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Tanuki Tales
2014-04-27, 08:57 PM
Title pretty much sums it all up: "What is the strangest character you've either played or seen played?" This can take any definition of the word strange; be it a character who was just silly, who downright gave you the creeps or who was simply not something you would have thought about ever playing or seeing someone play.

The strangest character I've seen was for this Star Wars: Saga Edition game I sat in on. One of the players was doing two characters, one of them a force sensitive child and the other a Sith Lord. The Sith Lord though was a Force Ghost and was using the child as basically a cat's paw for all of his various plans and goals. He passed himself off as the child's guardian angel, having saved him from some horrible home life and had the kid completely convinced that some benevolent god had shown favor upon him and that he was special and destined for great things. The kid also happened to only really talk in hushed tones and was more then skirting the edge on cloudcuckoolander territory.

Hyena
2014-04-27, 09:11 PM
When we were playing a HoMM 3 game, I was playing a chaotic good necromancer* with a really bad case of good samaritan syndrome. When the party was attacked by nigon raiders, it was her that created a spectaculary stupid plan - to find whoever responsible for the attacks, get rid of him - and him alone - and then do something about the rest of the guys. She ended up bluffing and intimidating her way out of the boss fight, which lead to her becoming a nigon overlord in charge of fortress of said raiders.
Necromancer decided that the party is going to whip the raiders in the shape and make them a legitimate power, by teaching poor troglodytes and harpies concepts of farming, landowning, craftsmanship and trade.
DM was so amused that he remembers the girl as my best character ever.


* - mechanically, warlock. The other characters of the party included erathian fighter, tatalian spirit shaman and a halfling monk.

SimonMoon6
2014-04-27, 09:56 PM
In a superhero campaign: One player had a clever idea. He decided to make a character who was a fish with water control powers. This fish would be able to animate water to create a water elemental walking around (with the PC fish swimming around insde). The idea was that most enemies would think the water elemental was the superhero... and even if they realized otherwise, they'd still have difficulty hitting the tiny fish swimming around inside.

And if that's not strange enough, the fish (who was secretly an alien) had an alter ego that was a seven-armed starfish.

Balmas
2014-04-27, 09:58 PM
Let's see... Weirdest I ever made was a Necropolitan spellscale Dread Necromancer. He got drunk when he was in his teens, blacked out, and woke up necropolitan. Since then, he went on a quest to do two things: find out who did it, and to campaign for the rights of undead everywhere. After all, it's not undead that are evil; it's the evil clerics that animate them.

He used his social skills almost as much as his magic, as I remember.


A neat character idea that never actually saw the light of day: an awakened housecat wizard with a human familiar.

Kid Jake
2014-04-27, 10:03 PM
Strangest character I ever played was a cow barbarian/frenzied berserker. Nobody was quite sure whether it was awakened or just rabid, but she'd follow the party around and wreck stuff up. I remember during one particularly tense interrogation where the prisoner knew nobody was actually going to kill him since the party was pretty much all good aligned she gave a mighty moo and threw him out the window to his death. The rogue was like 'Did it mean to do that or has it finally snapped?! Kill it!' but the cow just looked at him with its big offset eyes and started chewing on the drapes.

DeadMech
2014-04-28, 12:48 AM
I think the weirdest I've played might possibly be my treant monk from a home brewed game. He was a normal enough treant, shepherding his clans forest around the countryside however he stayed behind one season to look after a dying relative. That was when he met the tribe of mushroom creatures that had been following behind the forest feeding off the debris left behind. They taught him their fighting style of fung-fu after he helped defend them from predators.

Yes.. Fung-fu. Yes, realistically a walking tree would be too slow to really be a martial artist. He had to pay a town to let him take root near the party's Inn at night. It was different.

Another possibility, though for another reason, was Kate. She was a human teenage girl in a modern supernatural secret society home brew game. She was also psychic and a mess in the head. She believed herself to be the unwilling vessel to a Lovecraftian horror eldergod who's name required three mouths to pronounce and had a penchant for abducting her to another dimension for painful experimentations and whispering vile and murderous thoughts in her head. Or perhaps developing psychic powers at a young age and being exposed to peoples thoughts simply made her develop a psychological disorder. I had decided to leave that open ended.

In either case too much stress, injury, or use of her powers would cause her to start losing touch with reality. She was taken to a psychologist by her parents and was medicated. However her mental state began to deteriorate more quickly. In a suicidal attempt to make the visions being fed to her end, she took a butter knife from the kitchen and mutilated herself, blinding herself in the process.

She was committed to a mental hospital where her powers grew out of control gaining the attention of the Illuminati. A man she only ever referred to as Doctor arrived one day. He was the only person she had met who's mind she couldn't read and the only person who paid her ravings any mind so she trusted him. He took her into the secret society to train and be used as a tool against another secret society called the Templar, who rather than using supernatural beings for their benefit seek to destroy them to protect humanity.

She was unstable, easily provoked to disturbing levels of violence using telekinetic powers, and manipulative steering people so she could get info from their surface thoughts. She was also at times completely helpless and blind if no one was in range to read surface thoughts off of, and completely dependent on her handler or teammates.

She was really allot of fun to play but at times. A more cerebral, spy thriller, information control type of character than I've ever had a chance to play before or since. On the other hand I didn't like to dwell too long in that particular headspace. Thinking about plans for that rp when I wasn't playing was a bit unsettling and depressing.

Inevitability
2014-04-28, 10:07 AM
Love this.

I've been playing quite some weird characters, but my awakened tiny monstrous spider beguiler wins here.

JeenLeen
2014-04-28, 11:10 AM
In a oWoD Mage: The Ascension game, I played a Virtual Adept Reality Hacker. His paradigm was that he believed the entire world was a MMO video game. Mundane folk were mostly NPCs, mages were PCs, and he wasn't sure about other supernaturals. If you ascended, you would become a real person in the real world. The handle he went by was Meta. In addition to normal programming foci, he also used the foci of the various Traditions, understanding they were really just tools to indirectly access the code. Not great tools, but ones he was willing to use to make things look more coincidental or to get by if an EMP blew out his computer.

He was fun in that he had no moral qualms about killing mundanes, although he realized he shouldn't lest it potentially impact his alignment or other unknown statistics, as well as social connections. He also had a habit to loot his enemies, which wound up being getting a trophy from every battle in which he killed someone. He was also fairly manipulative, which backfired a few times but allowed him to be a good party face when needed. All together, he turned out looking like a sociopathic serial killer.

He was finally killed by another PC, a Chorister going crazy-Paladin. He had been told by a demon (Scratch of LA) that becoming a thrall and gaining power that way and that a mage gaining power through devotion (i.e., powerful umbrood, in Meta's mind) was essentially the same. Meta was discussing with the Chorister about converting and being good, and whether that would be an effective character build or whether thralldom was a better route. This (along with some other stuff, including considering using torture to gain info) infuriated the character, who decided to kill Meta in his sleep. I was sad to lose him, but it was rather funny when we ran into him as a wraith in the underworld later on.

Mastikator
2014-04-28, 12:03 PM
A fire dragon polymorphed into a human in the disguise of a priest to infiltrate and take over human society. The religion was about everything being a dragon isn't about, and the dragon didn't quite understand humans, so he played humanity for what he saw, petty, vindictive and narrow minded about stuff he was open minded about, but couldn't manage to disguise his vanity and greed, so he just seemed like the most evil horrible person ever (not towards the other players, but it got on their characters's nerves after a while).
Those were the days.

TheCountAlucard
2014-04-28, 04:13 PM
There was that time I played Alpha Five in a World of Darkness game.

But that was only for one session.

Delwugor
2014-04-29, 11:29 AM
"Hi I'm Bob!" A superhero that looks like a basketball with arms and legs.

Jay R
2014-04-29, 12:30 PM
In the first edition rules of Traveler, all character creation was random. I rolled up a character who turned out to be a two-foot-tall hyper-intelligent amoeba.

I promptly named him "Ooze the Avenger".

Lentrax
2014-04-29, 12:37 PM
I played a Dwarven ranger once. His favored enemy was "Trees."

nedz
2014-04-30, 05:10 AM
A Dentist's Chair.

It was Paranoia and he was a 'bot.

He had a hoverpad for locomotion and his attack was to sneak up behind the enemy, charge, knocking them off their feet and into the chair where he would attempt to chloroform them.

DigoDragon
2014-04-30, 08:04 AM
The strangest character I played was in a teen superhero game. My character was an ordinary geek with a fox hand-puppet wearing a Star Fleet captain's uniform. He had the delusion that the fox was a real starship captain from the future with an array of gadgets (they were actually different psi powers that just looked weird when they manifested). The teen wore an ensign's uniform and didn't talk much. The fox puppet did all the talking and combat, even at one point taking command of the team (and quite effectively, much to the annoyance of several team members).

People assumed I was a delusional ventriloquist, but there was one time the puppet talked while my character was asleep, so they sometimes wondered... :smallbiggrin:

TheThan
2014-04-30, 09:46 PM
Lets see, there was Xera Wengor,
She an Orc barmaid. She was a unarmed swordsage/monk gestalt character. She moonlit as a bouncer as she was bigger than most of the other patrons.

There was also Zors Igothan- the far seer
He was a Half farspawn, human psychic warrior that ran around preaching doomsday prophesies and allegedly seeing the future. He claims to have been taken by beings from the far realms and altered. Basically his template allowed him to transform into a tentacle beast.

I keep trying to find a good game for Mugs and Guss.
They’re two goblins in a trench coat.

creepyeye
2014-04-30, 11:13 PM
i had a guy who would have a gnome druid called twig and he had a lepord known as berries.the gnome was crazy because he would talk to trees.This was in pathfinder

in living greyhawk,i had a friend play a wood elf who was engaged to a paladin.he was supposed to meet her parents but he somehow got sidetracked so now shes mad. So now shes looking for him.

Gadora
2014-05-01, 03:58 AM
Mortella started off as kind of a bland gray elf beguiler for what was supposed to be a challenge run into a dungeon crawl. The DM in question had us start in town, and, having prepared for what I was told was going to be just a straight up dungeon crawl that was more a challenge for the players than an RP, I sort of didn't have much of a personality for her. What turned out to be her defining moment was me being bored and making a series of sense motive rolls, more or less at random. She quickly developed rather serious paranoia and kept looking for hints of Illumian plots, carrying around a book in which to record her conspiracy theories (in, of course, a private cipher). The DM got to mess with me and fuel her paranoia immensely when she successfully disbelieved the ceiling of the dungeon, causing her to believe (rightly or wrongly, I still have no idea) that there was an illusion of the ceiling in place, as an exact duplicate, only two inches lower.

Sadly, Mortella died when she was paralyzed in the doorway of what turned out to be one of those classic 'stone slabs seal the entrances and water begins to pour in' rooms. On the bright side, her corpse prevented a complete seal, and the party was able to use one of her many tree feather tokens to force the door back open. On the downside, the party kinda desecrated the elf's corpse with a tree.

Erik Vale
2014-05-01, 04:22 AM
Game in the making [let's be a tad random] getting character notes from a random generator for us to build, not sure if the character will end up being made, but the character is a cleric religous leader but agnostic.
His response: 'And now, let us all gather round while I read from the book of uncertainty.'

Khedrac
2014-05-01, 06:42 AM
IN a homebrew game at Uni (it was a very complex detailed homebrew) I saw a friend play what was effectively a man-sized ball of fur with eyelashes as the only feature on the fur (they could also manipulate objects to some degree). That was pretty weird.

Zazax
2014-05-01, 08:21 AM
My group has seen some pretty strange characters, but one in particular stands out above all the rest.

In a superhero-themed campaign, we had one character whose powers included having laser blood, so that if he was ever cut or stabbed, instead of bleeding his wounds would fire constant, Cyclops-from-X-Men-esque lasers. He then would mitigate the collateral damage from this by peeling his wounds off like stickers and throwing them at people, where they would stick and effectively transfer to the throwee. He was startlingly effective.
The fact that, lacking any sort of flight, teleportation, or other superpowered means of rapid travel, he drove around in a barely-functional AMC Gremlin while humming his own theme song just sealed it.

ReaderAt2046
2014-05-01, 08:46 AM
My group has seen some pretty strange characters, but one in particular stands out above all the rest.

In a superhero-themed campaign, we had one character whose powers included having laser blood, so that if he was ever cut or stabbed, instead of bleeding his wounds would fire constant, Cyclops-from-X-Men-esque lasers. He then would mitigate the collateral damage from this by peeling his wounds off like stickers and throwing them at people, where they would stick and effectively transfer to the throwee. He was startlingly effective.
The fact that, lacking any sort of flight, teleportation, or other superpowered means of rapid travel, he drove around in a barely-functional AMC Gremlin while humming his own theme song just sealed it.

You're forgetting (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?315583-Ridiculous-Characters-amp-why-you-made-them-the-way-you-did&p=16548782&viewfull=1#post16548782) Guy! (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?315583-Ridiculous-Characters-amp-why-you-made-them-the-way-you-did&p=16619252&viewfull=1#post16619252)

tahu88810
2014-05-03, 06:18 PM
I once had a player in 3.5 ask me if he could play an awakened sloth druid. With a shrug, I told him to go for it.

It was a while ago, and I don't quite remember the exact details, but he used some feats from I believe Eberron to graft living fungi onto himself. Which I also gave the OK for. He then proceeded to try and start up a magical drug farm in the campaign we were playing. All would have been well, but the guy playing the completely bog standard wizard was less than enthralled and eventually problems arose in the form of arguments and the like.
This, in a game where someone else was playing a huge-sized warforged artificer who had grafted platforms onto his shoulders and back for an army of tiny crossbow wielding homonculi to fire from.

Jjeinn-tae
2014-05-03, 08:34 PM
The Cranberry Ooze. It was from a short-lived D&D 3.5 game on these forums based around what character you could create that could manage a 1 in all stats except intelligence, which had 3, build array. We made a game around it of little oozes (I think they were fine size). The Cranberry Ooze was a Spellthief, and I know we had a Warlock as well.

The Ooze accomplished nothing of note, being unable to do much of anything. :smalltongue:

TeChameleon
2014-05-04, 02:23 AM
Paik, the lunatic Dragonborn Soulthief, isn't quite as flat-out strange as some of these, at least on a conceptual level (the Unarmed Trollish Adept that I played in Shadowrun might take that honour, given that he could best be described as 'a Yiddish Jackie Chan, except nine feet tall. And with horns'), but he certainly had his moments.

He started off as a theorycrafting build when I was putzing around with the character builder, and got dusted off later for a one-shot that we were playing that needed stealthy characters. At the start, he was pretty much a blank slate, with functionally nothing in the way of personality.

Then two things happened. First, I reasoned that stealing peoples' souls and using them to kill other people would probably mess you up in the head a bit. So I decided to go the 'weird and frightening, in a sad sort of way' route with his personality, altered his scales to be ashen grey, and stretched him to be nearly nine feet tall (although still a medium creature... homebrew stuff). The second thing to happen was that I wanted to have an Enshrouding Candle on him in combat (dims the light around him) to use a feat that gave concealment in dim light, but the DM made it pretty clear that he was going to screw with me if he just had the candle stuck someplace on a shoulderpad or whatever.

So I decided that Paik had his own left eye removed, and the candle magically mounted directly in his eye socket. Per the DM's instructions, I took a fire resist feat so that he wouldn't constantly be taking damage from the open flame inside his head, but I decided that he had gotten his brain a bit cooked in the process, making him even more loopy.

For starters, even he didn't know how to pronounce his name (I alternated randomly between pronouncing it 'Pike' and 'Pake' in the game). And he had a distressing habit of fiddling with the eyepatch he wore when not being sneaky at random times, making the light flicker rather nauseatingly as the magic leaked.

And his approach to problem solving was... odd.

One of the first legs of our quest had us end up basically trying to loot a temple, while evading the notice of the local baron's guards. A temple that was still active. And of Bahamut, who most of the party worshipped. It's a long story :smallredface:

Anyway, Paik got bored and wandered off as the rest of the party was trying to ransack the temple as reverently as possible, drifting towards the encampment where the 'guards' were (really a collection of singularly unpleasant mercenaries, apparently). He used his ludicrously high stealth skills to ghost into the center of the camp where the leader of the enemy band was and casually slit the guy's throat.

This in itself really isn't all that out of the ordinary for an assassin. But what happened next... well, let's just say that Paik had decent bluff skills and some interesting magic items. The DM started to tell me that I would need some more stealth checks to get out of the camp, only to look a bit nonplussed when I announced that Paik wasn't leaving yet. He proceeded to stash the commander's body, used a potion to assume an illusion of the commander's form, and created a facsimile of a changeling's dead body.

I'm pretty sure you can all guess what happened next. Paik strode out of the tent, bold as you please, and roared out that they were under attack by shapeshifters. One bluff check later, and the camp was in utter pandemonium. Paik then gleefully skipped out, pausing only to give contradictory 'secret passwords' to a few people to increase the mayhem.

Back with the rest of the group, the defacto group lead was just starting to wonder where Paik had disappeared to, and what all that noise was, when Paik materialized out of the shadows wearing the kind of grin that's usually only seen by particularly unlucky swimmers when it's approaching rapidly underneath a fin, and bloody to the elbows.

"Ah."

Thus endeth what I'm pretty sure was supposed to be a fairly stiff combat encounter.

A short while later, we found ourselves in the position of needing to kill a captain of the guard, hopefully without leaving any evidence of foul play. Fortunately for us, he was very, very, very drunk, and there was a river nearby, which made things a bit easier. However, Paik was not one to leave things to chance. Rather than just tossing him into the drink and hoping for the best, we set things up to make sure he wasn't going to come back up.

First, one of the others got him in a headlock and shoved him down so that he could see his reflection in the river. Then Paik turned invisible and force-fed him a love philtre. The guard captain promptly went mad with desire for his reflection in the water, and dove in in a desperate attempt to get at it. As far as I know, he never came back up.

Of course, not all his assassinations went that well. When trying to kill the guard captain's lieutenant (and accomplice in the conspiracy we were trying to root out), Paik had snuck up on him in perfect silence while the unfortunate guard was doing paperwork in the barracks. Paik then proceeded to fail to cut his throat repeatedly, flailing wildly and invisibly in the darkness behind the oblivious lieutenant while constantly making his stealth checks to remain hidden.

Good times :smalltongue: (and for those that are wondering how that last bit worked mechanically, Paik had the Dragonmark of Shadow, which allows you to remain invisible/hidden if you miss all your targets when you attack).

NikitaDarkstar
2014-05-04, 04:41 AM
Wow umm... I suddenly feel utterly normal here.

I think the oddest one I may have is a Neutral Evil elven rogue. In short she's a (winged, cause fiendish wing grafts are awesome) sniper in a mercenary company, which ironically enough is primarily made up of Good and some Neutral characters (seriously she's the only Evil one there). She's also absurdly over protective of our Lawful Good sun elf oracle of Pelor.

But yhea I think that's my oddest that has seen play. Well her and my Jaunter/Dirge singer gestalt. Also had a flaw that made parts of him incorporeal from time to time. And he used an adamantine guitar as a melee weapon (statted as a great axe, but exotic and bludgeoning). A gnoll friend of his father taught him how to use it after being far more amused than intimidated by his attempts at attacking something. Okay yhea, I think Marcus may have been a bit odder than Zinnaatris. Still neither has anything on some of the stuff in here.

FabulousFizban
2014-05-04, 04:22 PM
I once played a pack of dogs in pathfinder. I played an awakened dog huntmaster cavalier. I just kept taking boon companion for my feats. I had a pack of six I think? It was total bull**** power wise. With boon companion I was basically 4 level 5 characters, plus two level ones. All six dogs would just jump one enemy at a time and tear it to shreds. RP wise it was amazing. Each dog had a nobleman's outfit & ranks in perform dance.

nedz
2014-05-04, 09:35 PM
There was the Elf Ranger I played years ago.

Backstory: Started off LE — Killed his Uncle for his magic ring when he was a child — puts it on — turns out the ring is Cursed ring of opposite alignment — runs off into the forest filled with remorse — becomes a Ranger.

Kind of an inverse Gollum I suppose.

The Oni
2014-05-04, 11:07 PM
I'm working on a qlippoth-spawn tiefling Zen Archer Serene Barbarian (dex and wis boosts instead of strength and con). He was raised by a wizard who basically bought him (because neither of his parents survived the circumstances of his birth) and made him into his personal assassin/attack dog. With his 5 Int and 20 Wisdom he can't quite wrap his mind around basic concepts like "law enforcement" and "personal space" but his non-euclidean perception means he doesn't aim so much as shoots where he feels you ought to be - and it works.

Also he wears no armor and ends up with a 30 AC.

DigoDragon
2014-05-05, 07:54 AM
A college friend once created a telekinetic mouse in a GURPS campaign. Lori was a small and squishy rodent with an IQ of 140 and the ability to lift and hurl a mid-sized car. She could also fly as fast as a bullet (leading to her second method of attacking). Required secondary power was a kinetic shield so she didn't go splat against whatever she threw herself at. Lori... sometimes forgot to put up her shield. :smalltongue:

Zazax
2014-05-05, 09:13 AM
You're forgetting Guy!
Heh, yeah, I guess I am. Although Guy was actually with a different group than the one that had the laser blood guy (this was years back; can't remember his name, sadly), so my original statement still stands. :smalltongue:

Leon
2014-05-05, 09:34 AM
For a significant length of time we had a fighter in a 2nd ed game who was a swarm of approximately 300 rats due to a magical effect.

Same player in a game I ran played a INT 3 gobber cleric who could only speak gobberish and to know what he said the second least intelligent char had to make tests to link words from the shared language root of gobberish and molgur-Og. Needless to say not a lot was understood and a lot of pantomime was had.

illyahr
2014-05-05, 11:53 AM
My strangest and most infamous character started out completely useless and ended up being the funnest character I ever made. Behold, the saga of Random (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?315583-Ridiculous-Characters-amp-why-you-made-them-the-way-you-did&p=16543073&viewfull=1#post16543073). :smallbiggrin:

Raimun
2014-05-06, 04:24 PM
I once played a character who was not war personified. That was strange.

KOedBarbarian
2014-05-09, 10:27 AM
The strangest character I've ever played was a shaman/spirit tempest in 4th ed. who was re-flavored as an amoral, anti-social necromancer named Marcus Fitch. He was my third character for the campaign (the first having died to friendly-fire 3 sessions in, and my last character having sacrificed himself for the good of the party). Having died on the shadow plane, I decided Marcus was visiting the plane to conduct necromantic experiments in isolation, and managed to accidentally bond my previous character's soul to himself permanently as a spirit companion. When our party ranger died in an epic one-on-one confrontation with a bounty hunter, Marcus took him as his second spirit companion, and from then on, anytime a PC died in-game, he would show up as one of Marcus's summon powers. He also absolutely loathed harpies - after a particularly grueling encounter involving a combined ambush by a group of harpies and quicklings, he became enraged at the mere mention of harpies, and carried around the petrified foot of one as a talisman he would play with while lost in thought.

Somehow he ended up becoming the moral center of our group, which is a little disturbing, even given that the group was comprised of a dhampir-dwarven fighter with a magic weapon-hoarding problem on a quest to be the ultimate badass, and a changeling warlock that can generously be described as the lovechild of Mystique and the Joker.

BootStrapTommy
2014-05-09, 09:29 PM
GURPs Campaign. Mute clairvoyant. Could see the future and got tipped off to things by the GM. Could not communicate effectively with the other players.

In another GURPs Campaign played a space ship captain. Master gunslinger with the maturity of a 12 year old. Completely off the wall the entire campaign. The campaign turned into a a goof off, but it was one of the most productive and seriously done goof offs in our campaign history.

AdmiralCheez
2014-05-09, 10:23 PM
My two weirdest characters were in Palladium's Heroes game. One was a mechanical genius heavily inspired by Dr. Venture from the Venture Bros. He had a walking eye, which ended up being crucial to killing the final boss, a nightlord or something. He also ended up addicted to caffeine pills and had a box of exploding fake mustaches.

The other was the Ghost Doctor. It was my first character in the system, so I picked a bunch of powers that seemed cool and wrote the backstory later. So he had things like the ability to bend light, phase through walls, fly, and separate his body parts at will. Common tactics were to pop out his eye, cloak it, phase it, and then float it into a room and spy on enemies. It was scary effective at recon. Combat, not so much, unless you count the final boss fight where he flew up into the atmosphere and bent the sun into a coherent solar death ray that killed several werewolves, a vampire lord, his base of operations, the rest of the party, and about twenty square acres of Irish countryside. To be fair though, the rest of the party was either dead or dominated, or a broken android.

Archpaladin Zousha
2014-05-10, 09:19 PM
For me it's a toss-up between two characters played by my college D&D group.

One character, Taliesin, was a kobold sorcerer that collected the ears of his slain enemies and wore them like a necklace. Before I joined the group, he willfully contracted lycanthropy to become a werewolf, and while the party argued about what to do with the werewolf puppies, he killed them to move the party along. He later took levels in cleric and gained an elf barbarian as a cohort who kept hitting on halfling characters for some reason. When the campaign ended, he ascended to godhood, his trademark ear necklace becoming his holy symbol.

The other character was Rush (short for some name I can't spell). He was a halfling, with a homebrewed class called the Treehugger, basically a druid variant. Rush was the flightiest character I'd ever played with, and was constantly wandering off and getting the party into trouble with his complete and utter absence of common sense. The crowning moment of this changed the campaign for good. We were sent to an ancient ruin known as Wormwood (actually the now-ancient Chernobyl reactor, as this was a post-apocalyptic Europe after a second Ice Age had reduced the world to a medieval tech level) to retrieve cold iron (apparently what gave it its powers was its radioactivity). We'd been sent to just claim a small chunk of the stuff, which we did, but nearby was a much larger piece. Definitely too big to carry out of there, after we'd decided we wanted some cold iron for ourselves (my paladin especially, as it would be great for slaying demons). Since we didn't have any tools to break pieces off the larger chunk, we debated using various spells to try and do the job. Rush then cast a lightning bolt at the cold iron. Lighting is super-hot. This caused in essence a third Chernobyl meltdown, and we barely escaped with our lives. The radioactive cloud from the disaster devastated two whole kingdoms, forcing a mass exodus, and killed off the hobgoblin stand-ins for the Mongols that were intended to be the major threat. The event forced our DM to completely change the campaign as Rush had single-handedly wrecked the setting.

And that wasn't even the end of the stupid things he dragged us into. Taliesin and my paladin were nearly killed when he asked for our help in taming a herd of wild elephants because he wanted one as a pet, and he successfully alienated both nature gods in the setting, the first one for his careless triggering of the Wormwood disaster, and the second one because he foolishly attacked the Archdruid of the faith because he found their human sacrifice practices iffy. Finally, Rush ended up getting killed when he snuck into the Underdark alone and was discovered by the robots that ruled there. He managed to send us a warning of the army they were building to invade the surface before his untimely demise. Rush was less a character and more a force of chaos.

Melville's Book
2014-05-10, 10:12 PM
Alverto Griffinspire.

He was an apprentice warlock in a strange Fate Core game that basically centered around a war of medieval magic-users of many different varieties against Psychics with super advanced tech.

Alverto, being a hedge Warlock rather than a High Wizard, couldn't really make a meaningful impact in the war himself...

So he ended up using his skills of seduction and mental manipulation to start a movement across the country to help give the stressed wizards a supply of free or discounted drugs and, ahem, pleasure people.

Which in turn caused another movement of revolt against the "corrupt" High Wizards.

Also led by Alverto.

Who then led his supporters intentionally into the crossfire of an upcoming battle.

I never really figured out which side he was on.

PastorofMuppets
2014-05-11, 10:20 PM
My most memorable was Dorf the Anchor for a DnD dragon hunting campaign the DM cooked up where dragons were suddenly multiplying like rabbits and dragon hunts became a necessity for survival to get em before they could grow too powerful. Dorf was dwarven barbarian specialized in the art of Harpoonery (based on some source book the DM had). Our party consisted of Dorf two rogues a cleric and a fighter, not the most ideal method of fighting something that can fly away but Dorf had a plan, he attached the harpoons to chains which he tied off... to himself. So a Great Hunt begins a dragon is sighted and engaged in combat as Phase One (smack the hell out of it) begins. Panicked the dragon flies off, what is phase two of the plan Harpoons! Harpoons chained to Dorfs own torso and an activation of his Belt of Growth of course! Now Dorf is a Giant and far heavier, the dragon slows but it is not enough to pull it back out of the air so phase three is begun. High in the air Dorf opens up his two Bags of Holding and out tumble a pair of anchors (also chained to Dorfs battle harness) which snag the ground and trees halting the fleeing and confused dragon. As dorf holds tight to the dragon and earth his friends the rogues climb up the chains and dorf to the dragon and cripple its wings, forcing it to the ground as the fighter waits to finish the dragon with the rogues and the cleric heroically reassembles the brave and rather broken Dorf so he can help again for the next grand adventure!

This was the game plan and it worked great for a good few dragons before bad luck had one of them break 9-6or7 hp) the cleric with a lucky blow before the fly away part, dorf landed the harpoon but the rogues were busy trying to use their wands of moderate healing(each party member had one at this point in case of emergency like this) to try and fix him. Seeing no help coming he climbed the dragon himself (int and wisdom were both dump stats for this guy) and failed horribly at hurting it, getting clawed to past death, only alive for 2 more turns from Rage bonus hitpoints when he had a brilliant idea, The Wand! it could heal him! so being enraged he "used" the wand by snapping it to get the magic out. The DM stared and explained these rules either forgotten realms or just his group used for magic item failure, namely all remaining charges burst out as intended Or as raw magic damage from the broken spell container. He rolled some things (bad things) and announced to the (remaining) party that the dragon and I became a sparkling mushroom cloud of various magical bits in the sky and they needed a new anchor.

illyahr
2014-05-13, 12:35 PM
For me it's a toss-up between two characters played by my college D&D group.

One character, Taliesin, was a kobold sorcerer that collected the ears of his slain enemies and wore them like a necklace. Before I joined the group, he willfully contracted lycanthropy to become a werewolf, and while the party argued about what to do with the werewolf puppies, he killed them to move the party along. He later took levels in cleric and gained an elf barbarian as a cohort who kept hitting on halfling characters for some reason. When the campaign ended, he ascended to godhood, his trademark ear necklace becoming his holy symbol.

The other character was Rush (short for some name I can't spell). He was a halfling, with a homebrewed class called the Treehugger, basically a druid variant. Rush was the flightiest character I'd ever played with, and was constantly wandering off and getting the party into trouble with his complete and utter absence of common sense. The crowning moment of this changed the campaign for good. We were sent to an ancient ruin known as Wormwood (actually the now-ancient Chernobyl reactor, as this was a post-apocalyptic Europe after a second Ice Age had reduced the world to a medieval tech level) to retrieve cold iron (apparently what gave it its powers was its radioactivity). We'd been sent to just claim a small chunk of the stuff, which we did, but nearby was a much larger piece. Definitely too big to carry out of there, after we'd decided we wanted some cold iron for ourselves (my paladin especially, as it would be great for slaying demons). Since we didn't have any tools to break pieces off the larger chunk, we debated using various spells to try and do the job. Rush then cast a lightning bolt at the cold iron. Lighting is super-hot. This caused in essence a third Chernobyl meltdown, and we barely escaped with our lives. The radioactive cloud from the disaster devastated two whole kingdoms, forcing a mass exodus, and killed off the hobgoblin stand-ins for the Mongols that were intended to be the major threat. The event forced our DM to completely change the campaign as Rush had single-handedly wrecked the setting.

And that wasn't even the end of the stupid things he dragged us into. Taliesin and my paladin were nearly killed when he asked for our help in taming a herd of wild elephants because he wanted one as a pet, and he successfully alienated both nature gods in the setting, the first one for his careless triggering of the Wormwood disaster, and the second one because he foolishly attacked the Archdruid of the faith because he found their human sacrifice practices iffy. Finally, Rush ended up getting killed when he snuck into the Underdark alone and was discovered by the robots that ruled there. He managed to send us a warning of the army they were building to invade the surface before his untimely demise. Rush was less a character and more a force of chaos.

Sounds like Rush and Random would get along perfectly. :smallbiggrin:

Tetraplex
2014-05-13, 08:37 PM
My first character was an awakened Shrike barbarian. A group at my old uni had a game going and as the DM didn't want to introduce someone mid dungeon he gave me pick of any npc with them. I picked the Treant druid's animal companion and, after blowing every crit I would roll in that campaign on some skeletons, intentionally got trapped in a time loop room. By the time they saved Descartes the bird, he had lived for a century in there and was intelligent, if not bright.

I really should dig up that idea I had for a Warforged Hierophant beekeeper housing his swarm companion in his own (transforming) body...

GuesssWho
2014-05-14, 02:58 AM
Every character I have ever made has been a monster or had way too many templates. Currently I am playing a half-farspawn elf wizard in one game, and a Styx dragon in the other :D

Wraith
2014-05-14, 03:27 AM
In After The Bomb, I wanted to play around with the psychic powers system, on the grounds that no one else wanted to go through the hassle of creating a character with such high demands on their BIO-E, when there were combat skills to buy.

If you're unfamiliar with ATB, your BIO-E is basically your pool of skill points - different races have more or less BIO-E, depending on how good or bad their natural traits are, so big creatures like Bears and Rhinos are always tough, strong and have natural weapons but almost no extra points to spend, whereas Mice and Frogs have no special abilities but lots of spare points to spend on whatever else they want.

One of the 'balance' mechanics is to allow large characters to recoup BIO-E to spend on skills by lowering their size category, which costs them hitpoints, armour points and stat bonuses.... So, I need as big an animal as possible, with as many natural abilities as possible, then shrink them down to a roughly human-sized character and thus harvest the greatest amount of BIO-E to spend on powers.

I rolled a camel. Slightly-above medium sized, no special abilities at all. :smallsigh:

By the time I was done with him he was shriveled to the size of a housecat, but he would permanently float 3 feet off the ground instead of walking, could erect a psychic 'shield' that was immune to bullets, and could telekinetically smash his way through a concrete wall.

He never had a name - my co-players simply refer to it as "The Camel" - but I like to think of him as 'Finneas'. :smallsmile:

Jormengand
2014-05-14, 05:56 AM
An Ork psyker on a Space marine bike quad-wielding skorchas and with literally every item in the entire D20 40k rules with a purchase DC under 15 stuck in the back of the bike.

The Oni
2014-05-14, 05:59 AM
...How does an Ork quad-wield pistols?

Jormengand
2014-05-15, 09:53 AM
...How does an Ork quad-wield pistols?

Skorchas are two-handed flamers.

The answer is that he has a mutation which makes him count as large whenever it would benefit him and another two which give him extra arms. Each Skorcha does 6d6 damage in a 30 ft cone.

The fact that he was a psyker was by this point completely irrelevant.

The Oni
2014-05-15, 08:31 PM
That's fantastic.

Jormengand
2014-05-16, 05:09 AM
That's fantastic.

Of course, the drawback was that he was dependent on two different chemicals... both of which he had in NI supply.

This is one helluva ork.

Loxagn
2014-05-16, 12:06 PM
Let's see...

I played a necromancer once who was Neutral Good. A neutral good sorcerer necromancer who actually had a good intelligence score, and had studied at a wizard college to better understand the way magic worked. In an effort to prove the worth of his chosen field, he attempted to conduct a large-scale research experiment on the behavioral patterns of undead and the nature of negative energy in general, so as to debunk the 'undeath is evil' mindset, with a secondary goal of fighting for equal rights of sentient undead and 'lesser' races such as goblins/kobolds/etc. When denied funding by his university, he decided to fund it himself by adventuring! After all, firsthand experience in the field is better than what you could ask for in a laboratory environment.

So, scientist necromancer civil rights activist sorcerer.

I also once (briefly) played a Favored Soul of Chzo.

Callos_DeTerran
2014-05-18, 12:34 PM
Hmm, I've definitely had some odd characters in the past but I think one of the strangest is one that I still play these days...that being...

...The bag man. No, really, that's his name. Or at least it's what everyone calls him since ever single time he has to give a name he has given a different one with the complete and total belief that this name is his name, I spent most of the group character creation session making up a long list of names he could pass out like candy since I had finished my character early and, as a little joke, made sure I had each other character's real name on the list since quite a few of them used aliases. Including introducing himself as Harry Dresden, Wizard Private Eye to a party member that had actually met Harry in their back story. This was in the Dresden Files RPG (FATE system) and I wanted to build my own character for my first one rather than use one of the templates, partially because I didn't really know a lot about Dresden Files and didn't want to accidentally upset some of the huge fans in the group by playing a previously established concept against what it should be. So, since it was modern fantasy setting, I decided to go with a slightly unusual concept and build something no self-respecting player in my IRL group has ever done, a penniless hobo that checks almost all the boxes of the 'stereotypical crazy hobo' list. Has a shopping cart full of various pieces of trash and plastic bags (hence 'bag man')? Yep. Has scraggly gray hair, tattered long coat, and fingerless wool gloves? Yep! Full of crazy conspiracy talk that is almost entirely nonsensical and undoubtedly completely mad (and probably complete hokey)? Oh, you have no idea... Stands on a random street corner with a sign declaring the end of the world? Pssh, that's for amateurs...he's reserved a street corner for himself and gets into regular scuffles with a pimp over who has a right to stand there bothering people, him or the prostitutes.

So...what makes Pentagon Pete so special to me? Well I didn't know a whole bunch about Dresden Files so I read up on what background information I could and wanted to link the Bag Man to some big, villainous faction in-universe and settled on the Outsiders. So, Spiral Simon used to be a low-level bureaucratic functionary in the city government who was in charge of building permits and such which is mind-numbingly boring but Leon Lannister took to it well because of his incredible mind for details and not wanting anything exciting to happen so when he noticed 'missing' plots of lands were buildings and properties were labeled for demolition or renovation but just disappeared off public records instead, he left it alone. Just a clerical error, right? However it bothered him so he finally set about looking into it to find out it wasn't a clerical error cause the buildings and properties were still there, just abandoned. He figured the mob was using the buildings as drop points and such or that somebody with influence was using the buildings for private meetings so he resolved to just quietly inform his superiors so they could go through the proper channels about it all. He went home that night to find his wife dead and a hefty group of mad cultists waiting to ambush him. Turns out he had been tugging at the strings of the supernatural and now the supernatural tugged back, because they kidnapped him, burned down his home, and dragged him off to one of these 'lost' properties to complete some ritual or another that needed a blood component. Adolf Mao didn't understand any of what was happening, but he heard references to magic, 'Outsider', and someone called 'He Who Walks Behind' as they got ready to gut him like a goat. Then something interrupted the ritual that the cultists ran out to deal with leaving Clarence Raithe alone on the altar as something began to push through into our world. Understandably that damned hobo panicked and managed to escape the altar to try and flee even as the cultists returned to finish the deed and that's the only thing that saved Triangle Teach at that time since He Who Walks Behind was so busy killing the cultists that he was able to escape, though not without consequences.

Something happened to the bag man's mind, this Outsider had briefly made mental contact with the poor man and his mind had shattered like a Fabrege Egg tossed into a washing machine full of ball bearings. What's more, everyone he knew was pretty sure he was dead, so it wasn't like he could waltz back into his old life. And it is his old life cause now...now he could do things. He was a lot tougher than the other people around him, could travel to a vibrant and perilous world by making portals between them (travel to the Never-Never at will), and could force his own despair into other people in a debilitating mental assault that could kill them if the bag man wasn't so determined not to kill anyone. And when Wardens inevitably came to find out what was up with him and his contact with Outsiders, the bag man discovered something else...there were other strange and powerful people in the world like him but they couldn't hurt him with their gifts (immune to magic). He doesn't know it, but he's slowly turning into something that is more and more like an Outsider. Oh, and he gets visions of the future but no one ever believes him when he tells them about it (Cassandra's Tears) so it's not like he can tell anyone about the dangers he sees. Depressing, right? Why would I love this wonderfully strange character?

...Cause he decided that if he had these strange powers, he was going to use them to save other people so nobody else ends up like him. Oh, and put his brain back into proper order while he's at it, he's told that's important as well. So he wanders around the city like some Eldritch Super-Hero who is the most undeniably good member of the party aside from a literal agent of God (they get along really swell actually), with a freaky, oddly effective set of skills for what he wants to do. Need to get between two points? Into Fairy World we go (he can navigate it better than anyone else in the party)! At a dead-end for what to do? Wait until I get a seizure and we'll have a hint! Supernatural ne'er-do-wells screwing with the homeless community? DESPAIR TOUCH (except for One-Eyed Gus, the ghoul server at the soup kitchen, he does right). He's the one that warned the actually important people of the city that Black Court vampires were preying on the homeless of the city and he went on a magical adventure on Christmas with Santa Claus (The GM said he'd earned one sleigh ride, at the least). And he's, depressingly for me, the most aware member of the party for when it comes to picking up that something isn't right. The GM is amazingly forgiving of any crazy action I want to take or do, so long as I have a bit of Insane Troll Logic to throw out to justify me doing it or being there. Example: Hand of God was confronted on a street corner by three probably-vampires of some kind and the bag man went there to back him up. We were searching for a remarkably potent magical talent that had been abducted and the other PCs were worried she might like, destroy the city or something if she wasn't found (the bag man just wanted to rescue the kidnapped girl honestly). We deduced pretty quickly after said vampires walked off after being confronted with more people than they thought they would have to fight that they were trying to intimidate Hand of God into dropping the case and basically all went our separate ways to look for clues. Eventually they heard that our resident White Court PC's brother had been kidnapped and most of the party went there to investigate without telling anyone else, but mostly the hobo who smells of pee and the GM apologized to me since I'd be sitting the rest of the night out. I looked at him completely surprised and asked why, since I was already there and he got a look of confusion on his face and asked why, since I hadn't had any visions or anything indicating this was the place or that she was here So I explained the bag man's logic.

"Those three prats from before were vampire wanna-bes and tried to spook off my buddy from looking for a girl, or at least that's what I thought at first but than they walked off...walked. Vampires don't walk, the cement hurts their dainty feet so they must not be vampires but obviously some kind of undead. What's another name for zombies? Walkers! Hey, they were walking! Must be zombies then and where do zombies congregate to avoid notice? Horror-movie conventions where people applaud their awesome make-up skills and people think a zombie attack is just part of the pageantry of the event. Didn't a bus drive by saying there was a zombie convention in town right after the zombies walked off?"

:smallbiggrin:

The rest of my party stared at me liked I had started speaking in tongues and the GM did as well for a moment then decided I had actually gotten to the convention center before the other party members since I had disappeared right after the bus incident and hadn't been seen for the longest time and since Petrokov's logic was so 'obvious' that I must have been making my way to the convention center the entire time. The rest of the PCs found me arguing with the cashier that I was the janitor and supposed to be in there cleaning right then and there (despite looking like a hobo) and, when that failed tried to smash a brick through the glass door after explaining my mission. he threatened to call the police, the bag man fled...and just climbed up the side of the building and encountered the real janitor...so the bag man apologized profusely, knocked him out, stole his clothes, and promptly began to mop the floors since it had occurred to me (the player) that there's no way smart kidnappers would keep their hostage in such a public place and I obviously had come to the wrong place, might as well make sure the real janitor didn't lose his job!

...I left the other PCs very confused about what I was intending to do with this character since none of them know what he can do or what he will do...I also made the realization later on with that with the Bag Man's powers and abilities that he was practically a GM Deus Ex Machina except in the control of a player totally on board with making the game awesome in the odd ways.

SimonMoon6
2014-05-19, 11:06 AM
I remember this 3.0 game where the DM was a total ****. We each had our own ways of dealing with it.

One player gave up trying to have a cool character and just made a grave-digger wielding a shovel. His name was Barry (get it? Barry as in "bury"?).

Well, my cool PC got screwed over as well. My idea behind my original character was to try to make the best of multi-classing in a non-synergistic way (after having had overly efficient characters before), so I made a cleric/rogue who took an obscure prestige class that would give him some minor but cool abilities to make up for things. Several problems: (1) I was specializing in UMD tricks, so the DM made this a "low magic" game (we weren't warned in advance of course), (2) Sneak attack was my main way of dealing damage, so the DM made sure that everything we fought was undead, and (3) this cute obscure prestige class let the DM choose which spell-like abilities I'd get; a sane DM would let such a weak and under-performing character get *good* abilities, but he went out of his way to choose the most useless ones possible.

So, I had enough and made a new character, a 3.0 cleric archer, pulling out all the stops.

But because this was a game where you'd never get anything close to WBL, my character was a beggar. He maxed out on Profession (beggar)... might as well, since all Professions pay exactly the same. And his equipment list was specifically pathetic (a bit of old string, a shiny rock, etc) as I wasn't sure the DM would allow anything of actual value to be possessed. And I had a cool beggar miniature that I painted up as nice as possible.

I got to spend a lot of time begging (and making money), though the king whose quest we were on was trying to discourage me as it didn't look right to have beggars in the street.

This may not have been the strangest character, but the motivations for making it sure were.

Defiled Cross
2014-05-19, 12:24 PM
My brother played a Paladin whose thirst could not be slated.

He would regularly be seen drinking from puddles when on the adventuring trail.

:smallbiggrin:

AdmiralCheez
2014-05-19, 04:35 PM
I just remembered the very first campaign I was in. We weren't strange character concepts per se, but the DM did make us roll on a chart of random phobias. I was a cleric who was afraid of the homeless, we had a summoner who was afraid of shellfish, the rogue was afraid of sharp objects, and the barbarian was afraid of nudity.

Judge_Worm
2014-05-19, 08:27 PM
Does a Half-Dragon Beholder Lich psion 22/fighter 10/cleric 10 god count? It was an epic level game where we killed off all the gods and had to take their place. I became the god of torture, justice, fair court, and punishment. My domains were law, domination, mind, and knowledge. My main temple was an entire plane turned into a library, my followers could debate the trivialities in a case of jaywalking until a dragon died of old age. My alignment was best described as true law, a poorly built house might send Haavaah into a frenzy that caused him to wipe the entire nation the house was in out of existence. I demanded perfection, or else.

GuesssWho
2014-05-30, 05:30 PM
If anyone wants to reuse character ideas, or has a new one, I have a thread that might interest you here (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?352696-Truly-Bizarre-Characters-3-5).

Plerumque
2014-05-31, 01:57 PM
I played a flying Gelatinous Cube once. The DM let me stack the Sentry Ooze template twice, so I ended up with a 20+ Charisma and made a sorcerer. We were going to buy him a fancy hat and make him the party face, but the game died before that could happen, sadly.

BWR
2014-05-31, 02:15 PM
A sentient, mobile xerox machine called Zzzzzz-DONK!.

Alex12
2014-05-31, 09:22 PM
Toss-up.
One 3.5 campaign (that withered and died) had a psionic anthropomorphic murder of ravens. Like, it was just a flock of ravens, but it just arranged the ravens into a vaguely humanoid shape. Oh, and it had Vow of Poverty and a habit of making utterly insane Autohypnosis rolls. We had a houserule that you can substitute Autohypnosis for all your saves against poison (based on a misreading of the actual rules) and another party member wanted to figure out how this creature's biology worked. By feeding him everything, up to and including broken glass.

The other one, also 3.5, was a Neanderthal Dread Necromancer. Illiterate and functionally retarded, but with incredible charisma and strength. You don't often see illiterate arcanists.

GuesssWho
2014-05-31, 10:05 PM
Has anyone else here used the Pathfinder race-making rules?