Human necro - background help

[Lynx.9058]

I've remade my human character like 3 or 4 times now trying to find a good fit for him.  At first it was guardian, thought the whole battlemage look/feel worked well but then decided I didn't really like guardian's playstyle much.  Then went ranger, trying for the hunter/hound theme, but no rifle with the new spec kinda turned me away from that.  Was going to go thief until I saw today's stream and lost interest.

In all of those cases, I went with the commoner/dead sister background as it seemed most fitting.  Was also kinda hoping there'd be some kind of romance arc with Petra but that never played out.  I'm aware of what happens with the sister choice as well.

Now I'm thinking about trying over as a Necromancer, bit of a different flair and I was always aiming for more of a non-magical character before but since that isn't working out I figure I'll flip and go full magic, lol.  However, I'm considering doing noble instead of commoner this time, since it seems like a noble would have better access to magical training (and thus be capable of becoming a necromancer in the first place) than a commoner would.  I'm thinking of headcannoning it as the character's sister 'died' and that spurred him into learning about necromancy trying to bring her 'back'.

I've heard that Lord Faren plays a role later in the game and that kinda makes noble a better choice for human characters in the first place.  I've never tried street rat or noble before, so can anyone give me some opinions on this?  Is the noble story more fitting than commoner for this character?

[Batel.9206]

Well, magic is pretty much everywhere in Tyria - a noble would have just as much access to it as a commoner or a street rat. Everyone can and does use at least a *little* magic. While someone in the nobility may have access to better or more thorough training, even people without that training can easily make up the initial difference. (Heck, one of the sylvari Firstborn - and a major character in the story - is a necromancer. Nobody taught him, yet he's arguably one of the most powerful necromancers in Tyria.)

 

The major characters, at least at first, are all people you may have already met depending on your initial starting story. There's Lord Faren, for human nobles - there's the aforementioned sylvari necromancer (all sylvari meet him early on) - there's Rytlock Brimstone, for charr... Point is, that no matter what background you choose, everyone you don't meet early on will eventually be introduced as part of the main streamlined story. You don't miss out on much, so you don't have to worry about choosing the "wrong" background. There isn't one. 🙂

[Danikat.8537]

Faren does appear periodically through the story and you sometimes get slightly different dialogue if your character is a human noble but it doesn't make a big difference to the story overall.

The same is true for all the biography questions at character creation - 1 determines the level 10 story and one determines the level 20 story (which questions these are depend on the race, for humans it's your rank and one regret) and the others make minor changes, but from level 30 onwards all of them only make minor changes. For example during Season 2 there's a few conversations with Kasmeer where my human noble gets different dialogue choices to my human commoner or my non-human characters but after level 20 there will never be a point where you get an entirely different storyline or anything because of your background.

That means it's almost entirely up to you to decide what fits your character the best. If you think it makes more sense for a necromancer to be a noble then go for it.

I think you can make any background fit for any character, for example my weaver is a human commoner and an orphan. I boosted him to 80 with Tomes and made him a weaver immediately and part of the extra backstory I made up for him is that he fell into being a weaver because he didn't have any formal education in magic, he learned what he could from whoever would teach him and figured a lot out himself based on his grandfather's stories (about the GW1 era, when elementalists would often use spells for different elements together) and no one ever told him he was supposed to focus on just 1 at a time. If I'd made him a noble I think I'd have used a different backstory where maybe his teacher was actually more interested in research and taught just to bring in some more money, and so they spent most of their time experimenting with new ways to use the magic instead of learning the traditional form.

[Lynx.9058]

Thanks for the responses.
  I guess I have a hard time with characters in this game because GW lore and setting is so different from other fantasy IPs and what I'm used to.  In a lot of other games or settings, a commoner wouldn't have magic or formal training, and certainly not a street rat.

 

So far my main and first level 80 was a charr iron legion engineer / scrapper, and every step of the way those character origin choices seemed to fit the story perfectly.  Just having a hard time foreseeing what will fit other characters the best in the same way.

 

 

[Loboling.5293]

I prefer the dead parents noble combination. Because in the story, you were alive with your parents and then they were gone. You were too young to remember what happened, but not too young to forget them entirely. I think your necro could explore the dark arts to search for them in the afterlife. And unlike the other story arcs, this one leaves the least open to never touched again lore, like how you can't interact with your SISTER after rescuing her really. It makes no sense to go through all that trouble, and in gw1, she'd have become a follower. But as it is, she's just a prop with no real identity, and that's why I often go dead parents. Good luck with your new character and have fun! I do the same thing all the time, probably my favorite part of gw2. 

[Amanda Whitemoon.6173]

most other characters from the starter storylines return in some cameo later on in the core storyline,

even if you pick balthazar or kormir it its just slightly altered dialogue in POF

 

 

like the aformentioned sister returns in orr, but basicly no more than a cameo.

Petra is mentioned in orr as sending food

asura statics return later in the grenth temple

charr iron legion has return in orr too

 

but only sometimes its more than a cameo

with Norn heirloom story, that ancestor is met later in orr, Romke

 

mostly you dont see any of them after the core storyline
only Faren returns plenty of times after the core story

 

i did though the human streetrat has no character met later on

so Noble is maybe the most interesting one, with Faren.

 

im still trying to figure out what the source is for the wiki mentioning Petra and the commener character having fun in queensdale and the moa range

 

 

 

[Sleepwalker.1398]

Later on if you choose Durmand Priory, you get close to Sieran but then......

 

😢😢😢