10 Character Concepts You Don’t See Every Day
Generic PC: “So the orcs killed my parents and torched my village. Then I learned how to use a sword, and I’ve been adventuring ever since.”
Me: *yawn*
Rogue PC: “I’m an orphaned child who grew up on the streets of the big city. I became a thief to support myself.”
Me: Yeah, you and everyone else.
Drow PC: “I’m the only good-natured member of my evil race, exiled to live as a misunderstood loner.”
Me: Take your standard-issue scimitars and get out of my sight!!
All of these character concepts are viable. The problem with them is that they’re way too overdone. Ever wanted to play something *really* different? Here are 10 fun character concepts that are anything but boring.
The Scavenger
Some people adventure for glory. Others adventure for wealth. You’re a first-rate pack rat who lives for all the random junk you find along the way. Even if you can’t use something right now, you know it’ll come in handy someday. Maybe you could even strip its parts and use them to put together a really awesome magic item of your own! Then again, you might blow up yourself and your friends, but you can live with that.
The 2-Legged Calamity
Speaking of blowing things up…
Nothing ever goes right for you. It’s like you were cursed – and maybe you were! Whatever the cause, you have trouble pulling off the simplest tasks. You always say the wrong thing, make the wrong decision, and trust the wrong people. Items break in your hands, you run into trees, and you’ve never met an animal that would tolerate you. Life sucks for the 2-Legged Calamity, but they can be great comic relief for a game.
The Indebted
You’ve finished mage school. Now what? You’re like a newly-licensed doctor without a clientele. Nobody trusts your abilities, and you don’t have a big inventory of magic items to sell. Worse, you owe the Academy. Big time. So, for lack of a better option, you set out to live the life of an adventurer. Or you could be an honest fighter obliged to support your elderly parents back home. Regardless of who you owe money to, you’re only adventuring to pay the bills.
Displaced Soul
Somehow, somewhere, you were reincarnated. You can’t prove it, of course, but you still remember your previous life. Maybe you were a dragon who soared above the landscape, sinking your talons into anyone who angered you. Or maybe you were a hero of legend, and you still remember how it felt to wade into battle and leave your enemies in anguish. But now you’re trapped in an inept and unskilled body. What do you do?
The Cannibal
This one’s best for evil PCs. Somewhere over the course of your life, you developed a taste for flesh. The flesh of your own kinsmen! Maybe you were forced to eat someone as part of a survival scenario, and now you crave the taste. Maybe you want to devour your enemies’ brains because you think you’ll absorb their powers that way. Cannibalism is the driving force in your life, and it’s downright disturbing.
Picture by Loup-Vert
The Doppleganger
You look exactly like someone else. No, really. The problem is, this person has a nasty reputation. You’re always getting yelled at, hassled by guards, and spurned by merchants because of the horrible things “you” did in the past. Who is your evil twin? Are they an unknown relative, or are they actually impersonating *you* for some reason?
Worst Hangover Ever
The last thing you remember was falling asleep with a buxom wench and a pocket full of jackpot coins. Then you awoke with a pounding headache, a missing fortune, and a summons from a local lord. What have you gotten yourself into now? You realize that you make really bad decisions when you’re drunk, but that doesn’t stop you from tipping a tankard every chance you get. It’s going to be an interesting life.
The Pensioner
You retired from the adventuring life, the army, or the city watch. You put down roots in a little town and maybe even founded your own inn. You got married, had kids, and bounced grandbabies on your knee. Now something sinister is threatening your town and everything you’ve worked so hard to achieve. Dust off the chainmail, Grandpa; it’s fightin’ time!
Paranoid Conspiracy Theorist
Nothing’s as it seems. You just know the king is in league with dark forces, and that’s the reason why life is so miserable in your neck of the woods. That guy that tried to hire you? He just wants to send all malcontents to their death. That caravan guard gig? You quit because you knew it was a front for weapon smuggling. People tend to look at you funny, but you’re convinced that something big and bad is going down, and all the powerful folks are in on it.
Yourself
It’s a cliché from 80’s movies, but it’s still a pretty fun premise. You were an average kid who got sucked into a fantasy world while playing everyone’s favorite evil game: D&D! What do you do now? How do you convince your new PC buddies that you come from another world? Will you ever find your way back, or would you rather cast off your former life and embrace the role of an adventurer?
What’s the most unusual character concept you’ve ever seen in play? Share your favorites in the comments section!
I remember an insane radical Atheist in one campaign who was convinced that the gods did not exist and that all religious were frauds. He vanished while raiding a temple to “expose the truth”.
Strangely in our various indie campaigns, cannibalism shows up quite often, and not always from ‘evil’ characters either. Cannibalistic halfling tribes seems to be a reoccuring trope in our fantanty games for example.
Well i’m just starting an eberron campaign with 7 characters
Altough the players haven’t given me their background story’s yet.
I as DM gave them some limitations and some basic background as a start
The first is a genasi wild magic sorcerer, who’s being kept prisoner in a mage towers for the last 4 years, Because well he’s the only genasi in eberron. He came to the world the day after the mourning and was captured immediatly after that. He doesn’t know anything about the world except his cage in the mage’s tower, that’s until the PC’s free him in the prologe of the campaign.
The second one is a cleric revenant(elf), who is summoned/created by the PC’s after they free the genasi. Because for some mysterious reason they need the genasi the restore the old elven soul. This character remembers nothing and doesn’t even speak the current commen or elven dialect, instead he speak old versions of them and has a difficult time understanding them. And an interesting twist to end with he has the thirteend dragon mark, The dragon mark of death
The third one is A shadar-kai Invoker, who has been struck by a Siberys comet. Infused with the energy of Syberis, he can greatly boost the powers of dragonmarks nearby him.
The fourth one is A human Warlock with vampiric heritage, he’s some one who believes in the prohecy of the dragons. Who has the starpact and has the mark of scribing
The fifth one is A Warforged paladin, he’s free to make up his mind
The sixt one is A Drow Artifier from storm’s reach, who has been taught the art of artifying by the house of Cannith. The house of cannith is greatly interested in him because he bears the mark of making and is a drow. He could easily infiltrate a drow society and copy from them the techniques of binding elementals and other strange forms of magic. Giving the house more power and less depence on the gnomes of zilargo
The seventh and last Character is an Eladrin swordmage from the lost fey city. He’s searching eberron for the eladrin city ever since the mourning happened.
Just recently I came up with two I’m really proud of;
One is named Greenoak, a Warforged Warden who’s body is infused with plantmatter and whatnot; his body had fallen in a forest a long time ago, and the forest had begun to reclaim it, when the Genius Loci of the forest, a being called Green Thumb gave the body life and bade it to protect the forest/ be an emissary.
The other is a changeling Sorcerer(ess?) who went crazy after direct contact with the elemental chaos; the contact caused all of the different ‘people’ she’d acted as throughout her life (even though at a young age, there were /a lot/) to simultaneously gain their own consciousnesses, causing her mind to tear itself to shreds.
I haven’t had the chance to play either of them, and I’m not in a group right now that really emphasizes story-telling anyway, so I’ve been saving them for that day.
The PCs in my Stargate-inspired Eberron game were a very, very odd bunch.
A spastic girl, seer psion, who was brain-damaged after accidentally scrying into Cyre during the Mourning. Acted somewhere between Luna Lovegood and River Tam.
A warforged servant who was caught in the Mourning and emerged with a warlock-pact Eye in the midst of his forehead and a compulsion to record memories for the Eye by scrivening his experiences into his own armor with an adamantium stylus.
The warforged’s cohort, who worshipped the Eye, was a crystalline entity buried deep underground who had taken over a human’s body psionically after his friend’s brain was eaten by illithid, and was using the body to explore the surface world while his real crystal body was stuck underneath.
The party mage was an elf who was the subject of an experiment to bond a Valenar spirit to a living body… but instead it caught the deva-like spirit of the Traveler, who occupied the body and worked to break the power of the dragons and their Prophecy. His ‘original’ mind manifested occasionally with demon-like power.
The human bard was intended to be a weird character… a grunt who was Reincarnated by an arch-druid into a mermaid who spent her early levels adventuring in the sea before getting a Ring of Landwalking and rejoining surface society, stuck betwixt two worlds. Then she ended up finding a Ring of Three Wishes and wishing herself to take the place of the genie of the ring, becoming a Jann herself. Turns out she was the most normal of the group.
Well just a quickie favourite – my “jobsworth” paladin, who spent his life as a clerical assistant for the local council, but was recommended into the Silver Flame (Eberron) by an exasperated admin boss. With low INT he made a bad clerk, but seems to want to bring form-filling into his paladinship, wherever he goes. Turns out his dad was killed as an adventurer and Mum never wanted him to do it, so sent him to work for the Council, as it was safer.
@everyone: Awesome stuff. I’ll be sure to point my own players here if they need to spark their imagination when creating a character.
Some I’ve seen:
A archmage with severe Alzheimer’s…when he could remember what he was doing and why, he was awesome, the rest of the time he was a liability.
Clone who had half the memories of previous individual (mage), and knew that the remaining memories were out there somewhere in a second clone.
Individual escaped from alternate universe. (not so original I know but fun)
Intelligent sword, looking for someone worthy to wield it.
Informant to the city guard and graverobber to the local necromancer.
Gamekeeper to the local lord
Crippled inquisitor with a number of minions (Pre Abercrombie by several years)
Possessed body looking for a way to move-on to something better.
Numerous doomed or cursed characters who have attracted or upset the forces of darkness in some fashion. A shout out to teh memorable Doradin the Damned, an AD&D illusionist who was cursed with weakness and got to 11th level with only 13 hit points.
We’ve got an interesting group right now, playing a Forgotten Realms campaign.
Ben is playing a half-elf swordmage, Eylwyn, and I’m playing his swordmage twin sister, Cinda. We met our elven half-brother, Baelvain, who was watching over us unknown as we grew up near his woods. Apparently his father and our mother got it on, but he went back to his wife and our mother left us with her twin brother, who we grew up thinking was our dad. Eventually, the truth came out that our father was our uncle and our traveling, adventuring aunt was our mother.
Enter Thorn, an elf of ancient origins, who has been incorporated into a magic pendant (with his horse) by his goddess, destined to pass from hand to hand through the ages. He incarnates in a different form for each new holder, this time coming out as a druid. Eventually, we learn that he is the true father of Baelvain…which means Bael isn’t Cinda’s half-brother…which means that they can get it on…which we did.
We’ve also got a ninja along with us now, but we’re not sure if he’s related yet or not.
Oh, yeah. Thorn is also a “living tome” for the librarians at Candlekeep. He keeps journals of his deeds and brings them back to them for study. They also track him and his lineage with a cool family tree and a map of the world with tracking markers all over it (kind of like the map of Hogwarts that Harry Potter gets…but for the whole of Faerun).
Ah and a new character that should see some play time later today:
A Revenant Vampiric Githyanki Paladin of Tempus who is unaligned, a completely legal for play in the RPGA LFR world.
Looking forward to see how this one interacts with others
I am a Gnoll, Gnolls love to eat. Gnolls love to eat meat. I am also a very good cook and carry and gather herbs, which me dame taught me to find, around. So after each battle I always ensure that I am able to procure the choicest portions or the defeated foes and at rest times whip up the most wonderous of Bar-B-Ques. Unfortunately most of my party have delicate digestive systems and are unable to enjoy the delicious repasts I provide. Much to my dismay (and secretly delight) I usually end up having to consume the meal all by me self, since as we all know, there are many starving cubs out there and it is shameful to waste good feeding opportunities.
On an other note: My human controllers daughter plays a Doppleganger (now changeling) Rogue with a form of tourettes. When she sneezes or coughs harshly or gets startled she randomly shifts form.
The only semi-interesting character I had was Elborn Highleaf by day, The Thiefling by night. He was born into an upper class Half-Elven family. Recognizing the suffering of the lower class in his hometown, he would steal from the other rich families (and his own) to help the poor. He was a robin hood, basically. However, he did not reveal his identity to the other party members. He was obviously a Rouge but I was thinking about taking a disguise-related prestige class to go along with it.
So I once made a dwarven archer (str was really high so he was a very effective fighter with a mighty bow) who was orphaned (yawn) but then found by wood elves who decided to raise him as one of their own as a joke. So I got to role play a kinda snoby dwarf who rocked in combat. It was a blast.
I’ve done the (yawn) dark elf in exile (with the twin scimitars). I think the most fun I’ve had with a character was an orge raised by humans who tried to fit in (his name was BullSh*t). He was very curious. Such as coming to a door and “wait for the thief? Heck let’s see what’s behind the door right now. (boom)” The curious part is what made it interesting.
My brother played a bard in that memorable way you hear sometimes by singing all his songs. My brother is a really good writer so it was always fun to hear him make up lyrics on the spot. The twist was that he was metal and after sounding off two or three brutal line he would yell “rock” and start head banging. He also became a vampire about halfway through the campaign which was a surprising effective combination, although it meant our most charismatic character couldn’t represent us during the day.
In one of my first D&D games I played an ex-professional executioner who was fired after his town got rid of the death penalty. When he finds the adventuring group and goes on subsequent adventures he starts collecting heads and keeping them stored in a modified bag of holding that’s actually a room you can go inside. where he has set up shelving to keep the heads. After a while continuing his gruesome hobby he gets more than a little blood in his mouth, which is usually prevented because he always wore his executioner’s mask while fighting. Anywho, he gets taste for it and unbeknownst to the rest of the party he begins eating people. This becomes easier and harder for him when the party gains a permanent dwelling in a major city and start operating out of there, as he has to kill people with out alerting the guard or his party. He also takes on new zest for cooking, bringing mysterious meats to the house, which the party ranger refuses to eat for some reason.
In our current campaign one of the pcs is a warforged vampire who sucks at pretty much every skill but intimidating (which he has a +15 for)!
Marty the magnificent mage, Wager of war against weeds, champion of cheese, dealer of death to dasterdly dragons, etc, the name gets longer with each escapade. Marty was a 2nd ed character I played for very short time. He had this over the top smile like “Bob” from the enzyte comercials, and a cheesy galant “Ha HA!!” laugh at random times then he thought he had done good. who was a dudly do right type, but was an insane wild magic user. He would go around “helping” people, and would be oblivious to the calamaty that would ensue after rolling on the wild magic table. The old farmer needed help pulling weeds, so he calls for some wind to blow them away (roll) which turns out to be an elemental that destroys the town. He rides around on his “steed” named Peaches whom he believes is a really a demon he entraped in this form to be his servant. Peaches is actually just a Donkey that seems to have more common sense than Marty, conveniently disobeying Marty when ever he is to stupid to realize the townspeople are forming a lynch mob. I ended up retiring him because he was to fun and to destructive to the campaign. Next I rolled up a Kender kleptomaniac who would steel the fighters sword cause it was shiny…
It’s dangerous to ask players to talk about their character concepts. Oh well, you asked for it!
The priestitute
She’s a priestess of Olidammara, or any other god related to ale, sex and party, and she’s damn hot. Her only duty in life is to make sure everyone drinks, sings and has fun in any possible way while making everyone believe she wants them. She acts like she wants to make out with everyone, although she’s a virgin. That character always ended up with dozens of pretenders and almost got raped a few times, but we all figured out something pretty simple : try undressing a priestess wearing an armor that takes 10 rounds to take off before she casts fear on you. Fun times.
The Hello Kitty
That character was a gnomish ranger girl that lived in the woods for her whole life with her family. Her parents wanted to preserve her from everything that is evil, and so they raised her like a kid. Now she’s an adult and squeals when she sees small animals, thinks gnomish babies are born in mushrooms and sees every magic item the group finds as a new toy to try out. She ended up partying with a barbarian that’s half as retarded as she is, and they’re having tons of fun fooling around while preserving the world from destruction. They’re also tagging along with an elven priest that tries to raise her ”correctly”, and fails. Her love for animals makes her want to keep every furry thing she sees, which includes monsters. She ended up raising a baby owlbear and she once tried to catch a wild griffin with ropes so she could fly on it. Do I need to say she applied magic oils to turn her owlbear pink, green and blue?
The medieval nerd
He wants to know everything. Everything. As soon as he learns something, he writes it in a magic book so full of content that he needs a spell to find his way through it. Do I need to say he’s a wizard? It was pretty fun when he tried convincing the party not to kill a dragon so he could study it. Two adventurers were killed that day.
The runaway noble
He/she’s tired of hearing about his/her duties, arranged marriage or family. He/she just wants to be free and now that he/she was able to run away from his/her father’s castle, he/she has no intention of coming back. He/she’ll hide his identity to the party and no one will suspect anything… until a bunch of guards try to arrest them for abducting the noble.
The worst team ever
The King is about to die and asks his most loyal knight, a lawful good paladin, to find his true son that lives somewhere in the kingdom. The son was given to a family of trusty peasants to make sure that no one could find and assassinate the prince before he came of age. When the knight finds the King’s son, he finds out that his foster family abandoned him to the streets, and that the prince is an evil rogue that kills to loot. The paladin is forced to bring the rogue back to the castle and to explain to him that he’s prince of the whole kingdom. Still, if they survive the road ahead, will they survive each other? How will the paladin react when the prince kills an innocent that annoys him? Will the rogue try to kill the knight during his sleep because he’s tired of hearing him talk about justice and such?
My favorite concept, aside from the one about “me”, is the one I created for my good fellow (Dragonborn Starlock) sentinel, Sharki. Basically, he was exiled from his home for using star magic, which dated back to the 1st king of the nation using star magic to kill his son and only heir. Sharki, appaled at the discrimination, decided to take his revenge on the 1st king’s celestial body. After doing that, he went and saved his home from invaders, becoming king afterwards. The story was so interesting, I continued the plot, which I now am happy I did.
All right no joke I once played a walking talking chair. I was constructed by an artificer to be well his chair. I was sort of sick of that gig so I left to adventure. The worse part of the game was everything seemed to talk. Doors, locks, wagons, even a box. But ah the memories walking talking chair 3rd level rogue you had to see the dms face when I said, “So he tries to sit on me well sneak attack.” Him, “You’re a rogue!?” Lol good times
My weirdest character concept that I’ve ever come up with was a little 12 year old girl who was inhabited by a deva spirit (currently between reincarnations). The deva spirit did some bad things in her past life and she is fated to be reborn as a raksasha. She is doing whatever she can to reverse her fate, if it is even possible. So she stole away into a little girl who has a strange power to channel spiritual energies. She hopes to correct the mistakes of her past life and redeem herself.
Basically I stole the concept though from a game called Valkyrie Profile. In the middle of conversations I could be playing a little orphan girl who just wants to play with dollies, and then in a flash I switch to a stern, intelligent deva speaking through the girl. The deva does care for the girl greatly and tries to get her to agree to anything they do. The deva sees herself as somewhat motherly towards the girl.
In combat the character is a Shaman and her spirit is the angelic-looking deva (big wings, flaming sword). I selected all spirit attacks so basically the deva is the only one making attacks while the little girl just runs around trying to hide. It makes for a very interesting combat.
Currently playing my favoritest character ever. Dex-based bow fighter (not a ranger).
Charisma, Dex, and Str (in that order) as primary stats. Hes a pretty-boy jock type. he started out as a young kid on the streets. His mother was a whore, but he always believed his dad was a famous swashbuckling bard who never took crap from no one, and was no one’s boss.
He became a local leader of a small gang mostly built on cult of personality. Basically: he was charismatic and fun, so other young street kids hung around him. When a thieves guild saw that he had potential to be a lieutenant, they tried to recruit him with an offer he couldn’t refuse. He refused it.
After the whole-sale slaughter of the majority of his friends / “gang,” his mother used her status as “favorite” of the guild’s lieutenant to save him. He was forced to watch as his girlfriend got raped, and then dragged away. He’s never seen her again.
Disgusted at his mother, and his friend’s slaughter he shunned the ways of rogues (he was never any good at that skills-stuff anyways), and turned to being a member of the city guard, excelling at Longbows in his training. He left the guards, eventually, because they don’t do enough to stop evil and corruption. He is now motivated to stop evil or corruption wherever he can see it.
This was not my idea, as I was the GM for the game, but I wish it was! It was a one-shot fantasy game. It was up to the players to create characters and personalities to fit the plot. One of the characters was the royal bodyguard for the teenage daughter of the king. After explaining this, the player said the best two words to fit the situation ever: Brock Sampson.
I have a cariter who wonts to be a haf human &hafe pretor allean.
Great ideas!
Well, I don’t play a lot of fantasy per se, but by working closely with each player during chargen, my group usually avoids cliché. Our superhero games were hopefully free of the usual With great power/dead parents cliché for example (then again, one guy insisted on playing a good vampire).
My last PC was a non-Eberron warforged barbarian who was raised by a tribe of good-aligned minotaurs. Since warforged in this campaign were extremely rare, and because wisdom was his dump stat, he genuinely believed he was just a funny-looking minotaur, and his reason for adventuring (aside from your usual “evil dudes burned my village” theme) was that he wanted to find more minotaurs like him. I left it open to the DM to figure out where that would go, but I expect he would have eventually found out what he was and dealt with it. Unfortunately our group fell apart immediately following that first session, for unrelated reasons.
The highlight of the session? Character introductions. He walked right up to the party’s irish-brogued, wise-cracking tiefling rogue and asked him (wide-eyed) “are YOU a minotaur too?!” Good times were had by all.
I am currently playing a pretty ordinary half-elf ranger at the moment whose parents are (probably)dead (Yawn!). She has a tendency to blank out at crucial moments so there is an element of distrust in the party. What she doesn’t know but her companions are beginning to suspect (well they think she is a vampire because she is scared of crossing water (not all the time tho’)) is that she is a Damphyr.
The traits were triggered after a vampire spawn attack when she was bitten and her so called inherited amulet cracked. The spontaneous (under the control of DM until Indi gets control of her ‘powers’)turning into a mist and taking passing bites at my companions is proving somewhat troublesome and amusing.
I have also played a dwarf of indeterminate sex, but my co-players never cottoned on to that one.
My characters soft spot for pretty girls has gotten my party in lots of trouble. Trying to romance a succubus, landing in jail in the middle of a quest, hitting on a refugee from a plague. Fun times
To add to the list of “yawn” pc’s, you’ve got “I’m the long lost brother of my previous character, give me his stuff!”
Regarding the doppleganger idea, there’s always the chance they look like someone more important, like the king!
I’ve done a temporary amnesia thing, which turned out that I was a failed summoning experiment by an inept wizard.
What about someone who has been kicked out of the Royal court for commiting an etiquette faux pas? This would make for some interesting RP between upper class establishments and the player.
I had a friend once who made a cannibal character. It wasn’t meant to be an evil game, but it quickly turned that way when my political intrigue/diplomancer/skill monkey character and his cannibal indestructible meat shield teamed up to overthrow the nation.
We succeeded.