Bad characters that are fun to play

[Silus]

So I've been thinking about my Pathfinder Society character, wondering where I went wrong with her build, when I realized that despite her highly questionable class choices, she was hella fun to play. So I'm wondering, anyone have a character that build-wise is just "bad" or at least "questionable" but as a character is stupid fun to play?

My character, Amalee Piks (Warning: Gushing about character ahead)

Spoiler

Show

So I had no idea what to do with this character when I made her. My only thought was "Sweet! Dervish archetype!" and ran from there. She's currently level 5 (Dawnflower Dervish 2 (Bard)/Urban Barbarian 2/Unarmed Fighter 1) and far too squishy to rightfully be in the thick of combat (She's got only 40HP at the moment). However, despite her tiny health pool and inability to dish out damage with the big boys, she is frighteningly fun to play. Combat usually starts with "I Battle Dance and Rage", bumping my AC up by 2 (to 21), my To Hit by 4 (to a total of +12) and my damage up by 4 (to +8). Then comes the Attack Defensively bit which jacks my AC up to 24 with only a -2 to hit (thanks to Crane Style. Crane Wing comes next level for "lol nope" on first one attack per round when fighting defensively), and if I'm flanked, I get an additional +1 to AC and to Hit.

So best case scenario, she's flanked with +13 to hit, 25 AC, and dishing out 1d6+8 damage a turn.

The backstory kinda developed itself as I went. The end result is that when she was younger, her village was attacked by a warband of hobgoblins. Her parents were taken, giving her time to escape. She snuck into the encampment later that night to try and free them, only to witness their execution and devouring by the hobgoblins. Something in her snapped, causing her to set the whole encampment aflame while the warband slept. At present, she does not recall this happening, due to a trauma induced Dissociative identity disorder and amnesia. She's full of anger and rage, usually towards slavers, which is rather unusual for someone that claims to be a Varisian wanderer (nomadic people with heavy Romani influences). Also has a fascination with fire that at times rivals that of fire mages (she considers "kill it with fire" to be a good a strategy as any).

TL;DR: Half-Elf BardBarian that can't buff and is essentially a glorified Dex Fighter that benefits from getting flanked. Also mentally unstable and has a case of Dissociative identity disorder along with hints of pyromania.

[Yora]

My favorite character is a half-elf ranger/sorcerer. Started out as a barbarian/sorcerer on a dare that everything can be made playable, but ranger just has the more interesting skills.
Once I learned that 50/50 caster/noncasters are terrible in everything, making it 1:2 made a great character.

[Morithias]

The Merchant. For all the travelling D&D parties do, no one ever seems to want to run the trade routes in the process. It's a great role-playing opportunity and adds to the world at large.

The bad part is that it slows the party down greatly whenever you stop to barter with the guild and try to sell your stock, and the money you'll make from the trading route is NEVER comparable to the money you make as an adventurer.

(which makes no sense, if the orcs have over 2 thousand gold pieces, why are they raiding farmland for food, I'm pretty sure even an orc isn't so stupid, none of them would think "you know why don't we just BUY food" that way murder hobos aren't slaughtering us, our wives, and our children! Also if the trade routes make virtually no money, why are the caravans being attacked by bandits, and not every adventuring party that forgets to put up an alarm spell having their throats slit in the night and all their gear robbed)

Seriously find me an answer for that that doesn't boil down to "Players would complain and moan if a DM did that"

[PersonMan]

(which makes no sense, if the orcs have over 2 thousand gold pieces, why are they raiding farmland for food, I'm pretty sure even an orc isn't so stupid, none of them would think "you know why don't we just BUY food" that way murder hobos aren't slaughtering us, our wives, and our children! Also if the trade routes make virtually no money, why are the caravans being attacked by bandits, and not every adventuring party that forgets to put up an alarm spell having their throats slit in the night and all their gear robbed)

Seriously find me an answer for that that doesn't boil down to "Players would complain and moan if a DM did that"

Orcs with lots of gold: They raid the farmland for food because they both enjoy the fighting involved and have no agriculture of their own. They also can't buy the food. In most DnD settings, the average person is generally living like people did in the medieval period, which means they probably didn't have enough food to spare for a large tribe of people to buy from them.

Besides, nobody expects their entire warhost to be killed by a handful of people sent by farmers.

---

Adventurers are either too poor to be worth robbing or are strong enough to just kill most highwaymen. Honestly, it's a better idea to just hit caravans with a few low-level guards than to attack small camps of people who make their living killing things that can slaughter entire villages.

[Morithias]

Orcs with lots of gold: They raid the farmland for food because they both enjoy the fighting involved and have no agriculture of their own.

Okay that I might give you.

They also can't buy the food. In most DnD settings, the average person is generally living like people did in the medieval period, which means they probably didn't have enough food to spare for a large tribe of people to buy from them.

Bull Plop. According to the DMG, if any item is under the town's "GP Limit" it is available for sale. I'm pretty sure a few bushels of wheat won't break even a small villages GP limit given how cheap meals are in arms and equipment and player's handbook.

Besides, nobody expects their entire warhost to be killed by a handful of people sent by farmers.

Except that adventurers and tales about them are common knowledge, or does living in a D&D world leave you unable to learn from other people's mistakes, like you somehow HAVE to stick to stereotypes.

---

Adventurers are either too poor to be worth robbing or are strong enough to just kill most highwaymen. Honestly, it's a better idea to just hit caravans with a few low-level guards than to attack small camps of people who make their living killing things that can slaughter entire villages.

4 level 3 adventurers camp for the night with the standard DMG starting gold of 2700 gp each. They forget to put up an alarm spell and just put the fighter on watch since the wizard and cleric need to get their spells back. A group of 3 level 1 rogues and 1 level 1 wizard approach the party. The wizard casts a "Sleep" spell on the fighter and he fails his will save. The 3 rogues sneak into the camp and using sign language and mental training coup de grace the other 3 members in sync, then they murder the fighter and run off with a total gain of 10800 gp. 5400 gp if they sell at half price.

There, that is an ENTIRELY plausible situation and the only thing I actually made them fail was the fighter....failing a WILL SAVE. And as for the "Alarm spell" I cannot recall one time my party has actually put up an alarm spell...or put someone on watch period now that I think about it.

I'm just saying. If you want to start a trade route, you have to sink in over 100k in gold, and then you have make a DC 33 profession (merchant) check just to break even, not make a profit, BREAK EVEN. And if you beat that check by say 7 points? Want to know how much money you make?

350 gp. A MONTH. And you have to deal with TWO random events ranging from taxes to fire, to a monster attack.

I'm sorry, but with those numbers, adventurers should be living in constant paranoia, not the merchants. The average adventurer should be in a mental ward from fear of being murdered in his sleep by people after his gold rather than any evil cultist or something of that nature.

I'm just saying

5400 gp.

Versus 350 gp against someone who can make a DC 40 profession check.

I think the Merchant is a higher level.

Edit: I checked the DMG 2, the level for a Human Specialist with a +30 mod to their profession check? Level 11.

4 level 3 adventurers will get you 5400 gp.

One level 11 guy will get you 350 gp.

You would literally have to rob the merchant of 16 months (rounded up) worth of profit with him taking 10 on each roll, for you to make more money than killing the adventurers.

[ghost_warlock]

Not necessarily mechanically bad, but my current Encounters character is a heavy flail-wielding nudist bugbear barbarian. Trained skills are Acrobatics, Athletics, and Endurance. He loves doing cartwheels, letting everything just flap in the breeze. I played the same character in an earlier season of Encounters and the entire time he donned exactly two pieces of clothing - a magic belt and a dwarven robe that came to his waist. His name is Crapface.

[Arbane]

OI'm just saying. If you want to start a trade route, you have to sink in over 100k in gold, and then you have make a DC 33 profession (merchant) check just to break even, not make a profit, BREAK EVEN. And if you beat that check by say 7 points? Want to know how much money you make? (SNIP)

D&D's economics found to be unrealistic, film at 11.

[Morithias]

D&D's economics found to be unrealistic, film at 11.

I notice how you didn't have a rebuttal to what I said.

I love how no one can give me an answer to this.

Seriously why do the bandits attack the merchants and not the adventurers, this isn't rocket science. 10800 gp versus 350 gp. One sleep spell!

[Urpriest]

I notice how you didn't have a rebuttal to what I said.

I love how no one can give me an answer to this.

The Merchant has almost the same gear as the adventurers, though. NPC gear is determined by CR, so at most an equal level merchant and adventurer will differ by a level's worth of possessions. And while adventurers' gear is mostly tied up in equipment which can only be sold at half price, merchants' will mostly be in terms of trade goods, which can be sold for full price. Even if the merchant is only making 350gp a month, his goods are by necessity worth much more than that.

Four level 3 adventurers gets you 10,000gp (remember, they're NPCs, you only get to kill the PCs once so you can't really make a living off it), which since almost all of it is equipment gets you 5,000gp. One level 3 merchant gets you 2,500gp that will almost all sell for full. You then need 2,500gp to make up the difference, which you get if the merchants travel in pairs, or if the merchant has twelve first level warrior guards or NPC-classed passengers.

[Morithias]

Four level 3 adventurers gets you 10,000gp (remember, they're NPCs, you only get to kill the PCs once so you can't really make a living off it), which since almost all of it is equipment gets you 5,000gp. One level 3 merchant gets you 2,500gp that will almost all sell for full. You then need 2,500gp to make up the difference, which you get if the merchants travel in pairs, or if the merchant has twelve first level warrior guards or NPC-classed passengers.

Ah but remember that the base costs for a shipping business is -25, with -4 for high risk and -4 for high resource. With a 50 gp mod that means monthly costs come to a mere 1650 gp.

And no offence, but I'm pretty sure a number of that is taxes and wages not necessarily merchandise.

And no you cannot claim that that number is too low because you know what happens if you don't make your profit check for that month? You have to pay off your debts! That means your average expenses for a shipping co? 1650 gp a month, not counting specialists or increased wages or taxes from Random events.

So even if the guy is using slave labor, and is smuggling so he doesn't pay taxes? 1650 gp of merchandise from each caravan, and THAT is assuming that you are looting him when he has his entire shipment for that MONTH all at once.

Give me a second to check the DM's NPC value table.

Edit: Ah here we are, Table 4-23 page 127.

The value of a 3rd level NPC's gear? 2500 gp.

So even if you remove the "PC" part from the equation? You've only dropped from 10800 gp, to 10000 gp. Or 5000 versus the merchant's 1650.

Keep in mind the risk factor too. Level 11 plus any employees or guards (and I think in the DMG2, high resource business have like 20 employees), versus 4 level 3 guys 2 or 3 who are asleep.

[endoperez]

I notice how you didn't have a rebuttal to what I said.

I love how no one can give me an answer to this.

Did you hear what happened to the last group that tried to rob this lone merchant?

Remember, this is D&D-land, not the real world. Some weird laws apply in there. Just like people know that there are adventurers about, people tell each other stories about merchants, the weird and dangerous things they keep in their carts.

I mean, a group of heroes goes robbing a merchant, and there's fires... Clairvoyant city guards... A thunderstorm of such power in the middle of the night that the constant lightning perfectly illuminates the would-be thieves, while the thunder keeps their spellcasters from casting... The merchant turning out to be Elminster's brother... The merchant's girlfriend turning out to be a demigod of some sort...

Yeah.

[Morithias]

I mean, a group of heroes goes robbing a merchant, and there's fires... Clairvoyant city guards... A thunderstorm of such power in the middle of the night that the constant lightning perfectly illuminates the would-be thieves, while the thunder keeps their spellcasters from casting... The merchant turning out to be Elminster's brother... The merchant's girlfriend turning out to be a demigod of some sort...

Yeah.

That sad part is that that isn't farfetched. The Merchant Prince prestiege class, AND the shipping business both come from the book "Power of Faerun".

[Arbane]

Did you hear what happened to the last group that tried to rob this lone merchant?

And that's a series with GOOD Fantasy Economics!

There's a reason that 'you're all guards for the same caravan' is right up there with 'you all meet in an inn' as a Standard Game Opener.

Anyway, back on topic. Fun Bad Characters, anyone?

One guy in my Pathfinder group's got one: A crazy Elf Magus/Alchemist. (Not terribly optimized.) He's got a sword that talks to him, an unhealthy obsession with blood, a 'pet' troll-head he carries around and has conversations with, and delusions of restarting a local dead empire. He constantly does ridiculously risky things (going off on his own, falling for strange women, snorting mushroom spores...) but he's survived so far, I suspect at least in part because he keeps the GM amused.

[Morithias]

And that's a series with GOOD Fantasy Economics!

Anyway, back on topic. Fun Bad Characters, anyone?

I see we can all agree on one thing, Spice and Wolf is AWESOME.

Anyways I am sorry for derailing the train, when a thought pops into my head I tend not to be able to let go of it. I am a fiery debater as you can tell from my warnings.

Fun bad...fun bad....OH I know.

The Chaotic Evil guy who is never going to betray the party, no matter how much sense it makes.

This is likely going to happen with "Sensou no Hime" or "Senhime" the elvish war princess. Chaotic evil and aiding the heroes against the bad guy, why? Cause she enjoys kicking the stuffing out of people! Would she ever betray them? Nah...she's chaotic evil cause of her extreme blood knight personality, she knows there's a different between "War" and "Murder" (Please, oh please for the love of Waukeen don't turn this into a debate).

[The Curt Jester]

I had fun with a half orc rogue/assassin with maximized strength and minimized dexterity and intelligence. He couldn't sneak around or anything, but he was devastating when he could get a flank attack on an enemy. He worked well in a team with a half orc wizard with minimized intelligence and maximized strength (the staff was a killer!). Bad party, sure, but a lot of fun.

[hex0]

In early 3.0, one of the first games I played, Level 1 Fighter Half Gold Dragon Dwarf in a party of level 4 adventures. Actually a decent combo but I had hardly any HP. I think I took toughness, actually.

We were in a absurd maze fighting minotaurs and oozes and the like. Since charging was out of the option, I mostly stood in the back and intimidated people and used aid-another. Rust monster ate my greatsword, took a greataxe from a dead minotaur. Met the BBEG, some cleric and his flunkies in the center of the maze. Gave a long speech. Torched them with my breathweapon. So epic...

Also played a Halfling Bard 3/Ranger 3, for some reason. I think we all played weird combos. Like Dwarf Sorcerer, etc. The Gnome thief in the party rolled a 20 and stole a pile of gold off a table without being caught, lots of cool stuff going on. I got captured and thrown out of a wagon in the middle of nowhere. The other players were saying I was screwed and then I countered "Screw you guys, I have Endurance!". I ran for miles, burst into the fortess and killed the guys that captured me, who were shocked that I made it back so fast.

[Dusk Eclipse]

So I've been thinking about my Pathfinder Society character, wondering where I went wrong with her build, when I realized that despite her highly questionable class choices, she was hella fun to play. So I'm wondering, anyone have a character that build-wise is just "bad" or at least "questionable" but as a character is stupid fun to play?

My character, Amalee Piks (Warning: Gushing about character ahead)

Spoiler

Show

So I had no idea what to do with this character when I made her. My only thought was "Sweet! Dervish archetype!" and ran from there. She's currently level 5 (Dawnflower Dervish 2 (Bard)/Urban Barbarian 2/Unarmed Fighter 1) and far too squishy to rightfully be in the thick of combat (She's got only 40HP at the moment). However, despite her tiny health pool and inability to dish out damage with the big boys, she is frighteningly fun to play. Combat usually starts with "I Battle Dance and Rage", bumping my AC up by 2 (to 21), my To Hit by 4 (to a total of +12) and my damage up by 4 (to +8). Then comes the Attack Defensively bit which jacks my AC up to 24 with only a -2 to hit (thanks to Crane Style. Crane Wing comes next level for "lol nope" on first one attack per round when fighting defensively), and if I'm flanked, I get an additional +1 to AC and to Hit.

So best case scenario, she's flanked with +13 to hit, 25 AC, and dishing out 1d6+8 damage a turn.

The backstory kinda developed itself as I went. The end result is that when she was younger, her village was attacked by a warband of hobgoblins. Her parents were taken, giving her time to escape. She snuck into the encampment later that night to try and free them, only to witness their execution and devouring by the hobgoblins. Something in her snapped, causing her to set the whole encampment aflame while the warband slept. At present, she does not recall this happening, due to a trauma induced Dissociative identity disorder and amnesia. She's full of anger and rage, usually towards slavers, which is rather unusual for someone that claims to be a Varisian wanderer (nomadic people with heavy Romani influences). Also has a fascination with fire that at times rivals that of fire mages (she considers "kill it with fire" to be a good a strategy as any).

TL;DR: Half-Elf BardBarian that can't buff and is essentially a glorified Dex Fighter that benefits from getting flanked. Also mentally unstable and has a case of Dissociative identity disorder along with hints of pyromania.

I don't see how your bardbarian is a bad build, sure you aren't bending the game in half with your unlimited arcane powah!; but you can work effectively at the role you chose to (which from my understanding is secondary melee damage dealer/tank). To me that is the perfect definition of optimization, choosing how you build based on a theme/mechanic/etc and making sure that everything is working for that.

By the way I love the backstory and her personality, she does sound as an extremely fun character.

[Silus]

I don't see how your bardbarian is a bad build, sure you aren't bending the game in half with your unlimited arcane powah!; but you can work effectively at the role you chose to (which from my understanding is secondary melee damage dealer/tank). To me that is the perfect definition of optimization, choosing how you build based on a theme/mechanic/etc and making sure that everything is working for that.

By the way I love the backstory and her personality, she does sound as an extremely fun character.

Well you need to keep in mind that it's a Pathfinder Society character, so leveling usually ends around 8-12 and money is almost always tight.

Also, seriously had no idea how I was gonna build her. The "tanky Dex Bard" thing came around after she took a 30-something Greataxe crit during a surprise round, dropping her instantly.

Also, need to remember to pick more Alchemist Fires and set money aside for those slick Boots of Speed.

12,000G

As a free action, the wearer can click her heels together, letting her act as though affected by a haste spell for up to 10 rounds each day. The haste effect's duration need not be consecutive rounds.

Hehehhehehe

[Jeff the Green]

Right now I'm playing a gestalt dryad cleric/holt warden/livewood daughter//Crafty hunter Ape totem barbarian/fighter/ranger/swordsage/warblade/witch hunter. (The first thing my DM said was "Jeff, I don't think you have enough classes.")

She's an archer and because she's mostly Charisma SAD without a way to get Charisma to damage, doesn't do a bunch. Still, she has a climb speed and girallon's blessing, which means her main tactic is "climb something, plink away at them."

She's also irrepressibly cheerful (with a wisdom of 6) and twice as old as anyone else in the party. She also worked with Aaren d'Cannith to create the first warforged, was a Cryan war hero, and an ecoterrorist. She retired to a life of luxury and debauchery in Sharn after a few years of adventuring, but came out of retirement to save the world from an ancient doomsday device.

Oh, and a bunch of crazy people decided she was an avatar of Arawai, the goddess of nature and farming. That really annoyed her, since they kept following her to ancient ruins, where she'd have to save them. So she appointed her best friend, a warforged artificer poet she helped create, to be her high priest (over his objections) and command them to stay at home and garden or something.

Edit: Oh, and she worships herself; Charm and Plant domains, natch.

[Slylizard]

I once played a dex-based half-orc barbarian/rogue... he was slightly insane and was fully convinced that he was actually a halfling thief (hence the rogue levels).

Mechanically it was a complete bust, RP-wise it was great fun!

[nedz]

The Merchant. For all the travelling D&D parties do, no one ever seems to want to run the trade routes in the process. It's a great role-playing opportunity and adds to the world at large.

The bad part is that it slows the party down greatly whenever you stop to barter with the guild and try to sell your stock, and the money you'll make from the trading route is NEVER comparable to the money you make as an adventurer.

(which makes no sense, if the orcs have over 2 thousand gold pieces, why are they raiding farmland for food, I'm pretty sure even an orc isn't so stupid, none of them would think "you know why don't we just BUY food" that way murder hobos aren't slaughtering us, our wives, and our children! Also if the trade routes make virtually no money, why are the caravans being attacked by bandits, and not every adventuring party that forgets to put up an alarm spell having their throats slit in the night and all their gear robbed)

Seriously find me an answer for that that doesn't boil down to "Players would complain and moan if a DM did that"

Meta reasons
The game is heroic-fantasy and not Pounds and Pennies.
Most players find fighting monsters to be fun; accountancy, not so much.

IC reasons
You rob a merchants caravan for his capital, not his income.
The Orc tribes gold is the tribes wyrd. It is meant to be in like shiny things and fur, not cash. It is also their capital, not spending money.
Caravans are easy to spot and predictable to track.
Adventurers are unpredictable and vary more in power.
Caravans also carry more food. This includes the horses.

Stay on Target
Some of the best characters I've had have had a 6 somewhere on their sheet.

Like the cleric with 18 Wis and 6 Int - that was hard to get my head around.
How do I make wise decisions based on very flawed reasoning ?
(This was a long time ago, these days I'd just stick rigidly to whatever the temple's dogma was; which would be not so much fun)

Like the Dwarf with 6 4 Cha - so much fun with Diplomacy
We had a mis-understanding with some wood elf types, three of whom died. At the peace talks I was asked to make a Diplomacy roll.
I played the result out by singing "Three-Nil" repeatedly, like a football chant. So much more fun than a diplomancer.

[endoperez]

In some Battletech-inspired homebrew in an anime setting, I played a viking.

By anime setting, I mean that katanas were good, the leader was a shogun, there was a secret ninja assassin clan, and the best warriors were the ones who had learned to channel their KI so they would start glowing and hit a guy and the guy flies 50 meters backwards and hits a wall and explodes.

There was also a viking-land and a crapsack Europe-land.
All the vikings who don't die in battle become cursed ghouls for infinity. The vikings who die gloriously get to Valhalla. So the vikings just raid everyone and fight everyone and sometimes each other.
The Europe-land is constantly under the plague, the inquisition, and was probably inspired by Monthy Python.

Any way, I came into this game not realizing it's an anime game. So I made a viking warrior who uses a sword, or an axe, with a shield, or perhaps dual-wielding.

Then I started playing and realized that specializing in one skill is THE most important thing in the game.
Then I found out that learning that KI channeling stuff is maybe even better for a melee guy.
Then I was already so much behind the other guys built by the actual homebrewers that if I got hit once in a friendly duel, using all the best equipment I got by abusing the broken crafting skills, I was so close to death that we had to check the math half a dozen times before we found a way to shave a few HPs off.

But the system they used was so easy to break that even when I was bad compared to them, it got silly in other ways...

I maxed my agility and shield, which caused some hilarious "can't hit this" effects. I could run a few hundred meters in five seconds. In their system, charge bonus damage scaled with the distance you had moved... I could shield bash through a cave wall and stuff.

Any way, the thing why he's fun? The crazy luck and situations and story.

He left the viking-land because he lost his front teeth in a bar brawl, and wanted to find a master who could teach him the secret art of... making false teeth.

He ended up facing an ancient evil dragon-god at level 1. And level 4. And level 6 (or equivalents), being the only one to come away alive in all cases.

He ended up with a set of false teeth made from dragon's teeth, and the stories of things he went through sound ridiculous even though he never did the hard stuff himself.

Charging and one-hitting (actually kill-stealing) a dragon...
Facing a few dragonic gods and, by luck, surviving...
Falling off of a sky-bridge and surviving with -9 hp (equivalent) thanks to last session's level-up and feat choices...

[DigoDragon]

Years back I played a fighter in a D&D 2e group of all wizards (and one cleric/mage dual class). My character grew up in an oppresive nation ruled by evil sorcerers and if you didn't know magic, you were regulated to slave status. My character escaped and took up the profession of bodyguard for merchants until the party hired him on.

Sure they had all the fancy spells and cute familiars, kill-stealing everything in combat, but I had the funniest one-liners, the highest CHA in the group which made the NPCs like me best, and whenever the DM pulled out that book by "Grimtooth", the spellcasters knew to get behind me because I was the coconut shell to their meaty goodness.
It was like being the Han Solo in a group of Luke skywalkers.


Bonus fun: Being the only fighter meant I always got the good weapons/armor in the treasure finds.

[RayGallade]

Let's see, my favorite "bad" character? Well, he happened to be a Warforged Ranger. A 4E Warforged ranged combat Ranger. What made him "bad"?
Well, perhaps it had something to do with my weapon choice. You see, most players will pick bows or crossbows, or even slings for their weapons. Me? I chose daggers, throwing axes, and throwing hammers. Lots of them. Using Quick Draw was necessary for him to even survive. He also had a low Intelligence that I role-played, so that was entertaining too. So he was the sort of guy who just loved to do the least intelligent things, like press random buttons. I think my favorite thing I ever did with him was when we were sneaking into an evil noble's home, he went up to a door and peeked in. The guards asked him, "Who goes there?" Being who he was, he asked the party what to do. They told him to just ready his weapons and prepare to fight. So, he called through the door, "Just ready your weapons and prepare to fight." I miss playing this guy.

[endoperez]

So, he called through the door, "Just ready your weapons and prepare to fight." I miss playing this guy.

Fantastic!

[Alabenson]

One of my all-time favorite mechanically inferior characters was an insane Hexblade/Pyrokineticist.

I played him as a bizare cross between Deadpool and the Joker, and burned down every wooden structure I had a battle in .

[Deepbluediver]

For the longest campaign I was ever in, I played a plain basic, PHB Monk. Luckily optimization was fairly low all around and we only had one other tanky-melee'r so I contributed fairly well in combat.

The fun part though, was his alignment and personality. I was lawful good, and rather than be the paladin-stick-up-the-arse version I played the "so sickeningly sweet it makes your teeth hurt" version. I chose not to deal lethal damage to pretty much everything, I refused to believe anyone would lie to me (purposefully forgoing Sense Motive checks), comitted the entire group to helping out any NPC who appeared even mildly inconvienenced, and then turned down or donated large chunks of our treasure to local orphanages and soup kitchens.

The rest of the part was True Nuetral, Chaotic Good, Chaotic Nuetral, and Chaotic-greedy, so my actions frequently had them (and their characters) gritting their teeth in frustration (the DM has expressly forbid PvP). But they couldn't do anything about it without taking a hard-dive off the deep end of the alignment pool and ticking off every DMNPC within range.

The Merchant. *Snip of long screed railing against the D&D gold-standard*

D&D's economics found to be unrealistic, film at 11.

ROFLMAO

The WBL table and amount of treasure monsters supposedly carry around with them are, IMO, completely frelling borked. There is no good way to explain it. The closest I can get is: The party is the ONLY group of PC's or even magic users that exists in the entire world, and every monster is part dragon so they have a compulsive need to hoard gold coins.

What my DM's usually did was that most encounters provided a few dozen to a few-hundred gold and silver coins (depending on the level) to keep us able to afford potions and basic supplies, and treasure was usually handed out in the form of loot that was appropriate (i.e. not random) once per story arc. If we wanted something specific, we had to find an NPC capable of making it, who usually wanted us to do them a favor in exchange.
Also, because adventurers are the only people who can make good use of most of the loot, and the NPC's aren't brain-dead morons, then will never buy everything we want to sell them for more than a few thousand gold.
For example, no one in the elvish town actually needs twenty suits of slightly-used orc armor, so we ended up trading them to the blacksmith as scrap for some free repairs and a bundle of arrows.

[hex0]

Also, I played a custom race and class once as well. Based on Quina from FFIX. I was a Qu Tribe Blue Mage (Con based spontaneous caster that could steal enemies spells and learn them). I had a 6 Charisma and Wisdom, and around 10 Intelligence. I wasn't a straight rip-off of Quina and played it very unique.

Basically I had no knowledge of anything other than magic and cooking (Which I had a +4 racial bonus and skill focus in, btw). I also had Spell Thematics, and all of my spells were food based. Fireballs were flaming pumpkins (or pots of chili), magic missle was pastries, etc. All my spells names were food based as well or based on my broken speech. Summon monster was "comey here!", for example.

With low Cha. and Wis. I was completely akward and oblivious to what was going on all day. Being from the swap I found anything mathematical, mechanical, or foreign to being bizarre and confusing.

The best moment is when someone tied a rope around me and pulled me into a moat and I just didn't understand what was going on or what would happen. It was hilarious for all as I weighed about 400 pounds and ended up splashing acid up when I fell that splashed the guy. (I had resistance)

I was also prone to find food based solutions to combat as well. When attacked by invisible foes I threw a bag of flour in the general vicinity.

It was challenging to play a powerful mage with such weak mental scores (which also meant my skills, social interaction, and will saves were none), but it was probably my favorite character.

[Hiro Protagonest]

I am a fiery debater as you can tell from my warnings.

...Only you and the mods can see your warnings.

And I don't like focusing on the merchants in D&D. Why? Because that would involve D&D economics, and then you realize how they fall apart when you poke them.

[Morithias]

...Only you and the mods can see your warnings.

And I don't like focusing on the merchants in D&D. Why? Because that would involve D&D economics, and then you realize how they fall apart when you poke them.

Oh I was under the impression anyone could see those. My bad.