Playing Frankeinstein's Monster

[APorg]

Did a search on the forums but wasn't able to find anything on this subject.

Is this an option as a PC? Could the Frankenstein Monster be represented by the Caliban subrace?

[EO]

It'd be a flesh golem but we dont support that subrace unfortunately.

[Badelaire]

Fun fact: Frankenstein's Monster was actually called Adam. Thus tying in the connection of the Lamordian creation to literary horror as per Ravenloft's MO.

[APorg]

It'd be a flesh golem but we dont support that subrace unfortunately.

Would it be too much of a stretch to use the Caliban template to represent a playable type of "golem"?

[herkles]

Fun fact: Frankenstein's Monster was actually called Adam. Thus tying in the connection of the Lamordian creation to literary horror as per Ravenloft's MO.

actually not correct, it was not given a name. Unlesss you count "monster!" as a name. Though i do believe it likened himself to adam at one point, been a while since I read the book.

[herkles]

Fun fact: Frankenstein's Monster was actually called Adam. Thus tying in the connection of the Lamordian creation to literary horror as per Ravenloft's MO.

actually not correct, it was not given a name. Unlesss you count "monster!" as a name. Though i do believe it likened himself to adam at one point, been a while since I read the book.

I'm sorry but I have to politely disagree. Re-read the book. He refers to himself several times as the "Adam" of Frankenstein's labours (hence the Ravenloft nod) and took the name as his given one. It isn't expressly mentioned by everyone but is the one the monster adopted as a result of wishing identity. Being made up of several cadavers and all.

Yet one of the things of the book was how he had no name, he was the monster. I did state the monster likened himself to Adam, but he was given no name at all and no one called him by the name adam at all in the book.

[APorg]

Let me ask the question another way:

Is it possible that a Caliban can represent something that was not birthed, but something that was grown or made as the result of some horrible experiment?

[Badelaire]

Herakles I'm just not getting into it, sorry. Hence why I deleted my post. There lie better expenditures of my energy and no Prog, I don't believe there's any way a Caliban could be grown unless some macabre experiment in warping an already gestating foetus within the womb using dark magicks. I have some folklore on something similar from the Malleus Maleficarum someplace I'll try to drag out and translate.

[Silverfox]

Frankenstein's Monster is featured in the Masque of the Red Death Gothic Earth campaign setting, but could be readily represented in the Ravenloft Campaign Setting by an MPC with the Dread Golem template added on. It'd require some tweaking, but I would think that this would be a pretty cool exceptional MPC to encounter.

It would allow players to explore the morality behind science, magic & the human condition after all - so long as no one has an itchy red-until-dead trigger finger.

Would totally support such a motion, but unfortunately, my word isn't worth anything around here

Wizardly experimentation creating a Caliban which must replace it's flesh with that of fresh corpses to slow it's own decay, is however the best possible outcome I can concieve for a "legit" way of doing this.

[Crimson Shuriken]

The monster refers to himself as Adam, a metaphor allusion to Eden's Adam of course. You're both right and the row is dumb semantics.

[Bluebomber4evr]

Let me ask the question another way:

Is it possible that a Caliban can represent something that was not birthed, but something that was grown or made as the result of some horrible experiment?

No, that is not allowed.

[dutchy]

...but he apreciates the out of the box thinking.


i got hired by the staff to nicefy blue's posts, im his persenal app 

[Feronius]

It more sounds like something along the lines of the mummy template, tbh, more so than a caliban.

[ThePwush]

Did a search on the forums but wasn't able to find anything on this subject.

Is this an option as a PC? Could the Frankenstein Monster be represented by the Caliban subrace?

I don't know if this is a viable idea, but what about roleplaying a caliban who was experimented on, having limbs severed and the limbs of others attached via regeneration magic?  Eyes, ears, fingers, maybe even lips or the nose, for example.  It's just an idea I'm throwing out there.  I could see a necromancer doing this, as well as having his poor victim hang in the balance between life and death while he experimented.   

[ladylena]

In the 3.5 Ravenloft Denizens of dread creature rule book, there is a creature, playable if I remember correctly called a broken one. Sort of like frankenstien's monster, though I am unsure if it would be permitted in the game.

[Dusk]

i got hired by the staff to nicefy blue's posts, im his persenal app 

[Bluebomber4evr]

In the 3.5 Ravenloft Denizens of dread creature rule book, there is a creature, playable if I remember correctly called a broken one. Sort of like frankenstien's monster, though I am unsure if it would be permitted in the game.

Broken ones are more like the vivisected animals in H.G. Wells's The Island of Dr. Moreau, but they are not allowed as a PC race, either.

[EberronBruce]

What about this.

Making a test tube cailibian. One that was born out of a test tube not in womb. There are sometimes a mad scientist in the mountains near Krofburg that makes broken ones and melocks. So why couldn't he explore in growing something. Stats wise it is the same as any half orc, but it goes into description and how you play the character. This is the idea.

Create a half-orc character, make stats like like wis, int, cha very low like 6. Make is strength 20, his con extremely high, and dex average. Choose an good picture to match your description. Choose Barbarian for the class. Choose male for his sex to use male body type. Make the character's sex neutral (neither male or female). Choose a proper face as well. Then create a creative description and background story about how he was grown not born.

Then play the character who has the mental age of a 3 year old, who can barely speak, who is extremely emotional, and who is trying to fit it. Give him very crappy equipment and don't go asking around for like steel armor or anything. Use the rage from the barbarian to show he gets upset.

He becomes a very dangerous monster but with a lot of the humanistic type of characteristics that can be found from a Frankenstein's monster. Essentially this is a poor man's Frankenstein which you don't get the perks of a golem like immunities and such, but you can get the same kind of roleplay.

[Bluebomber4evr]

What about this.

Making a test tube cailibian. One that was born out of a test tube not in womb. There are sometimes a mad scientist in the mountains near Krofburg that makes broken ones and melocks. So why couldn't he explore in growing something. Stats wise it is the same as any half orc, but it goes into description and how you play the character. This is the idea.

Create a half-orc character, make stats like like wis, int, cha very low like 6. Make is strength 20, his con extremely high, and dex average. Choose an good picture to match your description. Choose Barbarian for the class. Choose male for his sex to use male body type. Make the character's sex neutral (neither male or female). Choose a proper face as well. Then create a creative description and background story about how he was grown not born.

Then play the character who has the mental age of a 3 year old, who can barely speak, who is extremely emotional, and who is trying to fit it. Give him very crappy equipment and don't go asking around for like steel armor or anything. Use the rage from the barbarian to show he gets upset.

He becomes a very dangerous monster but with a lot of the humanistic type of characteristics that can be found from a Frankenstein's monster. Essentially this is a poor man's Frankenstein which you don't get the perks of a golem like immunities and such, but you can get the same kind of roleplay.

No. That is not what a caliban is. Calibans are not a "I can be anything!" race.

Read this thread for what calibans are and are not: http://www.nwnravenloft.com/forum/index.php?topic=29503.0

[Dusk]

Eh, that the Frankenstein monster was 'created' only represents a facet of what made it such an effective antagonist, IMO. It seems the particular facet of 'created in a lab' isn't too transferable with the playable PC races, but if you identify some other facets such as 'tabula rasa', 'abandonment', and 'eternal isolation', I think it's entirely possible to capture the essence of the Frankenstein monster in a character. Were I to do this, I'd likely start with a background concept along the lines of: Sewer Caliban is captured in Port-a-Lucine and brought to a scientist in Lamordia for experimentation. Already thought of as less-than-human, the Caliban could undergo horrific experiments -- grafting, for instance -- that leaves the Caliban even more disfigured. During the process, the Caliban looses all sense of identity and memory, and when discarded as 'failed', he is left with feeling only a sense as if he'd been abandoned by his 'father' and left in a world where he was truly unique, grotesque, and forever alone without a clue as to the workings of anything at all.

If the aim is to capture the psychology of Frankenstein's monster in a character, I'd imagine it could be done with a few of the races. If the aim is to capture the physiology as well, or both, I'd imagine it much more difficult, if not impossible with the given playable races.

[Ovidiu_Lacusta]

One of my favorite short pieces in Drama class was one I got to pick called "The Return of Frankenstein."

Victor is in a graveyard mourning the loss of his family, killed by the monster.

The monster returns, cultured by sciences and language and theology, and accuses Victor of being a horrible "father."

It's pretty short, but so heavy.  I highly recommend it!

[APorg]

Partly I wanted to see if playing something without parents -- something truly non-human -- was on the books. But it's not, so oh well.