order of the Guardians that had been guarding it until a theif recently stole it. Areklief saw this as his calling, and joined the order.

After 10 years of guarding the dagger with the Guardians, Areklief finally discovered a ritual that could destroy the evil relic. While performing this dangerous ritual, 3 of the other 5 priests in the Order died. After putting them to rest, Areklief and the other 2 priests went their separate ways. He has been wandering the Core for 5 years, searching for something to devote his watchful eyes to, a crusader without a cause.

Areklief was last seen leaving the Horseman's Rest Inn in Darkon, headed to Mordentshire in search of the Pipes of Mordenshire

Note: since Lawgiver is LE, technically his priests can't be LG, but Areklief is sort of a reverse Elena Faithhold. He thinks he serves the Lawgiver, but he's really worshipping the Domains of Law and Bindings directly. Since he's a Guardian (headed toward Guardian Seeker PrC) his faith in the Lawgiver (as a diety) is sort of waning anyway, but he still believes in the Lawgiver's ideals: The rule of Law, people and things in their proper place (like magic items.)

Here's another one of mine I never got to play. 2nd edition (as most of mine will be).

Augustine "Aggie" Drakovich, a half-elf fighter/mage/thief from Vorostokov.

Aggie's mother arrived in the midst of a storm, shivering and fragile in the eternal winter of Vorostokov. She has no recollection of how she got there, and was dying before the Boyars found her and brought her into Kargo. She was a skilled healer, and an exotic beauty that everyone in the little village wanted to keep her around. At first. But slowly, the men's lust and the women's jealousy got the better of them. One evening, in the bath house, the elf woman was cornered, alone, but a gang of the men of the village. And raped. 9 months, and more sexual trauma later, she began to go into labor. As she gave birth to Aggie, the midwives and women helping her smothered her with her own pillow, and she died, giving birth to the deep red haired Aggie.

Aggie was not strong enough to hunt. But he was very smart, and taught himself to speak another language his mother spoke called Darkonese and read her book of magicks. He was a natural skinner, and became a natural knife thrower. But the thing that made Aggie a target was that he was just as beautiful as his mother. So while the men of Kargo went out to hunt, out to gather lumber, out to do Gregor's wishes, Aggie had his way with the daughters and wives of the men. Until he was found out, and run out of Kargo, chased by men, then men and their dogs on sleds, then by wolves, then by winter itself, until Aggie found himself in a snow storm so vast that the snow no longer touched the ground. Until he emerged in Darkon.

I really thought this would be a hopping thread. Let's expand this a little, just to share great characters you've had. Characters from campaigns that never started, or old PCs, or PCs you ran that you remember vividly. This is to create a nice bank of NPCs for all of us to use, so let's do this people!

Well there's the 2nd lvl PCs for a PbP called Unsettled House here in the PbP subforums, that dwindled.

I made a young Richemuloise Ari1/Swashbuckler1 who was to be a sort of d'Artagnan like character heading for the Duelist prc. He made me think about the fencing schools of Richemulot/Dementlieu (and perhaps even Mordent) and endlessly tinker with different possible fencer builds.

The other PCs included the hilariously titled "Great Swami Ranjan" a travelling mordentish tinker/charlatan/esoteric magic dilettante (awesome concept!), and Fräulein Schreivogel, a rough female Falkovnian caliban ex soldier, a contrast to all those snobby if downtrodden Richmuloise if ever there was one.

I would be very interested to see how they would have developed...


And I always wanted to make a Barton-Wright pastiche (N)PC for Ravenloft. Bartitsu ftw.

My last group of players included a mage with the Moribund kit from Dragon magazine, updated for 3e. His name was Morgrhim, he was a Mulan with very little backstory, but his current sketch was enough to make him interesting. Moribunds draw health and magical power from undead creatures, like a negative energy drain. Morgrhim is a typically grouchy wizard with little patience for the living, although he despises the undead, particularly intelligent ones. He felt smashing mindless undead was a good way to make his strange powers serve heroic ends, but during a conflict with an old vampire, he actually leveled up due to contact with the creature (coincidence, not a mechanic of the kit). This made him believe that intelligent undead were a source of power even greater than he had imagined. He became a hunter of the creatures, though not out of any altruistic reasoning. Drained skeletons allowed him to launch magic missiles from the energy he stored. H wanted to store vampire-powered lightning bolts and lich-powered wishes!

The player wasn't into the whole Shadow Rift campaign, since he couldn't drain the Fey. He played the reluctant team member well enough and was fairly ticked when Gwydion mopped the floor with the lot of them. He found the Saugh useful enough, but perished at the Obsidian Gate with the rest of the party.