Memorable RP-Characters
Basillicum
Member, Translator (NDA) Posts: 400
I'm sure many players on these forums have played at least a little bit of pen and paper - be it old school D&D, Pathfinder, ASIF or some other setting - and surely there are others out there that also enjoy skipping down memory lane with their favourite characters. In doing so hilarious stories often emerge.
I know I have several, and all of them met their end way too early (either by death or by lack of playtime).
Which ones are your most memorable RP-characters?
I know I have several, and all of them met their end way too early (either by death or by lack of playtime).
Which ones are your most memorable RP-characters?
Post edited by LadyRhian on
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I was going to play Keldar, a half orc barbarian for one game. I'd rounded up my previous campaign with my gaming group and had a few months of being unable to play so one of the others would DM, I'd play for one session and bow out while the others would continue.
It was a sort of post apocalyptic Forgotten Realms setting where massive wars had been fought and Evil had won. Almost all cities were subjugated to Bane and others. The players would pick their classes and after a bit, turn into Gestalt paladins (levelling their own class + a paladin class at the same time) as they would be the champions of a now bitter and battered Torm (new god of honour and vengeance), meant to liberate the world.
I was part of the group for the first game, I'd agreed with the DM that I'd get a noble death in the end.
Hijinks ensued, eventually we were in a city beset by dozens of city guard and the Guard Commander, known far and wide as a powerful warrior and sadistic asshole. At level 1, we fled and found a way out of the city, but the group needed a distraction. Keldar sealed the exit, then stayed behind and when the commander and the guard showed up, Keldar challenged him to a duel.
Now, Keldar was level 1, had a greataxe and wore some leather armour. The commander was a higher level fighter in magical full plate. This would be Keldar's death sentence, but it would give the group time to get away.
The commander humors me, we bow to eachother, I win initiative and rage then power attack, throwing around my barbarian ferocity in a last moment of defiance against the evil and corrupt regime before my untimely death.
Natural 20. Confirm the crit? A 19, confirmed.
Damage roll, a 10 on the d12. So let's calculate, 10 + 10 (Str*) + 2 (power attack) = 22 damage. Multiplied by three because Greataxes roll that way.
*Two handed weapons get 1,5x Str modifier, which was +7 at the time due to 20 base Str and Rage)
With 66 points of damage, I smashed the commander's skull in and tore a gorge through his body, ending at his sternum. As his body fell to the ground, the guard panicked (their loyalty only enforced by fear of their superior), most fled, some fired crossbowbolts at me (almost killed me too), one stabbed another in the neck, seizing the moment to settle an old score.
Keldar was confused at his survival but knew a distraction when he saw one, sprinting off into an alleyway.
The session was over and everyone cheered, ending on a higher note than we expected. I later learned that the party had heard tales of a brutal orcish slayer stalking the city, viciously slaying all evil in his path. I guess that's not a bad way to go either.
So ahem, that's one of my favorite character moments. Having played a bunch over the years, I could tell you a few more but let's not make this post a novel :-)
I don't remember much from that time, although I recall a module that gave us laser weapons or something silly like that.
I lost track of the friends I played with, but I had lots of fun and wish I had had more opportunities to play!
I always rolled terrible for some reason, but then again I'd always pick a warrior class since everyone else wanted to get fancy (rogue, wizard, clerics, monks, etc.) and I wanted to help keep things balanced. If I ever pick up the game again, I'd definitely want to play a ranger, only b/c I've always wanted to do the Horizon Walker prestige class. Sure I could achieve it with other classes but ranger would be fastest.
One of my favourite characters was Nathaniel Nier, an Aasimar Paladin of Bahamut. We were actually playing Pathfinder but our DM had decided to place our campaign in Faerun, and allowed me to play that my character was one of the Martyr's Progeny ("The Martyr's Progeny is the collective term used to describe children who were spared from death by the deity Torm when he absorbed the souls of his followers in Tantras during the Time of Troubles in 1358 DR"). He was supposed to be extremely resilient but not necessarily a damage dealer, so I gave him a shield, a scimitar (Bahamut's chosen weapon), a full plate and lots of constitution. Dumping dexterity (7) means he became a slow and clumsy 6'7 fortress of goodness.
I don't remember the exact details of Nathaniel's background, but he had grown up supporting several paladinian gods, but for some reason he had decided that his quest was to spread Bahamut's fait, by being an example of his justice.
Anyway, Nathaniel did well as a tank and became an important part of the party, but when we encountered an ethereal spectre-like entity that drained dexterity on touch he didn't last too long. In fact, he died within three or four rounds.
Luckily the rest of the party decided that they wanted their main tank back. After having glanced at their economy for a few seconds they also decided that Reincarnation was the cheapest way to go (which means that the character is resurrected in a new form - most likely as a different race). Our DM was overjoyed, hoping he would roll the realm's first kobold paladin (or something). Unfortunately...he rolled a 100. This means that the DM decided the new race. He needed some time to contemplate, and ultimately landed on the most fitting race I could've ever wished for. Dragonborn of Bahamut.
I should mention - at this point none of us had any idea of what the new dragonborn race in 4E would be like at all, so our DM just assumed I'd get a +2 bonus to strength and constitution as well as the ability to breathe and resist fire, while getting a penalty to charisma. When reincarnated you keep your mental stats, however, and as Aasimar already granted me +2 to wisdom and charisma Nathaniel now had a +2 bonus to four stats in total, which is kind of OP.
Obviously Nathaniel excelled in many battle after this event, but the one that I personally enjoyed the most has to be the one with the evil employers. We had been tricked into working for a couple of people that turned out to be the culprits, and of course my paladin took this more than a little bit personally.
In the showdown with the evil employers the rest of the party managed to kill one of them before Nathaniel even reached the scene. As the other bad guy suddenly noticed this now 7 feet tall half-reptilian full plate-clad monstrosity towering over him, he bailed. His exit strategy was apparently to feather fall down a dark pit that was too deep to see the end of, but Nathaniel needed vengeance more than he needed to bother with safety, and was determined to jump after him.
I don't know how deep the pit was, but I know that Nathaniel crashed into his target mid-air a good 100 feet below, as I could hear 10d6 being rolled behind the DM Screen. The evil employer was killed instantly by the falling damage and Nathaniel survived by 3 hit points. Miraculously he was also able to wring off his enemy's Ring of Feather Falling to use it to fall safely down the rest of the pit, which apparently took a while.
Sorry! This post quickly ended up being longer than I planned on. :P
Glorious! Those crits, man, they're a game changer at the best and worst of times.
@Basillicum
Ah, the Ring of Feather Fall. Arguably the most useful item in the game. It opens up so many possibilities.
My most memorable character is a no-brainer: Segard Whitemane the teenaged Barbarian/Frostrager. I rolled on the random age table and got 16, no joke. He was a white-haired scrapper with the Improved Unarmed Strike feat because I wanted to take the Frostrager so I could punch people with pissed-off ice fists.
Initially, in 3.5, Segard earned a name for himself when the group found a young white dragon in an adjoining room that was not yet aware of us. The group was running low on resources, and some of us were injured, but Segard had full HP, still had one rage for the day left, and his rages made him immune to cold damage thanks to the Frozen Berserker feat. For some reason I cannot recall, we also did not want to kill the dragon, so Segard being an unarmed fighting type volunteered to solo the thing. So, I threw off my gauntlets, went into a rage with a "YEEEEAAAAAAAGH," and tore into the room. The rest of the party shut the door behind him, and Segard punched that dragon into unconsciousness, shrugging off breath weapons, claws, and bites.
Another time, Segard had the bright idea to kill a troll by pushing it off a ledge onto a spike pit. Regeneration saves the day, so it didn't take. So, of course, he jumps on top of the troll and starts stomping it down onto the spikes to finish the job. Didn't take. Then, he gets the bright idea to use the party's ropes and chains to tie up the troll, jumps down to the floor of the spike pit, goes into a rage, and uses the leverage from the ropes, chains, and spikes to thrash and tug at the troll's head and neck with a wicked headlock. The troll's head came off. Segard later proceeded to hold up the troll head in the local tavern and recount the tale of the dungeon crawl. He rolled a 19 on his Perform (oratory) check [yes, he had ranks in Perform (oratory), deal with it]. Needless to say, the tips, ale, and wenches flowed freely that night. The DM was impressed enough to have Segard wake up the next morning literally covered in ladies. Not a bad way for a young guy to lose his virginity.
Later, the campaign switched to Pathfinder, and Segard continued to take Weapon Focus (legendary shenanigans) feats. There was this manticore that kept flying away from us, shooting its stupid spiked barbs. Lacking a ranged weapon, Segard threw the Ranger at it. The Ranger in question, Algowayne, was a living wood chipper with his kukris, only for people. And monsters. Once Algowayne latched onto the manticore's side, we knew it was over.
After that, Greek mythology continued to harass us, this time with a chimera. Segard put it in an icy headlock. All three heads. At this point, Segard had this really lovely feat that let him maintain his grabs as a mere Move Action, leaving his Standard Action free to do other things, or just do more wrasslin'. Granted, my usual strategy was simply to double up on the icy squeezin's, so nothing super flashy usually happened. This time, however, I was grappling a chimera, which has a dragon head, which breathes fire, so I decided to only maintain the grapple and deal damage once. Then, I readied an action. The next time the chimera tried to breath fire, I would try to direct its dragon head in a direction of my choosing. I did so, and made it breath fire all over a bunch of duergar mobbing my buddies.
Sadly, the captain of the duergar still grew huge and cut our Sorcerer in half with a bastard sword crit. But, eh, can't win 'em all.
Another favorite of mine is the character of a friend of mine, François the Sorcerer.
Inexplicibly French, he spoke with an incredibly heavy accent (akin to Monty Python's Frenchies), had a pack of endless cigarettes (which he smoked endlessly as well, often in the faces of our enemies), had ranks in painting which he used liberally on anything (Shar's holy altar has never looked nicer) and believed he was the center of the universe (which, due to his 22+ Charisma, he unfortunately often was).
Many good times were had, like the time where he tried to woo the evil cult priestess and almost succeeded ("Ma belle, you are the most beautiful of our enemies. Before you sacrifice us, let us have a night of passion together. It would be a waste of this beautiful body to not be used until right before I die, non?"), the time where he went face to face with a black dragon and called him 'an overgrown little lizard thing that smells of sewage and has the brain of an inbred newt' before exhaling cigarette smoke in its face (the rest of the party going "Oh shit! We attack the dragon!" saved his life) or the time where he refused to cast Magical Tattoo on anyone, unless it was in the form of a fancy mustache.
We all loved and/or hated François.
"Inexplicibly French," the greatest descriptor for any character, ever.
In the next several encounters, firing my bow, I rolled something like 9 natural 20s (on a dice roller, yet no less). I one-shotted several grow, brought down giants with my sword, and at the final encounter, when it looked like the mage was going to flee with his captive, I THREW my sword like a spear. Rolled… once again, a natural 20. The GM cursed up a blue streak, but that ended the adventure successfully. I brought back the sword with the evil mage spitted on it as a trophy and presented it to the sage, who was suitably impressed. I have never had such good luck on rolls, online or in person, EVER again.
Bargle - Casts magic missile : Aleena
Bargle did 1 damage to Aleena
Aleena - Death
I love her.
And then there was the player whose actual name was Fred. So he named his characters every variation of that you can think of: Derf, Ferd, Dref, Erfd, Redf… he lost so many characters (because he *insisted* on playing mages), that we started to have numbers after the name. I think he was up to Dref #8 before he survived past early "too squishability". At last. But who wants to play Dref #8 as a character name?
Another player was a girl I knew in college. She was Eastern European, but had spent 10 years living in Mexico. Her character was an extremely feisty mage Enchanter playing a Witch kit (which meant she started off with 1000 exp of magic items and a strange aura, among other things). Another player was playing a thief with an overly inflated sense of his own… attractiveness and ability to seduce young women. Of course, being an enchantress, she has a high charisma. Highest in the party, in fact. So when the thief comes on to her, she turns him down flat. He viewed this as a "challenge to his reputation", so he got more and more insistent about it, even though she made it extremely clear that she did not want any kind of a relationship more than a professional one with him. One night, she was on watch and the thief decided to "try his luck"… yet again. She'd had *more* than enough of this, and on a break, she'd asked me as DM if I minded her hurting his character. I said, "Of course not!" So she cast a Sleep spell on him, and took off two very important things for his passing on his genes, shall we say. Then, she bandaged him up, administered a few sips of healing potion to him, and in town the next day, she took her, um, trophies, and had them bronzed. She proceeded to hang them around her neck on a silk cord and the next time he came on to her, she told him they were his, and she had no objection to starting a collection of them. His character turned white and never bothered her again. And he had to raise the 50K gold to get them regenerated… eventually.
The group consisted of Marcus the Barbarian, Absolute the Alcoholic Druid and her pig Tank and Watashi the Ninja.
They were on a mission for the temple of Waukeen to recover several relics strewn across the realm, competing with a mysterious lady in a red robe and her followers. Their clues led them to Cloakwood and the temple had provided a necklace that would give the wearer a vague sense of direction to the relic so they wouldn't get lost in the forest.
I played up the Spider Forest angle and described the forest quickly turning silent, dark and full of webs. Their spot checks notified them of large shapes skittering overhead in the trees and soon they encountered Sinoth the Verminlord, Shadowdruid and Keeper of the Forest, a villain I quickly pulled out of my ass to give face to the forest, writing down his stats as the party talked amongst themselves. He offered them safe passage on the condition that they take care of a digging expedition to the west. The intruders there had slain many of his spider kin and the party provided excellent patsies to take them out.
The group agreed and followed Sinoth to the digsite, where 16 diggers were digging holes in the ground, overseen by a burly man in plate, an elf in leather armour with a bow and a cackling gnome who enjoyed harassing the diggers and taunting them with threats of torture if they didn't work hard enough.
I expected them to storm in and kill, which is what they always did. Instead, they came up with a plan. Have the spiders chase them into the clearing, convince the enemy that they were attacked and when close, attack.
So that was done, the group ran into the clearing screaming, the spiders surged out of the forest and the three enemies attacked the spiders. Then the party also attacked the spiders, causing them to retreat (dragging a few diggers along with them).
The party and enemy party greeted eachother and of course the other three wanted to know why the party was there. They bluffed, saying they were accompanying Absolute on a pilgrimage through all the major forests of the realms, but had underestimated Cloakwood. The other group bought it (or seemed to buy it) and offered to protect them on their way out, provided they grabbed a shovel and started digging, to which they agreed.
I hadn't accounted for this at all, the group never talked to enemies (the barbarian always started shooting or throwing weapons at any villain mono or dialogueing) so I improvised their general personalities and their reactions to the development. The party started digging and Marcus the barbarian soon found the relic, covering it up with a little dirt but remembering where it was.
As evening fell and 'dinner' was served, Absolute made the mistake of letting Tank close to the forest in search of pig food. With loud screeches, he was pulled into the forest by spiders and Absolute immediately ran after him (the player has an obsession with pigs, allowing her to have one in D&D made her insanely happy so kidnapping him actually almost reduced her to tears).
She was met by Sinoth who was enraged at their betrayal and demanded all the diggers and their leaders be dead by dawn or she would only see the mummified remains of her pig again.
Absolute returned to camp and as night fell, they agreed they had to do what Sinoth said. Watashi snuck out of their tent to the gnome's tent and cut his throat as he slept. One down.
He then went over to the elf's, cut a tear in the tent with his sword and immediately got an arrow to the face, critting for enough to bring him to -6hp. The elf had made every spot and listen check since they got to the camp, noticing Marcus finding the relic and overhearing their plan to kill them and in what order. Not minding the psychognome killed, he had waited in his tent with his bow drawn, with a readied action to Rapid Fire on anyone opening his tent.
Marcus made his listen check to hear his friend get plugged, raged and stormed out of his tent, being stopped by the large plated warrior and the two fought, quickly made difficult by the elf getting out of his tent and firing arrows at Marcus as well.
Absolute snuck out and quickly healed Watashi back to the land of the living. He immediately turned invisible and snuck behind the elf, shanking him in the back with two swords. With their combined might, they took down the plated warrior.
They returned freedom to the dig slaves, got the artifact, got Tank back from the Verminlord (though he was unconcious and poisoned to 0 Str) and Absolute swore eternal vengeance on Cloakwood.
The players were amazed at the session and I was amazed that I managed to improvise 90% of the things that had taken place.
That...is so very awesome.
DM : You're walking through the forest, the sun shining through the trees and the wind rustling the leaves on the bushes to your right.
Me : I leap into the bushes and attack with my axe!
* stunned silence *
Other player : What?
Me : DM said that there was something rustling the leaves.
Other player : Yes. The wind.
Me : Ah. Er.. well I'm in the bushes by now, swinging my axe.
Other player : Yeah, teach that bush a lesson!
DM : Um, actually there are four goblins in the bushes who were getting ready to ambush your party.
Me : Wow. Awesome! Shall I roll for surprise?
DM : Er.. there's really no need. You already have surprise on me. You can have two free rounds on the goblins....
my very first P&P character was a dwarf called Borri Stonehammer and was my intro into 3rd ed, a level one fighter who had high STR, DEX, INT being a smith by trade fighter by class. sporting 16 / 14/ 18 in my rolls the rest being 11 and under. the main reason i remember him so fondly is because he knocked out a hill giant with one swing....kinda, in a rare stroke of good rolls Borri jumped onto a hill giant attacking a village and landed on his head, he then struck the giant in the head but alas did very little damage but he didnt need to!! the DM rolled for his reaction, rolled a 1 and said "the giant grips his club and goes to swat-" i cut him off by saying i jump off get the 16 roll i needed to make it and the DM continued "swat his own head and knock himself out cold" he got shot later by an archer rolling a 1 on his attack roll but he was the hero
my second P&P memorable character is my 4th ed half orc monk gagnash who i have decribed before his main memorable moment was using the broken hald orc / monk combo to one shot the boss, well he would have one shotted the boss if the DM didn't fudge it to make him live using harmonious thunder, flurry of blows, half orc blood rage to deal a grand total of 86 damage to the 50 hp boss...oh this was at level one aswell as i rolled a 20
now for my online characters:
Agaran is an 8th level barbarian whom i based off the rigante novels by David Gemmel this was in ravenloft so it was allowed for any character from any setting to play and he just couldn't die, i turned him into a sponge and jacked his AC up to late 30's (38 if memory serves) and he could take on hordes of monsters that people higher level than him couldn't he got so ridiculously powerful he managed to fight (and im not exaggerating here i had the time to count) 32 skeletal knights which are all level 12. and he survived, he didnt kill any becuase he was in a group and while they were dealing with zombies a friendly paladin with a mace started swatting the skeletal knights as i was still the biggest threat taunting and such, it was gruesome i was on very little HP at the end, but god damn it i survived that fight.
and my final character in this massive story post is Beldur. Beldur is my main character a neutral evil demonologist trying to find a way to become immortal and take over Lloths domain (Lloth being a demonic god, becoming immortal through demonancy the main goal in other games where Lloth doesnt exist ) the guy i dust off in every RPG and when needed P&P groups, everyone has one of these kinds of characters, and this is a short story about a cruel admin getting his comeuppance and how i took over an entire server to make a point.
in some of the dungons beldur happened upon a gate scroll after a very useful search roll of 20, i kept onto said scroll and didnt use it for 3 years untill i did another DM event where said DM was the cruel admin i mentioned before that involved a genie in a bottle who we saved after fighting lots of stuff and we were all given one limited wish each, beldur wished for two permanence scrolls (for roleplay purposes the spell doesnt exist in the game). he bought a spell of protection from evil, memorized the spell cast it upon himself and used one of this permanence scrolls to make him forever protected against evil. he then used his three year old gate scroll and his other permanence scroll on that to get a permanent gate to the abyss that spit out balors fully under his control.
i then said to the admin who was giving overpowered magical items to his favorites "even with the cheating items everyone who is against me might be able to take down a balor or 2, but my permanent gate will spit out an infinite number of balors untill i will, even if i die the gate is permanent so even if i die i still win. i give the orders to my infinite demon army to kill everyone who tries to fight me and take over the server. you cant stop me, this is what you get for breaking your own rules and implying harsher ones on those who aren't in your little circle" and then having made my point, i left the server and letting the memory of how with 4 bits of paper i took over the world.
hope you enjoyed this im going back to BG2:EE
There was an unreasonably huge scorpion and her swarm of freshly-hatched babies going to town on us, half the party was down, and Azura was fresh out of heals. When an Evil Cleric is out of heals and down to less than half HP, it's time to cut your losses. Azura bid a smug farewell to his dying comrades and made a beeline for the exit, but I forgot I was within reach of the scorpion's tail. Opportunity Attack! Hit! And Azura dropped like a sack of potatoes. The dwarf Fighter tank being played by a new player, realizing that things were truly dire and that he still had both of his damn Daily powers, used them both in a single turn to finish off the scorpion. The day was saved, albeit barely. Luckily, everybody was either unconscious or drunk on scorpion venom, so Azura was able to convince them he absolutely DID NOT try to leave them all for dead. The dwarf is too much of a lunatic to care, and has an unhealthy obsession with fresh water even for somebody living in the Dark Sun campaign setting. Why is that last part relevant? Well, Azura happens to be a water genasi. The dwarf thinks he's pretty awesome just for existing.
It's....dirty.
In my personal, in no way canon cosmology, Feldrak Feldrak'i in Black Pits 2 is Feldrak's great-grandson.
I was unpacking my old gaming stuff a few weeks back, and actually found the original List. If I ever get to play round a table again, I've got a sneaking suspicion my next character's going to be a Feldrak'i.
***
The last D&D campaign I played in was sort of a disaster. There were nine players, including the DM; three were into the roleplaying/improv aspect of it (I was one of them), three were rules geeks, and three were playing for the first time and didn't really knowwhat the hell was going on. It was... not a workable scenario.
My character was a short, bald, excessively judgmental human cleric, Brother Precarius of the Order of Our Lady of the Perpetual Martyrdom. Or so he claimed. In fact, he was a dwarf rogue with alopecia who drove the DM completely nuts with his habit of taking everything he stole (and he stole everything he could lay his hands on) and burying it for future use.
Even though there was something clearly off about Brother Precarius -- he had little regard for other peoples' personal property and never particularly subtle about it -- I managed to keep the other players believing I was a cleric by failing a lot of healing rolls until they were unconscious, at which point I'd "make my roll" with a healing potion. Some people got suspicious when the number I rolled seemed to have no actual relation to whether my healing worked or not.
I pitched Precarius for TBP2, but the Our Lady of the Perpetual Martyrdom stuff got nixed over concern someone would actually believe it represented a legitimate in-game religion. I believe it was at that point I changed the character's name to Brother Ellraish. Some other changes were made by various parties and the rest was history.
***
My only real regret about the Black Pits 2 was that I was never able to put words in the mouths of those two characters. But the guy who did did a really fabulous job, especially with Ellraish.
He slept with a storm genasi prostitute. Not a big deal, you say? Well, he killed her boyfriend a year ago. Azura killed him because they were competing for her and possible a seat on their tribe's council. He also callously forgot all about that because once he left his tribe to explore the bigger world he no longer cared about his previous schemes. When confronted by the prostitute who had left the tribe to kill him, he gave her the M. Bison Speech. "When I killed your mate, it was the most important day of your life. For me, it was Tuesday."