The story of my most cursed character ever.

[SangoProduction]

And no, it's not the one who has only rolled 2 attack rolls above a 5 over a 1.3-year period, whose story is in my signature.

This is the story of Thanasis Nightwing, guardian of the people, defender of righteousness, and the last Dragon Knight.

Most recent character sheet: https://www.myth-weavers.com/sheet.html#id=1090749

Character's Actual Backstory [Shortened]:
Thanasis was part of the association: The Dragon Knights of Azuma. Azuma was a living frost dragon. She was somehow captured and enslaved by a witch, along with many other Good dragons. Battle happens. Dragon Knights are wiped out, for the most part, and those that remained are no longer loyal to the cause. Thanasis was bitten by Azuma directly, at the behest of the Witch.

"Cold gripped me tight. I didn't know if it was Death's, or Azuma's hand that held me so." He reawakened on the battlefield, as nothing but animate armor, pulling the tooth from his chest, and fashioning it in to a weapon.

On my first attempt at playing him:
So, it was my first time I actually found a group that played BESM. What a joy! What a lucky day it was. We played online. My character hopped through worlds before in his chase for the Witch. This time when he hopped, he ended up in...some sort of "god's labyrinth", which was a multi-dimensional, phase-locked, buzzword, labyrinth created to test the greatest of warriors for the god's boon.

After cursing that she had gotten away again, I found a group that was escorting a princess to the top. Well, I simply had to join in. Trials and tribulations ahead. We get 2 floors up, discover secret artifacts, find a new energy source unique to the labyrinth, and are about to enter the "tournament arc" of the story....and then the DM goes silent. Considering he was living in China, I say he probably should be been a bit more quiet about his distaste for how the country was run. They make Trump/Putin look like Angels.

The group just kinda listlessly meets up every week for 6 months before slowly disbanding. No one wanted to DM. I don't think anyone could DM (back then). I went on for another 4 months before deciding the DM is just gone.

On my second attempt at playing him:
About 2 years later, I try my hand at playing him again. The new DM was our last DM's friend, and our last game went on for about 1.5 years, and was reasonably fun. Porting Thanasis over, I worked the new DM to find a best fit. I eventually went "screw it" and just chose to go with Warforged Paladin. Spoiler: this is where I learned "never play paladin."

So, over the course of 2 sessions, Thanasis was trapped in a cage for half the entire session, got one of his arms irreversibly rusted off, thrown in jail (separate from the cage), his deity-bond weapon taken away, his speed cut in half (by god damned fleas! how?), fell because the prison guard, seeing the other 15 blowing up as I grappled him one-handed, refused to surrender, forcing me to kill him. Because of the bond with the weapon, I get to sense "it's over there." Which, for one reason or another meant "chase your weapon, so that everyone else loses their equipment."

I am a very, very patient man. But no. I left. Asked the DM what his deal was, and got no answer. **** this.

On my third attempt at playing him:
It's been a number of years afterwards. I needed to calm down, but I still wanted to play him. I found the opportunity. But god was this new DM just absolutely droll, monotone, and unexciting. I trudged through 3 sessions of that before deciding this was definitely not the campaign I'll be playing in. /Sigh. At least it's not dramatically, mentally-scarringly bad.

On my latest attempt at playing him:
It was kinda cool. I mean, I was pulled in after they cycled through an entire roster of other players, and they didn't keep logs of what they did, so I was pretty well lost. But in the end, it was a pretty cool little adventure. My character created the Neo-Dragon Knights in this world (in the background the DM set up, not in play). Everyone seemed friendly and what have you.

I got 2 sessions through...and then no more than 2 other people show up at to any single game. In a group of 7. SEVEN! For a month! I left the game. God damn it! Thanasis! I blame you and your bloody ice bitch of a goddess.

[the_david]

Hmmm, sounds cool. Do you still want to play this character, or have you given up already?

[SangoProduction]

Hmmm, sounds cool. Do you still want to play this character, or have you given up already?

Yeah, kinda. He never got a proper ending. You can take him if you want.

[the_david]

He's not really my style, i just want to give you a little bit of critique, if that's okay.
- The animated armor part is a bit too special snowflake for me. It might not work with every DM, or in every campaign. (As could have been the case with attempt 2.) You risk drawing attention to yourself as the lead character, while you should think of yourself as part of the team. An easy way to remedy this is just saying your character had a near death experience and he still hasn't recovered yet. (Which would let you play him as a first level character.)
Though if I have to be honest, I've never seen an animated armor as a character before. You get cool points for that.
- The last dragon knight bit is another problem. What you're telling your DM is: "All my friends are dead and my character doesn't have any ties to this world." It's very similar to saying your character is an orphan. It doesn't add much to the setting, and your DM won't be able to do much with it.
- Your character seems to have a personal goal. (Freeing Azuma and killing the witch.) If the DM wants to build a campaign around the players and their character this might be an excellent goal. If the DM wants to run a railroad campaign that has nothing to do with Azuma or the Witch, Thanasis will stand out like a turd in a punch bowl. This could also create some friction between players as they might not share your goal.
To be honest, I've got a character with a personal goal that I've never played. I could adapt him to different settings, but I can't find a group that would like to play in that particular style.

So that's how I think about Thanasis. It might be a bit harsh, but this is what my experience tells me. What do you think.

[Long_shanks]

Question on the character sheet. How come do you only have 146 HP, when you have 143 bonus HP from your constitution (11 con mod x 13 levels)? You should be around 195-205 with average rolls...

[the_david]

And how can someone be 6'20'' tall?

[SangoProduction]

Question on the character sheet. How come do you only have 146 HP, when you have 143 bonus HP from your constitution (11 con mod x 13 levels)? You should be around 195-205 with average rolls...

I don't think I ever recalculated my hit points since I adjusted my Con.


And how can someone be 6'20'' tall?

By having a Typo


He's not really my style, i just want to give you a little bit of critique, if that's okay.
- The animated armor part is a bit too special snowflake for me. It might not work with every DM, or in every campaign. (As could have been the case with attempt 2.) You risk drawing attention to yourself as the lead character, while you should think of yourself as part of the team. An easy way to remedy this is just saying your character had a near death experience and he still hasn't recovered yet. (Which would let you play him as a first level character.)
Though if I have to be honest, I've never seen an animated armor as a character before. You get cool points for that.
- The last dragon knight bit is another problem. What you're telling your DM is: "All my friends are dead and my character doesn't have any ties to this world." It's very similar to saying your character is an orphan. It doesn't add much to the setting, and your DM won't be able to do much with it.
- Your character seems to have a personal goal. (Freeing Azuma and killing the witch.) If the DM wants to build a campaign around the players and their character this might be an excellent goal. If the DM wants to run a railroad campaign that has nothing to do with Azuma or the Witch, Thanasis will stand out like a turd in a punch bowl. This could also create some friction between players as they might not share your goal.
To be honest, I've got a character with a personal goal that I've never played. I could adapt him to different settings, but I can't find a group that would like to play in that particular style.

So that's how I think about Thanasis. It might be a bit harsh, but this is what my experience tells me. What do you think.

OK. I wasn't sure why you were asking it, and I didn't want you to think I was going "NO! My Character! Back off!"

1) Well, I worked with the DM to port it over in to 3.5, in #2. He OKed everything from the design to the implementation. He was just a ****. The rest were online games, where you put in applications to play. If they don't like the application, they don't let you play. So, if it doesn't work with the DM, then that's no problem as they'd either choose another, or none, of my applications.

2) Perhaps. You could also see it as background building for the world, if you wanted. A major / semi-major institution of paladin-kin being decimated by their allies can be a pretty huge event. Which is why, whenever I write out the full BG, I never mention the size so the DM can play with it as they see fit, if they do at all. Often times, background is just "OK, so this is the basic gist of the character, got it."

3) You don't need to have the campaign built around a character. Indeed that's exceedingly rare. But each character should have a reason to keep adventuring continuously, unless it's one of those rare specimen campaigns where motivation is inherent to the campaign (aka, the world is ending and such nonsense). This character, for example, would always fit in, because each adventure has potential to find leads to the witch, and get him closer to his goals.

I just find "greed" to be a really poor motivator when you could already buy a fully stocked castle with all the luxuries with 1/10 the gold you already have.