Are you sane?

[Avor]

I was thinking about past games, and I was reminded "this is not how normal people act" This leds to my question, how sane is the paranoid, murdering thief that is your character?

sll common

ADD
Anxiety disorder
Binge drinling
Bipolarr
Delusional
PTSD
psychopath
sociopath
Schizophrenia


Personaly, my half orc samurai believed he was on holy mission from Heironeous to bring orde and goodnes to all orc kind.

[penbed400]

Favorite character to play ever was a halfling rogue with a dark past and ancestry in thievery. I actually planned out the family tree. He was a:

womanizing
binge drinking
clepto maniac
sex addict

whos entire goal in life is to stay completely drunk and steal as much stuff as possible until he settles down in the family mansion, finds one of his many bastard children that is a halfling and raises him as a son to be just like his dad. It's gone on for 3 generations now. Oh Boggle, my favorite character. How I miss thee.

[Piedmon_Sama]

I think my Psychic Warrior's ability to dispassionately kill people (in their face with a sword, no less) and not get worked up about it might be considered some kind of Anti-Social Disorder by modern psychology. Aside from that, my Half-Orc Druid is a pretty normal, even sheltered, guy.... he wants to be an adventurer, but at level 3 he still hasn't quite grasped that this requires fighting to the death without hesitation. And my Neanderthal Barbarian.... he's not a sociopath, although my DM and fellow player would think so. He's almost completely Hobbesian in outlook, but some of it is that he can't communicate easily with humans (Neanderthal language was largely hand-gestures, he can't quite master the complexity of a 100% verbal language).

[HamsterOfTheGod]

This leds to my question, how sane is the paranoid, murdering thief

Just because you're paranoid, murdering thief, it does not mean the people who are out to get the stuff you rightfully took don't deserve death...

[Starscream]

One of my recent characters had Cotard's Syndrome.

Of course he was a vampire, but still.

[Knaight]

Delusional prophet of Nerull. Not only was he not a prophet, he didn't have any divine magic at all. And he was a good guy. T'was fun.

[Yukitsu]

Not really. Many of my characters never kill anything, and most are decent enough. The only thing they may have is some kind of apathy disorder, where the fear of death holds no sway over them.

[9mm]

meh, just a drunken brawler... who really needs to learn when NOT to start a fight.


Protip: when its quite obvious that the main villian can kill you in a single stroke, don't stand in the middle of the room, insult his man-hood, and then charge.

[PairO'Dice Lost]

Just because you're paranoid, murdering thief, it does not mean the people who are out to get the stuff you rightfully took don't deserve death...

Beat me to it.


My last character was a somewhat genre-savvy LE warblade of noble birth who tried to avoid as many villainous cliches as possible while still serving evil. A sample interrogation:

"You're mad! Mad, I say!"

"Impossible. I have been psychoanalyzed by the finest wizard in this nation--well, this room at least, aren't you, Alric--and pronounced to possess a clean bill of health. I find that delusions of grandeur and megalomaniacal tendencies inhibit my capabilities."

"...no maniacal laughter, then?"

"No."

"No random explosions and burning down villages?"

"Certainly not. Waste of good resources, both raw goods and slaves."

"So...you're not going to kill us in a painful manner just because you can?"

"Oh, I didn't say that."

*stab*

*stab* *stab* *stab* *stab* *stab* *stab*

"Hmm...two minutes to bleed to death. I'm getting rusty. Record, Jeeves?"

"Three minutes, twenty-seven seconds, sir."

"Thank you, Jeeves. I'll work on that. Next victim?"


Is that insane? You decide.

[RandomNPC]

my characters have all snapped in one way or another.

My epic half dragon vassal of bahamut dreams of settiling down and being king somewhere evil so he can turn the place around. he may actually pull it off.

My cleric theif doesn't want to be a hero, freaked out, and on the middle of a platform on a lake curled up around his bow, rocking back and forth "im not a hero, im not a hero...." then when we could hear the villan but not see him i decided it was a dream and started calling him sancho. because dreams cant hurt you.

i've got a bard tucked away who assigns notes to peoples feet and trys to play as many different peoples walking patterns as he can. I love it, but it gets annoying.

i've got plenty more, something's wrong with each one of them.

[valadil]

I played a cleric who thought he was a wizard. By the end of the campaign he was talking to trees and it made sense within the context of the character. Actually he had to be retired from the party long before the game ended.

[Oracle_Hunter]

Considering the sort of world they live in, most D&D adventures could be considered well-adjusted.

Haley Explains It All (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0537.html) :smallbiggrin:

As for sanity... well, my oWoD Malkavians needed to be insane, of course. Bothersome, of course, but I have fond memories of the Malk who was a former member of the French Royal Guard with growing megalomania; he never took off his hat. Not, not even then :smallamused:

[Callista]

I've played characters that could've been diagnosed before, but not generally anything extreme.

Playing a mentally ill D&D character:
http://chaoticidealism.livejournal.com/25381.html
http://chaoticidealism.livejournal.com/25614.html
http://chaoticidealism.livejournal.com/25947.html

[Forbiddenwar]

My favorite was a Monk named Jenny. She KNEW there was no such thing as Gods. Divine magic is a scam, where wizards use Arcane magic and pass it off as a miracle "from the gods" to fleece the gullible. Note this was in a typical campaign where this wasn't actually true. Her favorite pass time was to engage in physical theological discussions in bars. With priests. And her fists. (Prove to me your magic comes from a god and not from you. I've seen some pretty good illusions, so it'll be hard)
actually, I would still call her Sane, so yeah she's sane
:smallbiggrin:

[Blackjackg]

Let's see. I had a wizard with serious daddy issues, if that counts.

Also an Abyssal with severe mental retardation.

[Anxe]

Kleptomaniac thief, duh.

[Raum]

Of course I'm sane! Who's trying to have me committed this time?! I'll kill 'em and take their stuff!
-----

One of my favorite characters was a fighter / thief (AD&D) with homicidal tendencies who collected swords and cursed items. Told one team member that a pit causing cold damage was "...a little cool." Said associate almost didn't make it back out...

[SurlySeraph]

I've played enough paladins and others with extreme fanaticism about their beliefs. Most of my characters tend to be mostly sane, just really, really obsessive about what they care about.

[EmperorSarda]

Let's see. I had a wizard with serious daddy issues, if that counts.

Red Mage? He counts. He counts big time.

[Gralamin]

You're an Adventurer. If you're not insane (or sometimes Super-sane), you're doing something wrong.

[TheLibrarian]

I only got to play him a few times before the group split up over summer vacation, but a relatively insane Avariel Duskblade/Swashbuckler (He lost his wings) pirate captain named Eskellen D’reg (Esk for short) who staffed the crew of his ship by getting people drunk and coercing them to the ship by dragging them along good naturedly. He refused to call people by their actual names instead referring to them as Mappy or Gimpy, which was good, because the “unnamed” crew had a tendency to die, not that he would go out of his way to kill them, he just didn’t see them as actual people.
He was somewhat dumb tactically and almost died in the first encounter when he used expeditous retreat (swashbuckler variant) to run freakishly fast and leap from his boat to the other one, and take on a crew of 20 by himself.
He might have done well if the sorcerer didn't just magic missile him to unconsciousness.

Originally he wasn’t going to have any spell casting, but after Mappy (who has tricked him and escaped the boat in the past, and returned as a focused conjuerer that Esk shanghaied into the plot) showed up and cast some spells, Esk decided that he wanted to be able to use magic as well.

All in all he was like a demented Malcolm Reynolds

Erm, that was rather long...
I also had a Lawful Good Binder who really detested fighting despite being somewhat optimized for it (his justification was trying to end the fight as quickly as possible), and ended up beating the Chaotic Neutral Sorcerer unconscious (killed him actually, but when I realized that he was going to die from one attack my DM let me switch it to a non-lethal attack) when he tried to start a fight with some guards.

[Starscream]

According to Terry Pratchett rich people are never insane, they are eccentric.

By mid-level adventurers tend to own more coins made out of solid gold than a normal person could carry, so they are clearly just very eccentric.

[Tharivol123]

I played a Ranger all the way up to epic that suffered from dissociative identity disorder. He had a lawful good (personal/legal protector) personality, a true neutral (nature's guardian, at any costs) personality, and a chaotic evil (anti-social, no regard for law/social norms) personality. Every day I had to make a DC15 + number of days present personality in control will save or change personalities (change would be one of the other two, as determined by a coin flip).
All the changes were handled away from the rest of the group, so they never knew which one was going to show up until the day started. Made for a fun situation where one day we helped the constable solve a murder in town (lawful good personality) only for me to kill him the next day when he attempted to question my chaotic evil personality on something unrelated.
It was also fun because of the rest of the party. A lawful good cleric, a true neutral druid, lawful neutral fighter, and a chaotic neutral sorcerer. My character would essentially jump between the personalities of the rest of the party, seemingly at random to them.

[Irreverent Fool]

My favorite character currently is one Melriach Morimundus, Wizard of the Order of the Arcane Eye, Personal Advisor to Sir Sedgewick the Mighty, and Mechanomancer of Sambria.

He's an amoral crackpot who gives life to automatons (golems and effigy creatures) with abandon, caught up in the novelty of granting life to the lifeless. He studies captured elemental portals and the outlawed practice of necromancy not for personal gain, but simply because the knowledge is there. He is also about the least-effective wizard in combat in the world as far as his fellow PCs are concerned. Combats involving Melriach frequently involve castings of grease strewn about the battlefield and crumpled notes covered in explosive runes resisting dispel magic (and exploding) after being thrown toward the enemies while he holds his grinding war-machines back from the melee for fear of his precious creations getting damaged or destroyed.

obnoxious
sig

[bosssmiley]

"Rogue Trader" (the original version) answered this one years back with the dictum that:

"Only the insane have the strength to prosper; only those who prosper judge truly what is sane."

What applies to GRIMDARK applies to D&D-land. :smallamused:

[Kaiyanwang]

As a DM, I roleplayed an NPC inspired by the same villain of 3x3 eyes that names my avatar, Kaiyanwang.

My K was like Parvati/Pai in the manga. Clearly a Schizophrenic. FUN.

[Captain Alien]

Protip: when its quite obvious that the main villian can kill you in a single stroke, don't stand in the middle of the room, insult his man-hood, and then charge.

It could have worked. Could.

[Hunter Noventa]

My current character is an extremely genki girl who loves to hit things with axes. Big axes. That are covered in electricity and force, and could really almost be called Power Axes. She also thinks she got a vision from the Goddess she worships more closely than others that she would end up falling in love with the Princess. This hasn't happened yet, but she did get to make out with her to break the domination spell on her after her first true Crowning Moment of Awesome.

Currently, she's somehow become second in command on a retrofitted airship that's about to go on a very suicidal mission in order to keep the country and continent safe from invaders. We'll see how that plays out.

But I think she counts as just a little crazy.

[random11]

Well, most characters are delusional.

If they meet an orphan, they are sure he must have some sort of lost heritage.
If they enter a town, they are convinced the town is in deep trouble, and they are the only ones around that can solve it.
If they read a prophecy about "chosen ones", they will be sure it is about them or at least someone they know personally (like the orphan from the example above).
They will be convinced that strong bad guys are personally after them, even when stronger good guys are around.
They will also believe that they are the only ones that can stop that bad guy, never seriously seeking help beyond casual hints and funding.
Basically, they think the world revolves around them.

Of course, more often than not, they are right.

[Renegade Paladin]

Beat me to it.


My last character was a somewhat genre-savvy LE warblade of noble birth who tried to avoid as many villainous cliches as possible while still serving evil. A sample interrogation:

<snip>

Is that insane? You decide.
Yeah, because he didn't actually interrogate the guy. :smalltongue:

[prufock]

My characters tend to be relatively well-adjusted, especially when compared to some of the nutcases with whom they associate.

Currently, I'm playing a ship's captain, a corsair who is given relatively free range but who is mostly loyal to his own country and is given letters of course from his government to legitimize his piracy. He mostly raids ships of unfriendly nations, and actually engages in some legal trading. He doesn't like indiscriminate killing, but some bloodshed is to be expected. He is, after all, attempting to cut off a war before it starts. He's a good captain, respected by his men, and merciful to his enemies (he gives captured sailors the choice to become POWs, walk the plank, or join his crew). He's traveling with a hot-tempered paladin, a half-vampire, and a warmongering sorceror. Even the cleric tends to be a little extreme, and it's the PIRATE who ends up being the voice of reason in most cases.

Previously, I played a conjurer who was usually more interested in conducting his magical research than in fighting. He was an investigator for the mage's guild, and only a little aware of its corruption. I don't recall him killing anything except a hostile beholder. He may have been a little too inquisitive for his own good, but that's hardly a pathology.

I also played a superhero campaign, in which I played a density-shifter. He was a member of the government-mandated meta/mutant control force. A highly-trained no-nonsense professional, he was mostly concerned about doing a good job, and preferred to capture/incapacitate his opponents rather than killing them (in one great moment, he managed to grab a speedster, shift both of them incoporeal, sink into the pavement to the knees, and turn the speedster coporeal again). He did go through a rough period of about a year when he lost his powers, stopped training, started drinking and smoking heavily, began eating junk, and took a more liberal approach to what constitutes "excessive violence" - he was depressed, doing his job half-assed, and taking it out on the world. He gained weight lost interest in his appearance. Eventually, he got his wake-up call and realized he could be good at his job without his powers. And later he gained his powers back.

Even my "evil" characters end up being pretty laid-back. I've played in 2 Star Wars dark side campaigns. In one, my character was a hacker who was more concerned with the holonets than the war. He had a grudge against the Republic, which was his only real motivation. He certainly wasn't lawful, or good, but he was a saint compared to the mercenaries and Sith he was surrounded by. Unfortunately, Evil by Association set in, and he fell to the dark side. He's now Lord High Inquisitor of the Sith, and pretty much owns the holonets.

My other dark side character wasn't dark at all. He was actually a half-decent guy, if a bit of a rogue. He was force-sensitive, but didn't accept it. He believed in luck, and all his uses of the force were somehow attributed to good fortune. As such, he as quite the gambler. He mainly wanted to be left alone, but the Sith saw an opportunity to use him to help infiltrate a rebellion. He was okay with this, for the most part, despite travelling with some less scrupulous characters, because part of their cover was to prove themselves part of the rebellion by sabotaging Sith posts. After spending time with the rebellion, he came to identify with them more than the Sith, and ended up turning on the Sith, and being destroyed for his efforts.

[9mm]

It could have worked. Could.

the sad part is... it did.:smallbiggrin: distracted him so much the rest of the party got into position and wiped him out.

[PrismaticPIA]

I had a 5th level halfling Warmage who would be brought to the brink of death (purely by accident) in first round of nearly every encounter.

*Nearly choked to death by a Choker round one.
*Bull-rushed into a 60-foot pit trap round one
*Nearly drowned to death by a Water elemental round one.
*Bull-rushed over a cliff with a waterfall turn one.

After the last one, he went nuts.

[Indon]

Well, my last party consists of a group of reincarnated ancient heroes, so there's a bit of a megalomaniac streak in the group.

Example, when we learned there was a religious conflict in an area, we mused about starting a new religious order in the area (dedicated to religious freedom, since we all had different deities) and wiping out the other groups (we determined we didn't have the time).

And we're still level 1 (though in our previous lives we were higher leveled, and we remember that, so there's that).

Aside from that, though, pretty sane.

[woodenbandman]

I have this really GREAT character right now, who is a priest that spreads the teachings of thor over the land. The thing is: he's a halfling. Who is actually not a cleric, but a barbarian. Also, he is the group skillmonkey as well as the group beatstick. As a 40 pound halfling.

The thing is, he is entirely sane. He is a barbarian with a bit of a temper problem, and yet; he has absolutely perfect manners, even though he can be gruff, rude, and often entirely inappropriate. He philosophizes with the wizard, even though his first solution to a problem is to try and hit it until it's not a problem anymore. He is actually more religious than the party cleric (though I put that down to the player being a bit shy and not quite as into the minutiae as I am). Despite the fact that he often uses violence to solve his problems, he believes in the preservation of life, and he doesn't jump to the violence with glee. He will often be the one to keep peace in a conflict situation.

Needless to say, I plan to have this character stick around for a very very long time.

I often do come up with characters that are a bit off, with "questionable" morality. For instance, I had once a binder who was sick of the whole issue of morality and good and evil, and his decisions were all based on what was the best way to prevent the destruction of all the world. So there was a political struggle, and he discovered pretty early that he didn't like any of it, at all. So he spent much of that part of the story frustrated because he wasn't vested in the nation he was working with. Fortunately, he wasn't completely cut off from all contact; he still had family and such to fight for.

EDIT: And one of these days, I'm going to play a character who is a Buomman Bard, who only speaks through a magical device in his guitar which allows him to shape the sound into words without using his own voice (basically THIS (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=An9_LG3Mc08)

[eepop]

I once played a DMM Cleric that was convinced that HE was a god, and he used DMM'd group buff spells to gain followers.

[Mr.Moron]

I had a short lived wizard, who the rest of the group thought was bonkers but I simply thought of as "Eccentric". He once had about 100gp converted into CP, loaded up into a wheel barrow. Burst into the town's School House without notice dumped and dumped the contents on the floor in front of the children then ran away, screaming his own name.