Can't decide

So, I got this idea of making a Grim Reaper themed/styled character. However, I don't know which Alignment to us. As the Grim Reaper is technically not a Villain, and since he kills people he's not a Hero. So it's either Rogue or Vigilante. Which one seems to fit better?

Who says a hero can't kill people?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

Allow me to rephrase, he kills INNOCENT people. He's a reaper, so it doesn't matter if your innocent, a good guy or a bad guy. You'll eventually wind up on his to kill list.

While perhaps not maliciously so, he's still the enemy of every living creature. Make him a villain.

Hmmm, but technically he isn't evil. As everything has to end at some time and without him there would be death, which would royaly mess up the time line.

Surely the Reaper doesn't kill, he just reaps the souls of the already dead.

There is a reason he's called the Angel of Death.

He's not a bad guy, he's simply another Angel tasked with a gruesome chore. Reaping the souls of the recently departed, so they don't get trapped on the mortal plane.

Sounds heroic to me.

Even though you despise the thought of him, when he claims the soul of your grandma, it'd be far worse if he didn't and you had to live with her ghost forever.

You could make the concept to have him fed on the souls of evil ones, while reluctantly taking the souls of the others.

Hmmm, didn't think about that. I still haven't thought of what powersets to use.

Maybe he CAN'T be a villain by virtue of the fact that he's clinically insane.

Hence the phrase "Reaper Madness."

Death is a hero. Death is the ultimate figure of mercy, fairness, and transition.

Make an Empathy Defender. The ones you can't save in time are meant to go!

I'd go with Vigilante, personally.

Vigilantes in this game aren't concerned with personal gain. They're concerned with getting the job done.

You can't be a hero because heroes in this game actively prevent people from dying.
You can't be a villain because you lack malice.
And you can't be a Rogue because death cannot be swayed by filthy lucre.

Vigilantes simply do what they believe they must. Even if that means occasionally reaping an innocent.

Also, Reapers don't have to be murderers. They can also be psychopomps, tasked with guiding souls to the next world.

Another take on the reaper is less of a "taker of souls" and more of a "Death Enforcer". From this perspective, every soul has a predestined "Time of Death". In this case, your Reaper actually doubles as a guardian angel type figure. Your job is to ensure people pass when their time has come. Not a moment before, and not a second later.

So... for example, if their was an attack on a building, you would use your reaper powers to see which victims are meant to survive. You would rescue those victims, and then reap the rest.

If someone violated their ToD (by becoming undead, for example), then you would have to hunt them down and kill them in order to maintain spiritual equilibrium.

I think it would be an interesting way to justify being a Vigilante.

As for powers, I would look into Dark Themed Powers (for obvious reasons), or Pain Domination/Empathy, depending on what AT you choose.

*cough*Shinigami*cough*Bleach*cough*

Excuse me, must have swallowed a bug.

Only Shinigami I know about is a certain MMO, as for Bleach I don't watch it nor do I really want to as it seems like a pretty generic 'death' themed anime to me.

Surprisingly there's no real death theme in Bleach at all. The show's take on shinigami (grim reapers) is not one where they kill people, but one where they make sure those that have died move on. In the show if a soul doesn't move on it gradually loses it's humanity and becomes a monster. The shinigami's duty is to make sure souls don't stick around to become monsters, and to protect the living world from those souls they couldn't get to in time. It's probably the most heroic view of a grim reaper you will find. The show doesn't focus on people that die or have died though, they mostly just kill the monsterized souls and fight other people.

Please don't make a shinigami character though.

Well, I was thinking of my character being something more like Thanatos, Angeu, Smierc, the Yamaduts and other, older, traditional incarnations of death.

However, I found an example of Death being viewed as someone evil, Izanami. For those of you who don't know Japanese legends/mythology, In Kojiki, after giving birth to the fire god Hinokagutsuchi, the goddess Izanami dies from wounds of its fire and enters the perpetual night realm called Yomi-no-kuni (the underworld) that the gods retire to and where Izanagi, her husband, travels to in a failed attempt to reclaim her. He discovers his wife as not-so beautiful anymore, and, in a brief argument afterwards between them, she promises to take a thousand lives every day, signifying her position as the goddess of death.

I wouldn't put Death redside for the sole reason that I'm pretty sure he wouldn't be working for anyone else, even Arachnos.

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