EDIT: I wrote this before seeing the last four or so posts. I don't have time to reply to anything else for a while, so I'll leave you with this. Go ahead and resubmit. Everyone can make as many sheets as they want, so long as they make sure I know which one they want to use in the end.
That first sentence (of my last post) was not supposed to be there. Makes my post seem (even) more negative than intended, and conveys a level of conviction that I didn't actually feel. I apologize for that, especially considering what I'm about to unload. I hope I don't come off as too mean-spirited.
Let's get the easy stuff out of the way first. I don't care about the sword - I didn't even mention it in my post, and as far as I can tell, its effects on gameplay are negligible at most. Knowing arcane magic (healing or otherwise) makes you a wizard, in the same sense that being a pediatrician makes you a doctor. You may not get the respect that a brain surgeon has, but you had a hell of a way to go to get there anyway. You know magic, that is your main skill in life, not something you pick up as a hobby. Especially something as painstakingly precise as healing - unless you want to turn yourself inside out by accident. Seems like that was a simple misunderstanding, though, so I'll withdraw some of my accusations.
You also lose all natural evolution privileges once you've made a half-giant, half-tree person. The fact that *that* blasphemy against genetics can have a child with whatever race Erasmus was just throws any science talk out the window right away. But that's not the issue here. My personal aversion toward fantasy halfbreeds notwithstanding, in-universe justifications are just window dressing. What's important is the player's motivation for wanting to play whatever character they've made - and how well they convince me they're going to enrich the game rather than take away from. I do see the one you put in your post down there at the bottom, and I'll address that in a moment. I just want to emphasize that that's what matters.
Your sheet is too long for me to go over it with a fine-toothed comb looking for every place where I think communication failed, but ultimately, what you convey is much more important than what exactly you write. I didn't take away much about your character from reading it - especially not about who she became who she is. She seems to live by natural talent and sheer luck, and the hardships she's faced amount to a childhood tragedy and one hungry ocean voyage, after which she immediately married into royalty and lived in the lap of luxury ever since. Traumatizing, certainly, but there's no journey, no progression, no development, just "everyone died and she was sad, now she's not sad anymore." Every part where she might have connected with society and the people around her are glossed over, where the parts you could have glossed over "her mother was kidnapped during a raid and taken as a concubine by the king, done" take up several paragraphs, despite happening in the distant past, far away and to characters that have nothing to do with anyone else's character and will never affect the game in any meaningful way.
What was her marriage like? How did she snap out of her depression? Was she a burden to her husband until he nearly abandoned her? Did having children change her? What did she think about living in a country permanently waging war at every border? Did she have to struggle to find acceptance? How was her unique brand of magic received? There are thousands of things that could affect who she is, but her background seems to mostly focus on the physical flow of events, and not at all on how any of this impacted her. Even the stuff that could be emotionally impactful is relegated to a couple of sentences - her child is murdered, but all that leads to is a description of how the attackers lost some limbs. Even the violence strikes me as uninspired. Also, you promised flashbacks - as in, role playing segments no one can interact with or even perceive. I'm not sure what you're hoping to achieve with that, and to me that only increases the feeling that your character is stuck in a past that has nothing to do with the present.
You say your character has cultural traits from her father's country, but you only list things that are not going to be noticeable in the actual game. You say you wrote parts of it when you were exhausted, well, to that I can only shrug. I still only have what you gave me to judge you by. Appendices and explanations after the fact are gonna be very impractical once the game starts, as well, so your ability to communicate everything you need to in a single post is actually important.
And then, there's a whole 'nother misunderstanding I have to address. This one's not nearly as serious or big, though. Everyone is stronger, tougher, faster etc than a baseline human, unless you choose not to be (and of course, I expect wizards to limit themselves relative to warriors), and the way you wrote it, I interpreted it as you not realizing that, but wanting to have it all anyway, which is an attitude I'm wary of to the point of paranoia. Getting run through with a sword and just keeling over dead is actually below my expectations. Did you perhaps mean to say that that's all she has to make her more physically capable than the average person?
Your last paragraph, wherein you explain your motivation, is the reason I still have faith in you. That motivation is what I care about the most. However, even there I have some issues. Mainly, that I don't feel the impact of any of those things in your sheet, and despite your explanation, I have no idea what you want.
That first sentence (of my last post) was not supposed to be there. Makes my post seem (even) more negative than intended, and conveys a level of conviction that I didn't actually feel. I apologize for that, especially considering what I'm about to unload. I hope I don't come off as too mean-spirited.
Let's get the easy stuff out of the way first. I don't care about the sword - I didn't even mention it in my post, and as far as I can tell, its effects on gameplay are negligible at most. Knowing arcane magic (healing or otherwise) makes you a wizard, in the same sense that being a pediatrician makes you a doctor. You may not get the respect that a brain surgeon has, but you had a hell of a way to go to get there anyway. You know magic, that is your main skill in life, not something you pick up as a hobby. Especially something as painstakingly precise as healing - unless you want to turn yourself inside out by accident. Seems like that was a simple misunderstanding, though, so I'll withdraw some of my accusations.
You also lose all natural evolution privileges once you've made a half-giant, half-tree person. The fact that *that* blasphemy against genetics can have a child with whatever race Erasmus was just throws any science talk out the window right away. But that's not the issue here. My personal aversion toward fantasy halfbreeds notwithstanding, in-universe justifications are just window dressing. What's important is the player's motivation for wanting to play whatever character they've made - and how well they convince me they're going to enrich the game rather than take away from. I do see the one you put in your post down there at the bottom, and I'll address that in a moment. I just want to emphasize that that's what matters.
Your sheet is too long for me to go over it with a fine-toothed comb looking for every place where I think communication failed, but ultimately, what you convey is much more important than what exactly you write. I didn't take away much about your character from reading it - especially not about who she became who she is. She seems to live by natural talent and sheer luck, and the hardships she's faced amount to a childhood tragedy and one hungry ocean voyage, after which she immediately married into royalty and lived in the lap of luxury ever since. Traumatizing, certainly, but there's no journey, no progression, no development, just "everyone died and she was sad, now she's not sad anymore." Every part where she might have connected with society and the people around her are glossed over, where the parts you could have glossed over "her mother was kidnapped during a raid and taken as a concubine by the king, done" take up several paragraphs, despite happening in the distant past, far away and to characters that have nothing to do with anyone else's character and will never affect the game in any meaningful way.
What was her marriage like? How did she snap out of her depression? Was she a burden to her husband until he nearly abandoned her? Did having children change her? What did she think about living in a country permanently waging war at every border? Did she have to struggle to find acceptance? How was her unique brand of magic received? There are thousands of things that could affect who she is, but her background seems to mostly focus on the physical flow of events, and not at all on how any of this impacted her. Even the stuff that could be emotionally impactful is relegated to a couple of sentences - her child is murdered, but all that leads to is a description of how the attackers lost some limbs. Even the violence strikes me as uninspired. Also, you promised flashbacks - as in, role playing segments no one can interact with or even perceive. I'm not sure what you're hoping to achieve with that, and to me that only increases the feeling that your character is stuck in a past that has nothing to do with the present.
You say your character has cultural traits from her father's country, but you only list things that are not going to be noticeable in the actual game. You say you wrote parts of it when you were exhausted, well, to that I can only shrug. I still only have what you gave me to judge you by. Appendices and explanations after the fact are gonna be very impractical once the game starts, as well, so your ability to communicate everything you need to in a single post is actually important.
And then, there's a whole 'nother misunderstanding I have to address. This one's not nearly as serious or big, though. Everyone is stronger, tougher, faster etc than a baseline human, unless you choose not to be (and of course, I expect wizards to limit themselves relative to warriors), and the way you wrote it, I interpreted it as you not realizing that, but wanting to have it all anyway, which is an attitude I'm wary of to the point of paranoia. Getting run through with a sword and just keeling over dead is actually below my expectations. Did you perhaps mean to say that that's all she has to make her more physically capable than the average person?
Your last paragraph, wherein you explain your motivation, is the reason I still have faith in you. That motivation is what I care about the most. However, even there I have some issues. Mainly, that I don't feel the impact of any of those things in your sheet, and despite your explanation, I have no idea what you want.
