freeney
Travelling Wordsmith
Posts: 31
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Post by freeney on Aug 4, 2015 22:59:49 GMT
Right, a topic dear to my heart: character concepts.
Basically I just thought it would be good to have a place to share the most interesting character backstories, traits or pretty much anything else that you're considering or have come across, since (for me at least) roleplaying a unique and interesting character is one of the biggest draws of D&D, particularly if it's a character at distinct odds to my own personality.
So, anyone got any good ones to share? I'll get the ball rolling with Leo'rolth, an elf I played a few years back who happened to be a vampire, the only other player to know being the DM. It was a pretty fun character to play, coming up with reasons to avoid the sunlight and drain life from enemies without the other PCs and their players catching on.
Please feel free to add your own, or ones you've heard of or played with! I've got a couple more to add too at some point, including the Drag Queen Dragonborn, which ended... Unexpectedly.
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Post by Brave Sir Robin on Aug 7, 2015 10:52:52 GMT
I have played so many different characters over the years I am starting to lose track. I feel like I've played every character at some point or other. Recently I have been really enjoying playing 'traditional' characters. The last character I played was a Dwarf fighter with a background in mining. Hamid is similar in a way - he's very much what you would expect him to be in many ways.
One of my all time favourite characters was in a LARP game. I played an avowed atheist in a world were gods were real, and obvious. At the culmination of one adventure a god even appeared, but my character certainly didn't acknowledge this as proof of anything.
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Post by Alex Newall on Aug 16, 2015 5:13:15 GMT
I had so much fun playing with your Dwarven banker. In that game I was a changeling rogue who specialised in hand to hand. I was going for sort of half Jack Sparrow half Sherlock Holmes (From the Robert Downey Jr films.) I won't go into too much detail here about builds because honestly I will use some for NPCs in the campaign and don't want to do spoilers. But there was one concept I loved: Introduced a girl to Pathfinder and she wanted the biggest, baddest Barbarian she could. We did all that and then ended up giving her a Pseudodragon companion. We soon realised though that its mental stats were waaaaaaaay higher than the barbarian so the party decided to accept the pseudodragon as a member and only let the barbarian in as the dragon's familiar. Fun times.
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freeney
Travelling Wordsmith
Posts: 31
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Post by freeney on Aug 20, 2015 0:16:58 GMT
We soon realised though that its mental stats were waaaaaaaay higher than the barbarian so the party decided to accept the pseudodragon as a member and only let the barbarian in as the dragon's familiar. Fun times. Reminds me of a oneshot I played as a demon with a 'pet' thoroughly brainwashed wizard, again reversing the dynamic. One other character that springs to mind was Bendrom the warrior, who's top priority when handling any situation would be to do so in a way that bards would recount for ages to come. It was a fun way to mess around with the usual tropes and overall one of the most entertaining characteres I've played. I feel he'd get on well with Bertie...
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Post by Oneiros on Aug 20, 2015 10:09:50 GMT
Like bravesirrobin, I've played a lot of characters over the years that I've sadly forgotten a lot of the details - especially names *sigh* Probably my most interesting ones were: a) in a mate's homebrew world, the only cleric of an interloper god (a god of secrets and mystery) trying to get a foothold in the world. His main schtick was trying to turn any situation involving others into an opportunity to proselytize about his deity and suggest that it was only by his grace and power that the situation was resolved/danger was averted. b) An Exalted game as an illegitimate scion of House Cynis, sold into servitude at a Cynis pleasure house, who Exalted as a Sidereal and became fixated on trying to bring down the entire House through subtle machinations. c) In a all-elven game set in the Forgotten Realms, my gold elf wizard (Elastris) died fairly early (like Session 2) so the next one (Vaelyn) turned out to be his secret silver elf ex-boyfriend who Elastris had to renounce in order in order to spare his family (House Starryn) shame. Vaelyn originally joined the party just to recover Elastris' body and carried on with them. I ended up blue-booking a lot about Vaelyn's subsequent run-ins with Elastris' family and his downward spiral following the death. Ah, good times
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Post by Alex Newall on Aug 21, 2015 2:19:31 GMT
I fear Oneiros' chracter choices have been significantly more interesting than my own.
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Jonny
Member of the Order of the Quill
Host of The Magnus Archives
Turns out I was a ghost all along.
Posts: 114
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Post by Jonny on Sept 11, 2015 8:05:04 GMT
I really like games which have a mechanical, quantifiable "attractiveness" stat (charisma or certain edges) and then just abusing that fact. My favourite example so far (not my own character, I must admit) is in a game of 50 Fathoms (magical pirate setting for Savage Worlds), one of the other players is playing a Scurillion, a playable race which is basically a giant sentient crab. This player, however (let's call him Martin, because that's his name), realised that even though Scurillions had no real physical parallels to anything that a humanoid might find sexy, there was no mechanical reason he couldn't take the "Attractive" and "Very Attractive" edges.
So now he's playing an inexplicably sexy crab. No-one knows why this giant crab is so damn hot, but she is. Maybe something to do with the iridescent sheen of her shell? The luscious curve of her eyestalks? It's a mystery!
I also love any game where I can play something just super against-type: half-orc bard, gnome barbarian, anything where it would be unreasonably hard to find character art for it.
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Post by Alex Newall on Sept 14, 2015 13:38:10 GMT
I am a great fan of half-ogre bards and pixie barbarians.
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Jonny
Member of the Order of the Quill
Host of The Magnus Archives
Turns out I was a ghost all along.
Posts: 114
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Post by Jonny on Sept 15, 2015 8:54:07 GMT
I was also looking at the Pathfinder Barbarian rules recently, and it struck me just how much their combat is tied to their rage (you're never really going to have a combat where you willingly don't rage). I had an idea that I really like of a really unassuming character (halfling, maybe) that just has serious anger issues, but who blanks out and doesn't remember their rages at all, so has no idea that they're a barbarian. They probably think they're a Bard. Obviously, without the Perform class skill, no-one's going to like listening to them play - which is just the sort of philistine criticism that makes them angry...
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freeney
Travelling Wordsmith
Posts: 31
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Post by freeney on Sept 17, 2015 23:39:32 GMT
I was also looking at the Pathfinder Barbarian rules recently, and it struck me just how much their combat is tied to their rage (you're never really going to have a combat where you willingly don't rage). I had an idea that I really like of a really unassuming character (halfling, maybe) that just has serious anger issues, but who blanks out and doesn't remember their rages at all, so has no idea that they're a barbarian. They probably think they're a Bard. Obviously, without the Perform class skill, no-one's going to like listening to them play - which is just the sort of philistine criticism that makes them angry... I absolutely love the idea of the Halfling barbarian who thinks he's a bard... I might have to give that one a try. Also - Changling Druids - never underestimate the fun you can have with one of them. I tend to give my shapeshifters a set theme though, such as only turning into water creatures because they worship a water god
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Post by Alex Newall on Sept 21, 2015 23:56:12 GMT
I did once know of a rogue who spent an entire campaign telling the party he was a paladin, wearing all the armour etc. and then ended up getting them all killed when they needed him to heal them. The only person who knew what he was, was the GM.
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Post by Oneiros on Sept 22, 2015 7:05:22 GMT
I did once know of a rogue who spent an entire campaign telling the party he was a paladin, wearing all the armour etc. and then ended up getting them all killed when they needed him to heal them. The only person who knew what he was, was the GM. Wow. Whilst I can appreciate the concept, that sounds like someone who didn't want to play well with others. Also, unless there was another, actual, rogue, it seems a little strange that you'd hamstring yourself in that fashion, not being able to use/demonstrate your class abilities. If the rest of the party knew and it was an IC 'public-facing' paladin, fair enough but I can imagine the rest of the players being mightily cheesed off at the reveal / that they couldn't rely on a comrade.
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Post by Brave Sir Robin on Sept 22, 2015 22:00:38 GMT
I have to say I agree with Oneiros. I personally really strongly dislike PvP and similar stuff. Whilst I think Paranoia is an excellent game idea, I know I would never want to play it myself. I think hidden information of that kind can so easily derail a campaign or break up an adventuring group. The couple of times I played in groups where one character hid some significant part of their character concept, I found it pretty irritating at the very least.
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Post by Alex Newall on Sept 22, 2015 23:50:15 GMT
I have no issue hiding character concept if a GM has ok'd it and knows it will work. In this scenario it destroyed the game if I remember correctly. (Not surprising really.)
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Jonny
Member of the Order of the Quill
Host of The Magnus Archives
Turns out I was a ghost all along.
Posts: 114
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Post by Jonny on Sept 23, 2015 6:46:25 GMT
I love a hidden character concept, although if it has genuine game-destroying potential I'd probably discuss scaling it back with the player involved. "Dramatic mid-campaign revelation" is the sweet spot I always aim for. I also like to establish plenty of code phrases with the player, so that there doesn't need to be lots of suspicious note passing or obvious out-of-room discussions.
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