Origin Stories: Pugilist
Pugilist is unusual among kobolds. She isn’t a sniveling sneak. She doesn’t hide behind cover and snipe with a blowgun. No matter what the old gray-scales on the war council might advise, she’s not going to stand back and let spiked pits do the fighting for her. Not Pug! She’s out there with her dukes up, ready to take on the world.
This is my favorite way to design monstrous NPCs.
As you might recall, Pug was introduced to Handbook-World as the archetypal race-class mismatch. Brawling with a racial Strength penalty and a size-small frame is no easy task, but it brings all kinds of fun Napoleon complex tropes with it. Weird personalities, unusual fighting styles, and outsider status combine to make memorable protagonists. That’s an interesting way to build a player character, but it works just as well for NPCs.
Imagine an apparently dimwitted ogre who owns a detective agency. Imagine a dragon taking a stab at civilized life in the kingdom’s capital. Imagine a barbaric half-giant showing up for Wizarding 101 at the local mage academy.
“But Colin! That’s just playing against type. It isn’t innovative or original or unnecessarily complicated!”
No, it isn’t. It doesn’t have to be. Subverting expectations might not be an especially impressive trick, but I find that it produces more interesting NPCs than the stock characters that otherwise emerge from stat blocks. Especially when you’re running a lot of similar dudes — a thieves guild; a hag’s coven; a kobold tribe — inserting one member that’s a little different than the others can make all the difference in the subsequent scenes.
Here’s an example. Imagine that your party fought Pug and her tribe. You’ve managed to beat the ambush, and now you’ve got prisoners to interrogate. Is it more interesting to deal with yet another obsequious, frightened little lizard man, or to adopt the pissed off pink one that just challenged your fighter to single combat? I’m pretty sure that’s how Pug earned her character levels in any case.
Question of the day then! What monsters have you met that play against type? Did it come off as different-for-the-sake-of-being-different, or was it a truly memorable NPC? Let’s hear about those unconventional monsters and their odd career choices down in the comments!
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In my very first game, we had a hobgoblin paladin. I believe that’s playing against type. It was a PC rather than an NPC though.
Well I guess it’s got the “lawful” half of the equation down.
At the time, I had no idea that hobgoblins were supposed to always be evil.
First 5e game I played one of our enemies had halfling brigands. Now usually smallfolk aren’t the type of people you’d expect to take up such dirty businesses but crime and civil war tends to create strange circumstances, especially as these were not halfling scouts or bandits but berserkers. Funniest thing was that aside from changing their greataxe to battle axes they didn’t have any altered stat blocks or abilities, but when we the party heard they were halfling we were scrambling to remember what halfling could even do, as we were a predominately medium sized party.
I mean we killed them without question, but it certainly taught us a lesson about our preconceived notions of races. They did managed to get the drop on us precisely because they were halflings, we figured they were just guards or something as we foolishly walked within their melee range to be distracted as their regular bandit allies peppered us with crossbow bolts.
Halfling rogues jump out with prison shanks? Hard pass.
Bloodthirsty little berserkers leap from the bushes with battle axes? Hell yeah!
In one campaign I ran in which the land is afflicted by a terrible, incurable plague that the party must find a cure for, the party had to cross a mountain range, but a nasty blizzard threatened to block their travel. A bheur hag contacted them and offered to clear the blizzard if they would just do her one small favor. Apparently there is a mountain village that has been a source of fun to her, but a medusa has come into the village and dried up her fun. If the party could just kill the medusa, the bheur hag would be willing to help them. The party agrees, and sets out to kill the medusa.
The party comes upon the village, which is eerily silent with no sign of movement or life. The first building they come to has a statue of a halfling sprawled in terror on the ground, with sign by the door that says “Danger! Monster. Looters keep out!” written in common and celestial. Doesn’t stop the party of course, who continues on.
Strangely most of the rooms seem empty. There are a few terrified statues, but not nearly enough for a village of people, and they cannot find the medusa. They do find a temple to Ilmater, as well as a note that indicates one of the adherents was going to make a terrible sacrifice and suffer for others as Ilmater does. And then they finally found the central room, in which they found all of the villagers petrified. Strangely, while they looked worried or nervous none seemed scared or running away, a lot of livestock was petrified in the same room, and everyone was heavily laden with equipment.
Turns out the medusa wasn’t the spiteful and wily monster who liked oversized lawn ornaments, nor was she the tragic figure unjustly victimized by an angry goddess. This medusa was stoic, soft-spoken, determined, self-sacrificial, and had a fierce protective instinct. In 5e, medusas are women who fear the toll of time and strike a deal with a powerful entity for eternal youth and beauty. They get eternal youth, and beauty for a time, but then their beauty shifts into a medusa and the vain women are driven mad and hateful by the turn and seek to inflict vengeance on others. This medusa was a retired adventuring paladin or Ilmater who in her adventures discovered a formula for a stone-to-flesh paladin. When the plague came with no cure and threatened to wipe out her home village, she got desperate. Following her god, who suffers on behalf of others, she approached the hag asking for eternal youth and beauty. The hag was delighted to corrupt a former paladin and jumped at the opportunity to turn her into a medusa. Unbeknownst to her the paladin wanted to be a medusa, and as soon as she turned gathered everyone in the village, petrified them with their equipment to preserve it and protect them from the plague, and then guarded the village from looters. The hag, of course, was furious at being tricked, and recruited the party to kill her. To the party’s credit they were able to mostly put the pieces together, and agreed to help the medusa kill the hag.
The funny thing is I didn’t actually get the idea just to subvert expectations. I was inspired in part by the Savage Species medusa-as-a-PC class, and her petrifying gaze is based off charisma. I thought of how nasty it would be to have a medusa paladin, since she would have even higher charisma, be a nasty melee warrior, and the party has to choose to either fight her blind, quite hard with her AC and raising the chance of her critically smiting, or looking at her and risking her boosted petrifying gaze every round, and since she wants to close into melee they cannot outrange it. When I had the campaign idea for a terrible, incurable plague, I tried to think of different ways people would try to adapt or avoid, and one was petrification to wait until a cure. When I saw the 5e medusa lore, it was just too good of an opportunity to pass up: the self-sacrificing paladin who tricks a hag into turning her into a medusa so she can save her village. One thing I like is that it subverts expectations, but in a way that makes sense both why she is this way, and why she is such an anomaly when most medusas are either vain and spiteful or tragic outcasts.
…this wasn’t supposed to be a reply to another post. Stupid fat fingers.
Heh. The D&D version of cryogenic freezing. Love it when a plan comes together!
Heck yeah. I’m DMing a 5e game on Discord and I got a quickly minibus’s squad called “Big Impact” made of a Goliath, an Orc, Minotaur, and a Juggernaught Warforged. Big burly Jojo-esque guys, all of them bards. And only the warforged is a valor bard for armor proficiency, and they otherwise act and look like a K-Pop group.
I hope you give them big fuck-off weapons that are actually just musical instruments. Ax (guitar), maces (illusion’d drumsticks), etc.
They mostly do dancing, but the orc also covers drums and actually has weapons in the form of two clubs. The Minotaur and warforged use their natural weapons as they dance while the Goliath, as the lead singer, is the primary spellcaster/vicious mockery user. That being said the Minotaur handles string instruments like guitars while the warforged does wind instruments since he doesn’t need to break but can still blow air, thus play continuously.
Nice. I hope they’ve got their poses down: https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/dragonball/images/e/ea/GinyuTokusentai.png/revision/latest?cb=20150227230857
One of my older characters was a female dwarf wizard (w/ levels in the assassin prestige class) who wore heavy armor. All her spells were either spells without somatic components or augmented with the Silent Spell metamagic feat.
Another character, while not exactly the same thing, upset the GM when I played an arcane spellcaster without ANY damaging, debuffing, summoning, or buffing spells. It was nothing but noncombat utility spells (you know spells like knock, find traps, mending; the sort of spells that are generally only useful outside combat). I suppose the GM just had a preconceived notion of what a spellcaster was, and he knew that it wasn’t ignorance, because of my system mastery. I suppose it did not help that the four players in that game included your standard heal-bot dwarf cleric, dps halfling rogue, sword-&-board human fighter, and myself.
So what did your wizard actually do during combat?
I’ve been toying with the idea of rolling up a “wild magic sorcerer” who rolls to see which spell they learn each level. I figure it could get real interesting if it’s utility all the way down.
Oh, I just used a crossbow.
<I’ve been toying with the idea of rolling up a “wild magic sorcerer” who rolls to see which spell they learn each level. I figure it could get real interesting if it’s utility all the way down.>
There’s something almost like what you’re after for the Wizard already:
https://media.wizards.com/2018/dnd/downloads/UA-3Subclasses0108.pdf
Heh. I know a couple of players that would be into that wackiness.
Yeah, I keep wanting to roll up a crazy, dementia-addled advanced age wizard, but the character’s not a fit with any of my current group. The fact that I already have it crafted and in my theory folder is of no concern to this!
Big mood, yo.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ECYF6vEWwAABnL5.jpg
Most of the Yuan-Ti I encountered weren’t actually that into torture, slavery, and human sacrifice; they just lived in a society that required those things. The leadership however was totally into it. As a result killing the leadership while sparing the subordinates was an easy decision.
As I’ve said when discussing the Drow; most evil societies are only fun to live in if you are at or near the top. This is a recipe for dissent. Hobgoblins are the exception where it seems like everyone is having a good time in their military industrial complex. Other Goblinoids don’t seem to thrive though.
Heh. I’d love to see a politically advanced group of goblins with a… Nevermind. I got halfway through that description before I realized what I was describing:
https://verantheacodex.tumblr.com/goblinvania
In one of the last sessions of my campaign, I threw a family of kobolds at my players. The PCs were level 9 at the time, so a small group (5) of kobolds was nothing, right?
Except that I had given those little guys class levels. And even though I had built them to be level 8 instead of 9, and using the kobold monster stats (+2 points from levelling) rather than real PC stats, I’m the optimizer in our group. Those little guys packed a punch. Not to mention that even tough I had not-so-subtly reminded my players that kobolds loved traps, they charged ahead blindly…
Yeah, they had a rough time, and learned not to underestimate unnasuming monsters.
Though the Cavalier one shotted a Dragon the very next session, so….
That bell curve is crazy what with its outliers and such. Sometimes the dragons are kobolds and the kobolds are dragons.
Well, in this specific case it’s more that the Cavalier had been rolling terribly the entire campaign, and so after I threw him a bone and gave him a good weapon, he proceeded to crit and roll almost max damage… on a charge, with a lance, and the Spirited Charge feat. Yeah, that dragon was done.
Of course, after that moment of glory he went right back to rolling terribly.
Heh. I think I told the story of my own cavalier’s misfortune against an “ocular tyrant.” It’s all about hitting the big charge with those guys!
In a monster-PCs game I ran, one of the characters was a half-giant/half-dragon. Totally the group bruiser, right?
Nope. Bard. Specifically, 80’s hair metal bard.
I was kind of hoping for glam rock. Glam rock dragon would be amazing.
Have i told the story of Saint XHGRITNDOFTERGH, the savior of
Vom Meer und Fluss? Surely not. It’s a legend of the campaign my group made. He was a member of a totally-not-an-Illithid-expy race and one of the goodest guys in the setting. He was the best that Goodness and Light could offer and sacrificed his life to save Vom Meer und Fluss the city of the sea and river. People trying to use his name as a rally cry to make good things is just hilarious 🙂
Can confirm. That’s actually pretty hilarious. GJ.
Well “XHGRITNDOFTERGH” wasn’t exactly its name. “XHGRITNDOFTERGH” is one of the any approximations to its name. Being basically a low-level eldritch abomination don’t help you make your name any more pronunciable. That said, if you thing the pc and npc got problems with that saint name you should have hear the problems the players got with the towns and cities names. Since i got a thing for German names, lots of things in that setting got German names. and not of the easy ones 😉
I am currently (as in right now taking part in her intro session) playing a Large Lizardfolk named Ahilani (which is sort of bad Hawai’ian for ‘Fire Princess’) who, though her first level is in fighter, is mostly going to be flexing her brain at people with levels of Witch, as she travels the world learning how to be a good and righteous hero so she can eventually go back and really turn her ‘might makes right’ tribe around!
One day you’ll know, how far you’ll go. 😛
…I’m currently rewatching that movie OH MY GOD STOP READING MY MIND
So, not SUPER against type, since ‘Warlock’ can go with any class, but the headline text DOES remind me of my most recent Adventure League character. I wanted to combine three things for this character: Wanted to play a kobold, wanted to play my first Warlock, and wanted to do a scottish accent inspired ENTIRELY by the Scottish Pokemon Tamer memes that have come out in the lead-up to Sword and Shield.
And so Teman was born! To justify the accent, I used one of my favorite bits from Volo’s Guide to explain that she was from a clan of City Kobolds who were tasked with keeping the sewers and runoff tunnels no one else wanted to work in mostly functional. Specifically one under a Dwarven city. They had given themselves the name ‘Clan Weeshites’ after hearing the dwarves refer to them as such. They also called their kids by the same name, so by that logic, the kobolds consider themselves family! VERY proud of such, which is why Teman takes whatever chance she can to talk shit to the Kobolds in the ‘Rise of Tiamat’ module we’re running for not being proud members of Clan Weeshites!
…From the maximum range of her Eldritch Blast, with the paladin and figher between her and the enemy in question. She talks shit, but that doesn’t mean she’s crazy!
I am not familiar with this meme of which you speak. I’m down for Scottish kobolds though. That mess sounds hilarious.
https://imgur.com/a/ST3hlmc
This is the one that started it for me. Also, ‘that mess’ is probably an appropriate description of her, and it is every bit as hilarious as it sounds!
“Is it more interesting to deal with yet another obsequious, frightened little lizard man, or to adopt the pissed off pink one that just challenged your fighter to single combat?”
Definitely adopt.
Assuming it survives single combat of course. 😛
We once did a Everyone Same Race and Class challenge and we picked kobolds and bards in pathfinder. We each took a different archtype and we were a traveling band.
We got murdered by Mummies.
The one thing I actually am very tempted to try is a Kobold Synthesist Summoner in pathfinder. He insists he’s actually a dragon, but no one believes him and he gets more and more angry (let’s say, ten rounds-ish) and then he finally explodes, cue transformation scene, and then you actually have a dragon up in your face!
This is reminding me of a dragon NPC I came up with whose hoard wasn’t a pile of riches but instead tenure (and all the pay that came with it) at a mage’s college. Why have a fixed pile of coins when your riches could instead be what is functionally infinite pay for doing almost nothing?
As a PhD student, I cannot tell you how much I love this.