tell the story of your favorite character.

[robertbevan]

i'll start.

my favorite character i've ever played was Gorganzola McTinkerton. he was a gnome wizard.

this was when we, as adults, first started playing again after nearly a decade away from the game. i brought my 3.0 books back with me from the states, but the rest of the group was confirming rules according to sources on the internet that were mainly 3.5. unaware of the differences, i chose a toad familiar for the +2 bonus to constitution, and the DM let me keep it after we found out it didn't apply to 3.5 rules.

the other players called him the meatball, because he was tiny, but had nearly as many hit points as the party's fighter.

he was a blaster wizard, ready to soar through the air and blast the crap out of whatever was in his way with a fireball. his battlecry was "HAVE SOME!"

because of a cursed sword, the other members of the group got to fighting with one another. gorganzola met his end during a fight with a dragon in which only he and one other party member were participating. the rest of the group was bickering with each other. he got swallowed whole by the dragon, but didn't go quietly. he gave that dragon a severe case of indigestion with a lightning bolt from the inside.

too little too late though. in the end, he was dragon ****.

[killianh]

I had a Sorcerer named Glub. He had an INT of 6. He thought he was a barbarian that simply smashed at range. With fire.

Glub survived until the end of a campaign wherein we were exploring a desert temple and fought off a lich. He took the paladin down with him, but kept him alive long enough to convince him to become a blackguard. The paladin came back up and killed the rogue and cleric while Glub was distracted looking for a beetle. After he walked up to me, poured out the rest of my water and stepped on my food, knowing I would trust his decisions and (now being evil) thought it would be better for me to suffer from dehydration and starvation rather than kill me outright. The paladin left, but his player forgot that I had two wands of create food and water. So my guy ended his career as a walker in the waste convinced he was some kind of elemental barbarian.

[Rallicus]

I guess I'd have to go with the character I'm playing now, Jon.

He's lazy, sloppy, and usually drunk. He enjoys the company of hefty women and feels most comfortable in a tavern. He doesn't care about treasure or gold or fame.

While the rest of the party is pretty much a generic adventuring group, always working for whoever will help push them forward, or for whoever will help them become stronger, Jon sits back and chooses what he feels like doing. Most of the time it's anything that will keep his interest while being drunk.

For instance, the first session the group had the clear out a mine. Jon accepted. Next, the one who hired them sent them on a mission to find a person, and it mostly involved bribing people and solving riddles. Jon got frustrated, threatened to kill one of the people the party bribed, then stomped off to the tavern and got drunk, letting the rest of the party do all the work.

Out of character, he's a level 3 fighter with several pointless feats (monkey grip for one - he uses a medium sized two-handed sword with both hands and has yet to be in a situation where he'd need to swing it in one hand), which sort of represents how lazy and carefree he is. He's the lowest level character due to contributing the least to the campaign, he has the least amount of money, and he has literally no items that aren't mundane (the rest of the party has several wondrous items).

[Andorax]

Alas, most of my career has been spent DMing, so my list of actually played characters is painfully short. However, a few do stick out in my memory:


Unknown 10th level Wizard. Hey, it's over 20 years ago, so I forget the name. First AD&D character (1st ed.) I ever played (previously played 0D&D for several years). I signed up for a tournament at the local game store, and wound up with the party wizard.

The tournament had a pre-tourney event, where everyone who showed up in at least *some* attempt at costume got a bonus magic item for their character. In the case of the wizard, it was a scroll with D-Door and Ice Storm on it.

Scroll got hoarded through the entirety of the tournament, until we came to the final battle against a demon, dragon, drow, and efreet. They advanced towards us, with a big wall of fire at their backs (and between us and our goal). I decided then and there to shortcut the whole process and D-door behind the baddies and the wall, claiming the artifact that was the object of the tournament.

Unfortunately...the efreet was tricker than we gave him credit, and had actually stayed behind, sending an illusion of himself forward instead. I D-doored in, but stood helpless as he reached down and picked me up, burning me severely.

I knew already that I was a dead man...his fire aura alone would kill me at the start of his next turn without any other actual damage, so as my last act I turned to the DM and said, "I still have the scroll in hand, right?" "yes". "Ok, I read the other spell, Ice Storm, and call it down right on top of us!"

Died spectacularly, nearly took out the efreet in the process. The party's fighter came charging through the wall of fire a couple rounds later and finished the efreet off with a single blow. Victory for the good guys!

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Maruk, Barbarian 1/Sorcerer 3. After much arm-twisting, I finally convinced a friend of mine to take a turn at DMing. Sitting down with the other players (and informed we were starting at 4th, and could do "anything we wanted"), I talked them into the idea of an all human barbarian party from the same tribe. All of us would go Bar 1, then branch off into whatever else we wanted to do.

We had a Bar 4, Bar 1/Dru 1/Ran 2 (Building for Beastlord IIRC), a Bar 1/Cle 3 (Eranthul), and myself.


First introductory dungeon we entered into the main room, saw cooridors branching off in several directions. DM was expecting a typical inspect/crawl approach, going room by room. What actually happened?

"You go that way, you go that way, I'll go this way...shout if you see anything!"

The entire dungeon, two levels worth, was conquered in round-by-round time. Any time one of us found an opponent, we found a bottleneck and were marginally more defensive until the others RAN to that location and we overwhemled our foes, singing tribal songs of victory all the way.

Alas, the adventure then found its way into the middle of a large mageocracy, and things went...badly. We weren't stupid, but we played our cultural ignorance to the hilt. The plot managed to herd us down to the docks to board a ship for the other side of the bay. After getting there (itself quite a scene, with four fur-clad barbarians running and chanting down the middle of the road) we arrive at the docks. The boat isn't there yet. So we interrogate the harbormaster.

"We were told to get on this boat...the boat's not here."
"When the boat arrives, you will simply have to wait for boarding."

The moment the ship started to pull near the dock, we made a contest of seeing who could leap and grab the railing first (it's not even tied off yet), pulled ourselves over the rail, and began to interrogate the wide-eyed, terrified crew.

"Are you Boarding? No? Where is he? Where is Boarding! We are tired of waiting."

The ship sank a half hour later under the less than tender mercies of a powerful sea serpent, and the poor fellow has sworn off DMing ever since.

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Isawa Konjira, Human (Phoenix clan) Sorcerer 3/Shugenja 3
(building, without shortcuts, towards Mystic Theurge)

I was only able to get away with this in a play by post game. She had, among other things, the flaw "Arcane Performer", and had to make successful perform checks to cast her arcane spells. So all of her spells were cast in haiku.

She also had the Friendly Kami (Rokugan D20). Her fire Kami "lived" in an iron lantern she carried about. In a few levels, she was going to have built her friendship with the kami sufficiently that it would leave the lantern at times aid her directly (by taking Improved Familiar: Small Fire Elemental at 9th).

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Strix, Kobold Dragon Shaman 8

Played after I found out that the other two PCs were a wyrmling silver dragon and a paladin of bahamut. Strix reasoned that the best way for a kobold to get ahead is to attach himself to the nearest dragon and assure that the dragon is successful in every way. Getting in on the "ground floor" so to speak of the next great dragon to come along, hoping that by making himself in all ways indespensible he would be the "chosen one" of the mighty dragon someday, decades from now...and that the resulting wealth, fame, choice of numerous mates, power, and so forth...would all be his in due course.

Strix is completely delusional in terms of comparative power levels. His breath weapon is in all ways measurably better than his master's, but he ignores it, believing that the dragon is the true power, "and I, but your humble servant...master".

He doesn't fly, but due to a combination of speed, skill tricks, invisibility and spider climb, he's usually always breathing down on an opponent from a corner near the ceiling (the coward flaw had something to do with that too).

[Kaveman26]

The Silent One-Monk

The Silent One (TSO) has taken on many forms. He is mute. I have fond memories of my 1st edition TSO who killed Posiedon in a single round and could out run a horse. We ran a high level, two character campaign where he was abroad a ship after stealing Posiedon's crown. The DM was tired of me dramaticaly adjusting the crown and sent Posiedon himself to take it back from us. With Haste he had an obscene number of attacks and he won initiative and ran roughshod on Posideon in a single round and killed him. It was on Posiedon's home plane which meant he didnt just defeat and banish him...he KILLED him.

I have fond memories of TSO leaping a 50' feet raging river in the first session of a pathfinder campaign, as he landed on the other side and theatrically dusted off his sleeves as if to say "piece of cake" a trio of girallons burst from cover to attack the isolated and alone character.

I loved my TSO in a more optimized campaign where instead of his standard githerzai race he was a catfolk barbarian monk with horseshoes of speed nailed to his "paws" . He was fast...

He was never the strongest...he never had the best ac, and he rarely did the most damage, but he had lots of awesome running/jumping/acrobatic type stuff.

[ThiagoMartell]

I'm surprised no one mentioned yet "my wizard who overshadowed anyone, was completely paranoid and lived under astral projection all the time" :smalltongue:

My favorite D&D character was called simply Jack. He was a lowborn Rogue, a dirty fighter, a guile hero if you ever saw one. He adventured with a paladin, a cleric of Ilmater and a Harper wizard, acting as the glue that kept them together, the voice of reason and resident snark knight. My favorite moment was when he alone was accepted by the Purple Dragon Knights as a member. His catchphrase was "there are different kinds of X", usually after lying about something. As in: "I thought you were a knight!" "There are different kinds of knight." or "Don't you have any honor?" "There are different kinds of honor."

[Raimun]

The one with the sword who, like, fights stuff. Using the sword.
>: P

[limejuicepowder]

Chroll-Ac Mar the Witch Doctor (spirit shaman 6)

Human, but raised by goblins and taught the ways of the spirits. Utterly disgusting and full of superstition, Chroll-Ac very quickly became a legend among my gaming friends. Tripping on mushrooms and casting Omen of Peril at every opportunity was his MO, along with refusing to cast spells unless he had his spirit mask (to protect him from angry ghosts).

His most famous exploit came at the end of a battle against some werewolves. The leader of the pack had an odd tattoo that radiated evil, thus warranting investigation. However, when it was cut loose from the werewolf's body, the evil began to diminish. Not wanting to lose the opportunity to find out more, Chroll-Ac did what every sensible person would do.

And ate it.

This gave him invaluable visions of what was to come, accumulating in an actual conversation with the malevolent force that was corrupting the forest and making the druids go mad. It also almost resulted in the summoning of some bad demons, but luckily the other party members were keeping an eye on him.

[Amoren]

Hmmm, sadly DnD forum so I can't talk about my mutant martial artist from Nightbane... But I suppose favorite DnD character would probably be the first iteration of Sjach Gix, a kobold rogue for 4th edition who's finally being brushed off for 3.5 for a pbp campaign on Myth Weavers. He was a kobold who was 'rescued' from his clan by a raiding party of dwarves when he was a young hatchling, and raised with dwarven propaganda so he legitimately believed they had saved him from a life of misery amongst his fellow kobolds - while being in service as a slave to the Dwarven prince in the party.

Since he was a slave, he didn't have any weapons, but instead utilized sharpened kitchen utensils for weapons when his Master was attacked by eladrin... To which he was brutally effective. After they caught and interrogated a bard that had betrayed our party, the party gave the kobold her dagger since he used them, and they needed everyone as best armed as possible.

I then proceeded to roll crit after crit with that magic weapon, prompting several enemies to die in a trail of blood behind him. When things finally calmed down and it came to split the loot, the Dwarven prince insisted on my kobold getting a cut despite being a slave - because the last thing he wanted to do was upset quickly crinsoming scaled kobold.

Sadly the Dwarven campaign this was in only lasted until 4th level. /: