Most interesting Personality Quirks

[TelemontTanthul]

We all have creative ideas when it comes to making characters.

But what I am interesting in hearing is what those characters are like.

So, this thread is dedicated to the sharing of stories involving characters with... strange... or interesting... personality quirks.

Note that this is about characters, not players.

Anyways, to start.

We have a gnome monk, whose name is Xavier.

He has an odd habit of licking his daggers during the worst possible times.

He says that his character is a psychopath, and I believe it.

His character must make a will save every 32 minutes (real-time) otherwise he is crippled with a bout of insanity.

[Shadowbane]

I played a paladin who constantly prayed. He talked in quotes from the (real-life) bible.

It was actually pretty hard, after a while.

[Jergmo]

My first character in D&D was an insane elven wizard who was an obsessive compulsive packrat. He collected a wide variety of unusual and mundane things, including jars of dirt (which he managed to save the party with once).

Um...one of my older characters that I'm fond of is an alternates between elven/human druid, and she rubs her neck whenever she's nervous about something. It's nothing special for a quirk, but it just seemed natural for her.

My human necromancer in a friend's campaign does the Spockbrow a lot and rubs his chin when he's thinking.

Things like that. There's a lot I could say about a lot of my characters, but I'd have to think some more about their quirks - most of the time I don't think about it, these actions just seem natural for them like my own quirks.

[TheEmerged]

My first character in D&D was an insane elven wizard who was an obsessive compulsive packrat.

I fail to see how that qualifes as a quirk for an adventurer

[Tavar]

I've had a couple characters that are in disguise when the party meets them. It can be fun to have the character revert back to his true identity at an appropriate time. Note that in no case was the character acting against the parties interests, he just happened to not trust the bunch of misfits he got stuck with right away.

[Thatguyoverther]

I once played a wizard based on Professor Farnsworth from Futurama. Including falling asleep at random intervals, insane laughter, and general craziness.

The group had a second wizard and our characters had a rivalry as two who was the more competent wizard. At one point he knocks himself out trying to use a spell that was beyond his level.

My character knows that as a side effect he'll remain unconscious for 24 hours. He exclaims, "Quick get me a vat of pickled herring! It's the only way to cure him!"

Everyone else fails their Knowledge Magic rolls and I manage to convince them that it's the only way to revive him. The rival wizard wakes up 24 hours later in naked in a barrel of fish.

[Catch]

In a ninja game, I had a GM introduce an NPC who spoke entirely in Nadsat.

And it's hard to ignore an unintelligible character who's giving you the plot points.

[Radiun]

Character I have now talks like a hillbilly at random times for no apparent reason.
Also, his Dire Bat animal companion's tongue is 10ft long. No mechanical benefit, but it does seem to come up fairly often

[FlyingWhale]

Had a vampire who was a teacher and a master of the arts... the literal arts, like, painting and theater... vegan, effeminate, polite, I believe he poked people, though prodded may be more appropriate... Forgot his name... NIKKI you tell these people about Rigato, the vampire, Ariane, your brothers... omg the list is endless... WHY WHY AM I CURSED WITH BEING THE DM?! you always get to play with character quirks... ENTIRE CHARACTERS BEING BASED OFF QUIRKS! and I don't even remember them... I am a character generator folks... I just brew hundreds of characters in my head and fill the town full of NPCs... Nikki, as usual.. pull up my slack...

(please no ban for derailment! I promise I had good intentions! IT WAS FOR THE CHILDREN!)

[Jergmo]

Had a vampire who was a teacher and a master of the arts... the literal arts, like, painting and theater... vegan, effeminate, polite, I believe he poked people, though prodded may be more appropriate... Forgot his name... NIKKI you tell these people about Rigato, the vampire, Ariane, your brothers... omg the list is endless... WHY WHY AM I CURSED WITH BEING THE DM?! you always get to play with character quirks... ENTIRE CHARACTERS BEING BASED OFF QUIRKS! and I don't even remember them... I am a character generator folks... I just brew hundreds of characters in my head and fill the town full of NPCs... Nikki, as usual.. pull up my slack...

(please no ban for derailment! I promise I had good intentions! IT WAS FOR THE CHILDREN!)

*Pats gently* There, there, friend. I feel your pain...I've become the default DM in my group of friends, and my favorite characters that I've played for years get no time to be noticed or are given little though just like other NPC's, and when I try to introduce characters to the players in the game, it apparently takes the fun out because they're "Star NPCs".

[Xallace]

Invoker of Pelor would use song lyrics as Pelorian Bible quotes, just adding "Amen" to the end. Liked to draw relevant conclusions from the randomly-selected lyrics.

And from my friends...
Elven ranger liked to collect boots, magical or mundane. Ended up with a pretty sizable collection.

Human Strong Hero liked to kick open doors. Locked? Kick it. Unlocked? Kick it. Open? Close it and kick it.

Warforged Tough Hero liked to reminisce about "old country" and used "Russian Reversals" as statements of fact (he'd elaborate on how car drove you, and such).

Maybe not the MOST interesting, but definitely livened up the campaigns.

[Choco]

The barbarian I am playing now has a "thing" for female liches.

I have been dropping minor clues, but it seems no one will catch on till the DM throws one at us

Seriously, I wonder what kinda expression he will show us when he describes his uber-villainess, and I repsond with "Hey there sweet thing, got any plans for after you slaughter those clowns?"

[Zaydos]

I usually end up having to put in an NPC to work with the party at their behest... unfortunately one time it was a druid-wizard he held back but we did the math, if he decided to kill the party and just started nuking them he'd have killed one player within the surprise round, his familiar-companion would have pounced and grappled the warlock, and only the knight would have been left with no chance of victory. Really the only way the entire party could have stopped him would have been if the ninja-shaman (usually weakest character in the party) decided to try and kill him and got surprise followed by winning initiative... I'm a little ashamed of that but everyone enjoyed it except my little brother who hated him (and especially his tiger) from when I mentioned, because one of my players [Mr. X] said they wanted to DM an adventure or two in the campaign, "I came up with a character idea if [Mr. X] runs an adventure." In the end even he loved the wizard-druid and volunteered to have his character killed off permanently instead of have the tiger leave the party.

My friend's warlock was fun too. He tried to be the Doctor from Doctor Who and called himself the Professor (as doctor had no meaning in the world where healing was a cleric's job) and started a school for wizardry in the elven kingdom. He was as much of a magpie as the druid and it was fun when they'd find books.

Sorry for the off-topic comment, on topic now. My favorite character quirk was probably back when I was 9 I played a homebrewed class of my older brother's for BD&D and while the class really ended up being fighter with more XP/level required it was a fun one to play and my character was CN and talked to his sword occasionally. He was a psychopath and enjoyable for a 9 year old. Another of my favorites was the aforementioned wizard-druid's tiger familiar-companion, it somehow managed to use just growls and roars to communicate quite effectively with the party and was a big protective kitten, honestly I think it was wiser than its master (he was a magpie of a wizard who used permanency on Arcane Sight so that he always knew what was "shiny") and was the most loved character in the campaign. Also a few NPCs in the campaign namely a proselytizing cleric Andoric who was a rather nice person who would tell you to your face you were going to hell for your choice in god but he didn't blame you, and the warblade who was an overconfident warblade who would rush into any danger but was super vulnerable to any/all fear effects (Will vs Shaken became Will vs Panicked for him), the PCs loved to hate him (except my little brother who just loved him). I miss that game.

[CrazySopher]

Friend of mine had a gnome Artificer whose familiar would constantly write down what was going on in the world around us because she'd forget what she was doing about... oh, every three minutes or so. She'd get incredibly insecure about it, freak out, and on at least one occasion, thought we were trying to trick her into giving up her friends (who were... us) and went on a full fledged attack against her own party members. To her credit, we laughed most of the time! It was adorable!

[Vortling]

In my current campaign I have a rogue who pokes nearly everything with his dagger before doing anything else. He also hordes daggers. He's up to 54 daggers now and is thinking about buying a bandoleer for them instead of the sack he's lugging around.

In another game I had a rogue who was a court jester. He'd stop at inopportune times and start juggling. He was very fond of tall tales.

I once had a wizard who spoke like a strung out surfer and was named after a hallucinogenic variety of mushroom.

As a DM I've had a variety of quirky characters from the showboating leader of the performer's guild to the quest giver wizard who would "disguise" himself (0 ranks in disguise, never used disguise self or any other illusion spells either) as the bad guys to tell the players where to go next.

[Vangor]

Kender Vow of Poverty Paladin (who had Cosmopolitan [Sleight of Hand]), and I doubt I need to say much more than many a scenario where he was fleeing, shiny object in hand, shouting, "I am doing good! It is for the children!"

One mass of personality quirks there with the curiosity, "borrowing", upholding order, and selflessness.

[Piedmon_Sama]

A friend of mine is playing a Ranger with no ranks in Survival. o_o

The character is also an absent-minded momma's boy with bizarrely militant ideas about female empowerment for a Renaissance setting. In this setting, the Rangers are kind of a spy organization, and they sent his character deep into the wild north pretty much just to get rid of him.

[Xzeno]

I play a gnome paladin who prefers subterfuge and treachery to fair fighting. He's also quite cantankerous (verbally), picking fights with plot-centric NPCs.

I also play a gnoll ranger who is... well, completely mad. His alignment is cnawful gnevil (CNLGNE) and I play him as such.

[Stormageddon]

I played a halfing sorcessor that believed his powers came from a bobcat tail (dispite many wizards telling him the tail had no power what so ever) he carried around him. The DM like (plus he told me that if ever wanted to cripple my character he could just make me lose it.) this so much he let it be the sole component to all my spells.

[Thatguyoverther]

I'm thinking about playing a halfling rouge in my next game who refuses the title halfling. Believing himself to just be an unusually short human, an adopted child with lots of denial. Stabbing anyone who says otherwise.

The next Hero System game I play I'm planning on a Crusader/Televangelist who fights crime in a high tech armored suit paid for by the local megachurch.

[Xey42]

Rogue/swashbuckler from my early days.. he was a little unbalanced and muttered a lot, but early in the campaign our group was wandering an underground warehouse for a local noble. Being the most intelligent character in the group, he thought it was an incredibly bad idea to go and get comfy in a room full of old furniture when lots of weird stuff had been happening..

Turns out, most of the furniture was actually a large number of mimic's.

After a long, drawn out fight, where he saved ever other member of the group at least once, finished by slaying a mimic mattress that was crushing our paladin.

He insisted on taking the mattress/mimic corpse with him from then on, having it completely fixed up to be like new, carried on a donkeys back. Going so far as to get violent about the prospect of leaving it and vehemently reminding everyone of what happened when they didn't listen to him by throwing the mattress at them.

-so, in short, an obsession with a mimic corpse/mattress that he carried with him everywhere on the back of a donkey.

[The Mute Bard]

Had a vampire who was a teacher and a master of the arts... the literal arts, like, painting and theater... vegan, effeminate, polite, I believe he poked people, though prodded may be more appropriate... Forgot his name... NIKKI you tell these people about Rigato, the vampire, Ariane, your brothers... omg the list is endless... WHY WHY AM I CURSED WITH BEING THE DM?! you always get to play with character quirks... ENTIRE CHARACTERS BEING BASED OFF QUIRKS! and I don't even remember them... I am a character generator folks... I just brew hundreds of characters in my head and fill the town full of NPCs... Nikki, as usual.. pull up my slack...

(please no ban for derailment! I promise I had good intentions! IT WAS FOR THE CHILDREN!)

The steps of Hell, Branden...The steps of Hell. I SIGH AT YOU!!!

Hello, everyone, I'm the aforementioned Nikki, and I'm here because I'm a walking, talking character archive for my dear cousin's games.

It's gonna be a long night.

In the world of "Providence", there was a slew of strange and wonderful characters; Master Rigato, Lord Archimedes, my brothers Faron and Blaise Tornay, The Hedge-wizard Croe, Lee, the strange gnome fortuneteller in the "red-light" district of Manifest, the couple Ember and Barthus, Turgus, and Truffles...poor poor Truffles...(mournful silence)

Well, to start off. I was a player in this particular game. Most of the characters I listed above, have something to do with my character, so I think explaining her is important.

Ariane Tournay was a bard, specializing in acting and oratory. Ariane traveled almost constantly, but had almost no combat skill...At all, I'm not kidding, this was so absolute that the die rolls were almost always 1's for the character in combat. The dice are funny that way, huh?

Her father, Bertram, was a landowner of a distant area of the empire. The land that he owned was in a place called Arrorstar. He bought this land after he married his wife, a half-elf named Gwyn. A citadel was built, including; a huge castle, and a theater. The proximity to the ocean cause the citadel to grow and become the major port city of Arrorstar.

It is here in Arrorstar that many very quirky characters have their origins.

Master Rigato:

Master Rigato was an elven vampire sorcerer. He couldn't stand the sight of blood, and was entirely terrified of combat. Instead of "drinking blood" he took the life-force of plants into himself to sustain his existence. Therefore, we referred to him as a "Vegan Vampire". He grew plants as a hobby, and sorce of sustenance. Being an elf to start with he was indeed effeminate, he was very polite, he however DID NOT poke people. He was also very easily upset and could be made to "cry" at the drop of a hat.
He helped raise Ariane and her two older brothers, who I'll describe later....In general the dude loved children, he made part of the castle mentioned earlier into an orphanage. The biggest orphanage in the whole campaign setting.
Due to his attachment to Ariane, I believe Branden made a joke about him poisoning all Ariane's suitors. (I think we decided that that was true. )

Remember that theater? He ran it. Master Rigato was a master play-write, over the centuries he'd been alive, and writing, his plays and stories became legends thought to have been true. Many of the orphans that came to Arrostar became his students, learning many of the the "fine arts."

I'll come back and continue this another time. I'm being called away from the computer.

[Cecil777]

Probably not all that interesting, but... I had a wizard named Cain that was the most conceited, perverse jackass.
Once, he got knocked into a pit of slime and refused help from the party members telling them "If The Cain did not want to be in this horrid pit of rot, The Cain would not be in this horrid pit of rot."
He only accepted help from the Dragonborn priestess who joined our group for that mission, and by way of thanks he decided to... um... grab her inappropriately. (Later, he got her drunk and... well, that's another story)
He named attacks after himself, took the gold that should have been split between the party, and hid behind everyone else.
He became a better person later, but he was this way for a while. Oh, he also pulled a billion pranks with ghost sound and prestidigitation. One time he actually scared off a bunch of ruffians that were giving the party a hard time with ghost sound and a convincing bluff check. He later reminded them that the trick was for his pleasure, and not the benefit of the party.
Wow. What a jerk.

[Shadowbane]

I had a womanizing bard who had Multiple Personality Disorder. First personality, the original, was charming, a little effiminate, but gentle and kind. Neutral Good.

Second personality was the Protector, the personality that would come out when he or his beloved was in trouble. True Neutral.

Last one?

A male prostitute.

[root9125]

I've played with two extremely interesting quirks. One, we had a character with a magic fascination. He just HAD to use the spellthief "steal magic" on everything that radiated any magic aura at all, including, one time, the magic keeping a shiny dress shiny.

The second was a character called Sir Humant Notelf. He was a half-elf who was ashamed of his elven race, and passed as a human by wearing a long hat. He would routinely make comments like "I have nothing for or against elves, I simply am not one myself" at the slightest provocation.

[herrhauptmann]

2nd edition wizard. He hated dogs of every shape and variety. Walking through town and see a mutt in an alleyway? Magic missile.
9th level and party randomly encounters some wolves? Fireball fireball fireball. One's still alive? disintegrate.
At about level 12 he convinced DM to let him research a spell "Destroy dogs" which included anything with the name dog or hound in it's name. And it would affect an area of like 60 feet from the center. After that, he kept a 6th level slot always filled with that spell.
Level 17, DM throws a plot encounter of hellhounds or shadow mastiffs or something at the party. Wizard waits until they get close, "Destroy dogs." Kills almost all of them. About 90 I think. The party was supposed to get swarmed by the dogs and saved by an NPC who would give them the last info they needed for their quest.

[Temet Nosce]

Lets see...

Pyro: He was certain the fire spoke to him, and that everyone he incinerated lived on. Since he was healed by fire he was certain he couldn't go to his own reward until he completed his task... incinerating the world.

Addicted indifference: A significant part of several of her adventures involved acquiring her drugs, and she spent any time she wasn't reading books (often while people died in front of her) drinking and drawing incredibly complex patterns in the liquid.

Mute, sociopath: Completely insane engineered weapon, very cheerful and self centered. Prone to hurting others out of bored curiosity.

Masochist/sadist: Tortured during her childhood (her father had her raised by his demonic allies), and thoroughly convinced that everyone was wrong about pain being bad. She spent her time trying to spread joy by tying everyone's pain and pleasure centers together.

[TheCountAlucard]

The Healer for my Friday game is a bit of a pack-rat; he saved the party with a bag of flour he had obtained a dozen sessions prior. He also keeps each and every acorn ever thrown at him, ever. Considering that one of the other party members is a constantly-buzzed elf, this happens more than one would think.

I'd describe some of my quirky characters, but the only one I can immediately recall is Tykoga, my Twi'lek crime lord, who once convinced a Duros to moon an Imperial Star Destroyer.

[Zaq]

In a ninja game, I had a GM introduce an NPC who spoke entirely in Nadsat.

That's awesome.

I'm currently playing Sanden, who grew up reading and hearing all the greatest tales of heroes of legend, and really believes that the world is actually supposed to work that way. He's hired prostitutes, not to sleep with him, but to play the role of Tearful Love Interest begging him not to risk his life on his latest adventure. Last session, he actually chewed out the villain for not giving a proper villainous monologue, eventually culminating in a "here, just let me do it" moment. It was awesome.

He hasn't met any viziers yet, but if he does, there's a good chance he'd kill them on sight.

[gdiddy]

Every once in a while, a character my buddy DM's will speak and act exactly like a retarded Patrick Stewart. He communicates entirely by shouting. Ending every sentence in "Yes!"

"Battle. Yes! I will make it so. Yes!"

In the same campaign I played an jousting knight who would always say the most inopportune thing imaginable in any situation. It was unintentional for the character. He just had a bad way with words. It was completely unreflective of any number score, because he was a bright attentive guy that people liked. This lead to him getting in many adventures and being a general jerk to everyone on accident. He could, however, back up anything he said with charge multipliers.

Highlights:

After a tender moment explaining the importance of self-control to his squire , he threatened to hog tie the boy to a fence post.

When his wife took up fencing and his daughter wanted to try, he blurted out "Ladies don't fence" in front of his wife.


This is the same wife who was also courting the infernal powers to become a prophetess of Hell. She was quite insane, and Chaotic Evil. Portrayed by someone who actually read the blurb in the PH. Someone dedicated to their personal freedom with no care about the lives of others. The DM would constantly ask "What is your character thinking?", as a role-playing laxative.

The woman playing this sorceress would always come up with stuff in response like:

"Blood! Blood. Blood. Blooood!"

"Well, she just saw that monk (a 14 year old boy, with no character levels), so now she's paranoid. She is thinking how much she loves everything good. Good things. Puppies. Kittens. A pale horse, powerful, coursing underneath her, riding down those that defy- Crap. Puppies again. GET OUT OF MY MIND, YOU LITTLE INBRED BASTARD!"