[3.5] Weird And Wonderful NPCs

[Thurbane]

Hey all,

Just wondering what weird and interesting NPCs you've had in your games?

As a DM, I love to throw in NPCs that would be completely unviable as PCs, and have them as recurring sidekicks or allies.

In my last campaign, I had Ember, a Celestial Pixie Cleric; and Montius, a Brood Monkey Favored Soul/Ruathar (the party was low on healing, so I threw these two in at different times to support the group).

I also had Strongheart, an Awakened Warbeast Heavy Warhorse, who tagged along as an ally and sometimes mount for a bit.

Very interested to hear of the NPCs from your games!

Cheers - T

[Toilet Cobra]

One of my biggest DM sins is taking characters I intend to introduce and making their classes whatever is interesting to me at the moment.

Villains the party has dealt with include such oddballs as a Master of Many Style Monk, an Aerokineticist, Counterspell-focused wizard, Admixture wizard, blaster Psionic, and other things that I enjoy but wouldn't recommend for my players.

The best one I can recall by name is Kendric, the Pseudodragon Bard buddy (not familiar, not animal companion... just a buddy) of our party Warpriest. Together, they hit some folks really, really hard.

[erok0809]

I've used my own version of Korg the Magical (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?195049-Help-Me-Be-Annoying-with-a-Barbarian-Wizard) in my game, and the players got a huge kick out of that. He was the "Master Wizard General" in the army.

I also made up a bard/seeker of the song who uses Perform(sick flows) and has Melodic Casting, so he casts spells while rapping, and can literally give people "sick burns" with the fire cone from the first level in Seeker of the Song. He's the Hero of Rhyme, and his flows are good enough to kill. (Inspired by the Starbomb song "Hero of Rhyme", and then subsequently this thread (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?450498-The-Hero-of-Rhyme).)

[Azoth]

I have had a few NPCs that stuck out. Some were original creations and others inspired by movies/books.

Most recently was an enemy modeled after Benge from Vampire Hunter D Bloodlust. He was a Soul Hunter Stalker with the Shadow Traced template in a pathfinder campaign. The guy repeatedly teleports, turns invisible, or attacks while being ethereal all while taunting them with ventriloquism. They have such a hatred of him that they have pooled their resources for a CL20 scroll of Trap the Soul for when they finally kill him for good.

Another that they seemed to enjoy in an old 3.5 game was a warforged they picked up as their air ship's mechanic named Tink. Dude was rediculously strong and resilient, but aloof to the ways of living creatures and often the butt of many jokes. I didn't realize how much they liked him until the party rogue actually gave up his ring of Feather Fall mid free fall when their ship got blown out of the sky during a raid by sky pirates.

[T.G. Oskar]

Since my group is usually small, I tend to throw several DMPCs (which I tend to treat mostly as NPCs, without trying to overshadow the party), and some of them have ended up being interesting.

Take Seek'mej, the hobgoblin water shugenja. She's Lawful Evil, but specializes in healing magic. She respects strength and disdains weakness, even if the rest of the party tends to be stronger than her. What made her memorable (besides joining the adventurer's guild my party made) was a moment when she, alongside the party, served as escorts to a salvaging group from their patron, a Cannith businessman and tinker. After being assaulted by giants and other creatures, the bard asked her to heal the wounded, to which she refused at first, then accepted...if they paid her money. The bard was so furious, he immediately composed a song lambasting her, though in a way clever enough to hide the insults. That song was actually composed for reals (lyric and music) in around 15 minutes by the bard player, who's a major at Composition. The song got enough fame (and is part of the bard's permanent repertoire), so she got famous for being a Shylock.

There's also Lix, a changeling factotum that was one of the three original choices for party members. After a moment in which my group of players grew enough so that I could stop relying on NPCs, she made a party with the other two choices (a Dwarven Archivist and scroll merchant, and a CN Human Warlock/Sorcerer with the Infernal Heritage) until the time was ripe for her to be used again (when the group contracted once again until there were only two, thus requiring the need for more NPCs). Her spotlight (if I could say so) was when her brother, also a changeling Factotum (but without the level in Rogue, and being also part-Binder), basically stabbed her in the back in order to assassinate her. See - since by that moment I allowed my two players to make side characters, I decided to run a simultaneous story where their main characters would travel to a personal quest from the Bard (who decided to become ordained as a Gatekeeper druid), whereas the new characters would test themselves as potential guild recruits. I had the same character appear in both sides, where one would be the real deal and the other would be her brother in disguise (using the same human disguise as she would). When the two groups reunited, and they realized there were two of them, I did a small "cut-scene" where the impostor revealed himself and stabbed her at the back. The reaction from my players was one of surprise - to this moment, I consider it an achievement as a DM. I was planning to make her a Chameleon, and the way I wove that (her father followed the same route, and is personally training her, while they both hunt her brother) felt organic, so to speak.

However, I think my favorite NPCs are Raevel and Vellian. They're really supporting cast, and are the NPCs that have appeared the most besides the ones that occasionally join the group. They're basically a gay couple who act a bit too feminine and love gossip, and have taken an interest in the party - they're usually at the offices at Sharn, but can appear uninvited at other places (such as a ball the party had to infiltrate in). A short adventure I made that starred them allowed me to flesh them a bit more, revealing they're really agents of House Phiarlan, and their love of gossip, while not a front, does help them on their work as spies and assassins. The idea of the story was to have a group of side characters (my players have at least 3 characters they can switch around) prove their innocence, after being accused of a crime they didn't commit, but to which they couldn't provide an alibi (because of...reasons). Their origin is a bit strange, as they're loosely based on the characters "Razor" and "Blade" from the movie Hackers (hence, their Elven names), but it evolved to something closer to Zoolander. They are a bit stereotypical (and part of the intention was to poke fun at one of the player's characters, a macho-type Half-Giant Fighter), but after being fleshed out, they became pretty interesting.