Hello,
I need some help with the back story of a character I made for D&D. He is a human ranger, and his major characteristic is that he hates trees and his enemy species is plants. I've decided that he comes from a long line of tree hating woodsmen.
What I really need help with is creating a reason for this generations of hatred, and hopefully some family oral history to explain it. Something that could be told from father to son, possibly in a religious/moral story style.
I was thinking that his family is convinced that trees want to kill humans so that they won't be cut down any more. That there is a vast tree conspiracy to eradicate humans, and possibly all other life.
Any suggestions would be fantastic!
His great grandpappy saw The Happening.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kudzu_in_the_United_States
This shit raped his mother and destroyed his lands
>>47011135
The hatred of trees seems silly. Why not have a vendetta against Ents and similar things that masquerade as trees? He comes from a woodland environment and over generations gradually more and more Ents started to appear. They perceived the humans as intruding upon nature and started to attack, using their perfect mimicry of trees. The humans in turn naturally felt attack by monsters, they had been using the forest as their livelihood for generations.
His clan originates from the neighboring desert lands. They migrated to the forests after their home was invaded by gnolls. However, the forest they migrated to was already plagued with the blight, and to add the fey had also settled there.
Knowing little about forest life, much less the fey, the clan thought it was the forest itself, the trees, the plants, attacking them. There was no way they could go back to the desert without confronting gnoll hordes and have feared that the green lands get more dangerous the deeper you go...
That is until your character made a decision, a decision to leave the wildlands in search of a better home. One free of gnolls, the blight, and fey.
>>47011135
I feel like this concept is going to get you laughed at when you show up at the game table. Unless of course your actually trying to be funny in which case, this will get some laughs. It' s also going to make your character way more easy to discredit when you actually start playing, and trust me from experience, that shits annoying.
If you want to try and take the concept in a more serious direction you could say he comes from a place that had a large population of plant monsters, to the point that the local ranger population considered it important to regularly go on plant hunts to keep the "plants" in line. He could have been taught his whole life to be skeptical of every single tree, bush and shrub he sees because it might try to kill him.
His ancestors were a tribal people who lived in harmony with the druids of the forest. They were adept hunters capable of bringing down whatever creatures lurked in the wild, yet they did so in moderation as per the druid's teachings. The alliance was called into question, however, when the tribe ran into crisis.
A new predator had emerged in the forest: a creature of tooth and claw able to so swiftly and silently as to fool the trained hunters (displacer beasts probably). In the confines of the forest the mere men couldn't outmatch the beasts and became worried for their families. When they asked help of the druid's they were met with cold denial: they refused to harm nature for this was the way of the world. This was a grave insult to the tribe, who turned their back on the druids and left the forest. From then on every man passed the stories from father to son of the dangers of the woods and the cold-hearted men that protect them.
That's just the first thing that comes to my mind, make sure to mix and match parts to suit your campaign.
>>47011451
I am trying to go for a mildly silly back story. We've already had one session, and I played Ronard as a guy with the attitude of "fuck trees". Since he's a ranger, and thus fairly self sufficient, I had him wander outside of our starting town while the rest of the party was buying supplies, and just chop down trees.
That was my first ever session of D&D so the DM was able to use my attempt at getting to a tree on a cliffside to show me how rolling works.
>>47011135
Have you ever played a video game where you had to fight through the woods? It's scary shit. There could be a bad guy behind any one of those mother fuckers. If he's a woodsman, he'd probably know exactly what this feels like.
Fuck trees, man.
Your character's ancestor's were part of a tribe that was targeted by plant-shrike hybrids that would impale villagers onto trees. Those trees were formerly humans who have committed suicide. The trees curse anybody who comes nearby.
So yeah, your ranger's family hates trees.
Your ranger's grandmother was into some odd sex magic and snapped a small twig from a suicide tree and used it as a dildo, but somehow impregnated herself and gave birth to weird tree-human creatures.
I'm too tired to flesh out any ideas. idk
>>47011135
Johnny Appleseed broke up your great-great granddaddy's marriage. It turned out his eldest son was a bastard, but he couldn't prove it legally so his younger (legitimate) son was fucked out of his inheritance. What did the bastard do once he took the throne? Let the forest overtake the realm so he could go hit on Dryads or some shit.
Fuckin' trees, man. Fuckin' trees...
>>47011188
I like they way you think.
>>47011135
Honestly, this seems like one of those gimmicky "personalities" I see people doing way too often in rpgs. Just picking some random, weird gimmick (for no real reason, like in your case) and pretending this is characterization.
It almost never ends well, and usually the joke (and thus, the character based around that joke) stays fresh for a grand total of a couple of sessions, after which the player asks if he can just swap characters. No idea why some people do this over and over again.
>>47011633
you could go the romantic angle of having your lover shun you hard, and that lover was a dryad.
Could I get help too? I want a greatsword wielding, plate armor wearing, human fighter... but without the military / mercenary / blacksmith background. How do I play a combat god without the cliches?
Pic not related but cool
>>47011135
His family line has a long history of being killed by trees. Great-great granpappy? Tree fell on him. Great granpappy? Killed by an ent. Grandfather? Seduced and killed by a tree nymph. Father? Swallowed a magical seed that grew from the inside. Make it some kind of curse caused by one of his ancestors chopping down some witch's tree or something.
>>47014235
Kind of difficult to play that type of character and have them be good from the outset without any sort of experience. Only way I could think of is if you made them the child of a combat instructor for nobles and their father also trained them to take on the profession.
>>47011135
Ancestor's was killed by an Ent, family has been killing trees hoping to find the ent ever since.
>>47011135
Swords are poor weapons for tree killing.
>>47014235
Maybe he was the fantasy worlds equivalent of "upper middle class" and so he actually has some money to blow, so he took classes at the fantasy world equivalent of "kung fu/karate/mma dojo in the mall" and learned some basic fighting and swordsmanship in classes he took for several years from teenage and into young adulthood.
This makes him good enough to be reasonably capable in a fight, but also shit enough to justify being level 1.
You know how there are invasive species of plants?
Maybe this dude comes from a land with extremely invasive and extremely fast growing trees that choke out the native flora, not to mention crops planted by civilized peoples, and also attracts the fauna that is attracted to these trees, which is of course super shitty and hostile.
His attitude is less of a menacing "fuck trees" and more of a "you have a fucking tree problem, guys, lemme just take care of that for you" and he's just too overzealous to realize that not every tree is invasive and shitty.
>>47015212
I like this the best. His family line just seems to he plagued with forest-related mishaps, and he has developed a reasonable apprehension towards trees. Also, his uncle who tried to escape his fate by becoming a sailor was killed by a falling coconut.
>>47011410
To build off of this, perhaps it was Treants that started the family's hatred, but over the generations it got warped and altered until people hated the trees, forgetting that the Treants were the cause of their woes all those years ago.
>>47019735
Also also, he knows how to talk with animals because he fell from a tree as a child and hit his head, and has never been the same since.
