Character Creation Challenge: Pathon Addingdale

Happy New Year!

Other than "Fantasy RPGs," I have not worked out my theme or even my new banner for the new year yet. But I am participating in Tardis Captain's 2025 Character Creation Challenge. 

For this month, I wanted to celebrate the life of my friend and former DM, R. Micheal Grenda, by featuring his characters. When I picked up his collection from his widow this past autumn, it struck me how all of these characters' stories were never going to be told again.  My oldest immediately wanted to take them and use them all in his AD&D 1st Edition game to give it "a feeling of authenticity" and could not disagree.  

Some of these characters are old, as in the dawn of AD&D. Others came from the end of AD&D 1st edition when we were both at University. Some are well known to me, others are not. There are multiple versions of the same characters. There are even versions of some of my own characters.  I won't be featuring those, just his characters. 

Why Do This?

I got to thinking. There are so many of us, players from the first few years of RPGs, who have someone who is no longer at our tables. The Empty Chair. I can't feature everyone's character here, but I can feature his. While I am doing this, you can think back to the characters (and players) who are no longer with you and remember them.

For this, I will feature a character a day, talk about my memories of the character, and talk about how I might use them in my games. 

Pathon Addingdale

This was Grenda's "ego" character and the Patriarch of the Addingdale line. Pathon was born in Oerth CY 632. So in the future if you consider that the "current year" of the World of Greyhawk is 591.  According to his sheet he began in 1976. I know Grenda began playing around then with the OD&D rules, plus the Greyhawk and Eldritch Wizardry supplements. The sheets I have are obviously updated ones. These are newer sheets. Grenda updated to AD&D 1st ed like many of us did.

He was a cleric/fighter. Depending on which sheet I use, he was a 98th/30th level cleric/fighter (hey, it was the 1980s), a 14th level cleric, or a 20th level cleric.  

Pathon, like many of Grenda's characters were part of the Addingdale family. He was one of a twin, but that twin was "lost" in a battle, only to show up later as "the evil twin."  He will come up later.

I am going to pause here. We are going to embrace the tropes here. Sure, some of these might seem edgy, cliché, or even "cringy" by today's standards, but I will not judge them by today's standards. I will look at them in situ as they were when they were made. Let us enjoy them for what they are, not what we might want them to be.

We had rules back then that if you had psionics, your children were more likely to have them as well. Also, we felt that psionics was a sex-linked trait (thank you, high school biology and X-Men comics!), so women characters always had a +5% chance of being psionic. So. You are going to see a lot of psionics here.

Pathon Addingdale for Wasted Lands*

I am going to provide playable stats for the Wasted Lands RPG from Elf Lair Games. Why? Well, one I want to do is provide Dungeons & Dragons alternatives, and Wasted Lands is my game of choice. 

I say Wasted Lands with an asterisk because I will also add material from NIGHT SHIFT and Thirteen Parsecs. This works since there is DNA from my games with Grenda in all the O.G.R.E.S. games, especially NIGHT SHIFT and Thirteen Parsecs.

Class: Theosophist (from NIGHT SHIFT)
Level: 14
Species: Human
Alignment: Light
Background: Warrior

Abilities
Strength: 18 (+3) N    
Agility: 13 (+1) 
Toughness: 14 (+1) 
Intelligence: 16 (+2) N 
Wits: 18 (+3) A 
Persona: 14 (+1) 

Fate Points: 1d10
Defense Value: 0
Vitality: 76 (d6)
Degeneracy: 0
Corruption: 0

Check Bonus (A/N/D): +6/+4/+2
Melee Bonus: +4 (base)
Ranged Bonus: +4 (base)
Saves: +5 vs Wits 

Theosophist Abilities
See Dead people, Turn Undead x2, Summon Dead, Channel Dead, Death Knell, Suggestion, Command the Dead, Life Drain, Slay the Unliving, Call the Reaper

Heroic Touchstones
Level 1: Psychic Ability: Body Control 
Level 3: Additional 1st level Spell: Mend wounds
Level 5: Level 1 of Witch/Sorcerer
Level 7: Psychic Ability: Bio-feedback 
Level 9: Level 2 of Witch/Sorcerer
Level 11: Smite
Level 13: Great Smite

Spells
1st Level: Bless, Cure Light Wounds

Heroic (Divine) Archetype: Divine Warrior

Gear
Mace, Armor, Holy symbol

Not a bad version. I could tweak it a bit, but in truth, I am happy with how he turned out. There are differences between Wasted Lands and AD&D, and thus some differences in characters. I went through these all last year, but I have been pretty happy so far.

Looking forward to seeing how the other characters turn out.

You can get the Wasted Lands RPG and the NIGHT SHIFT RPG at Elf Lair Games.