Character Motivation

What motivates your character Veeky Forums?

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Student debt.

He just wants to be the very best.
And best his sister, who is currently the very best.

This was the motivation for one of my mages. Fresh out of his kingdoms hogwarts and owing money to a dwarf banker. Joined the parties freelancing company to pay it off.

Current character is motivated by fear of dying alone. Disgraced knight became a recluse, had a near death experience and was troubled by the idea that if he had died then nobody would really care.

Marrying his childhood sweetheart.

Doling out justice to heretics of the imperium cause was an arbite.
Also shooting any and all slavers.

He lives to crush his enemies, see them driven before him, and hear the lamentations of their women.

>he's a barbarian, what can you do?

Low risk, high-reward endeavors that she can get the party to do most of the work while she sits in relative safety and does her spellcasting thing.

Coin and cleavage.

Wait a minute, that's not motivation. That's just what your character does! What about WHY she does that? Is she lazy? Greedy? Motivated by NOT DYING?

At first, serving the god who's cult he was born into.
After that he witnessed their evil nature and was cast away, no longer of any use to the god. So he devoted himself to a goddess of redemption to thwart the evil gods plot and repent for his sins.
After that. His goddess cast him away as well, wanting him to make his own history and not be another tool of the gods.
Reluctant but grateful, he now take his job as a death god too seriously, much to the cringe of the rest of the divines.
>my group will never get back together to play again
>kill me

>Is she lazy?
Check.
>Greedy?
Check.
>Motivated by NOT DYING?
Dying poor and hungry? Check-a-roonie.

Evil supernatural mom orders her around.

My character is motivated by curiosity primarily, although his goal is simply to make a detailed map of the magical island that is the setting of the campaign. He gets embroiled in plots because he forms judgments quickly, is overly trusting, and can't hep but meddle in situations that don't fit his morals even if he doesn't understand the whole picture.

>captcha: click the dining room
>all the pictures are of living rooms
what the fuck

To SLAM with the best.

A ranger I play is a literal schizoid who will go out of his way to sabotage any attempts by any race to establish villages or any of form of civilization near the forest where he dwells. He's mostly fine with small collectives of druids since they tend not to lead loud or disruptive lifestyles.

It was an attempt to reconcile playing a non-evil character in a predominantly evil party. The party's goals are mutually beneficial with the ranger's, even though their reasons for wanting to undermine civilization are entirely different.

Helping other people, remembering who she is, trying to get home.

He wants to see his waifus more.
His waifus are glory, truth and justice.

My father has 14 children and a wife to feed and he can't make that on his guard salary. As well as putting one of his kids through pretty much Hogwarts takes a pretty good chunk of gold. Eventually I will have a house of my own so my family doesn't have to live in a 3 bedroom pseudo apartment.

Meant to say character, dunno why it auto corrected to father

To honor his debt and to protect his lady, the local Princess, with all of his might, ensuring that she lives a happy, secluded life.
She is also a werewolf

The thought of finally increasing his race's lifespan and making people think of his kind as more than just monsters is a very powerful motivator indeed. Thri-kreen live their life to the fullest every day of their lives. Imagine what they can do with 60 years of life instead of 30?

A better world, a bright future, in where everybody can live with a smile.

Btw, Paladin.

Protecting the family who took her in when she was young even though the family ends up protecting her most of the time because she is too zealous in her goal to repay them.

She accidentally caused a lot of collateral damage, so has thrown her lot in with the super villains, because she doesn't want to go to prison or worse for the things she did.

Old Mercenary (in his late 40's) tells everyone he wants to settle down,retire and have a family but keeps getting dragged into things.


But he loves the danger, the adventure, being part of events that truly matter and the chance to die for something other than another mans gold.

Chasing after the only woman that could even match him is also a big bonus.

...

Security, a home to call his own, a lineage, comfortable wealth, and the death of mimics everywhere. and maybe his left hand back too

As of right now, he's trying to root out the necromancer hiding in the campaign's starting town.
In general though, he's happy to be present wherever good men are needed, and serves his order faithfully, knowing that he chose to be a part of it, as opposed to having his life be chosen by his kin.
After all, a Pit Lord hardly makes for an open-minded family patriarch.

to get the bastard that killed me that one time.

Restoring her honor and proving her worth to her family as a warrior despite having lost an arm.

A desire to know everything there is to know about anything, and preserve that knowledge forever, within his own head if need be.
To that end, he's been working part-time on a way to make himself immortal without sacrificing innocents, or betraying his personal beliefs.

the fact that she will never run out of people to teach to. being a teacher and enlightening others is what makes her happy.

THIS WORLD IS MINE! IT ONLY EXIST FOR ME!

TO AVENGE HIS FATHER!

Paying the bills and keeping her mother in a nice home, so she never has to sell her ass again for the bills.

Nostalgia. She just wants to bring the comfy times back.

Bringing his wife back to life.
After being turned to stone for thousands of years and waking up to a hell torn world with no hope. He wants to at least try and fix things with the other three he woke up with, but his real goal is bringing his wife back no matter the cost.

Retaking Jerusalem

Adventure. Plain and simple.
>getting out of the house
>going somewhere
>taking in the sights, sounds, smells, etc
>meeting people, fucking some, fighting others
>encountering the mysteries, risking life and limb, etc
tfw when there is no place for fantasy shit like that in real life
Welp back to working as an accountant for the financial security, ha ha.
fucking kill me

Becoming a primordial and remaking the Plane of Earth

Immortality. Whether it was immortality through deeds that would make people remember him or actual immortality if he came across it and didn't involve some sort of evil magic like necromancy or something like a wish spell that could easily backfire.

Aside from that, he was also motivated by the pursuit of knowledge and to travel to places that not many or no one has dared to venture to.

To create a safe and quiet living for him and his younger sister away from his old life and troubles.

and to continue fucking said sister

I love everything about that pic

"Me stronger din puni tin can!"

"Guess what."

"Wuht?"

"Suck a dick"

Because THE WEAK FIGHT BACK.

He may or may not be extremely unhinged due to a drunken bet that made him a wizards potion tester for a day. On the upside he makes a lot of money killing shit for weird people, on the downside he now has a ravenous hunger and is continuously building the list of things that will not satisfy it, which includes but is not limited to, elves, dryads, doors, money, and various creatures and objects, however in the last session i found that magical items might be the key since he felt a tingle eating a scroll of create water. I have a feeling the next mage i get my hands on will not be a happy camper.
A groupmate once described him as like a giant garbage disposal.
Personally i like having mental illness' in games, it adds a certain realism to it, despite my characters getting shafted most times.

"Man. I just wanna fucking build boats. But I can't build boats if the whole world explodes."

Well I have this power, why not learn to master it.
And the rest of the group is so pants on head retarded that I can have a few laughs between having to pull asses out of the fire.

It's a job that pays well enough and he isn't the kind of guy to change things quickly

to determine whether or not he's his own father

That... that's a good reason. care to expand on that?

>due to a botched Reincarnation spell ended up being reborn by his lover
>now an Elf he studies magic to determine what makes a person
>also to distract himself from weird feelings for his mother
>and his newfound birthing fetish

Well, I expected it to get weird, and that's just what I got.
Good stuff.

hey you gotta keep things interesting

I'm playing two. One is driven by a desire to amass valor and fame to prove his worthiness so he can put a ring on that fine maiden and marry the fuck outta her like a proper man.

The other cares mostly about gold and getting by in the world. And about living a life he doesn't need to be ashamed of, but he's far too dwarven to ever admit his faults and guilts to his friends.

She's invulnerable and convinced that means she's gotta be a monster hunter so that fragile "mortals" don't have to.

Currently, both are explorers in an uncharted region of the seas.

First is just along for the ride. A solid decade of his time prior was wasted and he was a bit too dejected to turn down anything exciting at that point.

Second is using the journey as a way of proselytising new peoples to the glory of his elder god patron beneath the waves.

He's just a fun-loving priest of a goddess of sex, war, and Rock'n'Roll.

Beyond that, it's keeping it secret that he murdered at least four people to get out of an arranged marriage, including bludgeoning his mother-in-law to death with a Bible and strangling his betrothed before running off to what's essentially the French Foreign Legion for Roman themed ant people.

A get-rich quick scheming con-man, he wants to amass enough wealth to live high and dry as a rich man. He wants a mansion, servants, endless delicious food, beautiful women, the works!

His wit will surely get him there too, if he could just stop losing large sums of money in poor investments, bail money and the occasional peaking out of his heart of gold from beneath his callous and selfish exterior.

And all of this because he grew up ridiculously poor as the son of a mill worker and saw the owners of the mill living in the lap of luxury while his family lived in squalor.

Her motivation is fear, pure and simple.

>be child born into family worshipping LE god
>raised to believe that elves and half bloods are animals, and should be enslaved or purged
>joins religion as inquisitor, helps hunt down said undesirables
>becomes infamous for her cruelty and efficiency
>gets assassins sent after her, ends up separated from entourage, heavily wounded
>found by family with half blooded children, who nurse her back to health
>leaves, only to come back and have them thrown in irons
>this betrayal haunts her conscience, and after a while, she flees the religious sect
>changes identity, starts a new life, becomes a mother of two
>eventually, as she is an infamous war criminal, she is tracked down
>she flees again, changing her identity and appearance to throw off pursuit
So now shes an adventurer, desperately trying to stay a few steps ahead of bounty hunters. She knows that only the darkest pits of hell await her in the afterlife, so she's researching ways to obtain immortality, while also trying, possibly in vain, to one day make up for all the evil she has committed.

Source of gif? I've been trying to remember the name of those videos for like two years.
Also
To turn evil doers into a potted meat-like substance.
>Buts that's uncreative!
Excuse me for not being a polygamist catfolk scorceress from the east whose main goal is fight for gay rights. he does it to both avenge his gay life partner and to stay distracted from the thought of his murder

L-lewd...

A search for a friend, an inventive nature and an intense hatred for his rival.

Politics get in the way of helping people.
He wants to do what he can without dealing with the red tape of being a doctor.

>Dwarf Airship mechanic

He blindly follows the whim of his god, and just moves like a marble down a slope through life. Intends to die well before his time in his travels, enjoys life and leaves markings of his passage in the form of statues, engravings, and gravemarkers.

>Squad Mom mechjock

She wants to travel the Inner Sphere, sample cuisine from all across the galaxy, and eventually set up a mobile 5 star diner inside a Union dropship. Maybe have a little swarm of orphans to raise, since she's sterile.

>Big Game Hunter Alchemist

Die hunting something worth dying to, since the cancer will have him dead in a few years anyways. Intends to burn twice as bright, and go out with one hell of a bang.

>Mentally Unhinged Pre-Teen gravedigger

Get back home. She misses mapa and pama.

An intense guilt about past mistakes and an unachievable quest for self-punishment and eventual martyrdom so that in the end he can be confined to the pit in hell that's been dug for him and all the sins of those around him he's taken onto himself.

My character is a bard attracted to power.

Their end goal is to fuck a deity

Vengeance. After that, he'll probably help some other angry bastards get their vengeance, as repayment for their assistance.

Seeking to lift the curse afflicting his home or, failing that, creating the worlds greatest healing spell

youtube.com/watch?v=0Cw7aAFS5oc

youtube.com/watch?v=DUlg8Y_mLfA

It's from the equal to the reward.

I'm a gladiator that was banned from the arena because my fights were too brutal. Apparently I "violated common standards of decency" in my last match. I joined the party on the king's quest with a promise that he would lift my ban afterwards.

Also my character is an unarmed dwarf barbarian based on Randy Savage.

My homeworld is a crapsack nightmare where the two main things corporations center around are a tournament between assassins (with a very loose definition of 'assassin') and a tournament only for young women where the loser gets raped. The world is explicitly Satan's playground.

My Blue Mage has gone insane (or, as anyone else would call it, turned Neutral Good) and he, along with a few likeminded individuals, are committing acts of terrorism to bring down Satan himself via killing his followers/worshipers.

You may know the GM. He was the one who told the tale of Kefka-lite.

Here, Kefka-lite committed suicide. We just got done detonating a stadium full of the rape-tournament supporters. Good times.

The reward

I am a god who wants to keep being a god

curing the plague that has basically destroyed his homeland so he can return to peaceful 'retirement' in an insane asylum

He wants head pats from his father.

If he needs to build a successful secret demon hunting consortium from scratch to impress him so be it.

This, except for the part about the sister.

I intend to be the greatest starship mechanic in the galaxy.

Well at least the greatest one under four feet tall.

Some fairly told me to kill some monsters when I was a kid. So I did it now I can't stop and my friends are worry about me.

To find his brother who went missing during war, and also to see the world.

The death of his father and the loss of his kingdom are his key motivators. He's developed a bit of his own moral code in the process, seeing what's right from wrong and such.
He feels the need to carry on his father's legacy as king, but in order to do so he must learn what it means to be a king , to build this new kingdom up from the ashes, and what sacrifices he must make to accomplish such a daunting task. He's a young, impressionable man and full of self doubt when it comes to these responsibilities he's laid upon himself, with no one to guide him he's become a wandering king with no one to lead and no land to call his own.

Revenge?

Motivation is a strange thing sometimes. He set out to avenge his parents and his master, but all that actually happened a long time ago. I think he is really just looking for a reason to be.

So, I guess you could say his motivation might be looking for something that should be his motivation.

Thrill seeking and escaping debt collectors.
Though the ramblings of the troll adept (loanshark shield) about the holy grail are beginning to rub off.
We quest in dark places that we may find traces of something greater.

We are in the process of turning a shadowrun campaign into a grail quest, with the GMs help. It's fantastic.

He's pretty sure he can become a god.

In the beginning he just put his sword skills to test, but after fighting in a bloody war that went on a lot, and seeing so much devastation (fucking wizards), he is now on the way of funding his knightly order, so that he can make sure that another war like that won't happen.

>"Just another four thousand years of painstaking research and I'll finally, finally have a basis for the Demigod essence harvest ritual."

>Immortality equivalent of "20 minutes"

Looking for his deadbeat dad to punch him in the face.

Dragging this country that is apparently her homeland kicking and screaming toward internal peace so it can unite against the thing trying to block out the sun and populate the world worth dire shoggoths.

Challenge, competition, mystery, and forgetting the pain of losing his family in a natural disaster.

>mfw 20 minutes
;_;

For a while most of my backstories were long, convoluted ways of saying "motivated by dead family", but I picked up on that trend and now I tend to try and avoid it.

Next paycheck

Be the dominant male and prove that Gor is, indeed, strong.

Came back from the war with a battlefield knighthood. Village was gone. Family gone. Old job (the mine) was collapsed. Local lord and famiky didn't survive the war.

Guess I'll go into business for myself. I already got the armor.

At first to deal with the group of monsters that were an immediate danger to his family which later turns into trying to protect his stubborn daughter that has been struck by wanderlust.

Her childhood friend and adoptive mother is all she has left. Not even their last blood relative stays in touch with them.

She just wants them back.

Attain fame, fortune, glory, titles, and a mansion full of cute butlers and handsome maids.

Waifus and Skittles.

One fucker of a vendetta.

> Skitter be like