Comic Relief characters

[Aleolus]

Almost every player has them. A character that, either because of a certain feat selection, or a specific piece of custom gear, or a choice made with their roleplay, has ended up a source of comic relief for the group. I'm curious, what are some of yours?

To get things going, I have an idea for a character (haven't been able to actually put him to paper yet) who is a Dread Necromancer that wears a white robe with pockets in the front, who exclusively raises Skeletons, and who does so by singing "Move Your Dead Bones", by Dr. Reanimator. I think that would be good for a few laughs around the table

[amdskitzo]

Three come to mind for me:

Cecil B. Chesterworthterfieldtonville the 3rd esquire. Gnome Evoker. A once aspiring wizard until he was struck by lightning. Now all his spells that can be storm related are(elemental subsitution). Also went a little crazy.

Crazy Ivan. Gnome Barbarian. Would fly off handle(rage) whenever anyone said a word that was synonymous with crazy regardless of context.

Simon Snitworthy the 4th. Halfling Rogue. Actually a continuation of my mom's character from AD&D. Had a thing for all things gold(ANYTHING). Was very hyperactive and had a catchphrase of "GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOLD".

I have others, just haven't had a chance to actually play them in a campaign yet.

[Chronikoce]

I had a half-orc fighter in pathfinder who was stronger than most the party (they were all beginners and terribly unoptimized) rather than rebuild I just roleplayed the heck out of his desire to tame a powerful beast to be a pet. The trouble is he never put any ranks in handle animal.

Instead he used is rather impressive health pool to be able to spend round after round to try and tame a dinosaur by hold his hands out with a rope in the least threatening way as possible and going "shhhhhhhhh come here boy shhhhhhhh". It did not work.

The second even more outrageous action he took was when the party was racing some enemies down a spiral staircase with no center or railings he handed one end of a rope to an ally, said here hold this, and lept off the edge with the intention that the party member would brace themselves, arrest his fall, and cause him to swing back towards the stairs wrapping around one level down.

The flaws that arose:
1 there was nothing to brace themselves against
2 he handed the rope to the primary caster with a terrible strength score
3 they managed to hold onto the rope and got yanked off the ledge as a result

The DM was nice though and allowed me a reflex save to catch an edge further down and end up swinging the caster onto the stairs so they didn't die.

The other PCs faces when I said I lept off the edge were priceless though

[Know(Nothing)]

The campaigns I've played have always had a heavy emphasis, whether because of the DM or the players or both, toward a more serious, believable tone. Wacky 1-dimensional personalities, goofy names, and silly catchphrases are alright for some cheap laughs every now and then-- but like any good joke, there needs to be a good set-up before the punch-line.

Good jokes, genuinely funny situations, these come from an organic development of relationships between the party members. If someone always is and always has been the wacky cut-up comic-relief character and never deviates from that, they will eventually be incredibly boring. Vice-versa, a stick-in-the-mud, dour, straight-man character on his own is excruciatingly uninteresting. Both are worthless on their own. Both are shallow if they only ever display their one default emotion and/or behavior. They need each other, and they need variation.

The best situation is a balance. I love barbarians for this reason, as they naturally lend themselves to both levity and drama, particularly when they are the only one acting that way.

I'll give an example. It was before a risky, two-fronted assault on a fort. We needed to replace an artifact inside with a fake, without the enemies knowing of the switch. While the stealthy characters were to infiltrate, the rest were to cause a distraction down the road-- an all out attack. Now, amidst the enemies were at least one huge dragon, as well as possibly another large one, not to mention the rest of the actual guards. We are level 5 or 6 at the time, I think. Not an easy battle. Before the fight, most of the characters join in prayer to their respective gods, knowing they may well not live another day. My barbarian, however, needed to attend to some business with an NPC thief that our party needed for the job. She had been flirting with my character for a few sessions, so before our assault, I(as a player) strolled up and planted a big ol' manly kiss on the DM(he resisted at first, but I won him over). The table erupted out of solemn prayer into laughs and claps. I smacked my DM on the butt and told the character that he was running not to get herself killed in there. This utterly changed the mood of the room from a fatalistic, terrified, depressed murmur to an excited and energized team.

That is how you use comic relief in a campaign. It needs to be relief from an otherwise stressful, harrowing, or sad situation. If your campaign doesn't have those for balance, the funny moments will always be flat and flavorless. If you're lucky, every character your table runs will have to potential to be everything from hilarious to maudlin, melancholy, furious, wicked, and noble. Strive to not be one-note, and you'll see your efforts come back to you tenfold.

[weckar]

Many Comic Relief characters I've run into did exactly one joke over and over, because that's all they were.
Because of this, it works better if these things grow organically. Don't BUILD your character to be this.
For example, I once dealt with a shrunken Halfling who would challenge ANYONE they met to single combat. And Always lost. That was the joke.
Opposed to that, I'm currently running with a guy who after every combat does more and more elaborate victory dances. It's not intrusive and only takes a couple of seconds - and because it is quite a generic thing to do it tends to be more situation-appropriate.

[Aleolus]

The campaigns I've played have always had a heavy emphasis, whether because of the DM or the players or both, toward a more serious, believable tone. Wacky 1-dimensional personalities, goofy names, and silly catchphrases are alright for some cheap laughs every now and then-- but like any good joke, there needs to be a good set-up before the punch-line.

Good jokes, genuinely funny situations, these come from an organic development of relationships between the party members. If someone always is and always has been the wacky cut-up comic-relief character and never deviates from that, they will eventually be incredibly boring. Vice-versa, a stick-in-the-mud, dour, straight-man character on his own is excruciatingly uninteresting. Both are worthless on their own. Both are shallow if they only ever display their one default emotion and/or behavior. They need each other, and they need variation.

The best situation is a balance. I love barbarians for this reason, as they naturally lend themselves to both levity and drama, particularly when they are the only one acting that way.

I'll give an example. It was before a risky, two-fronted assault on a fort. We needed to replace an artifact inside with a fake, without the enemies knowing of the switch. While the stealthy characters were to infiltrate, the rest were to cause a distraction down the road-- an all out attack. Now, amidst the enemies were at least one huge dragon, as well as possibly another large one, not to mention the rest of the actual guards. We are level 5 or 6 at the time, I think. Not an easy battle. Before the fight, most of the characters join in prayer to their respective gods, knowing they may well not live another day. My barbarian, however, needed to attend to some business with an NPC thief that our party needed for the job. She had been flirting with my character for a few sessions, so before our assault, I(as a player) strolled up and planted a big ol' manly kiss on the DM(he resisted at first, but I won him over). The table erupted out of solemn prayer into laughs and claps. I smacked my DM on the butt and told the character that he was running not to get herself killed in there. This utterly changed the mood of the room from a fatalistic, terrified, depressed murmur to an excited and energized team.

That is how you use comic relief in a campaign. It needs to be relief from an otherwise stressful, harrowing, or sad situation. If your campaign doesn't have those for balance, the funny moments will always be flat and flavorless. If you're lucky, every character your table runs will have to potential to be everything from hilarious to maudlin, melancholy, furious, wicked, and noble. Strive to not be one-note, and you'll see your efforts come back to you tenfold.

That is awesome! And this is exactly the type of thing I was looking for with this, a character that is perfectly normal (or at least seems that way in game), but is or can be a source of a good laugh for the players at the table

[RoyVG]

There are a few I can come up with: The first is Paco, a stereotypical mexican (complete with poncho and hat, though he was a wizard I think) that pops up everywhere you go, speaks about himself in third person, and has a history of 'Paco snap neck'

The other one is Jim, a (half) orc, dumber than a rock and always shouting 'JIM WIN' even when losing. Of course when he's losing he beats your sorry ass and still wins.

We also had the Zackass for a few sessions. It was a guy named Zack, and he was a jackass and always crashlanded somewhere nearby or ruined any attempt at subtlety.

[ComaVision]

I've seen several joke characters and they're always short-lived. They typically aren't very effective characters and the jokes get old fast.

[Telonius]

Phido Oswald, middle aged Shifter Rogue/Wizard and conman extraordinaire. Very high bluff, very low Wisdom, no ranks in sense motive. He was basically that one shady uncle who always has something not-exactly-legal going on. He was part of an Age of Worms campaign from around level 6 to 20. (He started off as my Ranger character's cohort and uncle, then "graduated" when I retired the Ranger).

A really key part of playing a comic relief character is knowing when to take the spotlight, and knowing when to back off. If you're always doing something goofy, it becomes predictable, stale, and annoying. But, time it right, and the whole group will be laughing.

[martixy]

The point, everyone in this thread is dancing around, is that comic relief doesn't have to be a character's defining trait for him/her to be considered a comic relief character.
If anything, the phrase is an oxymoron, in the context of defining a character's primary "shtick".

[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) before in my games, and my party got a real kick out of him for a while. It was fun to play for me too.

[dascarletm]

I had a few long-lived comic relief characters. To be fair though, they had much more going for them than their silliness, and often the cause of their silliness became a serious plot down the road.

1. Gnome barbarian that thought he as a paladin of the goddess of beauty. Silly stuff like calling rage smite evil etc. Out of his rage he would go on about trying to find true beauty in all things. He was an art lover, and cooking enthusiast. Though, when he thought people were evil he would "channel the true divine." I imagined his consciousness would go to happy places like the pyro from TF2 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WUhOnX8qt3I).
Eventually he had to come to grip with reality, and he fell into a depression. He came out of it when he quested for the church and learned that being a paladin was more than class features.

2. Goblin in pathfinder with all the silly goblin feats that let him fly when being hit, and bite people/hang on. Very silly... just silly.