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TerakasTaranath
2019-03-03, 01:19 PM
Hey all! I thought it would be a lot of fun for everyone to post their favorite character/characters and anything about them.

My favorite characters are Terakas Taranath(elf cavalier from AD&D), Sir Trystan Merrick(half elf paladin 5e) and William Asher(human variant fighter battle master 5e).

Terakas was my first character that I actually understood what d&d was and why it was so cool. I sat down and really thought about "what would I want be if I lived in a d&d world." and I thought "well elves live the longest and I think knights are the coolest things ever so, that's what I'll do."

Trystan was my first 5e character and I played him through Storm Kings Thunder, and had alot of great memories with him.

William played through most of Tomb of Annihilation and died at the hands of Red Wizards of Thay. He was definitely the most iconic though as I had gotten a sword from the DM called Sword of The Blue Rose. It was a homebrew item that defined my character and I obsessed over. He died about a year ago and my friends and gf have all gotten me white roses and dyed them blue or fake blue roses as gifts ever since.

I also associate particular songs with these characters but I wont bore you with the details unless the discussion gets good :p

Please post your favorites! Discussing characters is one of my favorite parts of the game!

Kaptin Keen
2019-03-03, 03:03 PM
I have a number of memorable paladin characters in my past, but I guess my best characters of all time are Rakash the goblin thief and Stanislav Ferenc the ... whatever he was, some sort of dragonmarked fighter/rogue with shadow leap and self healing.

Stanislav was originally made for Ravenloft, for a campaign that never took off. So instead, he was lifted from there onto Eberron. He was a slightly off build, but worked out in-game because he could step from shadow to shadow, gaining stealth for sneak attacks.

He was interesting because he was such a genuine bastard. Sort of like Porter - in the Payback movie/novels.

Rakash was a fun character to play, a slightly paranoid goblin thief convinced that goblins are the good guys, unjustly put upon by history, circumstance and the 'giant' races.

OmSwaOperations
2019-03-08, 06:47 PM
Om Swa Op (hence my handle)

A brave, opium addicted mercenary, fond of telling ridiculously exaggerated tales of past exploits. Relatively weak compared to the PCs, but rapidly amassed an outsized reputation, and became the standout NPC of the campaign. It was all the better because I'd never really planned him. The PCs just rescued some random guy from a burning tea-house, who they insisted tag along with them, and I made up his characteristics organically as the sessions progressed.

JBPuffin
2019-03-08, 07:58 PM
Vishal Nemshara, an orphan with an aptitude and passion for magic and a heart of gold which eventually led to him sacrificing himself for the greater good of his party...and getting turned into a spellbook! He defied his lack of Charisma, but was still the party’s diplomat, and his Arcnae Trickster/War Wizard build combined into a thing of beauty. Favorite player character thus far.

Quertus
2019-03-08, 09:02 PM
Well, I suppose I should start with Quertus, my signature academia mage for whom this account is named.

I created the character because I could not understand how people could do something (like, say, play an RPG) for years (or decades) and still just not get it. I engineered him to have the most persistent tactical ineptitude I could engineer, and it worked. Decades later, and deeply into epic level, and Quertus is still pretty significantly tactically suboptimal.

In the process, I created a character that not only do I enjoy playing, but he is the most-requested of my characters, the most successfully massively multi table character I've made.

Quertus stands 5'6", with a long face, pale skin, and short black hair (no facial hair). He has bright red, gold trimmed robes, gold-framed ruby-tinted glasses, a golden hourglass with red sand on one hip, a gold-inlaid mahogany wand case on the other, numerous red and gold monogrammed pouches in-between, and several pieces of similarly styled red and gold jewelry. Perhaps not matching the style, but adding to the "Wizard" appearance nonetheless, are the wisps of rainbow energy that circle him, and the forked metal staff arcing lightning that, honestly, looks like nothing so much as Sauron's tower, in miniature. If Sauron were an eye wreathed in lightning instead of flame, that is. The only item stylistically out place is a prism on a simple cord hanging from his neck. Within this prism bounce 4 red balls. Everything about Quertus - from his hair and his nails, to his items - is perfect.

All that is an illusion.

Well, the reality looks much the same, just Quertus put a permanent illusion of himself on himself hundreds of years ago, and hasn't really updated it. If you could peer through the illusion, you'd see that his robes are a bit more worn, his skin a bit less pale (he got some sun instead of constantly adventuring in the underdark), and his face now has more of an AesSedai timelessness to it. Oh, and he has more jewelry, including a silver ring which looks like a small dragon curled around his finger

Quertus is an academic. He does not like or crave a life of adventure. He enjoys luxury, not camping in the dirt or getting stabbed. However, people and worlds needed saving, and Quertus answered the call. Usually because his friends roped him into it; occasionally because he knew that there was no-one else qualified to deal with the magical end of things.

Along the way, he has learned more than any character I've ever played or seen, and, per his style, has written and published many books on various topics, selling them "at price" to foster the spread of knowledge.

Quertus' lack of financial acumen means that he is almost constantly in debt.

Quertus' age is much less from his adventures as it is from his research. He has invented a ridiculous number of custom spells, including more senses, detects, and information gathering spells than there are spells total in the 3e PH.

In a party, Quertus usually provides information, and deals with magical/Arcane challenges. In combat, when with his preferred party, he usually asks, "you guys got this? Good." And continues reading from his book / sketching in his sketchbook. When he does actually take action in combat, it is rarely of great value (in the past 10 levels, I think that his entire combat contribution could have been accomplished by / replaced with a bag of flour). Said party would have "voted him off the island" were it not for how useful for logistics they found him.

When not adventuring, Quertus resides in a jumble of adamantine towers, surrounded and attended by thousands of Simulacra (primarily of himself). When not attending Quertus, maintaining the grounds, or actively guarding the place, said Simulacra conduct experiments on Quertus' behalf.

Quertus would rather like to have an apprentice who he trusts to take over the whole "save the world" thing, so that he could get back to pure research. Unfortunately, all of his apprentices have proven to be disappointments (or I've lost contact with their players). So, over 100 worlds saved under his belt, Quertus continues to reluctantly answer the call, with an "I'm too old for this" / "I'm too busy for this" attitude.

I guess this is a good start on describing / explaining him.

oxybe
2019-03-09, 02:04 AM
I have a handful of characters I really liked.
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Shump, the Hoboverlord. Demon lord of poverty, vagrancy, envy and murder.

Shump was a unique fellow. A half-mad human warlock who realized "adventurer" was better PR then "murderhobo" so he sold his services as such.

throughout his various adventures over the course of two and a half real life years he managed to get mangled, burned, melted, stabbed, insta-death'd and more. He traveled land and sea and eventually crossed the planar thresholds itself.

He was always followed by his semi-feral pet monkey. Not an animal companion, not a familiar, just a tiny little hissing and spitting and clawing critter that loved those preserved fruits Shump carried.

In the end, Shump was one of the 6 braves that waged open war on hell itself and saved the prime material plane, saving it.

Largely because it had all his stuff on it.

Shump, though a "hero", was still a sociopathic, murderous, power-hungry wretch. A cracked cannon the forces of good pointed in a direction where his special brand of destruction could be channeled for productive means.

Shump made deals with demons, bargained with liches and hoarded dangerous magical items in his search for power overwhelming. Anything was fair game in his quest for power (as long as it didn't grab the attention of his most dangerous enemies: his allies). In the end could channel his hate and wrath to draw from his own mangled body's life force to summon hellfire and immolate his foes and had found a few potential routes of immortality, at the low price of his thoroughly corrupted soul.

And when the dust had cleared and Demogorgon defeated from a multi-pronged assault on his lair, his plans in ruins, the Hoboverlord sat upon his new throne, drunk with newfound power
------------------------------------
Nisha was Evil. not too sure in which direction she leaned (or cared really) other then she was not a nice person, was rather open about her not-niceness and was very happy with her lot in life.

She was also very accepting of others, loyal to those that she got close to, cared deeply about the people who lived in her country (in a literal sense... she was one of the founders and her voice had weight in affairs of state and planar issues) and treated the party like the caring family she never had (as one of many tiefling spawn it was a "who can impress daddy demon the most" situation at home in the lower planes). She also worked as an apothecarist and off-the-record actually kinda cheap healer when she wasn't adventuring.

You just never crossed her. Ever. You can push her buttons and she'd glare at you. Maybe give you a doofy curse for a day or so, making you look like an idiot. But people who crossed the line... **** got real.

People have woken up in the middle of night with the worst night terrors imaginable, screaming bloody murder and then being petrified in that horrified position. Then dragged into her front garden. And had their mouths and nostrils scrubbed off. No one ever dared ask where the statues came from. They just appeared.

An army of soldiers got their **** kicked as when they tried to invade they were held down by a sudden hailstorm in the middle of the night, only to have their supplies and sleeping quarters wrecked by giant, angry infernal dinosaurs that were gone as quickly as they arrived. Repeated nights of these lightning raids did not help their morale.

Demons were summoned with the express purpose to assassinate people who caused grief to those she cared about. Bone Devils were favoured because you could tell them to just dimentionally anchor people so they can't teleport away and then have fun.

She had effectively permanently dominated a Cyclops that tried to mount an assault on a friendly town and had his brain scrubbed down to nothingness and was in the process of rebuilding it to her specifications. In the meanwhile his job was to guard the cave. Only select people could go in the cave, everyone else was scared off. Stay out of the cave.

Nisha was evil. And real good at it. Transparent about it too: Nisha liked it where she was, liked the people there and was living a good, comfortable (and in her mind, idyllic almost) life and those who messed with this weird little status quo she has going on, had hell to pay.

Then again, people never seemed to learn that you really shouldn't be messing around with a demon summoning, poison brewing, curse-toting, shapeshifting, mind-warping shamaness that is perpetually guarded by swarms of hyper-intelligent wasps and other insects on the payroll of, and only takes orders from, the highest authority in the land because she likes that person as a close friend and party member.
--------------------------------
I have a handful of other characters I played for short times that were fun.

latest is Ampwood, a gnome "bard" (made in the genesys system). If I could use 5 words to describe him... "Sum 41 cover band founder".

a tiny fellow who hung back and quietly helped the party as their jack of all trades and scout until he got his first instrument: a broken mandolin. it technically worked, but it sounded off and actually penalized me on everything i did using it, including casting my spells.

And then he truly came into his own, bringing his own brand of family friendly rebel-without-a-cause to the table. like pulling pranks on the town's magic detecting golems, slightly distracting and inconveniencing them.

Also of note: he just finished saving the town with the power of music, channeling his inner rebel and rocking out so hard it undid a complex summoning ritual that would have doomed the large metropolitan town we are in.

a ritual lead by a necromancer, his vampire associate and about a dozen skelebobs.

in a desecrated underground temple.

his poor guitar, however got wrecked by the vampire mid fight who didn't like this tiny ball of ritual-cancelling, party buffing, wound healing, counterspelling *** whupping.

we did get the last laugh though as even though the vampire took my guitar, our orc shaman took her arm with his axe.

Ampwood's next project is to find someone to make a guitar out of a bhargest skull and the dismembered arm of a vampire. seems like a fitting instrument.

Sajiri
2019-03-09, 05:55 AM
Ruya, the character in my avatar, also known as Ruya Nameless, Ruya-no-joren, and in the future, Ruya Brandr?

She's been an ongoing character of mine since 2015, and she has a special place in my heart because she was so unexpected. She was created very lazily to be honest, for a casual RP between my husband and I to erm, lets just say experiment with some stuff. But being that we both love D&D, I got too interested in the characters and the setting, and he couldnt help himself from introducing more serious plots. So the game we have going now is entirely different from the one we began.

When I was creating her, the only real requirement was that she not be a human and be more of a beast-like race. I couldn't decide between a wolf/kitsune character, or a harpy character, so I mashed them both together and made her a half breed, then because I was lazy I had her raised in an orphanage so I didn't have to explain why her parents of such different races came together to have a child. She was a naive, pacifist character who's dream was to join the Coven (essentially the governement and the church together, not always looked upon well) as an apprentice. The initial idea of the game was her travelling around the country she was sent to on her pilgrimage which is what apprentices do before joining the Coven as an official witch.

Throughout the pilgrimage, Ruya grew quite a lot as a character. It turned out she had some very unique abilities, due to her heritage, and the fact she is essentially the reincarnation(not normally possible in this setting) of a powerful sorceress (who was the reincarnation of an even more powerful and evil sorceress). She had a soul bound contract with a very evil character thanks to previously mentioned incarnation, and the two are now firm partners despite their differences. She has met and recruited several allies and has even unintentionally involved herself in politics and has royalty both as allies and enemies.

Ruya had to accept that unfortunately, conflict is inevitable, and she has been learning to fight and become a stronger witch. She has had to grow up, physically and emotionally. She has gone from being a carefree, somewhat immature and manipulative teenage girl who relied on everyone else to take care of her and do the difficult work, to a young woman who puts everyone else before herself, intent to find her own way in the world and has even taken in a little orphaned oni girl which she cares for.

Ultimately, less than two years have passed in the campaign, but a lot has gone on in that time. She's made friends, she's lost friends, she's been betrayed, she's become allies with former enemies. She's taken part in a war, she's uncovered centuries old conspiracies, she's saved a race from it's direction of extinction. Basically, she's been through a lot for a character I put next to no thought into at her creation, but this is why she has become my favourite, because unlike every other character of mine where, even though they have experienced their own changes and growth, they had personalities and goals defined before I ever played them.

The biggest turning point for Ruya was that her only real character point when I created her, was that she wanted to join the coven. When she completed her pilgrimage as an apprentice, she had been through so much that I had her choose not to join, and instead went her own way. The main defining point of her character was pushed aside and she went into unknown territory. It was a pretty big deal to me to play her that way.

Solamnicknight
2019-03-10, 11:04 AM
My first D&D character ever is one of my favorites. His name was Gerard Edwin. He was a 3.5e cleric of the Trickery and Illusion domains. He worshiped a draconic deity called Aaasterinian and always introduced himself when he could as "Gerard Edwin Cleric of Aasterinian" He was foppish, young, and usually in over his head especially since the dice did not favor him. Yet despite the bad die rolls on my part through clever use of spells and some luck at the right time Gerard would come through in vital moments which fit his character. He had run away from home at a young age to avoid being forced to go to a mage college by his father, instead wanting to be a bard like his mother. He was beaten up and robbed by bandits while alone on the road and left for dead. He was taken to a roadside shrine of Aasterinian by a half-dragon cleric and instead of being a bard or wizard finally found his calling. He then traveled around until he settled with a group of adventurers in a village called Branborough. With this group he had many perilous and exciting adventures, clearing a mine of a gnomish gang, and traveling to the city and dealing with a crisis involving a drug that mutated people called skitter that even involved time travel via ghost memories. However, we switched campaigns after a certain point in the city arc, and I retired Gerard. I still have all his old character information and a piece of not so good pencil art that I drew of him though!

Man_Over_Game
2019-03-12, 04:54 PM
I had a Warlock who was able to cast Disguise Self At-will, who served a mysterious being who demanded that he spied on people. He was told to spy on people in his group, and that's what he did.

Extremely charming and talented, he gave no reason to create any kind of distrust. He was also a member of several factions, some of them opposing, just to obey his Patron's orders to spy on people. He was able to sound, look, and talk like anyone he's ever seen, so catching him in the act was pretty impossible.

The players at my table were really skeptical, because they knew I was sneaking away to report their actions to several interested factions, but the characters knew nothing and could prove nothing. Most of my writings were in Illusory Scripts (appears like whatever I want to whoever I want), so they only ever found letters of me talking about my adventures to my family when they went through my stuff.

A Cheshire Cat character if you've ever seen one. He preferred being around the party, though, and never gave away information that would end up harming them.

His name was Phylactery Jones. Phylactery because that's the only name his attempted-Lich of a father would call him, and Jones because that's the catch-all name that his orphanage gave out. The pact happened when his father's ritual was interrupted by the Harpers and Phylactery was the only available recipient for the power. "Phyl" was both the sacrifice but was also due the reward of immortality, so the Patron decided to take him as a servant.

darkrose50
2019-03-14, 09:55 AM
One of my favorite characters was the maid of an archmage who learned magic by reading the archmage's books. The archmage would secretly leave out the correct books for her to read. After finishing her "apprenticeship" she was sent into the world with the archmage's son (another PC), and it was her job to keep the wealthy and spoiled brat of a young man out of trouble, and teach him how to behave. She had a war pony, named grumpy, whom she deeply cared for, and would outfit with all manor of magical gear. We rolled stats randomly, she had an 18 CON, and I always seemed to roll high for her hit points (surprises can be fun).

The Kool
2019-03-14, 10:42 AM
I can't speak of memorable characters without mentioning my first ever character. Bill the Paladin (2e), didn't really understand paladins much less D&D so I only played him for a few sessions before I retired him for a magic user and a more flexible playstyle. Still have his sheet somewhere.

My favorite though is the one I played to highest level. Jamie Mannheim, halfling warmage veteran turned mercenary (3.5). At least, that's how he began. He picked up UMD somewhere along the way and started mellowing out and planning more. Crafting items became one of his favorite pastimes. Somewhere around level 11, he made the move to become the first lich in that particular game world. Long before that though, he began acquiring power in other ways... Mannheim Financial is a staple of that world now. Any bank you find is either a branch of MF or backed by MF, with his full might and security behind it. His vaults are protected in every way he can think of, up to and including their existence being a secret. In the olden days, he even offered adventuring insurance, where for a modest fee he would keep tabs on you and rez you for free if you died. He was the eternal nemesis of the local Cleric of Olidammara (another PC), the only one to ever break into his vault. He still owes me a few hundred thousand gold, but I think I earned some of it back with some drive-by disintegrations of his tavern... He reached level 14 before being retired as an NPC, but he's still a part of that world.

Kyrell1978
2019-03-14, 05:15 PM
Thrain Stargazer a Twi'lek smuggler/mercenary in the old West End Games Star Wars RPG. This was my first anti-hero. In the same campaign I played Kyrell Windrunner (the first of a few Kyrell's from which my username was pulled) a self sacrificing jedi that adhered to the jedi code vehemently as a counter balance.

Draven a tiefling cleric of Malrizzeron (homebrewed god of demons) in 3.5. He was the most evil I've managed to get a character.

Prince Drake Longblade (2nd ed AD&D) Human (redundant here in a minute) Paladin of Solaris (hombrew sun god much like Pelor). The most purely good character I've ever had.

King of Nowhere
2019-03-14, 07:47 PM
Firem Gikwht (aka Kung Li, Chan Sheng, Li Chang, or whatever name he'll like better at any given moment) is a monk with a difficult past and a skewed logic.
at age 7, a wizard used compulsion on his parents to make an army of thralls. His parents died furthering the wizard's schemes, and Firem was raised in a monastery.
Firem remembers mostly the powerlessness. Being at the mercy of someone. He spent the first night crying, but then he resolved: bad people would no longer make him cry; he would make them cry instead.
He trained for combat. At this point, the skewed logic first manifested: Firem reasoned that a wizard gives up weapons and armor, and yet he's stronger than a ffighter, who uses them. So it follows that the less you have, the stronger you are. So Firem trained as a monk, because if you have no weapon, armor or spells you'll be even more powerful that the guy who only eschews weapons and armor. However, it fits quite well, because he's especially interested in surviving against the unpredictable and resisting magic, and so the class with the best saving throws and spell resistance is a good choice.

Firem trains hard. Really hard. He heard that misery builds character, "no pain no gain" that kind of stuff, and took it to the extreme. He started to wear clothes made of sandpaper. he sleeps on sharp stones (which he carries in his backpack; he picked the sharpest, most uncomfortable he could find, and whenever he finds a new stone that's even more painful to sleep over, he adds it to the collection). He kneels on pebbles. In the real world, he'd reduce himself to a wreck in a few years, but with magic to compensate for the long term effects of his training, he actually became very good.

After he got access to self-healing at level 7, his training got worse. He routinely breaks his bones. His unconventional excercices include, but are not limited to
- peeing against the wind, then trying to dodge
- hammering nails with his forehead
- walking on caltrops (he actually hired a couple of commoners to pick up the caltrops after he walked on them and spread them again in front of him, following him whenever he goes)
- using a punching bag full of rocks
- rubbing a sliced onion on his eyes (he promised he wouldn't cry anymore, and he's training for it)
- exposing himself to diseases
- headbutt rocks
- rebuffing blades with the calluses that he got by wearing sandpaper
- volunteering as target whenever the party wizard needs to practice an offensive spell
- drinking poison

It's important to notice that while he seeks pain, he is by no means a masochist: he does not like being in pain, but he thinks it will make him stronger.

Now Firem is quite a badass, and he has defeated a lot of evil wizards. Still, he keeps feeling insecure. His main motivation for fighting is that every time he faces deadly odds and survives, he feels more safe in his ability to not be powerless. He realized it a while ago, but concluded that it's ok. And he died a couple times, so he knows he still is not strong enoough. He'll never be strong enough.
In battle he's always the first to jump in, going in the middle of the enemy lines to throw them in disarray with his trip attacks. he wants to be focused, and he likes when he attracts many enemies and the wizard throws area effects centered on him. it means the wizard trusts him to survive those better than the enemies, and Firem can always use the implicit confidence.
During exploration, he leads, hoping to trigger some deadly trap that he'll survive thanks to his awesome training. when something risky needs to be done, he always volunteers. and that's how he died a couple times, incidentally.

Basically, he's like one of those guys who get robbed and react by learning martial arts and/or using a gun, and then they hope to be robbed again so they can defeat the robber and feel better. Except, he's a highly functional version of it, in a world where it actually works.

While Firem prefers to help people and doesn't care much for rewards, he also does not feel particularly inclined to go out of his way to help. What he really cares is fighting and becoming stronger, and he only sides with good because he would not hurt an innocent (he was hurt, and does not want to do the same to others) but he sees "baddies" as acceptable targets. He's fine working with evil people, as long as they do not actively hurt innocents.


I have a handful of characters I really liked.
-----------------------
Shump, the Hoboverlord. Demon lord of poverty, vagrancy, envy and murder.

Shump was a unique fellow. A half-mad human warlock who realized "adventurer" was better PR then "murderhobo" so he sold his services as such.

throughout his various adventures over the course of two and a half real life years he managed to get mangled, burned, melted, stabbed, insta-death'd and more. He traveled land and sea and eventually crossed the planar thresholds itself.

He was always followed by his semi-feral pet monkey. Not an animal companion, not a familiar, just a tiny little hissing and spitting and clawing critter that loved those preserved fruits Shump carried.

In the end, Shump was one of the 6 braves that waged open war on hell itself and saved the prime material plane, saving it.

Largely because it had all his stuff on it.

Shump, though a "hero", was still a sociopathic, murderous, power-hungry wretch. A cracked cannon the forces of good pointed in a direction where his special brand of destruction could be channeled for productive means.

Shump made deals with demons, bargained with liches and hoarded dangerous magical items in his search for power overwhelming. Anything was fair game in his quest for power (as long as it didn't grab the attention of his most dangerous enemies: his allies). In the end could channel his hate and wrath to draw from his own mangled body's life force to summon hellfire and immolate his foes and had found a few potential routes of immortality, at the low price of his thoroughly corrupted soul.


this looks like our party wizard. great minds think alike? :smallbiggrin:

Hackulator
2019-03-14, 08:05 PM
I just finished (temporarily, we'll come back to that game) playing a character I really liked, Stratus the wyrmling silver dragon. Stratus began the game at the ripe old age of 7...7 days that is. I took a lot of RP inspiration from my 4 year old nephew.

Some highlights included:

Becoming a vegan after one of my party mates brought me to a butcher shop to teach me what death was.

Continually asking one of my party mates "But why?" over and over again til they threw something at me OOC.

Yelling at a Great Wyrm Prismatic Dragon.

Sitting on a Glooms lap who I liked because he was cold.

Becoming addicted to ice cream, because it is cold.

Eating an entire large bag of silver pieces someone gave to me to hold for them.

Saying nothing but "I don't feel good" with different intensity and inflection for 2 straight hours after getting hit with ego whip for 9 charisma damage.

Walking onto some fog covering a valley, telling everyone to follow me, convincing them it was solid by jumping up and down onto it, but not realizing only I had cloudwalking so they all fell 30 feet to the ground.

TheTeaMustFlow
2019-03-14, 08:29 PM
Well, firstly there's "Savvy" Mercer, the true neutral elven Arcane Trickster. He was a delight to play, for his genial and mercenary nature, his skill at shooting people in the head with guns (he had a way of rolling a nat 20 just when it was needed), and his accent, which leapt around the sheepier parts of these be-sceptered isles like a pan-Celticist with a jetpack.

And secondly, there was Johann Steiner. The second character I played in Anima: Beyond Fantasy, he fully embraced the general silliness of that system by being as ridiculous and OP as I could manage while still being a playable character; essentially a Wizard Lich who had transferred his consciousness into a construct body he had created. He eventually knew and could cast literally every spell in the game, a powergamer's dream. And again, with a delightful accent (at least, from the perspective of the guy playing him), essentially playing up the "Herr Doktor" stereotype to the hilt in the best way possible. Ironically, of all the party he had the least dubious associations, being merely a member of the Illuminati/Hogwarts faction while most everyone else had a connection to one of the magical Nazi groups. 'Twas great fun :).

Quertus
2019-03-15, 10:36 AM
Raymond was a telepathic vampire / diplomatic merchant spy in a homebrew reality-hopping system called Paradox. To understand him, just imagine an Illithid Savant in Rifts. About a decade before there was such a thing as an Illithid Savant.

To give you a feel for Raymond, upon finding himself in another world, his first action in the game was to hide; his second action was to consume the mind of a local, to fully understand the world he was in. So, while the other D&D-esque characters were pushing buttons in a metal dungeon to open doors and struggling against death traps, Raymond realized that he was on a starship, and that they were activating the airlock. Raymond's third action was to drink the native (the ship's captain) dry, to replenish his telepathic energy. Technically, action 2&3 were the same action - Raymond never even considered the possibility of consuming someone's mind without drinking them dry.

Before the game started, the charismatic Raymond had befriended a god-lizard, who had granted Raymond protection from daylight, and who traveled with and greatly aided the party (when Raymond eventually made his way to the savages who were killing his crew / food supply).

Raymond was significantly weaker than the rest of the party, and so took the role of Control, using the ship's Teleportation devices to transport the party around. He also had personal forcefield generators made to let him survive the deadly world, should conflict come to him (imagine a non-mega-damage character is Rifts getting mega-damage armor).

One of the things Raymond got directly involved with was the saving and relocation of a group of Mages. With his dieing breath, the archimage granted Raymond his power. Raymond went from being a phenomenally skilled Telepath to a decision paralysis Omnimancer. Eventually, Raymond reasoned that "grant someone else your power" was something that a Mage could do, so he gifted his most loyal, most thoroughly Mindraped Thrull (think leadership or Thrull Herder), the chief engineer Tivek, the power that the archimage had given him, and returned to "just" being a Telepath.

Eventually, Raymond asked the party's benefactor (much like Aladdin did his genie) what *he* wanted. The lizard was quite surprised, and explained that he was a baby god. In order to join the ranks of full deity, he needed to gain the power to connect to the divine telepathic network.

Well, reasoned Raymond, allies are a form of power, so let's see what I can do. One critical success later (owing to Raymond having spent his XP on passive probability manipulation, giving him a +1% to all rolls), and Raymond was able to perceive the divine internet. A second critical success later (yes, that would have been a 1-in-10,000 set of rolls there, where failure was likely to result in death), and an exhausted and hungry Raymond successfully connected the baby god to the divine telepathic internet.

And lost the party their greatest ally. We never heard from him again. Oops.

Things got a lot harder for the party after that. Eventually, Raymond left the party (taking a shuttle full of engineers and technology with him) to "retire" on a modern-ish world. (The world had other vampires, and a huge prey population, whereas the ship's crew was starting to suffer from Raymond's predations. Also, I wanted to help the GM test his system by playing other characters.)

But I liked Raymond so much, I ended up playing him several more times. And would love to play him again some day, if there were systems that could manage a proper translation of the character.