PCs who impressed you as a DM [3.5]

[Volos]

Have you ever had a player make a character that just impressed you? I'm not talking about power levels, but just the way they played their character. Someone who acted their part out perfectly, had a moment of brilliance, did something special that made the game more fun for you or the players?

I once had a player who was about 6'4" and 330lbs but was playing a halfling. Somehow he mannaged to get an accent, attitude, and persona that fit being such a small fellow. Sometimes it was hard to get through a conversation IC, due to OOC laughter, but it made the game really special.

Another one I was impressed with was my first Warlock. His character focused on keeping his abilities seceret from the party. He used 'Hideous Blow' to channel his eldritch blast through his rapier. Up untill 12th level, everyone thought he was a really dangerous fighter but nothing more. When the evil paladin nearly killed the rest of the party and was about to get away, he shot his Eldritch blast for the first time. The party when from a feeling of defeat and doom to one of victory and confusion. The cleric never trusted him again, but the rest of the party was very greatful.

[Korivan]

My players make me laugh.
My players make me cry.
Oh so much Tk we have,
That I wants to die.

No, seriously though. My best players are best at running up to things and hitting them. Had one guy that was impressive back in 2nd edition...turned out that he was bending rules, fudging dice rolls, take librities with alot of things.

[ghashxx]

A friend of mine consistently makes characters with serious thought and real character development giving them a reason to live. Then on top of that they're always effective. For example the Ninja with ranks in Duelist for the Int to AC and ended up easily tanking better than our full-plate-wearing fighter. The look on the fighter's face was hilarious when he found out.

[Obrysii]

My most irritating player is a rules lawyer min/maxer who role plays well.

He would be totally cool if he didn't get upset when I forget some semi-obscure rule or bend rules to narrative effect.

[sambo.]

waaaaaaaay back in 1ed, i was in a game with a lass who decided she was going to play an Int 3 Barbarian Mongo-Smash type character.

she role-played that character to the hilt, it was awesome.

the party got into (and out of) all sorts of wierd scraps because she was playing her character so well.

[Dimers]

I'm a bit saddened that, although I've had good players in an OOC sense, I can't think of any especially impressive characters. Humh. :smallfrown:

[barteem]

I ran a solo campaign for a good friend for years.
He played a goth/emo bard. This was years before Goth/Emo was a pop culture thing.
He NAILED it.
It was awesome.

[RandomNPC]

well I recently killed an epic construct with nothing but a gate spell.

See i flew up in the air above its anti-magic aura, and opened a gate to the bottom of the biggest lava lake on the plane of fire, DM outright gave me the kill.

But enough of tooting my own horn. One of my gamers talked a tavern keeper into changing his sign from "Don't Go Inn" to "Come On Inn" little does he know next time he goes in there it's going to be the newest addition to the red light district.

[Glass Mouse]

Four years ago, I gamed with a 13 year old boy, who for a long time held the seat as THE best roleplayer I'd ever met.
He played an elvish wizard - an arrogant, eccentric dude. His familiar was a winged cat (named Katjes - oh, we loved to hate it... stupid cat was more effective than MY character at times), and I'll never forget his tone of voice when the following exchange happened:
Half-elf Bard: Did you find something?
Wizard: Just... a red stone.
HEB: Ooh! Can I have a look?
W: No.
HEB: Why not?
W: You're HALF-elf.

Yeah. That was in the days where the bard was chased outta town because of a bad roll, and two rogues could happily sabotage each other without consequences.
I kinda miss that party.

[Zen Master]

Just recently, in a semi-boss fight, the tank/controller/overall tactician got temporarily removed from the scene of the battle. And the ranger actually ran away. Honestly, that's never happened before. No tactical withdrawal bull either - he turned tail and ran for the hills like the devil was at his heels.

It was an awesome moment. Pure GM bliss. The other players went something along the lines of 'wait - what? ... you do what?' and were completely at a loss about what to do now.

Of course, he was right to flee - what can a low-ish level ranger do against a warforged titan.

Naturally, they turned the fight around and won. But the ranger did what any sane person would have done. Kudos.

[Otodetu]

well I recently killed an epic construct with nothing but a gate spell.

See i flew up in the air above its anti-magic aura, and opened a gate to the bottom of the biggest lava lake on the plane of fire, DM outright gave me the kill.


Pretty nice of him, and cool fluff wise, completely wrong by crunch.
A. Being completely submerged in magma deals 20d6.
B. Its a 9th level spell, a 9th level spell is powerful but not that powerful.
C. Its still possible to own the construct that way, but you would max deal 20d6 fire, and then 10d6 1d3 rounds later
D. this is only possible with a nice dm, or when you have a play-style where you go for what you feel should happen rather what the rules say about the matter.




Lava Effects

Lava or magma deals 2d6 points of damage per round of exposure, except in the case of total immersion (such as when a character falls into the crater of an active volcano), which deals 20d6 points of damage per round.

Damage from magma continues for 1d3 rounds after exposure ceases, but this additional damage is only half of that dealt during actual contact (that is, 1d6 or 10d6 points per round).

An immunity or resistance to fire serves as an immunity to lava or magma. However, a creature immune to fire might still drown if completely immersed in lava.


Not to be an ass or anything, just like to point stuff out.

[MichielHagen]

well I recently killed an epic construct with nothing but a gate spell.

See i flew up in the air above its anti-magic aura, and opened a gate to the bottom of the biggest lava lake on the plane of fire, DM outright gave me the kill.

But enough of tooting my own horn. One of my gamers talked a tavern keeper into changing his sign from "Don't Go Inn" to "Come On Inn" little does he know next time he goes in there it's going to be the newest addition to the red light district.

I am not a very experienced player, but i would have expected that casting gate in an anti-magic aura would not be possible, at least i assume you cast the gate right under the construct.

[Sliver]

I am not a very experienced player, but i would have expected that casting gate in an anti-magic aura would not be possible, at least i assume you cast the gate right under the construct.

No, he was casting it above the construct, dumping the lava on the construct.

[Zen Master]

Not to be an ass or anything, just like to point stuff out.

It all depends, doesn't it? I mean, quite a lot of lava could come through that gate - enough to fill a decent size room, for instance. And constructs cannot swim as far as I know.

[Sliver]

It all depends, doesn't it? I mean, quite a lot of lava could come through that gate - enough to fill a decent size room, for instance. And constructs cannot swim as far as I know.

I don't think it matters if you are drowning in a room full of lava or inside a volcano, drowning in lava.. You would get 20d6 fire damage per turn until you get out, and 10d6 for 3 turns after that. As the construct doesn't need to breath, I don't think it will drown.. But being an epic construct without elemental immunity..

[Foryn Gilnith]

Strictly speaking, by RAW, even resistance counts as immunity (resistance or immunity gives immunity, looking at the wording). A bit bizarre.
In any case, Gate -> Magma is about as powerful as Maw of Chaos. One just happened to be able to bypass antimagic in this scenario. In another scenario, you'll need Maw of Chaos against fire immunity. Whatever. It's an epic construct, a couple of dozen d6s of damage might not hurt too much. 20d6+3*10d6 is only 175 average damage, after all, despite all the dice you're throwing. People (not necessarily you folks) tend to overestimate the damage dealt by Nd6.

[Sliver]

Strictly speaking, by RAW, even resistance counts as immunity (resistance or immunity gives immunity, looking at the wording). A bit bizarre.
In any case, Gate -> Magma is about as powerful as Maw of Chaos. One just happened to be able to bypass antimagic in this scenario. In another scenario, you'll need Maw of Chaos against fire immunity. Whatever. It's an epic construct, a couple of dozen d6s of damage might not hurt too much. 20d6+3*10d6 is only 175 average damage, after all, despite all the dice you're throwing. People (not necessarily you folks) tend to overestimate the damage dealt by Nd6.

The construct doesn't have to get out of the lava pool in one turn, the 20d6 is for as long it is there.. What you have there is the minimum damage..

[Foryn Gilnith]

No, minimum damage would be 30. 20d6+10d6. Almost a 1 in Avogadro's constant chance of that happening, though.

Or it might possibly have Fire Resistance 1, making it immune. *shrug*

[BRC]

The moment that most impressed me was the Battle onboard the Imminent Judgement.

The Imminent Judgement was an inquisitorial prison ship transporting dangerous people to a secure facility. I needed a villain to break out of it, but rather than just telling the PC's about the Breakout, I decided to have them live it.

Towards this goal, I made a bunch of temporary characters, and gave the sheets to my players. They were now controlling a group of people onboard the imminent judgement. My plan was to overwhelm them with foes and have them die, any survivors being killed by the prisoner breaking out. The attack would be two demon ships appearing next to the Imminent Judgment, spewing forth waves of Demons and Cultists. However, I planned for all the action to occur on board the Imminent Judgement itself.
I immedietally told the Players that they wern't expected to survive this fight. They set out to prove me wrong.

First, the Rogue ran off to tell the Captain to activate the traps that would kill all the prisoners. The Captain brushes him off, so he goes and lowers a Lifeboat. The other PC's proceed to Enlarge Person the half-orc Marine, and start fighting.
One of them (Gnome Sorceror) wants to Fireball the deck of the other ship, I hadn't planned out anything for the other ship, so I said there was some sort of anti-magic bubble over it. The obvious solution was for the Half Orc to throw the Gnome to the other ship, fireballing the deck on his way down. The Monk jumped the gap between ships to lend support. They proceed to beat the cultist and demons on the deck, and the sorceror runs belowdecks, where he finds abunch of cultists chanting around a big evil crystal thingy. The Sorc then proceeds to destroy that crystal, make his reflex save to survive the ensuing explosion, then fall into the sea as the ship vanishes from the material plane.

At this point ,we're running out of time, so I have the Prisoner emerge from belowdecks, hands full of lightning. All the PC's proceed to jump into the sea, the exception being the Paladin (Who, being a Paladin, decides to hold his ground and die horribly). Because the Rogue had lowered a lifeboat earlier, they all survived.

So my "No-Win" encounter ended up with the only death being voluntary. I was very impressed.

[valadil]

I had a player who didn't want to be a hero. He wanted to be the underpowered obnoxious guy who hid when the fight started. His character was a teenage noble. He wanted to be an author of waht essentially amounted to comic books about adventurers. He escaped from his parents castle (he wasn't actually trapped there, just had some delusions going on) and found his way to the other PCs.

Normally this character wouldn't have been that interesting. What made him awesome was that the rest of the party was dysfunctional. Because he fantasized about comic heroes he had all these ideas about what adventurers should be so he constantly lectured the others on their failings.

I liked the character because he ended up playing the comedic straight man while being anything but. Usually the straight man reflects the weirdness of those around him by being perfectly normal. This guy was as screwed up as any PC I've ever seen but still played the normal one.

[Farlion]

I once had a player who played a bard with perform (poetry). We first thought, ok, so he will inspire courage using some poems. But he started to only talk in rhimes. I have to say I was blown away, and so was the rest of my players.

Unfortunately, the player quit shortly afterwards, due to lack of time. :smallfrown:

Cheers,
Farlion

Edit: typo

[drengnikrafe]

Once upon a campaign, I had a PC who always stole something from a store. Anything he could get away with, whenever possible. It started to irritate me, but I decided to be "fair" by pre-planning what nasty things would happen if he took stuff. So, after turning invisible, lifting a sword off of a giant orc with more giant armor, and making 3 or 4 saves in a row to get out, he exploded a couple of times (sword trapped with explosive runes), and survived with 1 HP. That impressed me because I thought for sure the traps would get him.

[Vorpalbob]

In the first campaign I ever DM'ed, There was a fighter/rogue who loved his rapier. The player insisted on wearing his 43' practice rapier at the table, and would consistently get up and act out his attacks.

We tolerated this (mildly) annoying behaviour because he was such a great roleplayer. He created this "suave lover" persona that fit quite well.

In the main battle of one of their adventures, their wizard nemesis cast Shatter on the party's weapons. This was not just to piss him off, it was in a prebought adventure. Anyway, he totally pulled a Roy, matching the monk blow-for-blow.

He was really upset, but when the player went to the washroom, the other players said they would pool their money and buy him a +1 Keen rapier.

So, really, all the players impressed me