Best NPCs You've Made

[DrowPiratRobrts]

What are some of the best or most unique NPCs you've made? What set them apart? Why were they memorable?

[DMThac0]

Many of my players have their specific NPCs that they enjoyed for personal reasons, but these NPCs are party wide.

Tik and Tak: Gnome siblings, artificers and illusionists. These two are trying to reinvent the world one mistaken invention at a time. They speak in nasally high pitched voices at about mach 30. They've invented a machine that can send out a pulse that will record every living creature in a 1 mile radius...except it tends to make the creatures enter a frenzied rage. They created autonomous golems to help with daily tasks, however these re-purposed Iron golems haven't quite remembered Asimov's Laws. My players love to fear these twins.

Warren: Halfling barkeep. He's a fast talking, highly charismatic person who seems half auctioneer and half Tom Cruise from Cocktail. He'll referee any fight that happens in the bar, taking bets and juggling bottles of alcohol all at the same time. He'd give the shirt off his back to you, but he doesn't sit still long enough for you to actually ask him. The players love him because he'll speak his mind and not give two coppers about the resulting fall out, however he manages to avoid any negative repercussions because of it...someone else usually get the bloody nose.

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Honorable mention goes to an NPC I didn't create but, every party I've ever run has always enjoyed my rendition of Meepo from Sunless Citadel.

[MarkVIIIMarc]

A party of mine loved Meepo also. I told them he had a terrible butt rash from being caged up and they fell in love with asking him about it.

I have a train conductor fellow named Killma who is a littlw slow and always has to one up what ppl tell him. The party gave him the nickname of Orc Slayer and got him elected mayor.

[Man_Over_Game]

Delvond, dwarven diviner wizard. A grumpy dwarf that's stuck in a coma, specifically he's stuck in a labyrinth in his mind. He can see certain things into the future, including what heroes are going to help him save the world. To get rid of monsters in his labyrinth, he dreams of people who can assist him, and they share the same dream, existing within his, while they sleep. He gets them to kill his dream monsters, and he urges them to come find him. And this repeats. For years.

Until eventually the people who shared his odd dream eventually find him and form a party. When one of them falls on the quest, another "dreamer" is found and joins the party.
Because of the afflictions caused by the dangerous dreams, the heroes are hindered when they are further apart from Delvond. For every 5 miles they are apart from Delvond, they earn 5% less experience. Many were reluctant, as they've lived the last several years effectively being plagued by these dreams, until the bond's negative impact forced them all to be together. The bond made their lives useless when apart, but they became heroes the longer they stayed with it.

And so they became "Delvond's Dreamers", a group of never ending reluctant heroes that all went from zero-to-hero.

I was very happy with how the campaign turned out.

[Selion]

What are some of the best or most unique NPCs you've made? What set them apart? Why were they memorable?

This one streches a few rules, so don't bother too much with that.
My favourite was probably a halfling paladin that had as mount a young dragon.
They both were members of a secret organization, which wanted to hire the PCs.
The halfling had a mask with permament disguise self, while the dragon could shapechange at will.
Well, thorough a big part of the campaign they were following the PCs to inspect their behaviour, every time i described them as a couple composed of a short and an unusually large fellows: one time the dragon (posing as a fatty man) challenged the PC dwarf in an eating contest, while the halfling posed as his "manager", one time they were a gnome merchant with a unusually large cow and so on. The group discovered them when the halfling, pretending to be a kobold,guided them through underground caves, a PC saw briefly a blurring figure overlapping the kobold, succeding for the first time barely in the perception check.
They used the "commune" spell to figure out who the hell he could be, it has been a good moment because the whole group cooperated with the questions. The defining one was "have we met him before?"

[Laserlight]

I suspect my players would say that one particular bat-demon from my PseudoMayazteca campaign. As they leveled and he kept getting punished (wings torn off, etc) for failing to dispose of them, he went from "he nearly one-shot the raging barbarian" terrifying to "if he wasn't such a nuisance I'd feel sorry for him, but you have to kind of admire his persistence...although I'm still going to smite him."

[CTurbo]

I made a spoiled brat teenage Half-Elf Lore Bard princess that the group had to escort across the lands to her powerful Elf King father. I took several liberties in creating her like giving her 22 Cha, more feats than she had levels for, and the fact that she almost always had Unseen Servant up. She didn't bother with armor or weapons and almost couldn't talk without using Vicious Mockery lol. Even her Inspiring Leader speeches were almost belittling. She was not mean though, just bratty. The group did grow to somewhat care for her, and vice versa. She had a pet cat that was really her 1200yr old Elf Land Druid Grandmother that was looking out for her. She didn't know.