Worst NPC (Who isn't an antagonist.)

[RogueGuy]

I'll go first.

Characters:
Adarr Nemonis: Dragonborn Paladin (Uncle)
Filch Snotbag: Goblin Rogue (Me)
Frettle Fireforge: Dwarf Cleric (Dad)
Seredin Fyre: Tiefling Fighter (Aunt)
Master Shin Quan: Human Monk (Brother)
DM: (Cousin)

-Our party was tasked with rescuing a teenage princess, and we had entered the lair of the captor. We had come to a fork in the path, and our party had decided to split up. Frettle, Seredin, and Shin Quan went one way, and Adarr and Filch went the other. After about an hour's worth of random encounters, and few hitpoints remaining, we find the princess. She immediately starts screaming.

Filch: "Woah, woah, woah! Chill! We're not gonna hurt ya, right Adarr?"

Adarr: "Correct."

Princess: "I know you monsters are here to hurt me again!"

Filch: "Wait, what do ya mean by 'again'?"

Princess: "They would hurt me, and you'll do the same!"

Adarr: "If it makes you feel any safer, we have brought swift justice to them."

Princess: "Lies!"

*Filch and Adarr look at eachother in disinterest.*

Filch: "Alright, here are ya options, sweetheart, ya could come wif me, or go wif him. Pick."

Princess: "Neither! Go away!"

Filch: "Adarr it is."

*Adarr proceeds to pick her up and put her over his shoulder.*

DM: "She's screaming the whole way back. While passing through the hall of arms, she takes a dagger off the wall, and...."

*Dice roll*

DM: "She plants the dagger into your neck. You take........14 points of damage"

Uncle: "I'm down."

DM: "Adarr collapses, and she begins to run off."

Me: "I run in front of her."

Filch: "Sorry, ye'll forgive me later."

*Filch shoots a dart laced with sleeping poison at her, she fails a constitution saving throw, and she falls asleep.*

DM: "She'll be zonked out for a good.....6 hours."

Filch: "Wait, I'm gonna have to carry both of 'em back. Crap."

*It took Filch 3 and a half in-game hours to drag both of them back and meet up with the party.*

-And this, ladies, gentlemen, and those of unspecified gender, is why you don't split up the party....






































.......or rescue bratty royals.

[Asmotherion]

I'll go first.

Characters:
Adarr Nemonis: Dragonborn Paladin (Uncle)
Filch Snotbag: Goblin Rogue (Me)
Frettle Fireforge: Dwarf Cleric (Dad)
Seredin Fyre: Tiefling Fighter (Aunt)
Master Shin Quan: Human Monk (Brother)
DM: (Cousin)

-Our party was tasked with rescuing a teenage princess, and we had entered the lair of the captor. We had come to a fork in the path, and our party had decided to split up. Frettle, Seredin, and Shin Quan went one way, and Adarr and Filch went the other. After about an hour's worth of random encounters, and few hitpoints remaining, we find the princess. She immediately starts screaming.

Filch: "Woah, woah, woah! Chill! We're not gonna hurt ya, right Adarr?"

Adarr: "Correct."

Princess: "I know you monsters are here to hurt me again!"

Filch: "Wait, what do ya mean by 'again'?"

Princess: "They would hurt me, and you'll do the same!"

Adarr: "If it makes you feel any safer, we have brought swift justice to them."

Princess: "Lies!"

*Filch and Adarr look at eachother in disinterest.*

Filch: "Alright, here are ya options, sweetheart, ya could come wif me, or go wif him. Pick."

Princess: "Neither! Go away!"

Filch: "Adarr it is."

*Adarr proceeds to pick her up and put her over his shoulder.*

DM: "She's screaming the whole way back. While passing through the hall of arms, she takes a dagger off the wall, and...."

*Dice roll*

DM: "She plants the dagger into your neck. You take........14 points of damage"

Uncle: "I'm down."

DM: "Adarr collapses, and she begins to run off."

Me: "I run in front of her."

Filch: "Sorry, ye'll forgive me later."

*Filch shoots a dart laced with sleeping poison at her, she fails a constitution saving throw, and she falls asleep.*

DM: "She'll be zonked out for a good.....6 hours."

Filch: "Wait, I'm gonna have to carry both of 'em back. Crap."

*It took Filch 3 and a half in-game hours to drag both of them back and meet up with the party.*

-And this, ladies, gentlemen, and those of unspecified gender, is why you don't split up the party....


.......or rescue bratty royals.

Can I just mention here how great it must be to have a fammily session of D&D?

Well, the worst NPCs I've ever met is definitely when a DM makes a Mary Sue DM PC.

In terms of "I hated this NPC's personality" was one of the PCs sister. She was dating the BBEG at the time we met her, and would casually rat information about our plans to him. Then, after we killed the BBEG, she pulled the "why do I only like jerks" line, and convinced her brother that the BBEG was using magic to control her. I on the other hand knew she was lieing, and comfronted her about it latter, wile there was only the two of us. She admited it, and bribed me to hide the truth. My PC was Lawfull Evil in that game, and the only reason he comfronted her is to gain something out of it, as he didn't really care about the other PC, just valued him as a strong asset to the party, and knew that having him face a truth that would devastate him (it did when he found out she was ratting on us), would make him underperform. So he kept his mouth shut, and gained a handfull of gold for doing so. That said, I still hate that bitch to this day XD

[pangoo209]

A d&d campaign I was DMing was about to come to a close, and we wanted to have a last laugh and a bit of fun with it before it was over. And because of this, I added Clarence. This was a skeleton who gave players cards from a deck of many things. (His alignment was CN)

2 Pc's died, one permanently from an avatar of death, one sent away into a gemstone, and one became very rich. For fluff reasons, he initiated a rise to power and eventually became king.

The players still love Clarence, but I hated him afterwards, simply because he somehow got remembered as one of the coolest NPC's in the game, and he killed almost the entire party.

[Renvir]

His name was Milton and he was an NPC in my first D&D campaign (AD&D 2e). We were all kids and only the DM had ever played before so it was often a crap shoot. Anyway, Milton wanted to become a knight one day so we took him on as a squire. We figured he could help carry stuff, watch the horses, cook food, and other menial tasks while we were off being heroes. But nooo... Milton would get bored and try following us around everywhere we went. He would constantly set off traps, get caught sneaking into enemy camps, and screw up our conversations with other NPC's. The DM said we couldn't kill him because we were all of Good alignment and we couldn't get rid of him because... reasons.

If something like this were to happen to me today I'd give my DM the evilest glare until he decided to make better life decisions.

[Spellbreaker26]

NPCs who exist to killsteal are my pet peeve. If an NPC is stronger than the players, I think that he should never be fighting next to them. A recent battle had us going up against three devils that I later found out were almost double our CR each. Trying to find a way for the party to escape, in desperation I used inflict wounds as a third level spell and somehow got a critical (I had advantage from inspiration). With 10d10, I thought, I should be able to wipe this guy from the face of the earth. I rolled really well too, doing nearly 60 damage, but it survived easily until the next turn the requisite ninja elf NPC turned up, killed it and its two friends. As you can imagine, I was put out, especially as one of the devils was a reoccuring villain that I thought we would eventually face but nope, dead. (though maybe she'll come back from hell). It turned out that the battle was a "x turns to survive mission", which we had just had the previous encounter as well that ended with more superpowerful NPCs destroying everything.

Basically, what should have been at the very least a memorable failure and at best a huge success was a damp squib.

It's like an RPG when you waste all your expensive healing items on a "supposed to lose" battle. Except at least in computer games there's the excuse of not having a person there. A DM replicating bad game design is just annoying.

If NPCs ever help the party out, have them just be healers or at worst on buff duty. Having them be the DPS is just bad design.