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NRSASD
2018-09-29, 03:52 PM
I finally might be handing off the crown of DMing for a moment and getting to play in a D&D 5E one shot. I'm quite pleased with my character concept, which the rest of the party is in

I'm going to be a barbarian (not sure what race) of the Eagle Totem path, refluffed as the Butterfly Totem Path. He's going to have a background in tailoring, and is going to be introduced as wearing loose, shapeless brown clothes he made himself, the traditional garb of his people. He'll be rather soft spoken, reserved, and eat a ton.
But when he rages, he'll find the highest point on the battlefield and announce "I reject the Cocoon of Civility!" rips clothes in half, revealing his true colors "And embrace the Butterfly of Rage!"

He'll be wearing basically this underneath
https://i.ytimg.com/vi/8hq0n71ysPM/maxresdefault.jpg

Two questions for the Playground: What other butterfly/caterpillar motifs can I sneak into my barbarian's culture, and what are some examples of your favorite ridiculous characters?

As always, thanks for any and all help!

Concrete
2018-09-29, 04:54 PM
You could have the shamans of his culture have a moth theme, if that ever comes up.

You could have him absolutely adore sweet stuff, mostly drinks, like mead and liqueurs and stuff.

He can sleep in some kinda mix of a tent and a hammock that hangs from a branch.

And a nasty mask that shows off the creepiest, most terrifying aspects of a butterfly's face could be rad.
http://www.dispar.org/images/upload/images/head.jpg

As for strange concepts, I once played a wizard that has a hand theme, and almost only had touch spells, or spells which had an effect that looked like a hand. I had however vastly overestimated my ability to come up with hand-puns on the fly, and he quickly became painful to be around.

I did also play a Changeling: The Lost character with a moth theme, a private investigator who had a tendency to stray too close to the truth and get burned. He kept a bottle of baileys in his desk and summoned moths to spy on people. Admittedly, he was more fun to draw than to play.

https://orig00.deviantart.net/d7c7/f/2013/161/8/9/nikolai_moff_by_persistant-d68jbre.png

Lord Haart
2018-09-29, 06:09 PM
As for strange concepts, I once played a wizard that has a hand theme, and almost only had touch spells, or spells which had an effect that looked like a hand. I had however vastly overestimated my ability to come up with hand-puns on the fly, and he quickly became painful to be around.
OTOH, if you didn't have enough puns handy, you should've considered a more hands-off approach to roleplaying him. Handling every single one in-character is a handful.


*makes a Hide check*


For example: had a paladine of Sune who was basically Johnny Bravo. Had a psionic android known as Brigadier, created for managing construction projects, whose intelligence was so high, he not only spoke about ten different languages, but did so without ever using a non-swear word (Russian allowed me to avoid even function words). And right now i'm playing a thieving, teenage half-elf girl who is also, secretly (though the party knows by now), a laguthrope — that is, a were-hare with a three-meters-tall hybrid form.

BeerMug Paladin
2018-09-29, 06:22 PM
Half-Orc wizard. Low/middling mental scores, high physical scores. He admires smartness, but isn't terribly smart or wise himself. In combat he would cast buffs and then go into melee with a great axe.

Based on the general idea that people who enjoy certain vocations or hobbies aren't necessarily talented at them.

SimonMoon6
2018-09-30, 06:48 AM
In 3.0, I had in mind a really stupid character that would have to be an NPC. My intention was for a group of PCs to need to hire one extra adventurer for some stupid bureaucratic reason, and they would have several to choose from (all of whom would be terrible). This particular guy used the 3.0 (not 3.5) version of the Foe Hunter prestige class.

The idea of this prestige class was that you choose a monster type and you get ranger-themed bonuses against that creature type, like bonuses to track and extra damage (similar to sneak attack damage) and stuff like that, if I remember right. So, the character I had in mind would be a Plant Hunter, a guy who absolutely HATES plants and wants to see them all dead. The downside would be that his class abilities would almost never come in handy. You can't track a daffodil because it's just sitting there and plants are immune to the bonus damage from the class. (Yes, shambling mounds, for example, could be tracked, but most plants would ignore of all his abilities.)

I loved this character for two reasons: (1) The idea of hating plants just seemed hilarious to me, especially since they're everywhere. (2) The idea that someone would hate plants so much that they would take a class specifically to be better at killing them, without actually getting better at killing them, also seemed funny to me.

I have heard that the 3.5 version of the class changed enough so that the Plant Hunter would *not* be useless, but I haven't looked at it.

Hand_of_Vecna
2018-09-30, 07:32 AM
OTOH, if you didn't have enough puns handy, you should've considered a more hands-off approach to roleplaying him. Handling every single one in-character is a handful.


*makes a Hide check*




I have to hand it to you those are some solid puns, but they risk coming off as heavy handed. On the other hand that can sometimes be the point of excessive punning. Don't knuckle under if one or two don't land brush it off *accompanied by gesture* when you get fingered. If it seems like too much to handle imagine yourself sitting in the shade of a palm tree sipping on three fingers of rum in a freshly squeezed tropical punch of finger limes, Budda's palm and a whole hand of bananas.

Can I use sleight of hand to assist a hide check?

Durandu Ran
2018-09-30, 01:49 PM
My favorite silly character I've ever cooked up was Saderik the Melancholy, an elf bard I made for a one-off Pathfinder session. I played him as gloomy, but also pleasant, courteous and conversational. I modeled my character voice after Noel Fielding, particularly his role of Richmond from The IT Crowd. I pronounced his name as "Sad Eric," and I had a running gag where I introduced myself as "Saderik... It's an elvish word that means joyful." My favorite spell was Sonic Scream because the idea of this weird goth bard wordlessly screaming at enemies as he strummed his lute was hilarious to me. Whip of Spiders was another spell that felt extremely right for the character, and I'm still on the lookout for a more long-term opportunity to play him again.

The Jack
2018-09-30, 02:14 PM
Dwarf-Dwarf

A Dwarf with dwarfism, which isn't that noticable among dwarven kind but let it be known that he is the shortest, and thus the dwarfiest, dwarf to have ever dwarfed.

He had a real name but the players never bothered to ask. I never bothered to actually think of it. I think it would've been 'Shorty'.

I actually played him as LE, and he left his home on account of his people not being Dwarf enough for him (He got kicked out for being a ****). He joined a pirate crew and I wasted a skill on acrobatics (Str fighter) so he could tumble.

GreatWyrmGold
2018-09-30, 02:52 PM
Mundogar the ettin. Two* players wanted to switch characters at the same time, and they came across rules for ettin characters. (One side played a barbarian, the other side played a warlock.) We knew that they would be incredible; we just didn't know if they'd be incredibly fun or incredibly annoying. Luckily, it was fun. A bit of it was mechanical, e.g. when Dogar would cast blink or something and leave the party without its tank. (You just had to be there.) The two personalities also bounced off each other in amusing ways; one incident that comes to mind is Dogar pushing Mundo into a river.
Their interactions with one of the other consistent characters also helped. I was playing a by-the-book aristocratic cleric who wound up the de facto party leader. He was a member of the Lord's Alliance, so the DM justified new characters as being sent by the Alliance; Mundogar was one of those characters, and they were eager to be "big heroes". Of course, they weren't always good at it; they didn't cause mayhem or anything like that, but they were consistent headaches to my cleric. (Though not to me, which is why it was fun.) It was a classic comic trio (https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ComicTrio) whenever the stakes weren't high enough to be taken seriously, but Mundogar knew how to take things seriously when he had to.

*Well, three, but the third player went through characters like coffee filters.

TeChameleon
2018-09-30, 05:58 PM
My favourite ridiculous character I played was Big Yan, a Pixie Grapple Fighter.

Well, more properly 'Pictsie'- I played him as basically being a flying Nac Mac Feegle. It worked better than you'd think, courtesy of a minor bit of rules-lawyering- there were a bunch of Fighter grapple-powers in 4e on which any mention of size modifiers was conspicuously absent. So enemies would encounter this tiny, glowing, fight-happy imbecile, laugh... and get grabbed, dragged, and smashed through a wall twenty feet away :smallamused:

Spore
2018-09-30, 10:30 PM
Maybe get a bite attack (improvised weapon = Tavern Brawler) for your caterpillar "form"? Like in "You don't deserve to see the majesty that is the butterfly! *chomp chomp*

My most fun idea recently was a Goblin Blackblade in Pathfinder (think Bladelock meets intelligent weapon) that found his Blackblade in the rubbish on the body of its previous owner. The weapon sees the goblin as a new wielder who is not worthy and bickers with it constantly. Of course the group cannot hear the sword. As the levels advance the weapon's ego will increase, eventually leading it to either rebel against the magus or accept it. So it's basically just a lunatic shouting at his sword that it missed deliberately and that the cursed thing should switch on its flaming ability already!

Another - PF - thing I made was a Wilfred Fizzlebang, Master Summoner! He never got to be played but the major gist would have been to flood the field with his summons, and I mean flood. I would drown the enemy in summons, eventually leaving me no choice than to use my Gate scroll. Which I would of course use to summon a Balor, and then try and convince it to help me.

lukitux
2018-10-01, 09:12 AM
Let me tell you about the characters that my brother and I played during a wilderness survival game. (This was 5e BTW)

Timber the Axeman: This character was specialized in one thing: handaxes. He multiclassed to get both the two weapon fighting style and the archery fighting style. He also took dual-wielder and Sharpshooter so he could deal significant damage with hand axes in melee or ranged combat. He was a ranger/fighter and his backstory is that both his parents were lumberjacks who were killed by Treants. He took up each of his parents hatchets and trained for years in the art of axe-throwing and axe-combat. His favored enemy was plants.

The Beekeeper: This was my character, a Druid wearing a beekeepers outfit and carrying a hive of bees on his back. All his spells were insect-themed and he mostly used Infestation, Insect Plague and Giant Insect. He summoned swarms of bees for combat and all his healing spells were magic honey from his bees. He didn't really care about the adventures, the only reason he stayed around was because the party kept going to faraway exotic locations that had their own species of bees to add to his swarm and if he went alone the monsters would eat him.

hotflungwok
2018-10-01, 01:32 PM
I had a DM tell us he was going to need to blow some steam off after defending his thesis, so he wanted to run us through Against the Giants, but in 3.5, using 3.5 giants. Yeah. He wanted us to all make 3 characters as minmaxed as we wanted (playing one at a time), and he'd see how many he could kill.

So I made a halfling wizard, necromancy specialist. His equipment: 1 large velvet bag with backpack type straps, some valuable gems, and a bunch of oils and potions. After looking over the character, the GM eyeballed me, wondering what I was up to. Early on someone made a crack about my character's size, something I was waiting for. My character goes off on a rant about stupid humans and elves towering over him, always looking down on him, and how he would show them all.

First encounter with a real giant, my character pulls out a gem and casts Magic Jar. The now possessed giant picks up the halfling's body, places it gently in the velvet bag, and puts the bag on. Then he takes some oil of Greater Magic Weapon and pours it on the giant's axe, drinks a potion of Rage (something like that?), turns to the surprised faces on the rest of the party and bellows 'Now I'm bigger than you! We're going where I wanna go! We're doing what I wanna do! I say we go go kick some ass!'.

He was a halfling with a height complex. He hated that other races were taller than him, and came up with a plan to deal with it. He possessed 2 or 3 giants that game, rushing recklessly into combat and jumping out of them when they got low on hp. The giant would snap back to his body and very very briefly wonder why his friends were killing him, while the halfling crawled out of the velvet bag over in the corner where it had been dropped at the beginning of the fight. One time the fighter couldn't open a giant sized door, and my character's possessed giant walked up to it and pushed it open with ease. He leaned down over the fighter and said 'Aww, does the wee human need some help opening that? Here, lemmie show you how it's done little man.'

He was fun. Kinda hard to do without starting at higher level, but I think the payoff would be much better with a campaign's worth of height jokes behind it.

Spore
2018-10-01, 04:13 PM
The Beekeeper: This was my character, a Druid wearing a beekeepers outfit and carrying a hive of bees on his back. All his spells were insect-themed and he mostly used Infestation, Insect Plague and Giant Insect. He summoned swarms of bees for combat and all his healing spells were magic honey from his bees. He didn't really care about the adventures, the only reason he stayed around was because the party kept going to faraway exotic locations that had their own species of bees to add to his swarm and if he went alone the monsters would eat him.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PYtXuBN1Hvc

GreatWyrmGold
2018-10-01, 09:53 PM
...eventually leaving me no choice than to use my Gate scroll. Which I would of course use to summon a Balor, and then try and convince it to help me.
That reminds me of the little demon-summoning kick Dogar (the warlock half of the ettin I mentioned earlier) went on. He only actually summoned demons once or twice, but the player (and maybe character?) talked about it more often than that.
My cleric didn't have the rolls required to identify the demons, so until Dogar incidentally mentioned that it was abyssal, not infernal, he had no idea what the warlock had just summoned. At which point he flipped out and alerted the nearby barbarians to just how bad of juju they were facing (apparently they knew the Common word for "demon").
...Dogar was not good at being a big hero.

Bruno Carvalho
2018-10-01, 10:08 PM
I fondly remember my Halfling Druid/Nature Cleric and his trusty St. Bernard mount and animal companion (with the barrel and everything)

RedMage125
2018-10-02, 10:05 AM
A player mine in 5e once made a Dragonborn Fey-Pact Warlock. It was fluffed as a pact with an elder Faerie Dragon. His breath weapon was poison (going off the hallucinogenic gas that faerie dragons use), and his Eldritch Blast was a blast of rainbow light.

He would occasionally say "Friendship is Magic!" when he blasted enemies with this.

The Glyphstone
2018-10-02, 10:55 AM
I played in a (Very brief) Monster-PCs game as a Nine-Headed Hydra, who wore a Headband of Intelligence to raise its Int score to playable levels. Each head had its own personality/alignment, and they would occasionally fight over who got to wear the headband and be 'in control', which was determined randomly at random times. It was like playing my own subgame of Everyone Is John inside the regular campaign (which became a dumpster fire and died for unrelated reasons anyways).

GreatWyrmGold
2018-10-02, 04:52 PM
For some reason, that reminded me of a campaign my group tried to start recently. We had basically no guidance on what the campaign was going to be about and little expectation that we would be able to take it seriously (because of the DM, long story), so we all decided on silly character concepts. I played a little druid girl who was raised by bears and could transform into one (I convinced the DM to let me get wild shape early and spellcasting late), and the rest of the party included an oblivious didgeridoo-playing bard, a criminal monk, a sorceress from another world (I think? The player didn't explain much of her backstory to the other players), and...well, his first plan was a corgi warlock (statistically a forest gnome) with a pixie familiar and a saddle, but he decided on an overly-optimistic centaur cleric instead. Oh, and the last player went with a town guardsman who was just saving up to buy a couple of pigs so he could propose to his sweetheart, a local girl named Marble.
Sadly, the campaign didn't get past the prologue before the DM's work schedule kicked in. The bits we saw were pretty generic (to the point that the DM accidentally copied the first chapter or so of the Dragonlance Chronicles), but the characters were fun.

Beleriphon
2018-10-03, 04:21 PM
Two questions for the Playground: What other butterfly/caterpillar motifs can I sneak into my barbarian's culture, and what are some examples of your favorite ridiculous characters?

As always, thanks for any and all help!

"Feel the Sting of the Monarch!" I feel like anything The Monarch from Venture Bros. says would probably a good thing to use.

Personification
2018-10-05, 05:41 PM
My favourite ridiculous character I played was Big Yan, a Pixie Grapple Fighter.

Well, more properly 'Pictsie'- I played him as basically being a flying Nac Mac Feegle. It worked better than you'd think, courtesy of a minor bit of rules-lawyering- there were a bunch of Fighter grapple-powers in 4e on which any mention of size modifiers was conspicuously absent. So enemies would encounter this tiny, glowing, fight-happy imbecile, laugh... and get grabbed, dragged, and smashed through a wall twenty feet away :smallamused:

On the one hand, this is amazing, but on the other hand, didn't your character's sword glow blue every time you had to rules-lawyer something?

TeChameleon
2018-10-06, 04:33 PM
On the one hand, this is amazing, but on the other hand, didn't your character's sword glow blue every time you had to rules-lawyer something?

Pfft... Hah!

Got around that by the simple expedient of not having a sword :smalltongue:

Jay R
2018-10-07, 01:20 PM
Next time I start a 2e game at 60,000 xps or more, I will run a dual-class Fighter / Wizard, who has just reached the wizard level where she can do both.

She will have been a Fighter, and then settled down to raise a family. During the next 60 years, she and her husband ran a farm near a village on the edge of a wilderness. She started learning herbalism from an older woman, and very slowly developed as a witch (a wizard by the rules). Experience was very slow - she could only gain xps when some wilderness creatures attacked, or a band of raiders came through.

When her husband died of old age, Old Granny Greyfeather sold the farm and started traveling again, a stern, crotchety, no-nonsense witch, gnarled and tough as an old oak.

The_Werebear
2018-10-07, 02:20 PM
Mine was a Bard/Master Thrower. Of Noble Origin, he was perpetually improvised from his extravagent lifestyle and his ability to throw 3-5 thousand gold worth of magic shurikens into the enemy every combat. Dual Wielding, Palm Throw, and Haste means Victor is a poor man.

Bacon Elemental
2018-10-07, 04:09 PM
I'm not sure if this counts as a stupid character concept because it seemed like a good idea at the time, but...

I had a paladin and I wanted her to worship a death god, so the GM made up a code of conduct because we felt the standard one didnt really fit.
We didnt really consider the consequences of the clause forbidding the "desecrating of tombs" until she had to awkwardly stand outside a tomb we were exploring with her fingers in her ears while the rest of the party did what adventurers do when theyve just cleared a tomb of monsters.

DuctTapeKatar
2018-10-08, 11:09 PM
I got one.

A bard who was raised by wolves.

Like, he'd be all cheery, and then when people ask him about his past, he's like, "Yeah, my birth parents abandoned me in the woods, luckily I was taken in by a nearby wolf pack. Once they told me I was adopted, I decided a couple years later that I should probably go find out who I am meant to be."

He'd be scruffy, lacking in proper table manners, and hitting on anything with some form of sentience.

Thisguy_
2018-10-09, 02:12 AM
Playing off the Druid from earlier, my group is about to wrap up a Storm King's Thunder game with my character being a Wizard with a bee motif.

There's also an entire archetype I keep making of Fist Wizards, who are all based off of Alex Louis Armstrong. I've done a pure wizard, a sun soul monk, and in PF, a bloodrager (she turned out great) so far.

Oh, and my first-ever character was a Thief Rogue who was in it for the money. But not to spend the money. Only hoard it. He inherited like 30-50% of a doctrine from his father about money being a form of power or something, so he just kind of collected and stashed wealth. A lot of it. In caches. All over the place. Like some kind of gold squirrel.

Arbane
2018-10-09, 02:18 AM
There's also an entire archetype I keep making of Fist Wizards, who are all based off of Alex Louis Armstrong. I've done a pure wizard, a sun soul monk, and in PF, a bloodrager (she turned out great) so far.



"I CAST FIST!" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m7RosIoQisA)?

Thisguy_
2018-10-09, 03:44 AM
"I CAST FIST!" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m7RosIoQisA)?

Absolutely yes. The Sun Soul Monk edition of this concept got to yell that out pretty triumphantly at one point after using a recently unlocked ability.

braveheart
2018-10-09, 09:40 AM
In my current campaign the party met a goblin, who doesn't speak common, but is insainly muscular, and massive... For a goblin, which means he is almost as tall and thick as the party dwarf, because he is non hostile the party has taken to calling him swoleblin

hotflungwok
2018-10-09, 10:15 AM
In my current campaign the party met a goblin, who doesn't speak common, but is insainly muscular, and massive... For a goblin, which means he is almost as tall and thick as the party dwarf, because he is non hostile the party has taken to calling him swoleblin
I played a buffed out gnome in a one shot with some friends once, he had a really deep voice and always talked about gainz, lifting, etc. They started calling him the brome.

Segev
2018-10-09, 05:07 PM
In an X-Men game, I played a character whose mutant power was to have cat eyes and grin huge. Her code name was "Cheshire."


In an epic D&D game, I played an (epic) pseudonatural...human. He was summoned by an apocalypse cult, but they got the wrong entity and he just wanted to say "hi." They were very disappointed in him, so he wandered off to seek adventure.


A white dragon wyrmling I had as a cohort on one character was convinced that he shattered the universe and created the multiverse. When he described the experience, it became clear he was describing hatching.


Not a PC, but I ran a game where the party found themselves in a part of Limbo that was a dune-choked desert, and they encountered a little red slaad in a pointy hat who was afraid of everything. Turned out that she was keeping the area stable as desert. Eventually, they gave up on pursuing the chicken slaad sand witch through her domain. (Yes, she had levels of sand shaper.)


In a Final Fantasy (table-top) RPG game that had mechanics for certain races you'd think of as PCs, the GM wouldn't let me home brew a tonberry. So I played a taru-taru who maxed out vitality and took the Knight class, which had Minus Strike. Minus Strike did the difference between your max hp and the amount of hp you currently have. Vitality determined your max HP. He said "doink" every time he minus struck anybody with his normally pathetically low-damage knife.

Nabirius
2018-10-10, 03:53 AM
I ran a campaign in which one of the main characters was a Crusader of Freedom named George Washington ... Carver. He was a legacy character from the traditional paladin who stood for societal order and complete insanity, George Washington.

Bastian Weaver
2018-10-10, 11:35 AM
Let's see. It was a superheroic game, and I played Plankton from Spongebob, masquerading as a Gotham city police officer. He was hiding inside a robot body, and the other players thought that the voice I did for him sounded a lot like a Dalek. So when the party stumbled into a villain named Doctor Doctor Doctor, the only sane thing to do was to grab a plunger and scream "Exterminate Doctor Doctor Doctor!"

John Campbell
2018-10-10, 02:10 PM
In a superhero game recently, I played a 7'-tall white-furred minotaur-like being with adhesion powers. He was a minor deity, the Modern God of Glue, an anthropic personification arisen from the common human subconscious, powered by the tiny prayers of everyone trying to get one thing to stick to another. He became a superhero in order to raise his public profile and gain more worship.

His name was Elmer (http://www.ci-n.com/~jcampbel/rpgs/dca/pcs/character.php?char=elmer).

When I wasn't superheroing, I'd help schoolchildren with their art projects.

GreatWyrmGold
2018-10-10, 04:41 PM
In a superhero game recently, I played a 7'-tall white-furred minotaur-like being with adhesion powers. He was a minor deity, the Modern God of Glue, an anthropic personification arisen from the common human subconscious, powered by the tiny prayers of everyone trying to get one thing to stick to another. He became a superhero in order to raise his public profile and gain more worship.

His name was Elmer (http://www.ci-n.com/~jcampbel/rpgs/dca/pcs/character.php?char=elmer).

When I wasn't superheroing, I'd help schoolchildren with their art projects.
That's adorable! It's so nice to see gods who actively work to improve their community, instead of just lounging around in heaven and muttering something about "mysterious ways" whenever someone criticizes their work.

TeChameleon
2018-10-10, 11:56 PM
In a superhero game recently, I played a 7'-tall white-furred minotaur-like being with adhesion powers. He was a minor deity, the Modern God of Glue, an anthropic personification arisen from the common human subconscious, powered by the tiny prayers of everyone trying to get one thing to stick to another. He became a superhero in order to raise his public profile and gain more worship.

His name was Elmer (http://www.ci-n.com/~jcampbel/rpgs/dca/pcs/character.php?char=elmer).

When I wasn't superheroing, I'd help schoolchildren with their art projects.

... didn't that run the risk of him getting eaten by that one weird kid, though? :smalltongue:

Love the concept, though.

The Glyphstone
2018-10-11, 12:00 AM
... didn't that run the risk of him getting eaten by that one weird kid, though? :smalltongue:

Love the concept, though.

Weird Kid was his supervillain nemesis, obviously.

hotflungwok
2018-10-11, 07:50 AM
Ever play a silly supers game?

My character in a game we played in college could fly, was really strong, could heat things up with his eyes, and could produce gourmet style food with a wave of his hand. That's right, he was Supper Man.

Another player had a character who could shoot webbing, cling to walls, & had a sixth sense about danger, but who's costume colors were the exact inverse of Spider Man's, and had 'Friends dont let friends copyright infringe' on his back. His enemies in the game were rampaging groups of Marvel lawyers trying to sue him.

It was a very silly game.

Jay R
2018-10-11, 10:05 AM
I once built a TOON character for D&D -- Ragnar Rabbit, the Hanna-Barbarian.

SimonMoon6
2018-10-11, 10:29 AM
Talking about ridiculous superhero characters: one of my players (who doesn't really "get" superheroes) once designed the following character (that he was never actually able to use):

This character is an alien starfish with seven arms. But that's just his powerless secret identity. When it's time for action, he turns into... a fish!

That's the ridiculous part. The useful part of the character was as follows:

As a fish, he has control over water, able to shape it and move it however he wants. So, he takes some water (that he swims in) and forms into the shape of a humanoid. So, when he goes out as a superhero, everybody just sees this water-man, with a fish swimming around inside it. The hope was that the villains might try attacking the water instead of the fish because they would assume that the water-man was the actual hero, instead of the fish swimming inside it.

Also, he was trying to take advantage of certain rules. It was easier in this game system to have an increased DEX if that DEX increase only applied in water (to make aquatic characters useful); also, very small characters are harder to hit. So, even if someone wanted to target the fish, it would be very hard to hit him.

John Campbell
2018-10-11, 10:55 AM
... didn't that run the risk of him getting eaten by that one weird kid, though? :smalltongue:
Worship takes many forms. "Eat of this paste; it is my flesh. Drink this glue; it is my ichor..."

And I mean, I was literally immortal. Worst case scenario (swarmed by voracious kindergarteners), I'd get bumped back to my Astral home for a day.


Ever play a silly supers game?
That was the kind of game Elmer came out of. My teammates included El Luchador Feliz, who got his powers from luchador, and whose secret identity was a different luchador (he turned his mask inside out); Le Flea, an aggressively French chef with shrinking and leaping powers; and Wreckr, a juvenile delinquent Pokémon master.

Durkoala
2018-10-11, 11:49 AM
For the OP, if you still want caterpillar/butterfly ideas:perhaps a philosophy which puts a focus on providing for yourself first and being self-sufficient, but being expected to support others if you're being successful? Or a culture venerating chaos and the surprises the future can bring? If you want to take a bit of a multiclass approach, you could get a defensive Fighter style and then switch to a full barabarian rage offensive style of fighting or something similar?


As best concept I've had was for a Magic The Gathering-based game. For those not in the know, MTG's central concept is that there are many separate worlds that cannot be reached except by a type of wizard known as planeswalkers (I'm simplifying a bit, but this gets the gist across). The premise of the game was that we would be a party travelling across the planes on adventures. I decided I'd like to play something like C.M.O.T Dibbler or Nurse Joy: A series of very similar characters spread out across the planes who would convieniently be in the right plave to help the party wherever they were. Sadly, the DM shot that down, but the more conventional planeswalker is still fun to play.

Fel Temp
2018-10-12, 09:26 AM
So my current Pathfinder character is a gnome who will tell you that she's a normal, friendly illusionist. She's actually a neutral evil necromancer with a +12 to bluff. I mostly just wanted a chance to say things like "Oh, don't worry about those 'skeletons.' They're not even real."

Segev
2018-10-15, 11:51 AM
So my current Pathfinder character is a gnome who will tell you that she's a normal, friendly illusionist. She's actually a neutral evil necromancer with a +12 to bluff. I mostly just wanted a chance to say things like "Oh, don't worry about those 'skeletons.' They're not even real."

Mere conjuration spells and illusions. Why are my illusions so creepy? Well, fear is an illusion spell, and I just ran with the theme. Makes it more believable.

The bones rattle and feel so realistic? Why, thank you! I work hard on my illusioncraft.

John Campbell
2018-10-16, 12:33 AM
Mere conjuration spells and illusions. Why are my illusions so creepy? Well, fear is an illusion spell, and I just ran with the theme. Makes it more believable.
Fear is actually necromancy. Because "necromancy" just means "bad and scary". That's why cure spells are conjuration now, but inflict spells are necromancy! Because that totally makes sense!

The Jack
2018-10-16, 08:02 AM
So my current Pathfinder character is a gnome who will tell you that she's a normal, friendly illusionist. She's actually a neutral evil necromancer with a +12 to bluff. I mostly just wanted a chance to say things like "Oh, don't worry about those 'skeletons.' They're not even real."

Reminds me of this Hobbit I had, who'd essentially play as a CG, ultra niceguy that'd win the trust and friendship of everyone. I'd be aggressively nice, like the bestest buddy of everyone. I'd be the pillar of the group.
But really he's Chaotic evil warlock of such wicked sickness that it'd only make sense to act so good. I'd spend games subtly suggesting that the other players should 'let their hair down' on occassions where they'd do evil, and I'd waiting to get my hands on a wish/mcguffin.


Nobody suspects the hobbits. Nobody.

GreatWyrmGold
2018-10-16, 09:57 AM
Fear is actually necromancy. Because "necromancy" just means "bad and scary". That's why cure spells are conjuration now, but inflict spells are necromancy! Because that totally makes sense!

Which crossed a wire with Ekman's "six basic emotions" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emotion#Basic_emotions), resulting in:

Anger: Evocation
Disgust: Enchantment
Fear: Necromancy
Joy: Abjuration
Sadness: ???
Surprise: Conjuration

Maybe it would work better if we paired necromancy with disgust...

Anger: abjuration
Disgust: Necromancy
Fear: Evocation
Joy: Enchantment
Sadness: ???
Surprise: Conjuration

No, still pretty arbitrary, and still nothing good for Sadness.

...I think this is interesting enough to share, but not fruitful enough to make its own thread, so I'll just spoiler it.

PandaPhobia
2018-10-17, 06:32 PM
what are some examples of your favorite ridiculous characters?



My favorite concept to play and roleplay with, as well as my current character, would have to be Verse (The Cursed) Twain. He´s a bard who used to be an insult comic, until he made fun of a bunch of kenku and got cursed to be more like them. Now he can only speak in couplets.

NRSASD
2018-10-18, 11:05 AM
Haha I love all the entries in this thread! I'd love to call them all out by name, but there's too many good ones. Elmer may have to make a cameo in one of my campaigns though (with your permission of course!)

From a 5E game, my wife played a Kenku battlemaster. In my setting, Kenku can be any kind of bird, so she went with a winter wren as the baseline. He used two scimitars, dropped action hero one-liners, hit on anything vaguely humanoid, and was dumber than a bag of hammers. He escaped from prison as part of his backstory, and so he was on the run from the law for most of the game.

His name?
WRENEGADE

(pictures to follow as soon as I can figure out how to upload one!)

Joe the Rat
2018-10-18, 11:40 AM
Going from the (horrible, horrible em face shot... <shudder>), you should have a whip. Maybe not your primary weapon, but something to uncoil for a good tongue lashing. Something about tasting the nectar of your fury. Try to get one with an inexplicable hollow tube for use as a straw/snorkel.

When civil, you are hungry. You are also a heavy sleeper, and tend to cocoon yourself in your blankets. Refer to your bonus action dash as the Migration of Doom.

You have a passion for aromatic flowers.

Get a Cloak of Billowing.


"Feel the Sting of the Monarch!" I feel like anything The Monarch from Venture Bros. says would probably a good thing to use.A veritable gold mine, that.

On a different note:
I am running a group through a one-ish-shot of a Ravenloft-style adventure. Aside from the three deadly shooters, I have an alcoholic cleric, a brawling paladin based on the Leprechaun from American Gods, and Leeeeroooy Jenkins, Gnome Fighter. First to charge, last to arrive.

GreatWyrmGold
2018-10-26, 07:21 PM
For the Pathfinder playtest, I've prepared a magic-sports star named Viktor Jordan, who got kicked off of his team (the Greengold Dragons, because "Greengold" is a name I noticed as a city name on the Pathfinder wiki) when he was discovered taking performance-enhancing potions before a big game. His motivation for becoming a hero to improve his public image so he can get on the field again. (Given the playtest's structure, this motivation only needs to last one adventure.) I gave him a number of movement-enhancing spells and feats, among other vaguely-sporty things...and his primary attack cantrip is, of course, telekinetic projectile. Presumably, the Greengold Dragons were a magic-basketball team of some kind.
I was planning to play him today, but real life got in the way as it often does. Ah well, things should be open next week.

(P.S. I also decided to give him a healing staff and a snake familiar to wrap around it, partly because it's good to have a backup healer and partly because the staff with two snakes is Hermes's, dangit!)

ImNotTrevor
2018-10-28, 08:35 PM
I just want to play a character named:
"Eric Withakay"

Confuse everyone at the table and everyone he talks to for fun and profit.

GreatWyrmGold
2018-10-28, 09:10 PM
Oh, and the last player went with a town guardsman who was just saving up to buy a couple of pigs so he could propose to his sweetheart, a local girl named Marble.
Alright, today that player mentioned that his character was actually a changeling who killed and impersonated the guardsman. He was planning to have the guardsman "die" and be replaced by another random guy, and repeat until the party figured out what was going on.
Still a brilliantly stupid character concept, just a much more elaborate one.

Personification
2018-10-28, 10:19 PM
I just want to play a character named:
"Eric Withakay"

Confuse everyone at the table and everyone he talks to for fun and profit.

I am 90% sure someone on this forum has said that they have made that character.

ImNotTrevor
2018-10-28, 10:40 PM
I am 90% sure someone on this forum has said that they have made that character.

I've seen a 4chan post about it. Could have been there. It's an idea worth stealing, IMO.

Son of A Lich!
2018-10-28, 11:32 PM
I have Algernon, who is an INT 6 Wizard that I'm going to be play testing and reporting the results on the boards here. Of course, he is going to have a familiar; A white rat, likely holding flowers.

I have had a number of interesting ideas that wouldn't really fly in a serious campaign;

-A "sorcerer" (By class, not in lore) who was an arch mage that mind wiped himself after learning a dark secret that he couldn't let fall into the wrong hands. Wandering the streets with a mail box he insists is his familiar, and otherwise disregarded as a crazy old vagrant, who carries a large, leather bound romance novel he believes to be his spell book.

-A Druid/Arch-fey warlock gnome who is so disgustingly sweet while talking about the importance of Saturday Morning Cartoon "Morals" like brushing your teeth and respecting the foundation of institutionalized monarchies (Citation needed), while gleefully sending candy colored wolves to devour her opponents and unleashing prismatic bees singing songs in unison. Think Yuno (Future Diary), as depicted through My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, from the world of Strawberry Shortcake.

-Another Warlock, this time a simple farmer who is literally not in control of his spell casting. Plausibly pact of the chain, probably Arch-fey, as he describes getting lost in another world and made a deal to get back to his farm, but he has never left his hillside village and has no idea where the otherworldly being 'returned' him to, but it definitely isn't "Close" to home like he thought he was going.

-Yaun-ti Cultist (Warlock, Cleric, Sorcerer, Eh...) worshiping an Abeolth unbeknownst to himself, and desperately trying to convince everyone around him that the number of things he is trying to hide from them aren't true, even when they are obvious to everyone else. Claims to be a bard, has a writhing host of tendrils for a familiar, asks for samples of blood "in case they need to be resurrected", and that he really is just a normal human with a SKIN CONDITION! Or, as a corollary, a human (Probably ranger, Ranger feels like a good fit) who is convinced that someone in the party is just an Abeolth worshiping Yaun-ti cultist. And he's so on to them... "So, you admit that you breath underwater!" "Paul, I literally just told you I'm a Triton" "A Likely Story!"

lucky9
2018-10-28, 11:40 PM
What other butterfly/caterpillar motifs can I sneak into my barbarian's culture

Only thing that comes to mind that hasn't been suggested (apologies if it has): Other than when he's eating his sweet syrups or sleeping in his cocoon, have him be completely unable to sit still for more than a few seconds. That is, he tends to float around awkwardly mid-sentence, maybe even from enemy to enemy in combat if you want to take it that far. He could do so on tip-toe to further emulate the "float like a butterfly." Especially good in very dramatic RP scenes when everyone is transfixed by the king's decree, or what have you, and he's tip-toeing all around the throne room


and what are some examples of your favorite ridiculous characters?

It's more a vague idea than anything I've created yet but it's a polka gnome, because of course he is! And he's a bard for the same reason! But the best part: his instrument, which he carries absolutely everywhere (yes even there), is a full sized alp-horn! The unmistakable tones of the alp-horn playing the greatest polka classics to awe and inspire!

Bastian Weaver
2018-10-29, 11:28 AM
I have Algernon, who is an INT 6 Wizard that I'm going to be play testing and reporting the results on the boards here. Of course, he is going to have a familiar; A white rat, likely holding flowers.



Let me guess - the rat's name is Charlie?

GreatWyrmGold
2018-10-29, 12:42 PM
-A Druid/Arch-fey warlock gnome who is so disgustingly sweet while talking about the importance of Saturday Morning Cartoon "Morals" like brushing your teeth and respecting the foundation of institutionalized monarchies...Think Yuno (Future Diary)...
I get the "looks normal, is psychotic" angle, but I don't think Yuno is a very good parallel to what it sounds like you're trying to make there.


Yaun-ti cultist
What's a Yaun-ti, and why do their cultists worship aboleths?
(Are you talking about yuan-ti? If so, since when do they revere aboleths?)

Arbane
2018-10-29, 04:11 PM
-A Druid/Arch-fey warlock gnome who is so disgustingly sweet while talking about the importance of Saturday Morning Cartoon "Morals" like brushing your teeth and respecting the foundation of institutionalized monarchies (Citation needed), while gleefully sending candy colored wolves to devour her opponents and unleashing prismatic bees singing songs in unison. Think Yuno (Future Diary), as depicted through My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, from the world of Strawberry Shortcake.


Have you seen Star vs. The Forces of Evil? One gamer I like described the heroine's magic as 'Lisa Frank Lovecraft'.

Personification
2018-10-29, 04:15 PM
I've seen a 4chan post about it. Could have been there. It's an idea worth stealing, IMO.

I don't use the site so probably not. I believe it was in either the things I may no longer do when RPing thread or the quotes thread.

PandaPhobia
2018-11-15, 05:07 PM
Two questions for the Playground: What other butterfly/caterpillar motifs can I sneak into my barbarian's culture, and what are some examples of your favorite ridiculous characters?

As always, thanks for any and all help!

a monk/arcane knight combo for 5e with a speed of 60ft a round at 7th level that has a bunch of messed up stuff in his past that's chasing him. He's literally running away from his past, get it?

Tohron
2018-11-16, 09:27 AM
It would take a more political-oriented campaign to function, but I'm amused at the notion of a Chaotic Neutral lawyer, who wins cases by ramping courtroom antics up to eleven, and orchestrating favorable disruptions to the court environment that can never be traced back to him.

Unavenger
2018-11-16, 12:44 PM
I remember running a comedy game of Pathfinder where the characters were:

- A half-mimic sorcerer.
- A half-dragon half-dragon half-dragon half-dragon dragon dragon.
- A dwarf inquisitor with an oversized trenchcoat.
- A dwarf rogue who carried the inquisitor and made sneak attacks from inside the trenchcoat.

Make of this what you will.

Tombguardians
2018-11-16, 02:11 PM
I like your idea and concept

GreatWyrmGold
2018-11-16, 07:26 PM
It would take a more political-oriented campaign to function, but I'm amused at the notion of a Chaotic Neutral lawyer, who wins cases by ramping courtroom antics up to eleven, and orchestrating favorable disruptions to the court environment that can never be traced back to him.
I don't think that would be a viable strategy under most legal systems...



- A half-dragon half-dragon half-dragon half-dragon dragon dragon.
So, was this dragon with bloodlines of five or six different draconic races a dragoon, by any chance?

PastorofMuppets
2018-11-16, 07:44 PM
Play a character based on Hector Salamanca, a wizard with a familiar as a helper animal.

Spore
2018-11-16, 08:41 PM
I've yet to play the meek human abjuration wizard that is DEADLY afraid of any magic he hasn't cast himself, and made at LEAST triple the necessary precautions.

:vaarsuvius: Why aren't you heating your food with Prestidigitation?
:eek: What if I make a mistake and summon the demons from the netherrealm? I'd better cast Protection from Evil first...

Unavenger
2018-11-17, 11:17 AM
So, was this dragon with bloodlines of five or six different draconic races a dragoon, by any chance?

No, they had dragon racial hit dice. That is, by "half-dragon half-dragon half-dragon half-dragon dragon dragon" I mean that their race was half-dragon half-dragon half-dragon half-dragon dragon and their class was dragon. I would have explained that fully, but this explanation is already beginning to...

Drag on! :smallcool:

Malphegor
2018-11-18, 02:48 PM
I love fractal summoners.

Tiefling who summons devils who summons devils and so on.

Or with savage species: Anthropomorphic Elephant Druid Who summons Elephants and Mammoths who he Awakens and trains to summon more elephants

SimonMoon6
2018-11-18, 05:07 PM
I once had a bard who had a guitar that doubled as a club. He was a full spellcaster but he never cast any spell other than vicious mockery, but instead just rushed in and started bashing heads in with his guitar.

Was he an anthropomorphic horse named El Kabong?

RedMage125
2018-11-18, 05:20 PM
Was he an anthropomorphic horse named El Kabong?

only when wearing a mask, I would assume. Otherwise he would simply be called "Quick Draw McGraw".

GreatWyrmGold
2018-11-18, 10:42 PM
I once had a bard who had a guitar that doubled as a club an axe.
FTFY.
...Though I guess it would be tough to justify slashing damage without endangering your fingers.

Pauly
2018-11-18, 11:05 PM
FTFY.
...Though I guess it would be tough to justify slashing damage without endangering your fingers.

He would need a top hat to do slashing damage.

DigoDragon
2018-11-19, 08:11 AM
He would need a top hat to do slashing damage.

Such a character would certainly be picking up the occasional Odd Job. :smallbiggrin:


A concept I never got to try out--this one involves two players. One is a bard who passes themselves off as a hedge-wizard and the other a druid that wildshapes to play the roll of familiar. They travel around to con rich people out of their valuables and donate most of it to the poor.

John Campbell
2018-11-19, 01:38 PM
One of the PCs in a Shadowrun game I ran once was a minotaur decker with a customized guitar that he'd built basically everything into. It was a fully functional electric guitar, with an amplifier and speakers built into it, and contained his deck, which had a bunch of sound processing software linked to the amp and guitar pickups, along with the typical decking software, datajack, and wireless networking hardware, so it was basically a self-contained instrument/effects processor/mixing board/recording studio/network streaming server that jacked directly into his brain, had an assault rifle (with noise-cancelling sound suppressor) that fired through the neck, and was melee-hardened, with blades in the body so that he could use it as a literal axe. He'd dumped something like 800,000Ą into the thing. I never had the heart to make something happen to it.

Another PC in that campaign was a physad who was literally Ken from Street Fighter. He had a geas that required him to fight someone one-on-one at least once a day, or he'd lose the use of most of his powers. If I wasn't throwing ninjas or something at them, he'd go out and get into underground cage matches to fulfill his geas.

In another campaign, one of the PCs was an ork elf poser who, a) actually believed that she was an elf, b) was the worst elf poser ever, in that her entire elf posing was just taping popsicle sticks to her ears to make them stick up more, and c) wore a pink cheerleader outfit and rollerskates all the time (because... that's what elves wear, I guess?).

Shadowrun in general is an endless mine of this sort of thing.

TheYell
2018-11-22, 12:22 AM
A Samsaran wizard, scion of a merchant family. They all believe he is the reincarnation of a witch burnt in Ustalav by superstitious peasants, so they fetched her skeleton back and he made a bonded wand out of the thighbone.

John Campbell
2018-11-24, 04:07 PM
I built a "character" for DC Adventures called the Inverse Ninja Principle. I spent all of my points on a power array that was just a bunch of Summon powers that traded off base power rank (which determines the power level of an individual summoned minion) and ranks of Multiple Minions (each rank of which doubles the number of minions you can summon), so I could summon ninjas, whose numbers increased exponentially as their individual effectiveness decreased. It started with a single 225 PP Heroic minion at the high end, and at the low end produced 2^66 (73.8 quintillion) 15 PP mooks.

For some reason no one would let me play it.

iceman10058
2018-11-25, 10:13 PM
I made a Kolbold Sorcerer in 5th edition with the dragon bloodline subclass. He was 100% convinced he was actually a cursed ancient red dragon and was seeking out the wizard that cursed him, so he could eat him, to turn back into a dragon.

paperarmor
2018-11-26, 10:26 AM
I personally haven't tried playing anything too crazy. I always wanted to play a character based around driving.

A friend of mine wants me to run a game of vampire the masquerade so he can play a malkavian who thinks he's Frank drebin and reinact the naked gun series.

braveheart
2018-11-26, 11:52 AM
Glubtuk is the greatest goblin wizard and will become the king of all goblins. This was the sole motivation for my goblin Character in a campaign. The stupidity was the stupidly high stats I rolled for him, an 18, 17, 16, 14, 10, and 4, the 4 was put in wisdom and Glubtuk the goblin sorcerer was the greatest goblin wizard, the campaign died out before he could become the king of Goblin's.

PastorofMuppets
2018-11-26, 01:47 PM
In an old Werewolf game I played a character that was based on Doctor Krieger, if he was a Glasswalker that fell to the become a black spiral dancer. He spent a lot of his time crafting and modding weapons for the local street gangs, had a body disposal business( it involved hot dog vendors) and played with SuperScience where the Super came from shoving spirits/banes into stuff to see what would happen.

He pretty much never Raged or played much politics but he was convinced that he could create a device to help any situation. In true Krieger fashion he just wanted to help people. He just happened to be surrounded by terrible people so that’s who he helped. His “genius” was used to create on some occasions, self aware animated land mines (think Starcraft spider mines), corrosive spray paint so gang tags were harder to tag over, a machine that turned any living thing dropped inside into “Hot Dogs”. And due to a botched attempt at making minions he created Sharktopus.

SleeplessWriter
2018-11-28, 11:35 PM
A wizard that became a lich because they just wanted to make rainbows.
Almost exclusively uses the prismatic ——— spells.

The Jack
2018-11-29, 12:10 AM
I don't think the beserker barbarian is anywhere near the appeal of the other subclasses, but I'd love to apply it to the 'ugly-crazy ex wife' archtype.

Joe the Rat
2018-11-29, 11:54 AM
A wizard that became a lich because they just wanted to make rainbows.
Almost exclusively uses the prismatic ——— spells.

Undying in the Light?

DuctTapeKatar
2018-11-30, 09:26 PM
Kailean the Kobold Barbarian


All of his feats are built into wielding a human-sized greatsword, and he always speaks in a Scottish accent. If he wants to talk to someone face-to-face, he plants the sword into the ground, stands on the crossguard, and will break out into a speech. He also believes that anyone can accomplish anything if they set their mind to it, leading to him thinking "Yeah, I can beat this giant into tha ground!" or "Tha Princess doesn't love tha guy -- she should get together with the mate she loves, and by the tilly-tally gods -- I be makin' sure tha happens!"

He means well, but he is a kobold with a sword he has no business carrying, and his accent can be so thick at times that nobody can understand him, which is no help at all.

GreatWyrmGold
2018-12-01, 01:07 PM
A wizard that became a lich because they just wanted to make rainbows.
Almost exclusively uses the prismatic ——— spells.
There should be more of those. Not just to make prismatic casters more viable, but because randomly-generated spell effects are a simple yet neat concept that should be used more often.