I'm playing a halfling noble right now, and I'm struggling to come up with a motivation for why he wants to adventure. What I have right now is (I'll give a bit of backstory for clarification)
>Comes from a family of sorcerers who use their magic to subtly manipulate people, which is how they have so quickly risen up the social ladder
>Our halfling is second in line to be the head of the family
>He's currently adventuring to find more avenues of income/contacts for his family, and collecting a bit of treasure for his own prestige along the way.
But this feels a bit weak. Any suggestions /tg/?
>>48337413
Is your halfling able to cast magic?
What are his relations with his parents and the first in line to be the head of the family?
Is there something that could disrupt his family's schemes, like a rival noble house?
>>48337413
He is the henpecked husband of an absurdly domineering wife, he ran off to get a couple months away from his woman and hopefully die before she finds him.
It's funny, it's Halfling, it gives the DM a potential NPC.
>>48337475
>He is the henpecked husband of an absurdly domineering wife, he ran off to get a couple months away from his woman and hopefully die before she finds him.
Excellent.
Halflings, especially if they're noble and should be "living the life", have to be reluctant adventurers. Kinda anti-hero but with a brave heart.
It's cliché and it's what Martin Freeman did (pretty well I'd say considering the dire circumstances he was in) but it's great.
>>48337461
He is, but his entire family (and by extension, he) has to keep this a secret (if the king ever discovered that one of the more influential families of his court had achieved this by charming and scheming their way to wealth, he'd most likely call for them to be executed)
He is distant with his parents, who were often at court or doing other activities to boost the family name, but he doesn't resent them for this, rather he respects what they do. He has been brought up to believe that the family is more important than anything else, and that being responsible is the highest virtue of them all.
All that could disrupt the scheming is the secret of their sorcery escaping, as they don't really have any rivals (the Greenleafs, like many Halflings, try not to start petty fights over nothing as other noble families might).
>>48337475
This sounds good, but the only problem is that right now we're running the Curse of Strahd adventure (I've joined in about a quarter of the way through). Maybe on his way to escape he was told legends of a realm inaccessible to many people, and so escaped there to try for a new life?
>>48337529
Desperation will make you do some pretty crazy things, if he learned his wife was on his trail and coming close, the prospect of an inaccessible wonderland sounds mighty appealing.
>>48337413
Your motivation is fine.
Noble's sons went off crusading and leading mercenary bands for less.
>>48337413
Ennui
A Halfling noble is exactly what Bilbo Baggins was. His motivation was the fact that he didn't like anyone telling him he couldn't be a good burglar, even if he didn't want to be one in the first place. Basically it was a mixture of wanting to prove himself and just having an adventurous spirit that had been repressed by small town Shire culture.
>>48338812
Exactly this.
>>48339174
Those Ruffians had it coming. Think about how long the Shire had to go without Second Breakfast and Supper because of the food shortages!
I imagine a disquieting number of them were fed to the local swine after the Scouring.
Even if this is untrue, which is likely, you could use it as a gruesome fate for those who run afoul of "not as nice as they look" Halfling Farmers, and if they are like Farmer Maggot, that would be somewhere in the vicinity of "Even actual infernal beings think they are excessively evil"
You might also have mysterious, out of season availability of pork products that do not taste quite like the usual, carefully fattened pigs usually slaughtered at more normal times.
The prices aren't too bad though, and the strange taste is attributed to the preservation techniques used, or the unusual time at which the animal was slaughtered. Maybe also to the swine being more frightened than it really ought to have been when it's throat was slit ear to ear.
>>48337413
>noble
Simple: He's not the first son, and so stands to inherit nothing.
>>48337475
>He is the henpecked husband of an absurdly domineering wife
Ahh I love it when /tg/ comes up with backstories for people by projecting their own lives onto someone else's idea.
Good shit.
>>48337413
He's deep in debt with the wrong halflings after being tricked to visit an opium den where he was tricked into gambling away irreplaceable family heirlooms, but he's managed to convince his creditors to give him a chance to get his hands on similarly valuable artifacts and pay them back with those instead.
