Iconic Build
Looks like Uchichi Draguto has swapped his beloved headband for a more contemporary pop culture reference. No doubt he will be kicked out of dragon anime club from the offense. Before we strip our exuberant wyrmling of his beloved jutsu, however, let’s look at the odd gamer practice of Pop Culture Builds more closely. Maybe (just maybe!) he’s on to something fun here.
First and foremost, we’ve got to contrast this biz to the Shameless Ripoff. Our own Kineticist is the poster child there, presenting a thinly disguised Aang as her own original character (do not steal). By contrast, Pop Culture Builds are less earnest and more tongue-in-cheek. They might serve as thought experiments (intended as grist for ye olde blog rather than an actual tabletop), or as practical jokes (where a player drops a dozen sessions worth of hints before revealing Wuce Brayne is more than a mere monk).
You can also have great fun with a themed one-shot, asking everyone to show up with an appropriately leveled Pop Culture Build from [insert IP of choice]. You don’t even have to choose the IP ahead of time, allowing Grape Ape, Bender from Futurama, and Ash Ketchum to all go adventuring together. Half the fun of that setup is going in blind, slowly figuring out the references as you play.
No matter what Pop Culture Build you shoot for though, the practical questions present an intriguing puzzle. If you’re starting at Level 1 with standard wealth by level, how is Thor affording that magical hammer? If you want to bring Omni-Man into the game, how are you getting flight at 1st level? Starting in the mid-levels can solve some of these problems, helping builds to “turn on” right away. But even there, quirky characters present their own issues. I mean sure, you can play Kirby. But how the crap are you going to get a PC with the swallow whole ability?
And so, for today’s discussion, why don’t we compare our Pop Culture Build notes? When have you created one of these monstrosities? Did it see actual play, or is it destined to dwell forever within your “Character Ideas” folder? And more generally, what is the best kind of game to bring these shenanigans? Is it possible to show up to a standard game with a Pop Culture Build, or is that inevitably distracting? Sound off with all your takes on Kermit the Frog, Katniss Everdeen, and the dog from Up down in the comments!
EVENT: The Handbook is heading out for Free Comic Book Day! We’ll have our table set up at the Mini Comic Convention in Lawrenceville, GA! Both the writer & illustrator of this here Handbook of Heroes will be there on Saturday, May 7th from 10 AM – 4 PM. We’re always down to talk shop in person, and we’d love to meet any and all of you guys out in meat space.
ARE YOU AN IMPATIENT GAMER? If so, you should check out the “Henchman” reward level over on The Handbook of Heroes Patreon. For just one buck a month, you can get each and every Handbook of Heroes comic a day earlier than the rest of your party members. That’s bragging rights right there!
Two such cases!
One was a Suli Skald with a massive two-hander, called ‘Hassan Cho’ph’. Based of a Looney Tunes character.
The other was a Steel Hound (gun archetype) Investigator Vanara. Based off an infamous panel from Hellboy.
Those are such one-dimensional characters that you get a lot of freedom to make an actual character from the starting template. So I’m curious: To what extent were they one-gag characters, and to what extent did you fully develop them?
Neither were really one-gag characters! I make sure even the goofy gag characters have some kind of story or happening behind them. The Suli for example was a disgraced royal guard of a treasury, which put him well in the Wrath of the Righteous storyline (that AP went on hiatus unfortunately).
And the Vanara was effectively a gun-toting Dr. Who (David Tennant version) who was operating on ‘fake it till you make it’ mentality, lying about having a higher education and relying on his analytical skills/natural intelligence more. He didn’t let the fact he was named Dr. Bananas break his stride either – he enjoyed proving his intelligence to those who assumed him a goof.
Did… Did Uchichi Draguto (assuming he’s not called ‘Th’Ore, Dragod of Lightning’ now) forget he has wings? Does Blaze Redscale need prescription for his dioptry?
https://i.kym-cdn.com/entries/icons/mobile/000/012/132/thatsthejoke.jpg
I’m currently playing two of them, and have played more previously.
My current characters are an Half-elf Vengance Paladin, who fled from her monastery with a stolen set of armour and weapons that previously belonged to a saint of her order, based of the League of Legends character Diana, and a dagger-slinging Human Mastermind Rogue X/Bard 1 who is currently in self-imposed exile from his previous life of political intrigue, based of Thom Merrilin from Wheel of Time.
I have also played a Human Beastmaster Ranger based off Perrin Abaya, also from WoT, and a Tiefling Hexblade Warlock based off For Honor’s Apollyon for a one-shot, and have characters that I’ve made a rough outline of but never played based off Fang from Armello, the Houndmaster from Darkest Dungeon, and Irondrakes/Bardin from Warhammer Fantasy/Vermintide.
The beats of the backstory of my current characters are more or less copied, but changed to fit into the setting, and after first session the character will invariably morph into their own thing. Often when consuming media I look at a character and go “That would make for an interesting build in DnD”, but the finished character doesn’t actually end up being much like the inspiration.
> after first session the character will invariably morph into their own thing
I think that’s the distinction I tried to draw back here:
https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/original-character
In my mind, we’re talking about three different closely aligned concepts:
— Inspiration: Where you base a character vaguely off of a template but let them grow into their own thing.
— Shameless Ripoff: Presenting a thinly disguised version of a pop culture character as your own creation.
— Pop Culture Build: Where the pop culture reference is the (often comic) point.
Of course, I may be splitting hairs too fine with this taxonomy.
I tend to have the opposite approach to that problem, i.e rather than going “this is what I want to do, how do I make it work in the system?”, I go “these are the abilities I have access to, what can I do with those?”.
I also have a tendency to not want to stray too far from a game’s “intended” setting. Meaning if you can reflavor something to make it work in the (relatively) medieval setting of D&D, it’s fine, but if you try to simply plop down a superhero that normally appears in a modern setting into D&D, I’m going to find it jarring.
For both of those reasons, I think I’d save that kind of wacky pop culture stuff for more “freeform” games like Fate.
The superhero is an interesting point of reference for “jarring.” I just had one of these guys show up in a game:
https://www.d20pfsrd.com/classes/base-classes/vigilante/
The designers had obvious inspirations sprinkled throughout that class. But is it necessarily jarring when one of these things shows up at the table? Maybe. Supers definitely bring their own tropes to the table, and they can feel weird in standard dungeon fantasy.
I think Pathfinder is a little bit more flexible in that regard than D&D in my eyes. Probably because they have only one setting (AFAIK, not counting third party stuff) in which there’s everything, including technology and stuff, unlike D&D where you’ve got several settings each with their specifics, and the “default” one of the Forgotten Realms is relatively standard medieval fantasy. A vigilante can work in Golarion, as long as you don’t ham it up too much I guess. In Faerun, not so sure. At least I wouldn’t enjoy it.
The biggest problems with supers though is in the name. They are *super*. So they typically don’t fit lower level games, as you said yourself.
I’m perpetually amused by the “level titles” in Chainmail and early editions of D&D. If memory serves, the 8th level Fighter was called a Superhero. Gygax just meant “better than standard hero,” but it’s still funny in retrospect. Like you hit 8th level and *DING* here’s your cape.
For me*, the jarring part is less the superhero tropes and more the fact that vigilantes require way more social focus than most classes for their core abilities to make sense, let alone be effective. Even something like a bard can function properly in a big hack-and-slash megadungeon, but how does a vigilante’s social identity work when nobody has a social life?
I really want to play a vigilante, but first I’d need to play in a game where vigilantes make sense.
*Whose recent Pathfinder characters include a one-armed monk, a cecaelia sea-witch whose mind was addled by an unidentified ancient evil, and an android mystic theurge salvaged from the remains of two other androids. And while my character is usually the weirdest in the party, he’s never the only weird one—the monk patrols with a goblin granny looking for her grandson who thinks her lizard familiar is a cat, the character I played before the sea-witch briefly sailed with a griffin until both of them were eaten by the same plant monster, and the android worked with a sort of half-lich tiefling alchemist and a hunter who was way too attached to his tiger companion.
So my perspective might be skewed.
I prefer such character to live in oneshots or as ideas for the most part, though they can have their place in beer and pretzel style games. and as thought experiments is can be quite fun to see how something may be recreated within the rules of a system.
Ive done a few, first that I snuck into a meat-grinder hackmaster campaign was a red draped dwarf with a fine mustache and a bag full of throwing hammers. somehow it took most of the session for the group to figure out I was Mario even with a bad Italian accent. I deserved the summery execution, only to make peter pan but a Grel(super evil elf) like three characters later.
Another of note was a star fox inspired one shot a friend ran, playing a homebrew system. We were given the option of naming our group, choosing Zetta Unicorn, playing Beary White of the ship Bear Force One. things got a little out of hand and somehow I managed to create a planet of bears, not a planet where bears lived… but like a floating ball of bears deep in space.
This concisely expresses my preference as well. Good show.
But like… How did the bear planet keep from collapsing on itself?
mostly bad sci-fi logic.
It was an exploding dice system where if all future dice rolled a one you would bust with consequences based on how high you got before the bust. fighting some rivals I declared that “I wish to call upon all the other bears in the galaxy to help me make this shot.” and on 2d6 I managed to get into the mid 30’s before the bust.
I called the bears alright, straight into space where as the GM described over thousands of years the bears were slowly drawn by gravity and formed a massive floating ball of bearmass.
Reminds me of the xkcd what-if mole of moles. Except less…unbearable.
(Dunno if I can post links in these comments, but google “mole of moles” and you should find it.)
Also, for people who already read xkcd what-if when it was actively updating…the website got a redesign and a new what-if was posted two days ago.
Closest I ever got was making their… mentality like someone from fiction. One of my current PCs is directly inspired from Amadeus of the Green Stretch (Practical Guide to Evil) in their personality.
While I have not directly made such a build, there was an event that is relevant. My group, after many years of running one game, decided it was time to change games, so we were looking at new systems. One of the systems we were looking at was Mutants and Masterminds with the idea of going as superheroes. Only one person had ever really played it before, so the rest of us were fairly new. To learn the system, I proposed that everyone use one of the heroic levels and build… Danny Phantom.
The points suggested were not enough to fully make the Ghost Boy. It was, however, enough to get some of his classic powers. This allowed everyone interested in trying this to get some aspect of him and also showed what we thought was important among his powers.
For myself, I made a super soldier type character with the classic intangibility and invisibility, using guns to replicate Danny’s different ghostly attacks and other more mechanical items. I put more points in base attributes rather than the powers. Another person worked hard to replicate Danny’s possession power, something I barely remembered he had. Another used the Hero Form to represent going ghost to get the base attributes and focused extensively on his beam weaponry, replicating the ghostly wail, ghost shield, ghost beam and ice beam.
While all of them were obviously based on Danny, the comparison helped us understand the system a bit better, showcasing different ways to build the “same” thing.
My own M&M dude was equal parts Arnold, Colossus, and the Human Torch. I named the dude Dirigible, and he could fly at a top speed of 5 mph.
With supers games, the powers are so specific that it’s weirdly hard to get away from the famous touchstones and do your own thing.
I’ve yet to field (heh) him, but I’ve got a gnome druid (circle of spores) just itching for some play. Complete with monotone clothing, his trusty fishing rod he never goes anywhere without and a bright red cone hat, Gargaxyl’trephunay is a walking facepalm. Most people find his name too confusing, so he’s shortened it to just “Gar”.
Not 100% aligned with the QotD, but I don’t have many themed characters, be they custom or cookie-cutter copies
Fishing makes me thinkin of HuxterXHunter, and Google suggests “Quote of the Day” for QotD. In conclusion, I do not get this reference.
This will probably help.
https://www.pinterest.com.au/pin/412009065896774540/
Also, QotD: Question of the Day
For our next campaign, we will have the illustrious Rockwell the barbarian and his partner in crime, John Centaur the monk.
Yes, this is exactly what it sounds like. Hopefully it will be exactly as stupid as it sounds in practice.
Get a bard. Somebody has to play your entry music.
I remember reading about two 4e players, who dropped your Wuce Brayne manoeuvre upon an unsuspecting GM. It was glorious.
They played two drow bards, who spent all their income on gold jewelry and courtesans and fired hand-crossbows sideways.
The gig was up when they performed a heartfelt rendition of “In Thou Club” and finally introduced themselves by their names (which they’ve managed to conceal so far): 50 Copper and Ludi’drizz’t.
I’d love for my players to bring something like that.
> 50 Copper and Ludi’drizz’t.
XD
AD&D, 1e– when I was tired of automatically equipping a druid with a scimitar every time, I rolled up an 18 Str. druid, gave him a hammer (one of the few weapons available to the class back then), made him a worshipper of Thor, and photocopied (and recolored) a piece of Walt Simonson art as my character sketch.
“Done!” I declared. When the DM gave me a side-eye, I told him, “He’s a storm-summoner. What?!”
I suspect that provoking DM side-eye was half the point. Well played.
Never done it myself; I’m actually not at all fond of the practice. But I knew a guy at the local game store who always played characters based on games or anime. I once asked him “Do you ever play original characters?” He thought about it for a second and replied “Nah.”
I thought about criticizing him for not playing the game “correctly”, but then realized A) We’re playing AL dungeon crawls, characters aren’t that important to begin with, and B) even if they were, who am I to dictate how this guy enjoys the game? Figuring out how to match builds to low-level characters could be a big part of the fun for him. It was a formative moment for me, and I’m glad I came down on the side of live-and-let-live.
I had two main pop culture characters. The more Recent one was a fire Genasi Sunsoul Monk I had made in 5e for a campaign i was playing with little ones. She didnt have flight at low levels but she still made a passable starfire. The other one was a bit more complicated 3.5 build. They were Dvaati battle dancers (monks had a pesky alignment restriction that did not work for them). Dvaati were a weird race that was two bodies for one soul so it was a weird splitting health two characters for the price of one that worked perfectly to male the Dee Dee twins from batman beyond. They couldn’t hot the broad side of a barn but they basically just surrounded a single person and used flanking and like four or six attacks at level one to just swing rapidly at a target. Sadly their campaign never made it off the ground but i was super excited about the build.
What was it like RPing that second one? I could imagine the voice work being difficult when trying to distinguish who’s talking.
Sadly their campaign never quite got off the ground. The plan was to intentionally make it hard to distinguish as the dee dee twins were pretty much one entity even in the show. Also it was a purely online campaign so straight text for speech. Im not exactly comfortable with my voice and can usually roleplay much better in text.
It’s weird how often I forget that text-based RP is a thing. I keep getting reminded here in the comments, but it’s so foreign to my own hobbyist practice that it just falls off my radar.
Yeah dude, that makes a lot of sense. Much easier to pull off that style of character in forum-based play. And on a related note, I really ought to go back and watch Batman Beyond.
> A) We’re playing AL dungeon crawls, characters aren’t that important to begin with
Don’t tell Laurel this. I’ll never convince her to do organized play with me!
Good on ya for the live and let live though. I agree that this ain’t my cup of tea. If it was a home game I’d have a serious talk with that dude about appropriate tone. But then again:
https://sites.google.com/site/amagigames/the-what-i-like-glossary
Many years ago my group did an entire party that was a riff on the Princess Bride. We ran multiple adventures with them before retiring the group. And yes, lots of things were ‘Inconceivable!’.
I’m assuming your rations were nothing but peanuts.
I once made a fireball-happy sorcerer based on Megumin. Unfortunately, nobody else at the table had seen Konosuba, so his habit of fireballing groups of enemies that happened to include the barbarian was not properly appreciated.
In my defense, he was blind one of those times. And he only did it, like, four or five times total before mistakenly believing that half of the party had murdered the other half to steal their stuff (long story, connected to the blindness).
> his habit of fireballing groups of enemies that happened to include the barbarian was not properly appreciated.
It rarely is:
https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/artillery
Yeah, maybe “appreciated” wasn’t quite the right word to use.
A couple years ago I ran a Strange Aeons campaign (actually, that just wrapped in November now that I think about it). Since the campaign begins with the PCs having no memories, the players let me build their characters for them. So I made them all based on Darkest Dungeon characters: the human barbarian was the Hellion, the halfling swashbuckler/warpriest (of the Lantern King) was the Jester, the dwarven occultist was the Man-At-Arms, and the human psychic was the Antiquarian. It worked out really well long-term because the games have similar themes. Even the Jester was only sometimes the comic relief; he had some pretty serious issues.
Loving the feedback loop between tabletop and video games. Now get out there and game dev your own digital biz and continue the loop!
Oddly enough, in my own Strange Aeons game that ended recently (we just ran the first book), I had a player who wanted to be the Leper. By the end, he was a Celestial Bloodrager 2/Paladin 2 who used a reskin of the exotic weapon Butchering Axe, which he deliberately did not get proficiency in. Without his bloodrage, he also lacked the STR needed to avoid the Butchering Axe’s -2 penalty on attack rolls. And he was addicted to Power Attack. The result was a character which utterly terrible accuracy, but when he landed a hit, he would wreck things, and when he crit he’d do 50-60 damage.
For lore, I diverged from the Leper’s “king who had to go into exile because of disease” thing, though the player didn’t realize this at first because the character (“the Forgotten King”) had a mask he knew he should never take off and his one memory at the start was his city giving him a funeral march before he left it for the last time. What actually happened was that he was going on a quest to slay a Great Old One that was threatening the city – the seers had prophesized that one of royal blood could do it, but they would die in the process, hence the pre-emptive funeral. However, he failed to kill the beast and survived, while it devastated his city. He devoted himself to atoning for this failure through further monster-slaying, and as he grew older, created a Shabti duplicate of himself to carry on that work. That’s the PC. (Kind of – technically the PC is a dream mist creation of a guy’s subconscious memory of the Shabti. It made sense in context.)
…I should note that I have never actually played Darkest Dungeon.
You know, “dragon” is a “class” that really should be able to fly on it’s own… I think the dragon party’s missing the forest for the trees here.
QOTD: In Mutants and Masterminds, an NPC who’s basically a hybrid of Corvo Attano and Emily Kaldwin. Not all of their powers (no rat swarms, no Domino to start), she has their more widely-used powers. But has only briefly shown up and barely got to show off any of her powers. I’m hoping the campaign will resume soonish, but the NPC seems to be gathering dust for now.
That is indeed the gag. But it’s funny… My players ACTUALLY hit me with that criticism when I ran a dragon game:
https://www.d20pfsrd.com/races/3rd-party-races/rite-publishing/dragon-taninim/
“What do you mean I can only glide and need a feat to get a decent breath weapon? I wanted to be a dragon, not a fancy kobold!”
**Hammer of Thunderbolts** better replicates Mjolnir, but it does have more restrictive attunement requirements. (Those attunement requirements are myth-accurate though)
A lot of pop-culture builds are easy:
Samurai Jack: Kensei Monk X.
Professor Layton or Columbo: Inquisitive Rogue X. Take the **Observant** and **Keen Mind** feats. For Layton you need all the knowledge skills, and expertise in Investigation, for Columbo you need expertise in Insight.
The Hulk: Bear Totem Barbarian X. Flavor **Rage** as turning green and large.
Gandalf: Aasimar Eldritch Knight. (Wizards in Middle Earth are all low-level angels. Gandalf does a lot of swordfighting but not much big magic)
Aragorn: Human [Paragon Warlord](https://www.gmbinder.com/share/-LW4agTNJcbwe6kSv4H2) with proficiency in Animal Handling, Nature, and Survival.
Batman is the one that gives me trouble: Probably a mix of Way of Shadow Monk, and Conquest Paladin, but that build is already super-MAD before you factor in the need for Intelligence for all the relephant skill proficiencies.
I did the Hulk myself. Barbarian/Alchemist/Master Chymist.
Flash is the one that gives me fits. I tried Monk with Sorcerer with the Stormborn bloodline. But trying to be able to full attack while moving is hard.
I had a friend who did a Batman character. Multiclass Rogue/Way of Shadows Monk, with a Cloak of the Bat attuned. The character’s name was “Ba’torc”, and we were going to see how long until the rest of the party figured it out.
He’s much easier in Pathfinder, where you can just be a Vigilante.
I actually had this happen entirely unintentionally, playing a temporary character while my Cleric in my Sunday game was… indisposed. I created the concept and build long before Elden Ring released, but entirely coincidentally created almost the exact build of the penultimate boss. The character has, sadly, met her inevitable end, and my cleric is returned- but it was a funny coincidence to have while it lasted.
I have a player who wanted to be the Doom Guy. We considered the Savage Technologist Barbarian archetype (which is about rage, melee and firearms), but decided to go with the Jistkan Artificer (AKA Golemfist) Magus, who has a mechanical arm and punches things – with spells! He’s had a pretty good time, and isn’t concerned that he’s not as invincible as the true Doom Guy (he’s actually pretty fragile, but he sure hits hard). Character-wise, he is a veteran of the now-ended Mendevian Crusades against the demons of the Worldwound, which is where he lost his arm. This has left him with an endless desire to kill demons and demon-worshippers… which is not what the campaign is remotely about, but that’s an intentional joke on the player’s part, and the character is delusional enough that he can justify any enemy the party faces as “demonic.”
It wasn’t all that serious, but I’ve always wanted to take the Cartomancer Witch (their familiar is a deck of cards, and they can deliver spells by throwing them), stock up on Summon Monster spells and become a Yu-Gi-Oh character. Probably go into the Harrower prestige class later. I’ve never quite been able to decide on a Patron, though. Ancestors is a good “buff others” list, Elements has good options for throwing cards at people, and Autumn, while otherwise unhelpful, is the only way for a Witch to get Create Pit, and what better Trap Card is there?
I’ve done several dozen League of Legends character builds in Pathfinder in the past, trying to be somewhat faithful in replicating all the effects of their four abilities plus their passive.
It was a lot of fun to do, but I just couldn’t keep up with the rate at which they were releasing new champions.
You really couldn’t build most of them at level 1. I found level 16 was the sweet spot for LoL Champions, where all their abilities could be accurately represented. Some could be done well before 16 (though still in the 6 to 8 range, not at level 1), but a surprising many needed 16 levels before I was satisfied that I’d really done them justice.
…And of course there were one or two that were just so intrinsically linked to MOBA mechanics that I couldn’t manage to build them right. Freaking Bard and Kalista, man…
Oh, and of course more recently in Mutants and Masterminds I made a mercenary villain called Headshot, who is definitely completely unrelated to DC’s Deadshot, and definitely didn’t have the exact same costume with the red parts swapped for blue, and the same personality.
Roughly 16 being a ‘complete’ build in pathfinder (at least, 1e) is very intended, since Adventure Paths usually run 1-17, with the final boss technically rewarding the party with level 18.
This might take a while:
Guy McThreepwood, you know who is his base, and to make it better, or worse, he’s a scottish bagpipe blasting bard and all offensive spells are thunder damage.
Yes I combined Monkey Island protagonist with Mad piper and his take on Thunderstruck.
Cyberpunk 2020 had a Police character named Maloney. Yeah I should have gone with Robocop reference instead of Police academy for cyberpunk but I wanted to mess around.
and oh so many historical, mythological( you remember Tyr) and historical fiction. I’ve had two characters fashioned after sharpe so far.
as for the dragon boy, he going for Marvels Thor obvously but for the regular or the even less manly version than the mythological Thor(who still loses to Tyr in that gategory)
I have a character heavily based off Ralsei of Deltarune fame, even stealing their love of anagrams to name him Aelsir. As a celestial bardlock of the being known as R’behruss, he is a very wholesome healy boio with a knack for painting and other arts
Never 🙂
Why would i? 🙂
I made two in Pathfinder 1e. The Hulk and Captain Cold. Hulk was pretty straight forward. 2 levels of Barbarian, 8 levels of Alchemist, and 10 levels of Master Chymist. Very easy.
With Captain Cold, I went with Gunchemist (an archetype of alchemist), taking Frost Bullet as his first discovery, 3 levels of Trench Fighter for dex to damage with his gun, and a couple of levels of Phantom Thief Rogue.
I haven’t played Hulk yet, but Len is currently level 9 and holding. (I haven’t been able to get any play time lately.) He owns a bar and sells booze and potions. (My GM was nice enough to declare that alchemists qualified to take Brew Potion if their archetype traded it away.)
I’ve been trying to make the Flash as well but it doesn’t seem to want to be put together. It’s not enough to just have a high base speed if the best thing is to stand there and full attack.
“When have you created one of these monstrosities?”
As a Player? Never, but I do try to sneak really, really, really bad puns through the GM’s censor.
As a GM? Ahhhhhh… guilty as charged. I insert pop-culture NPCs all the time, Brad and Janet were a pair of newly weds who fell victim to a vampiric mad-scientist, Wain Lipton was a Batman expy as though played by Bruce Campbell (it took the Players waaaaaaay too long to figure that out, though, my Bruce Campbell impression was probably terrible), for a post-apoc game the Party found Frogtown while searching for a kilt wearing warlord named Hell. I’ve had custom monsters like the Cookie Monster, the (un)helpful dungeon ‘advice’ dealer Oscar the Grouch, and a party once was laid low by a giant bird’s invisible (imaginary) guardian.
Just to name a few.
I’ve definitely done my share of pop-culture-inspired builds in my time. My latest attempt was in Pathfinder 2e parodying the Hitman games: I made a kitsune investigator named Agent 4d7 who can shapeshift to look like anyone, nonlethally incapacitate non-targets who get in their way, and pick out and eliminate their marks with a variety of methods ranging from carefully-engineered “accidents” to precise weapon strikes. I originally planned to give them Weapon Improviser so they could kill with screwdrivers and such too, but unfortunately the archetype sucks unless the GM goes out of their way to make it work; as-is, they’ll just have to make do with “explosive ducks” filled with alchemist’s fire.
Tulok the Barbarian over on YouTube has a pretty nuts 5e Master Chief build for a level 20 character. I’m hoping to use it sometime for one of my group’s “pick a character you like and make a level 20 based on them” one-shots, especially since our magic item rules for those would allow me to give him a +2 assault rifle instead of reflavoring a heavy crossbow.
I love pop-culture characters, though mine tend to have minor to major twists on them as the mechanics and story inspire me during the creation process. Most of these are actually intended for use as villainous NPCs (but there are a few PCs in there) and have breakdowns on their stats and tactics at various levels. Feel free to use them in your 3.5 games if you like!
Pollyanna, The Littlest Nightmare. Inspired by the game Little Nightmares, she’s a Wendigo designed to psychologically torment the players with their inability to save her.
Character: https://forums.giantitp.com/showsinglepost.php?p=24809459&postcount=45
Inspiration: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TrCWc5G7H9g
Atriox is a much more direct translation of the villain in Halo Wars 2 (and presumably the Halo series proper going forward, but I haven’t played Infinite yet). Brutish alien with a gravity hammer becomes a werewolf with an eldritch glaive, optimized for flinging the players about and debuffing them.
Character: https://forums.giantitp.com/showsinglepost.php?p=23999697&postcount=95
Inspiration: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4cz7PRkgH3c
Azoth, the Raven’s Shadow. Inspired by the Night Angel trilogy, which isn’t exactly pop culture but is quite good. This one could actually work quite well as a token evil teammate or in an evil campaign (or if the alignment restrictions for some class features are handwaved by the DM). Damage, stealth, defenses, social skills, mobility, this character has it all. I’m extremely proud of this one; Azoth is highly competent and cool without being cheesy or too OP. Using Monk as a basis, no less.
Character: http://bit.ly/2kfZ3rs
Inspiration: https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0045/8892/9124/products/THE_NIGHT_ANGEL_TRILOGY1_837x.jpg?v=1556110435
Hank, the Highly Endangered Northwest Pacific Tree Octopus. A reference to the infamous hoax website, Hank (who is also named after the octopus from Finding Dory) is an anthropomorphic octopus that leaps from treetop to treetop, channels the spirits of magic animals, and eventually learns to fly. This is one of the few I’ve made that’s actually intended to be used as a PC.
Character: http://bit.ly/2GaGL2N
Inspiration: https://zapatopi.net/treeoctopus/
I also made two characters based on Devil May Cry: Dante and Urizen. Unfortunately, Urizen is mechanically a failure, me having missed or misunderstood multiple rules during the creation process so the character’s shtick of telekinetically wielding tons of swords for loads of Sneak Attack does not function (at all) by rules as written. Dante I’m much more pleased with; he’s a battlemage that wades into combat with a bunch of floating auto-attacking swords around him, casting area spells he shapes to avoid himself and his allies.
Character (Dante): https://forums.giantitp.com/showsinglepost.php?p=25171697&postcount=56
Character (Urizen): https://forums.giantitp.com/showsinglepost.php?p=24490063&postcount=33
Inspiration: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f-96T4q6zzM
Most recent is Ruin, who I created after checking out Thirsty Sword Lesbians and am sitting on in case my friends ever run a game of that (or for use as an NPC if I end up GMing). They’re inspired by League of Legends’ Viego, the romantic narcissist willing to ruin the world if that’s what it takes to bring his lost love back to life. Ruin would have been one of his nephews and supporters, up until he was defeated and they were forced to examine what exactly they’d been fighting for. They’ve been performing disaster relief and general heroism to atone ever since, taking the name “Ruin” so they never forget the cost of sacrificing the many for the sake of love. Mechanically, they’re a Devoted, serving the ideal of redemption and atonement and never again sacrificing others for the sake of love, which will make for baked in drama when Ruin inevitably falls in love themself. They wield their uncle’s iconic two-handed sword, but fight using the Black Mist like a mage (mechanically, the Steed class feature).
Inspiration: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8PbhGt8XxSM
I mostly steal names from books I read or games I play, but the characters quickly become their own person even when I borrow small bits of backstory.
Of the top of my head, I’ve built two characterss, that I intend on using, that are “rip offs” of another.
They have both since evolved into their own characters with fleshed out backstory, and own gimiks.
The first being Jewl, the blade singing/rouge high elf.
Being Hessonite from steven universe.
The second being a Tobias, the crooked celestial warlock tabaxi.
Being a blend of Sawn from Deltarune, and a few more merchant characters from other media.
Jewl is taking her sentient sword to their old battle grounds, trying to get it to talk again. As it has clamed up, when Jewl started treating the sword, named gleam, more and more like just a weapon.
Tobias is “possessed” by a celestial, of the smite-y variety, and Tobias is a crooked old merchant finaly giving in, over many years, to it. and going on the adventure, to so some smithing of “evil”.
two offenses to report:
Corporal Carrot of the Discworld
and a Jägermonster of Girl Genius
I doubt any of my RPG mates are going to get the referrences but they should be fun to play once I get the opportunity.
I’ve never done it as a player since I find it hard to divorce the source material from my resulting PC, but I’ve done a few referential NPCs before since that same problem can help hold a characterization in my head.
As an excercise I once statted up Frylock, Meatwad, and Master Shake from “Aqua Teen Hunger Force” in 3.5e as a warlock, a mimic warshaper, and an intelligent everfull mug.
Here’s a link to one of the threads on Giant in the Playground where I’ve posted these characters and stats. The actual stat blocks are in the spoilered section of the post, under encounter 14
https://forums.giantitp.com/showsinglepost.php?p=25249295&postcount=10