a mute character

[Talus]

I was thinking about playing a character that is mute. I was wondering if anyone had tried this or had any ideas on how to pull it off. I curious how the community would react to this or if it is impossible.

[Gordy101st]

I knew a mute in my old server (the HCR one), he died because he couldn't scream for help and we couldn't find his body

Its an interesting idea but its just like playing a blind monk, its more trouble than its worth to play out normally. Its disabling one of your main ways to interract with people. If you've got friends OOC who will help you develope this char and will actually play with him then yeah it will be good.

I can just imagine the stranger scenario though

*walks up and flaps arms rapidly smiling*

stranger raises an eyebrow and picks up warhammer
"ye'd better back off laddy"

;D

I can't really help with HOW to pull this off since your world would be limitted massively to up, down, left, right, yes, no sort of things. But it sounds like it would be interesting. The only way to see how it would be pulled off would be to start playing and see how your mute char reacts and tries to get the message across

[Gaurdian]

and careful with the mute casters. unless you ahve the right feats.

[Forum Administrator]

Playing mute characters will develop your roleplay skills rather impressively, I can assure you firsthand.

I've had a few characters that were mute throughout the years (yeah, in PnP too ), and they're very fun to play.

Now, seeing as your character wouldn't be able to speak or make physical sounds because of the muteness, you'll have to endure ALOT of emote-roleplaying, in case you were wondering on any part.

Another thing, like Guardian wrote above, if you're going to play a spellcaster of any kind, make sure to take the SILENT SPELL feat, and use ALL your spells as "Silenced Spells". If you don't, your character will make the chanting spellcasting sounds whenever you cast a spell.

One last thing to note, when making your character, find a VoiceSet that doesn't have any sound in it. And fortunate enough for the likes of players playing mute characters, the "Minotaur Zor" VoiceSet is broken, and as such, it has no sound.


Cheers,
DM Bassa

[Talus]

Thanks for the Advice. We'll see if I think I am up to the challenge.

[Munroe]

There was a mute character on a server I used to play who eventually got a pen. She carried it everywhere with her, but sometimes she didn't have paper. Eventually, though, she was unmuted.

(She was some weird made-up mute extraplanar elven race and she made a wish to be able to talk and got turned into a normal elf. This was actually a DM resolution to the fact that she was some weird made-up extraplanar mute elven race. Worse paladin ever, but anyway... the RP with the pen was good. Once she could talk, we wished she was mute because her INT was only 9 and she was incredibly vain.)

Anyway, my point was even if you are mute you can sometimes communicate with pen and paper, and the second part of my point was don't play low INT paladins of Sune unless you can grasp Sune having LG paladins and remember your character is Lawful Good. Actually, I don't think that was my point, just stick with the pen and paper stuff.

[soulfien]

The mute thing was cool until I started getting tells explaining what the pc was trying to get across. Ruined it for me and I started ignoring the character.

[kenny26]

i've seen one mute char on the server before and he did it extremely well.
rather than playing it as a physical handicap that the nearest cleric cold cure by waving his hand at him, the char had actually taken a vow of silence, actively refusing to speak.

he did an awesome job and had many friends ic, and his emotes were very detailed. most of the time i could visualize the person doing the emote and guess what he was trying to get across to me.

but be careful, if you're not cut out for it you'll just end up isolating yourself socially.

[Munroe]

've seen one mute char on the server before and he did it extremely well.
rather than playing it as a physical handicap that the nearest cleric cold cure by waving his hand at him, the char had actually taken a vow of silence, actively refusing to speak.

There's not a clerical spell or ability I can think of that will correct a birth defect so it need not be a vow of silence.

[kenny26]

my point was that some clerics will always try to cure you no matter what illness you're roleplaying, and persist, which can be annoying if you have to move the discussion ooc to tell the player to stop trying to cure you.
that aside i'm not saying it's impossible to RP a birth defect, it was really just a brief comment about that particular character...

[Gusty]

The problem with that previous mute is that he emoted more information then a mute would be able to emote, basically talking through his emotes, for example.

*senses hostility coming from the west passage*

this is not appropriate emoting for anyone. Something to keep in mind in 'ones' own emotes perhaps.

[Munroe]

Don't you love when you suddently realise your character is telepathic? When you can read people's minds, you must be telepathic, right?

Every time I see an emote that is emoting thoughts or feelings directly, I feel like emoting back *suddenly realises s/he can read minds* but since I don't know a lot of the people I have been playing with here, I don't do that. Now if I were on a server with a bunch of people I'd played with for a long time, I would totally just let that one fly.

[kenny26]

emoting one's thoughts isn't a major problem...
it's like typos, people can't help themselves and sometimes slip up when they type.
people usually just ignore the typos and the overly detailed emotes out of sheer convenience 'cause it happens all the time...

apart from typing alot of thoughts into his emotes, i did find the mute entertaining.

[MithrilBlade]

Can I play mute mind flayer? ;D


...Anyway yeah, it is fun to play insane/mute/other abnormal character for certain time but after that it starts to get just annoying, the fact is that other characters won't accept you if you're too strange or dark and mysterious person.

Oh well this is very individual thing but at least I personally don't like it when other characters ignore/dislike my character's presence, it usually goes to that when you make too strange one.