Post the worst player-characters you can come up with

[NNescio]

How to ruin player immersion 101.

Make a Tibbit Warblade and/or Barbarian, maintain Cat form. Never be not a cat, so you can never communicate with your party members. During combat you Rage and stack on as much STRENGTH and CON as you can. You use maneuvers such as CRUSHING WEIGHT OF THE MOUNTAIN, and COMET THROW, and my favorite for the tibbit, DEATH FROM ABOVE. The rest of your party sees a house cat flip out and utterly wreck opponents.

Bonus: If you're a crusader tibbit you can be an INDESTRUCTIBLE cat.

Alternatively, be a wizard. Take ocular spell. Be a cat shooting lasers out of your eyes.

Speaking about tibbits...

Tibbit Focused Nekoromancer 3*/ Dread Nekoromancer 1†/Focused Nekoromancer 1/Ultimate Magus 5/True Nekoromancer 10‡

* Dropping Evocation, Enchantment, and Abjuration.
† Practiced Spellcaster is needed here.
‡ Uses Arcane Disciple (Death) to qualify and Southern Spellcaster to advance both sides.

Familiar: Raven

Also has the Surrogate Spell feat.

[Anonymouswizard]

Speaking about tibbits...

Tibbit Focused Nekoromancer 3*/ Dread Nekoromancer 1†/Focused Nekoromancer 1/Ultimate Magus 5/True Nekoromancer 10‡

* Dropping Evocation, Enchantment, and Abjuration.
† Practiced Spellcaster is needed here.
‡ Uses Arcane Disciple (Death) to qualify and Southern Spellcaster to advance both sides.

Familiar: Raven

Also has the Surrogate Spell feat.

Nekoromancers, either they date cats or they only raise cats, I'm not sure.

[ThinkMinty]

Nekoromancers, either they date cats or they only raise cats, I'm not sure.

Why not both?

[Nerd-o-rama]

A Tibbit is fine too.

[Altrunchen]

Okay I got something after all this time that I was actually allowed to do.

It was a Gelatinous Cube bard named "WAAAARGH!".

Stay with me now.

The DM house-ruled it so that my character could be intelligent enough to do well...anything.

What's more is that I explained its ability to perform bardic music by saying that it would vibrate itself in such a way that it would create compression-waves in the air, thereby letting it create sounds like "WAAAAAAAAARGH" and so on.

When we arrived at a town (after it dined on the various bugs and whatnot in the grass) we were told that the town had all sorts of guilds in it. In fact the DM went out of their way to say that there was a guild for everything in this town.

Poor DM.

I had WAAAARGH! go to the guild of "Pies, Ladies, and Swag". Unfortunately it turned out to just be some dude's basement.

Still though, got to play jellybard.

If that's not one of the worst character ideas out there I don't know what is.

[TheGreyWolf1600]

Thri-Kreen Ranger. I made one once. Haven't played it yet. It has four arms. I gave it a wall shield, gladius, jambiya, and great scimitar. Used wall shield and gladius in lower arms, great scimitar and jambiya in upper arms. Uses hide armor. I know, "I'm a munchkin". I try to avoid it, but hey, I made this guy in sixth grade.

[Mono Vertigo]

In a FATE Accelerated game, revolving around our party of monsters, I had the only non-humanoid one: a phase spider paladin.
As in, a phase spider that picked up a dead adventurer's equipment, decided it wanted to defend the cause of its fellow monsters, and went around, communicating telepathically with people in a needlessly chivalrous kind of language. It tried to be polite towards classic "hero" races.
(The bits of armor, the shield and the sword were haphazardly stuck to the phase spider's body, with no clue of the function of most parts or the closest anatomical equivalent, using webbing.)

You might wonder what's the synergy between a sneaky teleporting huge spider with a poisonous bite, and a knight protecting their peers. There's none. One of its aspects was "no concept of personal space", because that's what spiders do, especially ones for whom space is only a suggestion from reality; imagine a very friendly-sounding, humongous goddamn spider, only half-sealed in a can - and that's only because it wanted to - walking up behind you and looking over your shoulder and grabbing your arm with its chitinous legs, merely because it is curious about what you're doing.
Its main perks were its zealousness in providing justice to monsterkind, its stubbornness, its social awkwardness, and its insistence that any equipment was good enough for it and mysteriously finding ways of wearing it (thus potentially turning it eventually into a tank of mismatched armors, weapons and accessories, with perhaps a few cursed items in there).
Its name was Ser Shimongraz *mumblessomethingsomethingcan'tremembersomethingth ere'salotmumble* the XIth, who was allegedly "a little small for its kind", and never clarified its gender.

The game died quickly, but the highlights the character provided included a great success at signing an adventurer contract (when you're a spider who can puppeteer anything with creative use of webs, you might turn out to have excellent calligraphy), and reverting to a foaming, screeching - but not attacking! - monster when the recruiter insists on the monstrous characteristics of the targets that need killing in order to complete a mission.

I think I would like to pick up this horrible, hilarious, well-meaning mistake of a character again someday.

On another note, I'm arachnophobic. This informed a large quantity of Ser Shimongraz' aspects.

[Velaryon]

A necromancer who can only raise old topics on forms.

Oh wait, looks like somebody made one of those already.


How about an awakened house cat barbarian/frenzied berserker? Yes, someone played this in a one-shot game I was in.

[TheGreyWolf1600]

I have some concepts.

1). The meta-bard. Whenever making a perform check, the player would turn on some classic rock band, and that is the song they play.

2). Freddie Mercury: Bard, that just happens to look like him. Wait, that's too awesome...

3). Sir Didymus: Werewolf fighter, cavalier kit, has the "tiny" disadvantage. Rides a large-ish dog that is loosely based off of one of the player's pets.

4). A 2e wizard: I don't think I have to say much more on this one.

5). The Rogue (wakfu): Uses longsword, hand cannons, boomerang daggers, flaming barbed wire whip, and dresses in black. http://wakfu.wikia.com/wiki/Rogue

6). Elven vampire cleric: Dual wields maces, chain mail, specializes in health steal or something similar.

7). Any My Little Pony character converted to D&D stats somehow.

[Spore]

Did someone already mention an undead cleric that turn itself? :D

[Lord Raziere]

any Zenith Caste Solar Exalted with the charms specifically made for seducing people and having the greatest sex ever. Your one of the most charismatic and enduring people ever, chosen for your unbending righteousness and morals.....and you choose the charms that do nothing but let you sleep with anyone. I mean, morals aside, its still kind of an odd choice given that there other charms that far more useful and widely applicable and aren't subject to the Red Rule. granted there are only like, two or three of those charms in 3e, but still, to reach those charms you have to specialize in doing those things specifically, you have build your character to focus on that, its not something you pick up casually. I kid you not, you have make a specific character build to become the greatest seductress/seducer in all of Creation. bonus points if you take the "selective conception" merit to choose whether you get pregnant or not rather than leaving it to chance.....so you can ensure you get pregnant every time.

but basically any character concept involving sex is basically the worst: Martian Julandri Courtesan (Rocket Age, they're a martian caste whose only right is to produce children how they wish), anything from Encyclopaedia Arcane: Nymphology (Mongoose entertainment for Dnd 3.5), I'm sure you can think of other examples.

A Superhero whose power is "curse people with Silver Age nonsense" you don't do anything useful, you just make Silver Age covers real so that superheroes become jerks for no reason.

A superhero whose power is "defeat people with the power of memes". your name is Memelord. you have to defeat villainy. With memes.

Krugg the Orc Paladin. Unfailingly follows the paladin code. Somehow always mishears or otherwise is ignorant or too dumb to figure out the other party members doing anything against it, and thus somehow always upholds it without knowing any better.

a pokemon trainer whose goal is to become a pokemon. must have at least have one pokemon earband and speak their desired pokemons name after every sentence. bonus points for a full costume of desired pokemon. more bonus points for walking around in nature in that pokemon costume eating berries. even more bonus points for having a class that grants you actual pokemon moves that you use while in the costume. lots more bonus points for owning only the pokemon you want to become and trying to speak to them in pokespeak. if you actually succeed in turning into a pokemon? you win.

[Anonymouswizard]

but basically any character concept involving sex is basically the worst: Martian Julandri Courtesan (Rocket Age, they're a martian caste whose only right is to produce children how they wish), anything from Encyclopaedia Arcane: Nymphology (Mongoose entertainment for Dnd 3.5), I'm sure you can think of other examples.

The one time I got a GM to scream no was when I threatened to play a Pornomancer in Unknown Armies.

[Rater202]

a pokemon trainer whose goal is to become a pokemon. must have at least have one pokemon earband and speak their desired pokemons name after every sentence. bonus points for a full costume of desired pokemon. more bonus points for walking around in nature in that pokemon costume eating berries. even more bonus points for having a class that grants you actual pokemon moves that you use while in the costume. lots more bonus points for owning only the pokemon you want to become and trying to speak to them in pokespeak. if you actually succeed in turning into a pokemon? you win.

Doesn't one of the two related Pokemon Tabletop (Third Word) games have a late game option where you kill one of the Legendary Pokemon to become said Legendary Pokemon?

[Lord Raziere]

Doesn't one of the two related Pokemon Tabletop (Third Word) games have a late game option where you kill one of the Legendary Pokemon to become said Legendary Pokemon?

CONGRATULATIONS!!! YOU WON ALL THE POKEFURRY LEVELS!

[The Jack]

Also, Sam Haight is pretty much this thread for WoD, yup.

No, no, no... As BS as the character might be, he was a well-aware joke, and would've facilitated an interesting player who really wanted to do things.

I've had worse. Times where I'd rather be running Samuel Haight. WoD is a minefield for those who don't get it. Even if you keep vamp players to the core Cammy clans or otherwise heavily restrict them, it's way possible for them to go full retard, even if they didn't dive into Malkavians, Brujah or Toreador. I've had a new guy go straight into nosferatu hacker and still **** that up.

I've taken characters into settite cults and infernalism because they didn't have the brains not to.

But Werewolf... Now werewolf is a ****ing minefield. You can't really get the nuance of it into a new player; every ****ing tribe is a satire of something, and no player wants a half hour talk on how the many shades of black fury man-hating, but new players seem to love doubling down on how ****ing retarded their tribe can be.

But werewolves playing against type:
A silver fang galiard with high purebreed that wants to avoid battle and results and just wants to stay pretty and raise children

A shadow lord that's really a massive wuss and who got into the tribe putting on a brave face This one went spiral and betrayed the sept

[Andor13]

Well, I did see a guy try to play a fighter with no thumbs.

In a Star Wars campaign we had a bounty hunter whose player couldn't come up with a name. For two years. I started calling him "Gun That Walks" and he liked it, so he became G.T. Walks and then we had a running sub-quest to find out what his initials stood for. He also wound up having a thing for cross species porn, which went weird when we hijacked an imperial news channel relay station.

[SimonMoon6]

This is a character I had the (un)pleasure of playing alongside.

He was a Drow, raised on the surface by some random ass human farmers. "Like Superman" is how it was described.

That reminds me of a drow character from one of my 1st edition games. (I don't consider this character one of the "worst" but others might disagree.)

This was when that new book Unearthed Arcana had just come out for 1st edition. And there was a certain issue of Dragon magazine that was a crucial supplement as there were some misprints that were corrected in that issue, and the magazine gave us a correct table for what kinds of multi-classed characters were possible. (Remember, back then, if you were multi-classed, you got all your classes all at once.) One of the possible multi-classing possibilities for a drow was "CMT" (abbreviations used for the name of each class).

So, this one player made a Cavalier/Magic-User/Thief.

Now, of course, that CMT entry was *supposed* to be Cleric/Magic-User/Thief. But I didn't realize that at the time. So, this player got to play a drow cavalier/magic-user/thief. One of the players jokingly suggested that this character would joust somebody and then, as he was riding by, pick the guy's pocket. (That, of course, never happened.)

Why does this remind me of a "like Superman" drow? Well, this character's name was Elwryn Callistern, which I immediately saw as "El. Cal.", which is kind of like Kal-El (aka Superman). So, I played up on this, and had all the other drow killed (because all other Kryptonians wer killed) by a strange creature that infected the Underdark with some sort of magical radiation, creating green glowing rocks that had devastating effects on nearby drow (which now meant just this one PC). The name of this substance was "Cripple Night" (to sound like Kryptonite).

[SimonMoon6]

One of the more ridiculous characters that a player suggested to me for a superhero game was this:

The character is an alien who happens to look like a starfish with seven arms. But that's just his secret identity. When it's time for action, he transforms into his superheroic identity of a fish.

Now, this fish has one really useful power: he can control and animate water. So, the character concept would basically be a fish swimming inside water that he brings with him to the fight. But he would control the shape of the water so that it would look like a humanoid. So, he'd be a fish swimming around inside a humanoid shape made of water. The idea would be that most opponents would think that the water was the hero, so they'd attack the water instead of the fish.

Now, it might sound clever and creative (which it sort of is), but it was all designed to take advantage of certain game mechanics. As a fish, he would be really tiny, so that opponents would have a hard time hitting him if they even realized that they should attack him. Plus, this game system had a particular power for being an aquatic hero that let you have a really great DEX for really cheap, but it only worked while you were in water. Naturally, this PC would *always* be in water, so he'd always get that super great DEX (along with being really tiny), so that nobody would ever be able to hit him, even if they thought to attack him instead of the water elemental that he was riding around inside.

[Anonymouswizard]

Honourable mentions: any character intended to stereotype another player's nationality (never seen it played, but I was close to it at one point), any character that shares the GM's name.

[CantigThimble]

Once we had an entire party that deserves to go on here (all at level 1):

Bestial Waste - Dragonborn bard of heavy metal (with kiss makeup) who refused to use any support abilities because people should do things for themselves.

Donaldius Trumpion - Wizard, his father gave him a small loan of a million gold pieces which he spent on copies of his book: "The Art of the Spell". He tried to get people to take a copy at every opportunity.

The Weed Druid - I think he had a name. He never did much besides do drugs and cast fog cloud. Don't try his goodberries while on the job.

Naphazaw - Deranged hermit-monk who communicated only in grunts, pointing and beating the **** out of people. He had the healer feat and saved a random stranger after another PC collapsed their house. After that he was affectionately referred to as 'Hobo-Jesus'.

The Edgy Elf Ranger - The one guy taking everything, especially himself, way too seriously for the game he was in. Immediately hated everyone else.

Donaldius Trumpion and Bestial Waste died in the first adventure, I think both of them via teamkills. They were replaced by a Vengeance Paladin and a Tempest Cleric devotee of Micheal Bay. He specialized in explosions. And by 'specialized' I mean literally never did anything that could not be called an explosion.

[MesiDoomstalker]

That reminds me of a drow character from one of my 1st edition games. (I don't consider this character one of the "worst" but others might disagree.)

The problem was, besides being raised by farmers the Drow in question had nothing in common with Superman. He wasn't an alien, he wasn't uber-powerful (even if his player tried to make him sound like he was), he didn't have a superior moral compass (despite his player insisting he did, his actions were in direct clash with the player's actual decisions and actions). It was a disingenuous, contradictory 'Not like Other Drow' Drow who was just like other Drow but got to be mopy for being treated like the underwear-stain he was played as.

[Anonymouswizard]

The problem was, besides being raised by farmers the Drow in question had nothing in common with Superman. He wasn't an alien, he wasn't uber-powerful (even if his player tried to make him sound like he was), he didn't have a superior moral compass (despite his player insisting he did, his actions were in direct clash with the player's actual decisions and actions). It was a disingenuous, contradictory 'Not like Other Drow' Drow who was just like other Drow but got to be mopy for being treated like the underwear-stain he was played as.

Yeah.

Although I do have a NLOD drow character I want to play at some point. Spoilered because, well, it's not actually a bad character.

Spoiler

Show

So female drow wizard, maybe wizard/cleric. If 5e specifically Wizard (divination)/Cleric (knowledge).

The first bit is that she actually wears clothes. Specifically loose trousers, a shirt, and a fairly loose jacket. Plus a farmer's hat to deal with sunlight sensitivity.

Also incredibly loyal (and lawful). She's on the surface because her superior/owner asked her to do something that requires her to be there for a long time, and a big part of her story is supposed to be whether to stay with the society she's been raised to be loyal to, or to break ties and join a society she can feel better about being loyal to.

Also meant to be fairly plain looking, not ugly but not actually attractive, and fairly socially awkward due to having essentially been raised as a slave.

[TheGreyWolf1600]

The problem was, besides being raised by farmers the Drow in question had nothing in common with Superman. He wasn't an alien, he wasn't uber-powerful (even if his player tried to make him sound like he was), he didn't have a superior moral compass (despite his player insisting he did, his actions were in direct clash with the player's actual decisions and actions). It was a disingenuous, contradictory 'Not like Other Drow' Drow who was just like other Drow but got to be mopy for being treated like the underwear-stain he was played as.

Technically, you're wrong on one thing. The alien bit. Being a race that live underground and have estranged themselves from the surface folk, Drow would technically count as an alien race. If you look up the definition of "Alien", it is literally "A foreigner, especially one who is not a naturalized citizen of the country where they are living." So they are alien in that sense.

[Spore]

Didn't even mention my first PF character. Ferrin, the _almost_ successful thief. In a game engine where specialization is key, he kind of took everything equally. The result was a character that just BARELY failed in everything he did (and he really sucked at Diplomacy, trying to seduce women adressing them with: Hey, momma).

Then you'd get pitted into a group with a LNish Paladin (as in, Law > Good) and a Fey Sorcerer, that is uselss against undead and play the sneak attack class with the mindset that "sneaking up on people takes too much time so I'll attack up front". Tada, you got a recipe for desaster.

[Wardog]

What about Senor Vorpal Kickass'o, a level 1 goblin with 1/11 of a level of every class.
http://goblinscomic.wikia.com/wiki/Fumbles
http://goblinscomic.com/comic/09022005

[BBQ Pork]

Maybe not the worst possible choice, but a Kender Barbarian would incur hate.

[Anonymouswizard]

Maybe not the worst possible choice, but a Kender Barbarian would incur hate.

We had kender back on the first page

[PhoenixPhyre]

I'm most bothered by people who make characters that have no reason to be there.

The one who just wants to be a merchant in a "heroic heroes doing heroic things" and has no relevant abilities.
The one who has allergies to working together and constantly abandons/backstabs the party in a "team tactics"-balanced game. (yes, this works in OotS, because it's a comic not a real game).

Etc.

[PastorofMuppets]

For a short lived do anything you want superhero game. Hench-Man. A normal guy with the power to turn into several normal guys. Any mundane gear he had was copied along with him like normal weapons, radios bulletproof vests and such but no “cool stuff”. No handing him the doomsday bomb making him split and have 10 doomsday bombs.

Also he had a drawback that the copies can’t merge back together. Henchmen are disposable so the only way to get rid of extras was for them to die off leading more than a few times to a “thinning out the herd” moment so the team could fit in a transport.

Had some fun moments of him disabling enemy turrets by sending wave after wave of himself at the things till they ran out of ammo, playing games of minesweeper minor life insurance scams and so on.

[GuesssWho]

For a short lived do anything you want superhero game. Hench-Man. A normal guy with the power to turn into several normal guys. Any mundane gear he had was copied along with him like normal weapons, radios bulletproof vests and such but no “cool stuff”. No handing him the doomsday bomb making him split and have 10 doomsday bombs.

Also he had a drawback that the copies can’t merge back together. Henchmen are disposable so the only way to get rid of extras was for them to die off leading more than a few times to a “thinning out the herd” moment so the team could fit in a transport.

Had some fun moments of him disabling enemy turrets by sending wave after wave of himself at the things till they ran out of ammo, playing games of minesweeper minor life insurance scams and so on.

That doesn't sound so bad to me. Possibly traumatizing, but not actually bad per se.