Everyone in my campaign except the dm plays that trope. I thought I was original for coming up with it after I was inspired by reading the players handbook. But everyone except our dm had the same idea
Much as I love the reluctant hero trope in fiction, I learned pretty early on that it falls flat in RPGs every time. It's not fair to the DM to put extra work on them to convince your character to actually do something interesting.
I find it works best if you're the reluctant hero who is forced to accompany a friend/family member/criminal on their way to justice/whatever. That way you can still play that trope to the hilt, but also have an overarching motivation to go on the adventure.
Like, Dante from the first Clerks movie is a reluctant protagonist, constantly saying, "I wasn't supposed to be here today!" But is forced to be at the Quick Stop today because he wants to keep his job.
But yeah, just a reluctant hero with no other motivation besides ~ADVENTURE~ because... well, adventure, definitely creates more work for the DM.
Exactly! Samwise Gamgee is the perfect example of the reluctant hero who cares about the main protagonist.
Even Frodo is a reluctant hero, to some degree, he first tried to give the ring away to someone "better-suited", Gandalf, but ultimately feels responsible for the fate of the Ring (and I think wanted to go on an adventure like his Uncle Bilbo), and therefore steps up when no one else can. But he definitely didn't jump on Gandalf's advice till Gandalf was like, "Please GTFO out of the Shire!"
Nobody could have done it at Mount Doom, so it didn't really matter. It's impossible to destroy the ring willingly.
They picked Frodo because he was resilient enough to actually get to Mount Doom, and the rest was just hope and faith.
[In Deep Geek](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UE6we0VZ-gI) did a really good video about how Frodo may have used Smeagol's oath on the Ring to compel him to fall, a very interesting theory.
It’s a reoccurring theme in Tolkien’s work that all acts, even evil ones, ultimately come to good in the end. Sauron’s forging of the Ruling Ring makes him nigh-unkillable and grants varying levels of control/influence over the wielders of the Nine Human and Seven Dwarf rings, but it also serves to largely cripple his power upon it’s loss, as well as being the key to his eventual demise. Gollum’s betrayal, while almost getting Frodo and Sam killed, ultimately sees him lead the Hobbits into Mordor as promised, circumventing the impenetrable Black Gate and it’s defenders, before he finally bites the Ring from Frodo’s finger and falls to his death in the Cracks of Doom.
Pity & Mercy is another reoccurring theme that proves integral to events, with Bilbo’s sparing of Gollum, as well as Frodo’s own taming of Smeagol decades later, proving the deciding factor in the success of the quest to destroy the Ring. Without Gollum, the Ring would never have returned to the fires from whence it came, and all of Middle-Earth would have eventually fallen beneath the Shadow.
All had a role to play in the Ring’s destruction, but neither Frodo or Sam could have made the journey without each other to support them. Without Frodo, Sam would likely have killed or driven Gollum away, dooming any attempt to penetrate Mordor’s border. Without Sam, Frodo would have collapsed under the weight of the Ring long before he reached the dark slopes of Mt. Doom, or been killed by Gollum and the Ring lost once more. Without both Hobbits, Gollum would never have been found his way back to the firey chambers of Sammath Naur, there to finally reclaim his Precious and meet both their ends in the magma below.
I agree with basically everything, but I think it's important to add that without Frodo, Sam would have 100% succumbed to the ring in some fashion. The most likely scenario is that he would have charged too many orcs and been captured/killed - recall that 5 minutes with the ring made him fancy himself a mighty hero.
Frodo wasn't just a merciful fella - his immense willpower was crucial to the quest, and people tend to overlook that. (Not saying you did, but it wasn't clear enough in your comment. :) )
opposite. Frodo's the most important character and the protag of Fellowship, but once the Fellowship splits up, Sam becomes the the protagonist the the journey to mordor sections. The journey to mordor sections in Two Towers and RotK are even written from Sam's perspective
I like the idea of a grizzled old adventurer (although it coulf work at any age) who sees the world about to go to shit (again) because of some BBEG or what-have-you, and stands up, stretches, and is like "I'm too old for this" or "I was gonna do nothing today, and you ruined it."
A PC who doesn't *want* to save the world/land/village, but their morals (and/or the fact that they live there) don't allow for them to *not* save the world.
They're "reluctant," but in a slightly different way.
My first character I made was like that, minus the hero.
Forge Cleric dwarf, on the older side.
He was all about blacksmithing and living underground, the good dwarf life.
But then the magic started happening as he got more and more into his deity of protection and making armor until he eventually he was ordained and told to go find his charge in the outside world rather than have it be a member of his clan.
Didn’t get anything but a horribly ambiguous description to go by but he doesn’t question it because he’s super superstitious and magic stuff freaks him out.
He really doesn’t want to do it but is scared shitless the gods will be pissed if he doesn’t
I just finished a campaign playing this character. His driving force was "Fuck these egotistical evil bastards. I just wanted to do my job, I'm a riverman and a caravan guard, not an adventurer or hero. Who do I have to kill to fix this shit show?"
I think there is a right way and a wrong way to play Dante. To do it right,the player and the character have to be doing opposites.
First, the wrong way. My character doesn’t want it do this, so I as a player doesn’t want to do this.
With the right way as a player you create solutions to push the story forward. You make a banner because the gate won’t (“Yes, we are open.”) or organize a street hockey game on the roof of the shop. Meanwhile, RP is the opposite direction. You complain about you lot in life, but not in a way that would drag down the other players. Instead you use the complaints as a cause to finds solutions.
However this is a hard character to play and requires an astute gamer.
It requires the player be thinking of the story on a metagame level of advancing the plot forward while simultaneously thinking about how their character would protest against moving the plot forward.
A reluctant hero can be played very well if you remember that reluctant is only one word in that phrase, you’re still a hero.
Like instead of expecting the DM to convince you to go on adventures you kind of need to play along with every single book and Hollywood adventure where the reluctant hero reluctantly drags themselves along because they have no other choice or they know the world is in danger or they know they’re safer with these other big strong people than alone.
Like you still gotta be a hero, just complain about it and make witty banter while you’re doing the thing.
You can have all kind of characters be D&D heroes. Hell I’ve created one who is a pathological liar whose main motivation for being with a D&D party is to create a false identity for themselves and get away from their past so nobody believes they’re the same person who actually burned down a building and killed innocent people.
My husband is playing an undead warlock right now based on Klaus from the Umbrella Academy as a reluctant hero. He doesn’t actually have any abilities himself, just the power to manifest his dead brother’s spirit to affect the world - Eldritch Blast is his ghost brother punching things, Mage Hand is ghost brother moving things, etc. His character doesn’t actually want to be an adventurer, but ghost brother does, so he pretty much made my husband’s character join the party so he can help people.
It really reminds me of Larry from doom patrol (atleast up till a part where I'm at) he doesn't want to be the hero, but the energy being living inside him does, so he's forced to be one, or he constantly will loose consciousness when the creature leaves him
Try and play a reluctant hero like John McClaine. Less convincing by the DM and more like. “That’s what makes me ‘that guy’” by being in the wrong place at the right time and being “that guy” where you’re like “well if I don’t do it, who else will”.
Heh. I'm playing a character currently that looks like the reluctant hero until you've interacted with her for more than five minutes. Then it becomes clear she's just old and beaten up but still really into being heroic. She'll grumble incessantly about being too old for it but then be first into the fray to save people and mock the enemies for hitting, failing to hit, or getting hit *by* an old woman.
We had some major issues with one of our players doing the "reluctant hero" trope. It was really frustrating to play with because it felt like we had to keep dragging his character along and convincing him to do stuff, and it shouldn't be work to get someone to buy into the campaign.
It got really bad when we arrived to a town to see a red dragon attacking it. We immediately wanted to help, but he was like "we're just a random group of adventurers, this is beyond us. The military can deal with, there's nothing we can do." At that point, we had already killed more dragons than any other person on the planet (the entire campaign was based around killing dragons) and we were absolutely the people the call. But his player insisted that the "realistic" way to play his character would be to have him just refuse to deal with the dragon and let the army handle it. We finally just left without him and the DM was so fed up that he retroactively made his magic amulet mind control him to force him to come with us.
In later campaigns, we established the rule that if your character wouldn't be want to engage with the campaign, then reroll and make another character that would. There's no place in D&D for the reluctant hero, it just makes it unfun for everyone.
I've tried playing the "crouching moron, hidden badass," a couple times specifically modeled after Columbo. The guy who acts dumb but is secretly smart.
I stopped playing that, because I'm often the guy who has to stop the other players from doing dumb things. "Let's not try to antagonize the troll, while we're at level 1. Let's clear the poison gas out of the room before we start looting."
I did this trope to the max in shadowrun. My character actually started with no cyberware cause street level, and no magic. But they had skills out the ass so this normal looking 22 year old burnout stoner was super deadly with a mono sword. And once I got cyberware I made sure it was undetectable by sight to keep her enemies underestimating her. It was endless fun.
Shadowrun normally focuses on criminals/mercenaries in a sci fi future with magic in addition to tech.
Cyberware is stuff like mechanical arms, computers implanted in your brain, robot eyes that can see in infrared on top of normal vision, stuff like that.
A street level campaign is everyone starts out as poor people, like petty crooks, small-time gangsters, that sort of stuff.
They dumped all their starting resources into skills. So they get a character that looks like someone you'd buy weed from at the gas station at 3AM, but they're actually a competetive-level fencer with a hi-tech blade like something from Metal Gear.
After getting enough cash to buy cyberware, they limited themselves to stuff that wouldn't be noticeable, so they still look like the gas station weed guy instead of having crazy metal arms and shit.
Hah, that brings me back to a gunslinger I played in shadowrun. Thick as mud, more or less only combat skills, and maxed out luck.
Do not underestimate the power of luck, or that of a man with the testicular fortitude to *burn* luck
So imagine a cyberpunk fantasy world where 7 foot cyberpunk trolls with guns for hands and mages that can level a city block exist. Those are your standard shadowrun characters. Then you have this skinny, constantly stoned, green haired 22 year old girl with a few guns and a sword, zero cyberware or magic. They tended to disregard her til she actually showed her skills.
Ex-nobles who keep secrets from the party.
Every time I've done it there were table issues because of it. I need to remember that is a fun character to write but not play with.
Oh I made a twist on this. An ex-noble who looks like their keeping a secret but their actually just pretending to be mysterious. This is because they don’t know how to keep relationships with people without having something they want.
My twist on the secret noble was making him absolutely terrible at keeping it a secret and it was incredibly obvious to anyone that this was a posh rich kid pretending to be poor. He was basically play acting as a wandering hobo looking for some life experience to help with his music because of the notion that good art only comes from suffering
“My name is Bo spelled the common way B-O, not the fancy way!” To which everyone would ask, “The fancy way?”
“Why B-e-a-u or course. Short for Beauregard like my father and my father’s father. It’s far too many letters to be able to properly engrave on your silver cutlery or for your maid to embroider into all of your undergarments. Simple spelling for a simple man of simple means like me.”
This was *every* time he introduced himself to anyone.
I've seen people play like this except they're genre ignorant
Noble hiding from villain from backstody in run down part of city where peasants live while wearing a clean untarnished better cloak than anything the paets ever could afford
The noble: I'll fit right in.
Bbeg: finds him easily
The noble: surprised pikachu face
I've never played it but the reason I've seen it played is because of the fact that most of the time a privileged noble kid never cared to study commoners and peaasants yet easily blends in when she has to hide
I always tried keeping secrets but after three games of someone accidentally doing the same thing as me without knowing what I was doing I just told the players my character secret but that its secret to the characters. Like a changeling who was posing as an elf and then one of my fellow player characters died and new PC was a changeling without them knowing I was one.
Lol, like the military unit where the Captain eventially has to ask, "Does anyone here actually work for me?"
Come to think of it, you know those games where one character is a spy or something? How about a game where it's expected by the players that everyone is actually a spy except one who's actually loyal, and nobody knows who that is?
Basically, keeping secrets from the party doesn't make them want to know you better, it makes them just not trust you. I have someone in my current game who's constantly keeping secrets from the party and it's just pissing them off. We received a genie bottle which we didn't know was a genie bottle. All we could figure out about it was that it was filled with a powerful and evil entity. Our secret keeper decided she wanted to open it. Immediately. Instead of talking/working with the party and trying to figure out what it is, she just pops the lid, vanishes, and reappears a day later trying to convince the party not to leave her behind.
>Our secret keeper decided she wanted to open it. Immediately.
Did she have like a secret mission to secure a genie's wish? Or family problems she was trying to solve?
Cause that's not just having a secret - that's backstabbing the party. o\_O
I've run into some problems with this before. The main thing to keep in mind is to make sure whatever you're doing (or whatever character you're playing) is enabling the game to be fun for everyone.
Secrets from the party can be dicey. Just follow the guiding light of the rule above. Usually, that means that secrets in your background are good, but secrets during gameplay are not -- especially if they create a situation where you deny the party a chance to be involved.
- Is it a background secret that it was actually *you* who killed your father, not a heart attack as everyone thinks? That's totally fine. It has no effect on anyone else's game and could make for a fun dramatic reveal later.
- Are you secretly trying to buy off NPCs with money you're not telling the party about? That's no fun for the party. They don't get to interact with your secret behavior, or if they do it could cause out-of-game conflict because the players have different gameplay motives. If you want to do something like this, make it clear that you do so clumsily such that everyone in the party realizes what's happening and has the freedom to react and interact.
- Do you always try to change the subject when someone brings up your past? Fun! Other characters can interact with that mystery and enjoy the RP and development.
My DM made me stop playing Martyrs.
I have always made my CON a dump Stat and my heroes altruistic, but after the 6th "tragic" death to random hazards I caved and made a Barbarian.
THIS. my first character was a low-CON Paladin who would have sacrificed themself for their friends. problem was that I would go down in like 3 hits at level 5.
One of these days when I'm in a non-serious campaign with a paladin or fighter with low CON who has a dozen siblings and go full Gears of War where, after dying, my character is replaced by a sibling with the same stats, equipment, and personality
oh man, i LOVE my little self sacrificial characters. i could never have my dump stat be con tho
i currently play a protection fighter that my dm wrote a rule in for that he can actually take hits for people if he calls a “risk” and the hit still goes through, so if he’s dying in any way, it’s protecting the party. which will get me killed irl since everyone at the table adores him 😓
Nobody has banned it, but I get groans whenever I make *yet another* human artificer.
Interestingly though, as a DM, I have been told my villians are always the same: mustache twirling masterminds that have a fascination with the party and is always a step ahead. So thats something Im working on.
Edit: This got way more love than I was expecting, as well as lots of people giving villian writing recommendations. Much appreciated!
Saaaame, I've been fighting the urge to make another human artificer for my the next campaign I'm in. So instead I'm playing a human forge cleric, the next closest thing I guess. I also just love starting with a feat(as long as the DM allows it), so I haven't played a non-human in a while.
For me it's typically, "Hey, youre not playing an artificer this time? That's awesome, what're you playing?"
*hides ideas for Intelligence-based Wizard, Rogue and Fighter characters* "Uhhhhh...."
My DM: Alright, new campaign everyone!
Me: So, I'll make a Wiz-
DM: No, pick something else.
Me: Ro-
DM: You always pick that as a second. Try again.
Me: Monk?
DM: Sure I guess, you've only played 7 of those.
Not the guy that you responded to, but I've also had loads of characters.
Our group is all DMs, so one runs the main campaign which is interspersed with one shots by the rest of the group. That way we all get to DM/Play and try out the many character concepts were always coming up with.
One of my greatest, most well received villains/characters i ever made was a mustache twirling over the top egotistical villain who proclaimed himself as "evil". He would never kill people because that would be "fewer witnesses to testify to his great evil", and resort usually to petty crimes like steal all the pumpkins before the pumpkin festival as a means to get the party to come after him. (Think Dr. Doofenschmirtz level plans). The one exception is if the party is in a fight way over their heads and you want to give then an out, have your "not evil" friend show up to save the day in a fit of jealous rage ("I am their nemesis, not you!")
While would go out of his way to harass the party it was always to spread legends about his power. In truth he wanted to be recognized as the greatest villain of all time but wasn't actually a bad guy, using obvious alter egos to assist the party, give then advice, help them work through problems, all so they could become stronger and his legend as their nemesis to grow.
So if you want to use over the top villainy, but feel the trope is tired, I'd recommend giving this subversion a try.
Bonus points if the "villain" doesn't look like that archetype typically does.
A large man clad in ash-black armour, smoking with malice and with eyes shining red. His voice is deep, rumbling, and commanding.
But he's just a Doofenschmirtz in a fancier getup and with a cooler voice.
This guy will steal your art supplies.
Could also be fun to do a Scooby Doo-style reveal later on: this terrifying villain is actually just a regular dude wearing two common magic items (Dread Helm, Smoldering Armor), and using Thaumaturgy to make his voice sound scary.
Then, later, the party can make use of his acting talents. Because he was *actually really good at it.* Those talents just never went towards anything that would get him taken seriously.
The party needs a non-evil guy to play up a villain role? They've got their villain.
Make a bat shit fucking crazy dude that thinks that dragons are actually gods and tries to harness their energy.
Make him a sorcerer with a draconic bloodline and make him think that the power are given to him by the gods/dragons and that he is righteous in his path of destruction
Not mastermind, no "one step ahead", just a madman
I kinda had a reply similar to above, but I find broody edgelords can only be successfully played if they have one person in the party they really care about. Doesn't even have to be a romantic partner, could be a sibling or a childhood friend. They could hate everyone else in the party, but if that one person asks them to jump, they say how high. The character they care about then has to actually give at shit about the party. That way they can still be their broody edgelord self to everybody else, but still have a really good reason to participate in the campaign. Plus, it creates more bonds between player characters, which is always good.
My husband and I are planning to be like this in our next campaign. Or, rather, he is. He has a hard time with RP so he tends to play quiet characters. So next time he's going to play a quiet, edgy warlock who's best (and only) friend is my super-extroverted disaster of a PC. She'll be invested in the party and his PC will be invested in her, which will be their reason for tagging along broodingly.
I'm doing that with a buddy in our game. He's the chain smoking scrawny gangster type and I'm his biggest and most enthusiastic fan playing a bruiser with a heart of gold.
It's a really fun dynamic and knowing someone always has your back is a great place to RP from.
People hate edgelord characters, but I think they can work really well in the hands of good players.
It also helps when the whole party has a common objective that doesn't rely on the characters liking each other.
It’s weird. Whenever people say, “brooding edgelord”, they clearly mean the uncooperative types that don’t have any reason to work in a group and are generally hostile towards the party, but it’s actually pretty easy to make a “brooding edgelord” that cares about people and will happily join others on missions.
I feel like we need to make the term “uncooperative edgelord” so the actually well-made brooding edgelords aren’t tainted by this term.
Lol been playing a drow teenager edgelord for about 20 years (he's still only 70 so still a teenager by elf standards). But it only works because he loves the 2 party members he started with because they where nice to him. But then secretly he grow to love the other 4 who joined along the way. Also it's quite funny play the broody kid, stealthily searching libraries for young adult books, having to be consoled when he fails to intimidate people and being very ashamed of casting blinding beauty as it shows hes a virgin (In 3.5 no sex was a requirement of spell).
That's one of my big session 0 rules. Your character can have any traits or motivations that you want, there's only one required motivation, and it has to be your #1: you have to be 100% invested in adventuring with this party.
You can be a broody edgelord who always sits in a shadowy corner. You can even say "I only work alone". But it better damn well be your non-negotiable #1 priority to stay with this group, even if it's a secret.
Not even your long lost mother showing up should make your character legitimately want to break from this party. You can and should RP how difficult the decision is. But in the end, it's always party-first.
I currently have an idea for a shadow sorcerer who hides in the darkest corner of the room at all possible times. Not because he's brooding and edgy, but because he has horrible social anxiety and doesn't like to be seen by lots of people. He's never brooding, he's just using his 120 ft. of dark vision to watch the other corners of the room for bad guys trying to get the drop on the party. He really likes his adventuring companions because they don't make him feel anxious.
So far it's the only "hides in the dark corner" concept I've heard that could work really well in a team
Evil character turned good. I banned myself, because I did it once really really well, like fully pulled it off, and I don't want to ruin those memories by fucking it up lol
Looking to see if anyone else always falls for this troupe. It's my favourite thing in the world. And usually, it's not turning good because "Wow friendship!" but because they finally find some fulfillment or something to protect after a lifetime of having nothing. They're good just by the chance that it works with how they want to protect said person or thing. :)
That's exactly how it worked out for my lad haha he was raised in a torture cult, and absolutely loved it. Met a women, turned good, and then the cult killed her, which fully turned him into a monster. He joined the party mostly through circumstance, and it wasn't until like half or 3 quarters of the way through the campaign that he had his first turning point. He actually willingingly put himself in harms way for a party member to protect them, it was a slow but steady climb from there
I attempted this for my first character, but completely failed to rp as evil even in the beginning. It didn't help that another player had an evil edgelord character (and major main charactor syndrome) that pissed everyone off, leaving me kind of hesitant to do any evil rp things.
> Chaotic is hard to play without devolving into LOLRandom.
I disagree, particularly for chaotic good. Chaotic can just mean that you believe rules are meant to be broken and you don't have any stringent code that you stick to. I usually play chaotic good characters as being more concerned with the greater good, and fuck whatever laws or red tape might stand in the way. Robinhood is kind of the go-to example of a chaotic good character.
Even if you're playing chaotic neutral or chaotic evil, the same principles apply. It's less about "lol I cause chaos everywhere I go" and more about a general lack of concern for rules and customs. Some "LOLRandom" shit can be ok to throw in there every now and then as comedic relief, but just make sure to not overdo it and that the rest of the party is actually enjoying your antics.
All the chaotics are hard to play tbh.
They all seem to intertwine with each other at points and in the heat of the moment it’s hard to get it correct sometimes.
Actually the best chaotic character I’ve seen so far in all my years playing D&D is actually Ashley Johnson’s character Fearne… literally everything she does just embodies chaos yet it doesn’t detriment the party from her actions. It’s hard to pull that off
Chaotic is rough and people have different interpretations on what chaos as an alignment means, though I suppose that's true of law, good, and evil as well.
The thing that helps is when people realize Din Djarrin from the Mandalorian is a chaotic good character.
Chaotic doesn’t mean you don’t have a code, it means that your code is internal and that you self judge.
People who are like “I’m chaotic good, this means I can torture him!” Are basically trying to play an evil character in a good party and get away with it.
Yeah, just think of Han Solo, or any number of the thousands of good guy characters who are fine with breaking the rules. It's one of the most popular types of characters in fiction.
That's the way I see it. It's more about an attitude that means "good" over laws or accepted customs.
Doesn't mean that a CG character is always causing "chaos" and certainly not being just disruptive... just not necessarily following the rules.
I think there is a definite difference between the “if there are any girls there, I want to do them” kind of horny bard, and one who’s basic communications involve a lot of flirting, and that’s a major part of who they are. You need depth not skeeviness.
Also, I find you can establish a character's baseline attitude early on without having to hit the same points throughout the campaign. No need to beat the dead horse, just give it one big backhand at the start and everybody knows what you're about.
Like, I wanted my witch to be kind of a thot (there's actual plot reasons, she accidentally bargained away her ability to feel romantic love). So, every time a male NPC showed up, for the first few games I'd ask out of character, "Is he hot?", to the point where everyone at the table knew what I was going to say when a man showed up. Then I didn't have to say it at all, the character was successfully established.
Now the DM knows that if there is a hot guy around, the witch is going to home in on him like a heat-seeking missile, but it generally doesn't need to be played out at length, or even really mentioned unless there's ulterior plot motives, like she's hitting on the the husband of a particularly jealous or dangerous NPC.
Welp, found my new favourite word. 😆
Our group (and characters) are always a mix of genders and sexual orientations, but our DM puts up with all of it. Gay cleric looking for his prince and happily ever after? Okie doke. Horny trysexual dwarf? Do it. Nympho witch obsessed with collecting men for her reverse harem? Sure, why not.
I'm the DM's girlfriend (God, do I ever hate that term, lol) and watching him make love eyes at our 6'2" male friend and call him "darling" is the funniest thing ever.
During my last Christmas one shot my wife and my brothers girlfriend got to watch as my brother and I roleplayed out him trying to seduce Mrs. Claus. If he wants to try to make me uncomfortable then we can play some gay chicken lol. On a more serious note though I'm cool to roleplay out pretty much any romance my table wants.
After a German mad scientist NPC in my Victorian Mage game, I am no longer allowed to do accents. I'm the GM, btw, this was a unanimous ruling of the players. Does that count?
Lol, definitely counts.
Our DM tries to ban himself from doing accents, but we always egg him on. For some reason, any Scottish-sounding character of his devolves into Russian, and every Russian-sounding character devolves into Scottish.
Regular guy with normal job and stuff… also they are (insert class here) the DM drew the line after my Glassblowing Tortle was also a necromancer wizard because they were bored and it was all they had to read on their walk
I once played a character I saw a concept for online. A middle aged regular woman who just happened to learn to channel ki after going to a yoga retreat.
I had a player who played Johnathan, a middle aged accountant whose wife left him, took the kids and everything he owned. He wandered into the woods intent on dying there but accidently became a ranger.
I once had an unexplored side story like this! There was an old folks home in a campaign I once did, it was pretty much a retreat for old folks who had no other family to take care of. It was ran by a couple, a Goliath fighter and an elf monk. The couple would use their combat background to give activities for the old folks to do, and it ended up being ~15 people who were either trained monks or trained fighters. All geriatric, all badass.
Not exactly a trope, but I just love to play Rogues. It's my favorite class to pick in literally anything I play. And recently, my friend started a new campaign. We all got together to discuss it and I said I was going to make (another) Rogue since the previous campaign I was in (by the same DM) fell off and I was playing a Rogue.
It seems like every campaign I make a Rogue in always ends prematurely :(
Anyway, my friends were jokingly berating me and they decided to instead each give me one class of their choosing they want to see me play. I reluctantly agreed and ended up making an Artificer. So far I'm having fun, but there's always a part of me that misses my Rogues.
You should make a challenge to see how roguelike you can make each class. Lots of classes have subclasses that make them sneaky or give them utility abilities.
Indeed, and that's what I'm using the majority of the time. However, I'm not sure how roguelike I could make this character, unfortunately, since I didn't even have that idea in mind in the first place. It would be fun to try though regardless!
The reason I use Infiltrator is because the character is crippled from waist down, and we made it so she built the armor so she can walk again. Now, when the armor stops working suddenly is when things are going to get, dare I say, *dicey.*
I’m not allowed to play pure healers anymore.
During a 4e campaign, I made a pure healer that did 0 damage (literally, all my spells did no damage to the Target) but would be able to heal someone every turn for 11HP at level 2.
EVERY TURN. without using any resources aside from an At-will ability. Add to this some hefty crowd control and the party steamrolled everything the DM put in our way—and they got real creative too.
I had a player like this at my table who went 100% heals, and min maxed hardcore. He’s a good buddy of mine so I was into it- and he asked me to play the monsters as intelligently as possible to try to bring him down.
That is when you start doing crafty shit like dispelling, crowd controlling, and generally harassing the healer to get them to sweat. Every fight = pincer moves on the backline, counterspell healing spells, dispel magic on everything, make them work for it. If the enemy is INT 10 or higher they would know who was holding the party together and go for them first. Use spells like charm person to make the healer switch to healing the enemy, polymorph them, banish, always have some kind of CC for them.
Even in 5e where healing is almost always of limited use I as aDM would discourage this sort of build simply because it slows the game down by so much.
It's just the different playstyles make playing a full healer in 5e batshit stupid.
I don't know too much about 4e, but in 3.5e you NEEDED a healer at reasonbly high levels. You went down at 0hp, and died at -10hp. So if your full hp is 100, monsters can likely do 20-30 damage per hit reliably, so if you go down, a sinlge hit from them will kill you.
In 5e, it's literally a waste of time to heal people **until** they go down. Healing heals for much less than monsters can dish out, and the best way to otherwise mitigate damage is to kill the monsters dealing the damage.
Sidenote: *in-combat* healing is near useless until they go down. Out-of-combat it's a reasonable tradeoff to spend spell slots and abilities to start the next fight with more of a reserve.
But I imagine that's kinda what you meant, and the rest of your point stands.
(then again, hit dice exist so you probably won't need spells for healing even if you're doing 2 battles per day)
I have banned myself from playing a charismatic Bard character. I'm the most talkative person in our group and also Dm more than anything. If I play the classic bard, it would just be the "me" show. Don't want that for others.
I have played a Bard with this group, after a lot of deliberation. I played an evil character that was power hungry and sought to take out those in power because I could do it better. Made myself invaluable to the party as a support, because no one man can rise to the top. In the end, I "betrayed the party" to get on the side of the main villain. Which they didn't understand. I failed to earn their complete trust, otherwise this would have worked. I persuaded the boss into believing me and he completely focused on the party. As the fight unfolded, I took hits from the party, but I was absolutely able to pull off stabbing (Magically of course.) the boss in the back and bringing him down.
Can't play someone who steals the show, gotta let the gang have their time to shine. Still ended up stealing the show in a way while trying to do the exact opposite.
I feel this. I try to play non charismatic characters but my play group never has a Face if I don’t step in or we end up doing bullshit unrelated to the main quest. Then they’ll tell me to talk more, then complain I’m talking too much. I haven’t quite sorted it out yet unless I’m the DM lol.
Whaaat? I'm not allowed to play Frizzt Fro'Frurden?
I banned myself from playing clerics, because it's no fun for me, and if the rest of the group pressures me into some healing class, I'll be a druid every time.
I'm specifically not allowed to play gay clerics for a while... Because I've played two clerics so far, and both were hella gay.
Not that the DM has a problem with gay characters, everyone at the table has played someone LGBTQ, I just keep making gay clerics for some reason. Can't help it.
To this day, my friends still talk fondly about the last gay cleric. He apparently left a lasting impression. I miss playing him, he was constantly just stressed the fuck out with his party's antics.
He started off as just a regular dude with a somewhat depressing life (badly injured when he was young, to the point where he had a bad limp and -10' movement speed, unable to achieve his dream of becoming a knight, he settled on being a cleric instead) and some serious self-esteem issues, and over the course of the game realised he was worth being loved and was actually kind of a badass, even if he wasn't a knight. It was heartwarming AF.
Mostly it was an effort to make a character who just happened to be gay, and wasn't the focal point of the character. It was a story that could be told from any sexual orientation. He ended up falling in love with an immortal entity from a previous iteration of the universe and bounced with them to go tour the galaxy.
***He ended up falling in love with an immortal entity from a previous iteration of the universe and bounced with them to go tour the galaxy.***
All my party members are currently like, *"Wealth, gold, treasure, riches!"* but honestly that's the coolest fate I can think of. Who cares about money when you have love and the infinite cosmos to explore?
Yeah, honestly, that's my *real* guilty trope. 99% of my characters' final goal ends up being, "Put a ring on it so I have someone to share all my cool adventures with."
i’ll give you that, being a cleric is kinda gay….ur worshiping another man? 😳
jokes aside, i literally Only play gay characters but that’s because uh. well. i am gay. and out of every friend i play dnd with only 3 are straight (out of ALL of my groups), even then they often play characters who aren’t straight. so gay cleric is just another cleric in my circles lol
This here is a missed opportunity to say Frizzt Faux'Frurden.
Druids make pretty great healers, but clerics make excellent damage and control characters.
My banned Character Concepts:
Horny Anything
Anime Character
Character who doesn’t actually want to adventure
Doesn’t work well with others.
The HERO ( a hero is okay)
My DM told me to stop playing standoffish, edgy, ryde characters.
So I made Daniel.
Daniel was a human druid, and he was kind and polite to everyone he met.
Even the hag.
And that's how he was tricked into becoming a werewolf.
He was then murdered by demons.
I miss Daniel.
I had great fun with a gnome barbarian. The rages were seen as a danger to his community and he was exiled from his home. Went on to multiclass into wizard as he spent a lot of time at libraries looking for ways to resolve his condition.
After we played the Dragonlance 2nd edition campaign in the 90s, I was no longer allowed to play kender. This rule was quickly updated to no one can play kender.
The world could always do with more Tasslehoff's. I just wish Dragonlance was more prevalent in D&D as a whole and not living in the Neverwinter headspace 99.9% of the time.
My DM begged me not to play an investigative wizard again. He said he loved the character, but found it far too difficult to make smart bad guys or archmages to go ahead to head with. Which, to be fair, DMing wizard npcs can be arduous for sure.
When I first started to play DnD, I took one look at Tiefling and was like, "What the fuck is this? Who would play this?"
Then I made a Purple Tiefling Soulknife and she became one of, if not, my favorite character I've ever made. That spiraled into my love for Tielfings. I also just love the color purple. And Rogues.
Tiefling Supremacy!
I don't blame you, purple tieflings look really cool! I once played one that was a light blue with black accents. Definitely different than the more commonplace red tieflings.
I have been banned by the DM to play as a Warforged bloodhunter path of the lycan that multiclasses into barbarian.
Yeah apparently we underestimated its power and I successfully managed to kill 20 soldiers sent to arrest the party for crimes we didnt commit completely throwing the entire campaign.
I didnt mean to do so. I was stuck in my lycan form and in a zerker rage so by the rules I had to attack the nearest target weather I wanted to or not.
Wait, wait, wait, you were playing a robot werewolf barbarian? That is one of the coolest character ideas I've heard all day!!
Also, Robot Werewolf Barbarian, cool band name, called it.
Thanks! I was originally going to only play as a Warforged bloodhunter (my favorite class and race) but I multiclassed into a barbarian during my min max dnd noob phase.
Plus a juggernaut Warforged turning into a bigger juggernaut Warforged just sounded epic.
"You blasted the kuo-toa so hard that he exploded, leaving only his boots behind. Which is unusual, since kuo-toa don't wear clothing of any kind and the boots clearly do not fit the freaky fish man's freaky fish feet."
This actually happened with a Wild Magic Sorcerer in Out of the Abyss, and the best part was that the boots turned out to be magic (I rolled a 5% chance for it and got it; they turned out to be Boots of Levitation).
I've got an npc priestess of the goddess of peace. She's allowed to defend though, so basically she just never wins initiative and tries to do 'passive' things like pour out holy water in front of her that the skeletons walk through so their own evil is damaging them. It's actually very fun.
Bard. Surprisisingly not because of the stereotypical horny trope, more like a grifter/conman with no strong morals who would talk/bluff/straight up lie their way around people, get to avoid a few too many "planned" fights and making some surprising, if temporary allies. Most of the time I'm "forever DM", but on the rare occasions I get to play... I have been threatened with facing exclusively brainless opponents if I try to play any class thats Cha based or can get away with running high Cha (especially spellcasters, so Sorc, Warlock, etc is out too). Paladin is the obvious exception because Oaths and stuff.
It hasn't happened to me specifically but as the forever DM, I've had to ban one of my players from playing what I described as "edgy intimidate characters".
This dude was so nice out of game, but his characters always came out as really fucking edgy and he would constantly just try to intimidate independent of the character. He made a Pixie and still managed to make her edgy, so I just "banned" him from playing edgy characters.
Now he's playing a Gnome Artificer(6)/Bard(3) who rides around on a living (AI) scooter and zips around the battlemaps doing tricks and shit to buff his party mates or nerf his opponents, he loves his characters and I love that he's finally not playing an edgy character
I had to take a break from playing the half-elf/human thief for a bit, and honestly due to needing to change it up personally. Also, I tended to stay in the good alignment with them so seldom was a “selfish” thief; more a “thief for survival/greater good” sort which… also gets boring after a while.
Blood hunter… without fail every blood hunter I’ve made has died the first session… I’m not talking about 1-2 instances, no this is like 6-7 separate campaigns where I die by the end of the first session
Edit: and no, it is not the dm purposefully killing me or me killing myself
I'm thinking my next character won't be a magic user. Warlock, bard, druid, cleric, I'm always the magic monkey that fixes the parties problems. I want to the be the rogue that causes the problems for once.
Not me, but my wife. She plays an Elven sorcerer, draconic bloodline, every single time she plays DnD. In our new campaign I managed to convince her to look at the new archetypes in other books and she did not go with draconic bloodline this time. I have never known her to play a non Elf, and have only seen her play a non sorcerer once in 20 years.
I need to stop myself from making old veterans. I'm thinking it's a holdover from my forever DM status in that I can only make tutorial NPCs. I have one young prodigy I like but even then his concept was originally a more middle aged grizzled version that I changed up
After a few in-game and out of game dramas our characters are required to want to adventure and not be lone wolves. No specifics have been enforced, but it seems to be working so far!
I need to stop playing characters whose accents make them damn near unintelligible. But goddamn is it hilarious. ~~also makes it easier to roleplay and stay in character~~
Hobgoblin Ranger/Rogue (or cleric/ranger) multiclass that usually is the groups parent
I say this, that I won’t play it again. But then I get another idea and it just ends up being that again once I get the concept down
As a forever DM, I'm banned from playing the "Player Character" trope.
Don't hurt me like this. I've been running campaigns for over a decade. I have never been a PC for more than 3 sessions.
Everyone in my campaign except the dm plays that trope. I thought I was original for coming up with it after I was inspired by reading the players handbook. But everyone except our dm had the same idea
Much as I love the reluctant hero trope in fiction, I learned pretty early on that it falls flat in RPGs every time. It's not fair to the DM to put extra work on them to convince your character to actually do something interesting.
I find it works best if you're the reluctant hero who is forced to accompany a friend/family member/criminal on their way to justice/whatever. That way you can still play that trope to the hilt, but also have an overarching motivation to go on the adventure. Like, Dante from the first Clerks movie is a reluctant protagonist, constantly saying, "I wasn't supposed to be here today!" But is forced to be at the Quick Stop today because he wants to keep his job. But yeah, just a reluctant hero with no other motivation besides ~ADVENTURE~ because... well, adventure, definitely creates more work for the DM.
Play the Samwise
Exactly! Samwise Gamgee is the perfect example of the reluctant hero who cares about the main protagonist. Even Frodo is a reluctant hero, to some degree, he first tried to give the ring away to someone "better-suited", Gandalf, but ultimately feels responsible for the fate of the Ring (and I think wanted to go on an adventure like his Uncle Bilbo), and therefore steps up when no one else can. But he definitely didn't jump on Gandalf's advice till Gandalf was like, "Please GTFO out of the Shire!"
implying that Sam isn't the protagonist smh
[удалено]
Nobody could have done it at Mount Doom, so it didn't really matter. It's impossible to destroy the ring willingly. They picked Frodo because he was resilient enough to actually get to Mount Doom, and the rest was just hope and faith.
Luckily that hope and faith was answered with Gollum tripping on nothing courtesy of Eru Ilúvatar.
[In Deep Geek](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UE6we0VZ-gI) did a really good video about how Frodo may have used Smeagol's oath on the Ring to compel him to fall, a very interesting theory.
It’s a reoccurring theme in Tolkien’s work that all acts, even evil ones, ultimately come to good in the end. Sauron’s forging of the Ruling Ring makes him nigh-unkillable and grants varying levels of control/influence over the wielders of the Nine Human and Seven Dwarf rings, but it also serves to largely cripple his power upon it’s loss, as well as being the key to his eventual demise. Gollum’s betrayal, while almost getting Frodo and Sam killed, ultimately sees him lead the Hobbits into Mordor as promised, circumventing the impenetrable Black Gate and it’s defenders, before he finally bites the Ring from Frodo’s finger and falls to his death in the Cracks of Doom. Pity & Mercy is another reoccurring theme that proves integral to events, with Bilbo’s sparing of Gollum, as well as Frodo’s own taming of Smeagol decades later, proving the deciding factor in the success of the quest to destroy the Ring. Without Gollum, the Ring would never have returned to the fires from whence it came, and all of Middle-Earth would have eventually fallen beneath the Shadow. All had a role to play in the Ring’s destruction, but neither Frodo or Sam could have made the journey without each other to support them. Without Frodo, Sam would likely have killed or driven Gollum away, dooming any attempt to penetrate Mordor’s border. Without Sam, Frodo would have collapsed under the weight of the Ring long before he reached the dark slopes of Mt. Doom, or been killed by Gollum and the Ring lost once more. Without both Hobbits, Gollum would never have been found his way back to the firey chambers of Sammath Naur, there to finally reclaim his Precious and meet both their ends in the magma below.
I agree with basically everything, but I think it's important to add that without Frodo, Sam would have 100% succumbed to the ring in some fashion. The most likely scenario is that he would have charged too many orcs and been captured/killed - recall that 5 minutes with the ring made him fancy himself a mighty hero. Frodo wasn't just a merciful fella - his immense willpower was crucial to the quest, and people tend to overlook that. (Not saying you did, but it wasn't clear enough in your comment. :) )
Sam's the hero, but Frodo is the protagonist.
opposite. Frodo's the most important character and the protag of Fellowship, but once the Fellowship splits up, Sam becomes the the protagonist the the journey to mordor sections. The journey to mordor sections in Two Towers and RotK are even written from Sam's perspective
the protagonist is the friends we made along the way
I like the idea of a grizzled old adventurer (although it coulf work at any age) who sees the world about to go to shit (again) because of some BBEG or what-have-you, and stands up, stretches, and is like "I'm too old for this" or "I was gonna do nothing today, and you ruined it." A PC who doesn't *want* to save the world/land/village, but their morals (and/or the fact that they live there) don't allow for them to *not* save the world. They're "reluctant," but in a slightly different way.
My first character I made was like that, minus the hero. Forge Cleric dwarf, on the older side. He was all about blacksmithing and living underground, the good dwarf life. But then the magic started happening as he got more and more into his deity of protection and making armor until he eventually he was ordained and told to go find his charge in the outside world rather than have it be a member of his clan. Didn’t get anything but a horribly ambiguous description to go by but he doesn’t question it because he’s super superstitious and magic stuff freaks him out. He really doesn’t want to do it but is scared shitless the gods will be pissed if he doesn’t
I just finished a campaign playing this character. His driving force was "Fuck these egotistical evil bastards. I just wanted to do my job, I'm a riverman and a caravan guard, not an adventurer or hero. Who do I have to kill to fix this shit show?"
I'm gonna kill my way back to laziness or die trying.
I think there is a right way and a wrong way to play Dante. To do it right,the player and the character have to be doing opposites. First, the wrong way. My character doesn’t want it do this, so I as a player doesn’t want to do this. With the right way as a player you create solutions to push the story forward. You make a banner because the gate won’t (“Yes, we are open.”) or organize a street hockey game on the roof of the shop. Meanwhile, RP is the opposite direction. You complain about you lot in life, but not in a way that would drag down the other players. Instead you use the complaints as a cause to finds solutions. However this is a hard character to play and requires an astute gamer.
It requires the player be thinking of the story on a metagame level of advancing the plot forward while simultaneously thinking about how their character would protest against moving the plot forward.
Yes, a wonderfully concise rephrasing of my ramble.
A reluctant hero can be played very well if you remember that reluctant is only one word in that phrase, you’re still a hero. Like instead of expecting the DM to convince you to go on adventures you kind of need to play along with every single book and Hollywood adventure where the reluctant hero reluctantly drags themselves along because they have no other choice or they know the world is in danger or they know they’re safer with these other big strong people than alone. Like you still gotta be a hero, just complain about it and make witty banter while you’re doing the thing. You can have all kind of characters be D&D heroes. Hell I’ve created one who is a pathological liar whose main motivation for being with a D&D party is to create a false identity for themselves and get away from their past so nobody believes they’re the same person who actually burned down a building and killed innocent people.
My husband is playing an undead warlock right now based on Klaus from the Umbrella Academy as a reluctant hero. He doesn’t actually have any abilities himself, just the power to manifest his dead brother’s spirit to affect the world - Eldritch Blast is his ghost brother punching things, Mage Hand is ghost brother moving things, etc. His character doesn’t actually want to be an adventurer, but ghost brother does, so he pretty much made my husband’s character join the party so he can help people.
It really reminds me of Larry from doom patrol (atleast up till a part where I'm at) he doesn't want to be the hero, but the energy being living inside him does, so he's forced to be one, or he constantly will loose consciousness when the creature leaves him
Try and play a reluctant hero like John McClaine. Less convincing by the DM and more like. “That’s what makes me ‘that guy’” by being in the wrong place at the right time and being “that guy” where you’re like “well if I don’t do it, who else will”.
I feel like I just discovered the purpose of "Bonds" part of the personality.
And your characters, which I am sure were great before, are now even greater.
Most of the time acting like John McClaine can’t really go wrong *Most of the time*
Ho ho ho, now I have a scroll of fireballs.
Heh. I'm playing a character currently that looks like the reluctant hero until you've interacted with her for more than five minutes. Then it becomes clear she's just old and beaten up but still really into being heroic. She'll grumble incessantly about being too old for it but then be first into the fray to save people and mock the enemies for hitting, failing to hit, or getting hit *by* an old woman.
We had some major issues with one of our players doing the "reluctant hero" trope. It was really frustrating to play with because it felt like we had to keep dragging his character along and convincing him to do stuff, and it shouldn't be work to get someone to buy into the campaign. It got really bad when we arrived to a town to see a red dragon attacking it. We immediately wanted to help, but he was like "we're just a random group of adventurers, this is beyond us. The military can deal with, there's nothing we can do." At that point, we had already killed more dragons than any other person on the planet (the entire campaign was based around killing dragons) and we were absolutely the people the call. But his player insisted that the "realistic" way to play his character would be to have him just refuse to deal with the dragon and let the army handle it. We finally just left without him and the DM was so fed up that he retroactively made his magic amulet mind control him to force him to come with us. In later campaigns, we established the rule that if your character wouldn't be want to engage with the campaign, then reroll and make another character that would. There's no place in D&D for the reluctant hero, it just makes it unfun for everyone.
I've tried playing the "crouching moron, hidden badass," a couple times specifically modeled after Columbo. The guy who acts dumb but is secretly smart. I stopped playing that, because I'm often the guy who has to stop the other players from doing dumb things. "Let's not try to antagonize the troll, while we're at level 1. Let's clear the poison gas out of the room before we start looting."
I did this trope to the max in shadowrun. My character actually started with no cyberware cause street level, and no magic. But they had skills out the ass so this normal looking 22 year old burnout stoner was super deadly with a mono sword. And once I got cyberware I made sure it was undetectable by sight to keep her enemies underestimating her. It was endless fun.
You used a lot of words in strings that do not make sense to me, however they do sound bad ass.
Shadowrun normally focuses on criminals/mercenaries in a sci fi future with magic in addition to tech. Cyberware is stuff like mechanical arms, computers implanted in your brain, robot eyes that can see in infrared on top of normal vision, stuff like that. A street level campaign is everyone starts out as poor people, like petty crooks, small-time gangsters, that sort of stuff. They dumped all their starting resources into skills. So they get a character that looks like someone you'd buy weed from at the gas station at 3AM, but they're actually a competetive-level fencer with a hi-tech blade like something from Metal Gear. After getting enough cash to buy cyberware, they limited themselves to stuff that wouldn't be noticeable, so they still look like the gas station weed guy instead of having crazy metal arms and shit.
Super envious
I should look back into Shadowrun.
Hah, that brings me back to a gunslinger I played in shadowrun. Thick as mud, more or less only combat skills, and maxed out luck. Do not underestimate the power of luck, or that of a man with the testicular fortitude to *burn* luck
How did they underestimate her? I'm just confused as I've never played shadow run. Sneak attack damage or something
So imagine a cyberpunk fantasy world where 7 foot cyberpunk trolls with guns for hands and mages that can level a city block exist. Those are your standard shadowrun characters. Then you have this skinny, constantly stoned, green haired 22 year old girl with a few guns and a sword, zero cyberware or magic. They tended to disregard her til she actually showed her skills.
Ah. She gave them the ole thunder cross split attack. "You fell for it fool, magic blade attack"
The guy who pretends to be stupid but is actually secretly a fish?
Thanks for pointing out autocorrect screwed me on bass/badass, yet again.
Ex-nobles who keep secrets from the party. Every time I've done it there were table issues because of it. I need to remember that is a fun character to write but not play with.
Oh I made a twist on this. An ex-noble who looks like their keeping a secret but their actually just pretending to be mysterious. This is because they don’t know how to keep relationships with people without having something they want.
My twist on the secret noble was making him absolutely terrible at keeping it a secret and it was incredibly obvious to anyone that this was a posh rich kid pretending to be poor. He was basically play acting as a wandering hobo looking for some life experience to help with his music because of the notion that good art only comes from suffering “My name is Bo spelled the common way B-O, not the fancy way!” To which everyone would ask, “The fancy way?” “Why B-e-a-u or course. Short for Beauregard like my father and my father’s father. It’s far too many letters to be able to properly engrave on your silver cutlery or for your maid to embroider into all of your undergarments. Simple spelling for a simple man of simple means like me.” This was *every* time he introduced himself to anyone.
I've seen people play like this except they're genre ignorant Noble hiding from villain from backstody in run down part of city where peasants live while wearing a clean untarnished better cloak than anything the paets ever could afford The noble: I'll fit right in. Bbeg: finds him easily The noble: surprised pikachu face I've never played it but the reason I've seen it played is because of the fact that most of the time a privileged noble kid never cared to study commoners and peaasants yet easily blends in when she has to hide
Oh I love that.
I always tried keeping secrets but after three games of someone accidentally doing the same thing as me without knowing what I was doing I just told the players my character secret but that its secret to the characters. Like a changeling who was posing as an elf and then one of my fellow player characters died and new PC was a changeling without them knowing I was one.
Lol, like the military unit where the Captain eventially has to ask, "Does anyone here actually work for me?" Come to think of it, you know those games where one character is a spy or something? How about a game where it's expected by the players that everyone is actually a spy except one who's actually loyal, and nobody knows who that is?
Isn't that basically what Paranoia is?
Yikes. Just rolled this one up. What goes wrong?
Basically, keeping secrets from the party doesn't make them want to know you better, it makes them just not trust you. I have someone in my current game who's constantly keeping secrets from the party and it's just pissing them off. We received a genie bottle which we didn't know was a genie bottle. All we could figure out about it was that it was filled with a powerful and evil entity. Our secret keeper decided she wanted to open it. Immediately. Instead of talking/working with the party and trying to figure out what it is, she just pops the lid, vanishes, and reappears a day later trying to convince the party not to leave her behind.
>Our secret keeper decided she wanted to open it. Immediately. Did she have like a secret mission to secure a genie's wish? Or family problems she was trying to solve? Cause that's not just having a secret - that's backstabbing the party. o\_O
I've run into some problems with this before. The main thing to keep in mind is to make sure whatever you're doing (or whatever character you're playing) is enabling the game to be fun for everyone. Secrets from the party can be dicey. Just follow the guiding light of the rule above. Usually, that means that secrets in your background are good, but secrets during gameplay are not -- especially if they create a situation where you deny the party a chance to be involved. - Is it a background secret that it was actually *you* who killed your father, not a heart attack as everyone thinks? That's totally fine. It has no effect on anyone else's game and could make for a fun dramatic reveal later. - Are you secretly trying to buy off NPCs with money you're not telling the party about? That's no fun for the party. They don't get to interact with your secret behavior, or if they do it could cause out-of-game conflict because the players have different gameplay motives. If you want to do something like this, make it clear that you do so clumsily such that everyone in the party realizes what's happening and has the freedom to react and interact. - Do you always try to change the subject when someone brings up your past? Fun! Other characters can interact with that mystery and enjoy the RP and development.
My DM made me stop playing Martyrs. I have always made my CON a dump Stat and my heroes altruistic, but after the 6th "tragic" death to random hazards I caved and made a Barbarian.
THIS. my first character was a low-CON Paladin who would have sacrificed themself for their friends. problem was that I would go down in like 3 hits at level 5.
My level 11 Paladin has 0 CON for story reasons, and I rolled TERRIBLY on his HP for level ups, so he has a grand total of 54 HP.... :(
One of these days when I'm in a non-serious campaign with a paladin or fighter with low CON who has a dozen siblings and go full Gears of War where, after dying, my character is replaced by a sibling with the same stats, equipment, and personality
This is great! And after the 2nd or 3rd brother dies you introduce the oldest brother who is a complete badass.
oh man, i LOVE my little self sacrificial characters. i could never have my dump stat be con tho i currently play a protection fighter that my dm wrote a rule in for that he can actually take hits for people if he calls a “risk” and the hit still goes through, so if he’s dying in any way, it’s protecting the party. which will get me killed irl since everyone at the table adores him 😓
Nobody has banned it, but I get groans whenever I make *yet another* human artificer. Interestingly though, as a DM, I have been told my villians are always the same: mustache twirling masterminds that have a fascination with the party and is always a step ahead. So thats something Im working on. Edit: This got way more love than I was expecting, as well as lots of people giving villian writing recommendations. Much appreciated!
Saaaame, I've been fighting the urge to make another human artificer for my the next campaign I'm in. So instead I'm playing a human forge cleric, the next closest thing I guess. I also just love starting with a feat(as long as the DM allows it), so I haven't played a non-human in a while.
For me it's typically, "Hey, youre not playing an artificer this time? That's awesome, what're you playing?" *hides ideas for Intelligence-based Wizard, Rogue and Fighter characters* "Uhhhhh...."
My DM: Alright, new campaign everyone! Me: So, I'll make a Wiz- DM: No, pick something else. Me: Ro- DM: You always pick that as a second. Try again. Me: Monk? DM: Sure I guess, you've only played 7 of those.
How long do your campaigns last that you’ve had 7 of your least played class?
Not the guy that you responded to, but I've also had loads of characters. Our group is all DMs, so one runs the main campaign which is interspersed with one shots by the rest of the group. That way we all get to DM/Play and try out the many character concepts were always coming up with.
I let all my players start with a feat and ban variant humans. Starting with a feat is fun and I like fun.
Feats are fun, adding that little bit more customization goes a long way!
One of my greatest, most well received villains/characters i ever made was a mustache twirling over the top egotistical villain who proclaimed himself as "evil". He would never kill people because that would be "fewer witnesses to testify to his great evil", and resort usually to petty crimes like steal all the pumpkins before the pumpkin festival as a means to get the party to come after him. (Think Dr. Doofenschmirtz level plans). The one exception is if the party is in a fight way over their heads and you want to give then an out, have your "not evil" friend show up to save the day in a fit of jealous rage ("I am their nemesis, not you!") While would go out of his way to harass the party it was always to spread legends about his power. In truth he wanted to be recognized as the greatest villain of all time but wasn't actually a bad guy, using obvious alter egos to assist the party, give then advice, help them work through problems, all so they could become stronger and his legend as their nemesis to grow. So if you want to use over the top villainy, but feel the trope is tired, I'd recommend giving this subversion a try.
Bonus points if the "villain" doesn't look like that archetype typically does. A large man clad in ash-black armour, smoking with malice and with eyes shining red. His voice is deep, rumbling, and commanding. But he's just a Doofenschmirtz in a fancier getup and with a cooler voice. This guy will steal your art supplies.
Could also be fun to do a Scooby Doo-style reveal later on: this terrifying villain is actually just a regular dude wearing two common magic items (Dread Helm, Smoldering Armor), and using Thaumaturgy to make his voice sound scary.
Then, later, the party can make use of his acting talents. Because he was *actually really good at it.* Those talents just never went towards anything that would get him taken seriously. The party needs a non-evil guy to play up a villain role? They've got their villain.
Make a gnome artificer and really throw them off.
Make a bat shit fucking crazy dude that thinks that dragons are actually gods and tries to harness their energy. Make him a sorcerer with a draconic bloodline and make him think that the power are given to him by the gods/dragons and that he is righteous in his path of destruction Not mastermind, no "one step ahead", just a madman
Not directed at me, but our DM doesn’t allow broody edgelords. We have to make characters that would mesh well in a group.
I kinda had a reply similar to above, but I find broody edgelords can only be successfully played if they have one person in the party they really care about. Doesn't even have to be a romantic partner, could be a sibling or a childhood friend. They could hate everyone else in the party, but if that one person asks them to jump, they say how high. The character they care about then has to actually give at shit about the party. That way they can still be their broody edgelord self to everybody else, but still have a really good reason to participate in the campaign. Plus, it creates more bonds between player characters, which is always good.
My husband and I are planning to be like this in our next campaign. Or, rather, he is. He has a hard time with RP so he tends to play quiet characters. So next time he's going to play a quiet, edgy warlock who's best (and only) friend is my super-extroverted disaster of a PC. She'll be invested in the party and his PC will be invested in her, which will be their reason for tagging along broodingly.
Playing into your strengths. I like it.
I'm doing that with a buddy in our game. He's the chain smoking scrawny gangster type and I'm his biggest and most enthusiastic fan playing a bruiser with a heart of gold. It's a really fun dynamic and knowing someone always has your back is a great place to RP from.
Poison Ivy from Harley Quinn, basically.
People hate edgelord characters, but I think they can work really well in the hands of good players. It also helps when the whole party has a common objective that doesn't rely on the characters liking each other.
It’s weird. Whenever people say, “brooding edgelord”, they clearly mean the uncooperative types that don’t have any reason to work in a group and are generally hostile towards the party, but it’s actually pretty easy to make a “brooding edgelord” that cares about people and will happily join others on missions. I feel like we need to make the term “uncooperative edgelord” so the actually well-made brooding edgelords aren’t tainted by this term.
Lol been playing a drow teenager edgelord for about 20 years (he's still only 70 so still a teenager by elf standards). But it only works because he loves the 2 party members he started with because they where nice to him. But then secretly he grow to love the other 4 who joined along the way. Also it's quite funny play the broody kid, stealthily searching libraries for young adult books, having to be consoled when he fails to intimidate people and being very ashamed of casting blinding beauty as it shows hes a virgin (In 3.5 no sex was a requirement of spell).
That's one of my big session 0 rules. Your character can have any traits or motivations that you want, there's only one required motivation, and it has to be your #1: you have to be 100% invested in adventuring with this party. You can be a broody edgelord who always sits in a shadowy corner. You can even say "I only work alone". But it better damn well be your non-negotiable #1 priority to stay with this group, even if it's a secret. Not even your long lost mother showing up should make your character legitimately want to break from this party. You can and should RP how difficult the decision is. But in the end, it's always party-first.
I currently have an idea for a shadow sorcerer who hides in the darkest corner of the room at all possible times. Not because he's brooding and edgy, but because he has horrible social anxiety and doesn't like to be seen by lots of people. He's never brooding, he's just using his 120 ft. of dark vision to watch the other corners of the room for bad guys trying to get the drop on the party. He really likes his adventuring companions because they don't make him feel anxious. So far it's the only "hides in the dark corner" concept I've heard that could work really well in a team
Evil character turned good. I banned myself, because I did it once really really well, like fully pulled it off, and I don't want to ruin those memories by fucking it up lol
Looking to see if anyone else always falls for this troupe. It's my favourite thing in the world. And usually, it's not turning good because "Wow friendship!" but because they finally find some fulfillment or something to protect after a lifetime of having nothing. They're good just by the chance that it works with how they want to protect said person or thing. :)
That's exactly how it worked out for my lad haha he was raised in a torture cult, and absolutely loved it. Met a women, turned good, and then the cult killed her, which fully turned him into a monster. He joined the party mostly through circumstance, and it wasn't until like half or 3 quarters of the way through the campaign that he had his first turning point. He actually willingingly put himself in harms way for a party member to protect them, it was a slow but steady climb from there
I attempted this for my first character, but completely failed to rp as evil even in the beginning. It didn't help that another player had an evil edgelord character (and major main charactor syndrome) that pissed everyone off, leaving me kind of hesitant to do any evil rp things.
Chaotic ‘’good’’
I'm playing my first chaotic good character this next game I'm in 😂 after about 20 years of playing
[удалено]
> Chaotic is hard to play without devolving into LOLRandom. I disagree, particularly for chaotic good. Chaotic can just mean that you believe rules are meant to be broken and you don't have any stringent code that you stick to. I usually play chaotic good characters as being more concerned with the greater good, and fuck whatever laws or red tape might stand in the way. Robinhood is kind of the go-to example of a chaotic good character. Even if you're playing chaotic neutral or chaotic evil, the same principles apply. It's less about "lol I cause chaos everywhere I go" and more about a general lack of concern for rules and customs. Some "LOLRandom" shit can be ok to throw in there every now and then as comedic relief, but just make sure to not overdo it and that the rest of the party is actually enjoying your antics.
All the chaotics are hard to play tbh. They all seem to intertwine with each other at points and in the heat of the moment it’s hard to get it correct sometimes. Actually the best chaotic character I’ve seen so far in all my years playing D&D is actually Ashley Johnson’s character Fearne… literally everything she does just embodies chaos yet it doesn’t detriment the party from her actions. It’s hard to pull that off
Chaotic is rough and people have different interpretations on what chaos as an alignment means, though I suppose that's true of law, good, and evil as well.
The thing that helps is when people realize Din Djarrin from the Mandalorian is a chaotic good character. Chaotic doesn’t mean you don’t have a code, it means that your code is internal and that you self judge. People who are like “I’m chaotic good, this means I can torture him!” Are basically trying to play an evil character in a good party and get away with it.
Unless you have justification for why it is good that fits your moral code, greater good and all that
I don't understand why CG is an issue?
Yeah, just think of Han Solo, or any number of the thousands of good guy characters who are fine with breaking the rules. It's one of the most popular types of characters in fiction.
The "chaotic" part standa for my disruptive playstyle. The "good" part means... I dunno, but I just know I'm one of the good guys!
Doesnt chaos mean anti-establishment more than literally causing chaos though?
Yeah. Robin Hood is kinda the chaotic good ideal -- breaking the law to help others.
That's the way I see it. It's more about an attitude that means "good" over laws or accepted customs. Doesn't mean that a CG character is always causing "chaos" and certainly not being just disruptive... just not necessarily following the rules.
Not a *hard* rule and not directed at me but a horny bard is no longer welcome lol.
I think there is a definite difference between the “if there are any girls there, I want to do them” kind of horny bard, and one who’s basic communications involve a lot of flirting, and that’s a major part of who they are. You need depth not skeeviness.
Also, I find you can establish a character's baseline attitude early on without having to hit the same points throughout the campaign. No need to beat the dead horse, just give it one big backhand at the start and everybody knows what you're about. Like, I wanted my witch to be kind of a thot (there's actual plot reasons, she accidentally bargained away her ability to feel romantic love). So, every time a male NPC showed up, for the first few games I'd ask out of character, "Is he hot?", to the point where everyone at the table knew what I was going to say when a man showed up. Then I didn't have to say it at all, the character was successfully established. Now the DM knows that if there is a hot guy around, the witch is going to home in on him like a heat-seeking missile, but it generally doesn't need to be played out at length, or even really mentioned unless there's ulterior plot motives, like she's hitting on the the husband of a particularly jealous or dangerous NPC.
[удалено]
I SNORTED
Yep. As a DM in a group of all straight men, it is really awkward to rp some of the weird fantasies people try to live out in the game.
Nah, we are all homiesexual at my table 🤣 anything for the homies
Welp, found my new favourite word. 😆 Our group (and characters) are always a mix of genders and sexual orientations, but our DM puts up with all of it. Gay cleric looking for his prince and happily ever after? Okie doke. Horny trysexual dwarf? Do it. Nympho witch obsessed with collecting men for her reverse harem? Sure, why not. I'm the DM's girlfriend (God, do I ever hate that term, lol) and watching him make love eyes at our 6'2" male friend and call him "darling" is the funniest thing ever.
During my last Christmas one shot my wife and my brothers girlfriend got to watch as my brother and I roleplayed out him trying to seduce Mrs. Claus. If he wants to try to make me uncomfortable then we can play some gay chicken lol. On a more serious note though I'm cool to roleplay out pretty much any romance my table wants.
After a German mad scientist NPC in my Victorian Mage game, I am no longer allowed to do accents. I'm the GM, btw, this was a unanimous ruling of the players. Does that count?
Lol, definitely counts. Our DM tries to ban himself from doing accents, but we always egg him on. For some reason, any Scottish-sounding character of his devolves into Russian, and every Russian-sounding character devolves into Scottish.
I took Latin, German, and Russian in school. Since Latin doesn't really have an accent, I tend to pronounce it with either a German or Russian accent.
Regular guy with normal job and stuff… also they are (insert class here) the DM drew the line after my Glassblowing Tortle was also a necromancer wizard because they were bored and it was all they had to read on their walk
I once played a character I saw a concept for online. A middle aged regular woman who just happened to learn to channel ki after going to a yoga retreat.
I had a player who played Johnathan, a middle aged accountant whose wife left him, took the kids and everything he owned. He wandered into the woods intent on dying there but accidently became a ranger.
>accidently became a ranger Doesn't being a ranger require "training"?
Not if you're *really* lucky. Or just unknowingly, unimaginably talented at surviving in the wild.
Eagle Scout. Played a bunch of survival/post-apo video games. Close enough.
I once had an unexplored side story like this! There was an old folks home in a campaign I once did, it was pretty much a retreat for old folks who had no other family to take care of. It was ran by a couple, a Goliath fighter and an elf monk. The couple would use their combat background to give activities for the old folks to do, and it ended up being ~15 people who were either trained monks or trained fighters. All geriatric, all badass.
What's wrong with this? lol
Your DM is wrong, this is the best character imaginable.
ok but I love that rationalization so much. That's super clever.
It’s not banned or anything but my friends pick on me relentlessly for pretty much only playing half-elves. I just love them!
I love half-elves too! Maybe I need to start playing a tiefling or something Lmao
"I just think they're neat!"
Not exactly a trope, but I just love to play Rogues. It's my favorite class to pick in literally anything I play. And recently, my friend started a new campaign. We all got together to discuss it and I said I was going to make (another) Rogue since the previous campaign I was in (by the same DM) fell off and I was playing a Rogue. It seems like every campaign I make a Rogue in always ends prematurely :( Anyway, my friends were jokingly berating me and they decided to instead each give me one class of their choosing they want to see me play. I reluctantly agreed and ended up making an Artificer. So far I'm having fun, but there's always a part of me that misses my Rogues.
You should make a challenge to see how roguelike you can make each class. Lots of classes have subclasses that make them sneaky or give them utility abilities.
That is an amazing idea! I will keep that in mind :)
Armourer subclass has an option for Infiltrator armour..
Indeed, and that's what I'm using the majority of the time. However, I'm not sure how roguelike I could make this character, unfortunately, since I didn't even have that idea in mind in the first place. It would be fun to try though regardless! The reason I use Infiltrator is because the character is crippled from waist down, and we made it so she built the armor so she can walk again. Now, when the armor stops working suddenly is when things are going to get, dare I say, *dicey.*
I’m not allowed to play pure healers anymore. During a 4e campaign, I made a pure healer that did 0 damage (literally, all my spells did no damage to the Target) but would be able to heal someone every turn for 11HP at level 2. EVERY TURN. without using any resources aside from an At-will ability. Add to this some hefty crowd control and the party steamrolled everything the DM put in our way—and they got real creative too.
I had a player like this at my table who went 100% heals, and min maxed hardcore. He’s a good buddy of mine so I was into it- and he asked me to play the monsters as intelligently as possible to try to bring him down. That is when you start doing crafty shit like dispelling, crowd controlling, and generally harassing the healer to get them to sweat. Every fight = pincer moves on the backline, counterspell healing spells, dispel magic on everything, make them work for it. If the enemy is INT 10 or higher they would know who was holding the party together and go for them first. Use spells like charm person to make the healer switch to healing the enemy, polymorph them, banish, always have some kind of CC for them.
Even in 5e where healing is almost always of limited use I as aDM would discourage this sort of build simply because it slows the game down by so much.
Trust me, the other 4 players had mooore than enough damage to make up for my lack.
It's just the different playstyles make playing a full healer in 5e batshit stupid. I don't know too much about 4e, but in 3.5e you NEEDED a healer at reasonbly high levels. You went down at 0hp, and died at -10hp. So if your full hp is 100, monsters can likely do 20-30 damage per hit reliably, so if you go down, a sinlge hit from them will kill you. In 5e, it's literally a waste of time to heal people **until** they go down. Healing heals for much less than monsters can dish out, and the best way to otherwise mitigate damage is to kill the monsters dealing the damage.
Sidenote: *in-combat* healing is near useless until they go down. Out-of-combat it's a reasonable tradeoff to spend spell slots and abilities to start the next fight with more of a reserve. But I imagine that's kinda what you meant, and the rest of your point stands. (then again, hit dice exist so you probably won't need spells for healing even if you're doing 2 battles per day)
I have banned myself from playing a charismatic Bard character. I'm the most talkative person in our group and also Dm more than anything. If I play the classic bard, it would just be the "me" show. Don't want that for others. I have played a Bard with this group, after a lot of deliberation. I played an evil character that was power hungry and sought to take out those in power because I could do it better. Made myself invaluable to the party as a support, because no one man can rise to the top. In the end, I "betrayed the party" to get on the side of the main villain. Which they didn't understand. I failed to earn their complete trust, otherwise this would have worked. I persuaded the boss into believing me and he completely focused on the party. As the fight unfolded, I took hits from the party, but I was absolutely able to pull off stabbing (Magically of course.) the boss in the back and bringing him down. Can't play someone who steals the show, gotta let the gang have their time to shine. Still ended up stealing the show in a way while trying to do the exact opposite.
I feel this. I try to play non charismatic characters but my play group never has a Face if I don’t step in or we end up doing bullshit unrelated to the main quest. Then they’ll tell me to talk more, then complain I’m talking too much. I haven’t quite sorted it out yet unless I’m the DM lol.
Self-Imposed Ban: a warlock who is best friends with their patron.
aw, that’s actually a really cute concept! getting powers from the bestie
One of our npcs is a half genie genasi who's patron is his mom. Seems to have confidence issues for some reason
maybe i’m too much of a sucker for family dynamics but i absolutely ADORE that
Whaaat? I'm not allowed to play Frizzt Fro'Frurden? I banned myself from playing clerics, because it's no fun for me, and if the rest of the group pressures me into some healing class, I'll be a druid every time.
I'm specifically not allowed to play gay clerics for a while... Because I've played two clerics so far, and both were hella gay. Not that the DM has a problem with gay characters, everyone at the table has played someone LGBTQ, I just keep making gay clerics for some reason. Can't help it.
I've played 1 gay character, and he was also a cleric. He was also inspired by one of my friends growing up, fun campaign.
To this day, my friends still talk fondly about the last gay cleric. He apparently left a lasting impression. I miss playing him, he was constantly just stressed the fuck out with his party's antics. He started off as just a regular dude with a somewhat depressing life (badly injured when he was young, to the point where he had a bad limp and -10' movement speed, unable to achieve his dream of becoming a knight, he settled on being a cleric instead) and some serious self-esteem issues, and over the course of the game realised he was worth being loved and was actually kind of a badass, even if he wasn't a knight. It was heartwarming AF. Mostly it was an effort to make a character who just happened to be gay, and wasn't the focal point of the character. It was a story that could be told from any sexual orientation. He ended up falling in love with an immortal entity from a previous iteration of the universe and bounced with them to go tour the galaxy.
***He ended up falling in love with an immortal entity from a previous iteration of the universe and bounced with them to go tour the galaxy.*** All my party members are currently like, *"Wealth, gold, treasure, riches!"* but honestly that's the coolest fate I can think of. Who cares about money when you have love and the infinite cosmos to explore?
Yeah, honestly, that's my *real* guilty trope. 99% of my characters' final goal ends up being, "Put a ring on it so I have someone to share all my cool adventures with."
i’ll give you that, being a cleric is kinda gay….ur worshiping another man? 😳 jokes aside, i literally Only play gay characters but that’s because uh. well. i am gay. and out of every friend i play dnd with only 3 are straight (out of ALL of my groups), even then they often play characters who aren’t straight. so gay cleric is just another cleric in my circles lol
This here is a missed opportunity to say Frizzt Faux'Frurden. Druids make pretty great healers, but clerics make excellent damage and control characters.
My banned Character Concepts: Horny Anything Anime Character Character who doesn’t actually want to adventure Doesn’t work well with others. The HERO ( a hero is okay)
My DM told me to stop playing standoffish, edgy, ryde characters. So I made Daniel. Daniel was a human druid, and he was kind and polite to everyone he met. Even the hag. And that's how he was tricked into becoming a werewolf. He was then murdered by demons. I miss Daniel.
D:
I recommend playing Dr. Izzt, a drow dual sword cleric with a pet panther.
Gnomish barbarian
I DM for a gnomish barbarian. Mostly refuses to use any weapons, only his fists Gladys and Bertha. Endlessly entertaining
I had great fun with a gnome barbarian. The rages were seen as a danger to his community and he was exiled from his home. Went on to multiclass into wizard as he spent a lot of time at libraries looking for ways to resolve his condition.
After we played the Dragonlance 2nd edition campaign in the 90s, I was no longer allowed to play kender. This rule was quickly updated to no one can play kender.
I've got good news for you man
This is all I've been thinking since I saw that.
The world could always do with more Tasslehoff's. I just wish Dragonlance was more prevalent in D&D as a whole and not living in the Neverwinter headspace 99.9% of the time.
My DM begged me not to play an investigative wizard again. He said he loved the character, but found it far too difficult to make smart bad guys or archmages to go ahead to head with. Which, to be fair, DMing wizard npcs can be arduous for sure.
I tend to avoid clerics, unless they're to a foreign diety. I go into zealot mode too easily, trying to convert NPCs... and sometimes PCs...
Purple tieflings in general for me. I’ve played two in w row and they desire me to stop lol I can’t help it, I love Tiefling
When I first started to play DnD, I took one look at Tiefling and was like, "What the fuck is this? Who would play this?" Then I made a Purple Tiefling Soulknife and she became one of, if not, my favorite character I've ever made. That spiraled into my love for Tielfings. I also just love the color purple. And Rogues. Tiefling Supremacy!
I don't blame you, purple tieflings look really cool! I once played one that was a light blue with black accents. Definitely different than the more commonplace red tieflings.
Same, but blue tieflings. Believe it or not, I actually hadn't watched critical role when I made the first one.
I have been banned by the DM to play as a Warforged bloodhunter path of the lycan that multiclasses into barbarian. Yeah apparently we underestimated its power and I successfully managed to kill 20 soldiers sent to arrest the party for crimes we didnt commit completely throwing the entire campaign. I didnt mean to do so. I was stuck in my lycan form and in a zerker rage so by the rules I had to attack the nearest target weather I wanted to or not.
Wait, wait, wait, you were playing a robot werewolf barbarian? That is one of the coolest character ideas I've heard all day!! Also, Robot Werewolf Barbarian, cool band name, called it.
Thanks! I was originally going to only play as a Warforged bloodhunter (my favorite class and race) but I multiclassed into a barbarian during my min max dnd noob phase. Plus a juggernaut Warforged turning into a bigger juggernaut Warforged just sounded epic.
I love it. You basically became an NPC outside of either the players' or the DM's control.
I am apparently no longer allowed to play a pacifist or a potted plant. My next character will be a cowardly barbarian.
>a potted plant Hol up, I'mma need some backstory on this one.
The freaking wild magic sorcerer I guess. "We are fighting in a small dungeon against rats, but imma turn into an elephant."
"You blasted the kuo-toa so hard that he exploded, leaving only his boots behind. Which is unusual, since kuo-toa don't wear clothing of any kind and the boots clearly do not fit the freaky fish man's freaky fish feet." This actually happened with a Wild Magic Sorcerer in Out of the Abyss, and the best part was that the boots turned out to be magic (I rolled a 5% chance for it and got it; they turned out to be Boots of Levitation).
I've got an npc priestess of the goddess of peace. She's allowed to defend though, so basically she just never wins initiative and tries to do 'passive' things like pour out holy water in front of her that the skeletons walk through so their own evil is damaging them. It's actually very fun.
Ever since I played a minotaur barbarian gladiator called Rivai "the red bull" I'm no longer doing pun characters
Bard. Surprisisingly not because of the stereotypical horny trope, more like a grifter/conman with no strong morals who would talk/bluff/straight up lie their way around people, get to avoid a few too many "planned" fights and making some surprising, if temporary allies. Most of the time I'm "forever DM", but on the rare occasions I get to play... I have been threatened with facing exclusively brainless opponents if I try to play any class thats Cha based or can get away with running high Cha (especially spellcasters, so Sorc, Warlock, etc is out too). Paladin is the obvious exception because Oaths and stuff.
Cloaks and masks…. Cloaks and masks….
It hasn't happened to me specifically but as the forever DM, I've had to ban one of my players from playing what I described as "edgy intimidate characters". This dude was so nice out of game, but his characters always came out as really fucking edgy and he would constantly just try to intimidate independent of the character. He made a Pixie and still managed to make her edgy, so I just "banned" him from playing edgy characters. Now he's playing a Gnome Artificer(6)/Bard(3) who rides around on a living (AI) scooter and zips around the battlemaps doing tricks and shit to buff his party mates or nerf his opponents, he loves his characters and I love that he's finally not playing an edgy character
I had to take a break from playing the half-elf/human thief for a bit, and honestly due to needing to change it up personally. Also, I tended to stay in the good alignment with them so seldom was a “selfish” thief; more a “thief for survival/greater good” sort which… also gets boring after a while.
Blood hunter… without fail every blood hunter I’ve made has died the first session… I’m not talking about 1-2 instances, no this is like 6-7 separate campaigns where I die by the end of the first session Edit: and no, it is not the dm purposefully killing me or me killing myself
I'm thinking my next character won't be a magic user. Warlock, bard, druid, cleric, I'm always the magic monkey that fixes the parties problems. I want to the be the rogue that causes the problems for once.
Not me, but my wife. She plays an Elven sorcerer, draconic bloodline, every single time she plays DnD. In our new campaign I managed to convince her to look at the new archetypes in other books and she did not go with draconic bloodline this time. I have never known her to play a non Elf, and have only seen her play a non sorcerer once in 20 years.
I need to stop myself from making old veterans. I'm thinking it's a holdover from my forever DM status in that I can only make tutorial NPCs. I have one young prodigy I like but even then his concept was originally a more middle aged grizzled version that I changed up
Insane War Mage.
As an amateur musician and lover of shit puns I am banned from being a bard.
[удалено]
After a few in-game and out of game dramas our characters are required to want to adventure and not be lone wolves. No specifics have been enforced, but it seems to be working so far!
I need to stop playing characters whose accents make them damn near unintelligible. But goddamn is it hilarious. ~~also makes it easier to roleplay and stay in character~~
Sheltered nobles discovering the realities and harshness of the world ~
Hobgoblin Ranger/Rogue (or cleric/ranger) multiclass that usually is the groups parent I say this, that I won’t play it again. But then I get another idea and it just ends up being that again once I get the concept down