PDA

View Full Version : Ridiculous Characters & why you made them the way you did



FabulousFizban
2013-11-20, 06:29 PM
Just what it says, what are some of the most ridiculous characters you've made, both in terms of personality and mechanics. Why were they ridiculous? Why did you make the character that way? did a paladin/rogue just seem like a good idea at the time, or were you going for somethin deeper?

Any system is fine just specify; and most importantly, WHAT WERE YOU THINKING DOING THAT?

Kane0
2013-11-20, 07:08 PM
I played this (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=223940) in a PF campaign as a test run.

Obviously, I thought I knew what balance was...

The best part? My group loved him and wants to see him make a reappearance, since that campaign ended prematurely.

ReaderAt2046
2013-11-20, 11:54 PM
So me and some friends were rolling up characters for a Call of Cthulu campaign, and I rolled up extremely high POW but weak physical stats. I took this ability spread and decided to do something that a more experienced CoC player would know is utterly ridiculous: I made a PC cultist. Specifically, I made Brian Patrick Hood, whose backstory is copied here:
In all worlds, in all times, in all shadowrealms and fractured realities, the house of Hood have been mages, sorcerors, wielders of supernal power. In this realm, that inbred trait drove them to the reality-warping energies of the Mythos, and they became Summoner Lords. Everything from Hunting Horrors to Fire Vampires to the Hounds of Tindalos were at their beck and call, if they paid the proper prices. An unusual mutation of common sense also runs rampant through this line, generally preventing them from driving too deep and getting involved with powers beyond their ability to control. As a child, Brian Hood was just beginning to be inducted into the lore of his family when his parents set off for a trip to Stonehenge, where they and others of the Circle intended to do…something. They never returned. Brian’s life is now bound by two tasks: To gain for himself the power that is his birthright, and to find the truth of what happened to his parents. In that quest, he has been required to work out the required spells himself, for both the bulk of his parent’s notes and all the Hood contacts within the Circle disappeared in the same disaster that took his parent’s lives.

I'm sure it surprised nobody that Brian died after about a half-dozen sessions, but what surprised everyone, including me, was that he actually died a hero.

The Set-up
We had gone to L.A. to look for a missing girl (named Kai Hito)whom I had seen in a vision, and in the course of this search my character had discovered hints in Kai's diary that the nearby collective of Buhddist monks contained a cultist circle. My character cautiously broached the topic with Kigo, the leader of the monastery, and received covert confirmation, causing him to promptly become obsessed with learning more about the Mythos. Unfortunately, nobody else shared my interest, and the discussion turned towards ways to break into the monastery. So, I set out on my own to warn the monks, in hopes of preventing offense.

The scene

After I warned Kigo, we had a long conversation about the responsibility of magicians and the resemblances between Kai and me, in which I unwittingly hinted at the existence of a special bond between me and Kai. Kigo lead me deeper into the monastery, and despite several OOC hints, I followed eagerly into a hidden system of caves. Finally, we came upon a bizzare tableau. Kai was lying impaled upon a stalagmite, kept alive by some form of magic, and dozens of cables were attached to her Hemalurgic bind points, humming with a strange blue energy.

The choice
Kigo explained that it was he and his circle that had made Kai disappear. She had massive natural magical potential, which they had hoped to steal for themselves. Unfortunately, she had somehow locked her mind and soul, and hence her power, behind an unbreakable psionic shell. Kigo believed that I could unlock her mind, allowing him and his followers to siphon off her magical essence. I might have done it, except that at that point, Kigo must have gotten overexcited, for he unwittingly let his control slip just a hair, and I realized that he was not even human, merely a monster hiding under a flesh-mask. That was the deciding factor. I could justify, even glorify, the sacrifice of innocents for power, but not to give that power to non-humans. I knew in that moment, that I had a duty to stop Kigo.

The first try
I bought myself a few moments to think by searching through the ruins of five books of Kai's mother's poetry, pretending to seek a passage that I believed was the key to opening Kai's mind. In seconds, I came up with a crazy plan. In the previous session, I had learnt a spell that would translate its caster, along with those targets he specified, to the eldritch realm of the Twilight Queen. All you needed to cast the spell was a small black stone, which I had in my satchel. I palmed the stone, laid my hand on Kai's forehead, and cast the spell. It failed. (The Narrator explained that to make it work on the other side of the continent from the mortal demsne of the Twilight Queen, I'd need a luck roll. Which I failed.) This was where things got exciting, for Kigo knew enough magic to realize what I was trying to do, and he promptly burst his flesh-mask, revealing himself to be a giant scorpion-like monster.

BATTLE!: Round One.
The monster was much faster than me, and struck first. I declined to dodge, as I had another use for my action that round. The attack hit, and knocked off over half my hitpoints, but then it was my turn. I gasped out "It is given to man... to have dominance over you and your kind... You should have known this." and in a single swift motion I drew the steel dagger I had established I always carried, and buried it to the hilt in Kai's heart. Her hands flew up to grasp my arm, and a single thought pierced my mind: Thank you. Kai's arms fell back, and a beautiful smile graced her face. The eerie blue glow of the power-draining cables winked out. Kai's magic was beyond the reach of Kigo forever.

BATTLE!: Round Two.
At this point, I knew I couldn't escape, and I had only one goal: to bury that same dagger in my own heart, and prevent Kigo from stealing my own magic as he had tried to steal Kai's. Kigo's stinger lashed out again, and took enough hitpoints that it should have left me unconscious. However, the Narrator let me have one final action, and with a grin of victory, I sank the dagger into my chest. Everything went dark.

The Reward
I still don't know if the Narrator had come up with this next bit in advance, or if she just made it up on the spot because she felt I deserved a reward for my heroism. Apparently, the last spell my parents had invented, the one that caused them to vanish, was a means to cheat death. Casting it used up their own life-force, killing them, but instead of going to heaven or hell, the spell shunted them into some kind of parallel reality, to live there as god-like beings of pure magic. And they'd cast the same spell upon me, so when I fell fighting Kigo, the decade-old enchantment kicked in, and my spirit was infused with magic and whisked off to the parallel realm where my parents had been dwelling.

The Aftermath
Now, this entire scene, from the moment I had left from the monastery to the moment the Narrator finished explaining my reward, had taken place in another room, out of earshot of the rest of the party. This meant that they had no idea what had just happened:smallbiggrin:. (Apparently they had caught one word: "dynamite"). So I watched as the players made their way to the secret cave where I had died. Arriving there, the party soon discovered Kai's body. According to the Narrator, she was absolutely covered in blood, and had an eerie smile on her face. Then one of the other players literally stepped on my body. It was awesome!

Trickquestion
2013-11-21, 01:20 AM
My buddies and I were playing Call of Cthulhu, and rolled up into a Virginia town we believed was hiding some monsters and cultists. The character's name was Reginald Lancaster. In his backstory, he was an underachieving Londonite who lived an extremely mundane existence despite his college education in chemical engineering. That is, until he fell into a sewer, barely escaped being eaten by some wondering horrors, and decided to live his life on the edge. He nicked a copy of the clown suit worn by the Sixth Doctor, starting cooking up homemade bombs, and started monster hunting. The Virginia town mission was his first "played" expedition, as he came to America to join an investigators society (the party).

His first course of action was to break into the police station and search the crime records for anything unusual. He broke the necks of several cops to do so. A cave outside of town seemed promising, so he loaded all the guns in the station into a car and drove out. Upon arriving at the cave, he rigged the car to explode, and stuck a knife through the gas to send in throttling into the cave to blow up. It exploded, and it turns out the only people living in the cave was a bunch of homeless, who were all painted on the walls after that.

He then acted as live bait, sleeping in the park to attract kidnapping cultists. When they got one, Reginald tied him to a tree, and in the process of interrogating him, cut off six of his fingers, one of his ears, and smashed all of his teeth to get a confession. The monsters were in the church basement. Then he set the cultist on fire. To finish off the monsters, he stole a gas tanker from a nearby gas station, rigged it into a car bomb, and pulled a repeat of the cave. While the entire town was at mass.

All of this horrifying sociopathy carried out by a man in a rainbow coat with an extremely thick cockney accent, who was constantly munching starburst and spewing puns. He constantly referred to the NPC leader of the society as Christopher Lee, and kept the insides of his coat soaked with Chloroform incase he needed to subdue someone in a hurry. It was a blast playing him.

Sith_Happens
2013-11-21, 04:54 AM
Sounds like someone graduated from the Henderson School of Call of Cthulhu.

Milo v3
2013-11-21, 06:16 AM
I once made a character called the Dandelion King, an awakened dandelion druid created by an epic level wizard because he was bored. His goal was to take over the entire world and turn it into land for his near infinite harem of flowers.

The King was disappointingly murdered by a fellow player character when he ordered them to bow before their king for the third time.

CombatOwl
2013-11-21, 06:43 AM
Just what it says, what are some of the most ridiculous characters you've made, both in terms of personality and mechanics. Why were they ridiculous? Why did you make the character that way? did a paladin/rogue just seem like a good idea at the time, or were you going for somethin deeper?

Any system is fine just specify; and most importantly, WHAT WERE YOU THINKING DOING THAT?

A mystic theurge that I negotiated a custom feat for. It reduced the cost of crafting magic items by 15% in exchange for a 30% chance of a not-directly-fatal curse. It yielded great cursed items, like the time-lock bag of holding (it only opens at night), the Bag of Treats (every animal pulled from the bag comes out dismembered), the Flying Cauldron of Simulation (it induced the delusion of flying, but didn't actually fly), etc. He ran a discount magic item store, and was totally used car salesman about the items. Always found some good reason why you'd want the curse (the time-locked bag of holding was more secure, the bag of treats was better for feeding pets, the flying cauldron of simulation he used for teaching people how to fly a flying cauldron, etc).

Kelb_Panthera
2013-11-21, 07:27 AM
I once made a changeling chameleon designed to be able to emulate most of the core classes pretty well. His entire personality was based on being obsessed with a changeling children's game; I'm you.

I'd set him up on some days to mimic one of the other PC's classes and see how long the other PC's or NPC's took to figure it out. The players knew, rather obviously, but on some runs the characters wouldn't figure it out before I changed him again.

Different group, same build, me and the DM knew it was the same character but the other players thought I was just running minor NPC's that would come and go. Got through four sessions before I let enough clues "slip," for them to figure it out.

BWR
2013-11-21, 07:43 AM
{scrubbed}

Yora
2013-11-21, 09:58 AM
I pretty much always play variants of the same two characters. Female human cleric in heavy armor or male half-elf barbarian/sorcerer.

The main reason to create the barbarian/sorcerer was basically to prove that any character can be made to work. I eventually switched barbarian for ranger, which I think works out a bit better, but it's still by far my favorite type of character.

DSmaster21
2013-11-21, 10:36 AM
Two-Spell Kill (PF)

Flavor (Yes I wrote this on my sheet and gave it to my friend)
This character is the first of 5 builds designed using perfectly legal rules, aside from not use the full feat/trait selection for it ((Traits equal 1/2 Feat)I had 2 and 1/2 feats and Friend Had 4 (He was a human fighter)) , to prove that my sorcerers can always win against your battle turtles.

Stats/Specs

Lv. 1 Human Sorcerer
Copper Dragon Bloodline
12/14/14/13/8/17
AC (Back to this in a minute)

Feats/Traits

Spell Focus Evocation
Varisian Tattoo Evocation
Signature Spell Shocking Grasp

Spells

Shocking Grasp (With Feats, Traits and Class Arcana, Touch deals 3d6+3 damage)
Mage Armor (Which Normally a Draconic Sorcerer auto-receives at lv 3)

Battle Usage

(We started about two rounds apart)
Apply Mage Armor AC=16
Let him come
Activate Shocking Grasp
Let him come
Deliver the Touch (12 Damage I believe)
Five Foot Step
Activate Again
Brace for Charge
Took damage (Down to two)
Miss on Touch
Missed By Swing
Electrocute him for 19

(I then rebuilt him as Magpie the Swap all instances of Shocking Grasp for Magic Missile Guy and killed my friend again)


He would have run efficiently for maybe one level and then been very subpar.

I got a little tired of him ridiculing my 9 HP and ability to "cripple" foes (it is called battlefield control) and shoot things with a crossbow (I had a working morningstar but I tried not to need it) so I decided to prove why you don't screw with a magic user.

Angel Bob
2013-11-21, 02:36 PM
Mr. Farwell Billingsworth is a respectable English gentleman of 51 years, complete with dapper suit-coat, top hat, and monocle. To drive the point home, his equipment list includes an embroidered handkerchief. He enjoys a good cup of tea, and places great emphasis on dignity and proper manners...

...aaaaaand his class is barbarian. So in combat, he proceeds to completely flip out and beat the ever-loving crap out of his opponents with his cane.

He's been a smashing success with my group, especially given his dialogue, and I don't think he'll ever be forgotten.

Trickquestion
2013-11-21, 03:20 PM
Mr. Farwell Billingsworth is a respectable English gentleman of 51 years, complete with dapper suit-coat, top hat, and monocle. To drive the point home, his equipment list includes an embroidered handkerchief. He enjoys a good cup of tea, and places great emphasis on dignity and proper manners...

...aaaaaand his class is barbarian. So in combat, he proceeds to completely flip out and beat the ever-loving crap out of his opponents with his cane.

He's been a smashing success with my group, especially given his dialogue, and I don't think he'll ever be forgotten.

Interestingly, that sounds just like an NPC I created to serve as a villain. He was an adventurer in his youth, a barbarian, who was now retired and spent his days sipping tea in the mansion built from all that Lich gold. He was also pulling the strings of an army of roving criminals/religious fanatics in a bid to become a god. When the players put the pieces together and break into his mansion, he greets them while calmly sipping tea, gives them the explanation he feels they've earned, then throws the entire dining room table at them as a surprise attack. During the ensuing brawl, he beat the rogue to death with a chair and made the cleric eat his own torn off hand.

BWR
2013-11-22, 02:51 AM
Mr. Farwell Billingsworth is a respectable English gentleman of 51 years, complete with dapper suit-coat, top hat, and monocle. To drive the point home, his equipment list includes an embroidered handkerchief. He enjoys a good cup of tea, and places great emphasis on dignity and proper manners...

...aaaaaand his class is barbarian. So in combat, he proceeds to completely flip out and beat the ever-loving crap out of his opponents with his cane.

He's been a smashing success with my group, especially given his dialogue, and I don't think he'll ever be forgotten.

So he's Berserker Axinhead (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Characters_of_8-Bit_Theater#The_Other_Warriors) from 8-bit theater?

Arbane
2013-11-22, 03:30 AM
I have a bad tendency to overthink things to the point of paralysis, and I've found one good way to avoid that is to play characters who can be best categorized as "kamikaze dumbasses".

Yoshi, Freelance Ninja

In my defense, I rolled up this guy in the 1990s, and the ninja craze was in full swing. A friend wanted me to make a character for his decidedly random homebrew RPG, so I made a three-foot-tall anthropomorphic rabbit (based very loosely on Sam of Sam & Max) with a katana, a big grin, and a coat of Rustoleum for camouflage. In the course of his career he bit an alien so hard that it sent their entire hive-mind into shock while trying to ride it like a horse, ticked off the Transdimensional Mafia while they were trying to steal a building, and got cursed by another PC.

Rodney
In another friend's Mutants and Masterminds game where we were all playing teenagers with random superpowers, I played a character very obviously based on Largo from Megatokyo: a videogame-obsessed goofball with an unorthodox view of reality, and time-distorting powers. I remember him trying to get one of his teammates to explore a 'haunted' house with him, commenting "if the characters in these games just brought along a crowbar and a stepladder they'd take two, maybe three hours, tops." Then the game got serious, and I ended up dropping out.

KiCowboy
2013-11-22, 03:26 PM
Once upon a time our college gaming group included Byron. He was a great friend, a fine party member in any campaign, but we all cringed when he got the craving to run a game of his own. Still, he was too nice a guy to let inconsistent and imbalanced homebrewing and awkward stories keep us from hanging out. In time we learned to make our own fun in his games, but do so in an immersive rather than destructive way. And so . . .

Ser Llewellyn Forester
- From what was at one point meant to be a game of Agone, but with over 20 pages of "adjustments" emailed to us. Not fully understanding what overrode or contradicted what, I simply decided to submit someone utterly ridiculous, and allow my friend to coach me into what fit his vision of the world. And so was born the extremely charismatic but troubled knight. Despite standing over seven feet tall and being a recognized and landed knight of the realm, Ser Llewellyn was quite mad in that he sincerely believed he was a Satyr. As such, his delusions had led to the disadvantage of an addiction . . . to sex. Like, honest to god game penalties if the character does not seal the deal addiction. Surely, this was an unplayable character in what was meant to be a fairly dark setting, no? But alas, my good friend Byron loved it and demanded the character be played "as-is." I will confess that while we never quite understood where our friend's short lived intrigue campaign was trying to go - it was utterly enjoyable to challenge myself to roleplay this man's delusions much like a randy Don Quixote

Sammy & Eddie
- Ah yes, during our friend's Gundam kick. Not to be satisfied with any existing systems, Byron presented us with what came to be known as his "Mecha Manifesto" - a system he designed himself from the ground up. Sadly, we did not fully share Byron's friendly sense of madness and as such, though we understood how to make the human characters - found the near 13 rolls a turn customized mech portion a bit daunting. At this point many other friends had found polite ways to bow out. But thanks to overactive senses of guilt and no decent excuses, two of us remained. And since this only excited Byron that he could run a more "personalized" campaign, my other friend and I committed to the only thing that made sense at the time. . . .

We made street level beat cops Sammy & Eddie. Not incredibly bright, a bit out of shape, good hearted coffee and donut loving cops. We convinced him that for a truly "personal" story, we felt the real drama would be in following the lives of two very common men in caught up in the events of an epic time. Strangely enough this turned out to far and away be Byron's best game. He got to narrate all the amazing mech battles his imagination had been craving to let out, and we got to become embroiled in a story that started almost a light hearted spoof on the spy genre into a compelling story of simple people questioning their loyalties and forced to make terrible choices for a "greater good" they were being told of but didn't really understand.


Alternately, another friend had a tendency to run character grinder Cthulhu games where we all knew not to be too attached to any backstory, because we would be re-rolling in a session or two. And so when he advised he wanted to start up a Victorian England game circa the 1890's . . .

Tristan Wade
- A tough as nails cowboy turned Pinkerton after some time spent in Deadwood. He had little more than a bit of high school education, didn't speak any foreign languages, and had zero starting occult knowledge. This man somehow survived a campaign that lasted over a year. Ancient book in a strange undead language bound in off-looking leather? Burn it partner - or he'll shoot you where you stand rather than see any more of this nonsense. Hunted by vampires in a setting where they take permanent wounds from silver? Load that shotgun with dimes and tell those bastards if they come any closer he'll aim at leg level - eternity is a long time to be a cripple. Buy time to back up to the horse, shoot them in the legs regardless, and run like hell. Etc. Fish-out-of-water survival was never so gratifying.

Calen
2013-11-22, 07:45 PM
Different group, same build, me and the DM knew it was the same character but the other players thought I was just running minor NPC's that would come and go. Got through four sessions before I let enough clues "slip," for them to figure it out.

My party (or most of it) thinks I am playing a minotaur ??/warlock. Actually a changeling. :smallbiggrin:

Last session the NPC I brought to the group keeps referring to "the other guy" that recruited him. The players just think I made a really good disguise check.

Trickquestion
2013-11-27, 01:32 PM
At the moment, this is only a concept, but I will work this into my campaign if it kills me:

Smaug Paul.

The Dragon Libertarian.

The Oni
2013-11-27, 02:05 PM
Once played a Koi Hengeyokai duelist. He was launched into adventuring because he was originally tasked with watching over a ridiculously powerful artifact (and ringing the bell if any trouble started, to wake up the *real* guardian, 'cause he was kind of a small fry himself). He snuck off to fool around with the local daimyo's daughter and the Celestial Brush was stolen while they were having snoo-snoo, so he was forced to track it down by my halfassed homebrew dragon goddess.

When he didn't look like a goldfish, he was Bishonen enough to pass for a chick and totally exploited this fact by wielding war fans for Bluff-based attack bonuses. He was planning to prestige into Warshaper (at a ludicrously low level) so that he could evolve breath weapons and become Gyrados.

Mono Vertigo
2013-11-27, 02:21 PM
Once played a Koi Hengeyokai duelist. He was launched into adventuring because he was originally tasked with watching over a ridiculously powerful artifact (and ringing the bell if any trouble started, to wake up the *real* guardian, 'cause he was kind of a small fry himself). He snuck off to fool around with the local daimyo's daughter and the Celestial Brush was stolen while they were having snoo-snoo, so he was forced to track it down by my halfassed homebrew dragon goddess.

When he didn't look like a goldfish, he was Bishonen enough to pass for a chick and totally exploited this fact by wielding war fans for Bluff-based attack bonuses. He was planning to prestige into Warshaper (at a ludicrously low level) so that he could evolve breath weapons and become Gyrados.
... you played Magikarp?
That's kind of amazing, and the worst part is, I'd love to hear about his adventures. :smallbiggrin:

genderlich
2013-11-27, 03:18 PM
I played Giles Georgie Geraldo, a flamboyantly gay dwarf rogue/barbarian who had a bright orange mohawk, went around in nothing but short-shorts and a leather vest, and relentlessly hit on the party fighter (who was in on the scheme). "Ye're kinda short for an elf. Got any dwarf in ye?" "No..." "Want some?" I did it as revenge on the DM for purposefully killing my previous character.

Then when Giles wore out his welcome and was also killed, I went with the most stereotypical pirate imaginable. I spent half a session trying pirate-themed pickup lines on the first female NPC we met, who happened to be a goblin barmaid, in an attempt to make the PC-killing DM as uncomfortable as possible. After that first character died I just lost all interest in trying to take that campaign seriously.

The Oni
2013-11-27, 03:33 PM
... you played Magikarp?
That's kind of amazing, and the worst part is, I'd love to hear about his adventures. :smallbiggrin:

They were awesome, but sadly came to a tragic and premature end.

He ended up with way high dex in hybrid form and at one point, critical hit an Orc while dual-wielding the fans. It did so much damage that the DM fluffed the crit as summoning actual cherry blossoms while the Orc's various pieces slowly slid off of his corpse and he fell over, samurai-single-stroke style. They went back to town and he went to sleep in fish form, underwater.

Meanwhile, another party member managed to be so insanely petty that he tried to get the entire party killed - twice - rather than cooperate with the new party member (not me), who he disliked IRL. I tore the character sheet in half out of frustration and, per GM rules, wasn't allowed to use Bishonen Magikarp again. In game, he had a blue dragon fry the character, underwater, and eat him like the fish stick he was. An appropriate, if unfortunate end.

No brains
2013-11-27, 10:23 PM
The crazy crap that I have played...

I once tried to make a sorcerer with a sea-snake familiar he would use as a weapon. People use snakes as weapons in robberies! Why can't I use one as a sorcerer? He was never approved.

My first ever character was called 'the worst dwarf ever' by the DM because I readily befriended the half-orc the other PC played and thought far out of the box.

The Oni
2013-11-28, 01:52 AM
In Pathfinder there's a Rakshasa that turns from a snake into a (ludicrously blinged-out) handheld weapon. You can get one as a familiar. Show your DM that and maybe he'll lighten up?

Deadmeat.GW
2013-11-28, 06:33 AM
My most outrageous character was an Exalted character which I build as a master crafts man.

Imagine, young boy genius with a golden spanner/hammer/whatever able to fix anything...

Then the GM put his foot down and said crafting had to be bought for every single type of material you know how to craft...on top of what type of crafting skill (i.e. Blacksmithing required Craft Blacksmith, Craft Iron, Craft Wood, Craft Leather, etc...to be able to make ANYTHING...)
He just read the line: 'Characters who wish to master multiple crafts must take this ability multiple times. s to mean any material and any type of craft.

During the course of the campaign I therefore obligingly bought ALL of the possible materials (wood, stone, orichalcum, jade, gold, silver, iron, ...etc...) as a craft skill.

This made my character an awful lot weaker then any of the other players (and this included several Dragon blooded whereas I was a Solar Exalted and a Twilight caste to boot...) despite making it to every single game unlike most players who missed out on about 1 in 3 games (i.e. I got about a third more xp then most but given that I had 19 times the Craft skill...and I kept leveling it...)

My weapon of choice was a Warhammer I made myself which was made from 5 different alloys (all of the Magic Alloys were used) but which only did Bashing damage (another ruling by the GM...)(a lot of Bashing to be honest but even so only Bashing...until I started making myself better stuff which resulted in a warhammer worthy of an Exalted Warlord which also happened to be enchanted for Smithing which had the following stats: Speed -6, Accuracy +1, Damage +14B, Defense +1, Resources 5 (and then some, I spend about a quarter of a million of the Dragon Blooded currency on it, adventured across the globe to get the materials and studied the oldest artifacts known to anyone to design it...) with a minimum Strength needed of 5...

Slow, accurate and extremely durable (so I could block with any part of it) while hitting like a freight train in combat.
I would usually only get one swing in, if that in the fights.

I also learned a lot of magic powers (mostly related to enchanting and enhancing items with a smattering of healing powers).

I also had the flaw that I could NOT, indeed would not be able to create anything worse then a Legendary item unless I spend a Willpower point (and because of GM ruling a diff 9 Willpower roll).
This made it of course very, very difficult early on to stay under the radar from the Dragon Blooded.

So...character with Strength 5, Dex 4 and Sta 5 wielding a weapon doing +14 bashing damage and Athletics 5 ( I needed it to run away from all the people trying to kill me throughout the early part of the campaign...)

My character then had the Shattering Grasp charm...
Now imagine what happened when I faced a Castle gate made from Steel (iron based), wood, several other materials which I had the craft skill for and which among other things used Blacksmithing for part of its creation...

Ok, ok, it does not sound too bad does it?

Times 2 damage or count my Str + athletics as twice as high as for the purpose of breaking something...

Then the GM decided I HAD to spend xp on some combat Charms to keep me competitive to the rest of the party...

A Charm that changed my damage from Bashing to Lethal or Lethal to Aggravated damage but with a twist...
It only worked against inanimated objects and non-living things (i.e. a boat or a small golem).

It was a choice I did not mind overly much so meh.

And to top it of...a Skill based damage increaser against all inanimated objects, creatures, living creatures, ghosts, etc...
But here he made a mistake...
The new Charm cost a fair few motes to activate but had the following effect...

Increase your DAMAGE BASE by the number of DOTS in your CRAFTING skill (s).
This was first made by a player who had 5 ranks in craft Soulsteel (and was allowed to craft anything he wanted as long as it was soulsteel without the need for other crafting skills).
Armed with a Soulsteel warscythe he did something ridiculous like +18 aggravated damage on a normal swing (yes, a Warscythe with +13 aggravated damage was the base damage for this character...he did get the GM to approve the most ridiculous things...).

I however learned it and then was told since I was not an Abyssal it would only work on inanimated objects, etc...and not anything alive...(armour yes, person inside armour no, he takes damage as if the weapon is not enhanced...).

The GM by this point had however forgotten one little, itsy bitsy detail...

My craft dots consisted of 19 TIMES 5 dots...i.e. 95 added to my BASE damage.

The campaign progresses with mister Soulsteel stealing the show on all occasions from our Dawn caste warrior (and yes, an Abysal was travelling with us and nobody seemed to mind so my character who was terrified of having to face the thing in combat kept his mouth shut) and generally killing most thing quite handily to the point that the GM decided to throw something against the party (i.e. the Abysal...) that would not get minced in 2 turns of combat.

He send after us a platoon of First Age Golems and Warwalkers.
(5 golems and 2 warwalkers)

The armour they wore was soo powerful that it would reduce all damage by 15 and players needed to roll to do damage.

The Dragon Blooded with their measly 12 aggravated damage with their enchanted weapons I made for them could not even hope to hurt these things unless they made a very, very good roll for their damage (roll 12 + any success of 1 for damage and need to score 16 success to do any damage at all...).
Our Lunar did 9 aggravated damage each attack but could hit over a dozen times in a single round was even worse off...
If he hit with all dice he would roll 19 dice for damage...and the Golems had 15 health levels the Warwalkers 32...
Unless he was insanely lucky no way he would do damage.

Our Dawn caste Exalted did 'only' 16 aggravated damage so he and the Abysal were able to get a few points of damage in if they got lucky...
Unlike the rest who needed to be insanely lucky to do the same thing.

Then the GM came to me and asked me what I would do...

My response was: 'I kill a Warwalker.'

The whole group started laughing at this...

I then proceeded to inform the party what I just was going to do...

Str 5 + 14 from warhammer of much personal use + 95 from crafting skills = 114 damage...
Multiply this by 2 for use of Shattering Grasp charm which I was allowed to use while wielding my hammer...
224 damage
Use Third Circle spell that doubles damage for enemies you curse and designate (takes a free action when you are able to study the enemies thoroughly and given that these were creations I had recovered the Blue Prints for...)
448 damage

Change the damage type from Bashing to Lethal...

I then said I would not mind rolling the dice but it would take some time... :).

I then checked and saw I could attack up to 5 times a round and proceeded to kill both Warwalkers and three of the Golems in a single round while the rest of the party pestered the remaining two until the next round when I destroyed them too...

I then proceeded to wipe the floor with a certain group of creatures which counted as crafted also when the GM had them swoop in so the result was that NOBODY would DARE come near my personal realm as I would destroy whole armies single handedly.
A bunch of Abysals tried too and I destroyed their weapons first, then their armour, then everything they carried on themselves and left them butt naked on the battlefield.
This was when I found out I threw a handful of GRAVEL and whatever inanimate object that gravel hit would be destroyed because of me throwing it...

The campaign collapse shortly after that last fight...as the GM gave up trying to contain us.

The Oni
2013-11-28, 05:06 PM
...in a CAVE! With a BOX OF SCRAPS!

Sith_Happens
2013-11-28, 11:23 PM
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure 448 damage is enough to say "I level the city" and proceed to do so with one swing.

Jay R
2013-11-29, 01:29 PM
1E Chivalry and Sorcery has no multi-class characters. So I decided to do one anyway, based on the fact that while all other characters level up based on experience points, Alchemists level up based on completing certain alchemical experiments.

So Sir Cornelius the Philosophical was a Fighter, eventually knighted, who adventured in search of components which he took back home for his alchemical experiments.

---------------

I once created a TOON character for D&D - Ragnar Rabbit, the Hanna-Barbarian.

------------------

And in a wild west game, I told everyone that I was designing a character based on a western TV show. So nobody was too surprised when I showed up with Cali Yang, a Chinese martial artist, clearly based on Kwai-Chang Caine of Kung Fu. Several episodes into the game, he washed off the skin dye, and revealed himself as Cal Young, a federal agent based on the disguise artist Artemus Gordon of Wild, Wild West.

BWR
2013-11-29, 01:50 PM
Do TOON characters really apply to this thread?
I just sorta assumed they didn't because the entire point is they should be ridiculous.

I made zzzzzzz-DONK, a sentient mobile astronaut photocopying machine.

VariSami
2013-11-29, 02:05 PM
Mine is a classic. As in, over-used. Because the party was in severe need of a tank since all other players had made glass cannon characters, I rolled up 'Gruul'. Yes, that is a MtG reference.

Gruul was a Feral Mineral Warrior Half-Minotaur Goliath Barbarian / Fighter / Warblade. He even had a back story to explain it all: since the setting was divided according to an ongoing war of elemental kings, the feral half-minotaur (ape totem) barbarian had been captured in the mountains by a nation affiliated with the Earth according to their tradition of handling monstrous humanoids into guardians. The basic training had made Gruul a specialized fighter (sunderer). As a part of his promotion, he was mineralized (once again, according to tradition) and trained in a new style of fighting, making him a warblade. Ta-da!

The character had an intelligence score of 3, the lowest allowed for non-animals. Thus, when the starved runaway was picked from the bottom of a ditch and fed some meat, he became doggishly loyal to the party's frenzied berserker. Basically all his replies were broken English and pertained whether or not he could eat things and people the party had encountered. A running gag was that he would return from an alley chewing on fresh human limbs. Once he fell down an illusion-covered pit trap only to regenerate from the damage with fast healing and to climb back up due to his totem-granted climb speed. The character was really, really hard to hurt in a meaningful way in melee, and he would dish out quite some damage with the combination of his absurd strength score and power attack.

Alent
2013-11-29, 06:03 PM
My most absurd character I never really got to play.:smallfrown:

Years ago a friend invited me to join his homebrew system Play by chat roleplay, which was driven by the usual "Mystery stuff from space gives everyone superpowers!" tropes, and full of the usual suspects: The amnesiacs and pastless with superpowers, the angstfilled youths with superpowers, the pyro, the obvious doubleagent, and so on.

I should mention that the mystery stuff from space also had a tendency to twist the mind of people it gave powers to, which helped result in the above laundry list of tropes. They were so obsessed with the moral dilemmas of angsty teens considering evil, that, well, I wanted to remind them that there's nothing as sinister as little children.:thog:

Despite that as a starting point, I could think of nothing that would stand out amongst the crowd of clichestorm. I couldn't just take a kid directly- being a brat with superpowers is a terrible cliche of its own. It was when I was cleaning out my spam folder later that day that it hit me- I'd make a golem animated by his unobtanium mutagen stuff, named after one of the spam-filter workaround message titles.

Contacted my friend to see if the idea would fly, and after he finished laughing he put his seal of approval on Pen Fifteen, the animated Kindergarten Teacher's Table.


Pen Fifteen was a Massive hulking monster made out of one of those half-circle teacher's tables like they have in kindergarten. His arms and legs were blue plastic and aluminum stacking chairs that were magically tethered to the table legs, and his head was a giant floating toybin that floated at the indentation where the teacher's chair would go. Instead of eyes, he had two floating picturebooks where his eyes would go, the type with standing cutouts in them. When his eyes were closed, the books were closed, when they were wide... you had random standup picturebook scenes. (sad was two cloudscapes. angry was random dinosaurs. etc)

He spoke in a long, slow, drawling voice reminiscent of Eeyore, and when asked why his name was Pen Fifteen, he would respond "That's mah name... lil' billy carved it right here with a pocket knife he wasn't supposta bring to class."

His memories began at the point when he arrived in the class room, and so his personality was an amalgamation/emulation of the kids who had been around him up until the school was abandoned in the apocalypse. Once he had become self aware enough to actually become mobile, he searched the school for days trying to find the kids before eventually giving up and yelling ollieollieotsanfree (sp?) for a day before finally realizing he was alone, which drove him to leave the school. This made him excessively curious, innocently naive, and resulted in nightmare fodder at the most random of times.

His method of combat was basically to draw a random toy out of the hammerspace toybox (his mouth) and supercharge it with gravity and/or time magic which represented the imagination of one of the kids who went through the kindergarten classroom he came from.

Often times he would build vehicles, buildings, fortresses, etc. out of duplo blocks, Lincoln logs, etc. He'd use those noisemaker "raygun" toys to actually shoot people, the effect being whatever random effect one of the kids from his class had once said it had. If he's remembering the time jimmy said "bang you're a frog?", well, now that person's a frog unless they say "NUH UH!" more times than jimmy said "uh huh!" Sometimes he'd even pull out stuff from the school sandbox that had worked it's way into the classroom.

The ultimate attack, drawn from the imagination of lil' billy himself, was to tell someone they weren't happy enough, pull out a tickle me elmo doll, create a spacial distortion around it, shake it up so it would laugh for hundreds of years, and throw it at someone, trapping them in an isolated pocket of space time with a laughing tickle me elmo doll until they died. All an onlooker would see is a tiny red ball flying at someone, that person being encased in a distorted event horizon, and when the distortion fades all that's left is a withered mummy on the ground.
As intended, Pen stood out from the clichestorm cast, but the way things went I didn't get to play with the group. I hung out with them a few sessions before playing, and got to know them, introduced my character concept, but a weekly event I had prior obligations to rescheduled to that night, so I never got to participate. They did bring him in as an NPC for a little while and the GM mentioned that the character was an absolute blast, but eventually they wrote him out to simplify bookkeeping.

Jay R
2013-11-29, 10:50 PM
Do TOON characters really apply to this thread?

He was not intended to play in a game of TOON. He was intended to play in a game of D&D, in which they said "bring any character from any system".

Kitten Champion
2013-11-29, 11:34 PM
I played Drizzt Do'Urden.

Well, she had a slightly different name, sex, and was technically a half-orc, but the same characterization. Mary Sue-ishness, protracted internal monologues, melodramatic tendencies, the works. It took a while to be able to improvise Salvatore's voice easily.

It was fun, my character's father led a warband to recapture her and get back into the good graces of his dark god by sacrificing me. She had a mystical wolf summon who was her only friend in the world. There was even a lawful evil assassin named Nemesis Khan who was obsessed with besting her but ended up her ally in the end.

Considering I went out of my way to avoid cliched characters since the start, it was interesting playing one dialed up to 11.

mistformsquirrl
2013-11-29, 11:53 PM
I have a few silly ones in my past... let's see here... we'll start with my Shadowrun "ninja" character.

He was about as stealthy as a machinegun on full auto. In fact that's PRECISELY how stealthy he was. Why? Because for reasons even I don't understand, he carried around 2 SMGs and a light machinegun when on a run. Why? Nobody knows. How did he count as a ninja? Well he dressed in all black and carried a couple katana, surely that was enough.

I was also uncreative enough to just re-create him half a dozen times after he'd been killed off (repeatedly.)

In my defense, my DMs were similarly silly and the whole campaign did not go particularly well (We were all 14 or so at the time lol) - still, the whole "Ninja with a light machinegun" thing baffles me to this day.

---

More in terms of mechanical ridiculousness rather than personality ridiculousness was my first D&D character.

A half-celestial* fighter/sorcerer/spellsword using a two-bladed sword and throwing lightning bolts all over the place. Now, this was admittedly a *very* low op campaign (nobody at the table knew what optimization was) - so I can't be too hard on 15 year old me... but looking back yeah, that was not the best built character.

Strangely I still like him, and might rebuild him with a little more... oomph, at some point.

*Who the DM houseruled did not have any of his abilities except his wings. He considered flying powerful enough to warrant a +5 Level Adjustment. (This was 3.0, I should add.)

-----

Finally - my just flat out strangest character of all time (and yet one of my favorites to this day) - a guy who started out a ninja* - but who's girlfriend died in the course of the campaign so I retrained him to Bard with a weird prestige class from a 3rd party splat book.

The prestige class allowed him to create life, but lacking the divine spark (still a mortal after all), the life he created was doomed to always slowly turn insane. He could spend gold to keep his creations sane longer, but they all eventually would succumb to madness. That was OK though because he was pretty nuts by this point himself. He kept creating clones of aforementioned dead girlfriend. Then the campaign ended prematurely (I think partly due to his weirdness); so I brought him back as a minor deity in my own campaigns.

Said character was basically by the end a harmless eccentric of a god who'd learned to live with the loss... but remained err, loopy. He had a tendency to interrupt the players at various points, opening Gates and stepping through, looking around, realizing he was in the wrong place, and saying something to the effect of "Wrong door." before departing.

I kinda want to play him more seriously now that I'm a bit more mature - there's a seed of something interesting in that character I think.

*Specifically a Rogue styled like a ninja. It's amusing... I was on a huge ninja kick at the time; and now in the last 48 hours I've picked up another one. ... hrm... coincidence? (Yes.)

Makeitstop
2013-12-02, 10:44 PM
I have a tendency to make characters that go against type and defy expectations. And I love making long detailed backstories. Every character I have ever made has given my GM a headache.

There was Allistair, the half-orc nobleman/gentleman thief who wields a double axe. It all made sense in context.
The short version is that he came from a noble family, and his mother was born with a divine gift for healing. She ran off to put her abilities to use, had adventures of her own, and eventually found herself serving as a healer in a war in a far off land where orcs and humans were fighting a common enemy. The leader of the orcs was unusually intelligent, and as she nursed him back to health, they kind of fell for each other.
So the war wiped out his clan, and she had seen more of the world than she ever wanted, so she went back home, but pregnant, and with a secret orc lover. Her family took her in but hid her condition, and when Allistair was born, they told everyone (including him) that he was a war orphan that she adopted. She didn't want to play along, but when they revealed that they had her orc lover locked up, and his life depended on her cooperation, she played nice.
Allistair grew up as an outsider in his own family, and as a charity case among the "true nobles." At his mother's insistance, he learned to wield his father's double axe, as it was part of his birthright. Eventually his mother got sick and on her deathbed, revealed the truth about his birth, and told where to find his father. He freed him, and then confronted his grandfather, the patriarch of the family who had treated him as a servant and an embarrassment, rather than family. But his grandfather, having just lost a daughter, was in mood, and a shouting matched turned into a concussion for grandpa and a stolen inheritance for Allistair.
From that day forward, Allistar traveled dressed in his finest clothes and making it obvious exactly who he was as he robbed those noble bastards, and particularly his own family's businesses.

And then there's Greth, the druid who hates nature. But that's a story for another time.

A_Man
2013-12-02, 11:41 PM
I once ran a crazy mustached black hat rabbi, who thought his mustache was a gift from god, and the same 'stache that David had.

He was also a fan of Cow Guts as a food, and owned a chain Cow Guts fast food restaurant, and was remarkably rich.

His 'stache was nothing short of mythical, seeing how it would grant flight, had a unicycle stuffed inside of it (and a bazooka, but that's less interesting. :smalltongue:), held an abandoned puppy, a few Cthulu 'stache lobsters, and could fly off and stab people with a dagger. It was awesome. :smallbiggrin:

He was overly attached to the stache, which actually caused a party conflict right in the beggining of the campaign, where someone cut a single hair off of it, to which he reacted by pulling out a morning star, and attacked. XD

The campaign itself was silly, though, with Nazi Sasquetch Death Squads, but I think the highlight was shaving a clone hitler's stache off.

Graustein
2013-12-03, 07:05 AM
My first ever 3.5 character would make any optimiser cry. Lonko, Halfling Bard. Charming, flamboyant, moronic. His greatest desire was to tap into his draconic ancestry, and he sought to emulate the dragon in every way.

Mechanically, he was a Bard being built to take the Dragon Disciple Prestige Class. His weapon of choice was a pair of masterwork spiked gauntlets, dual-wielded, crafted to resemble dragon claws. He didn't have the requisite feats to dual-wield, of course; they would be redundant as soon as he got his dragon claws. His spell selection mirrored as closely as he was able to a Dragon's capabilities (which isn't very closely, because Bard). Fortunately, since he was a Bard and had excellent Charisma, his inability to hit even himself with those stupid stupid claws. He dump-statted Wisdom, and you can be sure I roleplayed that.

I think his moment of triumph was when he fumbled a Perform check in a tavern in a town where he was going to compete in a gladiatorial tourney. The DM ruled that although his performance was technically good, his choice of content was not, as he managed to insult every species in the room, Halflings included with racist jokes and terrible pantomime. Naturally, a riot ensued, from which his party members were somehow able to extract him. Instead of skipping town, the next day he went to the tourney anyway, where he was recognised the second he started up his Bardic Music (his Inspire Courage song was Don't Stop Me Now, every time) and lynched in short order.

I've also had characters who weren't dead weight. My favourite is Shadow, an awakened cat Psion. He was terrific fun to play, his powers were not common knowledge in-universe and even fellow party members assumed he was just the rogue's pet cat. He was careful enough that the rogue just assumed he was extremely deadly. Mind Blasting people just as they get Sneak Attacked, running ahead to scare guards off with horror-movie voice-from-nowhere shenanigans (ie. Intimidate checks delivered telepathically, bolstered by judicious application of Demoralise), that sort of thing. It was ultimately decided that he should be retired, both because he was way too powerful and because in order to play him to the fullest, RP-wise, we had to take a lot of just-me time, which was no fun for the other players.

illyahr
2013-12-03, 01:05 PM
One of my most interesting characters was a CN (read: completely and brokenly insane) Elf named Random.

The backstory:
As a young (relatively speaking) elf, he was walking through the woods near his family home when he accidentally stumbled into a wizard's duel due to his lack of attention. By the time he noticed what was going on, he had been struck multiple times by ongoing magical effects. The experience left him infused with magic and altered his appearance. Now having blue hair, red skin and yellow eyes, he tried to make his way in the world. The infusion of magic left him a penchant for both arcane and divine magic (Sorcerer and Favored Soul, respectively) but tapping into too much at once slowly started to break his mind further.

The breaking point:
After a while travelling, he attracted the notice of two local groups of fey. Both groups attempted to recruit this strange-looking newcomer with a mix of fey sorcery and fey nature magic. The combination shattered the division between his arcane and divine power, merging the two into an anarchic whole (Mystic Theurge PrC). As his mind completely shattered, the final fragments of sanity manifested as a familiar, a raven named Poe, and it was all that was left of Random's rational thought (Poe had both a higher Intelligence and Wisdom).

Enter: the Broken:
Random's spells and abilities all fell into mind-f#@*s and battle control, he had very few direct damage spells. His favorite tricks were using Alter Self + Mirror Image to look like one of his opponents, or Phantasmal Terrain to have people walk into/off of things. He would Suggestion/Otto's Irrisistable Dance/Tasha's Hideous Laughter the entire enemy party while his allies cleaned up. In the event he needed to fight seriously, he would cast Enlarge Person, Divine Might, and then Righteous Might/Tenser's Transformation/Body of Iron.

The endstate:
Suffice it to say, he drew atttention. Mortal and Immortal alike began to take notice and vie for his aid in battle and he began to inspire a cult following of the insane and cast-out. He became so unstable, that his body itself began to change at will and he became a were-tiger. His familiar, Poe, absorbed enough of the cast-off magic to take a level each in Wizard and Druid and got a Badger animal companion named Edgar. Before the gods realized what was happening (too busy trying to decide who he belonged to), enough mortals had begun to worship him that he ascended to godhood as the Mad God of Atrophy, called the Avatar of Chaos Unending. His followers seek to reduce the world back to its primordeal state. His domains are Chaos, Trickery, Destruction, and Insanity.

Suffice it to say, my DM does not allow me to play him anymore. He still shows up from time to time as an NPC and my PC characters are allowed to have him as a deity. :smallbiggrin:

The Fury
2013-12-03, 02:36 PM
I once ran a crazy mustached black hat rabbi, who thought his mustache was a gift from god, and the same 'stache that David had.

He was also a fan of Cow Guts as a food, and owned a chain Cow Guts fast food restaurant, and was remarkably rich.

His 'stache was nothing short of mythical, seeing how it would grant flight, had a unicycle stuffed inside of it (and a bazooka, but that's less interesting. :smalltongue:), held an abandoned puppy, a few Cthulu 'stache lobsters, and could fly off and stab people with a dagger. It was awesome. :smallbiggrin:

He was overly attached to the stache, which actually caused a party conflict right in the beggining of the campaign, where someone cut a single hair off of it, to which he reacted by pulling out a morning star, and attacked. XD

The campaign itself was silly, though, with Nazi Sasquetch Death Squads, but I think the highlight was shaving a clone hitler's stache off.

I...I can't top that. There's no way. He's like a cross between the Ice King and Axe Cop.

DSmaster21
2013-12-03, 04:55 PM
One of my most interesting characters was a CN (read: completely and brokenly insane) Elf named Random.

The backstory:
As a young (relatively speaking) elf, he was walking through the woods near his family home when he accidentally stumbled into a wizard's duel due to his lack of attention. By the time he noticed what was going on, he had been struck multiple times by ongoing magical effects. The experience left him infused with magic and altered his appearance. Now having blue hair, red skin and yellow eyes, he tried to make his way in the world. The infusion of magic left him a penchant for both arcane and divine magic (Sorcerer and Favored Soul, respectively) but tapping into too much at once slowly started to break his mind further.

The breaking point:
After a while travelling, he attracted the notice of two local groups of fey. Both groups attempted to recruit this strange-looking newcomer with a mix of fey sorcery and fey nature magic. The combination shattered the division between his arcane and divine power, merging the two into an anarchic whole (Mystic Theurge PrC). As his mind completely shattered, the final fragments of sanity manifested as a familiar, a raven named Poe, and it was all that was left of Random's rational thought (Poe had both a higher Intelligence and Wisdom).

Enter: the Broken:
Random's spells and abilities all fell into mind-f#@*s and battle control, he had very few direct damage spells. His favorite tricks were using Alter Self + Mirror Image to look like one of his opponents, or Phantasmal Terrain to have people walk into/off of things. He would Suggestion/Otto's Irrisistable Dance/Tasha's Hideous Laughter the entire enemy party while his allies cleaned up. In the event he needed to fight seriously, he would cast Enlarge Person, Divine Might, and then Righteous Might/Tenser's Transformation/Body of Iron.

The endstate:
Suffice it to say, he drew atttention. Mortal and Immortal alike began to take notice and vie for his aid in battle and he began to inspire a cult following of the insane and cast-out. He became so unstable, that his body itself began to change at will and he became a were-tiger. His familiar, Poe, absorbed enough of the cast-off magic to take a level each in Wizard and Druid and got a Badger animal companion named Edgar. Before the gods realized what was happening (too busy trying to decide who he belonged to), enough mortals had begun to worship him that he ascended to godhood as the Mad God of Atrophy, called the Avatar of Chaos Unending. His followers seek to reduce the world back to its primordeal state. His domains are Chaos, Trickery, Destruction, and Insanity.

Suffice it to say, my DM does not allow me to play him anymore. He still shows up from time to time as an NPC and my PC characters are allowed to have him as a deity. :smallbiggrin:

Sounds awesome. Any chance you could share his favored weapon (or make one up (I never can remember the differences from 3/.5 and PF)).

I would love to use him as a deity in one of my campaigns, if I may? (I might change his backstory because this world like sorcerers but hate wizards, I don't know about ?favored soul? (Imagine a world where the clerics and wizards have caused so many wars and so much destruction that many are killed on sight (Basically every cleric and wizard behaved like PCs (dang murder-hobos))))

Cunningtub
2013-12-03, 09:26 PM
Mine is probably a dwarven barbarian named mittens

He was a complete and utter sissy, some of the best moments are with mittens, he once befriended a dragon we had found I went down kinda like this

*Dragon swoops in*
"Sh*t" Argo (elven ranger)
"You are trespassing mortals" dragon
*fails every possible check that could have gotten us out of that*
"Aren't you lonely out here, all alone?" Mittens
"What?" Dragon
"Haven't you ever had a friend" mittens
"No..." Dragon
"Poor thing" mittens
Both mittens and the dragon hug it out and eventually start to cry while my other three friend stand by awkwardly, that's how mittens and fordalsan the dark became friends.

Rakoa
2013-12-03, 10:46 PM
So there is this system I don't think anyone has ever heard of called Hero System, but we call it Champions. Anyway, you get points to build your character, and the system supports almost any concept.

I created a Video Game Character. He wasn't a specific one, just a Video Game Character. His powers included:
infinite wealth (because he could create money by smashing small things)

The ability to set a "Respawn Point" (resurrection and teleport linked together by meditating at a location before death). This could be overcome by killing him with an electrical attack which would delete his save state.

The ability to see in all directions regardless of his own orientation (third person view)

Increased accuracy (locking on to enemies)

Darkvision (turning up the brightness/gamma)

And, when he felt he was losing the battle, once per week he could give himself insane boosts by hacking.

From there I just decided he would be from some stereotypical Sci Fi game so I gave him some future tech armour, a blaster, a lazer sword, a jetpack, and a helmet with assorted utilities (I always pictured him as looking sorta like Proto Man).

He was a fun character.

Zazax
2013-12-04, 06:59 AM
Some time ago, I played in a game using a homebrewed Mecha system based loosely on D&D/D20 (wasn't perfect, but worked for us), and the setting took inspiration from multiple sources (mostly anime), including Gundam, Evangelion, World of Warcraft (somehow), Mechwarrior, and such.

In it, I played a normal dude-turned Mecha pilot who I, quite creatively, named Guy. Guy was a clueless Idiot Hero with no common sense (and more than a little bit of tropes such as the Fool and the Loonie) in a world teeming with Ancient Conspiracies, Eldritch Abominations, alien invasions, political intrigue, a massive world war, and dimension-hopping, mind-controlling cosmic horrors from a level of existence Man was not meant to know existed. He would have died horribly in the span of a few sessions if he hadn't proven to be so stupidly badass.

Highlights include:
- Killing a building-sized, world-ending Eldritch Abomination by running up to it and punching it. While not piloting his mech.
- Fighting off mind control due to being too dumb to realize what the mind-controller wanted him to do, causing him to Rage Quit in frustration.
- Single-handedly fighting off an alien invasion in orbit by cutting them to pieces with an enormous, mech-sized sword. In space. They couldn't outrun him, which is even funnier because he had no flight capabilities whatsoever. Figure that one out.
- Foiling an Ancient Conspiracy by starting a spontaneous song and dance number at just the right moment. Specifically, Cuban Pete from the Mask. (This one's probably my favourite).
- Somehow surviving having all his limbs broken and getting shot six times in the chest.

And less silly, but still awesome:
- Bringing another PC, who has previously killed his love interest, to exactly -9 HP in less than twenty seconds without taking a single HP of damage. And his opponent attacked first.
- Reviving said love interest almost immediately after the aforementioned fight, in a world where Resurrection of any kind is believed to be as impossible as it is in real life, by momentarily rewriting the universe through sheer willpower and badassitude (A lobotomized Eldritch Abomination may have also helped). Made even better from an OOC perspective, as it only happened due to a perfectly-timed natural 20, and anything less would have instantly kicked off the apocalypse (which was why the other player was fighting him; to stop him).

Easily one of, if not the, most fun characters I ever played.

illyahr
2013-12-04, 10:22 AM
Sounds awesome. Any chance you could share his favored weapon (or make one up (I never can remember the differences from 3/.5 and PF)).

I would love to use him as a deity in one of my campaigns, if I may? (I might change his backstory because this world like sorcerers but hate wizards, I don't know about ?favored soul? (Imagine a world where the clerics and wizards have caused so many wars and so much destruction that many are killed on sight (Basically every cleric and wizard behaved like PCs (dang murder-hobos))))

I would love for you to use him. :smallsmile:

A Favored Soul is basically the Sorcerer equivalent of a Cleric. They spontaneous cast divine spells and run on Charisma (Complete Divine for details). Random never studied. All of his magic was internalized due to the magical accidents he kept getting involved in.

Random's favored weapon is the elven thinblade (one-handed exotic, 1d8, 18-20/x2 crit, finessable) and his symbol is a screamin face cracked down the middle and slightly offset.

eulmanis12
2013-12-04, 10:38 AM
I play a character named Aces in an ongoing campaign.
Through various shenanigans he had access to some skills and feats from Fighter, Rogue, and Cleric, without multiclassing. And does a passable job with each. He came in late to the adventure, my earlier character having been killed off for good, (Sven the dwarf may you rest in pieces). In the homebrew world this campaign takes place in, he looks, acts, and claims, to be from a nation that is basicly fantasy counterpart England, but actually comes from a nation on the other side of the world that more resembles Rome and Greece than anything else. His actual name, which only the female members of the party know, due to him introducing himself formally when he meets a pretty girl, is Marcus Amelius Scarus.

Not a single person has managed to figure out what the heck he is in game. Though he has fit into the party well as a good Jack of all Stats character.

DSmaster21
2013-12-04, 01:43 PM
Shadowclub "Shadow,Chad,Crush,Kel" Skeletoncrusher the Tiefling Wizard/Sorcerer/Rogue (I made a couple different versions of him, roughly the same but trying different classes)

Named because He was a heavily stealth-based and had a club (morning-star) as his primary melee and backup dagger (sickle) that he used to slash and beat the undead hated so much to death.

Undead were his berserk button (His village was destroyed by a necromancer's hordes when he was about 6 years old and he was one of the few survivors who fled.

His specialty in magic was necromancy (There are two types of Necros those that learn it to destroy the undead and those who use it to create and empower the undead).

His other rage point was people that called him demon-boy, filth-scum etc. (Tieflings are the children of humans (almost always) and either a demon or devil) He was the child of a devil and a human though his (both human) parents never told him which had been the human that had been involved.

He absolutely hated the amount of crap he put up with being a half-devil necromancer even if he only used his powers to destroy mutual enemies of everyone else.

His familiar was a viper that had ability focus poison, tons of stealth and perception.

(I was about to post this whole thing in the funny character names but I think this belongs in here more)

BeerMug Paladin
2013-12-09, 03:30 AM
My most ridiculous character is a fairly easy choice for me, even though as a rule I tend to be the 'crazy' gamer of any group I happen to be a part of. In D&D 3.5, I made a low-wisdom level 1 commoner named Lister as an adventurer. It was a fairly long campaign, and he somehow survived. If I recall correctly, I think we ended up at 12th level by the end.

Backstory
The backstory was pretty simple, really, he grew up on a farm and the family regarded an ancient tree on their land as something of a fertility blessing. Essentially, they thought of the tree as a guardian spirit of the land, but it was actually just an old, big tree.

This tree protector spirit was called 'Treeyus', and was treated by the family as if it was a lesser demigod for the setting. Lister regarded it as something like the Earthly representation of a lawful good god of plants and life.

Unknown to all on the farm, there was, for some reason or another, a bastard sword lodged firmly in the big tree's branches, way high up where nobody could see it. I never bothered to come up with a reason why, because sometimes that doesn't matter, all that matters is what happened because of it. And after all, odd things happen sometimes, and you don't know why.

One day, Lister happened to be passing by the tree when a strong gust of wind rustled the branches. A great sword fell out, and landed near to him, and he took it as a sign. Treeyus had delivered a blessing to him from the heavens, and he took it as a sign that he needed to answer. Lister, the lawful good commoner, took it upon himself to become a Paladin, and resolved to become the greatest champion of good that ever was.
Early Equipment
Since he began his early career as a farm hand, Lister had almost no money to procure good equipment. He had little in the way of resources other than what he could make do with on the farm.

Lister needed armor of some kind, so he took a barrel and modified it, giving it straps of leather to hang from his shoulders and adjusting the bands to make it a little easier to wear. Then he took an old bucket, cleaned it out, took off the handle and drilled holes into it. It fit snugly on his head.

Every paladin needs a steed, so Lister took the smartest, most loyal donkey on the farm, and piled up the equipment on him before setting out into town to go join an adventuring guild.

In the end, Lister was quite proud of his craftsmanship, even boasting a little that he made it himself to someone surprised by the outfit. "I made it myself. Can you tell?" Onlookers, if they stopped gawking at the barrel armor and bucket helm long enough, could also see the self-proclaimed warrior was also lugging around a thoroughly rusted sword.

According to Lister, the odd look of the sword was due to the divine nature of the blade, a special property that Treeyus had certainly bestowed upon the weapon.

In game mechanics terms, this translated to minuses on minuses on minuses. I had no proficiency in bastard swords, in my ridiculous armor, and the rusty nature of the sword gave a -1 penalty to damage rolls. I think it translated to -12 with my attack, with a -8 ACP due to the armor being so cumbersome and a -4 from not being proficient with the sword.

I am basically the antithesis of a powergamer. I even rolled the character stats using 3d6 instead of the standard 4d6, drop the lowest method. Lister was, after all, an adventurer only because of an unforeseen circumstance. Luckily, I still got an 18, so dumped it into strength, which was sorely needed.
The Early Game
This character was more or less made for me to do as much silly improv as I wanted, all while being as close to lawful good as a low wisdom character can be. And there was a ton of that stuff all throughout the game, but what I think really made everyone remember Lister was the first few sessions.

Showing up at the adventurer's guild, the recruiter asked to see what special talents Lister had, to which he said that he had trained his donkey to eat an apple off his head. If he was laying down. And the donkey was also hungry.

Oddly, he didn't ask to see it, and just sent Lister away to be grouped up with the other players.

The party's first job was to protect a shipment of stuff. Of course, since we were PCs, we had to encounter some trouble on the mission. We all had an opportunity to decide what we were going to do. We were, of course, suited up in our armors, just in case of trouble.

I decided Lister was trying to train his loyal donkey companion to become even better at the trick I described earlier. I tried to teach him to do the thing on command, laying down in barrel armor, and placing an apple on his face. It mostly just wound up covering Lister's face in slobber and apple mush.

That's just when the party is caught by surprise. Lister is suddenly alone with a sword to his neck, the rest of the party is nearby, being similarly threatened, and we're told to surrender.

Lister responded to the threat by rolling aside, springing to his feet and swinging his sword wildly. I won't try to recount the thrilling cavalcade of 20s and 19s (I'm not Rimmer, after all, and this was not Risk), but strangely enough, even though Lister started off in the worst situation, cornered and alone, he actually wound up being more effective than the party's actual fighter. The (real) fighter had a bad night of botched rolls.

Out of game, after that, several other players started suggesting that I ought to have Lister take actual levels of paladin. I stayed in commoner until level 4, after which I reasoned he had learned enough by being around real warriors to start taking levels of fighter.
A Few Final Things
Lister (the commoner) the Paladin was in most ways, the best paladin I've ever played. He was lawful good and fully devoted to the sorts of causes a paladin might pursue. He was friendly and enthusiastic to help people. He was just designed to be almost completely incompetent, and despite that, still succeeded.

I think part of the charm of him came in that I tried to improvise little stories here and there about how some knowledge on the farm could be helpful in fighting undead or dealing with rampaging orcs. Or just a story about combating a particularly nasty gopher (which a party member unfamiliar with gophers mistook for an ankheg).

Someone in the party eventually convinced and helped Lister to get the magic of Treeyus's weapon enhanced (ie, got the sword fixed, and enchanted. Before it got rusty, it was masterwork). And in time, he traded away the barrel armor for some full plate. He still kept the bucket helmet, though, because he liked it.
That's quite a long description, I know, but I hope it was an entertaining read.

illyahr
2013-12-09, 01:19 PM
My most ridiculous character is a fairly easy choice for me, even though as a rule I tend to be the 'crazy' gamer of any group I happen to be a part of. In D&D 3.5, I made a low-wisdom level 1 commoner named Lister as an adventurer. It was a fairly long campaign, and he somehow survived. If I recall correctly, I think we ended up at 12th level by the end.

Backstory
The backstory was pretty simple, really, he grew up on a farm and the family regarded an ancient tree on their land as something of a fertility blessing. Essentially, they thought of the tree as a guardian spirit of the land, but it was actually just an old, big tree.

This tree protector spirit was called 'Treeyus', and was treated by the family as if it was a lesser demigod for the setting. Lister regarded it as something like the Earthly representation of a lawful good god of plants and life.

Unknown to all on the farm, there was, for some reason or another, a bastard sword lodged firmly in the big tree's branches, way high up where nobody could see it. I never bothered to come up with a reason why, because sometimes that doesn't matter, all that matters is what happened because of it. And after all, odd things happen sometimes, and you don't know why.

One day, Lister happened to be passing by the tree when a strong gust of wind rustled the branches. A great sword fell out, and landed near to him, and he took it as a sign. Treeyus had delivered a blessing to him from the heavens, and he took it as a sign that he needed to answer. Lister, the lawful good commoner, took it upon himself to become a Paladin, and resolved to become the greatest champion of good that ever was.
Early Equipment
Since he began his early career as a farm hand, Lister had almost no money to procure good equipment. He had little in the way of resources other than what he could make do with on the farm.

Lister needed armor of some kind, so he took a barrel and modified it, giving it straps of leather to hang from his shoulders and adjusting the bands to make it a little easier to wear. Then he took an old bucket, cleaned it out, took off the handle and drilled holes into it. It fit snugly on his head.

Every paladin needs a steed, so Lister took the smartest, most loyal donkey on the farm, and piled up the equipment on him before setting out into town to go join an adventuring guild.

In the end, Lister was quite proud of his craftsmanship, even boasting a little that he made it himself to someone surprised by the outfit. "I made it myself. Can you tell?" Onlookers, if they stopped gawking at the barrel armor and bucket helm long enough, could also see the self-proclaimed warrior was also lugging around a thoroughly rusted sword.

According to Lister, the odd look of the sword was due to the divine nature of the blade, a special property that Treeyus had certainly bestowed upon the weapon.

In game mechanics terms, this translated to minuses on minuses on minuses. I had no proficiency in bastard swords, in my ridiculous armor, and the rusty nature of the sword gave a -1 penalty to damage rolls. I think it translated to -12 with my attack, with a -8 ACP due to the armor being so cumbersome and a -4 from not being proficient with the sword.

I am basically the antithesis of a powergamer. I even rolled the character stats using 3d6 instead of the standard 4d6, drop the lowest method. Lister was, after all, an adventurer only because of an unforeseen circumstance. Luckily, I still got an 18, so dumped it into strength, which was sorely needed.
The Early Game
This character was more or less made for me to do as much silly improv as I wanted, all while being as close to lawful good as a low wisdom character can be. And there was a ton of that stuff all throughout the game, but what I think really made everyone remember Lister was the first few sessions.

Showing up at the adventurer's guild, the recruiter asked to see what special talents Lister had, to which he said that he had trained his donkey to eat an apple off his head. If he was laying down. And the donkey was also hungry.

Oddly, he didn't ask to see it, and just sent Lister away to be grouped up with the other players.

The party's first job was to protect a shipment of stuff. Of course, since we were PCs, we had to encounter some trouble on the mission. We all had an opportunity to decide what we were going to do. We were, of course, suited up in our armors, just in case of trouble.

I decided Lister was trying to train his loyal donkey companion to become even better at the trick I described earlier. I tried to teach him to do the thing on command, laying down in barrel armor, and placing an apple on his face. It mostly just wound up covering Lister's face in slobber and apple mush.

That's just when the party is caught by surprise. Lister is suddenly alone with a sword to his neck, the rest of the party is nearby, being similarly threatened, and we're told to surrender.

Lister responded to the threat by rolling aside, springing to his feet and swinging his sword wildly. I won't try to recount the thrilling cavalcade of 20s and 19s (I'm not Rimmer, after all, and this was not Risk), but strangely enough, even though Lister started off in the worst situation, cornered and alone, he actually wound up being more effective than the party's actual fighter. The (real) fighter had a bad night of botched rolls.

Out of game, after that, several other players started suggesting that I ought to have Lister take actual levels of paladin. I stayed in commoner until level 4, after which I reasoned he had learned enough by being around real warriors to start taking levels of fighter.
A Few Final Things
Lister (the commoner) the Paladin was in most ways, the best paladin I've ever played. He was lawful good and fully devoted to the sorts of causes a paladin might pursue. He was friendly and enthusiastic to help people. He was just designed to be almost completely incompetent, and despite that, still succeeded.

I think part of the charm of him came in that I tried to improvise little stories here and there about how some knowledge on the farm could be helpful in fighting undead or dealing with rampaging orcs. Or just a story about combating a particularly nasty gopher (which a party member unfamiliar with gophers mistook for an ankheg).

Someone in the party eventually convinced and helpfulLister to get the magic of Treeyus's weapon enhanced (ie, got the sword fixed, and enchanted. Before it got rusty, it was masterwork). And in time, he traded away the barrel armor for some full plate. He still kept the bucket helmet, though, because he liked it.
That's quite a long description, I know, but I hope it was an entertaining read.

This is a level of awesome that requires he be used. Can I use this guy in my campaign? :smallbiggrin:

BeerMug Paladin
2013-12-09, 05:22 PM
This is a level of awesome that requires he be used. Can I use this guy in my campaign?

Go right ahead.

GrayGriffin
2013-12-09, 05:29 PM
I think part of the charm of him came in that I tried to improvise little stories here and there about how some knowledge on the farm could be helpful in fighting undead or dealing with rampaging orcs. Or just a story about combating a particularly nasty gopher (which a party member unfamiliar with gophers mistook for an ankheg).

I request examples of this.

BeerMug Paladin
2013-12-10, 02:13 AM
I request examples of this.

Unfortunately, I have a terrible memory, so I mostly remember the act of doing these things as an improv activity more than I recall the stories themselves. And for the most part, the stories tended to be pretty short callbacks to Lister's backstory, since all his experience before adventuring was as a farmer.

Here is one story I do remember fairly well.

Lister Vs The Gopher
As an optimist, there were few things Lister believed were impossible to accomplish. I'm not certain, but I think this was recounted to the party when someone speculated that our enemy might simply be impossible to defeat. (Another character, in backstory, stole a horse from a lich which was to be gifted to a black guard.)

Or maybe it was recounted as a way to deal with carrion crawlers, or some other burrowing enemy. (Like I said, my memory is a bit hazy on this.)

One year, on the farm, there was a particularly stubborn gopher, one that was very difficult to get rid of. The usual tactics of getting the beast to leave or poisoning it were simply not working, and it was being a troublesome pest, as gophers are on a farm.

When Lister had been finally fed up with the little creature, he dedicated some time to getting rid of it. The plan he came up with was to pour water into the little holes in the ground, which would either force it to come above ground where it could be fought or simply drown it.

That solution was not ideal, since the holes and the farm's well were some distance apart from one another. But over time, he proceeded to run back and forth between the farm's well and the site of the gopher holes, pouring water into each hole as fast as he could before running back to retrieve more water.

Back and forth, over and over he ran, determined to fill up those underground tunnels for several hours. Eventually, the persistence led to every one of the holes being filled. Although I do not recall the specifics, I also embellished the level of heroism involved, Lister talking about how the gopher might bite at him, but he was not afraid, and that would not scare him away, armed only with the mighty bucket, that the fiend would be thwapped if it surprised him.

This latter part of dramatizing the danger led one party member to assume it was an underground dwelling monster of some kind, since I believe his character was from a colder climate where they didn't normally have gophers. No knowledge of nature on his part, but having had encountered an ankheg before, he thought the description I provided sounded similar enough to that. (Lister did not describe the qualities of a gopher as much as I described what they did.)

As Lister finished his story, recounting the final defeat of the dreaded gopher and things returning to normal on the farm, he pointed a single finger to his head. "And I did it all, using this very bucket."

BobVosh
2013-12-10, 02:28 AM
1ed Exalted, an Alchemical. I saw a couple of charms that were meant to be combined.

1000 Fold Courtesan Calculations and Hyper-dexterous Tentacle Apparatus. It was also surprisingly effective, which had to be the worst part. I feel the charm names is adequate to describe how it would work.

Also I feel that all these threads need the classic Old Man Henderson. (http://1d4chan.org/wiki/Old_Man_Henderson) Obviously not mine.

Sith_Happens
2013-12-11, 01:01 PM
1ed Exalted, an Alchemical. I saw a couple of charms that were meant to be combined.

1000 Fold Courtesan Calculations and Hyper-dexterous Tentacle Apparatus. It was also surprisingly effective, which had to be the worst part. I feel the charm names is adequate to describe how it would work.

"I am fully functional!" (http://keychain.patternspider.net/archive/koc0132.html)

Silus
2013-12-11, 03:39 PM
Palladium Fantasy game, made a "Mercenary Warrior" from the southern jungle/wasteland that is now a trapper and hunter up in the Eastern Territory. Plays more like a French-Canadian Hunter/Trapper than a proper merc or tribal though.

Only been one session, but current personality is a quiet, keep to herself kind of person that flies into massively violent blood rages when confronted with Wolfen or Coyle. Stupidly tenacious as well. Took three arrows to the chest and would likely have taken more if one of the casters hadn't blinded like...three of the four guys.

As for why the blood rages, she was, for a time, captured by Coyle slavers and was going to be sold as a virile, high quality breeding slave for the express purpose of birthing slave labor (or something of that nature). Now, she had recently escaped from her tribe who wanted to do pretty much the same thing, but instead of "slaves" it was "warriors". So needless to say, she did to the Coyles what she couldn't have done to her tribe--She butchered every single one of them. Now, at least outside of cities (due to guards and soldiers and such), Wolfen and Coyles are KOS for her.

razorfloss
2013-12-15, 01:58 AM
Some time ago, I played in a game using a homebrewed Mecha system based loosely on D&D/D20 (wasn't perfect, but worked for us), and the setting took inspiration from multiple sources (mostly anime), including Gundam, Evangelion, World of Warcraft (somehow), Mechwarrior, and such.

In it, I played a normal dude-turned Mecha pilot who I, quite creatively, named Guy. Guy was a clueless Idiot Hero with no common sense (and more than a little bit of tropes such as the Fool and the Loonie) in a world teeming with Ancient Conspiracies, Eldritch Abominations, alien invasions, political intrigue, a massive world war, and dimension-hopping, mind-controlling cosmic horrors from a level of existence Man was not meant to know existed. He would have died horribly in the span of a few sessions if he hadn't proven to be so stupidly badass.

Highlights include:
- Killing a building-sized, world-ending Eldritch Abomination by running up to it and punching it. While not piloting his mech.
- Fighting off mind control due to being too dumb to realize what the mind-controller wanted him to do, causing him to Rage Quit in frustration.
- Single-handedly fighting off an alien invasion in orbit by cutting them to pieces with an enormous, mech-sized sword. In space. They couldn't outrun him, which is even funnier because he had no flight capabilities whatsoever. Figure that one out.
- Foiling an Ancient Conspiracy by starting a spontaneous song and dance number at just the right moment. Specifically, Cuban Pete from the Mask. (This one's probably my favourite).
- Somehow surviving having all his limbs broken and getting shot six times in the chest.

And less silly, but still awesome:
- Bringing another PC, who has previously killed his love interest, to exactly -9 HP in less than twenty seconds without taking a single HP of damage. And his opponent attacked first.
- Reviving said love interest almost immediately after the aforementioned fight, in a world where Resurrection of any kind is believed to be as impossible as it is in real life, by momentarily rewriting the universe through sheer willpower and badassitude (A lobotomized Eldritch Abomination may have also helped). Made even better from an OOC perspective, as it only happened due to a perfectly-timed natural 20, and anything less would have instantly kicked off the apocalypse (which was why the other player was fighting him; to stop him).

Easily one of, if not the, most fun characters I ever played.

how in the name of all that is holy did he pull this off
anyway on to mine earth genasai barbarian pacifist who used her voice as a weapon. was against all forms of violence and her rage was pretty much a rant against the evils of killing people. had a houseruled feat that converted her voice into a sonic weapon when raging.
one of the funniest character ever. give me an excuse to rant when we got overwhelmed.

Zazax
2013-12-15, 08:43 AM
how in the name of all that is holy did he pull this off
With gusto! :smallbiggrin:
...
...

Well, it's not as funny if I explain it...
- The 'punching an Eldtritch Abomination' thing is a combination of several things. It was our first 'boss fight', and this particular entity had 'possessed' the base we were on and begun animating everything inside it in an attempt to kill us (including things like firearms). We were separated from our Mechs at the time (they were in the 'hangar', so to speak; we were in our respective quarters. We also weren't sure if they'd also be animated or not...), so we went in search of a way to kill this thing. We eventually found its 'core' (see: mention of Evangelion influence), and while another PC was struggling with an animated gun to try and shoot it, Guy just ran up and punched it to death.

-The mind control thing is self-explanatory, sort of. The mind controller wanted Guy to fight and, if he could, kill another PC (as it happens, the one I mentioned he fought and handily defeated) and the NPC who would later become that aforementioned love interest. However, he was really obtuse and abstract about it, Guy couldn't understand what he wanted, and after several increasingly-irritated attempts the mind controller Rage Quit in frustration.

-The alien invasion thing is actually somewhat explainable. Guy had been launched into orbit and was being held in place over the alien's target. They were all coming in to attack this one area, not expecting any orbital resistance (because 20 Minutes into the Future). The aliens come roaring in at top speed and by the time they notice Guy posted in their path in his giant mech of death, sword drawn, they're already caught in the gravity well and coming in with a lot of momentum. They couldn't slow down in time, and most of them just flew right into him. It was kind of sad, really.

- The Cuban Pete thing was just to cause a distraction at a critical moment (although it was hilarious). A Cosmic Horror was in the process of simultaneously 'possessing' an entire city, making everyone extremely violent and insane all the time (as an Ancient Conspiracy had known was coming and counted on to weaken this city, which happened to be our HQ). However, they would only remain in this state if this Cosmic Horror could still influence them; as soon as it was gone they would return to normal. All we had to do was hold it off until we could defeat it, temporarily at least, so Guy kicked off a song and dance number to keep all the crazy people from murdering each other for those precious extra few seconds. I was actually surprised that it worked myself.
As it happened, this particular event was a fairly important step in one of the several evil Ancient Conspiracies in play, and the fact that our HQ came out of it with virtually no damage at all pretty much halted their plan entirely. It was awesome.

- The 'limbs broken and shot' thing (in case it wasn't clear, it was all at the same time) can just be attributed to a monstrous Fortitude Save and more HP than I knew what to do with.

For the less funny, more awesome ones:
- The fight is just a sad example of what happens when the melee guy is able to close to the squishy ranged guy, particularly when said ranged guy misses his first shot. The fight was in our mechs, and by the end of it the other guy was impaled into the ground with a sword through his Mech's chest, had a knife sticking out of its neck, and had Guy's Mech kneeling on over it, punching it in the face repeatedly. The whole thing only lasted 3 or 4 rounds. Considering some revelations of recent events at the time, everyone (including the player of the defeated character) afterwards all agreed it was a fitting result. But more on that in a moment.

- This would be another one of those Eva influences. Guy's Mech was actually a cybernetically-enhanced, lobotomized Eldritch Abomination that he drove around like any other old mech. One of its defining traits was that its power was directly related to his mental state (in a number of ways; most notably, inversely proportional to his mental stability). Usually he was fine (well, for a given value of 'fine), but literally seconds before the aforementioned fight he had discovered that the death of his love interest had been orchestrated by his commanding officer, and carried out by the PC he beat to within an inch of his life (hence the agreement that his landslide victory was fitting). His mental state was not the greatest, to say the least. After winning said fight he proceeded to co-opt the now-immense power of his Mech and essentially forced reality to bend to his will and revived her. Since he had no idea what he was doing and was simply hurling phenomenal cosmic power at the universe and screaming at it to obey, the DM had him run through a series of checks, of which he passed them all, and it all came down to a single roll.
The DM explained to me (and our commander explained to Guy in-character), in no uncertain terms, that having succeeded all the previous necessary checks, if I rolled a natural 20, my attempt would succeed. However, I was toying with powers beyond my ken, and anything less would rend a hole in the fabric of the universe, and that this would surely kick off the apocalypse and likely spell the End of the World as We Know It. This had been the reason that other PC, the one who had killed the girl Guy was now trying to revive in the first place, had fought him. I could still stop if I wanted. I acknowledged that I understood, covered my eyes, and rolled anyway. The chorus of "no way!" and "YES!" that followed was glorious. It remains easily my favorite moment in my entire history of tabletop gaming.

Our DM would later tell me that he had not expected it to actually work, and had had to rework the entire campaign to account for her survival, as he'd assumed Guy would go for it but fail, kickstarting the end of the world (although it wasn't the first time this had happened; Guy was something of a Spanner in the Works for our poor, beleaguered DM who couldn't always keep up with him. That Cuban Pete thing above is another example, although more minor; this one was just the biggest since it completely changed the course of the campaign).
In case anyone cares, by the time the campaign ended the two of them were happily married, so that one roll turned the at-best bittersweet apocalypse story into an unambiguously happy ending. Best roll I ever made.

So, yeah. Stupidly badass. :smallamused:

illyahr
2013-12-16, 10:43 AM
With gusto! :smallbiggrin:
...
...

Well, it's not as funny if I explain it...
- The 'punching an Eldtritch Abomination' thing is a combination of several things. It was our first 'boss fight', and this particular entity had 'possessed' the base we were on and begun animating everything inside it in an attempt to kill us (including things like firearms). We were separated from our Mechs at the time (they were in the 'hangar', so to speak; we were in our respective quarters. We also weren't sure if they'd also be animated or not...), so we went in search of a way to kill this thing. We eventually found its 'core' (see: mention of Evangelion influence), and while another PC was struggling with an animated gun to try and shoot it, Guy just ran up and punched it to death.

-The mind control thing is self-explanatory, sort of. The mind controller wanted Guy to fight and, if he could, kill another PC (as it happens, the one I mentioned he fought and handily defeated) and the NPC who would later become that aforementioned love interest. However, he was really obtuse and abstract about it, Guy couldn't understand what he wanted, and after several increasingly-irritated attempts the mind controller Rage Quit in frustration.

-The alien invasion thing is actually somewhat explainable. Guy had been launched into orbit and was being held in place over the alien's target. They were all coming in to attack this one area, not expecting any orbital resistance (because 20 Minutes into the Future). The aliens come roaring in at top speed and by the time they notice Guy posted in their path in his giant mech of death, sword drawn, they're already caught in the gravity well and coming in with a lot of momentum. They couldn't slow down in time, and most of them just flew right into him. It was kind of sad, really.

- The Cuban Pete thing was just to cause a distraction at a critical moment (although it was hilarious). A Cosmic Horror was in the process of simultaneously 'possessing' an entire city, making everyone extremely violent and insane all the time (as an Ancient Conspiracy had known was coming and counted on to weaken this city, which happened to be our HQ). However, they would only remain in this state if this Cosmic Horror could still influence them; as soon as it was gone they would return to normal. All we had to do was hold it off until we could defeat it, temporarily at least, so Guy kicked off a song and dance number to keep all the crazy people from murdering each other for those precious extra few seconds. I was actually surprised that it worked myself.
As it happened, this particular event was a fairly important step in one of the several evil Ancient Conspiracies in play, and the fact that our HQ came out of it with virtually no damage at all pretty much halted their plan entirely. It was awesome.

- The 'limbs broken and shot' thing (in case it wasn't clear, it was all at the same time) can just be attributed to a monstrous Fortitude Save and more HP than I knew what to do with.

For the less funny, more awesome ones:
- The fight is just a sad example of what happens when the melee guy is able to close to the squishy ranged guy, particularly when said ranged guy misses his first shot. The fight was in our mechs, and by the end of it the other guy was impaled into the ground with a sword through his Mech's chest, had a knife sticking out of its neck, and had Guy's Mech kneeling on over it, punching it in the face repeatedly. The whole thing only lasted 3 or 4 rounds. Considering some revelations of recent events at the time, everyone (including the player of the defeated character) afterwards all agreed it was a fitting result. But more on that in a moment.

- This would be another one of those Eva influences. Guy's Mech was actually a cybernetically-enhanced, lobotomized Eldritch Abomination that he drove around like any other old mech. One of its defining traits was that its power was directly related to his mental state (in a number of ways; most notably, inversely proportional to his mental stability). Usually he was fine (well, for a given value of 'fine), but literally seconds before the aforementioned fight he had discovered that the death of his love interest had been orchestrated by his commanding officer, and carried out by the PC he beat to within an inch of his life (hence the agreement that his landslide victory was fitting). His mental state was not the greatest, to say the least. After winning said fight he proceeded to co-opt the now-immense power of his Mech and essentially forced reality to bend to his will and revived her. Since he had no idea what he was doing and was simply hurling phenomenal cosmic power at the universe and screaming at it to obey, the DM had him run through a series of checks, of which he passed them all, and it all came down to a single roll.
The DM explained to me (and our commander explained to Guy in-character), in no uncertain terms, that having succeeded all the previous necessary checks, if I rolled a natural 20, my attempt would succeed. However, I was toying with powers beyond my ken, and anything less would rend a hole in the fabric of the universe, and that this would surely kick off the apocalypse and likely spell the End of the World as We Know It. This had been the reason that other PC, the one who had killed the girl Guy was now trying to revive in the first place, had fought him. I could still stop if I wanted. I acknowledged that I understood, covered my eyes, and rolled anyway. The chorus of "no way!" and "YES!" that followed was glorious. It remains easily my favorite moment in my entire history of tabletop gaming.

Our DM would later tell me that he had not expected it to actually work, and had had to rework the entire campaign to account for her survival, as he'd assumed Guy would go for it but fail, kickstarting the end of the world (although it wasn't the first time this had happened; Guy was something of a Spanner in the Works for our poor, beleaguered DM who couldn't always keep up with him. That Cuban Pete thing above is another example, although more minor; this one was just the biggest since it completely changed the course of the campaign).
In case anyone cares, by the time the campaign ended the two of them were happily married, so that one roll turned the at-best bittersweet apocalypse story into an unambiguously happy ending. Best roll I ever made.

So, yeah. Stupidly badass. :smallamused:

:smalleek::smalleek::smalleek::smalleek:

Random salutes you, sir. :smallbiggrin:

razorfloss
2013-12-16, 12:12 PM
holy crap that is badass