PDA

View Full Version : "Special snowflakes"



Arkhosia
2013-06-29, 10:38 PM
What is the best character, creativity-wise, you've ever come up with?
Mine is a changeling paladin of olladra.
A bright, adventurous, and eager changeling from the city of Snowvale, famous for being a melting pot of races and cultures and for it's many taverns, shops, smiths, and spellcasters, Sariel was a cartographer, exploring far and wide to create accurate maps. She often accompanied caravans as a guide and for the aforementioned advantage, making fast friends with mercenaries.
She became a paladin of olladra after a drunken dare made at a town a dwarven caravan she accompanied arrived at, which caused her to join an adventuring party to put her new skills to use and to satisfy her hunger for exploration.
To this day, she has never regretted the incident, claiming the most fortune ever bestowed upon her was a mug of ale.

LordErebus12
2013-06-30, 12:06 AM
Awakened velociraptor Druid (with pteranodon companion), hands down. she killed a mother T-rex singlehandedly with two nasty traps and repeated bites to her tongue and tonsils as she chewed on me.

valadil
2013-06-30, 11:07 AM
I played a cloistered cleric (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/classes/variantCharacterClasses.htm) a while back who had a couple of arcane domains and decided to introduce himself to the party as a wizard. Nobody questioned it so I ran with it.

I've always enjoyed the trope of the mad scientist wizard and I like the idea that bending reality eventually warps your mind. I figure wizards have some resiliency towards this due to their wizardly training. My cleric had no such resiliency and went off the deep end due to his arcane meddlings.

He believed that he was a wizard and would use that to justify any argument. A sorcerer joined the party and I found this so offensive that I berated the poor sorcerer till I was asked to stop out of game. By the last session (by which I mean the session where we decided my character was no longer fit to be an adventurer and was shipped off to the asylum) he was talking to trees.

The thing that made him special to me was the journey into insanity. Usually when I see crazy characters, they're the comic relief, which is really unfortunate. This guy went from quirky to insane over the course of the game. Each time he went a little farther, it made sense. The tree thing wasn't random. To this character it made sense. It was just one more step past a reality he'd been walking away from over the course of the game.

Pokonic
2013-06-30, 12:25 PM
I had a lot of fun as a minotaur, but what made him special was the context.

In this world, all the "beastmen" races, like gnolls and satyrs and such all were created by demons as foot solders and function a bit like how orcs would in other worlds. As such, very few in the world expect a seven foot tall minotaur monk to exist, let alone one who served the forces of good. Also, the image of a giant bull man jumping across fifteen foot ledges is priceless.

illyrus
2013-06-30, 01:34 PM
This was for a neutral/evil campaign.

Changeling vermin druid that had grown up in a tribe of gnolls and identified as one. When the tribe was killed she was drawn to an intelligent termite colony where she became the willing minion of the queen. She would assume the form of humanoids she would kill and eat (yay gnoll upbringing). This was her starting state and through the sessions her perspective changed.

Selein
2013-06-30, 03:10 PM
The Tin Woodsman.

In a post-apocalyptic game my backstory was I had found a nearly destroyed copy of the Wizard of Oz and upon reading it realised I must find this Dorothy (in a moment of almost religious awakening) for she guided the diaspora of people back to what it meant to be human: Thence my charactor started cladding himself in armour made from olde street signs.

I had some quirks, like wizards were mean, horses used to be a different colour no matter what colour they were and witches could all be kilt with water.

Arkhosia
2013-06-30, 05:46 PM
I had a lot of fun as a minotaur, but what made him special was the context.

In this world, all the "beastmen" races, like gnolls and satyrs and such all were created by demons as foot solders and function a bit like how orcs would in other worlds. As such, very few in the world expect a seven foot tall minotaur monk to exist, let alone one who served the forces of good. Also, the image of a giant bull man jumping across fifteen foot ledges is priceless.

At least he wasn't a cleric.
"Oh here, let me bandage your wounds"
"No! Don't"
"It'll be fine, it will only take a moment..."
*crunching sound, scream of agony*
Hmm, I seem to have tightened the bandage too tight. We'll have to amputate."

The Tin Woodsman.

In a post-apocalyptic game my backstory was I had found a nearly destroyed copy of the Wizard of Oz and upon reading it realised I must find this Dorothy (in a moment of almost religious awakening) for she guided the diaspora of people back to what it meant to be human: Thence my charactor started cladding himself in armour made from olde street signs.

I had some quirks, like wizards were mean, horses used to be a different colour no matter what colour they were and witches could all be kilt with water.
I assume he always searched for and carried oil cans, just in case, and thought monkeys could fly, making him reject biology textbooks?

The Rose Dragon
2013-06-30, 05:51 PM
I didn't come up with it myself, but the most interesting character I can recall playing with was the Pandora's Box. No, not Pandora, but the box she opened, that contained all the world's evils. At some point, some mad scientist reforged the Box into a construct, who became a superhero. She had the power of assuming the form of various "evils", which in this case were mythological monsters, and attacking supervillains and their henchmen with it.

Arkhosia
2013-06-30, 06:00 PM
I didn't come up with it myself, but the most interesting character I can recall playing with was the Pandora's Box. No, not Pandora, but the box she opened, that contained all the world's evils. At some point, some mad scientist reforged the Box into a construct, who became a superhero. She had the power of assuming the form of various "evils", which in this case were mythological monsters, and attacking supervillains and their henchmen with it.

I imagine it's best weapon was a succubus?

The Rose Dragon
2013-06-30, 06:03 PM
Well, her best weapon was a high damage Blast. I think it was described as a dragon's breath, but I'm not sure. Considering she had the Shapeshift power, she could do many things as long as she could describe it properly.

Arkhosia
2013-06-30, 06:19 PM
Well, her best weapon was a high damage Blast. I think it was described as a dragon's breath, but I'm not sure. Considering she had the Shapeshift power, she could do many things as long as she could describe it properly.

So in other words, she was a liquid metal terminator dragon.

The Rose Dragon
2013-06-30, 06:22 PM
She wasn't liquid, just magic. Mad scientist magic.

Also, she was humanoid in shape, not draconic. Of course, since she had Shapeshift, nothing prevented her from turning into a dragon except power point limits.

Arkhosia
2013-06-30, 06:36 PM
She wasn't liquid, just magic. Mad scientist magic.

Also, she was humanoid in shape, not draconic. Of course, since she had Shapeshift, nothing prevented her from turning into a dragon except power point limits.

I know. I was just joking (the liquid metal terminator could shapeshift, right?).
Curse you Internet and your immunity to voice tone identification!

The Rose Dragon
2013-06-30, 06:44 PM
Technically, T-1000 could only use Morph, not Shapeshift, though it probably had one rank of Insubstantial and an Array to simulate its more common body alterations.

Arkhosia
2013-06-30, 06:48 PM
I played a cloistered cleric (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/classes/variantCharacterClasses.htm) a while back who had a couple of arcane domains and decided to introduce himself to the party as a wizard. Nobody questioned it so I ran with it.

I've always enjoyed the trope of the mad scientist wizard and I like the idea that bending reality eventually warps your mind. I figure wizards have some resiliency towards this due to their wizardly training. My cleric had no such resiliency and went off the deep end due to his arcane meddlings.

He believed that he was a wizard and would use that to justify any argument. A sorcerer joined the party and I found this so offensive that I berated the poor sorcerer till I was asked to stop out of game. By the last session (by which I mean the session where we decided my character was no longer fit to be an adventurer and was shipped off to the asylum) he was talking to trees.

The thing that made him special to me was the journey into insanity. Usually when I see crazy characters, they're the comic relief, which is really unfortunate. This guy went from quirky to insane over the course of the game. Each time he went a little farther, it made sense. The tree thing wasn't random. To this character it made sense. It was just one more step past a reality he'd been walking away from over the course of the game.

Great job with the backstory! I am amazed at all the work and creativity you put into it, especially how well you played him (poor sorcerer. I hope that you only stopped due to him going mad, and not any other incidents).

Arkhosia
2013-06-30, 06:49 PM
Technically, T-1000 could only use Morph, not Shapeshift, though it probably had one rank of Insubstantial and an Array to simulate its more common body alterations.

Eh. Close enough.

magwaaf
2013-07-01, 09:05 AM
m buddy figured out a druid build that would make a f'ing huge area be hit by negative energy snowflakes

valadil
2013-07-01, 09:15 AM
Great job with the backstory! I am amazed at all the work and creativity you put into it, especially how well you played him (poor sorcerer. I hope that you only stopped due to him going mad, and not any other incidents).

The sorcerer was the only thing that could be called an incident. My character was borderline dysfunctional and probably could have stuck around longer. But he was imposing on the sorc's fun and I wasn't okay with continuing to do that.

Arkhosia
2013-07-01, 11:22 AM
m buddy figured out a druid build that would make a f'ing huge area be hit by negative energy snowflakes

Sir (or madam), you just gave the thread a whole new meaning.

Arkhosia
2013-07-01, 11:24 AM
The sorcerer was the only thing that could be called an incident. My character was borderline dysfunctional and probably could have stuck around longer. But he was imposing on the sorc's fun and I wasn't okay with continuing to do that.

Wow, that is sticking to character.
(I mean that in a good way, just to clarify)

magwaaf
2013-07-01, 02:14 PM
Sir (or madam), you just gave the thread a whole new meaning.
"Sir" and it was awesome! we wee evil as sh**

TeChameleon
2013-07-01, 04:59 PM
Probably my personal favourite was Headjuice, the Troll Physical adept from my sadly short-lived Shadowrun game. He was raised in a forgotten monastery that had originally been founded jointly by the Mossad and NSA as a psychological experiment in advanced unarmed training techniques. It dropped off the books in one of the great Crashes, and morphed into a monastery over the years due to isolation and a certain spiritual bent in the original trainees.

Headjuice was a foundling, left on the doorstep, and the monastery was the only home he ever knew or wanted. At least until it was attacked by organleggers (black market organ thieves) who had heard of the isolated commune full of incredibly fit but unarmed people. After a fight that left two-thirds of the monks and the entirety of the organlegger procurement team dead, Headjuice went out into the world to find the organization that had sponsored the attack and beat them all to death.

Basically, he was an eight-and-a-half-foot tall Trollish Jackie Chan. With a thick Yiddish accent.

Oh, and he got his name due to an incident before he started running. Some strung-out druggies tried to rob the bar he was drinking in, and when they started making noises about raping and murdering the waitress, he grabbed them by the head and squeezed.

Arkhosia
2013-07-01, 06:11 PM
Probably my personal favourite was Headjuice, the Troll Physical adept from my sadly short-lived Shadowrun game. He was raised in a forgotten monastery that had originally been founded jointly by the Mossad and NSA as a psychological experiment in advanced unarmed training techniques. It dropped off the books in one of the great Crashes, and morphed into a monastery over the years due to isolation and a certain spiritual bent in the original trainees.

Headjuice was a foundling, left on the doorstep, and the monastery was the only home he ever knew or wanted. At least until it was attacked by organleggers (black market organ thieves) who had heard of the isolated commune full of incredibly fit but unarmed people. After a fight that left two-thirds of the monks and the entirety of the organlegger procurement team dead, Headjuice went out into the world to find the organization that had sponsored the attack and beat them all to death.

Basically, he was an eight-and-a-half-foot tall Trollish Jackie Chan. With a thick Yiddish accent.

Oh, and he got his name due to an incident before he started running. Some strung-out druggies tried to rob the bar he was drinking in, and when they started making noises about raping and murdering the waitress, he grabbed them by the head and squeezed.

And then bottled it up and sold it, making a massive profit until the someone saw a piece of pre-rotted brain, and made a fuss about it. That quickly died down when they learned who "donated" the juice, and started a big demand for the drink, because, as one buyer said, "seriously, eff those guys".:smallsmile:

Mastikator
2013-07-01, 09:47 PM
Enter Jorgrimm, a savage man from a savage land, he started out as a sellsword from a very early age, not a very *pious man and over the years the violence got to him and he stopped, settled down, married, had and became a farmer or maybe a sheepherder, I never decided what exactly, but it was a poorer but safer life of quiet dignity. Something went bad with his farming and he had to loan to survive the winter, then the same next winter, so they took his family as slaves until he had payed of his debt.
So he did what he could to earn a lot of money quickly: he went back to being a sellsword, or a bandit, or anything that would mean money. But just as he had begun he was bitten by a wearwolf. With no knowledge of what he had become the other PCs discovered him naked and covered in blood in the woods.
It would've worked out if the violence of his past hadn't gotten to him, now whenever he got scared or angry he'd become a violent monster who had to leave the party after he nearly killed them all for the second time.


*pious in this context means willing to die gloriously in battle

Arkhosia
2013-07-01, 10:04 PM
Enter Jorgrimm, a savage man from a savage land, he started out as a sellsword from a very early age, not a very *pious man and over the years the violence got to him and he stopped, settled down, married, had and became a farmer or maybe a sheepherder, I never decided what exactly, but it was a poorer but safer life of quiet dignity. Something went bad with his farming and he had to loan to survive the winter, then the same next winter, so they took his family as slaves until he had payed of his debt.
So he did what he could to earn a lot of money quickly: he went back to being a sellsword, or a bandit, or anything that would mean money. But just as he had begun he was bitten by a wearwolf. With no knowledge of what he had become the other PCs discovered him naked and covered in blood in the woods.
It would've worked out if the violence of his past hadn't gotten to him, now whenever he got scared or angry he'd become a violent monster who had to leave the party after he nearly killed them all for the second time.


*pious in this context means willing to die gloriously in battle

A very interesting character. How did the mechanics for your werewolf work?

Knaight
2013-07-01, 10:26 PM
Discluding NPCs, I don't really have that much in the way of variety - most of my best concepts end up on the NPC side, as I GM almost exclusively. That said, if I count providing inspiration for PCs that aren't mine there are a few good ones. The most unique was probably Silent Gecko Hunts Quietly, a monk from a martial order. His backstory wasn't particularly developed, but there were two relevant points for the monastic order: They could only speak in proverbs, and they were experts at improvising weapons. Silent Gecko Hunts Quietly thus spent much of combat scenes beating on the scenery with such precision as to synthesize weapons from it, while being involved in several scenes of dialog in which all involved spoke entirely in proverbs - the player and I knew each other well enough that we could actually pull this off, and it was glorious.

Mastikator
2013-07-01, 10:45 PM
A very interesting character. How did the mechanics for your werewolf work?

Jorgrimm had a negative "psyche" ability score, which meant that whenever he rolled against fear he also had to roll a psyche check and then a physique check, if he failed both (which was likely, the rolls were hard, almost impossible for the first due to his lack of psyche) he'd turn into a werewolf, even if it wasn't a full moon or even night.
His werewolf stats increased his speed and strength considerably and lowered his intelligence equally, and his personality was changed with "must eat meat!".

Jorgrimms lack of psyche made him a very bad barbarian though, he'd give up easily and because he was so desperate for money he would do very terrible things, things he was ashamed of.
He had the skills of a great warrior, far greater than any NPC we met in fact, but he was crippled by shame and bad memories.

I know it sounds like he was doomed, but he eventually got enough money to free his family, he retired at that point.

DigoDragon
2013-07-02, 07:07 AM
What is the best character, creativity-wise, you've ever come up with?

Creative-wise? I would say Kyata the demon, from a comical urban fantasy adventure. Kyata's appearance was a fair-skinned scrawny older-teenaged girl with short green hair and aquamarine eyes. Despite the appearance, she was superhumanly strong and resistant to damage.
She was more amoral than evil. Hell was simply a "nonspace" that didn't have concepts like laws and social acceptance. Sadly, she was also very dimwitted. Kyata (Ky for short) was kicked out of hell as punishment for reacting to a Balor's sneeze with "Bless you." :smallbiggrin:

When Ky was kicked out of hell, she was given a bag of orbs that could hold souls of killed opponents. The deal was that once she filled them all, her punishment would be lifted. Of course, Balors aren't without a sense of humor and her "orbs" were just cats-eye marbles...

But Ky was a very plucky demon and she worked hard to gain acceptance with the party. She was quite creative with her strength and physical resistance at times-- she once stopped a villain's car by doing a great impression of a speed bump. Another time she helped collapse part of a warehouse by running into several load-bearing support beams with her head. :smalltongue:

She was a riot to play because she was a rare "antivillain" that just seemed to work well in a group of usually good heroes.

BWR
2013-07-02, 07:31 AM
Grund the ogre barbadin (barbarian-paladin).
He started out as an NPC from the old module Crown of Ancient Glory where the Pcs find him bound and tortured by his fellow ogres. In return for setting him free, he helps the PCs Converting him from Expert rules, I gave him barbarian levels, to make him somewhat useful at 10th level.
The party the joked about how it would be cool to convert him, since he didn't detect evil, was rather intelligent and polite for an ogre (I later rolled stats for him: 16, 14, 17, 17, 14, 18, before racial mods).
So after a few jokes about an ogre paladin, I made him one, which one player got to play briefly.

One charcter that wasn't planned as a 'special snowflake', but ended up rather odd was Nigel Smythe, a low-ranking Civil Servant in a VtM game. He was working his way up to be Bernard Woolley (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernard_Woolley), and dreamed of becoming Sir Humphrey Appleby (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humphrey_Appleby)some day.

His unlife started rather typically, being scouted and ghouled by powerful Ventrue in the area to use as a tool for messing with government.
Then out of the blue (black, rather, since it was at night) a Lasombra antitribu Embraced him and used him as a spy. Harrowing nights and days and many close calls later and he had the second best Fortitude score in the group and the highest Potence. He was a better brawler than both the Gangrel and the Brujah of the group, not because he wanted to be but because **** was always happening to him that made him take damage and fight his way out.
He once soloed a werecrocodile warrior aspect (cost him an arm and a leg. Literally).

Logic
2013-07-02, 08:23 PM
Jetharis - While he was once a wizard of some renown, he currently inhabits the body of his Greatest Foe - Keegan the Conqueror.

He came to inhabit the body of Keegan after using an ancient spell in desperation. This spell was also one that he had not fully researched. The mind of Keegan still exists in his own body, and Keegan has enough willpower to sometimes take control again, and is able to regain full control in anti-magic zones. Though the body of Keegan was a conditioned fighter, the vegetarian diet and minimal exercise habits have atrophied much of Keegan's raw physical prowess.

The relocation of Jetharis' mind was not entirely without consequence, as he lost some of his memories, and must relearn many of his magics anew.

Another physical disadvantage Jetharis must overcome in Keegan's body is chronic halitosis, which Jetharis remedies with repeated castings of Prestidigitation.

Note: The name Jetharis was likely conjured up after reading too much Giantitp, and I feel the need to mention his likely namesake. (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/member.php?u=1155)

oball
2013-07-03, 12:02 AM
At least he wasn't a cleric.
"Oh here, let me bandage your wounds"
"No! Don't"
"It'll be fine, it will only take a moment..."
*crunching sound, scream of agony*
Hmm, I seem to have tightened the bandage too tight. We'll have to amputate."

I made a half-orc cleric for a one-shot called Ulga Bonecrusher. She got the surname when she was a novice cleric and a peasant came in with a lame leg. She used her skills to heal his leg, only to shake hands with him as he was leaving and crush every bone in his hand. The other priests decided it would be safer for everyone if she focused on the more martial aspects of the faith.

Her patron deity was Athe, Goddess of Light and Life (the homebrew campaign setting's Pelor equivalent), and Ulga made it her mission to "bring the light of Athe" into the lives of evildoers. She accomplished this by calling her mace "Lightbringer", casting Light on it, and using it to smack people in the head.

Jerthanis
2013-07-03, 03:07 AM
Jetharis - While he was once a wizard of some renown, he currently inhabits the body of his Greatest Foe - Keegan the Conqueror.

He came to inhabit the body of Keegan after using an ancient spell in desperation. This spell was also one that he had not fully researched. The mind of Keegan still exists in his own body, and Keegan has enough willpower to sometimes take control again, and is able to regain full control in anti-magic zones. Though the body of Keegan was a conditioned fighter, the vegetarian diet and minimal exercise habits have atrophied much of Keegan's raw physical prowess.

The relocation of Jetharis' mind was not entirely without consequence, as he lost some of his memories, and must relearn many of his magics anew.

Another physical disadvantage Jetharis must overcome in Keegan's body is chronic halitosis, which Jetharis remedies with repeated castings of Prestidigitation.

Note: The name Jetharis was likely conjured up after reading too much Giantitp, and I feel the need to mention his likely namesake. (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/member.php?u=1155)

Wow, I'm strangely flattered. Interestingly enough, I happen to be Vegetarian as well.

Eurus
2013-07-03, 01:52 PM
One of my favorites, to the point of immortalizing him in my avatar, has always been Sir Richard Brightshield, Imp Paladin of Pelor. :smallbiggrin:

Arkhosia
2013-07-03, 11:21 PM
Wow, I am amazed at the characters you have all made!
I have to wonder if Kyata accidentally brought a holy symbol back as a souvenir...
I imagine Grund hade a hard time becoming a paladin (unless via Gruumsh in past). How many times did he learn the golden rule of a paladin, when you see a creature deemed not allowed to exist by your god, begin smiting in ten seconds?

Must of been hard for Jerthanis (the character) to communicate with past allies.

Yeah, I think I would reassign a healer if she broke a patients hand too.

The Rose Dragon
2013-07-03, 11:24 PM
Oh! I remembered one character I made, named the Ladykiller. He was a teenage guy who had psychic powers that worked only on women, such as mind control, emotion control, mind reading and psychic blasts. The only problem was that he was gay, and his first boyfriend turned out to be a major villain.

He started carrying a pistol with him afterwards.

Arkhosia
2013-07-03, 11:31 PM
Yeah, if you have powers that don't work on one type of [insert creature here], it probably is a good course of action to prepare just in case of said creature. :smallsmile:
No offense intended if caused.

Velaryon
2013-07-04, 02:41 AM
m buddy figured out a druid build that would make a f'ing huge area be hit by negative energy snowflakes

I desperately need to know how this works. I'm not even kidding, tell me! :smallsmile:

My own "special snowflake" character is from a 3.0 Ravenloft game that I played long ago, and was also the only time I played a female PC.

Rosa was the eldest of two daughters of the village candle maker. She manifested sorceress powers as she started puberty, which brought her to the attention of Ivana Boritsi (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivana_Boritsi), the local ruler and quintessential evil femme fatale. Since spellcasters were a rare resource, Ivana wanted Rosa under her control. She sent enforcers around to collect the girl, which resulted in the death of Rosa's parents, her younger sister being held hostage against her good behavior, and most importantly Rosa's transformation into an emordenung - basically an assassin whose body is magically infused with poison that can be delivered by touch, most commonly with a kiss. Once it was proved that she would obey as long as her sister was in danger, Rosa was allowed a lot of autonomy whenever her services weren't needed (which is how she ended up becoming an adventurer and joined the party).

Because of her background, she was going into the Candle Caster prestige class, but sadly the game fell apart before we made it that far. :smallfrown:

Scow2
2013-07-04, 02:46 AM
I imagine Grund hade a hard time becoming a paladin (unless via Gruumsh in past). How many times did he learn the golden rule of a paladin, when you see a creature deemed not allowed to exist by your god, begin smiting in ten seconds?
What the heck do Gods have to do with Paladins? Gruumsh doesn't even have Paladins (Except in D&D 4e), because he's antithetical to their beliefs. Grund was called to the life of righteousness and virtue from a stronger, more subtle force greater than any mere deity, and he answered that call, despite his upbringing.

Extra_Crispy
2013-07-04, 04:48 AM
I try to always make my characters around a good background rather then just stats or min maxing so I have alot of characters that I love and would go good here. Here is a fairly resent one that I really enjoyed though she was short lived. Also I hate how elves in most D&D are seen as these mystical, good, well off people that take care of their own. Are there no ugly, dirty, or dirt poor elfs?

Backgound was long but this is the jest of it. Poor elven parents sold their daughter to a brothel where she spent many many years being very popular with the human men for her exotic looks. After one particular bad day of being used and abused she got tired of it and using a dagger, given to her by an assassin who used her as a cover to kill the ruler of the city, killed almost everyone in the brothel. She then decided to find her parents. Finding their village but being shunned by everyone there because of her past she decided that she hated her people and hated being "exotic" so using that dagger she cut her pointed elven ears down to look human, disguised her other features and proceded to pretend to be human and take what she wanted and kill anyone that got in her way. Basically a Neutral Evil fighter2/thief3 going toward assassin.

One of the other players was playing a monk and his character and mine got off to a very bad start, our characters both really disliked each other. So we are in these tunnels and I am scouting ahead stealthy, the monk was following me trying to be stealthy and "not be seen by the evil B****" (though he did not know I was evil) I made my perception so I knew he was there but decided to ignore him untill we came to a room that had like 15 goblins in it. I grabbed him and pushed him infront of me and into the room. I was mostly joking but actually wanted to teach this monk a little bit of a lesson, I figured we would kill the goblins then he would have "words" with me. My friend decided to attack me and turn his back on the goblins. So now he is taking a little HP damage from them while trying to fight me and being flanked with me being a thief. So the same round I dropped him to negatives the rest of the party shows up just in time to see it. Seeing the goblins they figure we will kill the goblins first and ask what the heck later. I stood over his body and blocked the goblins from getting to the rest of the party who used ranged and mostly magic to help me kill them. After the goblins were dead the healer goes to him to see if he was still alive, I stopped her, picked up the monk and said "this is what you get for attacking me" and threw him into one of the fires the goblins had. I waited a little bit to make sure that there was no way to bring him back without powerfull magic and then just left. When I did that all the other players jaws dropped and they just looked at me, they did not know I was NE.

Scow2
2013-07-04, 09:47 AM
I try to always make my characters around a good background rather then just stats or min maxing so I have alot of characters that I love and would go good here. Here is a fairly resent one that I really enjoyed though she was short lived. Also I hate how elves in most D&D are seen as these mystical, good, well off people that take care of their own. Are there no ugly, dirty, or dirt poor elfs?

Backgound was long but this is the jest of it. Poor elven parents sold their daughter to a brothel where she spent many many years being very popular with the human men for her exotic looks. After one particular bad day of being used and abused she got tired of it and using a dagger, given to her by an assassin who used her as a cover to kill the ruler of the city, killed almost everyone in the brothel. She then decided to find her parents. Finding their village but being shunned by everyone there because of her past she decided that she hated her people and hated being "exotic" so using that dagger she cut her pointed elven ears down to look human, disguised her other features and proceded to pretend to be human and take what she wanted and kill anyone that got in her way. Basically a Neutral Evil fighter2/thief3 going toward assassin.

One of the other players was playing a monk and his character and mine got off to a very bad start, our characters both really disliked each other. So we are in these tunnels and I am scouting ahead stealthy, the monk was following me trying to be stealthy and "not be seen by the evil B****" (though he did not know I was evil) I made my perception so I knew he was there but decided to ignore him untill we came to a room that had like 15 goblins in it. I grabbed him and pushed him infront of me and into the room. I was mostly joking but actually wanted to teach this monk a little bit of a lesson, I figured we would kill the goblins then he would have "words" with me. My friend decided to attack me and turn his back on the goblins. So now he is taking a little HP damage from them while trying to fight me and being flanked with me being a thief. So the same round I dropped him to negatives the rest of the party shows up just in time to see it. Seeing the goblins they figure we will kill the goblins first and ask what the heck later. I stood over his body and blocked the goblins from getting to the rest of the party who used ranged and mostly magic to help me kill them. After the goblins were dead the healer goes to him to see if he was still alive, I stopped her, picked up the monk and said "this is what you get for attacking me" and threw him into one of the fires the goblins had. I waited a little bit to make sure that there was no way to bring him back without powerfull magic and then just left. When I did that all the other players jaws dropped and they just looked at me, they did not know I was NE.
Were you allowed to come back next session?! Because those kinds of shenanigans would get you banned from any reasonable table.

Seriously. Players and stories like yours are the reasons actually-good players aren't allowed to explore the south side of the alignment pool in otherwise-good games, or make a character that doesn't start off 100% cooperative to the party.

Arkhosia
2013-07-08, 02:02 PM
I try to always make my characters around a good background rather then just stats or min maxing so I have alot of characters that I love and would go good here. Here is a fairly resent one that I really enjoyed though she was short lived. Also I hate how elves in most D&D are seen as these mystical, good, well off people that take care of their own. Are there no ugly, dirty, or dirt poor elfs?

Backgound was long but this is the jest of it. Poor elven parents sold their daughter to a brothel where she spent many many years being very popular with the human men for her exotic looks. After one particular bad day of being used and abused she got tired of it and using a dagger, given to her by an assassin who used her as a cover to kill the ruler of the city, killed almost everyone in the brothel. She then decided to find her parents. Finding their village but being shunned by everyone there because of her past she decided that she hated her people and hated being "exotic" so using that dagger she cut her pointed elven ears down to look human, disguised her other features and proceded to pretend to be human and take what she wanted and kill anyone that got in her way. Basically a Neutral Evil fighter2/thief3 going toward assassin.

One of the other players was playing a monk and his character and mine got off to a very bad start, our characters both really disliked each other. So we are in these tunnels and I am scouting ahead stealthy, the monk was following me trying to be stealthy and "not be seen by the evil B****" (though he did not know I was evil) I made my perception so I knew he was there but decided to ignore him untill we came to a room that had like 15 goblins in it. I grabbed him and pushed him infront of me and into the room. I was mostly joking but actually wanted to teach this monk a little bit of a lesson, I figured we would kill the goblins then he would have "words" with me. My friend decided to attack me and turn his back on the goblins. So now he is taking a little HP damage from them while trying to fight me and being flanked with me being a thief. So the same round I dropped him to negatives the rest of the party shows up just in time to see it. Seeing the goblins they figure we will kill the goblins first and ask what the heck later. I stood over his body and blocked the goblins from getting to the rest of the party who used ranged and mostly magic to help me kill them. After the goblins were dead the healer goes to him to see if he was still alive, I stopped her, picked up the monk and said "this is what you get for attacking me" and threw him into one of the fires the goblins had. I waited a little bit to make sure that there was no way to bring him back without powerfull magic and then just left. When I did that all the other players jaws dropped and they just looked at me, they did not know I was NE.

How did the monk's player react afterwards?

BWR
2013-07-08, 03:34 PM
I imagine Grund hade a hard time becoming a paladin (unless via Gruumsh in past). How many times did he learn the golden rule of a paladin, when you see a creature deemed not allowed to exist by your god, begin smiting in ten seconds?


No Gruumsh on Mystara. There are several humanoid Immortals which aren't necessarily evil (even if they often work at cross purposes with the Immortals most humans++ worship). Basically, after the party left him, he was alone.
His tribe were eradicated by the party (not that he ever fit in with them, even if they were all neutrally aligned), his employers were dead (evil clerics: good riddance) and he didn't know what to do. He wandered north, trying to find work, and mulling over the actions of the party, especially the paladin.
She was suspicious, but she let him down off the rack. She healed his wounds. She treated him as person, rather than the annoying ogre who doesn't fit in.

Grund meditated on the subject and slowly he came to the conclusion that if elves and humans could treat him as something other than an enemy or dumb muscle, he could prove them right. After some unfortunate incidents (Kill the ogre!) he came across a young wizard out exploring. The two became friends and the wizard crafted an item to help Grund blend in with the other races (reduce person hat of disguise), which Grund reluctantly uses.
He'd prefer to show his true face, but it saves a lot of trouble to let people think he's human.

Arkhosia
2013-07-08, 03:54 PM
No Gruumsh on Mystara. There are several humanoid Immortals which aren't necessarily evil (even if they often work at cross purposes with the Immortals most humans++ worship). Basically, after the party left him, he was alone.
His tribe were eradicated by the party (not that he ever fit in with them, even if they were all neutrally aligned), his employers were dead (evil clerics: good riddance) and he didn't know what to do. He wandered north, trying to find work, and mulling over the actions of the party, especially the paladin.
She was suspicious, but she let him down off the rack. She healed his wounds. She treated him as person, rather than the annoying ogre who doesn't fit in.

Grund meditated on the subject and slowly he came to the conclusion that if elves and humans could treat him as something other than an enemy or dumb muscle, he could prove them right. After some unfortunate incidents (Kill the ogre!) he came across a young wizard out exploring. The two became friends and the wizard crafted an item to help Grund blend in with the other races (reduce person hat of disguise), which Grund reluctantly uses.
He'd prefer to show his true face, but it saves a lot of trouble to let people think he's human.

Interesting idea for your backstory! Why did the hat have reduce person? Are ogres larger than normal races (away from books, can't remember)?
Sorry for the mistake with settings-the most setting knowledge I have is Ebberon, followed by Forgotten Realms, but other than that, no real knowledge of settings.

Scow2
2013-07-08, 05:15 PM
Interesting idea for your backstory! Why did the hat have reduce person? Are ogres larger than normal races (away from books, can't remember)?

Yes, Ogres are between half again and twice as tall as a human.

Arkhosia
2013-07-08, 06:57 PM
Yes, Ogres are between half again and twice as tall as a human.

Ohhhh.
Great, now I have to get the amusing image of a beefy human who carries around emergency money in case he smashes anyone's door frames that you just bestowed upon me (yes, I know, he's now as tall as the average man, but still)...

GlorinSteampike
2013-07-08, 07:40 PM
I try to always make my characters around a good background rather then just stats or min maxing so I have alot of characters that I love and would go good here. Here is a fairly resent one that I really enjoyed though she was short lived. Also I hate how elves in most D&D are seen as these mystical, good, well off people that take care of their own. Are there no ugly, dirty, or dirt poor elfs?

Backgound was long but this is the jest of it. Poor elven parents sold their daughter to a brothel where she spent many many years being very popular with the human men for her exotic looks. After one particular bad day of being used and abused she got tired of it and using a dagger, given to her by an assassin who used her as a cover to kill the ruler of the city, killed almost everyone in the brothel. She then decided to find her parents. Finding their village but being shunned by everyone there because of her past she decided that she hated her people and hated being "exotic" so using that dagger she cut her pointed elven ears down to look human, disguised her other features and proceded to pretend to be human and take what she wanted and kill anyone that got in her way. Basically a Neutral Evil fighter2/thief3 going toward assassin.

One of the other players was playing a monk and his character and mine got off to a very bad start, our characters both really disliked each other. So we are in these tunnels and I am scouting ahead stealthy, the monk was following me trying to be stealthy and "not be seen by the evil B****" (though he did not know I was evil) I made my perception so I knew he was there but decided to ignore him untill we came to a room that had like 15 goblins in it. I grabbed him and pushed him infront of me and into the room. I was mostly joking but actually wanted to teach this monk a little bit of a lesson, I figured we would kill the goblins then he would have "words" with me. My friend decided to attack me and turn his back on the goblins. So now he is taking a little HP damage from them while trying to fight me and being flanked with me being a thief. So the same round I dropped him to negatives the rest of the party shows up just in time to see it. Seeing the goblins they figure we will kill the goblins first and ask what the heck later. I stood over his body and blocked the goblins from getting to the rest of the party who used ranged and mostly magic to help me kill them. After the goblins were dead the healer goes to him to see if he was still alive, I stopped her, picked up the monk and said "this is what you get for attacking me" and threw him into one of the fires the goblins had. I waited a little bit to make sure that there was no way to bring him back without powerfull magic and then just left. When I did that all the other players jaws dropped and they just looked at me, they did not know I was NE.

This story better end with, "And then the rest of the party grappled me, pinned me, and tied me up. Every day they would read "The finer points of Pelor" until my rehabilitation was over." Or I will be very unsatisfied with your group :(

Ionbound
2013-07-08, 08:25 PM
My character that I'm playing now is an eberron elf who was just happy and no harm to anyone until Blood of Vol came, razed and raised the entire village as zombies, and her as a sentient undead of some sort. Clerics come by, she begs them to raise her, they comply, she ends up with PTSD and studies to be a wizard and swears revenge on the cult. The reason she remained sentient is because she is very distantly related to Vol herself. Fun fun fun, as the campaign is set in Karrnath.

bobthehero
2013-07-08, 09:40 PM
A Cavalier in pathfinder, who's trying to pull a Tarquin (command a kingdom though a puppet leader) as well as summon his very own Nightmare (because he really needs a fancy mount).

Now he's low level, so his only highlight is when he was force-fed a potion of enlarge person, and proceeded to try and use the friendly ranger as a longsword, therefore sending said ranger inside the mount of the Colossal Naga we were fighting.

It kinda helps that my only other character I made is a Stormtrooper from Krieg in WH40k, so he's bland (try to remember to say ''This Trooper'' instead of ''me'' or ''I'') but still fun to play.

Arkhosia
2013-07-08, 10:10 PM
My character that I'm playing now is an eberron elf who was just happy and no harm to anyone until Blood of Vol came, razed and raised the entire village as zombies, and her as a sentient undead of some sort. Clerics come by, she begs them to raise her, they comply, she ends up with PTSD and studies to be a wizard and swears revenge on the cult. The reason she remained sentient is because she is very distantly related to Vol herself. Fun fun fun, as the campaign is set in Karrnath.

Why did the Blood Of Vol "raze and raise" (if you ever play a evil necromancer, that would be a perfect motto) the village? They're neutral as far as I know, and the event seems too malign for such an unaligned orginization.

Oh, and bob, BTW,
Next time THROW THE HALFLING!
Midget tossing is the best ranged weapon.

Deremir
2013-07-17, 02:40 AM
My best character hasnt actually been played yet xuz im still tweaking its base race (which im homebrewing from scratch) her backstory os that there was once a wizard who becaim a effigy master baught a tower and eventually reached epic class, and pretty high in the epic levels, he believed that effigys were workes of buety that could only be gifted and earned, never baught, however during his adventuring there was an er incident, that caused him to become sterile. So in his later years, desperate for an air, he spent almost all of his adventuring furtune to created a huminoid effigy that he enchanted like an intelegent magical item. Thus giving her inteligence and free will, hence Gardenia was born. After the old wizard died she spent the remaining money on his funeral and sent all his effigys off to those he had left them to in his will, all but the one he speciffically made as her familier, her familier was a miniture dragon effigy and soon after his death the two of tgem left the tower in order to get some real world expiriance as a wizard

At level one she has 10 ranks in craft mettleworking and will become an effigy master at the first opertunity

Arkhosia
2013-07-17, 02:51 AM
Interesting idea.
May I interest you in a Ebberon Player's Guide for stat inspiration in the form of a warforged? :smalltongue:
Sorry. Constructs and effigies are so alike to me... (I do only play 4e after all)

drew2u
2013-07-17, 06:53 AM
My best character has to be my Gnome Monk, Ennelvar Anklebiter, who was able to both triple-crit a minotaur - killing it in one shot, and pin a fellow PC polymorphed as a dragon.

Arkhosia
2013-07-17, 09:20 AM
My best character has to be my Gnome Monk, Ennelvar Anklebiter, who was able to both triple-crit a minotaur - killing it in one shot, and pin a fellow PC polymorphed as a dragon.

Is it bad that I'm imagining that the monk's fighting style was called the Seven Shin-kick Soul? :smalltongue:

Jay R
2013-07-17, 09:56 AM
This is a Rogue from the game Flashing Blades (role-playing in Paris in the time of the musketeers). From his character description:

Jean-Louis is a Parisian street-rat. He was an orphan, raised by the nuns of Notre Dame, until he fled at age eight, upon hearing that he was to be taught Latin. Since then he has lived by his wits, developing the skills of a cutpurse and thief.

Jean-Louis particularly enjoys climbing, feeling happiest and most secure when climbing buildings. (He has discovered that most Parisians never look up.) In the last few years he has spent a lot of time exploring the architecture.

In Flashing Blades, a character gets an Advantage and a Secret. I got special permission to have two of each (because the GM liked the character conception).

1st Secret: Secret Origins
Jean-Louis was a foundling, left at Notre Dame in a basket. Nothing is known about him except that he was left with a satin blanket with the monogram "JL". Is it a clue to his parentage? Is he the bastard son of a noble with those initials? Or was he born to a servant girl who stole the blanket? Is he the inconveniently legal heir that somebody wants dead? He does not know, although he still has the blanket.

Note to GM: Neither the character nor the player has any idea what this means. If you choose to clear up the mystery, the secret could easily develop into a Secret Identity, Sworn Vengeance, or Blackmailed, depending on the details. Feel free to use it any way you choose. A monogram cannot be traced (how many JLs are there?), but it might be recognized by a family member, washerwoman, or the original embroiderer. It could also be a blind to the child's identity.

Note to Playground: The DM set up a game in which Jean-Louis actually found out his parentage. He eventually turned out to be the bastard son of the niece of the Count de Montpazat, who ran away to marry a Huguenot lawyer, in a Huguenot church that her family doesn't recognize. His parents disappeared the night he was left at the church

1st Advantage: Contact
Master of the Fencing School
Jean-Louis, at age 14, was climbing and exploring. Finding an open window, he entered the lavish rooms. He was surprised in one room by a middle-aged man in a nightgown who grabbed a sword off the wall and challenged Jean-Louis.

Although Jean-Louis had a rapier, he had only fought untrained street ruffians like himself, and had an entirely unjustified high opinion of his own fencing skills. Drawing his sword and attacking, he was astounded to be:

1) parried,
2) sidestepped,
3) swatted on the butt with the flat of the blade, and
4) admonished to "Point your toe forward, don't lean over, hold the pommel up, keep your point on line, don't telegraph your blows."
Jean-Louis had no idea what was going on, and charged again, with similar results. This time he was told that he had managed to combine the elegance of a plough horse with the killer instinct of a milk cow. After the next pass, the man screamed, "Point your foot at me, fool!" Rather to his own surprise, Jean-Louis did. For the next five minutes, he was subjected to his first fencing lesson, at two in the morning, in a house he'd broken into, from a man in a nightgown.

It broke up when Jean-Louis's stomach rumbled. The fencing master asked him when he'd last eaten, and Jean-Louis said three days ago. (A flat lie -- he'd had a perfectly good crust of bread a day and a half ago. But street urchins always say they haven't eaten in three days, even when they're hopelessly overstuffed.)

The master fed him, and asked many questions. (Maítre Francis Toquin is involved in politics, and was frankly wondering which of his enemies had sent so hopelessly incompetent an assassin.) Deciding that Jean-Louis was too foolish to be a spy, the fencing master offered to teach him at the Toquin Fencing School.

Jean-Louis couldn't find the place the next day, since he had been too embarrassed to admit that he couldn't read. He next saw Maítre Toquin in the streets three weeks later, and was escorted to the school.

Several years later, Jean-Louis is an assistant at the school, and has the friendship of the master.

2nd Secret and Advantage: Anne of Austria (the Queen of France)
Secret Loyalty -- Anne of Austria
Jean-Louis has discovered that the richer the building, the easier to climb. Fashionable decorations afford more handgrips and more places to hide. He particularly enjoys the excitement of the royal palace -- the Louvre itself. He once saw Anne of Austria preparing to retire, and the sight of her overwhelmed him. He would do anything for her, and will not do anything that might hurt her. He has often returned to that window, and has caught a glance at her many times, but she has only seen him once.

Favor -- Anne of Austria
Once, at his favorite window, Jean-Louis saw someone sneak into the room and approach the Queen, dagger drawn. He opened the window (well, he is a thief) and grabbed the man.

After a short struggle, he managed to throw the man out the window. Anne saw this, and asked him who he was. Jean-Louis said nothing. She asked him what he intended to do with her. Jean-Louis said nothing. She asked who sent him. Jean-Louis said nothing. She thanked him for saving her life. Jean-Louis said nothing. Finally, Jean-Louis said, "I have to go open the window above this, so they won't connect you with the body." Suddenly, Anne realized the problem and spoke again, this time in French, "Thank you. If I can ever help you, call on me."

He left, and opened another window. He didn't dare to return for a few days, since he didn't want to be caught and accused of killing the man. He has no idea who the assassin was, or what the situation was. Nor does he care -- Palace intrigue has very little effect on the life of a thief.

(When he has enough status, he hopes to ask her for admission to the Chevaliers de la Reine -- or perhaps patronage at his sallé.)

Several episodes into the game, I developed his personal code, as a guide to playing him.

Basis for his personal code.
Just what will Jean-Louis not do? This question is starting to gnaw at him, and he is beginning to form a crude code of ethics. His life up to now has not provided a consistent base for one. He was an orphan raised by the nuns at Notre-Dame, so he was subjected to the child's version of current Catholic teaching. While he remembers it, what he remembers is a jumble of "thou shalt nots", confusing, inconsistent, and incomplete.

He spent his next few years on the street. If he hadn't stolen, he'd have starved. Even after becoming a fencing instructor, most of his income (100 L/year) comes from theft.

His training at Maítre Toquin's sallé d'armes has given him an excellent role model and a firm grounding in the etiquette of the sword. He has a firm theoretical and practical knowledge of the honor of a swordsman, fitting a man being groomed to join the Academie de Paris. This certainly includes discussions of honor and duty.

While studying etiquette from a master, Jean-Louis learned that he is, indeed, noble, though from the wrong side of the blanket. During his study of address and protocol, he has begun to ask questions about why such things are important, the meaning of nobility, and its practical effect on actions.

A thief's life, while uncluttered, is uncomfortable, precarious, and usually short. Also, he was recently horrified by the clumsiness and obviousness of a young rogue in his company, and is determined to avoid such ignominy.

He is well aware that one result of some treachery or dishonor was that he grew up without family, on the streets of Paris, and (even worse, in Jean-Louis's eyes) in the Church.

While his idea of moral behavior was hopelessly jumbled, there were always a few clear ideas in it. He is now actively formulating a Code of Honor.

Jean-Louis's code
1. He won't steal from, or betray, his comrades.
2. He will not steal from innocents, though he is quite willing to relieve someone of ill-gotten gains. He remembers that he was deprived of his patrimony for years. He is not public about his thieving, even with his comrades. So far, he's kept it reasonably well hidden. Cardinal Richelieu knows that he ransacked two offices and a bedroom, from which came the bills of lading, 1,000 L. in bank notes, and a codebook and letters, all now in Richelieu's possession.
3. He has no squeamish, vague distaste for killing. While he has no use for murder, he is quite willing to off anyone who attacks him. His sword's honor is more important than his life.
4. He will adamantly oppose anything that might hurt Anne of Austria. (In rules terms, he has a Secret Loyalty.)
5. He is loyal and grateful to Maítre Toquin, and will not willingly hurt or betray him. (Note that he does not have a Secret Loyalty, but only the advantage Contact, so this is a restriction I am putting on him myself.)
6. If he joins any group, he will be loyal to it. This could include the Academy of Arms, the Chevaliers de la Reine, etc.
7. He does not rob dead bodies (when anyone's looking), and is contemptuous of those who do. Note that he takes any weapon dropped by an opponent as his right, if the opponent fled or surrendered, but not if the man is slain. This is swordsman's etiquette, totally unrelated to ransacking offices.
8. He now has family – people with a claim on him separate from anything they have done. It's a new idea to Jean-Louis, and he wants to do it right. He will defend and help his family, on both sides. He will seek out his parents. He will not willingly embarrass them, and knows that his very existence is a major embarrassment to the de Montpazats. He has every opportunity to screw up due to lack of knowledge.
9. As the bastard of a noble family, he recognizes the double bind -- he must live up to the noblesse oblige , and will not be recognized for doing so.
10. Since both families recognize him (not necessarily as legitimate), he will brook no nonsense from those who don't.
11. He will try to behave according to his rank. He has studied etiquette, swordsmanship, and lived in the church, but the holes in his knowledge still exist.

One aspect of the character I find hilarious in retrospect. This character is an outcast foundling, left as a baby on the steps of Notre-Dame Cathedral. And yes, he was vaguely patterned on the hero of a Disney animated film. But he is not based on Quasimodo. I invented this street rat based on Aladdin, years before Disney created The Hunchback of Notre Dame.

Arkhosia
2013-07-17, 10:46 AM
Wall of text
Wow. That is a lot of work you put into him! You should definitely try to write a book about him at some point: now THAT would be a best seller.

TripleD
2013-07-17, 01:46 PM
One of the first characters I ever came up with. This was back in high school, when I didn't really understand the rules of D&D and envisioned this character as a web comic (that I never drew beyond page 6).

Jethro is a Vermin Lord. If you are looking for some tragic backstory you won't find it here. His wealthy family was totally accepting of their small child's unusual fascination with insects, and assumed his laziness and general lack of intelligence in other areas was "just a phase". Despite his sloth, the lad seemed to have an abnormally high magical aptitude.

However, when you don't learn how to focus your powers they can backfire. While messing around with his pet centipede "Sasha", he accidentally ripped open a hole in his soul and forged a powerful magical link between them. Sasha found herself enlarged to the size of a house cat, with human level intelligence and the power to speak. Jethro was the same as before, albeit with greatly reduced magical capabilities. A visit to the Cleric revealed that the link could not be broken, and that if one died, the other would too.

His parents were nonetheless ecstatic. No one in their family had ever shown this kind of potential! Over the years they ever-so-gently suggested he take up full time magical study. Unable to deal with even this facsimile of "pressure and responsibility", he ran away from home to make a living as a lone bandit. Jethro's Neutral Evilness manifested itself as laziness and apathy more than actual sadism, and he robbed only the weakest and most pitiful. Sasha, with her more pragmatic True Neutral disposition (and higher intelligence/wisdom) kept them alive in day to day matters (when to change areas, buy food, etc.)

Unfortunately, one of those messangers was unknowingly carrying one of the world's most powerful artifacts. Jethro pawned it before he was captured by soldiers of the ruling archemage. As punishment, she cursed Jethro with the "Belt of Heroes". Although he can speak and act for the most part as normal, whenever he must make a decision, or react to a situation, he is forced to do so as one who is Chaotic Good would. He must do this until he returns the artifact.

And so we follow the Vermin Lord Jethro and his familar Sasha on their many adventures. Slaying monsters (he'd rather hide from), saving orphans (previous victims), and spending 16 hours helping a decrepit farmer weed and fertilize his fields ("I HATE THIS %#@$&-ING BELT!!!"). All in his quest to once again spend each day sleeping in till 11am.

Arkhosia
2013-07-17, 09:12 PM
One of the first characters I ever came up with. This was back in high school, when I didn't really understand the rules of D&D and envisioned this character as a web comic (that I never drew beyond page 6).

Jethro is a Vermin Lord. If you are looking for some tragic backstory you won't find it here. His wealthy family was totally accepting of their small child's unusual fascination with insects, and assumed his laziness and general lack of intelligence in other areas was "just a phase". Despite his sloth, the lad seemed to have an abnormally high magical aptitude.

However, when you don't learn how to focus your powers they can backfire. While messing around with his pet centipede "Sasha", he accidentally ripped open a hole in his soul and forged a powerful magical link between them. Sasha found herself enlarged to the size of a house cat, with human level intelligence and the power to speak. Jethro was the same as before, albeit with greatly reduced magical capabilities. A visit to the Cleric revealed that the link could not be broken, and that if one died, the other would too.

His parents were nonetheless ecstatic. No one in their family had ever shown this kind of potential! Over the years they ever-so-gently suggested he take up full time magical study. Unable to deal with even this facsimile of "pressure and responsibility", he ran away from home to make a living as a lone bandit. Jethro's Neutral Evilness manifested itself as laziness and apathy more than actual sadism, and he robbed only the weakest and most pitiful. Sasha, with her more pragmatic True Neutral disposition (and higher intelligence/wisdom) kept them alive in day to day matters (when to change areas, buy food, etc.)

Unfortunately, one of those messangers was unknowingly carrying one of the world's most powerful artifacts. Jethro pawned it before he was captured by soldiers of the ruling archemage. As punishment, she cursed Jethro with the "Belt of Heroes". Although he can speak and act for the most part as normal, whenever he must make a decision, or react to a situation, he is forced to do so as one who is Chaotic Good would. He must do this until he returns the artifact.

And so we follow the Vermin Lord Jethro and his familar Sasha on their many adventures. Slaying monsters (he'd rather hide from), saving orphans (previous victims), and spending 16 hours helping a decrepit farmer weed and fertilize his fields ("I HATE THIS %#@$&-ING BELT!!!"). All in his quest to once again spend each day sleeping in till 11am.
That is a VERY noble cause.

Gamgee
2013-07-18, 01:48 AM
Ex-Stormtrooper turned detective.

Arcane_Snowman
2013-07-18, 02:16 AM
I would say that one of my favorite characters and probably one of the more unique would have to be Anicetus of Mecere for the Ars Magica system: a powerful mage with Hollywood insanity and ADHD. He had an extremely unique grasp on magic, which allowed him to do various funky things, such as changing the parameters of his spells on a whim, unfortunately his poor communication skills alienated him from his peers and kin. He was a specialist in the transformation of earthen materials, mostly into lava, which he used to hilarious effect, he spent a great deal of time entertaining one of the other PC's children by trying to make "lava lamps" amongst other things.

He spent a great deal of time breaking the fourth wall, much to everyone's amusement, but due to circumstances I was about to be rotated into the position of GM for the game again on a more permanent basis, so he exited the game with the following phrase "I think I'm gonna go find Seth and deck him in the schnoz".

I didn't get to give him as much of a run as I've wanted to, but he's going to be one of the few for which I make the exception of "a new character for a new game", though likely with a lot less Hollywood insanity.

Toy Killer
2013-07-18, 02:52 AM
I have a sorcerer character in mind that I want to get on the table soon.

The bare bones back story is that he was once a prominent Arcane Professor at some wizardary college, particularly renown for _______. Some how or another (Details left open for when I actually find a group that doesn't need a DM and will let me play such a guy), he got in too deep with some bad folk(tm) and was being coerced in giving up information, techno-do-hows or something requiring his particular skills (Like how to create your own plane, for example).

When the demands got too intrusive, he took matters into his own hands and mind-raped himself... however, calling it a success is a bit difficult.

Maintaining your sense of self is difficult when your warping your own image of yourself, and keeping key thoughts in mind while altering them is nigh-impossible. His old self is nearly completely shattered. He now wonders around with a mail box, he considers his familiar and seemingly refuses to adhere to one name, each introduction getting a new slew of names, usually taken from things a people he has encountered in the past.

His true familiar is fine, a small portly rat that tries to keep him on top of what the lost wizard is doing. It can be difficult when the only person you can converse with is someone you knew since a youngling and the days of deep intellectual conversations are dribbled down to rambling incoherency.

But loyalty is loyalty, and the man isn't completely gone as one may think, he can still cast spells; mostly utility pieces he bothered to memorize back in the day, but it's worth something. His true familiar is sure that somewhere in his mind he's still in their and can be restored... somehow.


*rattle rattle rattle* What's this? 128 Lemmington Drive believes we may find help down this street! Come my Verminous friend! We mustn't waste a moment! *As the rat face palms and waddles along*

oball
2013-07-18, 10:29 PM
I invented this street rat based on Aladdin, years before Disney created The Hunchback of Notre Dame.

Man, Disney are going to be pissed that Victor Hugo ripped off their creation 160 years before they made the film.

Arkhosia
2013-07-18, 10:42 PM
I have a sorcerer character in mind that I want to get on the table soon.

The bare bones back story is that he was once a prominent Arcane Professor at some wizardary college, particularly renown for _______. Some how or another (Details left open for when I actually find a group that doesn't need a DM and will let me play such a guy), he got in too deep with some bad folk(tm) and was being coerced in giving up information, techno-do-hows or something requiring his particular skills (Like how to create your own plane, for example).

When the demands got too intrusive, he took matters into his own hands and mind-raped himself... however, calling it a success is a bit difficult.

Maintaining your sense of self is difficult when your warping your own image of yourself, and keeping key thoughts in mind while altering them is nigh-impossible. His old self is nearly completely shattered. He now wonders around with a mail box, he considers his familiar and seemingly refuses to adhere to one name, each introduction getting a new slew of names, usually taken from things a people he has encountered in the past.

His true familiar is fine, a small portly rat that tries to keep him on top of what the lost wizard is doing. It can be difficult when the only person you can converse with is someone you knew since a youngling and the days of deep intellectual conversations are dribbled down to rambling incoherency.

But loyalty is loyalty, and the man isn't completely gone as one may think, he can still cast spells; mostly utility pieces he bothered to memorize back in the day, but it's worth something. His true familiar is sure that somewhere in his mind he's still in their and can be restored... somehow.


*rattle rattle rattle* What's this? 128 Lemmington Drive believes we may find help down this street! Come my Verminous friend! We mustn't waste a moment! *As the rat face palms and waddles along*

You should actually make him preform a ritual to have a mailbox familiar as well somehow that no one else can see just so you can have him say something along the lines of "Mailbox says that the traps are a bluff", for example.
Priceless.

Deremir
2013-07-19, 12:57 AM
I have a sorcerer character in mind that I want to get on the table soon.

The bare bones back story is that he was once a prominent Arcane Professor at some wizardary college, particularly renown for _______. Some how or another (Details left open for when I actually find a group that doesn't need a DM and will let me play such a guy), he got in too deep with some bad folk(tm) and was being coerced in giving up information, techno-do-hows or something requiring his particular skills (Like how to create your own plane, for example).

When the demands got too intrusive, he took matters into his own hands and mind-raped himself... however, calling it a success is a bit difficult.

Maintaining your sense of self is difficult when your warping your own image of yourself, and keeping key thoughts in mind while altering them is nigh-impossible. His old self is nearly completely shattered. He now wonders around with a mail box, he considers his familiar and seemingly refuses to adhere to one name, each introduction getting a new slew of names, usually taken from things a people he has encountered in the past.

His true familiar is fine, a small portly rat that tries to keep him on top of what the lost wizard is doing. It can be difficult when the only person you can converse with is someone you knew since a youngling and the days of deep intellectual conversations are dribbled down to rambling incoherency.

But loyalty is loyalty, and the man isn't completely gone as one may think, he can still cast spells; mostly utility pieces he bothered to memorize back in the day, but it's worth something. His true familiar is sure that somewhere in his mind he's still in their and can be restored... somehow.


*rattle rattle rattle* What's this? 128 Lemmington Drive believes we may find help down this street! Come my Verminous friend! We mustn't waste a moment! *As the rat face palms and waddles along*

Do you mind if i steal this at some point? The premis is just the perfect set up for an insane character

Jay R
2013-07-19, 10:09 AM
Man, Disney are going to be pissed that Victor Hugo ripped off their creation 160 years before they made the film.

Yes, I know about Victor Hugo's novel and about Aladdin's origin in the 1,001 Nights. And I didn't base my character on the Aladdin in 1,001 Nights, but on the different version in the Disney film.

I just enjoyed the irony that I based the character on a character from a Disney film, and differentiated him by having him left on the steps of Notre Dame as a baby, only for Disney to then make a movie about a character left on the steps of Notre Dame as a baby.

Arkhosia
2013-07-19, 11:47 AM
Yes, I know about Victor Hugo's novel and about Aladdin's origin in the 1,001 Nights. And I didn't base my character on the Aladdin in 1,001 Nights, but on the different version in the Disney film.

I just enjoyed the irony that I based the character on a character from a Disney film, and differentiated him by having him left on the steps of Notre Dame as a baby, only for Disney to then make a movie about a character left on the steps of Notre Dame as a baby.

Maybe one of your fellow PCs or the DM secretly worked for Disney and sold your story to them, but a game of Telephone ensued!

Jarrick
2013-07-20, 11:04 AM
Jarrick was a student at a medical school in a large city. He had a latent talent for necromancy thanks to the Mother Cyst in his lower back, but never sought out a mentor, instead preferring to explore his powers on his own. While still in training to become a doctor, he began experimenting with the idea of grafting unliving tissue to living subjects with the intent of helping amputees and such.

The college found out and threw him out. He scraped by as a medic in the city's underbelly, where his experiments continued until one day he attracted the attention of the cult of the Xammux, dark god of remorseless, uncaring logic and research. They guided his research and provided him the means to continue his work. Eventually, Jarrick attracted a little too much attention to himself, and set out on his own to ply his trade in the countryside, where he became an adventurer.

Over time, he got better and better at animating things, until he was able to animate an entire cat by animating individual peices of different cats and stitching them together. George the cat, named after the boy he stole the first cat from, became his stitched-flesh familiar. Eventually he learned how to animate entire bodies into mindless undead, and then into intellegent undead as well.

At this point, Jarrick had an epiphany. Undeath was a superior and more resiliant state than life, and the world would ultimately benefit from being entirely undead. Death, disease, famine, plague, age, all the major problems of the world would be solved, and medicine would be pointless. Jarrick's goal became the end to discrimination against the undead in civilized society, the end of suffering amongst the common folk through necromancy, and eventually, total undead dominion of the world.

Jarrick was a madman, of course, but he was so convincing about his goals that the rest of the party supported him at every turn, and volunteered to become undead themselves when they died. Jarrick became a lich himself, eventually. He then found a place in the icy north where negative energy seeped in from the negative energy plane. (No, not a warcraft reference, I'd never heard of the lich king at the time :smalltongue:) There, he and his army of minions began building a city, which eventually grew to become the home of tens of thousands of undead, who flocked to jarrick's banner in search of a peaceful place to 'live'. Jarrick ruled over his city with kindness and benevolence... to the undead anyways... Last I left him, he was well on his way to becoming a god, thanks to his throngs of worshipper citizens, and plotting the overthrow of the living.

Arkhosia
2013-07-20, 07:12 PM
Jarrick was a student at a medical school in a large city. He had a latent talent for necromancy thanks to the Mother Cyst in his lower back, but never sought out a mentor, instead preferring to explore his powers on his own. While still in training to become a doctor, he began experimenting with the idea of grafting unliving tissue to living subjects with the intent of helping amputees and such.

The college found out and threw him out. He scraped by as a medic in the city's underbelly, where his experiments continued until one day he attracted the attention of the cult of the Xammux, dark god of remorseless, uncaring logic and research. They guided his research and provided him the means to continue his work. Eventually, Jarrick attracted a little too much attention to himself, and set out on his own to ply his trade in the countryside, where he became an adventurer.

Over time, he got better and better at animating things, until he was able to animate an entire cat by animating individual peices of different cats and stitching them together. George the cat, named after the boy he stole the first cat from, became his stitched-flesh familiar. Eventually he learned how to animate entire bodies into mindless undead, and then into intellegent undead as well.

At this point, Jarrick had an epiphany. Undeath was a superior and more resiliant state than life, and the world would ultimately benefit from being entirely undead. Death, disease, famine, plague, age, all the major problems of the world would be solved, and medicine would be pointless. Jarrick's goal became the end to discrimination against the undead in civilized society, the end of suffering amongst the common folk through necromancy, and eventually, total undead dominion of the world.

Jarrick was a madman, of course, but he was so convincing about his goals that the rest of the party supported him at every turn, and volunteered to become undead themselves when they died. Jarrick became a lich himself, eventually. He then found a place in the icy north where negative energy seeped in from the negative energy plane. (No, not a warcraft reference, I'd never heard of the lich king at the time :smalltongue:) There, he and his army of minions began building a city, which eventually grew to become the home of tens of thousands of undead, who flocked to jarrick's banner in search of a peaceful place to 'live'. Jarrick ruled over his city with kindness and benevolence... to the undead anyways... Last I left him, he was well on his way to becoming a god, thanks to his throngs of worshipper citizens, and plotting the overthrow of the living.

Wait, wouldn't being considered a god go against his beliefs/goal? Because wouldn't they treat him differently, thereby committing reverse-discrimination?
Very creative idea though.

Crasical
2013-07-20, 09:00 PM
I'm vaguely shocked by Arkhosia taking the time to comment on each and every one of these 'Snowflakes'. I've never seen a 'share your characters' thread that didn't rapidly devolve into a bunch of people in monologues, no-one bothering to praise or discuss anyone else's characters. Props to you, Arkhosia!

TuggyNE
2013-07-20, 09:10 PM
I'm vaguely shocked by Arkhosia taking the time to comment on each and every one of these 'Snowflakes'. I've never seen a 'share your characters' thread that didn't rapidly devolve into a bunch of people in monologues, no-one bothering to praise or discuss anyone else's characters. Props to you, Arkhosia!

Sometimes, people are awesome. :smallwink: But only sometimes. Yeah I'm cynical.

Arkhosia
2013-07-20, 10:11 PM
I'm vaguely shocked by Arkhosia taking the time to comment on each and every one of these 'Snowflakes'. I've never seen a 'share your characters' thread that didn't rapidly devolve into a bunch of people in monologues, no-one bothering to praise or discuss anyone else's characters. Props to you, Arkhosia!

Why thanks. I don't have much to do often, so...
Also, I love talking about ideas such as these.
New plan: link comment to sig, something happens, profit for crasical.

Jarrick
2013-07-20, 11:07 PM
Jarrick wasn't actively trying to become a god. We just decided that his current course of actions and the eternal lifespan of both he and his ever-growing mass of followers would eventually lead to that conclusion. I did later use him as a villain and he was hwarted by the PCs, but that wasnt canon, so :P

I forgot to mention an important part of his character. Jarrick grafted undead flesh onto himself at every opportunity. He had basically all the best grafts from libris mortis and several custom ones we created. His goal was to become the ultimate undead being.

Arkhosia
2013-07-20, 11:16 PM
Jarrick wasn't actively trying to become a god. We just decided that his current course of actions and the eternal lifespan of both he and his ever-growing mass of followers would eventually lead to that conclusion. I did later use him as a villain and he was hwarted by the PCs, but that wasnt canon, so :P

I forgot to mention an important part of his character. Jarrick grafted undead flesh onto himself at every opportunity. He had basically all the best grafts from libris mortis and several custom ones we created. His goal was to become the ultimate undead being.

Of the best flesh, I assume?
I can see him stalking well-known fighters/fit people, stealing their kidneys by luring them somewhere.
:smallredface: :smallbiggrin:

Jarrick
2013-07-20, 11:33 PM
He has been known to arrange the demise of people and creatures that look like they'd make good undead. We need to run an epic campaign someday so I can bring him back :smallfrown:

Arkhosia
2013-07-20, 11:51 PM
He has been known to arrange the demise of people and creatures that look like they'd make good undead. We need to run an epic campaign someday so I can bring him back :smallfrown:

I have a feeling he probably has a mob of clerics of pelor and/or the raven queen after him by now. Might be a good campaign motivator. :smallwink:

mabriss lethe
2013-07-21, 02:05 AM
I've created a small retinue of entertaining characters in my time:

Jimmy:
A CN cleric of Set that wound up in a party with a paladin. He used his gold for a repeating trap of cure light wounds in the shape of a dull knife (yes, he had a healing shiv.) and effectively a permanent undetectable alignment. His battle cry, at least when the paladin was in earshot, was "For the glory of Se...omebody!"

Baron Manfred von Schadenfreude
a Goblin fighter/binder: A former circus performer, part of a dog riding act, he also told fortunes on the side (max ranks in Profession: fortuneteller). somehow or another I kept rolling 20s on the fortune teller rolls. The dm just went with it and hilarity ensued. (It was a low level campaign and the dm thought it was a good way to help out the party with information when they wound up in a bind.)

The Color Coded Drag Queen Assassins:
This was revenge for a player at my table getting me to watch Special Duty Combat Unit Shinesman (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yc4uY4MdqmI). It also doubled as a convenient method to introduce tome of battle material to the game. The CCDQAs were Bloody Eddie (a warblade) in red, Sister Sledge (a crusader) in black, and Tucker (so named because tucking was something he didn't do.) a swordsage in... I don't remember now. This was also the same game that featured an homage to The Evil Dead cabin in the woods. In the basement there was a hulking brute of an undead barbarian in his ceremonial pigtails, war glitter and "that slinky black outfit"

Manly Man
2013-07-21, 02:35 AM
I've had quite a few characters that are quirky as all Hell, and are so much fun in concept, even if they aren't exactly optimal in terms of power and build. Still, the sheer flavor of some of them is more than enough to make up for it.

My newest character is an intelligent (through the awaken spell) one of these little fellows (http://topicstock.pantip.com/camera/topicstock/2012/06/O12191290/O12191290-32.jpg), named Ratana (Thai for 'crystal) who has taken a few levels as a Ninja. She abhors boots with passion that burns with the fires of a thousand elder elementals, since her mate had been squished before eggs could be laid. She's a champion of the downtrodden, and has no tolerance for those who bully others because of an inferior size.

I also have a mind flayer who has escaped the grasp of his Elder Brain, and seeks out a Smalljammer to explore the multiverse. He has a masculine mentality, but the human he had taken through ceremorphosis also happened to be gay, and so he retains the attraction to men, which frustrates him greatly. He's currently travelling with a half-elf mercenary that he's developed a friendship with, though it's still kind of shaky, considering that pretty much anything would be weirded out by an illithid that had things other than experiments and brain munching on its mind, perhaps even more than a standard encounter with one.

Perhaps my favorite female character is Dagny Kennadottir, a half-frost giant gestalt Bardbarian. She had a dwarven father, and since she was nearly killed by her mother's clan for being a bastard child, her father took her and raised her on his own. She ended up growing fascinated with music, and instead of using an instrument, sings with a voice not unlike that of Agnes Nitt, and is a complete and utter ham, like, BRIAN BLESSED-grade stuff. After having stolen her mother's greataxe, she's on the run from the giants that follow her, but she's still able to fend them off, and mocks them by writing songs about how foolish she makes them seem.

Alex12
2013-07-21, 12:58 PM
Thrud was a Neanderthal in the frozen wastes of the north. He was extremely strong, and very persuasive, but remarkably clumsy and stupid even by the standards of his tribe. One day, when out hunting (badly) he stumbled upon a cave, in which rested a black crystal.
Entranced by the thing's beauty, he reached out and touched it, and a burst of magic enveloped him, filling him with necromantic power.
As he staggered away from the now-inert crystal and into the wastes, he was captured by slavers and taken to fight in the Pit, a world-renowned gladiatorial arena.
He speaks in third person, and not very well, and he's got virtually no skills, but he's very good at violence.
(in game terms, he's a Dread Necromancer with 20 Str, 18 Cha, 10 Con, and 6 in everything else)

Arkhosia
2013-07-21, 05:10 PM
Mabriss:I assume Jimmy's healing method wasn't the best.
Manly man: love the idea. How many boots did she smite?
Alex12: an illiterate wizard: don't see that every day.
BTW- DM know about the fallout reference?

mabriss lethe
2013-07-22, 12:36 AM
Jimmy considered the Healing shiv to be a bit of "positive reinforcement." After a healing session with him and the shiv, he was absolutely positive that the other PCs would take better care of themselves on the battlefield.

Otomodachi
2013-07-22, 01:22 AM
Cool stories. :)

I participated in a game of Mage: the Awakening that lasted about a year and a half. It started with me as the GM, and it was pre-agreed that once I got things to a certain point another player in the group would take over as DM (and their character would be retired until the very end) and I would bring in my character who would be getting XP at the same rate as the rest of the group.

Because we were mostly a DnD group that I had convinced to try Mage, starting XP and XP over time were... hefty. :P

My character was named Tom Kaurismaki and he was raised by elves; the world was a sort of Shadowrun like deal where some people had transformed randomly into some forms of fantasy races. Also, sometimes deadlands opened in the real world and made monsters. And I think there was just an enormous wave of star demons approaching earth from every direction, but they might've already done their thing at this point. Point is, UNRECOGNIZABLE from the real WW Mage rpg, except still on earth. Due to a magical apocalypse that had happened at this point, paradox was fairly trivialized.

So here's Tom Kaurismaki, basically an elf commando guy. His Avatar is primordial, and appears to him as the god Loki. Tom's avatar was endlessly trying to convince Tom of his status as Loki's seriously-for-real-biological son. And he's joining the equivalent of an Epic level DnD party, for those who don't speak Mage. Tom was a master of spirit, life and had a couple dots into Entropy, Mind, Prime and Correspondence as well. His Arete, the stat for CASTING spells, was 6 out of a max 10 WHEN HE SHOWED UP, and maxed out before the game ended. Please note, this is not the cool part. This is just establishing who he is.

His standard permanent-until-dispelled magic effects included maxing his physical stats at 10, having the form of a 30 foot tall frost giant to anyone in/perceiving the spirit plane, subtracting (by the end) 10 dice from the abilities of/using spirit, and the ability to cross over himself and anyone he is touching into the spirit plane with a word. He was a beast. Because he was a technical pacifist, his preferred way of getting rid of sentients was to take them to the spirit world and then turn them into the spirit of a rock or a blade of grass or whatever, which is only really reversible by someone of equal mastery of the spirit school.

The part I find most crazy was the rest of the party. First off there was the guy who played a swashbuckling opera performer (baritone) who was at this point the Supreme Leader of unified Asia. I just don't even know how to explain how all those things came together to be one character... everyone in the original party before the DM trade was in charge of one continent at this point. He was a straight up killer, master of correspondence and force. He was immune to all forms of energy until someone took the time to dispel his standing effect, just for starters. He used correspondence windows with his sword to kill things (he stabs his sword towards your face and instead it cuts open your achilles from behind), He had to sing to cast his spells and the player was pursuing his master's in vocal performance (opera. surprise surprise, right?) so it was actually frequently very nice!

Next up we've got the mad scientist. Doesn't every group have that one guy who given the chance wants to play a mad scientist that fixes everything in the large scale and makes no sense to take adventuring? Well, this guy didn't fix things in the big scale so much as break things. The party (read: this guy, spurred on by his terrible friends) was responsible for:

The desruction (via ignition of a VERY significant portion of the gas line) in entirety of a major, west coast american city that was being used by vampires as a farm. It remains nameless out of respect for the dead.

The destruction (via supermassive munitions deployed at near-relativistic speeds via correspondence buggery-pokery) of a major real-world holy city which will go nameless because I have taste.

AND the actual 'destruction' of the world (sort of Final Fantasy 6 style, made everything booped up and let the demons out) due to having no defenses against mental takeover. OOOOOOOPS GUY!

He was in charge of the Americas (the person in charge was meant to keep the demons at bay best they could) and objectively did best at his job by just keeping everyone in giant arcology facilities. This scientist was also a stone-cold killer and a BMF. His basic gadget was a energy ray that was, for practical purposes, intelligent but not capable of self-awareness. It just manipulated energy according to plain-english commands. And matter.

He also had a robot. Heheheh, that robot... see, the player of the mad scientist was very genre savvy and was CONSTANTLY on the watch, while i was the DM, for signs I was going to make it turn self-aware and have it try to kill him. So what was the first thing I do when I introduce my character to the party? Have him give the robot a soul using spirit. :P Thankfully (kept it a fun prank) the DM-after-me decided the robot had always been treated well, and started with a general good impression of me, so was friendly and helpful to the party.

There was another guy who was a mentalist. He was actually pretty forgettable which is sad cuz that guy usually played pretty memorable people. I think he was still wrapping his head around the rules. On the plus side, at this point in the game he existed PURELY AS THOUGHT and had literally no physical form despite being fully perceivable as a physical being because he was MADE OF THOUGHT. I am pretty sure everyone had some form of practical immortality, but his was coolest. I think he was also at-or-near-maxxed in Time magic and was capable of serious shenanigans. I also seem to recall he was responsible for the existence of a real-world religion that will go nameless.

That was basically a very special blizzard.

Derjuin
2013-07-22, 01:29 AM
My favorite character fluff-wise was "Crucible", the Warforged Binder. She believed she had no soul, and thus became a binder to give herself one. Only she ended up with many, and she gave herself the soul of whatever she felt like acting like that day. Mechanics-wise, she chose to fail all the Charisma checks to resist the effects of binding a vestige, so she would have different wills imposed on her each day.

Arkhosia
2013-07-22, 12:28 PM
My favorite character fluff-wise was "Crucible", the Warforged Binder. She believed she had no soul, and thus became a binder to give herself one. Only she ended up with many, and she gave herself the soul of whatever she felt like acting like that day. Mechanics-wise, she chose to fail all the Charisma checks to resist the effects of binding a vestige, so she would have different wills imposed on her each day.

A very interesting character.
Does this unit have a soul?

I don't know what to say to otomadachi: so much TEXT!

Otomodachi
2013-07-22, 08:23 PM
A very interesting character.
Does this unit have a soul?

I don't know what to say to otomadachi: so much TEXT!

Shoot, sorry, I'll spoiler it up a bit so people can at least scroll by it easier. It didn't look that long late last night... :P

Arkhosia
2013-07-22, 08:40 PM
Shoot, sorry, I'll spoiler it up a bit so people can at least scroll by it easier. It didn't look that long late last night... :P

Khaaaaan! Drowsineeeeeeeeees!

Lord Raziere
2013-07-23, 05:50 AM
lets see.

some pathfinder ones:

Sharinelle
Pathfinder Sorcerer
Water Element Bloodline
Catfolk

basically, she came from a culture whose beginning myth warns against the gain of greed and power while tying in how their water bloodline came to be.
its sort of long so if you want to read it, here is this spoiler:


The Myth of Nysellarine

Once, long ago, there was a Chief known as Kazordan, of the Fishfang Tribe, a tribe of Catfolk who lived near the coast. Kazordan was a Chief who always made sure debts were repaid in kind, and that a fair deal was always obtained. However one day, his son drowned in the ocean and he was distraught. After holding his son's funeral, Chief Kazordan traveled to meet with the Queen of Tides to seek an answer for his son's death.
When he finally reached her sanctuary, he found the Queen of Tides distraught, and crying. He did not care, and demanded:
"My son drowned in your waters, and I always seek debts to be repaid. You are to blame for my son's death, and so I desire that you pay your debt to me!"
But the Queen of Tides wailed at him.
"Oh! But it t'was, not my fault! I am distraught, and because I am distraught, I cannot control my waters, and therefore he died because of my despair."
"why, Queen of Tides, do you despair?"
"I despair, for the Lord of Glaciers comes. I have sent all my Undines to fight him, sent all my tides and waves and whirlpools to overwhelm and devour him. But none of it works, for he freezes all the water that he touches, thus dominating all the ocean that he walks while stealing away all control and power I once possessed."
"How then, does this concern me, Queen of Tides?"
"This concerns you for if the Lord of Glaciers dominates all the ocean, soon all the world will freeze, along you with it! However I provide an incentive: kill the Lord of Glaciers for me, thus freezing the ocean from his icy grip, and I will repay the debt I owe you, by providing you a new son to cherish and raise!"
Kazordan considered this, then agreed.

And so Kazordan marshaled his entire tribe, and together they built the biggest boat they had ever made, so great it was that rowing would not move it alone, so they sought out a Witch of the Winds, and threatened her at spearpoint to help the ship move as fast as the wind itself.
So this Witch of the Winds taught them the secret of catching the wind in a white canvas, which they soon called the art of sailing. Their boat complete, Kazordan and his entire tribe boarded and with the swiftness of the wind itself, they sped towards the Lord of Glaciers.
They soon encountered him, all the tribe debarked upon the icy land that the Lord of Glaciers spread, and charged into battle against him. The battle was perilous, for many fell to the Lord of Glacier's blade before Kazordan and his warriors himself managed to melt him with the flame of torches.
Many more perished as the Lord of Glaciers died, and his icy land began to melt to nothing beneath their feet, and they soon hurried back onto the boat, to take them back to the coast.
Soon, Kazordan went to the Queen of Tides and presented the Lord of Glacier's icy crown as proof of his victory. And so the Queen of Tides accepted the trophy, and proceeded to repay her debt.

And so was a son provided, and years later did he grow. The Son of Tides soon became the new Chief of the Tribe. The Son of Tides, moved with liquid grace and beauty. His beauty, was the beauty of the sea itself, of streams and flowing waterfalls. He also inherited the power to command the sea as well. As Chief, he brought more fish for the tribe to feed upon than ever. The Fishfang Tribe, feasted upon untold amounts of fish never before known. He further used his powers of the sea to fight off threats both on land and on water to help make them safe.
Under the Son of Tides leadership, the tribe grew larger and more prosperous than ever, doing more than just replenishing their numbers, but making their numbers grow to untold proportions unthinkable. The Son of Tides of course, decided to enjoy this unprecedented bounty, by enjoying the tribes women, and providing them with sons and daughters of their own, who also soon grew to command the seas. The Son of Tides taught his offspring to use their powers and marched his now larger tribe to war, conquering other tribes, and enjoying their women as well to provide himself more sons and daughters with his gift to help him conquer more.
Soon, the Son of Tides with his far larger tribe, from both bounty and assimilation of others into his own, approached his mother, the Queen of Tides.
"I have clearly proven that I am worthy of both being a ruler and of commanding the sea! I demand that you step down, and allow me to become the King of Tides, so that I may rule all the oceans, and soon all the world under my wise leadership!"
The Queen of Tides however hissed back
"Fool! By proclaiming yourself to be worthy of being the King of Tides without even a word from me, is to show how great you hubris has grown! You are not even a pure-blooded Undine, worthy of inheriting my crown! The most common, weakest Water Elemental in all my kingdom is more fit to be my successor than you! I curse you for your hubris- you will die with your name unknown and your offspring's name known throughout all of time, both your father and your daughter destined to be forever greater than you!"
And so the Son of Tides trundled back to his tribe in defeat, but defiant. He soon commanded the tribe to shout his name to the dawn, and to the dusk. He made them all remember his name and repeat it over and over again, making sure to try and burn his name into their memory.
However soon his various offspring began to resent being constantly commanded to do what the Son of Tides wanted. So one soon killed him from a stab in the back, and the tribe soon descended into chaos as various offspring of the Son of Tides began to battle with the power of seas at their command for control and supremacy over the Fishfang Tribe.

However, one Catfolk stood up, a Daughter of the Son of Tides. She was named Nysellarine and she bid for the fighting to stop, when they didn't listen, she grabbed them all kraken tentacles of rivers and made them stop fighting. She proclaimed thus:
"I hereby renounce my claim to rule the Fishfang Tribe! I proclaim from this day forth, that we, the Tide-Weavers, shall never use our powers to rule a Tribe ever again.
Instead, from this day forth we shall use the power of the Tide-Weavers to serve all the world, and never forget the folly of abusing our power towards selfish ends."

So all the Tribe nodded at her wisdom. All the Tide-Weavers dressed in garments and jewelry of the sea, and wielded only staffs made of coral, to remind them that they are not rulers. And so they spread throughout the world, siring more Tide-Weavers and teaching them their arts, as well their duty to serve and protect the world- especially from themselves, and so did Nysellarine's name became legendary throughout all the world as she and her followers protected those they loved and knew and used their command over the sea to help, as they spread the word of this legend, and so did all thank Kazordan for saving the world from the Lord of Glaciers.

And so was the Son of Tides name, was lost to history, forever.


But basically? it comes down to this: Sharinelle basically comes from a culture that places great emphasis on using your sorcerous powers to serve and protect the world, while giving up claim to material possessions and to gaining power for power's sake. sort of like a tribal clan-like monastic tradition.

she is basically then, an intentional anti-DnD character: she does what she does for purely selfless reasons, not gold, power or possessions, they are at best secondary to making sure the world is safe, and by her own traditions she can only wear clothing that her traditions demand her to wear.

and her entire character arc is based around realizing how these traditions are detrimental to actually helping and saving the world. she needs gold, magic items, superior weaponry to fight better, she needs more power to combat the foes she faces. and thus, the more traditions she needs to break.

in the end she brings about change in her traditions, remakes them to be better and shows her culture has become too stagnant and flawed to do what it is supposed to do. was one of the best characters I made.

Meffelkrow
Elf Oracle
Pathfinder
Time Mystery

Meffelkrow was basically conceived as the anti-elf without becoming a dwarf.
His entire appearance is messy, ragged and unkempt. His skin is unnaturally pale, his eyes are baggy from lack of trance or sleep, his hair was completely messy and his ears were floppy, pointed, but floppy.
his voice was between a rasp, a croaking whisper, and a bitter guttural growl.

(for you Death Note fans, think L with pointy ears and wearing a tattered green robe and you basically accurately pictured him)

and that while he was never a model elf, (his hair has always been hopelessly messy) most of his ragged appearance is because he made a deal with The Mysteries, which while not fluffed much in Pathfinder itself, I expanded them to become these vast cosmic entities beyond even the gods. The Mysteries as I made them are basically living cosmic plans- they don't even have physical form, they are just primal cosmic plans of the universe all trying to make a certain outcome fulfill itself, by giving Oracles visions and implying that they should make them happen.

Why did he make a deal with them? because Meffelkrow was raised in an elven orphanage and got teased for his floppy ears and for the fact that his eyes were more drow-like than others, thus more sensitive to light. He didn't know his parents so he made a deal with the Mystery of Time: Meffelkrow fulfills the visions he is sent, and he will be shown the way to find his parents, or at least his heritage. he made this deal when he was 30.

81 years later, much byzantine prophecies and visions fulfilled for the good of the world, and he is not much closer. he has become bitter from people not believing his visions, from calling him crazy, from people falling to misfortune and disaster because they did not listen, despite him saying it right to their face what was going to happen. he is particularly bitter about small villages mistaking him for a zombie and chasing him off. mostly, he is bitter at the Mysteries, for no matter how much he does, he seems no closer to getting answers and their plans seem strange and inscrutable as ever. worse, he feels bound by fate, by the cosmic plans that he has to fulfill, not knowing if he really has any choice in that matter.

and he made the deal in the first place because he didn't feel like he had any identity to hold onto, anything to identify with. and with fate weighing heavily on him, he still doesn't feel like he has any identity because of all the things he has because of fate, the visions, the omens he receives, for one needs choice to have identity no?

and yes. this is incredibly freaking unfair to him, and incredibly freaking harsh on the poor guy. Meffelkrow's story is not about the world being nice to him.
his story is about finding identity, choice and finding where he came from, when he feels like he has none of that, and the world seems to enforce this with every step forward he takes and question of how one finds those things when the cosmos themselves seemed determined to be unfair to him as possible. he is a good guy, and a hero who does have happy moments, but he is also one wracked by the tremendous burden upon his shoulders and the seemingly endless quest that doesn't get him any closer to what he wants.

he is also one of my favorite characters.

Syrennos
Human Wilder
Pathfinder

Yea, this guy's story is simpler, but no less harsh on Syrennos. Basically, he used to be a Taldan noble. he fell in love with a girl. the girl courted him for a few months but then suddenly hooked up with another noble while dumping him, while revealing that it was all just a ploy to get that other nobles attention though him.
He….didn't take the betrayal well.
It awakened his psionic powers, but he is no ordinary wilder unfortunately, he is a Chaosmind, a wilder so powerful, raw and uncontained in its strength, that its psionic power is completely uncontrollable, and so bursts from his head and destroys everything within miles in a giant psionic storm of pure destruction- everything except the Chaosmind itself. and so his manor, his town, and everyone within it, all died from the Psionic Storm, one that lasted for a day and would've probably last for far more, but fortunately a psion got through the storm and put a Helm of Psionic Containment upon him, thus limiting his power down to ordinary Wilder levels.
and so he learned to wield his power and control it, but unfortunately he must always wear the Helm, for if he takes it off, the Psionic Storm will come forth once again, and must therefore wear it always, even asleep. Even with his self-control and the Helm, occasional small bolts of psionic energy randomly leap out of him or crackle across his form- the energy is so great that no mortal mind can truly contain it completely.

his story is basically learning to deal with the unfair hand he has been dealt, to live with the fact that he is no longer the Syrennos the noble, but Syrennos the wilder- and how he must find a purpose with his new position in life, using the ability that put him there in the first place…and of course the constant worry that he might destroy everything around him haunts him always.

thats all I really am going to share right now. don't want this post to be too long y'know?

Kudaku
2013-07-23, 06:27 AM
I presented a character concept to my DM that I honestly wasn't sure he'd sign off on. He did, and it was a complete blast.

The character was called Bryce, and was a brawny fighter-like favored soul/paladin who fought with a bastard sword and shield. He worshiped a god much like Torm (FR) in a custom setting that didn't actually have "Torm" in its Pantheon - I believe it used the 3.5 standard deities.

The character concept was that the character could hear voice in his head. I (the player) didn't actually know what deity was talking to me, if indeed there was one or if I'd gone off the deep end. Essentially there were three options:
A: It really was the god "Torm", who wanted to found a religion in this setting. The character would strive to spread the good word to the masses and gather followers.
B: My character is suffering from schizophrenia, and was imagining the voices. He draws divine power from his own convictions, rather than an external deity. The character would spiral into madness as the advice and commands became ever more irrational and paranoid.
C: The voice the character is hearing is actually Hextor masquerading as a new deity, who seeks to build a rival organisation to Heironeous. Hextor provides the divine power the character draws on, which lets him use his powers without fear of falling as his alignment shifts. The advice and commands would initially encourage Bryce to spread the good word and gather followers, sniping at Heironeus for his dogmatic attitude and excessive focus on 'honor' and 'fairness'. Gradually the character in question would grow more and more corrupted, eventually leading to a religious war between "Torm" and Heironeus.

The other characters grew increasingly paranoid as I received "advice from on high" - little post-it notes the GM would pass me. Some of the advice was sound, some unsound, some downright strange. The fact that I was occasionally doing actions that clearly didn't correspond to the alignment on my character sheet but did not lose my divine powers added to the confusion.

In the end, it turned out the GM took the Winnie the pooh-approach. My character was insane, and that insanity allowed Hextor to talk to him.

That is one of the most unique characters I've ever played, and I had a complete blast with him. Other players still bring up Bryce fondly, usually with a phrase like "that crazy bastard".

Arkhosia
2013-07-23, 03:10 PM
I love the idea of meffelkrow: I hate racial stereotypes in d&d when it comes to PCs.
Loved the 1st reason for Bryce's paladin status. I always liked to imagine that D&D religion was like a group of stereotypical high school girls: all the gods are competing for the title of Most Popular

Silus
2013-07-23, 03:16 PM
I gotta say the most entertaining character that I had was Jillian, my 12 year old Lawful Neutral paladin with a sword as big as her. Raised almost from birth in the militant arm of The Church, she was like a combination of Judge Dredd and Hit Girl, but with divine power backing her.

Had the highest kill count by the end of the campaign.

Arkhosia
2013-07-23, 04:39 PM
I gotta say the most entertaining character that I had was Jillian, my 12 year old Lawful Neutral paladin with a sword as big as her. Raised almost from birth in the militant arm of The Church, she was like a combination of Judge Dredd and Hit Girl, but with divine power backing her.

Had the highest kill count by the end of the campaign.

Not too surprised about that.

Silus
2013-07-23, 06:36 PM
Not too surprised about that.

Well Extra Smite, Monkey Grip and Power Attack sure helped, plus the special material the Great Sword was made out of adding a +1 to slashing damage.

Arkhosia
2013-07-23, 06:55 PM
Well Extra Smite, Monkey Grip and Power Attack sure helped, plus the special material the Great Sword was made out of adding a +1 to slashing damage.

Nice! What is monkey grip btw? (4e player)

Silus
2013-07-23, 06:57 PM
Nice! What is monkey grip btw? (4e player)

Basically lets you use a weapon one size category larger at only a -2 for attack.

Arkhosia
2013-07-23, 07:59 PM
Basically lets you use a weapon one size category larger at only a -2 for attack.

So a 3.5 version of the oversized racial trait with a -2 penalty?

Scow2
2013-07-23, 08:44 PM
So a 3.5 version of the oversized racial trait with a -2 penalty?

Yeah... but it's not very good. That -2 is more significant than he's making it out to be, damage dice don't really matter because of huge flat numbers added instead, and it takes a feat, which is MUCH harder for a non-fighter to get in 3.5. And the fighter sucks even with them.

Arkhosia
2013-07-23, 08:56 PM
Yeah... but it's not very good. That -2 is more significant than he's making it out to be, damage dice don't really matter because of huge flat numbers added instead, and it takes a feat, which is MUCH harder for a non-fighter to get in 3.5. And the fighter sucks even with them.

I've heard that spellcasters were OP compared to other classes (at high levels). I sort of understand why now.
And dude, you're like a waiter: you appear suddenly with no warning (on your case, whenever someone mentions stats, not when they bit their food). :smalltongue:

Manly Man
2013-07-23, 10:41 PM
Manly man: love the idea. How many boots did she smite?

No boots yet, but she found the guy who stomped her mate. Instead of killing him, though, she has messed with his head enough that seeing a cobweb makes him soil himself. Nobody's really dug into the subject any further when they find out that he was screwed up so bad by a spider.

I was thinking about having the pair of boots that the guy wore become awakened animate objects, and having them run around on their own adventures, even following a sort of yin-yang scheme.

Forrestfire
2013-07-23, 11:09 PM
There are a lot of awesome characters here! This thread has been a fun read.

In any case, here's mine, currently being run in a 4e game set in the League of Legends verse (warning: long set of nested spoilers)

Julian "Ian" Irvine

http://i.imgur.com/RM0PtRx.png
Source: commissioned by a friend


The concept
When I joined this campaign, I was bouncing ideas around and eventually decided that I wanted to be a time-displaced Pulsefire soldier from the Pulsefire Ezreal future (http://na.leagueoflegends.com/board/showthread.php?p=25382322#post25382322).

I ended up writing a short backstory, then figuring out the crunch. I liked the idea of him having a tractor beam and other neat tools in his suit, so I found and decided to go with the Psion class. I decided that I liked the idea of playing a shardmind (no need to eat, sleep, or breathe? huzzah!), so I ended up rewriting his backstory a bit to include some information on how he got the stats of a shardmind from being human.

I also decided that his suit would look like a mix between Isaac Clarke's from Dead Space 2 and the Pulsefire Ezreal suit.

The backstory

The short version:
Ian is/was/will-have-been a top operative in a future cold war between the science-based cities Piltover and Zaun. He was on a mission in the Southern Wastes when he got caught in a time rift that encased him in a nexus fragment at Kalamanda. He was dug out by noxians and brought to Mundo's labs, and it turned out that the magic and being stuck in a nexus for 70 years ended up fusing his flesh to both the crystal and his pulsefire suit, making him something more like a crystalline cyborg-robot thing, and drastically boosting his intelligence by fusing his mind with the onboard AI. Needless to say, he escaped, and ended up meeting up with the party.


The long version:
Julian Irvine, or Ian for short, was an soldier for Piltover in its future war with Zaun. He came from an long line of scientists, and was expected to follow his families legacy into the field of techmaturgy, but Ian never felt at home in the labs. When he was old enough, he applied to join the Explorer Corps, an organization for exploring the few unmapped places of Runeterra and scouting for the Piltover military. His family, knowing he would not change his decision, grudgingly accepted his planned, and armed him with an experimental pulsefire battle armor for defense. Ian used it to complete his assignments quickly efficiently, and over the years he worked his way up the ranks to eventually become the leading man for battlefield-testing experimental technology. As a highly-valued scientific asset, his assignments became less about fighting Zaun and more about exploring areas considered to be danger zones.

It was on one such assignment that disaster struck. He was sent off to the Southern Wastes to search for relics, bearing an upgraded pulsefire suit with a highly sophisticated, if experimental tractor beam. Ian was inspecting a ruin when a sudden flux of chaotic magic occured, rending time and space asunder and sending him backwards. The rift opened roughly 70 years before the present day, inside the shard of a nexus crystal in Kalamanda. The energies the rift clashed with the nexus fused his body with the armor and the crystal, and he laid dormant inside it until it was unearthed by a mining operation and shipped to the labs of Dr. Mundo. It was here where his prison was eventually destroyed, and he was freed from his stasis. Ian would have been in grave danger had he not been rescued by Keroth, one of Mundo's assistants, when he left the labs to make his own name for himself.

After Ian escaped Noxus, he had the chance to inspect himself, fascinated and terrified by the changes that the magic had wrought. His body was fused with the armor, which was now made of some sort of dark blue crystalline structure. His head is the only part of his body that could be considered "flesh," and even then, he is no longer made of flesh and blood, but something else that looks like it. He no longer needed to sleep, eat, or even breath, but he could if he wished to. The most profound change, however, was not in the body but in his mind. During the maelstrom of magic that flung him back in time, his mind had fused with that of the magitech AI running the armor, granting him increased intelligence as he subconsciously outsources some functions to the machine part of him. Because the intelligence had controlled the pulsefire systems, Ian is currently unable to access most of them, having only unlocked basic functions of the tractor beam as well as parts of his helmet console's abilities, such as headlights and a telepathic beamer allowing him to converse silently. In any case, as he practices, he continues to learn new things about his abilities.

Ian split up with the scientist and decided to forge his own path. For a long time, Ian toyed with the idea of trying to find a way back to the future, but he realized that any future he could return to would have been changed by his own involvement in the world, and so his new goal is simple: work for a better future, starting with thwarting the initial conflict between Zaun and Piltover.

Ian's current cover story is that he is an escaped Zaunite test subject, and claims to have been a homeless orphan when they took him. Keroth is the only man who knows the truth about Ian's pas-er-future.

The story thus far

Ian met the current party when he accepted a job to clear a keep of squatting snake-men and to retrieve a magical artifact. After an initial assault successfully got us some prisoners, we interrogated them (the one that Ian and some others had ended up talking after some psyching-out, but sadly the other one got murdered by our angry dragonborn) and made a plan to try to bluff the snake men out of the keep.

The plan was to bluff the guy in charge that we had installed bombs under the building and would blow them up unless they handed over the magic book we were looking for. It almost worked, except that the leader of the snake men was a bit less scrupulous with the lives of his subordinates than we were, and we couldn't make do on our "threat."

Long story short, we fought our way into the keep, found that the snake tribe had split a bit before our attack, and found some hostages we were trying to rescue had been murdered in an attempt to use blood sacrifice to open the book. The party was not happy, and the sorcerer in question got hit with so much in a round that the DM ruled he just died without rolls (he was already injured for trying to use his tribesmen as more sacrifices, and the broodmother didn't like that, hence the split among the tribe's loyalties).

The main thing that my character did in all of this was accepting the surrender of the broodmother's faction. Where he's from, surrender is an important thing, and those who don't honor it are worse than dirt. This caused a bit of party friction when the demacian wanted to avenge the yordle family that was murdered by the other faction, but what happened happened. He also managed to convince the party to let the snakes stay in a part of the keep as long as there was no funny business.

Anyway, I seem to have gone off on a tangent and provided a play-by-play of sessions by accident :smallredface:

I think the coolest things I've done this campaign were doing heavy roleplaying in encounters, and cementing myself as the most paranoid person anyone in the party knows. At one point, the book we handed over to our first employer was mailed back to us, and Ian, wanting to make sure whoever was after it (we learned that our employer had also been killed) set up six red herrings, three of which were only known by the DM.

The DM ruled that when someone (or a team of someones) entered our keep at blinding speed while we were distracted by people out front, they found the three "obvious" ones, the two well-hidden ones, and missed the last one (where Ian had used the good will gotten by putting his life on the line for the broodmother to hide the book under the floor in the wine cellar her eggs were in).


Oh, and I managed to form an alliance with Viktor (http://leagueoflegends.wikia.com/wiki/Viktor/Background)by bargaining with the knowledge locked in Ian's head as well as the tech his body was made of.


And since I'm from an alternate future, there are some things I get to know in-character than others don't (like that Lissandra (http://leagueoflegends.wikia.com/wiki/Lissandra/Background)is evil), and I get to be a fountain of plot hooks for the DM if I want to be, since I had Ian name off a bunch of beings that might be able to identify our magical artifact book (the current macguffin).

The result of this, the best quote of the game, can be found in my sig. :smallbiggrin:


Oh, and I also wrote up a bit of info on his alternate timeline:
Ian's timeline diverges at the point where he arrived in the past, sealed in a crystal. His arrival 70 years ago created a localized burst of magic, during which a passing scout was vaporized, causing his army to lack vital information and be defeated in an oncoming battle, the turning point in that specific war. This caused a butterfly effect, creating small changes that led to the Runeterra we know today.

In his own timeline, the League of Legends was never created, with the Rune Wars instead ending roughly eighty years after the present day, following a magitech-science-based city-state developing a new type of anti-magic bomb. The nation, which had previously been a neutral party avoiding non-defensive battles through superior technology, used teleportation magic to prepare several joint strikes against the four strongest factions on Valoran: Demacia, Noxus, Freljord, and a massive group Void creatures that had poured in through a rift and colonized the surrounding areas. The designated time came, and the capital cities and armies of these factions were exposed to the new bomb.

It did exactly what was planned, permanently ending all magical effects in the zones of the pulses emitted from the bombs. Barriers were shattered, weapons ceased to work, Void-based creatures faded from existence, and, well, souls were severed from their bodies. The ruling party that had ordered the strike were horrified by the aftermath of the attack, having been unaware of the lethal effects of the bombs. The political turmoil tore the nation apart, splitting into Piltover and Zaun.

These two nations quickly became the powerhouses of the continent, having destroyed the armies and rulers of the strongest enemies they would have had to face. There was a time of tense peace for several years, but eventually war broke out again, but quickly stopped under the threat of the anti-magic weapons. Facing mutually-assured destruction, Zaun and Piltover entered a cold war, which lasted for about another 250 years (at which point Ian was removed from the timeline).

During this cold war, many smaller battles and proxy wars were fought, the largest of which actually nececitated a Piltover-Zaun alliance. About 40 years after the cold war began, Lissandra and the Frozen Watchers returned from the north and Piltover and Zaun's capitals were placed in danger. They created a temportary join committee of their top scientists and mages with the intent of finding a weapon other than the anti-magic bombs. After a year of work, they found it. 210 years later, Freljord is still burning.



In any case, I have done a crapton of roleplaying this game, more than any other campaign I've been in. Playing this sort of character is fun, I've found. However, I'm still highly amused that while I statted up Isaac Clarke, I ended up playing Michael Weston. :smalltongue:

Arkhosia
2013-07-23, 11:25 PM
There are a lot of awesome characters here! This thread has been a fun read.

In any case, here's mine, currently being run in a 4e game set in the League of Legends verse (warning: long set of nested spoilers)

Julian "Ian" Irvine

http://i.imgur.com/RM0PtRx.png
Source: commissioned by a friend


The concept
When I joined this campaign, I was bouncing ideas around and eventually decided that I wanted to be a time-displaced Pulsefire soldier from the Pulsefire Ezreal future (http://na.leagueoflegends.com/board/showthread.php?p=25382322#post25382322).

I ended up writing a short backstory, then figuring out the crunch. I liked the idea of him having a tractor beam and other neat tools in his suit, so I found and decided to go with the Psion class. I decided that I liked the idea of playing a shardmind (no need to eat, sleep, or breathe? huzzah!), so I ended up rewriting his backstory a bit to include some information on how he got the stats of a shardmind from being human.

I also decided that his suit would look like a mix between Isaac Clarke's from Dead Space 2 and the Pulsefire Ezreal suit.

The backstory

The short version:
Ian is/was/will-have-been a top operative in a future cold war between the science-based cities Piltover and Zaun. He was on a mission in the Southern Wastes when he got caught in a time rift that encased him in a nexus fragment at Kalamanda. He was dug out by noxians and brought to Mundo's labs, and it turned out that the magic and being stuck in a nexus for 70 years ended up fusing his flesh to both the crystal and his pulsefire suit, making him something more like a crystalline cyborg-robot thing, and drastically boosting his intelligence by fusing his mind with the onboard AI. Needless to say, he escaped, and ended up meeting up with the party.


The long version:
Julian Irvine, or Ian for short, was an soldier for Piltover in its future war with Zaun. He came from an long line of scientists, and was expected to follow his families legacy into the field of techmaturgy, but Ian never felt at home in the labs. When he was old enough, he applied to join the Explorer Corps, an organization for exploring the few unmapped places of Runeterra and scouting for the Piltover military. His family, knowing he would not change his decision, grudgingly accepted his planned, and armed him with an experimental pulsefire battle armor for defense. Ian used it to complete his assignments quickly efficiently, and over the years he worked his way up the ranks to eventually become the leading man for battlefield-testing experimental technology. As a highly-valued scientific asset, his assignments became less about fighting Zaun and more about exploring areas considered to be danger zones.

It was on one such assignment that disaster struck. He was sent off to the Southern Wastes to search for relics, bearing an upgraded pulsefire suit with a highly sophisticated, if experimental tractor beam. Ian was inspecting a ruin when a sudden flux of chaotic magic occured, rending time and space asunder and sending him backwards. The rift opened roughly 70 years before the present day, inside the shard of a nexus crystal in Kalamanda. The energies the rift clashed with the nexus fused his body with the armor and the crystal, and he laid dormant inside it until it was unearthed by a mining operation and shipped to the labs of Dr. Mundo. It was here where his prison was eventually destroyed, and he was freed from his stasis. Ian would have been in grave danger had he not been rescued by Keroth, one of Mundo's assistants, when he left the labs to make his own name for himself.

After Ian escaped Noxus, he had the chance to inspect himself, fascinated and terrified by the changes that the magic had wrought. His body was fused with the armor, which was now made of some sort of dark blue crystalline structure. His head is the only part of his body that could be considered "flesh," and even then, he is no longer made of flesh and blood, but something else that looks like it. He no longer needed to sleep, eat, or even breath, but he could if he wished to. The most profound change, however, was not in the body but in his mind. During the maelstrom of magic that flung him back in time, his mind had fused with that of the magitech AI running the armor, granting him increased intelligence as he subconsciously outsources some functions to the machine part of him. Because the intelligence had controlled the pulsefire systems, Ian is currently unable to access most of them, having only unlocked basic functions of the tractor beam as well as parts of his helmet console's abilities, such as headlights and a telepathic beamer allowing him to converse silently. In any case, as he practices, he continues to learn new things about his abilities.

Ian split up with the scientist and decided to forge his own path. For a long time, Ian toyed with the idea of trying to find a way back to the future, but he realized that any future he could return to would have been changed by his own involvement in the world, and so his new goal is simple: work for a better future, starting with thwarting the initial conflict between Zaun and Piltover.

Ian's current cover story is that he is an escaped Zaunite test subject, and claims to have been a homeless orphan when they took him. Keroth is the only man who knows the truth about Ian's pas-er-future.

The story thus far

Ian met the current party when he accepted a job to clear a keep of squatting snake-men and to retrieve a magical artifact. After an initial assault successfully got us some prisoners, we interrogated them (the one that Ian and some others had ended up talking after some psyching-out, but sadly the other one got murdered by our angry dragonborn) and made a plan to try to bluff the snake men out of the keep.

The plan was to bluff the guy in charge that we had installed bombs under the building and would blow them up unless they handed over the magic book we were looking for. It almost worked, except that the leader of the snake men was a bit less scrupulous with the lives of his subordinates than we were, and we couldn't make do on our "threat."

Long story short, we fought our way into the keep, found that the snake tribe had split a bit before our attack, and found some hostages we were trying to rescue had been murdered in an attempt to use blood sacrifice to open the book. The party was not happy, and the sorcerer in question got hit with so much in a round that the DM ruled he just died without rolls (he was already injured for trying to use his tribesmen as more sacrifices, and the broodmother didn't like that, hence the split among the tribe's loyalties).

The main thing that my character did in all of this was accepting the surrender of the broodmother's faction. Where he's from, surrender is an important thing, and those who don't honor it are worse than dirt. This caused a bit of party friction when the demacian wanted to avenge the yordle family that was murdered by the other faction, but what happened happened. He also managed to convince the party to let the snakes stay in a part of the keep as long as there was no funny business.

Anyway, I seem to have gone off on a tangent and provided a play-by-play of sessions by accident :smallredface:

I think the coolest things I've done this campaign were doing heavy roleplaying in encounters, and cementing myself as the most paranoid person anyone in the party knows. At one point, the book we handed over to our first employer was mailed back to us, and Ian, wanting to make sure whoever was after it (we learned that our employer had also been killed) set up six red herrings, three of which were only known by the DM.

The DM ruled that when someone (or a team of someones) entered our keep at blinding speed while we were distracted by people out front, they found the three "obvious" ones, the two well-hidden ones, and missed the last one (where Ian had used the good will gotten by putting his life on the line for the broodmother to hide the book under the floor in the wine cellar her eggs were in).


Oh, and I managed to form an alliance with Viktor (http://leagueoflegends.wikia.com/wiki/Viktor/Background)by bargaining with the knowledge locked in Ian's head as well as the tech his body was made of.


And since I'm from an alternate future, there are some things I get to know in-character than others don't (like that Lissandra (http://leagueoflegends.wikia.com/wiki/Lissandra/Background)is evil), and I get to be a fountain of plot hooks for the DM if I want to be, since I had Ian name off a bunch of beings that might be able to identify our magical artifact book (the current macguffin).

The result of this, the best quote of the game, can be found in my sig. :smallbiggrin:


Oh, and I also wrote up a bit of info on his alternate timeline:
Ian's timeline diverges at the point where he arrived in the past, sealed in a crystal. His arrival 70 years ago created a localized burst of magic, during which a passing scout was vaporized, causing his army to lack vital information and be defeated in an oncoming battle, the turning point in that specific war. This caused a butterfly effect, creating small changes that led to the Runeterra we know today.

In his own timeline, the League of Legends was never created, with the Rune Wars instead ending roughly eighty years after the present day, following a magitech-science-based city-state developing a new type of anti-magic bomb. The nation, which had previously been a neutral party avoiding non-defensive battles through superior technology, used teleportation magic to prepare several joint strikes against the four strongest factions on Valoran: Demacia, Noxus, Freljord, and a massive group Void creatures that had poured in through a rift and colonized the surrounding areas. The designated time came, and the capital cities and armies of these factions were exposed to the new bomb.

It did exactly what was planned, permanently ending all magical effects in the zones of the pulses emitted from the bombs. Barriers were shattered, weapons ceased to work, Void-based creatures faded from existence, and, well, souls were severed from their bodies. The ruling party that had ordered the strike were horrified by the aftermath of the attack, having been unaware of the lethal effects of the bombs. The political turmoil tore the nation apart, splitting into Piltover and Zaun.

These two nations quickly became the powerhouses of the continent, having destroyed the armies and rulers of the strongest enemies they would have had to face. There was a time of tense peace for several years, but eventually war broke out again, but quickly stopped under the threat of the anti-magic weapons. Facing mutually-assured destruction, Zaun and Piltover entered a cold war, which lasted for about another 250 years (at which point Ian was removed from the timeline).

During this cold war, many smaller battles and proxy wars were fought, the largest of which actually nececitated a Piltover-Zaun alliance. About 40 years after the cold war began, Lissandra and the Frozen Watchers returned from the north and Piltover and Zaun's capitals were placed in danger. They created a temportary join committee of their top scientists and mages with the intent of finding a weapon other than the anti-magic bombs. After a year of work, they found it. 210 years later, Freljord is still burning.



In any case, I have done a crapton of roleplaying this game, more than any other campaign I've been in. Playing this sort of character is fun, I've found. However, I'm still highly amused that while I statted up Isaac Clarke, I ended up playing Michael Weston. :smalltongue:


Wow! I love the fluff, backstory, basically everything about this!

I'm actually working on a new character, a drow cleric named Sariel.
Sariel was a highly devoted member of the church of Lolth, slaying those that opposed her. As Sariel rose in rank, her link with her goddess that provided her power became stronger, and she began to hear Lolth herself. She began to seriously doubt her service to Lolth being truly a good thing, the madness of her goddess deeply disturbing her.
One day, she vanished from the city.
She has begun to seek a way to restore lolth's sanity, and to hopefully redeem her and to redeem the drow.

Forrestfire
2013-07-23, 11:32 PM
Wow! I love the fluff, backstory, basically everything about this!

I'm actually working on a new character, a drow cleric named Sariel.
Sariel was a highly devoted member of the church of Lolth, slaying those that opposed her. As Sariel rose in rank, her link with her goddess that provided her power became stronger, and she began to hear Lolth herself. She began to seriously doubt her service to Lolth being truly a good thing, the madness of her goddess deeply disturbing her.
One day, she vanished from the city.
She has begun to seek a way to restore lolth's sanity, and to hopefully redeem her and to redeem the drow.

Thanks! :smallbiggrin:

I really like this drow character, too. It's a unique new take on the drow (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OverusedCopycatCharacter)defector (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/DefectorFromDecadence).

I'd love to hear how this turns out.


EDIT: Come to think of it, the character I have for an upcoming 3.5 game is pretty snowflakey, too, if a bit formulaic (on account of the campaign being magical-girl-themed, so my character is channeling some anime tropes).

Much less in-depth, but I think it's going to be a lot of fun. "Miri" is another player's character, a 12-year-old girl with a pet horribly genetically engineered velociraptor (a gift from my character, since his family is the sort that would look at an owl and a bear and go "... yeah, that seems good...")

Jason Abital, monk/soulknife (yeah I know. I wanted a challenge)

Jason Abital is a son of a noble family of magic-users, who subjected him to magical experimentation in an attempt to make him a sorcerer after he showed no magical aptitude as a child. He got some mystic tattoos on his hands and grey hair, along with the ability to project energy pulses from his palms. Seeing he wasn't a real caster, they trained him in martial arts and generic nobly things.

When he was eleven, he was being beat up by some other kids for his distinctive appearance, unwilling to fight back because he was taught to not murder other kids with psychic blades. You know, the usual. Cue screaming eight year old girl beating up and scaring away them group. They ended up becoming close friends, pretty much family.

They're in the caravan because Miri was like "IT'S A DRAGON WE'RE GOING TO SEE IT" and he tagged along because of him being protective of his pseudo-adopted little sister, and wanted to get away from his family on account of not being a magic-user like they were (even though they still love him, he feels like a little failure for not measuring up).

Theme Song: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=epFoQHZu0w4


Oh, and because I was bored and the character is heavily inspired by my time losing my life on tvtropes, I decided to try to to make (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PotHole)my backstory (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Backstory) an All Blue Entry. (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/AllBlueEntry) Parts of this post as well. (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SelfDemonstratingArticle) :smalltongue:

Jason Abital (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ThemeNaming) is a son of a noble family of magic-users (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/BadassFamily), who subjected him to magical experimentation in an attempt (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/GuineaPigFamily) to make him a sorcerer after he showed no magical aptitude as a child (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SuperEmpowering). He got some (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MarkedChange)mystic tattoos on his hands (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PowerTattoo) and grey hair, (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PowerDyesYourHair)along with the ability to project (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/KiAttacks) energy pulses from his palms. (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/LaserBlade)Seeing he wasn't a real caster, (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheTeamNormal) they trained him in martial arts and (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SupernaturalMartialArts)generic nobly things (although all nobles generally got that last bit). (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OfficerAndAGentleman)

When he was eleven, (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/WhenItAllBegan)he was being beat up by some other kids (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/GangOfBullies) for his distinctive appearance, (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/KidsAreCruel) unwilling to fight back because he was taught to not murder other kids with psychic blades. (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ComesGreatResponsibility)You know, the usual. (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/CaptainObvious) Cue screaming eight year old girl beating up (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/LittleGirlsKickShins) and scaring away the group. (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/CuteBruiser)They ended up becoming close friends, pretty much family. (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/LikeBrotherAndSister)

They're in the caravan because (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/FramingDevice)Miri was like (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/GenkiGirl)"IT'S A DRAGON WE'RE GOING TO SEE IT" (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Squee) and he tagged along because of him being protective of his pseudo-adopted little sister, (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/BigBrotherInstinct) and wanted to get away from his family on account (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/BlackSheep) of not being a magic-user like they were (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/CantCatchUp) (even though they still love him unconditionally (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/GoodParents), he feels like a little failure for not measuring up and doesn't see it). (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/IJustWantToBeSpecial)

Arkhosia
2013-07-23, 11:46 PM
Thanks! :smallbiggrin:


I really like this drow character, too. It's a unique new take on the drow (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OverusedCopycatCharacter)defector (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/DefectorFromDecadence).

I'd love to hear how this turns out.

I remembered reading that Lolth had become corrupted from her close proximity to the heart of the Abyss (demonweb pits), so I began to wonder how exactly Lolth should have been if it weren't for the insanity and corruption. I think that pushed her from nuetral or neutral chaotic to chaotic evil.

Oh, so that's why such a creature was created: lazy wizards.
http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0322.html

BTW: Sariel's themes: http://youtu.be/njJ7NZMH70M
And https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CC4QtwIwAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3D6eB GEtlHgwk&ei=OGHvUeKANavb4APdmoH4Dw&usg=AFQjCNGHrr2MazkMF2GQXiB4qvujsaW-7w (xtra awesomeness on this one!)

MolotovCocktail
2013-07-28, 04:16 PM
I have two characters I feel are worthy of mention here. One isn't a D&D (or even d20) character at all, and one is a 4e creation of mine.

TL;DR (this one's long): Chaotic Neutral, free-spirited but low-moraled mechanic becomes a Sith Assassin/Sith Sorceror who's somewhere between Lawful and Neutral Evil. Why? A girl, of course.

I have to say, my favorite character by far wasn't made in a D&D setting; it was in a free-form rp system set in the Star Wars universe (Post-Legacy era). I think he's my favorite, and my best, character because he was literally the first I ever made. He was awful at the start, but because he's been around for about six years now, he's undergone several extensive makeovers and been pruned, a lot, as well as undergoing a lot of in-rp development.

(I have his history written up in the format of an actual story herehttp://molotovcocktailparty.deviantart.com/journal/Zynn-unfinished-296730779, though it's a WIP)

Basically, he was a Coruscanti street rat, human, by the name of Zane who grew up having to take care of his mother, who tried to support him working in seedy cantinas and the like, but who was sort of unable to deal with the world after finding out that Zane's father was practicing the Dark Side of the Force in secret. She left him on their homeworld of Corellia, but, already fragile, she never really recovered from the betrayal of her trust.

Because of this, Zane grew up very close to his mother and fiercely protective of her, and he discarded traditional morality as superfluous on the grounds that the ends justify the means "if the ends are my survival and that of my mother."

He discovered fairly early on that he had an aptitude for mechanics, so he would fiddle with droids or make new inventions to sell for rent money or food credits, to whomever would buy them. As he grew older, he began to deal almost exclusively with criminals and terrorists, because they paid well, and had amassed a small network of contacts, who he trusted enough to even venture offworld on their recommendation.

After one such offworld jaunt when he was 17, he returned to find that his mother had been kidnapped by a vicious gang that he'd double-crossed in the past and he'd been left coordinates of where to meet them. So, of course he went to the obligatory abandoned warehouse, where he found some human thugs, led by a Trandoshan, holding his mother. Their demand: to apologize for screwing them over and to kneel before them now, on pain of death for his mother. Zane, who was basically CN and valued freedom above all else, did so, and hated himself for it.

After a short speech about the way to really learn a lesson, the leader shot his mother anyway.

Cue Antiheroic Blue Screen of Death, when all of the self-loathing from giving in turned suddenly and violently to rage. I probably don't need to mention that he butchered the entire enemy force immediately after.

Now, Zane had just awoken the latent Dark Side energy in himself, but he had no idea what it was. Confused and a little scared, he walled off his emotions behind an iron-hard facade of self-control, fled Coruscant, and went in search of his father on Corellia. When he found him, he learned the truth of what happened and became an initiate to the Dark Side, despite his initial misgivings. As he learned more and more, he realized he was reasonably powerful and his father was very weak, and the good side of his nature was being suppressed by the awakening Force, he decided it would be a good idea to kill his father and take his education into his own hands - so he did.

He went to Korriban and became a Sith Initiate, preferring to study and practice on his own and spending most of his time in the library, with a little bit devoted to working on his preferred Lightsaber style (Makashi, Form II: it was the only one sufficiently elegant and effective for his taste). He decided to take his father's last name, as it was traditional to change one's identity after joining the Sith; he also altered his first name to a Sith word that meant "tenacity," rechristening himself in blood and darkness. No longer was he carefree ne'er-do-well Zane Alestor; he became brooding Zynn Hawkright.

After a little while, he became obsessed with the nature of the Force itself, and made a list of powerful artifacts he found reference to in the ancient texts of Korriban's library, and went off in search of them.

The first was on Dxun, the jungle-moon of Onderon, and it was here that the defining moment of Zynn's career (which was not the death of his mother, actually) occurred. While tromping through the jungle looking for the tomb of Freedon Nadd, encountered another strong Force presence, which he found to be a young (by his standards; he was about 24 at this point, she was 18) Zeltron girl by the name of Niamh.

Turns out this girl was a powerful Sith Lord, and after an extremely interesting philosophical discussion at their first encounter, he had a strong feeling that he was supposed to go with her somewhere, so he became her Apprentice. She taught him how to control the Force and his emotions, and how to examine questions, infecting him with her not-quite-Dark philosophy and transmitting her (rather Lighter than that of most Sith) worldview to him, gradually.

Over time, Zynn became extremely attached to Niamh, eventually viewing her as a sort of replacement figure for his mother, which caused him to become very, very protective of her, as well as more than a little romantically interested, though there was never any indication she reciprocated his slightly twisted affection or, indeed, had anything but general goodwill towards him.

However, it meant that when Niamh had a crisis of identity and realized she wasn't well suited to true Darkness and left without saying anything, Zynn was devastated. For the first time since he killed the men who killed his mother, Zynn lost control and went completely ballistic. He stormed out of the Academy on Korriban with the intent to find Niamh and kill her for abandoning him, but, as fortune would have it, he ran into another powerful Sith on the way out. This Sith's name was Raziel, and he knew Niamh, and he knew anger. He stopped Zynn, telling him that rage is a useful tool only when directed at an appropriate target.

Raziel was a General in the Sith Army, and a master of the blade. He taught Zynn swordplay and how to use emotion instead of suppressing it. Sadly, before their relationship fully blossomed, Raziel was killed in action in a major battle by a Jedi Master, and Zynn was once again Master-less.

He found his third and final Master in Darth Trahir, who Zynn sought on the recommendations of other Sith Lords as being a specialist in the subtle, mind-targeting attacks of Sith Sorcery and the shadowy arts common to assassins. Trahir took the philosophy that had been instilled in him by Niamh, that the world was both Light and Dark and one had to be careful of either, and the teachings of Raziel, that anger was a weapon to be harnessed and the Light was the enemy at which it should be directed, and forged it into the final philosophy embodied by Zynn:

There is both Dark and Light, and both are necessary.

I am not of the Light, therefore I am a champion of the Dark.

It is my duty to be the villain that must be hunted, to extinguish the Light where it is found and to spread the growing Darkness.

Trahir taught him how to twist, bend, and break minds, as well as how to influence affairs more subtly. Under his tutelage, Zynn finally graduated to Sith Lord, taking the name Darth Infidus. He became an assassin and a spy, sent to dispatch high-value Jedi targets (since his powers and fighting style made him uncommonly good at 1v1ing Jedi) or to sow discord and gather information. He became stronger and stronger, killing off very powerful Jedi (including at one point engaging in an epic 1v1 battle with a Council member known for her illusory skills as well, which was fun - layer upon layer of falsehood and distortion, placed by both combatants).

He became obsessed with fear as a concept, and the duality of the human mind, the contrast between self-control and loss of self. He believed that the ultimate motivator for all sentient beings was fear, and only mastery of oneself and total domination of one's fear could lead to power.

However, his self-mastery wasn't as total as he thought, and it was his own downfall. He eventually re-encountered Niamh, now a wandering mercenary/spacer, and the emotions that he felt from their encounter caused his iron wall of a will to break down, leaving him flustered and furious and ecstatic all at once. In the end, he couldn't kill her; he harbored too great of a connection to her. However, he lost his self-control, and his mind began slipping even faster into insanity until he eventually was branded a threat to the Sith Order as a whole due to his instability, and had to be captured by an entire squad of Sith Lords, led by a Master who specialized in the counters to Zynn's powers, and was executed.

He was an incredibly fun character to roleplay, and I never regretted making him, even though the early iterations were clumsy.

Okay, that was a lot longer than I thought it'd be. I'll save the other character for some other time when my hands aren't aching (and the readers' eyes aren't bleeding, as I'm sure they are by now, if they read that whole thing).

Lord Raziere
2013-07-28, 04:36 PM
Wow! I love the fluff, backstory, basically everything about this!

I'm actually working on a new character, a drow cleric named Sariel.
Sariel was a highly devoted member of the church of Lolth, slaying those that opposed her. As Sariel rose in rank, her link with her goddess that provided her power became stronger, and she began to hear Lolth herself. She began to seriously doubt her service to Lolth being truly a good thing, the madness of her goddess deeply disturbing her.
One day, she vanished from the city.
She has begun to seek a way to restore lolth's sanity, and to hopefully redeem her and to redeem the drow.

………..:smallannoyed:

NOOOOOO!! NOO!!!!! NO NO!

just….:smallfurious:

I….darn it, I came up with that "redeem the evil gods" idea, with a drow too! darn it!

AAAAAARGH!!! :smallfurious::smallannoyed::smallmad::smallfrown:

Nevermind, now I have to come up with something else….:smallannoyed:

Arkhosia
2013-07-28, 06:48 PM
………..:smallannoyed:

NOOOOOO!! NOO!!!!! NO NO!

just….:smallfurious:

I….darn it, I came up with that "redeem the evil gods" idea, with a drow too! darn it!

AAAAAARGH!!! :smallfurious::smallannoyed::smallmad::smallfrown:

Nevermind, now I have to come up with something else….:smallannoyed:

You can still use it anyways I'm sure. And if the reason is because of the whole want of a unique character, at least take comfort in the fact they do say great minds think alike!

Love Zane's backstory! Very very clever and interesting!

TuggyNE
2013-07-28, 07:30 PM
I….darn it, I came up with that "redeem the evil gods" idea, with a drow too! darn it!

There is nothing new under the sun, but of the making of characters and of plotlines there is no end.

(Don't stress about convergent invention, in other words.)

Lord Raziere
2013-07-28, 09:21 PM
There is nothing new under the sun, but of the making of characters and of plotlines there is no end.

(Don't stress about convergent invention, in other words.)

aaaawwh….I hate that quote. it doesn't make me feel better, it just makes me feel I can't escape unoriginality.

fine, whatever I checked and I came up with the idea two days after Arkhosia did so whatever, I'll just have to be content with stealing it instead. it was never my idea.

what is my idea, is an entire order of Redeemers of the Gods, persecuted by both good and evil religions for their attempts to redeem the evil gods, so…whatever I'll just make mine a member of that, raised from birth to believe in Lolth's redemption, a secret sect among Drow society itself, trying to undermine it from the inside.

Arkhosia
2013-07-28, 10:35 PM
aaaawwh….I hate that quote. it doesn't make me feel better, it just makes me feel I can't escape unoriginality.

fine, whatever I checked and I came up with the idea two days after Arkhosia did so whatever, I'll just have to be content with stealing it instead. it was never my idea.

what is my idea, is an entire order of Redeemers of the Gods, persecuted by both good and evil religions for their attempts to redeem the evil gods, so…whatever I'll just make mine a member of that, raised from birth to believe in Lolth's redemption, a secret sect among Drow society itself, trying to undermine it from the inside.

I love the idea!
I always loved the whole idea of the gods being like us, but with awesome powers: they have great traits and fatal flaws. Asmodeus keeping order through harsh, cruel means, Melora letting evil beasts such as hydras and dragons run free and opposing those who kill them, Vecna teaching us that knowledge comes at a cost, and Corellion defending even the most vile artwork and books are all examples I love to use for 4e gods.

Jay R
2013-07-29, 10:36 AM
aaaawwh….I hate that quote. it doesn't make me feel better, it just makes me feel I can't escape unoriginality.

So stop worrying about originality and just do your best.

"No man who values originality will ever be original. But try to tell the truth as you see it, try to do any bit of work as well as it can be done for the work's sake, and what men call originality will come unsought."
-- C. S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory, "Membership"

Your Nemesis
2013-07-29, 03:49 PM
I had a Human Bard/Cloistered Cleric/Warblade/Crusader; that was pretty fun.

He was forced into the priesthood by his family, got bored, went wandering and collecting tales for a while, and finally decided to become an adventurer so that he could get paid for doing so. However, as he had heard that these adventurers were often attacked, he decided to do some combat training first...

But the best part for me was that he had done all of this on the basis of considered, thoughtful, rational decisions about what he really wanted to do with his life, and what he wanted to get out of it. In his case, the motivation was not so much the cash as it was that he was trying to find a job that made him happy.

Of course, he ended up being the moral compass of the party.

Arkhosia
2013-07-29, 03:59 PM
I had a Human Bard/Cloistered Cleric/Warblade/Crusader; that was pretty fun.

He was forced into the priesthood by his family, got bored, went wandering and collecting tales for a while, and finally decided to become an adventurer so that he could get paid for doing so. However, as he had heard that these adventurers were often attacked, he decided to do some combat training first...

But the best part for me was that he had done all of this on the basis of considered, thoughtful, rational decisions about what he really wanted to do with his life, and what he wanted to get out of it. In his case, the motivation was not so much the cash as it was that he was trying to find a job that made him happy.

Of course, he ended up being the moral compass of the party.

Sort of reminds me of how I envision changelings: they are curious, always willing to try new things, whether it be sushi or experiencing a race's culture from the inside.
Basically they treat the world as a stage, eager to try new roles and explore the endless opportunities of life.

Much like that player who's always switching PCs to try out that new class they just released. :smallwink:

Your Nemesis
2013-07-29, 04:14 PM
Indeed, I often have trouble sticking with character ideas, as I have so many of them, and so few games to use them in...it was nice to have a character almost as eclectic as I was.:smallsmile:

Arkhosia
2013-07-29, 04:18 PM
Indeed, I often have trouble sticking with character ideas, as I have so many of them, and so few games to use them in...it was nice to have a character almost as eclectic as I was.:smallsmile:

Same here. I remember when I used the d&d character builder demo, I had about 10 characters on there.

Dayaz
2013-07-29, 11:42 PM
I've had a few special snowflakes. the only problem with my snowflakes is they tend to get me banned from playing that class ever again lol. I've gotten so many rules for the Things I Am No Longer Allowed To Do list, I've actually got a folder of rules I have to consider when making characters.

On such character, was my boy half-orc wizard. In 3.5 .

He was affectionally known by his alignment of Chaotic Psychotic. He only really liked 4 things: Kids, Books, His childhood friend (the female half elf rogue), and FIRE. He was a debuffer who played with evocation spells of the Fire type. We had a group of 'evil twins' who were higher level than us, and after a while my guy got tired of the Halfling Wizard continuously trying to steal his spellbook. So he hatched a cunning plan, and he bought a plain book that looked exactly like his spellbook, and put an Explosive Rune on each page with sone wands he made/bought. When the group was captured, he let the halfling take the fake book and just sat there and grinned when the enemy party leaned over the halfling's shoulder to see if there was anything interesting in the book.

Every member of the enemy party took the explosive payload of 400 Explosive Runes.

Needless to say, they died.

And that's how my level 7 Wizard killed a whole level 15 party.

Arkhosia
2013-07-30, 12:20 AM
I've had a few special snowflakes. the only problem with my snowflakes is they tend to get me banned from playing that class ever again lol. I've gotten so many rules for the Things I Am No Longer Allowed To Do list, I've actually got a folder of rules I have to consider when making characters.

On such character, was my boy half-orc wizard. In 3.5 .

He was affectionally known by his alignment of Chaotic Psychotic. He only really liked 4 things: Kids, Books, His childhood friend (the female half elf rogue), and FIRE. He was a debuffer who played with evocation spells of the Fire type. We had a group of 'evil twins' who were higher level than us, and after a while my guy got tired of the Halfling Wizard continuously trying to steal his spellbook. So he hatched a cunning plan, and he bought a plain book that looked exactly like his spellbook, and put an Explosive Rune on each page with sone wands he made/bought. When the group was captured, he let the halfling take the fake book and just sat there and grinned when the enemy party leaned over the halfling's shoulder to see if there was anything interesting in the book.

Every member of the enemy party took the explosive payload of 400 Explosive Runes.

Needless to say, they died.

And that's how my level 7 Wizard killed a whole level 15 party.

That is totally Awesome.
It's too bad explosive runes aren't in my edition: id love to do that.

Dayaz
2013-07-30, 01:34 AM
That is totally Awesome.
It's too bad explosive runes aren't in my edition: id love to do that.

Lol, it was awesome... especially since I kept doing it. He died by tricking the final BBEG into teleporting them both to a plane that negated Fire Immunity and set off like, 75k of those books (couple hundred million d6 of fire damage to Cthulu-wannabe).

All because the BBEG tried to kidnap his secret crush (the childhood friend).

But yes, it was a lot of fun roleplaying him, and I'm still amused that out of all the stupid things I've done, that character is the one that got a book thrown at me (the irony, right?)

EDIT: the last time we tried to play in that setting I tried to play a Cleric that worshiped him (The gods gave him honorary godhood as the lord of books, knowledge, language, and runes) and my DM RFED'd the campaign world out of fear spite lol

One thing I did was I told a mage's college I had accidentally left a stack of my explosive books on a table and the librarian had picked them up and put them in random places on the bookshelves (she didn't, but the panicking mages were a riot)

Lord Raziere
2013-07-30, 01:54 AM
That is totally Awesome.
It's too bad explosive runes aren't in my edition: id love to do that.

I knew there was something missing from 4e

to the homebrew-mobile!

Dayaz
2013-07-30, 02:46 AM
I knew there was something missing from 4e

to the homebrew-mobile!

What have I unleashed?

...Wait... 4E GOT RID OF EXPLOSIVE RUNES?!?! THIS IS BLASPHEMY, IT IS MADNESS!!!

Lord Raziere
2013-07-30, 04:01 AM
Thankfully, I found an Already homebrewed explosive runes ritual (http://hastur.net/wiki/Explosive_Runes_(4E)) so I don't have to make one myself.

hope you like it Arkhosia.

Joe the Rat
2013-07-30, 10:04 AM
Oh, and because I was bored and the character is heavily inspired by my time losing my life on tvtropes, I decided to try to to make (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PotHole)my backstory (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Backstory) an All Blue Entry. (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/AllBlueEntry) Parts of this post as well. (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SelfDemonstratingArticle) :smalltongue:

Jason Abital (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ThemeNaming) is a son of a noble family of magic-users (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/BadassFamily), who subjected him to magical experimentation in an attempt (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/GuineaPigFamily) to make him a sorcerer after he showed no magical aptitude as a child (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SuperEmpowering). He got some (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MarkedChange)mystic tattoos on his hands (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PowerTattoo) and grey hair, (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PowerDyesYourHair)along with the ability to project (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/KiAttacks) energy pulses from his palms. (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/LaserBlade)Seeing he wasn't a real caster, (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheTeamNormal) they trained him in martial arts and (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SupernaturalMartialArts)generic nobly things (although all nobles generally got that last bit). (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OfficerAndAGentleman)

When he was eleven, (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/WhenItAllBegan)he was being beat up by some other kids (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/GangOfBullies) for his distinctive appearance, (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/KidsAreCruel) unwilling to fight back because he was taught to not murder other kids with psychic blades. (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ComesGreatResponsibility)You know, the usual. (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/CaptainObvious) Cue screaming eight year old girl beating up (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/LittleGirlsKickShins) and scaring away the group. (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/CuteBruiser)They ended up becoming close friends, pretty much family. (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/LikeBrotherAndSister)

They're in the caravan because (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/FramingDevice)Miri was like (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/GenkiGirl)"IT'S A DRAGON WE'RE GOING TO SEE IT" (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Squee) and he tagged along because of him being protective of his pseudo-adopted little sister, (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/BigBrotherInstinct) and wanted to get away from his family on account (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/BlackSheep) of not being a magic-user like they were (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/CantCatchUp) (even though they still love him unconditionally (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/GoodParents), he feels like a little failure for not measuring up and doesn't see it). (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/IJustWantToBeSpecial)

I'm not sure which amuses me more - the ridiculous/awesome/setting-perfect backstory, or that the entire thing is Trope-mapped. Not that there's anything wrong with that. (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TropesAreTools)

Originality is good, Adaptation is good as well. Follow the process with me. For our Saturday Night Game (which runs towards light humor), I was tasked with being the meat shield (since skulky rouge was taken). Fair enough. So I get to thinking about violent archetypes and characters. An angry young man, orphaned by war and raised by mercenaries. Made to "carry his weight" from a young age, he learned to fight with full-sized (to him oversized) weapons, and became something of a terror on the battlefield.

Sound familiar?

Yeah, Guts. Only without some of the more... unpleasant childhood experiences. And he's a Halfling, because the image of The Big Guy being the smallest member of the party amuses me. To ramp up the comedy value, we switch from the giant sword (in his case, a longsword) to a full-sized mace. A Halfling swinging a sword or axe at (human) waist level is frightening. A Halfling with a studded iron bat swinging for the bleachers is comedy gold (particularly with critical hits and fumbles in play).

Some ridiculous stats (He was the strongest member of the party until the elf showed up), a few more backstory details (his Halfling father was an 'honest' Halfling, he was looking for an older sister who also survived, and a major issue with being called "little"), and Pug the Halfling was ready to wreak havoc for whomever is willing to pay him. He is a mercenary, after all.

Arkhosia
2013-07-30, 02:37 PM
@ lord raziere
*has so much joy I implode*

@ joe
so many baseball jokes about the ball used immediately coursed through my mind when I saw the description of the mace...

Dayaz
2013-07-30, 04:01 PM
Alright, i'm willing to toss out another one of my Snowflakes, but I'm going to let you decide which you wanna hear about: The Bard of Inter-specie Love, or Dakka, the Gift of Fire.

Alex12
2013-07-30, 05:39 PM
Alright, i'm willing to toss out another one of my Snowflakes, but I'm going to let you decide which you wanna hear about: The Bard of Inter-specie Love, or Dakka, the Gift of Fire.

I'm voting for Dakka.

In the game I'm currently in, I'm playing Ardun, a Dvati swordsage. Dvati, for those who don't know of them, are humanoids with two bodies that share a soul, and many of their abilities. One of their useful abilities is a virtually unbreakable telepathic bond. No matter how far apart they are, even if they're on different planes and in antimagic fields, they can still communicate with each other via telepathy.
Ardun is ex-military. Dvati were created by mages and psionicists as military communications systems, with one body staying back at central command, and the other accompanying an army in the field, to serve as an unbreakable and uninterceptible form of communication. Then, when one of him was in the field, he saw a vision of beauty and grace that drove him to his knees. An angel of battle, moving with a fluid precision and power that left him breathless. Unfortunately for him, said angel (probably a Valkyrie) utterly destroyed the entire army, leaving only him. Even more unfortunately, the high command needed a scapegoat for the complete destruction of an entire army. The only survivor, who is also a member of a species that is frankly kinda creepy? Fits the bill perfectly. So he was thrown into the local version of a gulag. That's where he met the rest of the party and they managed to break out.

Manly Man
2013-07-30, 06:18 PM
I say both.

Fable Wright
2013-07-31, 04:58 AM
aaaawwh….I hate that quote. it doesn't make me feel better, it just makes me feel I can't escape unoriginality.

Just going to pop in to say this: Originality isn't coming up with an idea that no one else has done before. It's putting ideas together well enough that no one looks at the seams.

"Redeeming an evil god" is just a specialized version of "Redeeming <insert evil force here>." Plenty of people have done it. All that matters is that you add a unique flare to the idea that truly makes it your own, and therefore original. Take this plan to redeem Lolth, for example:

Implanted in a child's mind is the location of an ancient artifact Lolth is looking for, obviously in a ploy to get Lolth to befriend the child and become redeemed through friendship, when in reality the child's mind was obliterated and remade from scratch as a trap for Lolth. When she attempts to rip the information out of the child's brain to bypass the ploy, she's trapped inside the child's mind, utterly powerless except for the minor ability to act as a second conscience in the child's head.

Enter the child as a PC entirely unaware of her past, with the goal of redeeming Lolth, thinking that the goddess is still in the Demonweb Pits. Over the course of the adventure, she discovers that all of her memories are a lie, dealing with the psychological fallout of that, the fact that her life goal was forced upon her by a total stranger, and dealing the various neuroses implanted in her as a side effect of the mental trap and Lolth's machinations, causing an inevitable downward spiral as Lolth takes advantage of this insecurity. Cue forshadowed moment of attempted redemption where the child willingly switches places with Lolth, acting in the goddess's mind as an ignored conscience. Lolth views this as the Wizard's plan utterly failing, when in reality it succeeded by fostering, for the first time since Lolth's fall, feelings of guilt and doubt, acting as the chink in Lolth's psychosis that would allow future attempts to redeem Lolth to have an actual chance of success, as well as potentially causing gradual changes in Lolth's behavior over time that would inspire others to try and redeem her.

The basis for the concept is ripped directly from this thread, half or more of the ideas in there are tropes and cliches, and the end result is a backstory that I would likely deny entrance into a game in the recruitment forum. (Not necessarily for the concept, but for the parasitic effect on a game that I have already planned out to a decent degree dealing with unrelated matters and the fact that I've used 'X force stuck in character's head' too often myself for it to have any real impact.) However, in a real-life game where you work out the concept with the DM ahead of time and let the realizations and emotional struggle of the character play out organically along months of gameplay and the twists, reveals, and eventual turnout will catch the other players by surprise, it would be, to them at least, genuinely original due to the execution. My point being, despite all of this being ripped from other sources (this thread for redeeming Lolth, chink in armor from Homestuck, tomato in the mirror from TvTropes, mental trap from Girl Genius, and variously tropes being invoked by other elements of the concept and being invoked/subverted/averted as they came along) it would come across as genuinely original in play. Just because an idea's been done doesn't mean it can't be used in an original manner.

On the topic of this thread, my favorite concept that I've ever made for a character is Rem Dremidydd, a Cyran who believes he's currently in a coma caused by the events of the Day of Mourning and is desperately trying to wake up. The twist being, his inherent magical ability combined with the fact that he's consciously forgotten how to cast spells but still does so on instinct, his ability to use Silent Image as a spell-like ability (and thus without components) to show others the 'real world' and his ability interact with his own illusions as though they were real (to an extent, though no one else can) means that no matter what he tries, everything seems to correlate his beliefs.

In effect, he's a deranged reality warper (albeit only in a very minor capacity, for now at least) whose ultimate objective may involve destroying reality itself. And yet, he's one of the good guys.

TuggyNE
2013-07-31, 05:57 AM
"Redeeming an evil god" is just a specialized version of "Redeeming <insert evil force here>." Plenty of people have done it. All that matters is that you add a unique flare to the idea that truly makes it your own, and therefore original. Take this plan to redeem Lolth, for example:[snip of epicness]

Bravo, good sir. I applaud a marvelous Xanatos gambit.

Joe the Rat
2013-07-31, 08:15 AM
@ joe
so many baseball jokes about the ball used immediately coursed through my mind when I saw the description of the mace...

We play on Roll20. His attack roll emote was "Batter up!"
He named this mace The Judge, because it settled arguments. That, and "reconsidering your thoughts about starting a family" wouldn't fit on the handle.

Lord Raziere
2013-07-31, 08:20 AM
Just going to pop in to say this: Originality isn't coming up with an idea that no one else has done before. It's putting ideas together well enough that no one looks at the seams.
*snip*


yes, I get it already. please, no more, before I start hating this kind of lectures on why originality is this or that more than that quote. thank you.

Fable Wright
2013-07-31, 10:10 AM
yes, I get it already. please, no more, before I start hating this kind of lectures on why originality is this or that more than that quote. thank you.

*Shrug* If you don't want people to comment on something you know provokes discussion, why bring it up at all? Conveying frustration is one of the most effective ways of getting people to try to help you or, on 4chan, troll you. If you don't want the attention, don't draw it to yourself.

Arkhosia
2013-07-31, 12:35 PM
We play on Roll20. His attack roll emote was "Batter up!"
He named this mace The Judge, because it settled arguments. That, and "reconsidering your thoughts about starting a family" wouldn't fit on the handle.

Love that name!

Birth Control didn't work either?:smallbiggrin:

marcielle
2013-08-01, 07:12 AM
Might not be all that unique but here's one of my favs.
Alexander Lucent, Aasimar Antipaladin.

Lucent started off as a paladin, devoted, driven, idealistic. He fought day and night against the forces of evil for goodness and the weak and all that. One day, he was plucked fro the battlefields and posted as a peacekeeper in a city(paladins being like a militant order in the setting). In the midst of the peace and safety his brethren died protecting, he saw thieves and muggers go about their daily business without remorse, he saw the people they had selflessly given their all for not even bat an eyelid at the suffering of others and he saw the powerful exploit the weak where they had once fought for their freedom from tyrants and monsters. He had seen corruption and greed before but never on such scale, not among the 'goodly' folk. Even with the forces of hell far off, evil was still everywhere. Not amok and brazen as the demon hordes, but evil nonetheless. He saw now, he never saved the weak and downtrodden, merely paliated their suffering somewhat. Sure, a few would learn from the paladins and hold the virtues high, but they were far too few.

He disappeared into the forest without a word. Months later, he would emerge. Where he wore plain, serviceable armor before, his plate now gleamed and glowed, silver ornamentation accenting his sword and helm. He was still very much like before. He smiled and joked and offered kindness like nothing had changed. But he avoided the other paladins. Unbeknownst to all, his epiphany had led him down the path of Asmodeus. Kindness and righteousness could not by themselves create the world he sought. And peace through tyranny was just a quiet war. But when good fought evil, when all hung in the balance and seemed bleak, people stood together. Grudges, pettiness and greed were temporarily forgotten, and in the fleeting moments between conflict, the slightest glimpses of a bright world could be seen. So he would bring war to the world. He would hold high the banner of the dark forces to let the world know. Stand together, or die alone.

Your Nemesis
2013-08-01, 08:35 AM
It isn't really mine, but I have to say that my favorite character of all time is definitely Old Man Henderson.

Arkhosia
2013-08-04, 06:44 PM
I love the anti-paladin!

Lorin
2013-08-04, 07:06 PM
Well, i've got plenty of "special snowflakes", well, if we stick to DnD, allow me to introduce Leo Brightflame, warlock with very serious problems.

The thing is: he've got three souls. His own, quite and reclusive, mumbling stuttering and really nice guy all-around, who is very disturbed and afraid of his power. Next being is a ghost of some his ancestor: brash, foul-mouthed pirate, who likes to drink, sing, get girls and fight. Sometimes simultaneously. Also part-rime angelic being, not a good one at that, but God he is trying. And next is a devil. Well, acording to his bio, Leo was not really born with that power - he is just a victim of ritual which went horribly wrong, so instead of being fully posesed by a devil he've got powers and annoying voice in his head. Devil was quite pissed, but currently seeing it as an opportunity to eventually make a more powerfull body for himself and influencing Leo in his dreams, training how to use his powers in a form of nightmares. He is pragmatic, sarcastic, amoral and vile, facinated with morbid and bloody. Actually he was an original character and, ironicly, my home project at showing that Chaotic Evil character is not always a mindless self-destructive loony who just cannot do anything but killing. Actually, he can even do some good in right circumstances.

I really love this character and changing voices mid-sentence, doing some interesting stuff with the character and using fully his...divided... nature to my advantage. Also it makes for some really amusing conversations, considering that he is also a party's face. "Oh, marvellous, another poor soul, whom we should help free of charge!" "Erm... th-this wa-wa-wasn't addresed to you, g-good sir!".

Arkhosia
2013-08-04, 07:19 PM
Very neat!
The power source idea is very interesting.

genderlich
2013-08-04, 08:10 PM
An on-and-off player in my group is known for having very... unique... characters, to say the least.

At the start of the current campaign he was playing a wizard who was a fast-talking salesman type, trying to get everyone to buy his "Miracle Mix" to "cure" all their problems. The only effect it actually had was to be addictive. He was also being stalked by an invisible demon which he thought was the ghost of his old master, trying to guilt him into stopping his evil ways. Using point-buy he ended up with a 7 in all his physical scores, 18 Int, and 16 Wis and Cha. He died in the second session because he had 12 hit points at level 3 and was less than cautious in combat.

Another character he played was a human monk who used to be murderous bandit. He was captured and been burned at the stake but survived. This left him horribly scarred all over, missing an eye, and with a fear of fire so horrible he had to make Will saves whenever anyone lit a torch. I don't recall how this one died...

Another time I made the mistake of allowing him to play a 12-year old girl who was a Flames Oracle. It wasn't disruptive or anything - it was just weird having a preteen child casually burning people to death and bashing in skulls with a mace like it was nothing.

I have my own somewhat one-of-a-kind characters, too.

The first one I rolled up for my current group was Stark (I didn't have much time to come up with a more creative name), a Cleric of Obad-Hai. He was a separatist who believed his god to truly be the god of Winter. He was all about "survival of the fittest", how the winter culls the weak and strengthens the world. I played one session with him, then missed three sessions. The group had moved on, and it was decided Stark would become a villain (because his mentor, while I was gone, turned out to be evil) and I would make a new character. Stark became a fantastic villain, trying to cover the world in an endless winter and always taunting a former teammate who was once his friend.

My favorite character I ever played was Pavo, the wizard in my current avatar. I've told his story on this board before, but I never get tired of it, so here it is again. He came from a remote desert nation with little contact with the outside world. Pavo loved knowledge and lore above all else, so he decided to travel the world and record everything he learned in a great library. Eventually, since he started out rather old, he realized he was running out of time, and became even more obsessed with his goal to learn everything. So he started studying how to extend his life or become immortal, and settled on becoming a lich. The campaign ended before we got to that actual point, but he definitely went on to succeed and is well on his way to becoming the most powerful and learned mage in that world. Personality-wise, he was a lovable old jerk, a bit overly vain and a bit greedy, but always fascinated by learning something new no matter what it would be.

I also played Malachi, Pavo's long-lost son. Neither one ever knew of the other's existence, which is for the best, since Malachi was Pavo's opposite in every way. He was an Oracle who acted more like a Paladin, always kind, generous, and compassionate. He was a bit slow and simple-minded, but he always pursued justice. He was like a good southern boy who honored his parents and was unfailingly polite.

Then there was Ben Ravencroft, a 17-year old Gravewalker Witch. He was from a small religious town, but was apprenticed to the town apothecary - who was secretly a necromancer planning on destroying the town. Ben learned witchcraft from her, but since he was an impulsive teenager, he used it to play pranks and commit petty crimes, which eventually got both him and her caught. She was executed and he was banished. He became selfish and bitter, planning on proving everyone who "misunderstood" him wrong by becoming powerful. He used his undead-controlling power to take three severed zombie hands, naming them Vecna, Manos, and Thing, and treating them like actual pets. He died due to his own rashness, using a "clearly" cursed item given to him by an enemy.

I had four characters in that particular campaign - Ben was the first, but the next two died horrible deaths as well. The last one was a Yuan-Ti Wizard codenamed "Slippy". In the time since Pavo's campaign, the old man had started attracting apprentices to do his dirty work for him in exchange for learning a small amount of magic. Slippy was Pavo's number 1 man - of course, out of secrecy Pavo didn't let him use his real name, so gave him the pseudonym "Slippy". I rolled this guy up really quickly in the last two sessions of the game, which by that point with so many dead characters I was no longer taking seriously, so Slippy basically went on and on about how great and wise and perfect Pavo was and it was a lot of fun.

I also really liked a Lawful Evil Bard/Assassin I played one time: Cibran Bartolomeu Ignasi. He was a wealthy and important nobleman in the city-state he came from, being a diplomat to the public and secretly both a spy and an assassin. He was absolutely loyal to his city, willing to do literally anything to advance its cause. He masked this cold, driven cruelty by acting like a stupid, insipid aristocrat, dressing in the fanciest clothes, complaining about the quality of everything (food, air, temperature, other people), all that fun stuff. He was a blast to play in RP situations. One minute he would be using his stupid nobleman voice and smiling obliviously, the next he would be brutally torturing someone for information.

Joe the Rat
2013-08-05, 10:35 AM
I really love this character and changing voices mid-sentence, doing some interesting stuff with the character and using fully his...divided... nature to my advantage. Also it makes for some really amusing conversations, considering that he is also a party's face. "Oh, marvellous, another poor soul, whom we should help free of charge!" "Erm... th-this wa-wa-wasn't addresed to you, g-good sir!". This is one of those cases where voice-acting comes in handy for players - to keep your personalities straight. What's really fun is getting into arguments with yourself, though I suppose that's fairly standard for those valiant souls on the other side of the screen.

Lorin
2013-08-05, 01:03 PM
Very neat!
The power source idea is very interesting.
Well, it was also my way of justifying level ups. "devil just gave me new power, oh, he also replaced one. Sorry, no curses anymore."



This is one of those cases where voice-acting comes in handy for players - to keep your personalities straight. What's really fun is getting into arguments with yourself, though I suppose that's fairly standard for those valiant souls on the other side of the screen.

Still getting questions: "Is it devil talking?". Also spent plenty of time coming up with this voices, with a really deep and menacing one for my dark personality, tenor for the Leo and more rude, growling one for the pirate, but really liked the end result. Oh, also have trained my Evil Laugh. ) (yes, i have quite a voice range)

hisnamehere
2013-08-05, 09:10 PM
For my wife:
Benedikta "Benny" Bloodbath
Jotunbrud Vaasan Human Barbarian
Abilities (DnD3.5): 50ft MV, IUS, Imp Grapple, Powerful Build, Str 20.
The teenage princess of the Bloodbath Clan of giant-bred human barbarians. She is known for her compulsive honesty and for being exceedingly hard to wake up. Her tribe specializes in the pugilist combat form while employing the use of spiked and bladed armors, hence the name "Bloodbath." Her wrestling might and stature equal and beyond of generations of clansmen, her hunting party was massacred and she brought to civilization in chains. Bought, sold, traded, and gambled, fortunately Benny narrowly avoided her only brush with the brothel world by nearly breaking her would-be "suitor's" neck...and back...with only her legs untied. Unfortunately, the son of an influential lord, the slighted aristocrat called for her execution for the attempt on her life. A secretive and more influential freedom-fighting mercenary leader spirited her away to his training camp where she has gained all the respect she deserves.

hisnamehere
2013-08-05, 09:39 PM
For myself:
Wildclaw
Wild Dwarf Tiger Totem Barbarian
Abilities: arse-kickery
Wildclaw is just one example of an ancient tribe of wild dwarves found in the southern jungles. His tribe mimic the animals of their homeland, each adopting the mannerisms and habits of an animal. Wildclaw strives to embody the essence of the great striped jungle cats. He intimidates with a glance and possesses a rending combat style using naught but his bare hands. He walks on all fours, sleeps beneath the inn's porch, and prefers not to be seen until it's too late by his prey.

Myomoto
Human Aristocrat/Ftr/Rog
Abilities (DnD3.5): rolled Dex 18, Con 5, ranged specialty
My favorite characters have usually been those I have developed from the ability rolls up. That is, no concept until the 4d6 were rolled, and usually without allocating rolls (I.e. 6 rolls, starting with Str and working down).
As such, Myomoto was born. With an abysmal Con I obviously wanted to avoid melee. But why the low Con? He became the over-indulgent spoiled son of a prominent daiymo who used his position to acquire and master the use of the ninja's shuriken. A bad gambler and pickled-by-18 alcoholic who never worked a day in his life wound up in Ravenloft fighting to survive. He would tend to fail checks for things that most adventurers take for granted, like walking all day or staying awake for his watch.
By the time he died he had a replacement magical stone hand that compelled him to steal things (party members not excluded) and was in actuality his own evil clone insidiously placed within the party by a BBEG to thwart their plans. And managed to hold onto his birthright masterwork katana and symbol of authority in a reality he was no longer a part of even tho he never used it to kill anyone cause he never joined melee...until the day he died.
Good times.

Arkhosia
2013-08-13, 07:42 PM
Nice! Catdwarf should be his name though.
Oh! And he should have a catbug familiar!

XenoGeno
2013-08-13, 09:35 PM
Sticking strictly with PCs I've created... I sadly wind up being my group's usual DM (a position I have no idea how I wound up with), so I don't have a lot of stories to share. In D&D, I've really only gotten to play a couple of characters, and most of them have been more the type to chill in the background until it was time to be make the other party members awesome (and the enemies extremely unawesome). The only really creative one was Altama XIX, a human warblade with aberrant blood and extremely long arms from a long line of human martial classes with aberrant blood and who used the family glaive to great effect, and was leading a revolution against a dwarf kingdom. I think I got to play him in two sessions. :smallsigh:

Outside of D&D, the only PC I can think of worth mentioning is Geno Trucchetto, the son of wildly successful stage magicians, he slept with the mothers and best friends of several other PCs due to a bonus to seduce people whenever he suggests a threesome. He eventually sexed up enough people to start a cult. A snake cult, of course, because I have the sense of humor of a pre-teen. Needless to say, "at least he didn't start a cult around his penis" is the go-to phrase in my group for whenever I do something crazy. Also needless to say, Monsterhearts is a very, very strange game. :smalleek:

Forrestfire
2013-08-13, 10:10 PM
... and I have another new one to share. I'm just gonna copy my background and character concept:

Team Ghostblob a.k.a. Knut (“Ka-noot”) Stormblade the Barbarian, Dasha Alevi the Librarian, Anna Johnson the 10-year-old, and Obed Marsh the Necromancer

Gestalt Toned-Down Ghost 3/Warlock 2 //Factotum 5, heading into Master of the Unseen Hand


The basic idea of the character was that the ghost itself is made up of four different souls that got locked together by accident. At any one time, each of the characters making up this one are basically in a voice chat with the other three, and whoever is in total control of the ghost “body” is the one manifesting. They are aware of their predicament, and haven’t gotten to go to their own respective eternal rests because they all have stuff left over and whatever merged their souls isn’t letting them go on without settling all of it (or at least that’s their hypothesis).

In any case, most of the time they let whoever is in the mood to actually interact with things take the lead (generally Anna, on account of her being a hyperactive 10-year-old). If someone is pushing to take control, most of the time the others let them, but sometimes there’s a fight and the stronger personality manifests afterwards.

During combat, the four generally communicate fairly well, each having their respective fighting styles (except Anna, who mainly just has generic ghost powers) and moving freely between personalities as needed in the fight. An enemy might be grabbed with telekinesis by Knut and then shot with a spell or drain from WARLOCK before “dodging” an attack with Anna being pushed out and not getting hit because she’s short.


Anyway, the backstories for the people in Team Ghostblob (name courtesy of Anna):

Knut Stormblade was a barbarian hailing from the north. As the eldest son of the (minor) great warrior, he considered it his duty to live up to his deceased father’s name, and took to adventuring. He and a group of others from his tribe trekked south, conquering several dungeons before his group had the misfortune of running straight into the lair of a dragon. Needless to say, it didn’t end well. He and his party fought valiantly, but the dragon ended up roasting them easily. However, impressed by their valor (and by not being killed outright by the aged dragon’s fire, or maybe just on a whim), he decided not to eat them, but chucked their corpses into a canyon. Eventually, he was animated as part of a necromancer’s army as a personal guard as the wizard passed through and saw some armored corpses.

Dasha Alevi was a quiet woman for most of her life. She always preferred books to actual social interaction, and so after years of living as a farmer’s daughter, she ran away and tried to study at a wizarding university in the much larger Free City. It didn’t work as well as she’d hoped, as she had absolutely no magical talent. Desperate for some way to avoid returning home in shame, she forced her way into a job as the college’s library and finding that she was quite good at studying even though she wasn’t good at magic. So, she learned all about different creatures, lands, and other topics, while being a generally good organizer for the library. Eventually, when the city was attacked by a necromancer, she helped a group of adventurers working with the city guard find a weakness in the mage’s spell, but she insisted on making sure the obscure magic circle was arranged correctly. At the center of the battle, she made sure they were, and proceeded to die in the explosion.

Anna Johnson was a young girl living in the Free City. She had always been extremely sickly, and often found herself bedridden. Her parent tried many treatments short of hiring a cleric to heal her, and when the necromancer attacked Free City, they could not move her easily. Although the undead horde never breached their building, it happened to be next to where Dasha and the defense had their final confrontation with the necromancer, and the magical shockwave released proved too much for her sickly frame.

Obed Marsh is the necromancer who caused the other three so much trouble. He comes from a small village in the south, the only son of a town guard. He was a fairly popular child in the town’s social group, always surrounded by his gang, occasionally making trouble, but mostly a good kid. When he was 16, his town was attacked by raiders and he and his friends were quickly hurried out of the town. However, the attackers had split off and found them by the time they were out of sight of the town, killing the adults who tried to defend them. It was at this point that his nascent arcane power awoke, and he managed to kill the bandits attacking his group, but did not return to his home village in time to stop it from being burned to the ground. He and his surviving fellows (about eight of them) struck out on their own, followed by the reanimated corpses of the fallen raiders. Over the years his friends died or were killed, and eventually he was the only one left. Finally alone, his decaying mental state eventually snapped and he decided that he was sick of people in general. He began building an army of the undead, and marched on any town in his path. He was eventually stopped in a fight with the inhabitants of the Free City, and his soul was bound by the ritual they used to sever the connection between the negative energy plane and his undead horde. His personal guard, the bound soul of Knut Stormblade, was the only one to “survive” the ritual, but they both were slain quickly.

Dozens of years later, the four that died during the ritual itself ended up bound together as a ghost, haunting a [some sort of treasure related to magic] that eventually found its way into a [something the party fought their way through].

Each of the four have a different outlook on their current status as spirits stuck together in one whole. Knut sees it as a both a blessing and a curse, as he can still find a way to live up to his father’s name now, but since he’s dead he believes that no one will care anyway. Dasha is extremely intrigued by the whole situation, as she’d read about ghosts before and, while initially terrified, is now fascinated with the fact that she is one. Anna is of the opinion that dying is the best thing that ever happened to her, because now she has full mobility and doesn’t have to worry about her health all the time. Obed hates the fact that he’s now a ghost, because he had always viewed the undead as tools to be discarded and now, well, is one and has to face the ramifications of that. However, he’s happy he’s no longer alone, at the very least, and his new outlook on death has caused him to deeply regret the things he did and the lives he destroyed when he was alive.


Some goals that are keeping the group from their final rest are:
Knut wants to prove himself as a true warrior and to get revenge on the dragon who killed him and his party.
Dasha wants to write a book on her experiences as a ghost, and also wants to learn the magic she had no talent for by borrowing some of Obed’s.
Anna just wants to experience things, because she was only 10 and even then had very little to say about her life.
Obed is kinda drifting at this point, regretting his actions and wanting to make amends for what he did, but realizing that he caused a lot of destruction and has no way to find who to help. So his goal is to just do as much good as he can.


They are currently haunting a riverine dagger that stands on its point if unattended, and allows detection of undead. The character can't go more than 100 feet from the dagger, and they also can't move it in any way.

My fighting style is going to involve heavy use of telekinesis, since that's the only ghost ability I get.


tl;dr: I'm playing a ghost made of four different people in varying control of the main body, and at this point am basically an intelligent item due to fluff stuff.

Manly Man
2013-08-14, 12:10 AM
To quote myself in a different thread:


An idea I have that would be umpteen times easier now with a lich:

A gestalt Paladin//Bard (Lawful restriction obviously removed) who, after having been around for a few centuries, is running dry on song material- having him play heavy metal makes the concept even cooler, and fits it better- and so he makes "evil plans" which, in all reality, are just complete mockeries designed to get the attention of heroes who come to stop him. An epic battle ensues, and he pretends to be defeated, his fake plan for world domination/destruction/deadification foiled. In all reality, he intended for this to happen, and now not only does he have awesome material, but he also helped a group of adventurers out in making them rich and famous, their stories told forever onward through his songs.

The levels as a Paladin were, honestly, to make sure that he could come up with ways to do all this that were ultimately harmless. Sure, the adventurers might get a little beaten up, but all-in-all, people will end up happier with the feeling that a "great evil" has been vanquished, and they will have a figure they can trust to come to their aid again (the adventurers). In the end, I guess it would be one big, as well as needlessly complicated, good deed. Sounds legit, as well as awesome.

BWR
2013-08-14, 03:52 AM
.. Knut (“Ka-noot”)

That pronounciation always gets my hackles up.

Cerlis
2013-08-14, 06:48 AM
Another time I made the mistake of allowing him to play a 12-year old girl who was a Flames Oracle. It wasn't disruptive or anything - it was just weird having a preteen child casually burning people to death and bashing in skulls with a mace like it was nothing.

not a fan of Hit-Girl, then?

Name_Here
2013-08-14, 12:41 PM
I think one of my favorite characters was Bruce.

Bruce was a bad bad man. He spent the first 25 years of his life looting, pillaging and all manner of debauchery. Then one day freshly divorced from his last bandit group for killing the leader in a dispute over the leader's wife he came across a burning farm house that a group of bandits had hit. Never one to let a little looting pass him by he entered the house stepping over the butchered farmer and his wife, and cheerfully ignoring the chocking cries of the couple's young daughter he tried to find any valuables he could find.

That was when the ceiling gave in pinning Bruce under a huge beam. He tried to free himself but lacked the strength to move the beam. There trapped underneath the beam, in the heat, listening to the young girl's cries and in incredible pain from the fire Bruce's sanity snapped and somewhere in his madness he found the strength to move the beam and save the little girl before setting off to slaughter the bandits.

Overall I played him as a very righteous knight in shining armor type character who was utterly convinced he was a member of a holy order which constantly changed always keeping the flame motif.

icefyer
2013-08-25, 07:25 AM
So far, the first character I ever made for D&D that actually stuck was my Kobold Cleric. I didn't care about the -4 strength, or the con hit. I wasn't in it for the Dragonwrought cheese, even though he is one for flavor purposes. He was fat as all hell (as in, he waddles and actually jiggles) and surprisingly cute. Neutral Good too considering he followed Pelor. Basic backstory was he was part of a lair that generally got along well with the nearby town, trading what metals the Kobolds didn't use for free food, protection, and payment to get what they needed from towns they didn't have an agreement with. Adventuring party comes in and assumes they've been harassing the town and starts destroying their mines, though with surprisingly few injuries.

Unfortunately my Kobold was one of those injured, and the party's cleric was one of Pelor, who teaches to spread good whenever possible, so she saw injured Kobolds that hadn't even been carrying weapons, and went around healing them. That act of compassion was what convinced him to become a healer for Pelor. The fatness was mostly due to a joke a friend made about what would happen if a senile wizard confused his pig-pink scales for him being an actual pig and cast an Engorge Person spell on him made permanent and it stuck, and so the nearly 200-pound scaly teddy-bear of a lardball was born. You can find him as my profile image...New to the site so no clue how that works.

Actually quite a fun character to play. Almost always upbeat and cheery, so rather sharply contrasts most other players I've played with. Once even got a minor boon from Pelor for convincing the party to spare a goblin witch when the Paladin wanted to go all "Smite evil first, ask questions never."

Asmodai
2013-08-27, 05:30 AM
I ran a enchanter Minotaur patterned after the Beatles.

Joe the Rat
2013-08-27, 09:01 AM
Still getting questions: "Is it devil talking?". Also spent plenty of time coming up with this voices, with a really deep and menacing one for my dark personality, tenor for the Leo and more rude, growling one for the pirate, but really liked the end result. Oh, also have trained my Evil Laugh. ) (yes, i have quite a voice range)Heh, forgot to check back. Very nice. It's surprising how much practice laughter takes. But I have a really good Muttley if I ever need it.

I find you can do a lot with just a tone shift and rate of speech. I've got a grumpy Cleric with a flat tone, and a rather loquacious and excitable Bard.

Arkhosia
2013-08-30, 01:24 PM
I ran a enchanter Minotaur patterned after the Beatles.

Nice! I remember that I once made a lawful good Minotaur bard who played a flute and just began encounters offering for us to settle our differences over tea.

Subaru Kujo
2013-08-31, 06:45 PM
Not mine, but the most interesting I've played with was a flesh golem Cleric of Pelor.

The rationale was that they'd use the flesh of 6 heinous criminals, and meld it with the mind of a cleric, who would lead the condemned souls to redemption.

I thought it was strange, but the DM made it work out, which was astounding.