Most Memorable Character you've played

[Mike Miller]

I'm just curious what the most memorable characters people have played have been. I've primarily DM'ed, so I don't have a whole lot of interesting PCs to mention. However, a memorable NPC of mine was a friendly beholder shopkeeper in a rather strange homebrew setting.

[flappeercraft]

My favorite character I have had is actually the current BBEG of the campaign I'm running.

Mostly because honestly what he is doing is what I would do were I to have those powers. I would not be mass murdering or destroying for the sake of it, or even dominating the world. I would take over the top of the chain, kill the gods and become one as an ultimate goal, plus fighting with the lesser powerful beings even though I could end them in an instant, just for the sake of entertainment.

[tstewt1921]

My Wizard Urdenbarr was the most memorable character I've ever played, he died about 3-5 times in previous games and I just kept bringing me back, my DM basically said that the previous games he died in were alternate dimensions and while we were in Ravenloft all the memories of my deaths and past "lives" came back to him. Urdenbarr was already kind of a ****, but when those all came rushing back it sent him over the edge and made him a little insane. The character in itself is due to more party deaths than the DM has ever caused (GM mind controlled me and saw my tailored spell list for every person in the party and proceeded to massacre them) he had 3 people who he fully trusted in the party out of the 8 we had. Viridia, Tuck, Lev. He was trying to make his way home from Ravenloft and found a way after Tuck had died on a airship due to the creatures of Ravenloft. It was just Viridia, Lev, and Urdenbarr. When they finally found their way out, they killed one of the great beasts of Ravenloft, and 2 had to undergo trials (basically 7 deadly sin trials.) Going through the trials Urdenbarr basically failed all of them due to his giant ego. However, in the last trial he was able to complete it to get the information needed. A life from Revendar, Viridia, Tuck, and Urdenbarr's home must be sacrificed for the gate to be opened with a specific dagger given to Urdenbarr. At this point Urdenbarr couldn't bare the loss of another friend after Tuck, and he was madly in love with Viridia. So upon exiting he killed himself. After the party passed through the gate to Revendar, with Urdenbarr's body, they encounter the shrine of the gods. For completing everything that they did in Ravenloft, the gods granted them one wish. Lev, wished for Urdenbarr to be brought back. The gods refused saying it wasn't possible ( at this point I had a whole character rolled up and ready to go due to expecting nobody to wish for that ) Lev said, well then you aren't gods if you can't make that happen. (Lev was an atheist obviously) so after getting through everyone else, Lev didn't change his wish and the gods brought back Urdenbarr, to which from there he researched a spell to create his own world and destroy the hell known to him as Ravenloft, with the help of Lev & Viridia, they created the Gate City, which he named after Viridia who died in the creation of the city which is in the plane of Urdenheim..to this day, he is still researching how to destroy the plane of Ravenloft, as all attempts have failed and the plane grows and grows.

[Ellrin]

I haven't actually had a chance to play that many characters in actual games, so I suppose most of the characters I've played stick out in my mind. I guess the ones that stick out most, though, are Shad and Ind.

Shad was essentially the first character I ever made (my actual first character died in his first session). He was the son of an artist and a leanan sidhe, sometime apprentice to a crotchety old gnome illusionist, and an all around disreputable beguiler. His sole purpose in joining up with the party was that he had been traveling on his own for a while and was of the opinion that vacations were always more enjoyable with a meat shield or two around. After their first dungeon delve, the party encountered a sort of public venue where anyone was welcome to try their hand at drawing from a deck of many things. After three draws, Shad had leveled up three times, earned a keep in Montana, and gained the enmity of an outsider; at this point, he felt it was in his best interests to secure his fortunes, left the party, and rolled a 100 on the percentile die my DM wanted to use to determine his success in robbing the party on his way out.

Ind, sometimes known as Ind the Mad Child, was a sun elf who, due to a genetic disorder, had stopped growing at around the (apparent) age of nine. A necromancer of some skill, he had been a worshipper of Orcus and a horrible tyrant in a small, forested fiefdom, kidnapping peasants (mostly children) to inflict gruesome necromantic experiments on them--or just to break down their bodies for materials. After a traveling party of NPC adventurers nearly killed him, he had a nasty realization about what his own ultimate fate was likely to be, and decided to reform, dedicating himself to a minor homebrew TN god of funerary rites. He had a habit of getting in trouble with undead after that, though, and the party wasn't entirely sure what he was doing with all those vials of blood he kept taking from dead enemies. He once managed to accidentally enrage an encounter with wights by attempting to talk to them using the dark speech.

[Krazzman]

My favourite is somewhere between Draco, a strong and ressourceful Warblade who used a Spiked Chain to great effect and Butz the Totemist, an illiterate but intelligent (14 Int) Totemist with some Draconic roots.

Draco is there because he was just a constant badass due to really lucky rolls and clever use of Maneuvers... while Butz was an constant joy to play, both mechanically and role play wise.

[Âmesang]

My most memorable is my Suel sorceress/archmage, Quintessa, as I've been playing her in one form-or-another for the last decade—first in SoulCalibur III (and subsequently IV and V), then in 3rd Edition, and even referenced in 5th Edition by translating the custom spell I created for her (with more on the way, I hope).

I feel her having originally been a video game character helped to flesh out her vain, conceited, selfish, self-centered, egotistical personality early on as well as having an appearance I could easily describe and point out… and it was her appearance that helped to eventually flesh out her backstory because her (initially) white hair, magenta eyes, and fair skin closely resembled a color combination for the Suel from the WORLD OF GREYHAWK®… which was fortuitous since they're a people descended from an ancient, magical, and fallen empire which gave her an easy adventure motivation—seek out the lost lore of her kin and become the first "Mage of Power" in over a thousand years… all the while appearing utterly fabulous whilst doing so.

A run-in with the Soul Gem of Inverness bleached her appearance to a ghostly white, but new equipment, a touch of magic makeup, and the glowing-blue eyes of her permanent arcane sight has given her a very fitting, otherworldly appearance… as she might say, "…a perfect reflection of the Suel Imperium during the 'Age of Glory'."

What I also enjoy about the character is how deliciously devious and deviant she is, the kind of silver/forked-tongue individual who speaks with sweet words tinged with poison, always having a hidden agenda, and having the charisma necessary to wheel and deal with nobles, aristocrats, royalty, mages, dragons, and extraplanar entities… and, what's more, her skill with magic enables her to traverse the planes, visiting other worlds not unlike the more well-known mages of D&D, opening up ample opportunity for adventure (even if it's just in my own head :smalltongue:).

The fact that I've played as her for so long and put so much into her is why, when I thought about creating a spell, I named it after her—I figured it was only appropriate for a true archmage of Oerth to eventually have a unique spell to her name… especially one as vain as her who would love to have her name spoken with the same reverence as Rary or Evard, without realizing that letting loose her secrets means they can be turned against her (the consequence of having a below-average wisdom).

[IcarusWulfe]

My most memorable character (who still serves as my go to username to this day) was Icarus Wulfe, an Artificer I played during my freshman year of high school. He was basically just a young, extremely curious magical scientist with boundless enthusiasm and a near perpetually chipper attitude. He had been disowned by the wealthy merchant family he belonged to after accidentally blowing up a wing of the university he attended when an experiment went awry. What made this memorable was that all of my friends were playing their first "edgy" characters with dark cloaks, dead parents, and "my character doesn't care about this" all around. Icarus, despite being the youngest of the group served as the group's moral compass, quartermaster, strategist, and to quote TV Tropes Morality Pet. He was a blast to play and made a large variety of cool and useful magic items.

[Crake]

It's really hard to make a decision on something like this, especially as a DM. Between the numerous PCs I've made, and the innumerable NPCs, I couldn't possibly decide on a singlular most memorable. It would have to be like a top 5, or top 10 perhaps, so in no particular order:

Joanna Ryder (name and picture shamelessly stolen from this (https://orig07.deviantart.net/bf58/f/2014/338/7/6/joanna_ryder_by_sharandula-d88opq5.jpg)) a pathfinder unchained rogue in a spheres of power game, who, through various feats, and eventually a tiny bit of multiclassing managed to have a full caster level up until around level 12ish. Rogue 5/Incanter1/Shadowdancer 1/Rogue X, she was a starry eyed runaway noble, looking for adventure. She managed to get through quite a bit before being retired as a PC and becoming an NPC, after the rest of her party died to a fungal queen and her minions, and were raised as the fungal queen's servants. She eventually started a guild in their memory, as well as a means to fund research and magic item crafting to try and recover her friends from the fungus queen's control. The DM of that world says he eventually plans to run a game where we're members of her guild, and maybe manage to save her old party members, but that remains to be seen if it will succeed.

Calminaion Auroch, an elf factotum, was a noble from the great trade city of Sorenport, with a ranger elf cohort (his lover, Falathiel Celeanil) who were working with a knight, Sir Brydda of their sister city, Mah-Vodun to stop an incoming threat of an old, great wyrm green dragon. It's hard to go into much detail with these two without going through and explaining the whole plot, but sufficed to say he managed to have a threesom with the queen of Mah-Vodun (who also, as it turned out, happened to be the green dragon in disguise :smalleek:), and was slowly corrupted by a succubus whom he "saved", eventually becoming a follower of the succubus' demon lord masters, and betraying Sir Brydda when the green dragon attacked Mah-Vodun, using the opportunity to steal evil artifacts locked away in the castle vaults. Sir Brydda did manage to defeat the dragon, though it was at the loss of much of the city, and he eventually become Knight Commander of the city, since the royal family was all killed.

The following are NPCs, rather than players:
Claudia Dietricha Elisabeth Von Altenburg, eldest daughter of the Von Altenburg family, oldest family of the oldest city of my campaign setting. They are in fact vampires, but they have very strict rules regarding population control, meaning there is a primary house, and a secondary house. The primary house consists of the actual vampires, while the secondary house lives generation by generation. Only when a vampire is executed for breaking the rules, dies from some tragic accident (the city is enormous, so it is quite possibly for a vampire to be caught too far away from their coffin if they venture too far out into the city), or otherwise is unsatisfied with their life and commits suicide, a new vampire is chosen from the secondary house. This generation, it was Claudia. She met the players early on in a city game, and fluctuated back and forth a fair bit between protagonist and antagonist, starting off as a lover of one of the PCs, but then having a very violent break up, only to reconcile with the other PCs. Eventually, her sister, Nymphadora Abigail Dianne Von Altenburg (who was a player character in a later campaign), was also turned, due to an invasion resulting in a few more hapless vampires dying. Quite a fun NPC to play, and resulted in more than a few very memorable moments in that game.

Jeremiah, the Red Dragon. The second part is just a title that this desert wind swordsage carried as part of the guild Dragon's Roar. Each of the notable guild members held a title of some kind of dragon. This was in the same campaign as Claudia above, a very city-focused game, with a heavy focus on roleplaying and interaction with the NPCs in the world. The PCs all eventually joined Dragon's roar, and one of them even fell in love with Jeremiah, though it started of as a very an uneasy relationship, since the player was essentially a matriarchal amazonian tiefling who was taught from birth that all men are inferior, and there was much cognitive dissonance between her feelings for him, and the teachings she had grown up with. Jeremiah served a great red/gold dragon (gold dragon with the half red-dragon template, sue me :smalltongue:) who had gone missing long ago (he was immortal thanks to the wedded to history feat), and with the PC's help, eventually it was discovered that he was infact the dragon, his memories sealed in a thought jar which he stumbled across when he went to explore his master's (or rather, his own) secret vault. Upon touching the thought jar, things started to come back, and eventually he regained his full glory, though that was beyond the end of the game, post-epic (my players hate epic levels). I know that all sounds very DMPC-ish, but keep in mind that this game was entirely focused around what the PCs wanted to do, and the PCs wanted to learn more about the NPCs they liked, so that's how things went down. Each of the PCs, and at least a few of the other NPCs in the game had equally fantastical and epic stories of their own.

The last two characters kinda come in a pair, Illya and Niala, one a drow swordsage/shadowdancer, the other a demon daughter of Lolth (though quite a weak one, basically a refluffed succubus with drow abilities that could turn into a drider). The two of them held key roles in one of the players' backstories, a drow named Lyralei, in a game that was initially based strongly around Ashardalon devouring the world's souls, but there was a giant red herring involving Lolth being resurrected from the dead. That's right, Lolth. Resurrected from the dead. As a red herring. Sufficed to say, it's a very long story, involving drow on the moon (now a meme in my table group :smalltongue:), but the two of the played very heavily as supporting cast in the game, and that player's backstory. She eventually got leadership to have Niala, the demon, as her cohort, while Illya, who has essentially been her lifelong bodyguard/caretaker, joined the party about midway through the game when Lyralei cut ties with her family upon learning they had kept the truth about Niala's existence from her. Again, long story, but when she cut ties, Illya came looking for her to bring her home, but was eventually instead convinced to also cut ties and stay with Lyralei instead.

[Remuko]

Not favorite but memorable is probably Sgt Killik a Kobold that I gave an aussie accent (based on paul hogan from Crocodile Dundee). He was originally a barbarian and travelled with a half dragon fighter and gnome wizard and they became a sort of street performance troupe in their downtime from adventuring. Later in life he took lessons from a party member and retrained into a monk and set himself a nearly impossible goal; gain the power to reach and best Kurtulmak the evil god of the Kobolds. Eventually he had his chance and took it and with some rules in place challenged the deity to 1 on 1 melee combat. He bested him and altho he couldnt permanently kill him he stole some of his divine spark and ascended himself become a good deity for the kobolds to worship instead, leaving kobolds to more easily stray from evil alignments and deeds.

[unseenmage]

Draruuc the goblin alchemificer

Curiosity the spellfire infused warforged spellthief

Siyaca the gnome omnificer

[EvulOne]

Gow, my half-orc fighter that had a Myrmidon kit from 2.0. When I played him I had GREAT instincts. I always picked spots where traps were, Lurkers, mimics, nothing was able to surprise us cause I seemed to always know when it was coming and how. I was never able to do that with any other character. When I played him, anytime he spoke, the entire party shut up and listened.