About to start a new campaign with a group of friends and trying to come up with unique ideas for characters
Would you as a DM allow a character to travel with a 1 year old baby? It could be like a shield that doesn't increase AC.
And on that note, what are some other unique character ideas?
Hire a wetnurse/nanny hireling, keep her and your spawn safe, then enjoy your adventuring.
Hirelings, man.
As long as it isn't his baby, and there are plenty of ladders and vases around, he should be pretty well optimized.
The definitive title in the genre of "Murder Hobo carries a baby."
A surprisingly broad genre.
Sure. Whatever you want to do is fine.
No. Because as a GM I would not be able to keep myself from constantly fucking the players over because of this baby.
>It could be like a shield that doesn't increase AC.
This. Why take him with you? All that's going to happen is that you're either going to be the guy who brutally murdered a fucking baby in whatever spiked acid pit trap you had ready for days, or you'll fudge the game so it doesn't happen, over and over.
And people usually just make it up at chargen. My new PC is son of my last one, come to the megadungeon looking to find his missing dad. he was also conveniently addressed in the will as the rightful heir of all worldly possessions
Source on that?
Well, nobility bred aplenty and they basically were a class of murderhobos.
Hell no. All it will take is one fuckup and I'll be the GM who killed a baby and you'll be the idiot who has to tell the mother why you brought a baby into a war zone.
I'm not sure what I would think of a parent bringing their one-year-old child with them into a dungeon voluntarily. Not good things.
If it's a lighthearted campaign and you're sorta playing it for laughs, though, then go for it.
>If it's a lighthearted campaign and you're sorta playing it for laughs, though, then go for it.
>Dungeon Babies or The Littlest Murder Hobo
What about a non-druid who comes from an orphanage who wants to send a different animal back to the orphanage so every little kid has a pet?
How much damage can the baby deal?
Check out Lone Wolf and Cub.
You won't regret it.
Only if played as pic related.
A human who fell in love with an elf and was rejected due to his short lifespan became an adventurer to become a lich and spend an eternity with his elf honey
Is that swaglord?
They raise them DF-style, strapped to their backs as abaltive armor.
Adoption is always an option.
Current game we're playing, my character went through her pregnancy and is going around with her newborn now. The game is heavier on roleplay though and not much combat in favor of problem solving and surviving the environment (post-apocalypse).
It's very stressful though and is getting to me more than it should for an RPG. At least though it's a really different, interesting experience, to see how differently I play the game than if I didn't have a baby to look after. Like even just my equipment choice is different, the other players chose weapons or armor for the resources they had, I spent most of my resources on basic vaccines and what I had leftover on equipment to be able to have clean food and water, to be able to provide for and keep the baby alive and healthy. Or at least as healthy as can be in a post apoc world, thankfully the DM took into account immunities conferred through pregnancy and nursing.
>It's very stressful though and is getting to me more than it should for an RPG.
That's how you know you're doing it right.
>thankfully the DM took into account immunities conferred through pregnancy and nursing.
That is a lot of detail to consider. I'm impressed with your GM.
What system is this?
Well I wanted it to mean something for the game and character, but it's become too real and given me anxiety somewhat.
System is FATE, though I don't think there's something as detailed as conferred immunity in it, rather than the DM just providing that detail.
Also, how did you handle pregnancy in-game? Were there penalties for realism's sake (e.g. mobility, baby brain) or are those the kinds of things you ignored for ease of play?
And there's also the passage of time to consider. Did your game meticulously count the passage of months, or was it just a "when it feels narratively right" type of thing?
How does the rest of the group feel about the baby, in-character or out?
I dunno why this is so fascinating to me right now. It's not even one of my baby-crazy phases.
>System is FATE
>the DM just providing that detail
Ah. That's more reasonable.
>t's become too real and given me anxiety somewhat.
Oh. Then that might be too much.
But, I mean, if you're thinking about stuff like the baby's vaccinations and keeping it safe, then for even a fictitious baby you're gonna get emotionally invested. I mean, I feel really guilty when my stuffed animals wind up on the floor. Not anxiety-level guilty, I'm just saying that's how humans work.
Are you a parent, or do you want to be a parent? Is it possible your anxiety is stemming from concerns about real-world parenting?
There's no reason to have a baby around in a high-stakes, dangerous adventure.
If there was a reason for it, like you needed to bring that specific baby all the way to the other side of the realm to prevent a war or dark god emerging or something, it's possible. Slightly easier than an escort quest, though they can defend themselves even less.
What if there's just nowhere else to put it? Like the post-apocalyptic example listed above, of if the baby's parent(s) has no family or anyone else who could adopt it?
Yes.
Oh there were definitely penalties, they got progressively worse as the time progressed. DM went and looked up common pregnancy issues and stacked them on at times if rolls permitted. Thankfully my character didn't suffer any dire complications due to rolls, just a breech which she was able to self correct. The actual birth though was a big ordeal.
There was an actual passage of time as well which was kept track of, though it obviously sped up a bit in real time. The rest of the group reacted different though the general idea was that it was a mistake to make. Wasn't my fault though, my character and her NPC husband were looking to start a normal family which would have gone just fine probably, I couldn't have planned that he'd go missing. In-character it was more complicated because we didn't move as a group rather than individual survivors who may cross paths at times, so they weren't really at risk in trying to keep up the slack of a pregnant lady or new mother.
I'm not losing sleep over it, it's just that my playstyle is really different in the things I consider and do now, and how careful I play. I get worried whenever things are to happen because "What about the baby?" I'm not a parent but I want to be someday. You may be right about that.
I know this sounds incredibly edgy and I hate myself for saying it, but at that point, it's an ethical choice.
In a post-apocalyptic setting, babies are of little use to anyone, require an awful lot of time and resources with little profit, and may well die soon anyway.
There's a lot of factors to it and it's very complex, if you or your character is incredibly unempathetic but efficient, it may be safer to leave it or put it out of its misery. If you're a caring and good person, it'll take a lot of hard work, resources, and time and you'll be constantly risking your life carrying it around, especially when it cries and you're hiding from raiders/bandits/zombies.
Wait, so what would you have done if your character's husband had survived?
>The rest of the group reacted different though the general idea was that it was a mistake to make
I bet your group members are really boring roleplayers. Do they all basically just play versions of themselves? I bet they do, the bastards.
>I'm not losing sleep over it
>I'm not a parent but I want to be someday
I would like to be a parent someday, but I know I'd be terrible at it, so fantasizing's all I got.
>babies are of little use to anyone
But they're necessary to rebuilding the world. If you're not thinking about that, then what's the point of worrying about resources anyway?
Have you considered sending it to the baby dimension?
Well he may still be alive. Probably dead, but I never saw it happen, he just went missing. If he had survived, then he could have worked and my character could have stayed at home to take care of the baby. Without him around though, she couldn't afford to keep the room they were living in so had to leave and take to the wandering life again which meant going out into danger first pregnant then with the baby.
I don't think they're too bad, they each did different kinds of characters, one even a kid. But having a baby (to be fair it wasn't planned, rolled poor on the dice) is a whole other level of risky.
Usually it takes 2 murderhobos and someone skipping guard duty.
Witnessed!
>party must sneak past some sleeping fuckhueg death-on-legs creature(s)
>get about halfway through
>baby starts wailing
I can see it now OP
>to be fair it wasn't planned, rolled poor on the dice
Holy crap! You have a group where your character became pregnant by dice roll, and the result wasn't immediate revolt? That's a quality group.
That does seem like a weird thing to leave up to a die roll.
I guess it's like when you're getting on an airplane and you keep the baby awake so they'll sleep through the flight.
I've only seen the movies, but the baby racks up quite a kill count himself.