I actually came up almost exactly what I thought I'd end up with. I am apparently a true neutral dwarf mage thief (and a follower of Dumathoin). I didn't predict thief and I didn't bother picking a Forgotten Realms diety. (I predicted true neutral dwarf mage.)
Here is the longer version (with the requested link from the html code I am copying):
I Am A: True Neutral Dwarf Mage Thief
Alignment:
True Neutral characters are very rare. They believe that balance is the most important thing, and will not side with any other force. They will do whatever is necessary to preserve that balance, even if it means switching allegiances suddenly.
Race:
Dwarves are short and stout, and easily recognizable by their well-cared-for beards. They are hard workers, and adept at stonework and engineering. They tend to live apart from other races; generally in deep, underground excavated systems, and as such tend to be distant from other races.
Primary Class:
Mages harness the magical energies for their own use. Spells, spell books, and long hours in the library are their loves. While often not physically strong, their mental talents can make up for this.
Secondary Class:
Thieves are the most roguish of the classes. They are sneaky and nimble-fingered, and have skills with traps and locks. While not all use these skills for burglary, that is a common occupation of this class.
Deity:
Dumathoin is the True Neutral dwarven god of buried wealth, ores, gems, and mining. He is also known as the Keeper of Secrets under the Mountain. His followers are typically miners and explorers, but also respect the beauty of the earth. They also stand guard over the dwarven dead. Their preferred weapon is the maul. Dumathoin's symbol is a faceted gem set inside a mountain peak.
Find out What D&D Character Are You?, courtesy of
NeppyMan (e-mail)Some detailed results:
Alignment: True Neutral beat out Lawful Neutral by only one answer. The only chaotic alignment with nonnegative results was CN. Neutral evil had the lowest score of -6.
Race: Dwarf and gnome each got 7 points. (Gnome was actually my second choice for what I thought I'd get.) I got a -5 score on half-orc and a -2 in human. ("I'm a human being!" --- I hope somebody catches this reference.)
Class: +5 on mage, +3 on thief, +2 on bard, +1 on cleric, and negative numbers on everything else (lead by the -6 on fighter, -4 on druid, and -3 on paladin).
27 comments:
I am a:
Neutral Good Gnome Bard Ranger
Hrm, I think I can handle that.
NG Human Ranger/Fighter. Funny, that's exactly what I play in Chris's game.
That character is still NG? What happened...? Have you been reforming lately?
Both of you are damn goody two-shoes! (I think I had a 0 score in the NG column. In fact, my total good score was something like +1, my total evil score was somewhat negative, and my neutral score had a total in the mid teens.)
[[Mason steps aways from the computer and goes and looks for his red robes.]]
steps away from the computer even...
I had my Godfather hat on briefly.
I got neutral good elven monk/ranger in service to Lathander.
I'm a little suprised that ddruid and bard are my only other positive class types. And that half-elf and dwarf were the only other positive races (and both close to elf too 7-5-4). I'll buy the alignment grid, I need to kick some puppies.
I find it also intersting that I cannot make a decent career path choice in simulation. (>^.~<)
fwiw, the distribution on my quiz was rather tight--more points in the things that came up for the result than all other options combined in every case, by a fair margin at times as well. The only "close" alternative was fighter, out of Bard(8)/Ranger(7)/Fighter(3).
I'm still a tad confused about the Ranger bit, but I'll live. M, that reminds me of the special reputation titles you could get in Fallout 1/2. "Puppy Kicker" would fit right in.
Oh yeah, Mason "I am..a...human being!" was the exclamation of the elephant man to a gawking crowd, which was his first indication of intelligence. Before this, there was a scene where the physician notes that he hopes that the elephant man is mentally incapable of anything beyond sustaining his existence, as for him to be able to do anything more would be too cruel. When he reveals that he is more mentally developed than anyone had expected, the scene grows quiet -- the people still gawk but there is a sense of shame amongst them.
Mylanda: I am actually thinking of a more recent manifestation of this line, although there is no question that the one I have in mind stole it from the reference you mention. (It's my bad for thinking of the other reference, but what can I say...)
I'm considering providing another hint, but I think there are several people here who don't need it.
True Neutral Human Ranger Druid. Does this mean I have to worship something? Because that's right out.
Wait, I had 5 points each in Ranger, Druid, and Bard. I think Ranger Bard makes more sense for me, seing as I'm an atheistic actor.
That question wasn't on the list, though I'm sure it would have swayed the points in favor of bard.
CN elf mage, very much as expected (though I note that they're quoting the idiotic 2nd edition definition of CN...). For some reason bard was the secondary class.
Details: -3 lawful, chaos and neutral differed by one. Very strongly neutral, with a negative evil score and positive good score. Race - elf by an overwhelming margin. Class - 8/6/5 mage/bard/thief, not much in anything else.
Gazebo - give in to the God of Slaughter!! Remember that nice sword we hid away, if you turn evil you can use it. :-D
They're also using one of the dumb 2nd ed defs of true neutral. True neutral certainly need not mean that one believes in balance. (The whole switching sides example is ridiculous.)
Josh: While I am completely with you on this in real life, having a D & D character be atheist doesn't typically work too well.
PC: "I don't believe in you!"
Cyric: [[Smite!]]
That was a non-random choice of dieties, but it's not like people are choosing random ones with their real-life examples and arguments.
Yeah, my impression, at least insofar as D&D is concerned, is that religion ~= political party.
Let the church & state comments commence!
I'm apparently a Chaotic Good Human Mage/Bard, follower of Mystra.
Race was interestingly distributed - 9 human, 7 dwarf, 5 elf, rest small.
Primary class was overwhelmingly mage (9), the rest were bard 4, thief 3, fighter 2, pld/clr 1, ranger 0, monk -2, and.... druid -5!
alignment definately tended to chaotic, but CG was overwhelming favorite.
3/ 2/ 8
-1/ 1/ 3
2/-2/ 1
Oh yeah, and halfling at -7, which I find amusing for some reason.
Mason: I agree with you on the stricter D&D interpretation, but a lot of the problems I had in the quiz had to do with balancing out "real world" decisions and "D&D" decisions.
Mainly the "Red Dragon" question. What would I do when I saw a Red Dragon? If I was on acid, I would let the dragon eat me. That's what you're supposed to do. If I happened to see a flesh (scale?) and blood Red Dragon, however, I personally would run my tail off and consider anybody who didn't an idiot.
So answering that questions calls for some make-believe concession. On the other hand, I'm taking this quiz to find out which character I am, not to establish a character. So how can I make a decision on what action to take if I were to face a Red Dragon without knowing which character I am already? I don't know what level or alignment deity is, nor who my party consists of, so how can I be asked to make a decision on the facing of Red Dragons (or in the case of the other questions, choosing a particular treasure out of a list, for instance).
Aha! The question is no longer "Which D&D Character Are You?", but "Which D&D Character Would You Like To Be?". Much with all of the online quizzes that I take that are "Which [pop culture reference] Are You?", I know which one each answer is going to lead me to ahead of time. It was pretty obvious which alignment or class each answer leaned towards, so the quiz is bent towards whatever my desire is rather than an honest depiction of my likeness in a D&D setting (if that is even possible).
Therefore my only recourse in order to get that honest answer is to base the answers on as much my real-life persona as possible. Unfortunately, the questions left me no possibility on that route: rather than being personality based, they were based on already-established classes, and I couldn't answer anything like "I have a spiritual side" or "I don't believe in magic", answers which would be more reality-based and yet allow for the personality answering the question to be cast into a magic user/non-magic user category.
I had a similar thought along these lines with the first "Lesser of Two Evils" run, when I commented that maybe chaotic evil is only evil in the eyes of those that establish and uphold the law. Someone (I forget who) commented that such a thought was too "meta" for D&D. What struck me was that we weren't supposed to think along the lines of these ambiguities when the title of the campaign itself was called "The Lesser of Two Evils".
Anyway, that was a silly amount of time to talk about an online quiz, but I felt like writing. Plus I have a pet peeve about online quizzes that are based around answering questions so that you know you'll get what you want when I would rather see a personality test geared towards formulating a character based on your answers.
Josh: Wow, that sounded a bit venemous. I passed the quiz along because I find such quizzes to be an amusing diversion. I do agree that the format restricts one's choices. (I put 'meat and beer' for food even though I don't drink beer. Maybe I should have chosen the 'salad' one and rotated by 90 degrees to turn it into meat?)
It sounds like I went through the answers in a manner similar to what you did---just trying to find the one that fit my personality based on the answers. One can figure out in advance what leads to what, but one need to attempt to go in that direction either.
If you have a pet peeve about these quizzes, then why'd you participate?
Lemming: It sounded based on your phrasing like you were agreeing with me, but I wasn't quite sure what you were trying to say. (By the way, Jing asked me at dinner who you are. Your fame is spreading.)
Mason: I certainly wasn't trying to come off as venomous, though if I did, I apologize for giving that impression. I certainly don't hold it against you for linking to the quiz, nor do I judge you for saying "hey, let's have some fun with this..." By all means, I think that's a totally fine thing to do, and my personal rancor with the amount of these quizzes out there has nothing to do with that.
As for why I still take them, there are three very simple answers to that. One: when all my friends are taking the quiz, I throw in my two bits, since it only takes five minutes. Two: I have a bit of an internet addiction, so I really shouldn't be taking the quiz in the first place. Three: if you don't know yet, you will find out soon that I am a brazen and proud hypocrite. I revel in my hypocrisies where others try to hide them. So while I inwardly sigh in exasperation every time I see a new "Which Family Guy Character Are You?" Or "Which Member of the Brady Bunch Are You?" I end up clicking the link anyway and following through the steps.
The problem is, by the end of all the quizzes, I have never been able to say "Well, that's an accurate answer." It's always "Well, that's an answer I saw coming... the questions made it pretty clear." And therein lies my gripe. I'm not against them, nor do I particularly wished to be surprised and astonished by the results. I just want the quiz to, you know, make sense structurally. Entertaining as they may be, they never do accomplish that task for me.
Mason: The dot product of our opinions was not only positive, but nearly equal to the product of the magnitudes. As for my super-secret identity, if you wish you may reveal one of my more well-known aliases, but don't spread any secrets that will make me have to kill you.
Wow, I didn't realize we had such a small angle between us.
The question is why she asked about you versus other people. That just makes no sense to me.
D & D: More popular than hornets. (That should be their slogan.)
Only talking about opinions re: D&D religion, of course. And forgive a bit of *cough cough* mathematical hyperbole *cough cough*.
Josh - though D&D doesn't handle the distinction between alignment and self-image very well at all, other related systems do. I think it makes perfectly good sense that a CE character would consider himself "good" in some way, whether from being completely self-centered, or ends-justifies-means, or whatever. The problem is with alignments and spells/spell-like abilities with the alignment descriptor. So this putative CE dude would register on a Detect Evil spell, have a hard time hitting people with active Protection from Evil spells, etc.
Anyway, one system that avoids this problem is Monte Cook's Arcana Evolved - no alignments or alignment-based spells, for precisely these reasons. Lots of other nice features, too, including what looks like a good, flexible d20 magic system.
Back to the quiz answers, I didn't find the red dragon one at all troublesome. In real life and with all but one of the characters I've ever played, the answer is either "run away" or "run faster than the slowest party member". :-D It was the favored weapon questions that gave me trouble...
Oh yeah, personality test that creates your character - play Morrowind! Though I prefer just picking a class, and I know many other players prefer custom-designing their own class.
I liked the Ultima IV character creation technique.
They used basically the same one in Ultima V to determine what character class you were before becoming an avatar, but it's not the same once you're already an avatar.
justin - interesting point about the Protection of Evil et. al., but can't the names and natures of those spells simply represent equally valid ideals, just as the alignment might in my overly-meta interpretation of the fact?
On the one hand, that interpretation may allow for much more subjectiveness on what is "Evil" alignment and what is not, but it seems to me that the labels of Good and Evil are simply designations of areas to make the role-playing experience easier and more polarized. I'm sure no one goes around in the D&D world saying to nearby townsfolk, "I am so True Neutral, you don't even know!" Rather, our characters and the characters of our allies and enemies are given these designations so that the player is given a measure of guidance as to how his character reacts to certain people, what measure of trust the behavior is met with.
And thereby in the sense of a "Protection from Evil" spell, since the alignment is often attributed to a particular theology, the caster is basically praying to his god to "Protect me from those people whose ideologies and theologies are not my own."
Now, many religions in reality have prayed for this from their deity-of-choice, the only difference is that every religion describes itself as "good" and the other side as "evil". But if "Good" and "Evil" remain empirical names in spellcrafting in D&D, then it stands to reason that the stigma doesn't go with the names. If that were the case, every villain would have to be a cackling little cliche of a true character... which would somewhat limit the ability of roleplaying, in my opinion.
Then again, maybe you're right, and I should check out other games if I want to go this deep into the subject. It's not like the conclusion of my thinking will ultimately effect the way I role-play necessarily, or even offer any productive end. I just like to think about such things.
That's a good thought about making the alignment spells based on religion instead (the vast majority of such spells are cleric/paladin anyway). Should work, I'd think, though some care may be needed for balance. Protection From Non-Coreligionists cast by the one and only priest of Bob the God of Laundry Baskets would protect against a heck of a lot more potential enemies than the same spell cast by a cleric of Pelor (or whoever the most popular deity in the setting happens to be).
Villains don't necessarily need to be cliche, I think, but since the spell lists define an objective Good and Evil, an Evil character would likely have to have a view that yes, I'm Evil as the priests define it, but (for whatever reasons) they're wrong and what I do is lower-case good in some sense that's important to me. Could still make for very interesting characters, but without the alignment system that acknowledgement of being objectively Evil becomes entirely optional.
I should use my comments to create a politically correct character, a Chaotic Evil Activists who insists on being described as "anti-establishment".
Also, if someone knows a variation on Protection from Christianity/Islam that I can cast on this plane, let me know...
Hmm. Neutral Good Elf Mage/Bard. Not what I expected for the alignment, but I'm not surprised one bit by the Mage/Bard. I wouldn't have thought of it myself, but it makes a lot of sense. Number-wise, I had negative scores for every other class (except ranger, which was 0). Next most likely races were gnome then halfling, oddly enough. I think a lot of that's just spillover from my bard-ness.
My alignment scores were
3/7/5
1/3/-2
-1/1/0
which was a bit odd; I think of myself as much more lawful than that would suggest. Not sure whether to put the blame on my self-perception or the quiz; both are fairly likely to be flawed.
I also had a hard time with the weapon question, although oddly enough, I was positive that crossbow was my least prefered weapon. No idea why.
I've actually been trying to research a Protection from Christianity spell, but for some reason it always comes out as a fireball spell centered on me. Go figure.
I'm glad this post has been sustaining well. I've been overworked (more than usual), overstressed (more than usual), and I also had a friend staying with me for a couple days.
Between all that, I wasn't posting. (I wanted to last night, but I was too mentally and physicall exhausted for a quickie, and I wasn't in the mood for the long-overdue post on the 3rd book in the Death Gate Cycle---which is pretty well evinced by the fact that I have now almost finished the 4th book.)
I was hoping to get Jing to guest-post an entry, but she was overly fixated on her postdoc interview. (Imagine that. How dare she! Her priorities clearly need fixing.)
Oh, and I got away with waking up a fellow Techer with The Ride and counting One Flem in consecutive days. Needless to say (but I'll say it anyway), I am extremely proud of myself.
I'll get back to the blog entry later. I have some work planned for tonight---some tax calculations and writing up a postdoc progress report for a grant.
Post a Comment