I normally play neutral-aligned dickheads or pragmatic people, so I decided in my latest game, where due to party balance I agreed to play a healer, she'd be a pure-hearted kind and patient chick. Is there any kind of twist I can add to this character to make it more interesting? The campaign is 100% inside of a single city, it's a rebels-vs-evil-government situation.
>>47693786
She's a government/church secretary, possibly a liaison between the church and crown, the sole breadwinner for her household, and legitimately wants to keep her job.
>>47693786
Refuse to just deal with the cognitive dissonance of killing enemy combatants like they're not real people too. If your character is really a pure-hearted healer she probably wouldn't be too understanding of just killing the enemy because they're the enemy and even if they're obviously deserving maybe she's more focused on reforming than punishing them for their sins. Especially since the "evil" part of the government is probably the heads of the state and not the cops you'll be fighting along the way.
>>47693786
Some ideas.
Make her pure-hearted and kind, but go the Charlie Brown route. She's genuinely a good person, but she's like that because she thinks she has to be, not necessarily because she wants to be. That's why she went off and learned healing arts, because she felt like it was the right thing to do and the world needed it. She's always thinking of other people first, even when deep down she just wants to act selfish like everyone else. Ideally, this would best manifest in a situation where she has to either put her life on the line and probably die for others, or have the chance to walk away scott free.
Give her some kind of mental issue relating to her job, or at least start her down that path. Paramedics/EMTs--IRL "healers"--have some of the highest rates of PTSD of any career. As a cleric who's focused on healing and attaching herself to adventurers, she's making a living to dealing with people on the worst days of the lives. That gets to someone. Have her start turning to her god(s), and be left wondering why if they're so great and kind they always let such awful things happens.
Put some kind of angle on her role as a cleric. I always liked clerics because they open themselves up as great paranormal investigators. By virtue of their job their surrounded with myth and lore about all kinds of weird ghosts and demons. Maybe even though she's a good person, she's obsessed with finding creepy stuff and it gets in the way of her better judgement.
Have her totally be unable to reconcile reality with Good vs Evil. She's not a smitebot, but she's monumentally confused by things like an Evil person being out in the daylight. After all, the Sun is your god, right? And it's a Good god. So how can Evil walk in his light? It doesn't make sense, guys.
And above all, above fucking all, don't do the basket case healslut shtick.
>>47693786
>she still thinks it would be better to change the system from within
>she heals wounded of any faction (may be a given)
>she gets exited when people are hurt, because it means she can dote on them
>she is kind of emulating a role, looking for a knight in shining armor, she does the healer thing because it is that way in the stories
>good ol' pacifism
>alternative healing tradition that is commonly distrusted
>>47693786
>pure-hearted
First off, purity by itself is not a virtue. If you're incapable of evil thoughts, that makes you less than human.
My suggestion:
She derives sexual pleasure from healing other people, which indirectly makes her excited to see her teammates in situations where they'll get hurt, and may actually be just deeply repressed sadism. She acknowledges this, but still sincerely doesn't want anyone to get hurt if she can help it.
>>47694361
>She derives sexual pleasure from healing other people
Of all the great ways you could write out a healer who gets a thrill from seeing her friends get beat up you immediately go for "it gets her rocks off".
>>47694392
>>47694147
Not OP, but frequently set as support/healing, and I'm taking these ideas.
>>47693786
Give her the deepest, darkest gallows humor. A lot of professionals that deal with unpleasant things develop a sense of humor about their profession that outsiders would consider to be sick, but is really just their way of coping. Nurses, surgeons, and EMTs will say the most disgusting and inappropriate things outside of public earshot. Add a few hobbies outside her work that act as a distraction to complete the 'jaded professional who still has a heart of gold' set.
>>47694631
>Nurses, surgeons, and EMTs will say the most disgusting and inappropriate things outside of public earshot
This is fact. One of my instructors worked as a SWAT medic for a few years, and he said it's when they stop calling you a bunch of nasty, foul names that you know you're in trouble with them.
Every medic I've met has had an amazingly dirty mouth.
Right now im playing a healer who is conflicted because he realized that with the power to heal people he basically gets to say who lives and who dies. More to the point, every time someone dies, he could have saved them. Now he is conflicted about who deserves to live and die and why it has to be him who makes that choice.
>>47693786
Play her straight. Watch as the DM tries to bend the universe just to get her to break her pureness.
>>47694758
While I love this idea a bad GM can really fuck it up.
Whittling down a Good person's pureness is satisfying and a great narrative arc. But you have to do it right. Fucking up someone's alignment with an orc baby what do scenario isn't compelling in the slightest.
>>47693786
Have most of her family be employed on the opposing side. Not evil themselves, just dependent on those who are. On top of that, say her relatives do support the enemy, but more out of ignorance and thinking that things are okay that way than maliciousness. Depending on the details of the setting, she could be the hippy liberal from a family of conservatives, or believe deeply in personal responsibilty while her relatives are happy to stay in line for government handouts.
>>47694361
How about the opposite? She derives pleasure from seeing people suffer, but tries to keep it at bay and be chaste by healing them?
