T w e n t y S i d e d
We’ve all had ideas for D&D characters that sound really fun, but could kill the mood of a more immersive campaign or throw things too off the rails for even a goofy campaign. Well, I have some ideas for characters that I think are incredible. I like the people who DM for me so I won’t curse them with said characters. Some of these, I have ideas for potential modifiers that they might come bundled with, like backgrounds and the like.
- Warlock named Sheldor who shouts “Bazinga” every time he casts Eldritch Blast. He’s currently my Warlock in Baldur’s Gate 3 but I’d love to run him as an overly serious edgelord in a campaign. No modifiers needed.
- Autistic Rogue who grew up looking up to a brooding ranger from his town — think Aragon as Strider in LOTR: The Fellowship of the Ring — and wanted to emulate him, but fails to be intimidating or cool at every opportunity. He doesn’t understand what made the ranger cool and doesn’t understand that people don’t like him. -1 CHR for the cringe +1 INT for the tism
- Half-Orc whose mom lied to him from birth insisting that he is fully human and his step dad is his real dad. As a result he has grown up thinking he’s just incredibly ugly. -2 WIS for being a dope +2 CHR for learning to make up for his “hideous looks” with a charming personality
- Bard who has actually slept with a dragon and was traumatized. He thought he knew what he wanted but he barely got out alive. -2 persuasion checks against members of sexually preferred gender +1 WIS for the life lesson learned
- Bipolar Barbarian that suffers from post-mania regret and shame. Their rages are enhanced due to their mental suffering but after the rages end they are deeply ashamed of losing control. I don’t know how to balance it but I’m convinced it would be an interesting concept.
- Human Fighter who is so obsessed with making sure everyone knows that he’s actually a real interesting person that it pisses off all NPCs. -2 to Deception, Performance, and Persuasion for annoying everyone +2 History, Survival, and Athletics because he has a lot of time on his hands since he has no friends
- Monk who the party believes has taken a vow of silence but in reality suffers from a severe stutter and doesn’t feel comfortable talking in front of people. He communicates via sign telepathy when possible and crude sign language when not -2 all speech related checks
- Dragonborn who doesn’t have a breath weapon due to a lich’s surgical experimentation when he was a child. He instead learned to scream really well. He can essentially cast Cause Fear twice per day. Eventually he’d gain to ability to add the effect of Shout to his scream if he gets high enough in levels if the party doesn’t get his personal goal fulfilled. His motivation is to find a way restore that breath weapon and destroy the lich who experimented on him and his childhood friends. This is the one that I think is the most realistic option but requires a DM that feels comfortable pushing a campaign in a specific direction.
Comment your dumb or interesting character ideas below. I am genuinely interested in what you come up with.
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Crazy characters I’ve played:
– A girl who pretends to be a princess but is not and has to go through increasingly bizarre and humiliating likes to con her way into royalty.
– A man who wears a different disguise everyday and pretends that he is a different person. His party just rolls with it.
Both sound amazing :D. Characters that do nothing but make their lives more difficult are always fun to roleplay.
– (In the Draw Steel system:) A young female Troubadour with the Virtuoso subclass (=basically a D&D bard) who wants to be a pop star, but whose wealthy family has a hyper-competent long-time servant following and watching over her whom she finds extremely embarrassing having around due to his tendency to still see her as the child he knew growing up rather than the adult she’s becoming. (Not quite, but sort of a Wooster & Jeeves situation; it’s the “Meddling Butler” Complication.)
Personally, the Complications section in the Draw Steel handbook is probably my favorite part of character creation in that system, it’s got a ton of interesting and flavorful ideas that could easily serve as a hook to build a character around.
I’m going to have to see if I can get everyone to run a Draw Steel campaign. Never played it before but it looks cool.
I would definitely NEVER use Sheldor in an actual game. XD Trust me, I’ve DM’d games for similar “one catchphrase” characters before and the novelty wears off FAST. I adore the concepts of Half-Orc who fully believes he is human and Dragonborn without a breath weapon characters. :D I’d absolutely welcome you running those in my campaigns.
Narcissistic Human Fighter basically sounds like Noober et al from the BG series. XD
Most party-destroying PC I’ve ever played: An ultra-pacifistic Cleric of the God of Peace who refused to ever cast any damaging spells or offensive-boosting spells on the party, limiting himself strictly to defensive boosts or healing spells. What’s more, he would always beg the party to spare defeated foes and would “waste” his healing spells healing any enemies who looked in danger of dying, or just in very bad shape. I still think he was a fantastic character concept, but in practice he got on the party’s nerves VERY fast.
Most interesting long-term PC I’ve ever played: A regular human wizard who fell in love with an elven wizard (his former tutor at the magical College he attended). She returned his affections, but as the years passed and he saw himself visibly age in mirrors next to his seemingly eternally youthful bride, he began to fear losing her to death. So he began researching into Necromancy and Lichdom so he could “stay with her forever”, and he was travelling with the party specifically looking into knowledge and rituals to achieve the latter, but he never told anyone (or his wife) what he was really seeking.
Most interesting long-term NPC I’ve ever played: This character was a Lawful Evil Fighter/Blackguard who, thematically, is very similar to Emhyr Var Emreis from the Witcher. A brilliant strategist and highly skilled warrior, he founded and led his own mercenary company until he amassed enough influence and riches to form his own army and conquer his own kingdom. He was sometimes an antagonist for my players, sometimes an ally of convenience against a greater threat. I think my players grudgingly respected and even admired him. They actually wound up being allies against the campaign’s BBEG in the last few adventures, and right up to the end, they were unsure if he would keep his word and lead his armies against the demonic/undead hordes. He did come through though, because “I have not spent my lifetime building my own kingdom to see it trampled underfoot by some wretched has-been godling!”
Oh I’d never try to run Sheldor in anything outside of a one-shot where his quirks wouldn’t have time to get old. :P He’s too ridiculous of a concept. I love the wizard idea. Very compelling motivation.
Your cleric makes me think of a character in the “tyrant philosophers” series of book.
He’s the last priest of a forgotten god of peace and healing. The god can heal any illness / injuries but you have to become his follower, and as such you aren’t allowed to do any harm to anyone (direct or indirect). If you do, every illness or injusry that he’s healed you from immediately comes back.
It could be fun in a rpg even if pretty useless. As the party would convert over time to be healed from potentially fatal injuries, they’d be forced to rely more and more on diplomacy instead of combat
I’ve got a team concept called the Weird Girls (3.x dnd), a party of cute (?) girls in pretty dresses who are a bit weird. Until a fight breaks out and then they are very weird and everyone runs away screaming.
Wizard/Alienist: the “Luna” of the group. Alienist gives increasing penalties to social checks and makes all your summons Psuedonatural, meaning that their stats are still mostly the same as normal creatures but they’re acutallu horrifying tentacled abominations, and the mixed in Thamaturgist bits mean that one can be set on a contingent trigger to appear at a single word or in response to something (They’re Always Watching). The last level of the class also makes you grow some sort of minor aberrant feature that occasionally twitches and gives a -4 on checks to disguise your true nature, which I would rule doesn’t actually exist in this case, or doesn’t seem to. She does not have any tentacles. It only looks like it when you’re not paying attention. *Rolls up sleeve/flips petticoats/etc* see there’s nothing there! (The idea of this ‘feature’ being a schrodenger’s tell was part of the original inspiration).
Cleric/Divine Oracle: the “Clerics are OP” of the group, Divine Oracle makes your Auguries and Divinations insanely accurate, thus the Weird Girls only show up when and where they should be. Madness Domain obviously, but the second domain is a bit up for grabs, taking Spontaneous Domain to enable spontaneous mind crush and oracle predictions. She could also have the Cerebrosis feats from Dragon Mag, but the spells aren’t really that good? Mostly just stuff with spooky percent/uncontrolled summons to screw yourself that you should never use because lol random. I also give her access to a non-Drow version of the Yolchol’s Blessing spell, which gives the target a bunch of tentacles, and if she casts the Girallon’s Arms spell it produces you guessed it more tentacles.
Something/Eerie Traveler: the latter is a homebrew PrC (standard 10 levels) from the GitP boards, a Far Realm themed invocation user. They penalize nearby foes and panic domesticated animals, can become incorporeal for 1 round at a time say to walk through walls or evade/reduce incoming damage (use limited only by how mus Wis damage you can heal), deal a bit of Con damage on touch, force everyone around them to save or speak gibberish and lose spells, and of course use their actual invocations (which in 3.x are at-will spells) so most likely summon some amount of swarms and/or tentacles and have some bogus magical senses. At 9th (ECL 14th) they can planeshift with perfect accuracy nearly at-will, so indeed the Weird Girls show up exactly where and when they are supposed to be. This one gets to be the Trapfinder/4th wheel of the group, ’cause it doesn’t fit on anyone else and they’ve got 5 levels of pretty much whatever before the PrC starts. Extra senses and scouting ability are useful in this role.
Undetermined Melee Build (Barb 2/Fighter 6/ToB X?): being the most normal of the group, the last of the girls is the de facto face. And by normal we mean that she doesn’t have any class features that say she’s insane or takes penalties on social skills. But she does take the Aberrant Blood and Deepspawn feats for a pair of tentacle attacks, and is then allowed to keep spending feats on more tentacles because I see no reason why not (there’s a different mind flayer related feat group that works that way-also while we’re at it get rid of the restrictions on Rapidstrike). Said yes actual real tentacles that grant natural weapon attacks are usually hidden beneath a large hoop-style skirt (which is actually just her heavy armor with the Glammered property to look like whatever, because tank). I would also allow the Inhuman Reach feat to be shifted to apply to the tentacles (only), rather than primary limbs. Her actual hands are holding a shield (because tank), and a hammer (because Melee Weapon Mastery: Bludgeoning).
But this build is the most problematic, because basically none of it works together. Nearly all the natural weapon support in the game is for charge-pouncing claws and bites and whatnot, while we have blunt tentacles and a party to protect. Usual advice for natural weapon builds is to use them to get multiple sneak attacks early, but this is tank. Could go martial adept for maneuvers and stances, but they don’t benefit natural weapon builds that much, and going down that rabbit hole tends to end with just a normal martial adept character with some ribbons tacked on rather than actually focusing on beating things up with a bunch of tentacles (I’ve read some aberration themed homebrew disciplines, but they’re for normal people being aberrant, not people who have their own tentacles). We need to spend 3 feats just to get the tentacles started in the first place, and another 3 for Weapon Focus/Spec/Mastery to shore up the damage, and even Warblade stealing Fighter’s feats and specialization isn’t enough to cram it all in there.
But yeah, there’s the Weird Girls. Half of them are officially mechanically crazy, one looks she might have tentacles crawling around under her dress, one *actually does* have tentacles under her dress-and she’s the *sane* one, if you make a wrong move near them you’re liable to have a ‘grotesque tentacled mass’ land on your head without so much as a word, and the whole group appears and disappears without warning for reasons no one understands- quite likely not even themselves.
Alignments? Neutral Good of course. There are a number of non-Lawful restrictions, but that’s it. I’ve got a whole secondary writeup on why all sorts of crazy tentacle madness powers are just the same as any other power and are not only perfectly fine to use in defense of the world but indeed show that there’s nothing to fear from the so called Far Realm- not more than any other plane full of big scary monsters at least (the ending of Darkest Dungeon in particular was not quite and yet so perfectly matched with this that I felt quite vindicated), but that’s worldbuilding.
Dumb question, but why don’t you just write a short story about them, rather than try to make it work within a TTRPG system?
Because it’s not a story I have to tell, it’s a set of character concepts built from game mechanics with a side of visual description. I could use them as an NPC bailout squad if I was running a game, except I wouldn’t, because I know better than to put bespoke NPCs I don’t want dead anywhere near actual combat- and also the blatant “shows up exactly when and where needed because Divination cheese is OP” is both insulting to the players, not a can of worms you want to open to them, and I would rather they learn the consequences of their actions have an actually campaign appropriate way to bail them out.
Sure, I could flesh out a bunch of details about exactly what sort of campaign would have this party as an appropriate NPC bailout squad, and who they’re bailing out, and then try to write some prose about it, but. . . why? It’s just a fun concept for a gimmick party. If you’re wondering why the commentary on aberrant powers and worldbuilding, that’s because I’ve already considered the question of PCs (who the vast majority of the time are not supposed to be evil or even particularly amoral or mercenary, adventures are written for do-gooders) using aberrant powers and worldbuilding. And mechanically, in 3.x DnD, there’s little or no reason said powers are actually bad other than being distasteful to the sensibilities of less-weird people.
Maybe because the way you express a character through play, bouncing them off of other people and events, is entirely different from the way you express a character through a plot in which you control everything they react to and everything that reacts to them. Sometimes a character concept is intriguing specifically because you want to see what happens in play, where you give up a lot of control in return for the chance to be challenged and surprised.
It’s kind of funny, because the “why not just write a story about it?” trope arose in response to the exact opposite impulse: people who want full control with zero surprises. In my experience, these people are also extremely unlikely to recognize that their pet characters might actually clash with the kind of story the rest of the table is trying to engage in, which would put them outside the scope of this post….
Interesting. The giving up of control and characters bouncing off each other also happens when you’re deep into writing a story, and you’ve already established who your characters are as people. In fact, that’s how you het the very best stoeies, and it’s a phenomenon lots of writers talk about.
There comes a point when characters take on a life of their own, and you can’t really “control” them anymore – just nudge them in certain directions.
I guess this also goes into some of my overall hangups with tabletop role-playing games, and how they’re far from the best way of doing collaborative storytelling (or regular storytelling, for that matter, even assuming you have a good relationship between the DM and players). But as you said, this goes beyond the scope of this post :)
Definitely depends on how you write; I write off the cuff, and pretty much run my story as if it’s a D&D campaign.
I recently had an ending in mind for a story arc; the quest to the king would end with the court mage revealing they’d been impersonating the king, and a big fancy showdown in the throne room. Cliche but effective. And then instead of that, the court mage attacked the hero in the hospital, the hero turned the tables on him, and then the mage’s bodyguards killed him in crossfire while trying to rescue him from the hero. So that ending was out, and I had to figure out a different one while the hero was running away.
That seems like a lot of fun. Really well thought out. I’m a big fan of most things eldritch. :D
Thanks, obviously I am as well. The Alienist has been cool ever since I first got Tome and Blood, and figuring out how to make it useful is one of the tweaks I’m more proud of. Having a feat that gives you tentacle attacks also demands the question of how to actually build a character for it. Though re-reading more of my notes, trying to focus on extra tentacles basically requires Kensai to make them all magic, otherwise just being a ToB martial adept or maybe Fighter/Rogue/Nightsong Enforcer and lay on the flanking sneak attack supported by summons. Divine Oracle is annoyingly OP for any Cleric that’s not trying to also pretend they’re a Paladin since there’s barely any entry requirements, but for a mad oracle it’s actually appropriate for once. And the standalone nature of Invocations makes 10 level PrCs with a tight focus seem quite viable, particularly since someone encountering the strange and then falling down a rabbit hole lends itself more to prestige classes than base. I just so happen to have found enough support to make a whole themed party.
The way that Alienist works, you could also do a more standalone character who’s a completely normal Cleric that has no idea why the normal summons that are still provided by their normal god are somehow being replaced with tentacles horrors (bonus points if you modify what they can get with Planar Ally spells as well). The class is not limited by arcane or divine and has no limits on deities. You just happened to play nice with a weird thing one time and now everything you summon is weird.
It’s interesting to see the common elements to all these characters. Cringe, expectations vs reality, compensating for perceived or real handicaps, etc.
Yeah I may be self-inserting a bit xD
I’ve had a few fun characters. Some turned out better than others
Horace Chulmondeley (pronounced Chumley. He got annoyed if anyone didn’t immediately realise this). The son of a rich family who went to wizard college, wasted his time partying and generally being a stereotypical privileged rich boy. When it was coming up to time for final exams and he couldn’t manage so much as a cantrip, he once again took the lazy way out and took a warlock pact with a genie. He lived in fear that his father would find out he cheated and wasn’t a real wizard. His favourite spell was Arcane Blast of course. Believed he was in charge of the group, the others tolerated him while actually doing what they wanted. Something about this character didn’t really click with me and if I hadn’t had to quit the game because of Real Life I probably would have retired him
Dewdrop Foecleaver. A fairy barbarian who was raised by hill giants after her parents left her in Faerun to protect her when they were in trouble with Titania. Her adoptive parents never told her she wasn’t theirs so she grew up thinking she was just a very small, flying giant. The constant bullying for being a fraction of the size of her peers led to anger issues and very good fighting ability. When her settlement was wiped out she found letters from her birth parents that her adoptive parents had never shown her. Now on a quest to find out what happened to them, rescue them if possible and kill Titania either way. I loved playing this character. We had another party member who was a bard edgelord Batman wannabe, who was constantly disappointed that nobody had heard of him so I had Dewdrop be his number one fan, president and sole member of his fan club. She would constantly mess up his attempts to talk his way out of issues by saying ridiculous and threatening things that she honestly believed were helping
Khaban Evenwind, an atheist paladin. His power came from an almost religious fervor in his conviction that the beings known as Gods variously don’t exist, are faking everything or are just overpowered magic users with a superiority complex. He was an oath of the watchers paladin, focused on protecting the realm from extraplanar invasions.A fun character concept but I didn’t really get on with the paladin class.
Over Christmas, a player in the group I DM for offered to run a holiday themed one shot from a sourcebook with a new Snowborn race, basically living snowmen. I made Frosty the cleric of Krampus to join in with the others who were playing their normal characters from the campaign. We had a halfling and a goblin so I decided Frosty would assume they were children and threaten them with punishment from Krampus if they were naughty. He ended up nearly dying when surrounded by sentient Christmas puddings and getting hit with a fireball from the aforementioned goblin. Turns out the puddings are immune to fire so his near sacrifice for the greater good was in vain
I don’t remember the name now (I rolled on a table and struggled with it even while playing him), but a dwarf fighter who had been forced to fight as a gladiator until he refused to kill any more people and was thrown in jail where he escaped with the other characters. I liked the idea of refusing to actually kill anyone and just leave people tied up for the authorities to deal with, but the campaign died before I managed to really develop him. The final session ended with him finding a group of enemies cooking and eating dwarves, flying into a rage, killing them all then calming down enough to realise that he’d broken his oath. I’d like to revisit this concept some time
A couple of concepts I want to try: a “monk” who never mastered any control of ki or other mystic/meditative aspects of their training but was excellent at the martial aspects. Actual class, wild magic barbarian. A rogue stage magician who’s so good at sleight of hand that people always assume he’s using basic cantrips and so don’t recognise his genuine skill. Probably an ex circus performer, maybe a halfling
Hey, I double-checked to make sure it was still working the way it’s supposed to before I told you something wrong. You can edit a post for ten minutes after it gets approved. The timer gets a bit squishy if you leave the page open and do something else on another tab, so it can actually extend to 20 – 30 minutes in some cases. BUT, bottom line you will always have ten minutes to edit. After that the edit option goes away and you have to communicate that you need something changed or deleted. Sometimes we see that pretty quick, sometimes it takes a day. Rarely two or more, but it does happen. Mainly because we try to communicate and make sure it’s not a problem for a different writer or administrator. Or because life gets in the way so much. Usually if you need something done after the ten minute limit, just make another comment letting us know what you need done. Why your question got caught in moderation I couldn’t tell you for sure, only guess.
Dumb characters I have played:
A paladin who spent centuries trapped in a magic circle, and while he was out his god was murdered and his religion ceased to exist. He eventually acquired a massively magical sword, which was forged by the killing of his god. He refused to use it, as it would have been sacrilegious, so he just carried it around on his back, and punched things with his gauntlets (using another sword would also have been disrespectful to his sword-god…)
A ranger / druid with very low INT who stacked his spell list with various passive protections. He cast them subconciously on himself, and then blundered around like the innocent he was setting off traps and falling in vats of acid… but was always inevitably saved by all the protection stacked on him, and came out wondering what all the fuss was about.
An 7′ tall giant of a cleric, dressed head-to-toe in scarlet armour (stolen from the very first NPC we met, who the GM had intended to be our ally, but had made the mistake of making him about my size…) He was a cleric to the god of Death, so he had no healing spells, but could animate your corpse if you died. In every combat he would immediately go berserk, which required a perception test to tell friend from foe in the game system we were using. His perception was _massively_ negative, so every combat involved the rogue dancing in front of him and then leading him to an enemy before evading away. Had to be knocked unconscious by party members at the end of every fight.
Any number of dwarven wizards, over the years. Some of whom were skeptics, and didn’t believe in non-metal-based magic. Despite being wizards.
A cleric to the god of Commerce who could only heal you if you paid him first.
Oh, and there was a Shadowrun character who, for weird reasons of the system that I don’t even remember anymore, was a mage so full of cyberware that he couldn’t cast any spells at all, but he was amazing at fighting in the magic etherial plane, or whatever it was called.
A couple of dumb character concepts (that I haven’t played… mostly):
1. A cleric of solipsism.
2. A pair of twins sharing one body — once a druid, the other a barbarian.
The first I did play briefly and it actually led to some interesting RP in a relatively low-stakes campaign, but I can see it causing a lot of headache in certain styles of campaign. The latter, I never even tried to actually play… although I’m sure you could do it well with sufficiently skilled player and DM.
I’ve seen the body sharing concept before, rolling each day to see who’s in control or similar. I’ve never known anyone to actually play it though
Okay, I have a file listing a bunch of dumb character ideas I’d like to try out at some point. I think this is my current favorite (with thanks to David J. Prokopetz for the idea):
Sorcerer who spent a few minutes technically dead due to an incident that starts with the phrase “Hold my beer!” and woke up with slight brain damage and power over unearthly spirits.
I imaged a mini-dachshund in a wizard hat and came up with a concept for that. Wizard curse/transmogged into a mini-dachshund. They still have the robes and hat, and can cast any spell they knew when transformed. Verbal components are woofs, barks, whines, etc. Other components are negotiable; one could argue some things are easier and some things are harder. The wizard can only be communicated with through a Speak to Animals spell, but their high intelligence facilitates thorough conversation. Of course, wizard to small dog means practically unchanged health and stamina, but maybe higher dex. It’s debatable. The dog is faster but much smaller, so has to cover more ground.
The dachs is more prone to cast Fireball due to frustration. Although wizards are already prone to that, so I don’t know how to show it without being absurd.
I once had a wizard get seriously injured very early campaign. We were thinking of a way to save him without being too on-the-nose when I suddenly realised it would be more fun to play as the kobold who killed him. The kobold would be a sorcerer who stole all the wizard’s gear and insisted the whole time that made them the same person. Sadly, that campaign died soon after.
The only other odd concept I’ve really wanted to play recently with was a beefy elven prizefighter. Like Hulk Hogan with pointy ears. Sadly in the current edition I couldn’t find a way to make a good unarmed fighter without being a monk.