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ladubois
2016-03-29, 07:34 PM
Share the character concepts you've come up with that practically divorce themselves from the default fluff of the mechanics you used. This is all about creativity and manipulating interpretation for all it's worth, so have fun. Concepts are not required to have been used or even built so long as you can describe how they can be reasonably replicated with whatever official rules exist for a system (any system you want, by the way, though universal systems like GURPS aren't encouraged since they tend to already be mechanics that you have to fluff up, anyway) with only very minor or no mechanical alterations.

For example, I came up with a Pathfinder character based on this painting (http://sandara.deviantart.com/art/Gu-Zheng-258301956). Mechanically, she is a summoner with the spirit summoner archetype. Fluff-wise, her power simply comes from how she plays her zither so beautifully that she enraptures the very waters, shaping and controlling them with her music. Her eidolon isn't summoned from another plane, but is created from the coalesced water, and instead of incantations and gestures, her music acts as her verbal and somatic spell components. Most mechanics are unchanged, since she'd still suffer just as much from bulky armour and silence effects as any other arcane spellcaster. The only appreciable difference is that rather than needing to gag her, you just need to take away her zither or tie up her hands. (Yes, you could hash out more mechanical differences if you wanted, but for 95% of cases the RAW are close enough that it isn't important, and what's left is best left up to GM adjudication rather than all written out, upfront.)

TheIronGolem
2016-03-29, 08:37 PM
Warforged Fighter/Warlock (in 3.5) or Soulbolt (PF w/DSP psionics). Soon I'll be building him out experimentally as a Blaster (from Spheres of Power's Destruction Handbook).

Backstory can vary with the setting, but the essential elements are: Extradimensional being longs to explore the physical realm and catalogue its experiences for posterity, naively makes a foolish deal during a chance encounter with an evil wizard, and ends up being bound to an experimental construct body that uses the being's energies to power itself (basically turning him into a Fantasy Battle Droid), escapes from evil wizard and goes adventuring as a way to explore the world like it wanted.

Basically, think Ariel the Little Mermaid as a war golem. Slight refluffing of the Warforged race, coupled with a moderate refluffing of whichever type of magic the class uses.

Gildedragon
2016-03-29, 09:05 PM
Not too far from the original fluff: Eraruk, a Half Orc PI psychic that helps the dead settle their unfinished business by channeling them/getting partially possessed by them
Mechanically he's a Binder or Binder//Totemist, the vestiges and soul melds being the manifestations of the ghosts he is currently helping out.

Bit further:
A chance themed shadowcraft mage. Instead of chaneling shadowstuff he'd fiddle with cosmic probability, there was such and such chance of something just appearing where he needed it, and sometimes that probable world he tapped into was likelier, more real, than the actual one he was living in

Prime32
2016-03-29, 09:52 PM
Once played in the following party:

NE Warforged psion (shaper) 4, specialising in astral constructs
LE Dragonborn (wings) warforged psychic warrior 4, with the Psicrystal Affinity feat
N Elan psion (egoist) 4 with Expanded Knowledge (astral construct)

Which fluffwise were:

A gnome artificer in a suit of power armor, who'd built an army of golems in his off-screen base and could summon the smaller models to his location (but they were tied to the base's power source so they couldn't stay for long). Primary motivation was to find new ways of building golems.
An experimental golem the artificer created by binding a devil in place of an elemental, using a fragment of the base's power source as its core. Part of its body could detach and act as a probe. Capable of docking with the artificer's armor to allow transfers of energy in either direction.
A cyborg seeking physical perfection through the combination of metal and flesh. Had crystals embedded in his body which can detach and generate energy constructs in the shape of creatures.

ladubois
2016-03-29, 10:21 PM
A chance themed shadowcraft mage. Instead of chaneling shadowstuff he'd fiddle with cosmic probability, there was such and such chance of something just appearing where he needed it, and sometimes that probable world he tapped into was likelier, more real, than the actual one he was living in

Oh, I like that idea. Very quantum-y sounding.



A gnome artificer in a suit of power armor, who'd built an army of golems in his off-screen base and could summon the smaller models to his location (but they were tied to the base's power source so they couldn't stay for long). Primary motivation was to find new ways of building golems.
An experimental golem the artificer created by binding a devil in place of an elemental, using a fragment of the base's power source as its core. Part of its body could detach and act as a probe. Capable of docking with the artificer's armor to allow transfers of energy in either direction.
A cyborg seeking physical perfection through the combination of metal and flesh. Had crystals embedded in his body which can detach and generate energy constructs in the shape of creatures.

Niiiiiice. Especially the gnome in power armour one.

Aran nu tasar
2016-03-30, 12:07 AM
In a 3.5 game a while back, I made a superhero with the power to control light: laser beams for offense, creating darkness and manipulating light for defense. And also flight, because I wanted to be able to fly. He was physically fairly weak, so no punching people out, and he had a nasty habit of putting way to much power into his light beams, draining his strength. I called him 'Lux Luthor' because I am unable to resist terrible puns.

Stat-wise, however, he was a pretty standard hellfire warlock.

In the same party was a Jedi, built as a swiftblade with spellcasting refluffed as Force powers. It was an interesting game, to say the least.

Âmesang
2016-03-30, 08:52 PM
I don't know if this is playing with fluff or against it but my long-running arcanist (sorceress)*, descended from a long-line of arcanists (wizards), entered Greyhawk's University of Magic during her youth… only to drop out of school when she noticed she had already surpassed all of her peers as she saw it (her spontaneous casting versus their need to prepare out of spellbooks).

Drawing the attention of the local Thieve's Guild she learned to fight in ways her peers rarely bother with (sorcerer weapon proficiency versus wizard weapon proficiency) and learned how to use her skill with alchemy to manufacture poisons (Book of Vile Darkness, p.45).

(Staying in University would also explain why wizards get bonus feats and extra skills, while as a drop-out sorcerer she didn't… though I suppose she could also trace her Bluff skill back to the Thieve's Guild combined with her natural talent for hiding her condescending attitude with flowery words.)
*I wanted to avoid the "dragon ancestor" explanation for sorcerous power by borrowing sherem transformation from GHOSTWALK: replace "Bazareene" with "Suel," treat the "iron ring that has touched lava" material component as being connected to the Hellfurnaces (the eastern border of the Sea of Dust/former Suel Imperium), and swap out the emerald focus for sapphire, amethyst, diamond, or any other gemstone that matches Suel eye colors). It also doesn't hurt that both Bazareene and Suel have connections to the monk class (being the top-tiered members of the Scarlet Brotherhood for the latter).

As for why her family cast the spell… it'll probably get her into Mary Sue territory, but I was kind of imagining an almost Anakin Skywalker/Darth Vader scenario: legend goes that when the Suel returned to the Sea of Dust the spirit of Slerotin, the Last Mage of Power, warned of an impeding Invoked Devastation that could ruin the whole world, so perhaps her kin sought to use her as a tool to prevent such a disaster from happening… but due to the nature of her power and her upbringing, it left her vain, conceited, selfish, self-centered, proud… and with an unquestionable thirst for greater sorcerous power that just may lead her to bring about the very same doom her kin had hoped to prevent…

RazorChain
2016-03-30, 09:00 PM
I made a Hafling fighter once.

Shpadoinkle
2016-03-31, 02:36 AM
Haven't had much of a chance to play lately, but I always thought refluffing a soulknife as a jedi would work pretty well.

I also remember I once came up with the idea of a gnomish thrallherd. His thralls and worshippers were statistically identical to normal races, but they would have been fluffed as robots and gadgets and such that he was constantly tinkering with.

I've also thought refluffing the bloodstorm blade's (ToB) boomeranging ability as basically Spectral Throw (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VWrJjbLBZkk) (those are essentially phantom sledgehammers she's throwing) would work.

MrNobody
2016-03-31, 02:30 PM
One of my favourite PC was an human NN Factotum/Chamelon. I played it as a multiple personality guy: the "body" was the one of a farmer that was standing on his field when two small army of adventurers teleported there and started battling. The farmer hid somewhere, but during the battle a "magical singularity" occured, killing all the adventurers but putting all their souls in the farmer's body.

He then became a factotum/chameleon, able to use a little bit of the power of each adventurer. From time to time he would pass out (the chameleon meditation to choose/swap focus), waking up with new powers and a new "dominant" personality. The first time the group met him he was geared and behaved like an high priest of Pelor, but he woke up the following morning trying to backstabbing one of the party and complaining about "how big and clumsy that body was" (the active personality was an Halfling assassin)...

I had a great time playing it, and my playing group enjoyed the small sketches in which i would start arguing with myself about the solution of a problem (for ex. the active personality was a paladin but a blackguard personality showed up to stop him doing good things): some other players often helped me out playing more than 2 personality at a time, resulting in a really enjoyable and immersive roleplay.

JAL_1138
2016-04-01, 09:16 PM
Not the most atypical I've played, but one I was fond of:

Typical foppish half-elf bard, bit silly, perpetually cheerful, outgoing, presented himself as a gentleman adventurer, traveling from one grand experience to another to do great deeds worthy of song. Absolutely bog-standard stereotypical bard at first glance.

He was a severely-depressive not-entirely-recovering alcoholic, chronic screwup, petty thief, and coward who'd spent a fair amount of his life getting the crap kicked out of him in various prisons for his petty crimes, vagrancy, etc., moving from town to town because he had nowhere else to go, had just been let out of jail, was run out of town, and/or was close to getting caught for a scam again. The cheerful, silly, life-affirming, brave, happy-go-lucky schtick was a front he put up in the desperate hope that if he faked it long enough he might start believing his own lie, and he joined up with the party as a last-ditch chance to one thing right, just one good thing in his life before he wound up dead in a gutter somewhere.

Yabex
2016-04-21, 02:33 AM
I have a PC right now that is playing a Warlock, but his character is themed around goo. His backstory involves some kind of terrible goo related lab accident resulting in the ability to secrete a white slippery goo, known as Sli-Goo, and a black sticky goo, known as Sti-Goo, from his body. He uses things like the black tentacle evocation and fluffs it as a giant tar like goo bomb. Even his magic items are fluffed as innate abilities(boots of skating are represented by sliding on Sli-Goo from his feet). Recently he discovered the ability to mix the two goo together to form a fast drying concrete type goo called Bri-Goo. After bricks I guess....

What can I say? The guy really likes Goo I guess.

goto124
2016-04-21, 05:16 AM
That char is a huge pun on 'goolock', isn't he?