Breakout NPC's.

[BRC]

I find that, while I'm DMing, I've got a knack for creating NPC's that the entire group falls in love with. NPC's that I have as much fun playing with as my players have interacting with. They're not always particularly important to the story (Though they frequently end up as such when I realize how much the players like them), or powerful, and sometimes I don't even intend for them to be anything special, they just kind of develop during play.

I treasure these NPC's, and so I want to make a thread about them.

#1: Krac. My first campaign was investigation-centric, and the first adventure involved hunting down a renegade sorcerer with a criminal past. The PC's got their hands on a list of his known criminal associates, names I had just cooked up the following night, only one of which (A smuggler) I had actually planned to use.
However, the player's eyes lighted upon an orcish mercenary named Krac, and decided to question him, forcing me to improvise the generic Dumb Orc Thug. In a later adventure, the PC's wanted to hire him, ended up rescuing him from a crime gang, and throughout the campaign he turned into something of a reoccurring character, eventually (While under a player's control) delivering the final blow to the BBEG.
#2 The Poet: Same Campaign, The Poet was intended to be an "Unstoppable Force", something the PC's could not defeat in a straight fight. A Sepulchural Thief (Basically the rogue's version of a lich) that far outleveled the party, the Poet had a habit of spring attacking from shadows, then hiding again that same round. This tactic, his habit of turning any encounter into a "Survive" situation, and the fact that he spoke only by quoting Shakespeare made him very popular. He's even shown up in other campaigns (Not DM'd by me).
#3 Captain Barthalomew James Nibbit: From a Pirate campaign I ran Freshmen year of college. Nibbit was a Marshal, an officer in the imperial marines, and an ally of the PC's due to circumstances (A Demon awoke during a battle between Pirate-supported Goblin tribesmen and Imperials). I played him as an over-the-top Military man, something of a cross between Armstrong from FMA and Othar Trygvassen (Gentleman Adventurer).
#4 Self: In my recent Western campaign, the PC's ended up in a kobold settlement that had been overrun by monstrous half-dragon scorpions (Long story). While exploring, they met a traumatized Kobold trapsmith who would only refer to himself as "Self". Self helped guide them through the mines, in battle I would roll on a chart, depending on what I rolled, Self would help the PC's out by activating some as-of-yet unseen trap, because it's a Kobold settlement, and everything was trapped. He was kind of adorable, and his catchphrase ("Best Work",after activating a particularly nasty trap) became a thing outside of our games.
#5 and #6: Bleach and Slackjaw. Just last week I ran a Pathfinder one-shot, the final encounter of which was against Bleach and Slackjaw. A Skeletal Champion Archer and a JuJu Zombie Fighter respectivly, I wasn't really sure what I was going to do with Bleach and Slackjaw until the encounter actually started. They ended up as a lovable pair of polite mercenaries who would banter with the PC's and each other, gathering up personality traits (Bleach likes to pun, Slackjaw has an irrational hatred of walls of fire, not fire in general, just walls of it). They referred to the mutagen-using Alchemist as "Freaky Guy", regretted having to hurt the Summoner's Eidlodon, and acted like the druid's wolf companion had just peed on the carpet rather than taken a chunk out of Slackjaw's arm.

The PC's ended the adventure with their decapitated, but still animate heads, with no real ill-will between anybody.

Does anybody else have stories of random NPC's who the players loved.

[Comet]

Usually, in one group I GM'd for, it was always the 'slave' sort of character that got the most love.

Y'know, the players just decide that they need a slave and so I improvise something up and give them a dull but relieble strongarm to drag around.
Except, of course, they really start to like this guy and start training him and giving him equipment and before you know it the party practically has a new member.

Happened more than once, too. The best of these breakout characters eventually rose to challenge the gods themselves with the other PCs and did a pretty good job at it, too.

In general, anything I plan ahead for and really flesh out in advance is appreciated by the players, but the game is always at its finest when the players sense that I am just making stuff up on the fly. Really gives everyone a sense of a living world and a chance to influence it.

[EccentricCircle]

I always try to flesh out the NPC's which my players take an interest in. I find it works a lot better than makeing up all the important NPC's at the start and then having extras in every other situation.

the best Mauve shirt was in a game I ran last year. while being arrested the Paladin wanted to know if any of the guards were actually evil. I decided that one of them was and the rest were just doing their job. when I later needed an agent of the emperors secret service to break them out of prison I brought back the same man, who soon came to be dubbed "Evil Guard" by the players.
I jokingly said he was called Gerald, but by the end of the camapign Sgt Gerald Iblis was one of the most significant NPC's in the story, at least as much as some of the characters i'd planned from the start. Gullible Guard was introduced as a running gag later in the same campaign when they kept sneaking through the same checkpoint using different secret identities. but by the end sgt Acyea's search for the fugitives that had tricked her too many times was a major subplot that several of the characters ended up worse the wares from.

[Zanatos777]

I've had a few breakouts. Spoilered for length.

Lord Roderick "Spiderbane" (PCs title, they gave it to him)
This one came out of no where for me. Most of the others I had intended to be either interesting characters or at least but Roderick was simply a blank character who ruled over the town where to players set up shop. He was a 6th level fighter at most and middle aged. The players interaction with him was requesting a building permit, that was all. Despite this they began weaving a complex mythology surrounding him. They began to talk of him wherever they went. At the end of the game they did end up saving him from the Big Bad but he had only been imprisoned because he happened to be there.

82
The most significant was an enslaved sorceress the party found called 82. The party gained her by killing her master and securing the magic item which controlled her mind. I expected her to serve as a sort of test to see how a party would handle having a 16 year old girl who did whatever she was told to do with no free will. I also figured they would use her as mobile artillery as they were afraid of having too much interaction with her, lore in the world said that sorceresses were extremely dangerous and insane if not properly restrained.

Instead they decided to remove then magic item that allowed them to control her mind (not an easy task) and see if they could teach how to be a normal person. They named her (Addie) and began looking at everything in the game as revolving around her. One character even gave up his revenge (against another group of breakout NPCs) to help her in this path. They cheered whenever Addie made progress such as asking an Oracle what they were trying to do to her. At the end of the campaign they happily allowed her to become a goddess instead of anyone else.

The Crimson Tigers
An entire organization of breakouts. The most obvious were Crimson and Salathor the sorceress leader and her intelligent artifact sword respectively. Horace, the cleric of Hades, became a voice of reason and counsel to the PCs as they struggled with their own internal relationships (PC made love triangles mostly). Perhaps mostly oddly was that Crimson and her mercenary army were the original Big Bads of the game but the players agreed with their philosophy and couldn't find enough objectionable about Crimson to oppose them (she opposed slavery, that was her main redeeming quality). They actually were so well liked that when Horace was killed by the Big Bad it was the act that really set the players off and they embarked on an unnecessary quest to free Crimson from magic imprisonment so she could fight the Big Bad with them. The party leader took the leadership feat specifically so that Crimson's girlfriend could survive adventuring with the group and help save her lover.

Craig
A normal human lowlife in one of my CthuluTech games was inexplicably adopted by the party. He was intended to be a one-time information source who would be killed for being a snitch. Instead the PCs shadowed him after they let him go (to make sure he didn't break their deal) only to attack the monster who attacked him. They successfully escaped with Craig and continued to keep him around. He was utterly useless to them but they loved him anyway.

Mark Vesten
From the CthuluTech game as well. For those who have played my players had Watched 2 and 3 (3 being the max). Naturally this meant that the magic police watched them basically all the time. Mark was the magic police for them. He also was incredibly open about it and I think they really liked that. They would meet him at Denny's to annoy him every morning for breakfast and joke about illegal activities which them might do. Mark for his part would be friendly and imply that he knew everything they were doing. They would amuse themselves trying to figure out anything concrete about Mark who remains enigmatic to this day for them.

[LOTRfan]

My grandfather is a recurring NPC in my game.

The character just started off as a reference to him, an injoke between me and my brother, but my friends enjoyed the character, so now whenever they visit his home town, they make sure to at the very least stop by and say hello.

What can I say? My grandfather's awesome. :smallamused:

[BRC]

Another one, I'm not sure this counts as a Breakout, because I kind of developed this character out of game alongside one of the players, in a two-person party.

Jack Spade
AkA, the Otherjacks.

In my western campaign, there was a legendary outlaw named Jack Spade. Stories about Jack Spade sprang up all over the world, making him almost impossible to track. He was described as having a thousand talents, and no matter how many times he was captured or killed he would always show up again.

The reason for this was that there was no Jack Spade. There is a group of outlaws and thieves who use Hats of Disguise to wear the same face and all use the identity of "Jack Spade". When any individual Jack is questioned about the actions of a different one (For example, how they survived being executed a month ago two towns over), they would respond "Must have been some other jack". As such, those who knew the truth about the organization refer to them as the "Otherjacks".
Throughout the campaign, my PC's met
Whiskey Jack: Illusion specialist
Captain Jack: A mast strategist who specialized in recruiting and leading other criminals.
Ripper Jack: Master knife-wielder.
Clever Jack: The Skillmonkey (well, one of several).
One-Eyed Jack: Not actually an Otherjack, he lives under their headquarters making magic items for the rest of the Otherjacks.
Hi-Jack: Specialized in robbing trains, carriages and Airships.
Full Metal Jack: A Sniper.
Lumber Jack: Distinguished from any other their by his magical wood-shaping hatchet.

At one point an old player returned for a Cameo role, when he mentioned that he heard Jack Spade had been executed, both of the regulars replied, in unison, "Must have been some Other Jack". I felt proud.

Edit:
And I forgot the single most triumpant Breakout NPC in any of my campaigns! Bill the Sailor!

The Pirate Campaign, early on the character's ship was attacked by a sea monster. At one point it rolled two natural ones on an attack role, and I was feeling silly, so I said "it lunges towards one of your crewmembers, who promptly punches it in the face for 3d6 damage (The purpose was for the PC's to survive the encounter until help arrived).
From that point on, the PC's crew included an unstoppable badass named Bill. It was understood that Bill would never actually unbalance the game, he was usually the one defending the ship while they explored islands or whatnot. Later on when I introduced a bigger plot, Bill became a crucial part of it.

[kamikasei]

The longest-running game I'm in featured an NPC at the very start who I'm pretty sure was meant to die straight away. In a setting where teens with superpowered magical armors fight giant alien monsters, he was an ordinary soldier with no superhuman abilities whose role in our first mission was to act as bait.

He lived, and became the memetic badass of the entire game, doing things like singlehandedly taking down squads of enemy armors with a knife and pistol and (when we all forgot he was there and needed defending) rolling a 20 to save against an area attack that by rights should have turned him in to chunky salsa. He eventually did die - when terrorists blew up the entire island of our home base and killed 99% of our support staff.

Godspeed, Frank.

[3SecondCultist]

I've got one. His name was Ibn Hassan. He was a wily pirate captain (is it me, or does that seem to be a recurring theme?), famous for his generosity and mercy towards his enemies. His dhow, the Burning Brand, sailed the rivers of the main river of this autocratic Empire. Anyway, he was a smuggler who worked for one of the Resistance factions.

I put him a couple of levels above the party, mostly to ensure that they didn't assassinate him before he got them to the capital. I only meant to introduce him as a way to get the party acquainted with the Resistance, but they took an immediate likeness to his easygoing manner, and after I had to use him to save them from a Marruspawn (in Sandstorm) they immediately saw him as a total badass.

My players began to weave an epic backstory for this pirate (who is all of level 6, by the way), and when he was summarily executed, they planned to Resurrect him. As if he was a player!!!

[Zanatos777]

I've got one. His name was Ibn Hassan. He was a wily pirate captain (is it me, or does that seem to be a recurring theme?), famous for his generosity and mercy towards his enemies. His dhow, the Burning Brand, sailed the rivers of the main river of this autocratic Empire. Anyway, he was a smuggler who worked for one of the Resistance factions.

I put him a couple of levels above the party, mostly to ensure that they didn't assassinate him before he got them to the capital. I only meant to introduce him as a way to get the party acquainted with the Resistance, but they took an immediate likeness to his easygoing manner, and after I had to use him to save them from a Marruspawn (in Sandstorm) they immediately saw him as a total badass.

My players began to weave an epic backstory for this pirate (who is all of level 6, by the way), and when he was summarily executed, they planned to Resurrect him. As if he was a player!!!

When the players get attached to an NPC they get attached to an NPC, mine tried valiantly to figure out a way to rez Horace when he died.

[joe]

Quentin "The Slasher" Dice' (pronounced dee-say)

The party, who at the time were posing as a group of traveling performers, ran across Quentin walking down the road between towns. When they stopped to greet him he boisterously announced that he was "The Greatest Swordsman to Ever Walk the Roads!" The party's caster declared himself to be the Greatest Sage to Walk the Roads, and Quentin, being ridiculously impressionable, announced how their meeting was some kind of fateful event. When further questioned about his exploits, he started going on and on with several stories about creatures he fought, and when one of the more chaotic characters struck him with a rod of wonder and turned him green, he simply replied "Wow! I'm Green!" without skipping a beat, and then returned to his conversation. Any question was answered with a quick and immediate response, and half the party adored him while the other half dismissed him as annoying.

When the party told Quentin they were traveling performers, he practically joined them uninvited declaring that his sword prowess would be something people would want to see on stage. The party agreed and he continued to discuss various combat events with the party's warblade and hexblade.

As luck would have it, the party ended up actually having to put on a show (something they were not really prepared to do) and Quentin declared that he would be the star of the combat arena. The fighters, accepted this, not being glory hounds the way he was. The BBEG arrived at the show and joined the audience (the party did not know this was the BBEG yet.) Quentin saw him and told the party that he'd dealt with him on his travels and was afraid of him, but that he would go out to the stage and perform anyhow. When he arrived on stage and announced himself, the BBED power word kill'd him immediately.

The party was insufficient level to handle an enemy of this caliber at the time, and proceeded with the performance as though it was supposed to be part of the act, all the while a good many of them mourning his sudden and unexpected death. There was a significant fear of my BBEG long after that.

The great irony is that the party never got to know if he really was "The Greatest Swordsman to Ever Walk the Roads" or just a bumbling idiot.

[Choco]

Any NPC's that the players can tell obviously takes a lot out of me to do the voice. I can talk loudly in my own voice all day, but if doing an NPC's voice will make my throat sore after half an hour, the PC's just can't get enough of said NPC....

[SleepyShadow]

Last time I was DM, the group fell in love with a blue half-dragon Factotum named Ryu. The whole time I was role-playing him, I used my best Antonio Banderas voice. He was a swashbuckling minstrel with a habit of mispronouncing words (Common was his second language), though the highlight of his career was when one of the players (playing a Bard) challenged him to a musical duel.

When I opened up iTunes, started Welcome To the Jungle by Guns'N'Roses, and asked the player if he had any music to contribute, one of the other players started laughing so hard she choked on the pizza.

I need to use him as a PC sometime :smallbiggrin:

[Katana_Geldar]

Bo Viduk was a Twi'lek child who escaped from slavery by stowing away the party's ship. I had him there for flavour, but the players liked and the little kid kept rolling 20s. Currently he's on a bus, living with the father of one of the players. But he'll be back, one of these days.

[onthetown]

One of my first times DMing was just a solo session with my friend. She was invading a mansion to investigate some plot hook or another that I had pulled out of Cityscape, and I decided to have the cellar of the mansion be the evil dude's dungeon. Not with prison cells or anything, just with people thrown into the cellar and have the hatch locked up.

She got a great perception roll to notice that the single guard in the kitchen was standing on top of a hidden trap door -- of course, anybody could have figured it out, since the door was shaking a bit and there were muffled curses coming from underneath it. She killed the guard and released the prisoner, a dwarf.

My plan was to have the dwarf just thank her and leave, but she started pressing him for more information. I did a stereotypical dwarf accent thing and we bantered a bit, and by the end of that conversation the dwarf apparently had a sibling who had been killed by the master of the mansion. Well, she's on her way to kill that guy, so why doesn't he come along? So rogue and cleric proceeded to noisily and destructively ransack the rest of the place, taking out the guards that I hadn't planned to be meeting up with more than one player (and I was too young in DMing to be able to up the challenge on the fly comfortably). The dynamic was something along the lines of sneak attack -> warhammer to the head - move on to the next room.

Rogue killed the master, and the dwarf stayed with her after the one session he was only intended for. I don't even remember his name -- I think the only reason she liked him so much was because I was pulling every dwarf stereotype I could think of for him, including that he wasn't sure of the gender of the sibling that was killed.

For the short time that the campaign lasted, he was definitely a quick breakout..

[El Dorado]

The one NPC I remember most fondly is a pseudodragon named George. Our gnome wizard had assembled all of the ingredients for his Find Familiar spell but hadn't found anything special. One night, the wizard awoke to see a pseudodragon standing at the foot of his bedroll, wearing the gnome's rings of protection, and chanting the Find Familiar spell by the lit brazier. The gnome became the pseudodragon's familiar. Wacky hijinks ensued. :smallwink: