Major Class Feature
I’d hoped to start this post with a link to Chris Perkins’s wonderful “The Circus is in Town” article. Sadly, the twin ravages of time and internet have eaten it. Too bad. It was full of all kinds of good advice for dealing with the freaks and weirdos of the campaign world. Or more specifically, dealing with the fact that you and your closest friends are the biggest freaks and weirdos of all.
I mean, just imagine being a dirt farming peasant in your typical fantasy town. It’s been a long hard day out in the muck fields, but you’ve persevered and got yourself a good clod harvest. You decide to celebrate by heading down to the local tavern, eager to knock back a tankard or six with the other hard working muckrakers of Dirtdale. So there you are, belly up to the bar of the The Filthy Pig Inn, when in walks in no particular order: an animated suit of armor; an old lady and her dead husband; one of the evil race you warn your children about; a freaky little lizard man that swears he’s a human trapped in a kobold’s body; and a nice elven lady. That last one wouldn’t be so bad except for the freaking allosaurus she just tied to the hitching post.
We all like to imagine that our fantasy worlds are living, breathing places. We like them to makes sense; to have some modicum of internal consistency. But when you look at the insane array of player options, and when you consider how easy it is to turn the default Fellowship of the Ring type party into a cavalcade of weirdos, you begin to get the sense that certain hands must be waved.
Question of the day then. What’s the weirdest character you’ve ever had in a game? How did the rest of the campaign world react to their weirdness? Let’s hear it in the comments!
BIG NEWS: Out of freakin’ nowhere, The Handbook of Heroes Patreon launches today!
Come check it out. We’ve got a sketch feed full of Laurel’s original concept art. We’ve got early access to comics. There’s physical schwag, personalized art, and a monthly vote to see which class gets featured in the comic next. And perhaps my personal favorite, we’ve been hard at work bringing a monthly NSFW Handbook of Erotic Fantasy comic to the world! So come one come all. Hurry while supplies of hot elf chicks lasts!
REMINDER: The Handook’s first summer con appearance is coming up. It’s today, in fact!
We don’t have a table at Denver Comic Con, but the writer & illustrator of this here Handbook of Heroes will be there on the 30th through July 2nd. If you track us down, we’ll have a super-exclusive giveaway for fans who find us at the con! Look for the Batman and Batgirl pokemon trainers on Saturday, or for us wearing our Handbook of Heroes shirts during the rest of the convention to make it easy! We’ll have the same giveaway at Dragon Con in Atlanta, and we’ll have our regular table at the Ft. Collins Comic Con in August.
Wasn’t a player, but as a DM, I stuck a polymorphed green dragon in CoS to mess with a player who had seduced it in LMoP. I was trying to teach them there would be consequences to their actions, but also because the idea of this player freaking out when he realized who this stunning 1/2 Elf who kissed him is was hysterical as hell.
Do you want half dragons? Because that’s how you get half-dragons, Devin.
Well, thank you for that, ARCHER. But this raises an interesting ?: if you got a polymorphed dragon pregnant, does the baby take the dragon genes, or the genes of whatever humanoid the dragon polymorphed into?
If they had humanoid genetics while in humanoid form, where would the half-dragons come from? I’d imagine they get the dragon genes.
I assure you, there is a whole genre of art dedicated to answering that question.
The fact that you KNOW this, Colin, just terrifies me.
I like to think of myself as an extreme anthropologist.
Pitch that as a reality series to TLC. “Coming this summer: EXTREME Anthropology!”
Handbook of Erotic Fantasy? Why Colin, how did you know what would get me to read yet another D&D webcomic? I wonder if it can match up to The Party by Clumzor, my favorite erotic D&D comic. Dare I enter your magical realms? Oh yes.
As for today’s topic, you remember Aurelia, my Winter Wolf Paladin/Warlock, right? In case you don’t, that’s the one that’s a literal Winter Wolf. The one that, after a potion mishap, had 90 children of all races with a male human party member (rolled d101.) Her familiar was a cute female sprite, but due to another potion mishap, became teeny tiny Vegeta w/ mustache. Her Fey patron doted upon her like a mother, sending her letters encouraging her to wash behind her ears and such. She was also a wee bit disappointed in Aurelia with each Warlock level she took, because it was the D&D equivalent of calling your parents for money.
So, let me tell you one that I don’t think you’ve heard. I have a Halfling Rogue, Fenny, who is trapped on a cursed island that is slowly draining the souls of the creatures on it, periodically turning them into statues. Her Familiar is Jinx, a black-furred Tressym (a sort of winged cat if you are unfamiliar, as I was.)
Rather, it was a Tressym, until we had a session where we scouted out and then sampled random magical herbs. The effect of Jinx’s was “you permanently polymorph into the last humanoid you touched.” Thus, she became Fenny. They are identical and psychically linked, making them as close as any true twins. They are sometimes mistaken for Dvati.
Jinx got settled in her new life and began taking class levels. After Fenny taught her all she knew about Rogue stuff, Jinx started learning from the party Druid. In time, with enough practice, she would eventually be able to regain her Tressym form, at least temporarily, with Wildshape. Fenny made her a cloak out of panther rawhide with the fur and ears left on, so she can be a black cat once again. All is well.
The Gods (or the DM) are cruel, however. While exploring a mysterious green cloud that is summoning bazillions of insects, we happen upon what is clearly a trap. Four treasure chests, just sitting pretty, waiting to be opened. Everyone decided “nooooope” except Jinx, who is ever the curious kitty. She carefully snaps the traps and locks off of one and opens it… to be engulfed in a gas that melts her flesh off. It is excruciatingly painful, and she falls to the ground, dead, before poofing back to her home plane as 0 HP Familiars are wont to do. The chest is empty.
I resummoned her an hour later, and the results are interesting. She’s alive, but she still has no flesh. She is a skeleton, with emeralds for eyes. However, she also jumped from level 4 to level 9, so I suppose I can’t complain too much (I can, I want my cute halfling nekomimi back!)
We find the owner of the chests, a mummy. She too has been working to get off the island, and she knows how to do it. The island is a prison for a particularly powerful Marilith; she needs to be defeated, dismembered, and thrown in the volcano to escape. However, the highest level party member we have right now is Jinx, and she can’t even attack.
To help this situation, the Mummy offers us the contents of the rest of the chests. Fenny remembers that they are empty and grows suspicious, but the Mummy assures us that the flesh-eating gas *is* the gift. The other party members accept the gifts after appropriate deliberation (and some very good roleplay!), but Fenny is particularly torn. You see, Fenny loves being alive. She loves to eat food, smoke a pipe, make love… all things you can’t do very well as a skeleton. I did a lot of soul searching before coming to a decision. We even paused the session so I could go have a smoke in my car and have a serious think.
In the end, I decided that this is the second time Jinx has been accidentally but permanently turned into a new and scary form. Fenny was incredibly excited to have a twin sister before and she will not abandon Jinx to her fate just because she’s a skeleton now. She accepts the gift. They are identical once more.
To cute them up again, I had them paint each others’ faces like candy skulls. =)
Day of the dead skull twins is a welcome change from “I’ll play a halfling rogue.” Good show! How did NPCs react when you swaggered into the bar?
Also of note, TY for entering my magical realm. 😀
You’re welcome.
Well, we’re still trapped on the island, so we haven’t had any bars to swagger into. We do have a few NPCs back at our camp who were pretty shocked, and we’ve yet to tell two party members who couldn’t make it to the session. I do use these characters on a reddit roleplaying sub though, and I think around Halloween I’ll bring their skull versions in and see how people react.
My weirdest character…boy that’s a tough one. I really like playing weird characters. One I made but sadly didn’t get to play was for a PbP 3.5 monsters PC game. Naturally the party was gonna be weird, such as a wraith cleric and a half elf half lion (bottom half was a lion) wizard. My guy, with DM permission, used some cheesy mechanics to be a half-giant assassin-ish guy who was an inch tall. Had the personality of Aquaman from Batman: the Brave and the Bold. Unfortunately the DM bailed before the game started. I was so sad.
Probably my favorite weird character that I did play was a tiefling unchained summoner synthesist (DM permission, since unchained can’t usually have synthesist but it fit the character concept and synthesist is weaker than standard anyway). Can’t remember if I’ve mentioned him before, but his basic backstory is he was sired to bring a pit fiend to the material plane, NPC adventurers interrupted the ritual, and a paladin in the party adopted him. He was a passionately devout follower of Sarenrae and wanted to be a cleric, but could never tap into that power. However, due to a screwup in the ritual he could tap into a fraction of the fiend’s power which let the shorty, scrawny, utterly unimposing but still obviously fiendish tieflinv hulk out into a monstrous devil form. The problem was he hated using it, and when he did he stilp had his usual nervous, stammering, very polite personality. Oh, and the devil was also whispering in his mind trying to corrupt him. That guy was a lot of fun. So sad the campaign died young.
Anyway, my usual solution to weird parties, since I happen to like them, is to make the world just as weird. Who says a trex is not setting appropriate in a land with bulettes and megaladon eagle sharks? For example, I’m a big fan of having most villages and almost all cities have a public latine/waste disposal area with a gelatinous cube at the bottom (those things are incredible for the classic medieval waste disposal problem). Little stuff like that sets the tone as a world with weird stuff, but people have mostly accepted it. It’s also why one day I really, really want to run a story in the Tippyverse, which is basically if the people of D&D decided to fully take advantage of the magic and monsters of the world.
Mild mannered Hellboy hulk sounds like a blast. I feel like that’s the kind of character you bring back for another campaign.
Any chance “The Circus is in Town” exists in the Wayback Machine? If you have the old URL, you can browse the history of all public sites.
No dice. I’m sure it’s out there somewhere, but alas, my Google-fu is weak.
The weirdest party I had ever GMed was one where the party was founding a kingdom, and an insane fairy prince kept polymorphing all the settlers. However, this didn’t result in any of the characters changing, all that was their own fault. Let me just run down what everyone started as and what everyone ended as:
The Queen, a female teifling gunslinger began life as a male gnome bard. Changed when he drank a potion he found in the bedroom of a recently slain succubus.
The Elven Druid began life as a Android magus, and was changed as a result of reviving a power boost from the fairy queen. Their animal companion ended up being a T. Rex, a lot like in this comic.
The Drow sorceress, who began life as an ifrit sorceress. Changed as a result of drinking magic horse liquid.
A male half Orc barbarian with the brains of a walnut ended up as a genius level female catfolk after drinks my a copious amount of magic horse liquid.
A little after all this, the part slew the elder god that was living inside the fairy queen, and established a prosperous nation the is the capital of all weird adventurer types.
My weirdest character that I’ve ever played for any significant amount of time would likely be my human monk, Zoa. He was illiterate, loud, friendly, solved all problems by punching them(enemies: punch them. Uncooked meal: punch it.), and had zero sense of direction. Any time the party was traveling, they literally tied a string around him and held onto the other end. Had the dream of punching everything. Dissapeared when he went off to get some milk for the party.
Did the elder god possessing this fairy queen manifest on the prime material plane as a random table o races and classes? 😛
No. It manifested as a giant crystal preying mantis that shot lasers.
On a second note actually: that magic horse liquid that I mentioned? I have introduced that quite a number of times, to both the same group and a few different ones, and somebody always drinks it. Always. Whenever I present a mysterious liquid, even one that I am implying to be magical horse liquid, somebody ALWAYS DRINKS IT!
You know what? Fine. I drink it. What happens?
Let’s see… your sex is now swapped, you’ve changed into a Kobold as if the reincarnate spell, if you had a sorcerer bloodline that’s changed to orcish, and you now have pink hair(how that works for a Kobold, I don’t know.)
Well then. At least I’m adorable.
I tended to make really crazy, complicated character ideas, and then get bogged down in the details of the mechanics.
Like, in a game where my DM removed alignment restrictions, I gave in and made a Human Antipaladin 5/Titan Mauler Barbarian 2/Unchained Rogue 3/Hell Knight 3, focused on defenses, high HP and maneuvers.
It was one of the most complicated things I ever built… And the entire reason it happened?
Someone saw my character backstory and went, ‘This looks like Ghost Rider.’
So I said screw it, and tried to build her as a Ghost Rider. And eeeeeverything got more complicated by the STEP at that point.
Got a build lying around? What manner of chain whip did you use? And most pressing of all, how did you acquire a motorcycle?
The DM’s houserules on multiclassing made the build pretty useless for anyone else – in his game, since it was a little highpowered, class features scaled off your total level, rather than level in those classes. So she got the Unholy Bond Antipaladin feature at APL 5 and it kept leveling up. Summoning various Fiendish-template creatures to ride that improved as her level went up was how she got the Ghost Rider ‘mount.’
And she dual-wielded adamantine flaming spiked chains with dex to damage thanks to the rogue levels. I could probably recreate the build and get pretty close but, as I said. Ultimately it’d be pretty useless as a build idea since it revolved around heavy houseruling.
Nicely done. Way to game the system. 😀
I’ve always been curious about the heavily mutilclassed builds you see out there, but never got anything more extreme than a Swashbuckler / Wizard into the Eldritch Knight prestige class.
Alas the parties I have been apart of have been relatively bland the most interesting of such includes a Werejackal Cleric armed with a snake, griffon and talking dog, a half-eagle aztec warrior, a Wizard who genuinely believes he is in a matrixesque fake universe and a Warlock who keeps the soul of his dead grandfather in his staff
Werejackal wielding a snake is right up there in he weird department. I award you a full 7.8 points.
Gotta ask though, was the snake a familiar or an improvised whip?
Well it was actually a magic item. The snake could be transformed from snake form to staff form on demand. Although the way the snake attacked was like a familiar or animal companion. The fun thing about the snake was, it counted as a huge creature meaning it could grapple nearly anythinf
Weirdest character I ever played was probably…. Daisy Pushings, a lich pony with a friendly disposition and a crown of daises on her skull.
Most weird for the world character I’ve ever played was…. actually that basically requires me to make a list of 90% of all my characters ever and narrow things down from there.
Seriously just right now I’m playing a Gestalt Fight/Mystic Tiefling from the Upperlight (who is basically the comic relief for the setting), a Wiseass Junior Mad Scientist Biotic Quarian, and Practitioner that specializes in making magic items out of Others and has a familiar that is a swarm.
It would be far easier to name characters I’ve played that wouldn’t be viewed as freakshows by the standards of the average person in the setting.
Good luck with the Patreon stuff. I’m sad I’ll miss out on a bunch of stuff because my player didn’t put any dots into Resources. But you guys certainly would be seeing some nuyen from me if I could spare any. You certainly deserve it.
No worries, Ramsus. May we both acquire additional background dots in the near future!
GJ on Daisy Pushings. I’m guessing that was your online MLP:FIM game? Great name.
Man it would be so great if I could say “Nope. D&D character.” there wouldn’t it? =D
But yes. One of several. That was a particularly weird (and short lived) game. We were all monstrous MLP things in some regard. Yet still, one look at the picture the forum artist at the time drew and the other players all recoiled all the same. That’s a pretty good reaction to get when people are *expecting* monsters I’d say. So I’ve always been a bit proud of the concept.
Hmm. I scrolled to the bottom of the page, saw that new ad, and suddenly my wallet just sort of jumped out of my pocket and repeatedly slapped itself against the monitor. Okay, okay, little guy. I get you.
Looking forward to how the new side comic turns out. Then again, I’m a sucker for magical realms. Even kickstarted a recent 3rd party Pathfinder book of a similar nature. I even got to design a bestiary entry for it!
You’re the best, Rosc! Looking forward to seeing you on the other side of the paywall. 😀
“What’s the 3rd party Pathfinder book?” he asked, purely for academic reasons.
It’s called the Book of Passion. I found out about it from the Know Direction people, of all places, when they did an interview of the person running it.
Artwork seemed kinda neat, and I’m looking forward to seeing what they do with my entry. It’s basically a low CR, benevolent take on the Drakainia from the Bestiary 4. Plus, from what I saw in submissions, there was a dire lack of (literal) Aberration love.
Well then. I watched the Kickstarter video. If the severity of my giggling fit is any indication, I do not qualify as “mature audiences.”
I must scurry from the darkness of being an observer to have my time to shine. Here’s the circus thingy that you mentioned:
http://puu.sh/wyZfB/27f3825b16.png
or
https://www.scribd.com/document/350574129/294290659-The-Dungeon-Master-Experience-Chris-Perkins-pdf
The puush is the whole thing in one big image, with the specific story you mention only. The PDF is where I found it, and contains a LOT more stories. Sadly, it requires an account to download the PDF, and I’m lazy, so I just screenshotted it, cropped it, and made a puush.
That is some quality scurrying from the darkness there, Sawrock. Thanks for the assist!
Now if only I can track down the rest of the missing articles. “The DM Experience” was a formative part of my development as a gamer.
The strangest character I’ve ever played? Considering all of the random forum and personal RPs that I’ve engaged in, it’s hard to remember.
My PFS Alchemist, Meiosa, is up there. Her backstory is that she used to deal with unethical experiments, working with seedy organizations like the Aspis. This put her in the line of fire of a group of Pathfinders, and as one of those murderhobos needed a faction goal, she was spared and recruited.
Meiosa still conducts horrific experiments, but only upon herself. As a transhumanist, she seeks to change herself by hunting down monsters, stealing their organs, and implanting them into her body. This is how I explain her many, many discsoveries as well as the flavor behind her self-only Extracts. After all, some organs can only perform at full capacity after she ingests the proper catalyst. Her bombs are the result of a failed breeding program, bottled grublike creatures that react violently when exposed to open air.
As of writing, her upgrades include: A second row of shark teeth and claws that emerge when she drinks her mutagen, a tentacle that protrudes from her shoulder, two extra arms that belong to a clone she’s slowly growing out of her own body, a tumor familiar with the silhouette of a scorpion that’s made up of a severed hand with extra fingers attached, and organs that have been shifted around for more efficient protection. She will soon learn the Countless Eyes spell, which gives all-around vision and sprouts eyes all over her body.
She has max ranks in the Disguise skill. Not because she’s particularly good at it, but because she needs it to go out in public.
Ah Alchemist, the class that is either kill it with fire towards others because you’re using explosive firebombs, or KILL IT WITH FIRE towards yourself because you’re a horrible body horror monster covered in teeth, tentacles, and eyes.
We never actually got to play any of them because the GM would veto them during the character-creation phase, but a few people in my group had fun suggesting things they knew would get shot down, just for gits and shiggles.
Some of the ones I remember people asking for were: a brain-in-a-jar, an animated object, and the druid’s awakened animal-companion from the last campaign. The GM stopped even entertaining our requests when someone proposed a half-dragon rust monster.
Reference: http://archive.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/iw/20041015b&page=2
I made the mistake of telling Laurel about this:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Pathfinder_RPG/comments/6a3gfj/racial_heritage_shenanigans/
Before I knew what was happening she had named her kitsune and done character art. My game is destined for a sad fate.
… And here I have this weird hangup with wanting basic biological plausibility in a world where physics long ago threw up its arms in exasperation.
This leads me, in settings I myself develop, to greatly cull the available pool of races. It’s a good thing I have a cadre of loyal players who seem to think I’m a good DM, because my restrictions would be off-putting to many.
I do love seeing what people can come up with within the framework I’ve created, though!
Do you ever allow monstrous races? I mean… I’m always struck by the idea that, “Dudes! What if we played as the dragons?”
In a world with many sapient species, there’s always that nagging feeling of “what if” that seems to prompt homebrew.
Weirdest party would have to be a short 3.5e campaign some years back… high-level (15 or so) monstrous characters. If I remember correctly, we had a an earth elemental (played as a Discworld-style troll), a rakshasa, a centaur, a pixie, a werewolf, and a giant lizardfolk (my character).
I think the rakshasa was the only one who was actually evil, but you wouldn’t call this group “nice”… between the wolf and the lizard, a few of our opponents did get eaten.
Probably one I played in my youth, back when I was enamoured with 3.5’s monster PCs rules. (Not that I don’t still like playing weird PCs.)
My weirdest recent PC is the caecilian mesmerist (later witch, because occult classes are clunkier than they’re worth) whose left eye was possessed by vague eldritch forces and could rip itself out of her head and do stuff. Or maybe the little girl raised by bears.
Weirdest character I’ve played? Literal cat. I got into an argument with my DM when I realized that my character wouldn’t be able to convey important information because he almost exclusively communicates in meows.
I read “The Stand” back in the day, and thought it would be cool to RP a mute character like one of that novel’s protagonists. Chalk board, pantomime… the whole bit. I lasted about half a session before I realized that a game predicated on oral communication requires oral communication.