Lame PC's

[Tiak]

We've all been there. Another player brings a character soooo ridiculous that you're ashamed to adventure with them. For example my friends character Ash, the chainsaw weilding centaur ranger.
or Styxz the minitaur barbarian who toted the fearsome "knome hooked hammer" don't lie i know most(if not all) of you have incountered or even played a ridiculous character.

[Burley]

I played a Warmage who was crazy over a book. It was an elf version of Smeegle...

I also played a dual-whip wielding Gnome. Most useless healer EVER.

I'm currently playing with a girl who's character is a Spellscale with 1 level of rogue and a couple sorcerer levels and some obscure prestige class that sacrifices spell slots for a breath weapon (it's cold by the way...and our campaign centers around undead.) And, because of the crazy multi-classing the Reflex DC is really low. Low enough that ZOMBIES have made reflex saves for half. ZOMBIES! Not an impossible task, but still shaming.

My buddy had a Doppleganger swashbuckler (Dawnforge) with a Quickdraw Rapier (which doesn't give quickdraw, only a +2 on feint attempts). He fiented every round...and even with a +17 to bluff at 3rd level...he still only pulled off a successful feint+attack compo once or twice.
He also had a thing with pooing on our fallen enemies bodies. Something about how he was raised...I dunno.
Funny story, though. While the party had just finished freeing a bunch of captives from a kobold fortress, they came into a room with a golem or something in it that came to life when you entered the room. One of the freed captives was an Elven Barbarian. The Dopplebucker (Swashgangler) was the first to realize and wanted to distract the Golem, so he yelled "KOBOLDS!" and the poor barbarian NPC raged and ran into the room, lasting less than a full round.

[comicshorse]

A friend ran a Succubus/Paladin, converted to the Church of Sune so she was actually good. Of course this with in the party with the Githyri Monk and the Pixie thief .

[Zincorium]

I've played in a party with characters like Sparko the Useless Mage (that was his actual homebrew class), the worst dragon/paladin/whatever DMPC I've ever even heard of, and the cliche slutty elven chick played by a creepy guy.

I was playing a high level assassin who got reincarnated (as a halfling) and then given amnesia, Hans the Lazy. Or Idle Hans, for those of you who can stomache a bad pun.

It's possible to turn lame PCs into an art form.

[Tiak]

a friend of mine actually made a character named harry potter... we put a stop to harry potter two games later. meteor swarm "accident" heh heh.

[valadil]

We played a game that was meant to be purely tactical combat. One of the players based his character on Noam Chomsky and had plenty of languages and little to no gun skill. I'm all for roleplaying the smart guy, but this was the wrong campaign for it.

[MorkaisChosen]

Oh, I'll have to throw a couple out here...

The first is from a Star Wars RPG campaign. I was playing a Bothan Tech Specialist (DM: "You see a computer." Me: "Hacking time!" was pretty much all I could do...), but one of the other characters was a Human Soldier. Background: "I used to be a stromtrooper, but I got amnesia and left."

In a D&D campaign (I wasn't in this one, I played some Warhammer instead), the same guy played a fighter. His background (as far as I heard) was that he liked gold and had an ancestral sword(which he never used, because his bastard sword was better).

[dungeon_munky]

Lets see...

There was the Half Orc Cleric who would rather smash his foes than heal his friends, and couldnt turn undead.

There was the one who wasnt actually any class or race, but instead was the worst case scenario of any of the multitudes of classes he might have taken, but didnt want to commit before he had a chance to look at his source books and eratta. He had no skills, no feats, no name, no appearance, BUT he did have many daggers, which he threw. He died that vey session.

There was the 70 year old human ranger who was encumbered by wearing a chain shirt. He also died.

The countless paladins I've played with who were openly planning to go into blackguard. A hairs breadth away from losing status. Yeesh.

The druid with an attitude, the only evil character in the party, who watched idly as my wizard was mugged and almost killed.

Warforged "Robo" samurai who had the gnome bard ride on his shoulders playing the fiddle.

The warlock who insisted he filled the role of rogue in our party based on damage he could do, and his baleful utterance's ability to do away with the locks on doors. Ironically killed by a door trap.

The bard who committed suicide because he didnt want to adventure anymore. (that was about 15 minutes after the start of the campaign.)

The elven rogue who ran into a goblin hideout, yelled at them, and ran back to where we were already fighting goblins, drawing the reviously sleeping ones to us and nearly getting us killed.

The pilot who was so insistant on becominga jedi that rather than waiting until I could train him, he wreasted my lightsaber from my hands and left us mostly defenseless for the ambush that happened immediately thereafter.

The tech specialist who fought with aforementioned pilot for doing everything on the ship. They both had the skills to do everything, and they both wanted to use all their skills.

There are probably a few more, but I cant think of any at the moment.

[Cuddly]

My friend has a warforged barbarian/juggernaught/psychic warrior/bear warrior.

Yeah, that's right, he made a transformer.

[Crow]

Our last one was in a D20 Modern game;

Before the session, the player berated one of the guys on the cover of the book, saying "Only an idiot would bring a sword to a gunfight." He then proceeds to make a character who plays second base for the Seattle Mariners (just got called up from triple-A), and is a melee specialist who uses a three-section staff.

In poetic fashion, he was killed in a gunfight that very session. I immediately thought, "I guess guys who bring three-section staffs are idiots too.". But I didn't have the heart to say it out loud.

[Baxbart]

Zombiegeddon scenario - everyone is playing level 3 characters... mostly semi-optimised for a chance at survival. This is all except for one player, who insisted on adding a classic element to the typical B-movie type zombie-fest... by playing as a farmer.

Thats right... he was a level 1 commoner.

He didn't die.


He did, however, somehow manage to pull off enough natural 20s to escape the oncoming horde by riding a cow.



Just for reference... the rest of the party died. They tried to make a last stand in an inn, but got overwhelmed when the farmer tried to maneuver his cow up the stairs and ended up bursting through the staircase so that they couldn't retreat to the first floor for safety. Don't even ask how he got the cow inside... its too embarrassing.

[Attilargh]

I once played a lame student in a Mortal nWoD game. He'd busted his knee when he got hit by a car, and-

Wait, wrong kind of lame, sorry.

[Shademan]

we had a lame fighter once.
literally.
he couldnt walk, and a owlbear ate his legs... the barbarian had to carry him on his back. anyone thinking chewbacca and c3po?
he couldnt be flanked from the rear!

[Swooper]

Hmm, I have to throw in one who wasn't as bad as some of the hilarious stuff up there, but worth mentioning:

We had a halfling with us once, that had so many classes I don't think I know about all of them. I know he had some rogue levels, some aristocrat levels (that's right, he willingly took NPC class levels... for the class skills, he said) and some levels in a 3rd party PrC class called Halfling Sherrif. It had full BAB and some lame abilities, like sensing when his home town was in danger. I can't remember him being any use in a fight, ever. Despite several rogue levels, he never once used his sneak attack. All he did was attack feebly with his MW shortsword, had a poor attack bonus and did only 1d6 damage if he hit. If he even felt like fighting at all. His feat selection was mostly stuff like Skill Focuses and Dash (for getting out of danger faster).

I remember the incident when we met the dragon. He goes "Wow! A dragon! I've always wanted to fight a dragon!" and then proceeds to hide while watching the rest of us fight the dragon.

Damn I was annoyed at that character. Pity he still lives - in the higher levels he maxed his Diplomacy skill as much as he could (to the point of digging up every feat he could find that gives a +2 bonus to two skills, one of them being Diplomacy). Then in the really high levels he became the president of the hobbit lands (the campaign was aimed at us all becoming national leaders, so we started as nobles). Since his election, he's been trying to hold the rest of the group back as the more militarily minded of us plan invasions, start wars and so on - he's playing a bloody pacifist

[KoDT69]

I was playing a high level assassin who got reincarnated (as a halfling) and then given amnesia, Hans the Lazy. Or Idle Hans, for those of you who can stomache a bad pun.

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[bignate]

a friend of mine was running a game where he gave out a homebrew "adventuring bag" which was basically a haversack-like bag that had a tent, firewood, torches, and other misc gear including a pack mule...the owner could pull out each item once per day.

well the ranger that got the item became obsessed with trying to drop the mule out of the bag onto enemies as an attack. he tried many time but i dont think he ever succeeded...

[Diamondeye]

2 that really tried my patience, both played by the same guy in college.

The first one was a blue, (as in bright blue) 8' tall elf of some homebrew-fluff elf variety that had a ridiculously high strength and could have been a competant fighter, but who behaved almost as bizarrely as his appearance. The worst part was that the guy playing the character insisted on remaining "in character" at all times... until the elf met its end when my bard (who was evil) found it too inconvenient to assist him up from the cliff he was hanging off of.

The second one was a short hooded character who carried daggers, didn't shave, or bathe, or, for that matter, speak. Again, the guy stayed "in character" all the time and therefore refused to speak even when the DM asked him for information.

The player in question was told, following that game session, that if he didn't come up with a strictly conventional D&D PHB character, and play it in a manner not designed to monopolize the entire game session, then he'd not be playing with us any more.

[Burley]

2 that really tried my patience, both played by the same guy in college.

...

The player in question was told, following that game session, that if he didn't come up with a strictly conventional D&D PHB character, and play it in a manner not designed to monopolize the entire game session, then he'd not be playing with us any more.

Just another example of certain gamers making the rest of us look bad...
And, that's more of a lame player than a lame character. But, 8' elf? That's lame.

It's not really lame, as it is kinda...lame-ish, but my DM has a habit of having some...odd NPCs running around. They usually have British Aristocracy accents, even though most of them are peasants and shop-keepers. The ones that don't have that accent are...scared, twitchy and studdery.
I'll never forget our last session, when the (British Aristorcat) haughty DMNPC Elf Wizard got into an arguement with the DMNPC (Scared) Human Archivist. The Archivist, by the way, was the leader of a resistance against a fallen-god who was trying to conquer all of existance. The Elf Wizard worked for him.

He did the turning head to face the other person, and changed facial expressions and hand gestures and everything. It was hilarious. But...it was one of those things you aren't supposed to laugh at.

[Doresain]

playing a wizard based off of a drunken womanizing old pirate that talks like sean connery is always a bad idea...especially when his gambling problem loses the group not only its ship, but another ship that the wizard said he had...