Writing a Fighter/Cleric/Mage NPC

elminster

So I've been working on a mod for a fighter/cleric/mage.

Jenora - Half-elf - Fighter/mage/cleric - lawful neutral
Location: Standing outside of the Sorcerous Sundries.

Strength: 15
Dexterity: 14
Constitution: 10
Intelligence: 17
Wisdom 16
Charisma: 16

Weapon proficiencies: (her proficiencies will of course depend on her level)
** Maces
** Flails
** Sword and Shield Style

Starting Equipment: As a priestess of Azuth she casts spells with a reduced casting time of 3. This is given to her via a special pair of casting gloves that she wears.
She also has a flail and a mace equipped as well as a helmet. She has a set of splint mail available in her inventory.

Biography

When asked about her past, Jenora speaks of her early days growing up as the daughter of a farmer outside of the city of Berdusk. It was, as she remembers, a hard life, certainly not one she has any interest in returning to. She does however mention that she left the farm and made her way to Berdusk some years ago.

With little in the way of work available for her it wasn't long before she found herself in front of a temple dedicated to Azuth, the Lord of Spells. The priesthood there welcomed her and in the intervening years since she has grown to be a very capable cleric.

(what follows after this would depend on whether this is BGEE, SoD, or BG2EE)

The problem I guess I'm having is with the biography and writing. How does someone conceptualize a character that has 3 different professions? I'd like to make an NPC with these three classes it just seems like its difficult to explain the fighter portion on top of her being a cleric/mage.

Dee

Think of it less as three disparate professions, and more as a kind of gestalt--she's not a fighter AND a mage AND a cleric; she's a fighter/mage/cleric. A character that cannot be described accurately by any one of the three.

jobby

Potentially other events in her life shaped her in addition? Going a bit Arya Stark here but what about rudimentary military training up to a certain age at which point tragedy befalls her and she is forced to fend for herself/adopt covert means to survive until she finds herself outside the temple doors.

Alternatively, during said military training she witnesses a significant breach of justice and abandons her post/command and is forced to live in the shadows before being taken in/joining the priesthood.

Just a couple of ideas, perhaps a touch cliche but i would mention that it doesn't all have to be in the biography from the start either, it could be quite fun to learn the full reasons for such an odd mix of trades through banters as the story progresses.

bob_veng

maybe think of her as a battlemage bent on destrucrution that also happens to be very devout

so make her primarily an aggressive and trigger-happy, perhaps even antihero type and just add religion on top which helps her regain some composure and inner peace (thus making her chaotic leaning in alignment, but not enough to warrant a fully chaotic label)

jobby

A kleptomaniac battlemage bent on destruction

Thinking about it she could've received military training from the wonderful flaming fist and went renegade due to a certain Mr Angelo Dosan, perhaps a pre-cursor to finding out about the full extent of his extra-curricular activities. Still don't quite know how to justify her ending up with Azuth the Lord of spells personally, I'm just running with the Lawful Neutral thing here.

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elminster

She's basically none of what you describe @bob_veng . Her philosophy is largely in-line with Azuth's. Magic should not be recklessly used, but rather that it needs to be responsible taught. She would for instance accept that wild mages have been taught to cast magic with the help of wild magic, so in that regard they will never totally change, but she still would seek to mitigate their reliance on wild magic in order to ensure that the harm they do to both the craft and (in the case of more powerful wild mages) the weave is minimized.

jobby

Oh well that fits in rather nicely with the Lawful Neutral thing and codes of honor and discipline and stuff.. Sorry I'm not particularly well versed with the Gods of the forgotten realms.

dockaboomski

Kudos for awesome NPC.
I think that the fighter part is probably the hardest to justify. A person who worships Azuth would easily be a mage/cleric, and that's easy to explain. Perhaps Jenora is more of a crusader (ideologically, rather than class-wise) who takes her devotion to Azuth and does things in his name in a proactive way.

Glam_Vrock

elminster said:

Her philosophy is largely in-line with Azuth's. Magic should not be recklessly used, but rather that it needs to be responsible taught.

Then maybe she's a mage hunter pursuing those who do use it recklessly. She trains in arms to stay versatile, because sometimes a mage is prepared for everything except a club to the head.

Also:

elminster said:

Location: Standing outside of the Sorcerous Sundries.

Be careful. Being unavailable until Chapter 5 is part of what makes characters like Quayle and Alora so underused.

elminster

She largely would be an SoD/BG2EE character. So I'm not too worried about making her available later in BGEE. Especially given that she is meant to start as a pretty experienced (40,000xp +) character.

Plus frankly the game tends to put multi-class characters in the later chapters (Coran, Yeslick, Quayle, and Tiax), the only two exceptions to that being Montaron and Jaheira, so putting her there is consistent with how the original game tends to handle multi-class characters.

Edit: I've closed this thread since I think I have gotten all the feedback I need