Have you ever made a character you expected to be weak, who turned out to be badass?

[Lakaz]

Looking for stories here, inspired by the fact that i just made one. My short, 50 year old Geology professor with nothing but academic skills and the lowest possible size stat in a Call Of Cthulhu campaign... wound up shanking a cultist to death ten seconds into the campaign. So far he's managed to go through three gunfights and a half-dozen eldritch abominations, has only taken 4 san damage and 0 health damage despite DISSECTING a minor eldritch horror and killing a bunch of people, and has either convinced every NPC in the game to join his geology class, or killed them.
...I didn't even take any combat skills for this guy O.o
Can tell the full story if there's enough interest and this thread takes off.

[RickAllison]

In Edge of the Empire, I designed a Slicer droid that was previously a scrapped medical unit. Extremely high Intelligence and good skills, but awful in everything else. He had plenty of knowledge skills so he could brandish his massive INT, became a 1-in-a-trillion hacker, and an alright mechanic, general skill monkey stuff. The hacking did prove to be useful on several occasions however.

The very first session, we were put up against a broken-down assassin droid (think IG-88). Most of the party wanted to just hack it to bits, but my PC managed to actually shut it down so we then got him for our own uses (we later lost it to a thermal detonator, but that saved one of us from dying horrifically!). That's not so spectacular, but it kind of set a precedent for how I used my abilities to solve encounters. Another situation involved me hacking a defense turret shooting us so it instead shot our enemies, but one event took me from having almost no kills to being the mass-murderer of the group. We had managed to shut down a decent-sized ship with our ion cannons (frigate or larger, I don't recall), but we didn't want to try boarding it against a crew measured in hundreds, so they instead sent me. I found an access port on the hull and tried hacking in, with multiple successes and a triumph. Basically had the entire ship at my command, so I shut down all the droids within the ship, locked all the bulkheads down and funneled all the oxygen into an empty area while broadcasting "Staying Alive" over the intercom. That massacre alone put me at the highest kill-count for the campaign, by my reckoning. We stole the ship, reprogrammed the droids to my will, and our Jedi mentor abandoned us for the sheer depths of our callousness.

Of course, my character became a more conventional badass thanks to the GM ruling that droids could switch bodies, gaining new dexterity and brawn stats with it. First I picked up a Magnaguard chassis, which combined well with a modified Heavy Repeating Blaster (read: walking turret; had an astromech carry the power source) and made my participation in ordinary combat boil down to "Tear apart the minion groups!" thanks to Blast. Toward the end, we managed to get the funds to create a droid factory, so my droid programmed B2s and droidekas to his will before creating a new body of his own. Somehow, the final product ended up as a Liger Zoid, Silhouette 2, with 45 Soak and 65 Wound Threshold (with phrik-alloy plating so it was lightsaber resistant), carrying around weaponry more fit for ship combat. For a sense of scale, personnel had no way to actually scratch my character without special circumstances because my armor was almost as tough as an AT-AT (Hoth giant walkers) and my health was far above what any reasonable player should have.

So yeah, my character began as a humble hacker/knowledge junkie and graduated as essentially a nigh-impenetrable tank with a small, but growing droid army. The epilogue from our GM had my character commanding an entirely droid armada with me personally controlling a Death Star in the shape of a big cat. He let us get a little out of hand...

[sktarq]

In Rifts I had a character made for me with the idea he was to be weaker than the others (as I as a player could "out-play" the other the other players according to the ST). He made a Dark Druid who worshiped the Tree of Death in the German Black forest instead of the trees of life. *Shrug* okay-I'm not sure that's even in the rules but okay-I have a stick that causes MDC to MDC targets and a bit +h magic and a license to be as evil as I could be.

So I was- a passed out cyborg in a town where I was told there is no law was, to me, a parts bin to sell off at the used cyberntics place mentioned on the way in. . .


I was with a vampire, a full cyborg battlebot, and an MDC alien. Yet I caused by far the most damage and death

[BootStrapTommy]

In a heavily min-maxed 3.5 run of Sunless Citadel, I played a warlock. While technically not "weak" given the level of optimization (the DM later added the vampire template to the Druid to prevent that battle from being a sweep), my warlock was not the party Face by design, he was an Intimidate build.

Didn't stop him from outperforming the actual party Face (min-maxed for the job) on every Diplomacy check. Which was often, since I choose the dipolmatic option in almost every encounter.

We got to the Druid before we saw any real combat.

Another instance was my GURPS mute precog. A party Face, who not only could not actually talk, but also could see the future. I worked with what I had, and the character's shenanigans are now infamous.

[Inevitability]

For a 5e campaign, I created a human rogue. He was a socially awkward (6 charisma) medic with an irrational fear of magic, and I expected him to be one of the weaker party members.

In-game, he was almost never hit, killed several foes with well-placed sneak attacks, and saved the life of other party members on multiple occasions.


Another example (3.5 this time). Someone challenged me to build an elvish samurai, using the samurai class from Complete Warrior. To anyone not familiar with 3.5, the samurai is viewed as one of the game's weakest classes, and while occasionally a good race, elves are really not a good option when it comes to strength-based melee.

After some optimizing, I had an Iaijutsu Focus-using undead warrior, who had sold his soul for additional benefits and (through cursed item shenanigans) couldn't be disarmed or otherwise separated from his weapon.

[goto124]

Wait... why are cursed weapons a bad thing in that case? Is it more to do with how you don't know what the curse on the weapon will do?

[BWR]

One V:tM character I made based on Bernard from "Yes, minister". For those of you not familiar with that amazing show, correct this situation. Bernard is basically the wussy, cowardly junior bureaucrat.
With no more than a single dot in any combat skill and two in Potence (learned through play) he soloed a warrior caste Mokole that attacked his lair in the middle of the day.

Basically, imagine a guy who has fired a gun once or twice and been beat up a few times but runs away in fear if possible. Then imagine a creature that looks more like a mini-Godzilla than anything else and is capable of tearing multiple far more powerful vampires apart without blinking. For those of you famliar with Worm, sort of like Lung only probably more powerful, more experienced and smarter.
At a time when he was virtually unable to think straight or move about (sunlight + vampires).

The dice were with me that day.

[Inevitability]

Wait... why are cursed weapons a bad thing in that case? Is it more to do with how you don't know what the curse on the weapon will do?

It was a cursed -2 sword. Its intended effect is that you take a continuous -2 penalty on attacks and damage rolls. To prevent people from just dropping it or selling it to a poor chump once they'd figured out the sword was hindering them, they added in a clause that you automatically draw it when trying to draw something else.

This built, however, depended on Iaijutsu Focus, an obscure skill from an even more obscure book. It let you gain massive bonus damage whenever you drew a weapon and then attacked with it.

By dropping the sword, then trying to draw something else, this character would draw the sword again, thereby continuously gaining the damage bonuses.

Another reason to use it was that, despite the penalties, the weapon was still magical. Certain creatures can only be harmed by magic weapons.

[shadow_archmagi]

In my ACKS campaign, one of the players recruited a level 0 peasant named Jorge. (Pronounced Hore-Hey.) During one particularly bad-looking encounter, another player announced that everyone was going to die except Jorge, and it'd be like those video games that start with you being hired by much more powerful adventurers who then all die and leave you to save the world.

"We are not the protagonists. We're Jorge's origin story." became the party's arc words for a long time. Since then, Jorge has ground his way up to level 4, and is their most trusted and favored hench who has never let them down.

[Douche]

Looking for stories here, inspired by the fact that i just made one. My short, 50 year old Geology professor with nothing but academic skills and the lowest possible size stat in a Call Of Cthulhu campaign... wound up shanking a cultist to death ten seconds into the campaign. So far he's managed to go through three gunfights and a half-dozen eldritch abominations, has only taken 4 san damage and 0 health damage despite DISSECTING a minor eldritch horror and killing a bunch of people, and has either convinced every NPC in the game to join his geology class, or killed them.
...I didn't even take any combat skills for this guy O.o
Can tell the full story if there's enough interest and this thread takes off.

I would like to hear the full story of this psychotic professor killing anyone who won't attend his geology lectures

[JBPuffin]

I would like to hear the full story of this psychotic professor killing anyone who won't attend his geology lectures

+1. I'm afraid I don't have anything to offer from my own characters - they all essentially play comic relief, even the ones who are mechanically quite sound. Bad luck is my friend .

[Pex]

2E D&D, a cleric of Justice/Revenge from the Priest's Handbook. Clerics of Justice/Revenge did not get the Healing sphere. That meant I was playing a cleric who couldn't cast Cure Light Wounds let alone any other healing spell. It was a disaster. I know clerics aren't and shouldn't be healbots, but healing is still part of their job description (in 2E). Even the DM recognized it was a problem and through roleplay granted my request to get the Healing sphere.

That helped, but it was practically too late for me. I started to hate the character. When the opportunity came to draw from a Deck of Many Things, I drew two cards without hesitation not caring what happened. If he becomes "gone" it was an excuse to stop playing the character. As it happened, I got the Loyal Follower which proved to add roleplay fun and 10,000 Xp that immediately gained me a level.

I continued on with the character. In 2E it was permissible to research your own spells. I began to do so with this character. I made up a whole bunch of new spells. I made up cleric spells that in 3E would be Mass Cure Wounds and Divine Power. I unknowingly duplicated the Foresight spell and it was even more powerful, but it got approved. It was fun to cast my own spells. It became fun again to play the character. He reached 15th level before retirement, the first time I ever got to play a character of that high level. I was ecstatic the first time I got to say "I cast Heal!" It was fantastic that I was able to contemplate Heal, Find The Path, Destruction as tactical spell choices, such powerful magic that only NPCs were able to do but now my character gets to do it.

[Inevitability]

For a 5e campaign, I created a human rogue. He was a socially awkward (6 charisma) medic with an irrational fear of magic, and I expected him to be one of the weaker party members.

In-game, he was almost never hit, killed several foes with well-placed sneak attacks, and saved the life of other party members on multiple occasions.

And of course he dies the day I post this. Goodbye Jandar, you'll be missed...

[EnglishKitsune]

Spoiler: Mild Tomb of Horrors (4E) Spoilers

Show

I once made a throwaway Eladrin Wizard to die horribly in the 4E Tomb of Horrors Module. Not only did he not die, he never went down to 0 hp once. He even distracted and held off the Vestige from the City of Moil. By the time we ended the campaign not only had he helped defeat Acerak, being the only original party member left. He had united the wild lands and beast races under his banner, bartered the help of gods, both good and evil, and was planning his own ascension to godhood at the time.

Here's the kicker: He was Chaotic Evil by Nature. And the only other original party member was a Lawful Good Paladin of Bahamut.

[ngilop]

Yeah, I made a character in my friends made up super hero system ( that was completely and utter CRAP for a ruleset it was better to never take any actions and to instead always play passively the way the rules worked which somehow came out to be a quadrubple percentile system)

anyways my guy did not have anything above 28%, that was with the base points and my stat combined. I took skills like 'tea making' and "shaving' and of course 'running' because Yeah you did not automatically know how to run in this game and the over whelming chances are you failed anways. I also took nuclear physics, programming, mass theory and other sciency stuff that sometimes I made up


So the rest of my -team- were on the level of Thor and such, pretty unstoppable and Me the Night Securatiy guy at Parker Industries.

blah blah cut to the chase some how by myself I manage to take out rhino, scorpion/shocker (cannot remember which one) 4 hobgoblin thugs and a hobgoblin knight and Electro all by myself and with me only ever firing one shot of my revolver.


But again, this was mostly because when my friend handed me the rule-sheet I took one look and realized "these are the most horrible rules ive ever seen' and quickly realized that all I would ever EVER want to do is nothing. Because that was honestly the safest wway for me to not fail an action, or fail it horribly.

even at the highest 'power tier' you could start with, you had about 8 times the chance to fail than succeed and an equal chance to fail horribly as opposed to succed


either way it was fun for my 'worthless guy' to take out one of the most powerful being in the marvel universe on earth.

[Segev]

And of course he dies the day I post this. Goodbye Jandar, you'll be missed...

No chance of a raise dead or anything?




This wasn't a character of mine, but in a Scion game, another player made a daughter of Freya who was a waitress. She had, as her only weapon, a pocket knife her (mortal) father had given her for self-defense. From her mother, she had a troupe of einherjar who would come within a round of her calling for them to serve her. She had supernatural dexterity because her player saw her as "graceful." She also had dancing as a performance skill, though that won't come up in this anecdote.

The very first combat we get into is with a corrupted scion who had turned against the gods in the name of serving the villainous Titans. I forget the god she was the get of. I think it was from the Greek pantheon, though. Our party was 80% Norse, not that that really matters here.

Anyway, my PC, a Scion of Loki, tries to smarm his way in and talk her out of whatever evil ritual she was attempting; sadly, he failed and she cut his throat wide open. The Scion of Freya called on her einherjar, and rushed in to try to help save me. She won initiative, and struck a super-high success on the attack roll and even moreso on the damage roll. With that knife. Just as the einherjar were arriving. So the mini-boss fight goes down on the second round, before anybody else gets to attack it.

My character (who had stamina knacks and other survival tricks) got up a few moments later, a bit embarrassed by the bloodstain on his shirt.

Next major fight, we've descended into what turns out to be a lair of giant spiders. The scion of Freya calls for her einherjar, as we think we're going to need the help. Round one, before they get here, she rolls ludicrously well with that little knife and guts one of the spiders, following it down into the pit as it falls from its severed webbing. The rest of us do various amounts of combat of our own, trying to not fall. Round two, her einherjar arrive, swinging down the webbing like swashbucklers on chandelier-ropes, just in time to see the spider-queen rising from the pit directly into the path of the scion of Freya...who AGAIN scores ludicrously well and manages to do enough damage between stabbing and falling on the thing to make it fall to its death; she tumbles unharmed to her feet on top of it.

After that, the einherjar realized something. This "protection detail" they'd been assigned was not, as they thought, a bodyguarding job for some pretty half-god who couldn't protect herself. No, no. They'd been given a reward: a ticket to the greatest show on Earth, with front-row seats. She didn't need bodyguards, she needed an audience. From then on, they usually showed up, when summoned, with a big overstuffed couch and some popcorn. Once, this was used to stop traffic so we could fight without having to dodge cars.

By the end of the campaign, that little knife had gained so much Legend from the exploits she pulled off with it that it was an artifact in its own right. The up-side and down-side of it was that any time it was drawn, it would deal SOMETHING a fatal blow before it was sheathed again.

[Raimun]

Well... I was playing this obscure but highly lethal, gritty, down to earth and pretty realistic medievel RPG. In that game, if you specialize in open combat, you really need at least the following to be battle armed:

1) A shield. Blocking with it is way more effective than with weapons. Preferably braced with/made of iron, so it won't break that fast.
2) A sword. They strike fast, do very good damage and are more resistant to breaking than weapons with a wooden shaft.
3) Armor. Mainly to mitigate wounds and to avoid the worst critical hits.

or:

1) Bow or Crossbow

You could also do well if your character specialize in something else than open combat. Like academic, stealth/trickery, outdoormanship or interaction skills.

So... I was given a character who specializes in open combat, with a wide variety of rudimentary (ie. dangerously useless) melee skills but only one skill of any real use: insanely high knife-skill. Sure, it would be helpful in city environments but we all knew that open combat was the main obstacle. Other skills (including sneaking and dodge) were pretty much non-existant or professional skills included because of the character's background. I didn't have an armor or a shield.

So, at end I challenged the experienced, battle armed leader of the opposing warband to a duel, expecting to die in a blaze of vain glory... but apparently insanely high knife skills were enough to keep me alive (with minor scratches) and mortally wound the leader, who was carried away by his warband, as they withdrew. My character was lauded a hero by the villagers and that was a pretty apt description.

[MrZJunior]

This story isn't mechanical or combat based, but I still think this is my most badass character.

I like to play slightly useless characters, so in a wild west LARP where we were going to be stuck in an isolated town with no contact with the outside world I decided to play the most lawful anal government agent ever. I gave him lots of government contacts and knowledge of bureaucracy, totally useless skills in this environment. He wasn't completely useless because he was really good at shooting stuff with a shotgun.

Now, after joining up with the faction headed by the town Sheriff I was given my first task: to arrest a member of a different faction. I marched into their headquarters, announced my presence and my mission, grabbed the guy, and marched out. Nothing happened, I turned around, went back inside, and confirmed with one of the GMs that I had not in fact been shot in the back. Apparently my target was not well liked.

When we got back to the sheriff's headquarters in the town church I was instructed to place my target in a cage onstage along with the other prisoner. The sheriff starts ranting about how we're going to hang these two criminals here. I stand up and shout "you can't do that, it is unconstitutional, they are entitled to a fair trial!"

"What do you mean I can't do that? I'm the law in this town!"

"You've not above the Constitution!"

It went on like this for a while before the Sheriff (being played by a GM) said to me out of character "if you keep going like this your character will die."

"Great, lets do this," I replied.

The GM stood up, the sheriff once again, and said "you either get up here and hang these two men yourself, or I will kill you were you stand."

"You can't do that, I'm a federal officer!"

"That means nothing here," and he pulls out his gun and shoots me right in the head. Giant white wings burst from his back, revealing that he was an angel and that magic was definitely operating in the game.

[RickAllison]

"That means nothing here," and he pulls out his gun and shoots me right in the head. Giant white wings burst from his back, revealing that he was an angel and that magic was definitely operating in the game.

And now I have the image of John Wayne as Clarence in It's a Wonderful Life

[Argo]

I was playing 3.5 in a rather large party.

They had every major party role covered at least once.

A Fighter, a Barbarian, a Paladin, two Clerics, a Rogue, a Wizard, and a Sorcerer.

So, I stepped in as a Gnome Bard. Glimrick "Doubletongue" Brangle. Low Strength, low Dexterity, low Constitution, low Wisdom. High Intelligence and Charisma.

For a few sessions, I didn't do much. When we got into combat, I'd inspire my allies by finding a safe-ish place and playing my guitar and singing about killing whatever we were fighting (I'd bring my actual guitar to the sessions and play along to the combats), until invariably, an enemy would attack me and usually knock me out of the fight with one blow.

One of the main obstacles we were facing as a party was that there was a rival group of adventurers who would swoop in after we had killed a monster, or cleared out a group of bandits, and claim that they had done it and collect our payment. They even went so far as to meet us at the entrance of the cave system where we drove off the goblin hordes and recovered the stolen MacGuffin for Important Guy X. They knew that when we were exiting the caves, we'd be out of resources, especially our spellcasters. They cast Hold Person on the Barbarian and then forced us to give them the MacGuffin, or we'd be all be eating fireballs and lightning from their Wizards.

So, Glimrick took matters into his own hands. He went back to the city and stayed up all night in the Inn with a stack of parchment and his Forgery kit, producing mastercrafted Forged WANTED posters listing all the members of the rival adventuring party. He drew their portraits in detail. He listed off their abilities (to the best of his knowledge), he made sure it was clear that they were ARMED AND EXTREMELY DANGEROUS and included that they were wanted DEAD by the King himself, and of course, there would be quite the reward. Each poster was finished with a perfectly replicated royal seal.

Then, Glimrick simply went into every seedy tavern, flophouse, whorehouse, and back-alley gambling house posting the Wanted posters, and making sure to post one on the door of the Town Guard Office.

Over the next few days, the rival party started turning up dead. Stabbed in the back in the marketplace. Poisoned by a barkeep. Dragged from their beds in the night and lynched by a few Guardsmen.

By the time word got back from the Capitol that the King had ordered no such executions and these posters were fake, the rival party had been eliminated.

The DM later told me that he'd never expected us to try something like that, and he was planning to build us to a point where we could finally fight them in open combat. By forging these Wanted Dead posters, I'd changed the entire course of the campaign and killed seven powerful NPC villains with a few skill checks.

It's no wonder that Glimrick is still one of my favorite characters I've ever played.

[Segev]

The DM later told me that he'd never expected us to try something like that, and he was planning to build us to a point where we could finally fight them in open combat. By forging these Wanted Dead posters, I'd changed the entire course of the campaign and killed seven powerful NPC villains with a few skill checks.

It's no wonder that Glimrick is still one of my favorite characters I've ever played.

That is very awesome. Did things get traced back to the party for the fake posters? What was the fallout from it being discovered it was fake?

[MrZJunior]

I was playing 3.5 in a rather large party.

They had every major party role covered at least once.

A Fighter, a Barbarian, a Paladin, two Clerics, a Rogue, a Wizard, and a Sorcerer.

So, I stepped in as a Gnome Bard. Glimrick "Doubletongue" Brangle. Low Strength, low Dexterity, low Constitution, low Wisdom. High Intelligence and Charisma.

For a few sessions, I didn't do much. When we got into combat, I'd inspire my allies by finding a safe-ish place and playing my guitar and singing about killing whatever we were fighting (I'd bring my actual guitar to the sessions and play along to the combats), until invariably, an enemy would attack me and usually knock me out of the fight with one blow.

One of the main obstacles we were facing as a party was that there was a rival group of adventurers who would swoop in after we had killed a monster, or cleared out a group of bandits, and claim that they had done it and collect our payment. They even went so far as to meet us at the entrance of the cave system where we drove off the goblin hordes and recovered the stolen MacGuffin for Important Guy X. They knew that when we were exiting the caves, we'd be out of resources, especially our spellcasters. They cast Hold Person on the Barbarian and then forced us to give them the MacGuffin, or we'd be all be eating fireballs and lightning from their Wizards.

So, Glimrick took matters into his own hands. He went back to the city and stayed up all night in the Inn with a stack of parchment and his Forgery kit, producing mastercrafted Forged WANTED posters listing all the members of the rival adventuring party. He drew their portraits in detail. He listed off their abilities (to the best of his knowledge), he made sure it was clear that they were ARMED AND EXTREMELY DANGEROUS and included that they were wanted DEAD by the King himself, and of course, there would be quite the reward. Each poster was finished with a perfectly replicated royal seal.

Then, Glimrick simply went into every seedy tavern, flophouse, whorehouse, and back-alley gambling house posting the Wanted posters, and making sure to post one on the door of the Town Guard Office.

Over the next few days, the rival party started turning up dead. Stabbed in the back in the marketplace. Poisoned by a barkeep. Dragged from their beds in the night and lynched by a few Guardsmen.

By the time word got back from the Capitol that the King had ordered no such executions and these posters were fake, the rival party had been eliminated.

The DM later told me that he'd never expected us to try something like that, and he was planning to build us to a point where we could finally fight them in open combat. By forging these Wanted Dead posters, I'd changed the entire course of the campaign and killed seven powerful NPC villains with a few skill checks.

It's no wonder that Glimrick is still one of my favorite characters I've ever played.

This is one of the greatest stories of RPG baddassery that I have ever heard.

[illyahr]

Ok, I have just the story. I give you Random.

Keep in mind, he was set up with enchantment/illusion to screw with people and self-buff to survive fights. In no way did I expect him to turn out as he did.

[Inevitability]

No chance of a raise dead or anything?

Sadly, no. Basically, the party had split up (I know...), with Jandar, a bard, and a wizard together and the paladin tracking us. In other words, we lacked a tank, we lacked someone with a melee nova, and we lacked a reliable healer. Then we encountered a group of orcs.

In the battle, Jandar and the wizard both get killed, and the bard ends up being captured by the last two remaining orcs. When he regains consciousness, he ends up killing another orc with verbal-only spells, then wakes up to find himself gagged and bound.

While all that is going on, the paladin catches up with what used to be the party. He kills the orc, frees the prisoner, but (as they hadn't met yet IC) starts arguing with the bard. The bard attacks the paladin and gets killed one round later.

We then decide that there's no way the paladin can carry three corpses back to somewhere with a cleric soon enough, so we start a new campaign.

[illyahr]

Another one from me.

I was playing a W:tF game as an extremely laid-back rogue type. He had a lucky knife that he was proficient with but otherwise didn't have much in the way of fighting other than a few dots in melee and a specialization in fighting dirty.

What he did have, however, was functional invisibility.

Let me explain: with several dots in stealth skills, an amulet that makes it difficult to focus on him, a special ability that makes him hard to see when he stops moving, a "spell" that covers his scent, and a special ability that suppresses his werewolf essence (I forget what it's called), he could disappear from view by holding completely still.

So our pack gets into a fight with another pack and we agree on a series of one-on-one fights. When it comes to my turn, I offer to flip my opponent for it (still laid-back and it's really early in the morning so I'm tired). When they refuse, they turn into what basically amounts to a proto-werewolf, one that's really in tune with the spirit world.

I stop moving and fade from its view. My "spell" hides my scent so it can't sniff me out and my wild essence is suppressed so it can't feel me. As it comes close, I attempt to stab it in the eye. With my lucky knife, it not being able to defend itself (I got 7 dice, but rolled 4 tens and 2 nines so I ended up rolling almost double that, almost all of them successes). The storyteller decided that I had punched through its skull and had both eyes and part of its brain on the end of my knife when it came out the other side.

I earned the Deed Name "Brain Tickler" after that.

[Segev]

The storyteller decided that I had punched through its skull and had both eyes and part of its brain on the end of my knife when it came out the other side.

I earned the Deed Name "Brain Tickler" after that.

Knowing how tough Garou can be, mechanically and in-story...

Was this enough to kill him, or did he recover?

[Halflinks]

I had a 4 Intelligence Warlock in 5e before. (4d6 - worst really did a number on him.)

Despite his 4 intelligence, he was wise. His pact was that he is required to wipe out any trace of "heretical" worship. That involved any idolatry or worship of any gods that were not Cthulhu. What does he do when he finds a room full of sleeping dragon cultists and a large statue of Tiamat? Hunger of Hadar, followed by shutting the doors.

"God was hungry so I fed him :^)"

My DM wanted originally to roll for the damage, but realizing that they were blind, in rough terrain, and there was only one door out of the room, he dropped his dice and just said "They're dead. They have no way of getting out, none of them can do anything. You murdered an entire room of people in a horrible, terrifying way."

Got XP, pat on the back from the barbarian, all was right in the world.

[gtwucla]

Not my own character, but from a class I was creating that was still in a design phase. The character was a young woman with powers centered on nature manipulation and crafting animated objects. We did a test encounter where her and another work-in-progress were sneaking up to an encampment of brigands. It was meant to be an intense encounter where the two adventurers were up against difficult odds, but motivated to break out an abused prisoner. But it turned into an easy 1 minute campaign. The player asked me if my definition of animated objects extended to the dead husks of moths, I thought about it for a minute and replied yes, so he showed up with these animated dead moths that he dipped in a special poison and when they realized what the encampment was all about his dozen or so moths flew into the encampment inconspicuous as can be and landed on each of the brigands. Within minutes all the brigands were incapacitated and he walked up to each of them casual as can be and slit each of their throats. It was a brutal and so so short encounter, which ended with a 'holy ****' and a 'I need to go back and look at the poisons for the witch.'

[LadyFoxfire]

Sylvie the pixie. Nine inches tall, 19 hp, currently a 9th level air elementalist. Not much in the way of direct damage spells, but a lot of utility. I expected her to be a support character, not the hero of the party.

My first act of heroism was breaking the entire party out of prison. I polymorphed into a mouse and squeezed under the door, then made an illusion of a group of guards coming to tell the current guards that the lord who arrested us wanted to talk to them. They left, and I polymorphed into a human and unlocked the door (the key being too heavy for a pixie to carry), and the illusionary guards marched us out of the prison, on the pretext that the lord wanted to speak to us.

Later, we're on a mission to retrieve a macguffin from a tower full of beast men. I had just gotten a staff with cloud kill the previous session, and I wanted to try it out. I knew from previous experience that a cloud kill sinks downward after it's been cast, and I figured that if we were expected to fight this many beastmen they couldn't be very high level. So I flew to the top of the tower and cast cloud kill on the roof. It worked its way through the entire tower, killing every single beast man (they didn't even get a saving throw, being less than 6 hd), but leaving the macguffin unharmed.

And then there were the dwarves that tried to invade the forest we called home. We came across a group of twelve rolling a giant cannon through the woods. I had the rest of the party hide in the woods, and I hovered above the group of dwarves and dropped every aoe I had on them; Stinking cloud, cloud of sleep, cloud of steam. They had no idea what was happening, and no way to stop it. Three of the dwarves ran away, and the rest were dispatched by my comrades. Then we set the cannon on fire, and stole all their booze.

[Rakoa]

I once made a handsome Diplomat, Vincent Dictum, a Cleric back in one of the earlier D&D additions. He had oodles of charisma, and was very well-off in every mental stat. His physical stats were so awful he could only wear leather armour, couldn't take a hit, and was clumsy as Hell. However, his clumsiness would always get us on the right path when things looked the darkest.

"Where are we ever going to find the hidden forest dungeon?"
"Roll dex."
"...I failed."
"You trip into a tree, but it was mostly rotted away. It topples over, revealing a very large hole beneath it."
"Oh."

But that isn't why he was badass. He was badass because he single-handedly ended a campaign that was years in the making by writing a single, very well-worded letter to the King's advisor. The DM was pulling her hair out because she couldn't think of a single logical reason to deny the party what I had asked, and we never had another session afterwards. Vincent Dictum succeeded in proving that the pen is mightier than the sword.