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!
My character concept was a elf with parents. (OMG WOW) Except when he was young a barbarian killed my parents (yawn…) I ran away, unhurt. Then I met some kick-ass honey badgers and they raised me till I was 27. Yup. Twenty-Seven. I’m not one of those teens, or one of those old wizard weirdos. It was so fun being a kick-ass honey-badger orphan!
Ah, I particularly enjoy taking normal race/class combos and making them interesting in personality and/or non game-math related ways. I once played a dwarf fighter who was a permanent drunk, and only got the penalties for being drunk if he was sober. He kept two barrels of ale on his horse, and an unbreakable mug which he could use as a mace. He was just a little bit insane, believing himself to be the party’s leader, and lamenting the true leader for not having a beard. If left to become sober, he spoke in a British accent, acted politely, and was a pleasant fellow to have around, despite the combat penalties. When drunk, he sounded like the dwarves from World of Warcraft, and liked to swear, blaspheme the Gods that aren’t Moradin, annoy his group (he never could remember how many people were in the party), and look for women.
Another one I enjoyed was my clueless and hopelessly stupid centaur barbarian. He had no idea he was a centaur, and spent a good chunk of the early part of the campaign tying to find out what a centaur was. He also had a flaw wherein he broke everything he touched, including other PCs. Personality-wise, I decided he was going to be the lovable idiot, so he developed an early desire to hug people he liked, even though he would often hurt them in doing so. He fanatically followed the group’s leader, a city leader who was the first person to ever be nice to him.
Possibly my favorite, that I wrote, but never got to play, was a half-elf Bard for pathfinder. While I wrote him entirely as a half-elf bard, I defined him as half-elf, and half orc, giving him an elf’s stats and physique, but having olive green skin, white hair, red eyes, an absolutely voracious appetite, and an odd desire to drink the really strong Orc variety of alcohol (which in this game was akin to drinking napalm. He was never comfortable in either Elf or Orc society, seeing as how he was smaller and a bit less aggressive than the Orcs, making it hard to compete for food, and he was a carnivore who could eat a whole lot of meat, making meals with the elves unsatisfying. He also was a terrible cook, and his goal in adventuring was to try the cuisines of the various places he went, in hopes of finding the perfect food, and settling where it was.
Since I’m a fan of aggressive melee fighters, the other concept I wrote, but never got to play was a poorly displaced Sister Repentia from Warhammer 40k, accidentally appearing in the D&D universe, which she mistakenly believes to be Hell. She has no defense, instead being built to be all offense power and combat capability.
how about a 4 ft tall squirrlle from hell with a stitch complex and oh yeah loves shiny things and sleeps in fire pits
Oh where to begin!? Chronological order I guess.
Okay.
First there was the wizard who was, in fact, not a wizard. Not that anybody knew. See he pretended to be a wizard (and it was, system wise his class) the thing being that any magic he used was supposedly all smoke an mirrors. The fireball was actually just an alchemical reaction. The lightning a magical trinket he used to shoot lightning with. The Magic missiles were tiny rockets and so on. And he managed to keep this going for quite a while! I don’t know if the party ever found out it was all just tricks and showmanship.
Then we have the monk who was really just there for the hell of it. No dead parents. No great aspiration. No plan for revenge. No running away from anything. He just went along for the ride, really. They found him inprisoned in a pirate cove a session or two into the game. Only to find he’d knocked out the guards and broken the lock of the cage with no real effort but stayed in the cage untill that moment even though he could’ve broken out any time because, hey. Free food. A roof over his head. He didn’t even need to help out. So he was really just leaching off them while waiting for them to decide what to do with him and then promptly escape. (He also killed a guy with a wooden cup. Badass points)
And we’ve also got the cleric who, in death, converted to the teachings of the ravenqueen and was eventually returned to life in order to serve her in the culling of the undead. He was a 7 feet tall pipesmoking badass who was all forgiving and generally a good guy. Because all comes to an end with time. He’d make sure of that personally. It was a great, dualistic, character.
Oh and the psionic conman who’d take the reward for heroism and then skip out of the actual heroic acts as much as possible. And steal anything that wasn’t bolted down if he could get away with it. This guy was the leader of the party, which made that entire campeign… unusual.
Oh and the half elf ranger who was a drunk army veteran and joined up with the party as their entire country was ravaged by war and they all became refugees and begrudgingly took up the adventurous ways due to some stinge of shame as a past soldier and duty towards the villagers.
Not to mention the preist of that town who was actually a Changeling runepreist/articifier demonhunter who crafter weapons and gadgets powered by holy runes with which to hunt feinds and demons and spread the glory of… I think it was Helm. She even CREATED one of the other PC’s. A Warforged swordmage who actually didn’t cast magic but had batteries of divine energies powered by the runes enblazoned on him to imbue his sword fighting with divine/magical powers.
And Seraliss the eldarin Bard who’s the youngest son of a noble house but left to persue his own childish idea of glory and write his own songs after the adventures he experienced. He’s a good enough guy but quite spoiled and has little time or care for anything beyond his own little sphere of the heroes life. He’ll help you, if mostly for the glory. But will just as likely scam some random person or steal things when necisarry, not all too heroic actions, because he doesn’t think far enough to consider how it may impact other nameless bystanders. He just really cares about himself and his companions and his strive for glory. Head faaaar up in the clouds.
And the dwarf warlord who was born under a curse, but still showed great promise and somehow made it past all obstacles untill the big battle where he lost his clans home to attackers and was cast out as a failure and liability as his curse had finally become a liability. Turns out this falure was actually what the curse had been all about and he goes out on a quest to gather an army and redeem himself and take back his home to break this curse and prove himself to his clan
Some examples of characters I’ve played or played with. Lots of fun.
My oddest character was a Changeling that killed a member of the royal guard to assassinate the strongholds princess as an assignment from his guild. The thing is, he began to believe he was the guard and fell in love with her on the job. He told her how he felt (and admitted who he was in the process). Word of advice: telling your crush that you killed the person you’re impersonating and was tasked to kill her is not the best pick-up line. Now both his guild and friends of the stronghold want to kill him and he refuses to change identities.
Is a sorceror/paladin who uses half or full plate and uses a Halberd the idea is , Web or movement stopping spell, maybe a quicken and add a magic missile then charge with Halberd ,
Ive played some fun characters but my two favorite one was a a half sun elf part demon(you should know the races name , im brainfarting) who was a sorceror/rogue who was evil in a completely good campaign, disquised magically as a party member, mated his wife who gave birth to a tiefling lol. Also(feyri was the name!) Planted feyri agents in the partys HQ a castle owned by the paladin, my nesest character is a Born(not afflicted) Werebear ranger/barbarian who dual wields two handaxes, climbs like an expert, tracks awesomely and animal companion is a real black bear, lol , thought of making this char a druid but decided against it. Another cool idea I wanted to play
The first of these characters I only heard about, but the second was one that I actually played and had a lot of fun doing so and the third was part of a pair with another player.
The first one was a newbie to D&D in a group of experienced players and made a surly, drunk fighter that would always call the PCs cowards when they ran away from something and would slap them in the face whenever they fell unconscious. The party eventually was fighting a dragon and the party cleric fell to -9 when the fighter ran up to the cleric’s soon-to-be-dead body and slapped him across the face while telling him to wake up. The DM was generous and allowed the cleric to be brought back to 1 hit point at which point the fighter turned to the dragon, gripped his greatsword in both hands, and charged the dragon while shouting something along the lines of ” SMITE THEE!” That’s right. The fighter was a paladin the entire time.
The second character was a dex-based fighter that I made by the name of Yik Yik. Now most of my characters are the surly hit it until it breaks barbarian. Yik Yik was not only a goblin, but was more hyperactive than a three year old that’s had a dozen cups of coffee.
The third character was the youngest son of the king and had one younger sister and two older brothers (one of which was a half-brother, still the king’s son but had a different mother). The bastard son half-brother was a paladin that tried to do everything in his power to please his father, while my character flat out didn’t care. He was set to inherit nothing, and took his rage at the world out on the things that he killed. Basically, the bastard son of the king was a paladin while the legitimate son of said king was a barbarian. My barbarian spent most of his time drinking and gambling in bars and seducing the waitresses. By the time that he was 19 he had 6 children, and only 2 of them were full blood humans. Whenever foreign dignitaries arrived with daughters he would seduce them (though he made sure that none of them became pregnant).
Half Ogre Barbarian thoroughly convinced he’s a mage. wanders around fiercely petting his familiar ( A terrified frazzled looking cat) His spell list includes Shrink object ( pulverizing it with fists until its at least half its size) Magic circle, (draws circle on the ground and punches anyone who tries to leave) Hold person (throws them on the ground and sits on them)
He instantly claims all magical acts from the other characters as his own.
I am currently playing in a group with a very humorous paladin in it. Every other member of the part calls him Slim Jim due to the fact that he is literally nothing but bone. He was once a regular mindless skeleton that was subject to the Awaken Undead spell and managed to delude himself into believing that he was a mighty paladin of Pelor. Now as you can imagine there is no way that Pelor would accept an undead paladin, so Olidammara decided to grant Jim paladin abilities and then hit the record button. Jim’s dump stat was intelligence which was a 5, and has 50 ranks in his Delusion skill.
“Belton, the ever-loving” 7th level druid
“It’s not bestiality if you’re the same species at the same time”
“what’s the challenge rating on a Dire Badger?”
“Summon Nature’s ally”
(Can’t resist.)
…and my brother had a half-orc cleric whose real ambition was to be a chef, and he insisted on collecting body parts from every monster killed to make dishes from them… then there was his tone-deaf fighter who harbored a desire to become a bard, and sang constantly… and his wife’s tough (and ugly) female fighter, who thought she was dainty and cute and would beat the living snot out of any guy who didn’t make a pass at her when she wanted…
What about the “Evil Missionary” Cleric, you know, the one who just wants to spread the wonderful word of Vecna to everyone, how anyone can benefit from the wonders of Undeath?
Or the “Bitch Rogue” who told her snooty Eladrin folks to suck it, and started stealing from Eladrin ruins to feed her desire for cash?
Or the “reluctant Barbarian”, who would really rather go home and make a nice brew, but since he’s here he might as well go cut some necks . . .
The cliches can be fun, but indeed it is more fun to look for something with a bit more life to it.
I’m playing Scion, a WW game right now (we’re taking a break from D&D and Exalted) and I’m very proud of my bodybuilder / sports doctor…. Who is a “dirty doc” in that he has a huge side business of illegally obtaining and selling steroids. Fun times!
Curently playing a Revenant/Eladrin Rogue
The character is a minor god that was on the verge of taking on a pantheon of his own but never wanted to. To escape his responsabilities as a God he left to wander the world in avatar form doing anything possible to remain there as long as possible.
He became a revenant to try to cheat his way out of dying once but he is running out of options.
He is anormaly afraid of dying and anything to do with the gods since being killed or too much contact with the gods could expose him and send him back to his responsabilities.
He curently adventures out of a need to stay ahead of the gods and to find a path to immortality that does not involves eighter gods or dying. He keeps his past as a minor god a total secret from the rest of his adventuring group comming up with any reason possible for not entering religious places or putting himself in too much danger.
I once had a character who was a deep gnome. his family had been chased to the outside lip of a cave by Drow soldiers. His mother put him in the nook of a tree right before the Drow killed her and my father and the 3 others that were with them. It was right before sunrise and as the sun started to come up, the Drow quickly retreated back into the caves and back into the underdark. I was found by some redneck humans who brought me home when I was still a baby. the rednecks were looking for possoms to kill and eat, so I was called possom-stump. Eventually I was raised on the farm that these rednecks owned but I was always picked on by my so called adopted brothers who always called me ” sh*thead “. I eventually left the farm to adventure and get away from being picked on and when ever someone would ask my name I would smile a big toothless smile (well, I had a couple of teeth but not all of them, after all I was basically raised by hillbilly’s ) and tell them my name was sh*thead possom-stump. Usually the humans that I met on my adventures would laugh real loud and I just thought that I was funny ( I didn’t realize that they were laughing at the sillyness of my name). I eventually became a gnome rogue/swashbuckler when I met this guy (played by a friend of mine) who was an Dwarven Swashbuckler and trained me.
those were fun times.
…and then there was Turg the Barbarian: 18/00 strength, 6 wisdom, 4 intelligence. Absolutely hated anything magical, but was easy to fool, so he thought the group’s magic users were playing practical jokes. Only thing in the world he was afraid of was his petite wife, Gundawyn, whom he’d run away from and who he was terrified would track him down. He’d have been better off being afraid of other things though, since he ultimately met his demise meeting the charge of a house-sized Titanothere with his set spear. Nearly killed the damn thing, too. A moment of silence for the grease spot…
Heh… remonds me of Floyd, my nearsighted, acrophobic Ranger, who was tough enough and skilled enough that the rest of the party used to put up with the fact that anytime a wall needed scaling someone had to tie him up and carry him. He was utterly hopeless with ranged weapons, but then the DM had a Kobold NPC make him a helm with corrective lenses in it. From that point he was better, but everyone had to be sure he didn’t get hit in the head, and the smell from a helm he NEVER took off was occasionally an issue.
@anonomous: That is so simple, yet brilliant!
One time I played with a wizard that created spells that gave her deadly flatulence, literally. In that same campaign the group’s thief stole the King’s pants during a speech and didn’t get caught. Another time I played an elven sorcerer who left the community he grew up in after his parents death, after all he wasn’t too fond of the idea of being executed for murder.
I have a character with parents. Living breathing parents.
Yeah, it’s WEIRD.
I’m currently playing a character who is completely bipolar. She’ll go from being nice and friendly to chopping your arms off and beating you with them in 30 seconds. She found out that the “cure” for her problem was killing stuff, so she became a raider (adventurers in the setting I’m using).
@Kit: that’s a fun concept. I supposed the DM and spider-puppet player planned it from the start?
So a friend of mine told me about a character he made. It was an indestructible fighter who would stand back up from the worst blows imaginable.
As it turns out, this fighter was a puppet for an intelligent monstrous spider! That really surprised the party. Almost as much as seeing the fighter stand back up after being cut-down the first several times. Heh. I really did dig how he worked that character!
Remember, skills were more than just what they seemed!
Heh heh. I was new to the game when I tried to play. I wanted to create a rash, young, not-so-good doer. He was full of himself and went boasting all the time. Needless to say, he got into a lot of fights, barely any he came out the better. Lots of fun, but also disatisfying at the same time.
One of my favorite all time characters to play:
The psychotic manipulative fangirl.
She’s very cunning and strange. She pretends to be good to get what she wants, she pretends to be nice to get people to like her and anytime she can get anything out of anyone she isn’t against getting it at any cost, so longer as it doesn’t eliminate all chances she has at getting something else out of the same people, in the future. That’s not too too original but this isn’t the only aspect of her character. When she was young, she actually runs away from her relatively good family because she finds them boring (yeah, a little yawn! there.) and is actually happy to take up the life of a seductress or prostitute as she finds using her body and charm does well to get her what she wants. Not to mention, I always find some one in the game that she is obsessed with. She has a problem with being overly obsessed with some things, so I find, usually a guy, who she absolutely worships. And it’s not just the kind of really devoted love. Not anywhere near as noble. No. She does psycho stuff like try to get a hold of locks of hair, immediatly imagines murdering anyone who crosses him or even so much as touches him, and would gladly mutilate herself to prove her devotion. Oh and she usually has schizophrenia or split personalities.
Don’t know if that’s too original of a character, but she’s certainly fun to play as it requires a lot of both bold and sly actions.
Something that I like to do to build a character background and personality is to find different psychological disorders and use them as the center-pin for that character and build out from there. So sometimes I’ll play a germ-o-phobe, who carries a cloth everywhere and freaks out whenever something dirty, including a dirty-looking monster comes to close and/or touches her, although that particular design can often make it difficult for that character to survive. There’s also the OCD character that has to do things a certain way, all the time. Has to have full control of camp set up so everything’s just right, has to finish off every monster a certain way, etc. There are characters that are narcissists, schizophrenics, split-personalities, and other array of different freaks. I also find it interesting to add stuff like that as a secondary trait, so that they’re not so much of a freak that they stand out from the crowd, but just enough so that they’re interesting and add a little spice to the game.
<3 Dani
@Simon: For me, it’s all about the people – hanging out with friends. I do think that having a little character backstories goes a long way though.
Most people I play with don’t really care that much about backgrounds. More then happy to actually be playing together.
My last character (whome I actualy played as) was a run-away gladiator who was the slave spoils of a small war. When he found out that he his master intended to kill him after he had achieved a reasonable amount of fame, my character ran away. With no other choice he took on an adventureing carrer in hopes of one day gaining the protection off a noble so his master could never get back at him. This guy likes to juggle his great axe, spit in public fountains, and his favorite food was FRIED RATS!!! He was a fighter. And unfortunatly I couldnt continue as this guy because I was next in line to become the DM of the group.
I once played with a roomate that used a 1/2 orc monk that was a pasifist. He did not like the violent ways of his Tribe and was exiled for being a wimp and now resided with a monastary for the humans wanted to kill him for being part Orc and what his tribe did.