CancerMans Character

I noticed @SHMKehoes's questions regarding dual-wizarding in the party, and after browsing Ammos's backstory I was struck with the idea of recycling an old wizard character whose background was nobility. My character could be from the Grifstone family as a younger sibling to the heir. Not sure how much info is there on the Grifstones, so if SHMKehoes is willing to work in a familial relationship between Ammos and my character, I can easily adapt as needed.

The drive for my character, as a noble, is to generate renown for the family name. Whether a Grifstone or a different family from a different region like Neverwinter, having a positive reputation promotes influence and garners favor, which can translate to power. Helping the Rockseekers establish their "something big" is a potential avenue for familial growth, even if there's little monetary reward.

So regardless of whether or not my character is a Grifstone, my character's goal will start as a desire to make their family proud; typical youngest child seeking approval of their parents and peers. There may also be an underlying problem of escaping an arranged marriage and using the adventure as an excuse to separate themselves from their assigned fate. As the adventure progresses, they begin their own personal growth and discovery and perhaps prove to their parents that they can do just fine on their own.

If @SHMKehoe is good what that I would be fine with you being brothers.

I hope that it's not presumptuous to respond here, I'm fine with being brothers!
There isn't a lot of lore about the Grifstone family, but they exist as a "new" noble family in Waterdeep that deals in mining, masonry and crafting. "New" means only 200 or so years old, as most of the Waterdavian noble houses are much older.

Are you thinking of going Human and being a blood Grifstone rather than adopted in? I don't think there's any lore specifying the Grifstone's race, so if you would rather be elf or dwarf we can change the family race to something else.

I am going to be human, and would like to be a blood member of the Grifstone family. I think it will provide a solid connection for my character to be Ammos's adoptive sibling.

Allowing the Grifstones to be new means there is greater purpose in my character's goals. Should they fail to acquire influence or secure a successful business venture from the Rockseekers, it'd mean they'd be subject to an arranged marriage to secure the family's power (assuming such things are still done in Waterdeep).

In my head, my character might consider Ammos to be more of a blood-sibling than their older sister, courtesy of the old spit-in-the-handshake. While Big Sis is busy becoming the future head of the house, my character as child would freely and willingly get into shenanigans, maybe even dragging Ammos along for the fun.

Then, in later years as Ammos began to develop their own interest in learning the Old Magic and sought their own path, my character would suddenly realize that they'd be all alone with just Big Sis and potential boring courtly affairs. They'd come up with the plan to prove their worth to the family without having to be involved and tag along with Ammos to get out of the house, literally and figuratively.

I haven't yet decided my character's gender. I just know that they're technically younger than Ammos by virtue of being born after Ammos was adopted.

I assume we're using the D&D 5e 2014 rules for character creation?

See the game information page.

Certainly, I was just asking because the 2024 rules have slight differences in backgrounds and spell selections. For example, the 2024 Noble background basically gets the Skilled feat, so I wanted to make sure we were all going off the same source.

Completely understood; I've got the core rulebooks from all editions going back to AD&D1ed and I'm pretty complete with 5e. I have no interest in spending $00s to start over again, so I'm happy we're staying with 5e and not 5.5/6/whatever 😁

I have submitted Tatiana Grifstone, human wizard.

@SHMKehoe, do you have names for our parents and oldest sister, or our mutual tutor? It's all right if you don't, just writing up the simple backstory. I can fill in any blanks later.

Well, Tatiana is quite a Ravenloft name, so we could borrow some inspiration from there- for the family at least.
Parents Vasilli and Alina?
Sister could be Livia.

Thoughts on those?

I wasn't really thinking of Ravenloft, but I admit I had some Eastern European influences on the brain so it does fit. All of the names work for me.