Fighter Concept

[Paksos]

Evening, all!

I’m starting in a new campaign soon and the DM is starting everyone at Level 3. I’m wondering what people think of the character concept below...

Race: Half-Elf
Class: Fighter (3) - Battlemaster
Background: Entertainer

Concept: Before joining the party, this chap was part of a travelling show touring the kingdom and his role was as part of an exhibition sword fighting act. He’s not the strongest but very dexterous and he knows how to put on a show for the crowd.

One night he’s drinking with the other performers when another act, a fortune teller, starts telling their fortunes. The fortune teller goes around the various folk until he gets to the PC at which point he recoils somewhat and foretells that death stalks the PC and one day he will be the spark that ignites a war.

Everyone is drunk so they laugh it off but this stays with the PC and it changes his act for the worst. One night, after a singularly terrible performance, the PC is dropped altogether and, rather than go home, he hits the adventuring scene instead.

I still need to work out how he found the rest of his group but what do people think of the start?

My thinking is that the “prophecy” thing could be a plot hook for the DM if he wants or it could be a load of garbage from a fraudulent fortune teller. If it turns out to be true then in future the PC might multiclass as a warlock (representing a higher - or lower power- trying to bring the PC under its wing so as to control the nature of the war that he starts)

[firelistener]

Pretty good start. I think it's great that you're planning to leave it open as to whether the fortune teller was honest or not, since that leaves your DM an easy out if they don't want to have you start a war but still want to legitimize your character's background story.

I do think you should leave the "sparks a war" part more ambiguous. Maybe something like, "bring great calamity upon your companions". Leaving to protect the other performers could give your character a more selfless/noble reason to ditch the circus without having to be disgraced in a bad performance. That kind of character would probably be a bit more aloof though, so maybe the fighter gets lonely after solo adventuring a bit and decides to look for some companions (hoping they don't find out about the prophecy, or hoping they ignore it should they find out).

As for finding the rest of the group, usually you can leave that to the DM. I open most first sessions of new campaigns with, "You are all in <story location>, for one reason or another". This lets players who care about backstory come up with something retroactively to explain why they're in the story location, and players who don't care very much can just leave it unexplained. Saves me a little effort as DM too lol.

Also I'm just curious, is your fighter taking the Gladiator variant or regular Entertainer? I think either is wonderfully fun, but yours sounds more like a Gladiator from the "exhibition sword fighting".

[Paksos]

Good shout - I hadn’t seen the Gladiator sub-type, that would work well.

[firelistener]

Good shout - I hadn’t seen the Gladiator sub-type, that would work well.

Awesome! Glad I could help point it out
Your character sounds like it will be really fun for the table.

[Lupine]

You might consider using college of swords/ valor.

Then, you can use the tables in Xanathar's for the "embarrassments." It synergizes very well. That said, it might not fit with your party (If your party needs a frontline tank, you might not want to play a skirmisher/mid-liner.)

[CTurbo]

Yeah this sounds better as a Swords Bard IMO, but it would work as a BattleMaster. The Warlock hook works either way.