Whats your favorite character you had played that is now gone?

[Ihazturtlez]

They can be "gone" because they are dead, or that the campaign had been completed/cut short. I wanna hear what everyone had loved to play and had some sort of attachment to that character.

I'll start with my Level 5 Assassin Rogue/3 Arcane Archer Fighter, Alwin Wsyajeon the Half Elf.

With an ever-changing party from Rogue, Fighter, Sorcerer, to a party of up to 9, we had managed to stop and end 3 sieges on cities, take out 2 Wizards of Power (Wizards that had become obsessed with power and had managed to be seated in high spots). The party had got a Nat 20 on a counterspell and counter spelled a literal god. After we split the party so we could actually manage playing with 9 people, we found different fates.
The party that I was not part of had all died, whether it be from the Deck of Many Things, or from suicidal tendencies, including a cleric that was there from session 2, at level 7. I was then the only person remaining from the original party, grouped with a bunch of newbies that hadn't played DnD much if at all.
As the only one remaining, my party had only stayed around for so long, until the DM needed to leave for college. The campaign had lasted, iirc, almost a year. In that year, I managed to die and get resurrected, picking up the laughing insanity from it, and stopping multiple sieges. Afterwords, the DM had told me that my character had moved on to keep tracking the wizards, and stopped them. After some years, I found the man I was looking for, Drizzt Do-Urden, but he had been frozen to prevent a world ending disaster.

I didn't get Alwin leveled very high, but for my first campaign, I think I had a good run.

[Marywn]

This is pathfinder, BUt she still is my favorite character.

Level 8 rogue, level 3 bloodrager Wyvaren.

In her final hours, she tore out the core of a clockwork golem with her claws, used a fusion shotgun to kill shadow beasts, and blasted clockwork soldiers to bits.

She was a theif that couldn't lie, and had her wings and one claw torn out three hours before this.

[jaappleton]

My first 5E character.

Grom the Half-Orc Barbarian, Bear Totem.

He challenged a whole clan of Goblins for leadership in solo-combat against their leader, an Ogre, and killed it. Grom was lv2.

He declared himself King of their clan, had a cheap crown fashioned out of copper, would declare "DIPLOMATIC IMMUNITY!" whenever people tried to arrest him, and worked with a Goblin to try to fix their economy (which consisted of Grom drawing pictures of himself wielding his axe and attacking people for their stuff).

[Ihazturtlez]

My first 5E character.

Grom the Half-Orc Barbarian, Bear Totem.

He challenged a whole clan of Goblins for leadership in solo-combat against their leader, an Ogre, and killed it. Grom was lv2.

He declared himself King of their clan, had a cheap crown fashioned out of copper, would declare "DIPLOMATIC IMMUNITY!" whenever people tried to arrest him, and worked with a Goblin to try to fix their economy (which consisted of Grom drawing pictures of himself wielding his axe and attacking people for their stuff).

That sounds almost EXACTLY like my friend's Half-Orc Fighter in this campaign. He had challenged an Orc siege group's leader, Half-Foot and declared his god's name, Gruumsh, after his victory.
Except, instead of diplomatic immunity, the group had turned against him and we had to save him.

[KorvinStarmast]

They can be "gone" because they are dead, or that the campaign had been completed/cut short. Korvin Starmast. My first 5e character, life cleric, who died somewhat early in life. The reason he is a favorite is that he is the character I was playing when our old High School gang of D&Ders (from the 70's) reunited to play on line via roll20. We all made a number of goofy mistakes and silly jokes as we got used to the new version of the game, and as we got used to roll20's weirdisms. Korvin was also the only PC who actually showed up for every single session, and was the scribe who kept our campaign journal. Life Cleric. Surprised my melee buddies when I killed an ankheg (basically soloed the bugger, I think our rogue got in one bow shot) while they were off fighting something else, with Inflict Wounds. Some days, the dice is hot.

Favorite of all time? AD&D 1e Ranger. Rocky.
The only AD&D char I ever rolled up with an 18 strength.
When he got to the percentile roll, luck was my lady that night: 98.
That campaign was a hard DM but a good DM. Keep on the Borderlands. The Licheway. Slavers of the Undercity (A series modules) was underway when we all finally moved away due to RL being what it is.

[WeaselGuy]

I've only played a couple of 5e campaigns, so for this system, my current character is my favorite. Level 5 Shadar-kai, Hexblade Pact of the Blade Warlock 4/Paladin 1. DM has proposed a Knight of the Raven Queen homebrew oath for me to use, that's looking to be pretty fun for my last 16 levels. We're playing Dragon Heist, and moving straight into Mad Mage afterwards.

My overall favorite character, from over 13 years of D&D, would be my 3.5e Half-Drow Fighter/Paladin/Vassal of Bahamut/Dragon Rider. Level 30, not quite a mounted uber-charger, but was definitely a lancer on a Silver Dragon. He started out as your typical outcast dark elf (I had just started reading Salvatore, in college, but didn't want to have the stereotypical twin-sword ranger), but joined up with a part of adventurers that were clearing out a red dragon wyrmling infestation in the mountains where my character left the Underdark (I was a freshman, joining a group that had already started playing over the summer break, so they were around level 4 or 5 when I joined). I ended up saving one of the last remaining Silver eggs from the Reds, and the party decided I couldn't be that terrible of a person, so they overlooked my heritage, and vouched for me in every city we ventured to. Eventually, our little company build a name for ourselves, and a favorable reputation, and it became less of an issue with the more powerful patronages that sponsored us over time.

We overthrew corrupt dictators and behind the scenes controllers, freed elf slaves from drow raiders, found long lost artifacts and hidden treasures, cleansed haunted forests and castles, and even restored a version of Myth Drannor to it's former glory (our DM loved to read, and incorporated aspects of many different novel settings into our games, everything from Dragonlance and Forgotten Realms, to Dark Sun and Ravenloft. We even had a dash of Ebberon for a little while).

Eventually, my little Silver dragon egg that I had rescued grew up as a companion, and became my trusted partner and agreed to allow me to ride her into battle, and we started planes hopping for even more challenging adventures. The party had received a number of wishes from Djinns and Demigods at this point, so everyone had extended their natural lifespans, to account for such long lives. We counter-raided Githyanki raiders, and acquired an astral vessel to travel the Astral Plane, and established ourselves on Sigil. Our Cleric's deity had us stop a Devil uprising and we slew numerous Lords of the 9 Hells, before Asmodeus decided to reveal it had been his plan all along to have us overthrow his usurpers, in order to establish more loyal followers into the newly created vacancies (turns out our "LG" Cleric had been playing the ridiculously long game of being a LE follower of Asmodeus, but we had never actually done anything straight up evil, so we didn't get rid of him for that).

By the end of my Junior year of college, 4e had come out, 2 of our guys were graduating, and 1 had finished grad school, so we all retired to Sigil, to be called upon again in times of great need.

[Icecaster]

Rest in peace, Mountainfist.

A goliath barbarian/rogue, he was meant to be a grappler. Mountainfist wasn't his real name, he had a goliath one I don't remember now, but he always introduced himself as Mountainfist because it was his show name when he was a wrestler. He refused to wear armor, and he had Tavern Brawler so he would punch people. I took a homebrew rogue subclass (a thug) so I could sneak attack with non-finesse, so I dealt sneak attack on my fists when I punched people I shoved. He had a warhammer for emergencies, but had no qualms about throwing it and using his dinner-plate-sized hands. I made him as large as a goliath could be in the book (almost eight feet tall).

His catchphrase was yelling Mountainfist. He would do it frequently when breaking things (which was pretty often). Once, he and the rogue in the party were breaking into a shady place, and they walked into a dark hallway. Mountainfist was gravely afraid of the dark, so he froze up at the door. The rogue went ahead to a door and began picking the lock using mage hand. After a moment, Mountainfist entered rage and began running down the dark hallway, where he could no longer see the rogue. The rogue managed to successfully pick the lock, but before he could reach the door, Mountainfist slammed into it and broke the door itself. This was, of course, succeeded by "Mountainfist!" in a Russian accent. This was particularly funny because earlier the rogue and Mountainfist had been arguing over whether it was more efficient to pick a lock or break a door. We found out.

Another time, Mountainfist had to help the rogue steal an item from a rich man's house. The item was the key to a portal, and we needed it. Mountainfist, being a rogue and having high Dexterity, actually was fairly stealthy (we joked about how, using his goliath carrying ability, bear totem's carrying feature, and a Strength of 25, he could sneak up on somebody and drop a boulder on them). There were alarms set throughout the gardens leading to the mansion, and while the rogue managed to navigate the alarms, Mountainfist used his trusty Ring of Jumping to stealthily leap past the alarms as opposed to going around. They met at the house and Mountainfist carried the rogue to the top of the mansion with ease. He had, at the time, I believe a +16 to his Strength (Athletics) checks. At the top, there was a round window leading into the attic, which the rogue went through into the house, but Mountainfist was far too large to fit through, so Mountainfist stayed outside. The rogue managed to grab the item without getting caught, but taking it triggered alarms and put a wall of force over every window. Mountainfist happened to be trying to reach something that caught his attention in the attic when this happened (he was also afraid of heights, so he wanted to focus on something else), so a wall of force cut off one of his hands. The rogue raced to the attic and had Mountainfist break a hole in the roof since he was already raging. Then the rogue climbed onto Mountainfist, who leapt off of the four-story mansion and began running through the gardens. We were mid-levels and Mountainfist was raging and at full health, so he took negligible damage and kept going, Dashing and Dashing again using Cunning Action and Fast Movement. After his rage ended and they were away, the rogue got off and they caught their breath. Mountainfist looked forlornly at where his hand had been and sadly said "Mountainstump."

The character was a phenomenal tank (rage and uncanny dodge when it happened was godly) and an effective control who once wrestled a roc into a castle's moat using a combination of Ring of Jumping and repeated shoving and grappling, where he then drowned it. He was a blast to play and the concept worked better than I thought it would, and everybody had a good laugh when Mountainfist did his thing, good or bad.

[carrdrivesyou]

My favorite character was actually in a Pathfinder game. It was a pirate themed game where we had been recruited onto a ship to serve as specialists. I had a human Alchemist (Grenadier and mad bomber kinda guy) that was entirely insane. Chaotic neutral because he couldn't help it. He had developed an addiction to hallucinogenic mushrooms, and so could not tell fact from fiction. This led to his development of another identity in his mind. The two knew of each other but did not wish each other ill, as they shared the same body. They just had vastly different ideas and philosophies whenever anything happened. Basically, whenever he had to make a decision, I rolled 2d20s. One for good thoughts, one for bad thoughts. Whichever die rolled higher is what I went with.

He died when the captain took him to the powder room and asked him if he could make bombs. Bad thoughts won out, and I made a bomb. And alchemical bomb. That exploded in the captain's face. In a room full of black powder. Miraculously, the other PCs survived with "some" of the crew.

[Misterwhisper]

Malinore Lyne
Half Elven middle child and only son of a prestigious family of magical craftsmen.

Secretly in long years ago his family could not make their business work so they made a deal with an ancient and corrupt power, in exchange for the soul of the eldest son of each generation they were give the secrets of crafting magical wonders (in RP terms, his ancestors were the ones who figured out how to make magic wands recharging instead of only X uses ever)

He was raised on a set of priorities:

The family name is all
The family power is second
The family member is last.

Unlike every other eldest male of his family for 100s of years, he did not receive the gifts of magic to become a warlock, even though he did have the training for it (ie he had the stats of a warlock but never got the magic) so he became a swashbuckler. He was also extremely protective of his older and younger sisters Corrine and Sherra. They were his heart and soul, his love for them was everything

Despite his being the only male child and the most devout in his worship to the source of their family power he could not be the head of house due to his lack of being blessed with magic.

This lack of magic in his blood shamed him to the family, so he was trained to be the behind the scenes "problem solver" he would do the dirty work so the family could look clean.
His older sister would become head of house, it was for the best, she was a ruthless and charismatic businesswoman.
His younger sister was also vital to the family, she was beautiful and wise, trained in the arts of dance and song as a bard. She would be a valuable prize to draw in more power for the family when it came time for her to marry.

However, she committed the greatest sin of all in the family, she fell in love with the wrong man, she loved a simple baker who was a good man and not the only son of a shipping magnate, like the family had picked for her.
To become an adult in the eyes of the family, and to redeem himself for not being blessed with magic, Malinore was given the task to end their relationship, to be exact he had to kill the baker.
Using his skills as a rogue he snuck into the room of the baker and killed him, but did whisper to him, "If it matters at all, she does love you more than anything, this is just business."

For months it just seemed like some robber had broken in and robbed the baker and killed him in the process.
Malinores' younger sister was crushed, she no longer sang, she no longer danced. She would dress in the ceremonial yellow garb of the family but she no longer had the light of life inside anymore.
After seeing this for too long, Malinore broke protocol and had to tell her what he did, the last shred of his conscience would not let him do otherwise.
He came to her room late at night and with tears in his eyes he told her that he was forced to kill the baker, he had to protect the family name and the family power.
This crushed her completely, to the point of no return.
With a guttural scream of a broken heart she summoned the magic to paralyze Malinore in place, (she cast hold person, as a lore bard) and took out his knife, the one that he had killed her beloved with, and cut her own throat in front of him, just as she died the spell faded and he could move again, he held his sister as she bled to death in his arms, his knife had taken the love of her life and now had taken his.
With her last words she coughed out, "You did this to me Mal, you killed me as sure as if you stabbed me yourself. This family is poison."

With that the last shred of his humanity he had left was gone. He saw his family for what they really were, heartless, murdering, monsters who sold their souls for power.
His mind broke, he took her bright yellow sash, the one she had trained with for years as his own, and he took his knife that he had killed all the love he had known with and he began his quest.

He would murder every member of his family, he would stab them all through the heart with the dagger that had broken his heart.
He would train in the ways of combat using his sister's yellow sash as his weapon. He was no fool, he knew this would take decades to accomplish, he would work from the inside.
He would work for the family, sabotaging things along the way and he would make sure he was there when each of their fates were sealed.

Over the course of the 2 year campaign, i pretended to be a happy go lucky dancing and singing bard, while really I was a scheming and murderous swashbuckler, I used a razored dancing sash as a weapon (Reflavored whip but it took two hands not one) and by the end I had hunted down and murdered every elder in my family, for making me what I was and for killing the only shining light he ever had.

However, he never lost his dedication to The King in Yellow, he was the most devout worshiper he had in the entire realm and for every member of his family he killed he recruited 10 more to make up for it.

[Waterdeep Merch]

Zarathustra, an Immortal Mystic that lived and changed through all three playtest versions. He considered himself a philosopher with an extremely Nietzschean outlook, a self-proclaimed enemy of the gods because he didn't like how they imposed their will on mortals and arbitrarily kept them from achieving their own divinity and thus power over their own fate.

Despite labeling him as an extremely hard Lawful Neutral, he ended up doing the absolute most good in the party, saving lives and uplifting civilizations through an extensive trade and mercenary business called the Immortal Roundelay that I got to build piece by piece over the course of the game. I ditched him at two major intervals to play lieutenants of the Roundelay before returning to him for the finish. The campaign eventually coalesced around his bid for apotheosis into a greater god capable of acting as a barrier to prevent any more meddling by the other gods while also awakening psionic possibilities in every sentient being and building a worldwide psychic 'network' for their use, essentially a mental internet.

Beyond maintaining his seal and acting as a psychic server, he retired. The fate of mortal-kind was finally in the hands of mortal-kind, and he had no intentions of ever meddling in their affairs again.

[ImproperJustice]

In an OSR game we played a few years ago, I had a Wanderer (an add on class) named Jo.

He was kind of a Thief type with some combat and survival skills. We were level 5, and exploring a mega dungeon full of various undead nasties.

Through no fault of his own, another PC triggered an attack by a Spectre and he got blindsided for a double level drain.

I then had to decide if I wanted to start over or keep going with a character two levels behind everyone else.
I ended up sticking with him, and decided the ghastly experience had made him super cautious.
I had to get really clever to find ways to contribute while minimizing risks, and it turned out to be one of my more memorable and enjoyable experiences.

The only trick, is that I haven’t found a good way to import his class to 5e.

[Man_Over_Game]

Arcane Trickster with Ritual Caster, relying mostly on Intelligence over Dexterity. Tried to solve all of his problems using magic, and became obsessed with it (even though he wasn't very good at it).

[Mr.Spastic]

Zain my Teifling Glamour Bard. He had an 8 intelligence and was with the party because he thought it would be a fun time. When I rolled a headband of intellect on a random magic item it increased my intelligence by 11 points. Now that he could think rationally he realized that fighting giants was sure to lead to a short life and left the party to seduce chicks.

[Laserlight]

Three candidates:
Baron Sharl Marlin of Wolf's Keep started life as a gutter thief; his first act as a PC was to steal a shortsword. He rose over time to become a frontier baron, taming the wilderness, managing his village, and getting married. Nearly 35 years later, that campaign is still limping along, although Baron Sharl has been mostly inactive since 1988 or so.

Flurry, a Champions superhero with powers somewhat similar to Nightcrawler. He was designed to be unable to hurt high-defense villains, which forced me to use ingenuity when facing them.

Junior the paladin of Saint Dale the Intimidator. I don't normally use accents for my characters, but...think of him as a combination of Forrest Gump and Sheriff Andy Taylor, with a mouthful of chewing tobacco and an Appalachian accent thick as molasses. Add to that, my son was playing Junior's buddy Jebediah, who was a drow AoE blaster, devotee of Pelor, and heavily overcaffeinated old fashioned tent preacher. All the other players loved Junior and spontaneously organized themselves into his followers, The Pit Crew.

[BlackRose]

Morden Androden, asimar. He started out as a protector and vengeance paladin but succumbed to promises of glory from an ancient fallen deity. Turned to a fallen asimar, oathbreaker/hexblade he and his party essentially ignored the main story line and set about to finding the sealed pieces of the fallen god to restore him. Along the way he found 2 tomes of leadership and influence giving him 24 charisma, which he used to raise a gnoll army and ransack anyone who hid the shards of his master. Upon the way he found a mystical beast who could destroy even artifacts of great power and so once he gathered the shards of his forgotten lord he destroyed every last one and then took the position for himself. He then used that power to destroy the other deity who had been threatening the land, as that was the main quest from the start, so we came full circle in the end

[WeaselGuy]

Junior the paladin of Saint Dale the Intimidator.

I see what you did there, and as a Carolina boy, I approve.

[rahimka]

My favorite was a Pathfinder character:
Oran Morhalt, LG Aasimar Paladin/Bard Archer

Oran was one of my earliest characters, and the first Lawful/non-Chaotic PC that I ever played. I was trying to challenge myself and grow in terms of my RP skills, so I decided to go meta with it and make a character who was himself TRYING to be Lawful despite strong Chaotic instincts. The result was a Bardic Archer with 2 levels of Paladin.

Mechanically, he was a dreamboat: the Paladin dip let him add his high Charisma to all his saving throws, gave him armor and weapon proficiencies, and even let him Smite Evil against the BBEG. As a Bard, he focused on support/buff casting and using Inspire Courage to boost the atk/dam of himself and the rest of the party (including the numerous summoned creatures of our Druid). He was great at boosting allies' but also had plenty of moments to shine as the party face.

In terms of RP, like I said above, his Lawfulness came from trying to emulate the legendary heroes from bardic lore by taking the Paladin oaths of honor and duty. But as a Bard, he didn't go for the stiff-neck and judgmental Paladin stereotype. Instead he was always trying to inspire others to be better and to lead by example. Like when we were about to beat a group of Drow scouts and they activated a rocks-fall-everybody-dies trap, Oran took the time/risk to drag one of the unconscious Drow out of harms way as we escaped, rather than leave him behind to die (which led to an amazing scene afterwards when the party actually came to blows over what to do with the prisoner).

AND IT ACTUALLY WORKED. Our party of PCs was pretty morally neutral and sometimes conflicted (hence our internal BATTLE over the prisoner's fate). But eventually, all of them came to look at Oran as the leader. I didn't even realize it had happened (in or out of character) until we were talking with a high-ranked NPC who asked if our band of adventurers had a leader to speak to, and suddenly everybody in the group turned to Oran! Both I and Oran were very touched by that moment.

But my favorite moment in Oran's career was how it ended:
We'd been sent on a rescue mission for an NPC Wizard who we'd worked with before. Turns out he's being kept as not-unwilling prisoner by a VERY EVIL Necromancer to whom he owed a significant/life debt. He's helping this Necromancer against the truly terrible, potentially-world-ending, threat of an outright Apocalypse Cult that is trying to summon the literal 4 Horsemen to the Prime Material Plane.

Now, this is the stuff that the fight-the-greater-evil caveat of the old pre-5e Paladin's code was made for, so Oran wasn't too conflicted about working with the Necromancer in the short-term. But the Necromancer had to push things just a little further, by demanding that he'd only work with the party (and release the Wizard ally from his debt) if they agreed to bring him back the Tome of Super-Duper Evil Summoning that was the lynchpin of the Cult's plan. He's no dummy, so he insists that Oran in particular SWEAR to abide by this condition. Through gritted teeth, Oran agrees and gives word as a Paladin, but he already knows this whole thing is not going to end well. He couldn't hand over such a powerful and dangerous book to this evil guy, but he also knew the party didn't really stand a chance against him and he wasn't willing to let his teammates or their friend the Wizard face certain death because of HIS obligations. On top of that, he'd given his WORD to hand this thing over. So he started to think of a plan.

One massive attack on the cult's Spire of Ridiculous Evil later, and our party is standing in the altar room at the top, with the Tome of Super-Duper Evil Summoning lying in front of us, inspected for traps and scanned for magic defenses. Oran takes a deep breath and tells the others to stand back just in case while he picks it up. As he does, he looks bad at them sadly and says "I'm sorry". Then he activates his Winged Boots and leaps out the window. He makes a bee-line right back to the Necromancer's base, along the way smashing every flask of acid and alchemist fire he has into the pages of the book.

Flying straight into the sanctum of the Necromancer, Oran tosses the still smoldering wreck that was the Evil Tome at his feet. "There is your prize, Necromancer. Our deal is complete..."

Oran Morhalt died a painful death that day. But, to his own surprise despite breaking his word, he did so as the Paladin he'd always strived to be.