Strange Brews
And there he is in all his glory, ladies and gents. The product of our very first Patreon poll. The people have spoken, and Alchemist is the newest addition to Handbook-World. (Better luck next time, Ninja!)
If you guys are unfamiliar with Pathfinder’s alchemist class, I think that this specimen is spot-freaking-on for the archetype. Sure you can play a proper scientist, an eccentric nobleman obsessed with natural philosophy, or some kind of variation on the white-bearded wizard trope. But given a range of abilities that includes such favorites as parasitic twin, vestigial arm, and tentacle, I think the game is giving us a clue about the kind of character it wants us to play.
I like to call this type of PC a “garbage pail alchemist,” because it seems to be as obsessed with squicking out people as the 1980s namesake. I also think that he’s a great reminder that there are other things to do in games beyond the typical power fantasy.
Like so many of my fellow gamers, I fondly remember (read: cringe at) my youthful days as a brooding assassin or a grimdark ranger. I’ve busted my fair share of vocal cords doing Batman voice in the pursuit of my cool dude self-image. And hey, I don’t think there’s necessarily anything wrong with playing that kind of character. If that’s your deal, more power to you. I love my boy Alchemist though because he is not concerned with being cool. He’s playing the game for a very different reason, and both he and Abercrombie the tumor familiar seem to be enjoying it.
How about the rest of you guys? Have you ever played a decidedly uncool character? Someone that would never qualify as “conventionally attractive?” What was it? Let’s hear about your garbage pail PCs in the comments!
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Let’s see…
In one of the rare times I played a male character, I had a Savage Worlds character (modern, post-apocalyptic) named Melvin Babbage. He was decidedly uncool. While a decent shot with a rifle, he was obsessed with old, mundane, uninteresting bits of old world technology. He didn’t believe in any of the horrors of the post-apocalyptic world, insisting that science had reasonable explanation and that nightmarish monsters were just beasts like any other. This led him to routinely underestimate threats and get in way over his head. He was fairly eye-roll inducing more often than he was genuinely useful, though enough of the latter made the former tolerable.
Ugly or unconventionally attractive? All the time! I’m fairly certain i’ve spoken of my various Orks and Half-Orcs (ranging from ugly to *almost* conventionally attractive), my Halfling candy skull twins (cute, but skeletons), and my Winter Wolf Paladin. I may have even mentioned my Ghast Diviner at some point, short-lived though she was.
I don’t think i’ve mentioned my Tech Priestess, though (WH 40k setting.) Once conventionally attractive and still hinting at it slightly, the typical martian obsession with transhumanism has long since replaced her human looks. She has multiple mecha-dendrites, about half her face has been replaced by a series of sensors and plates, and many tubes and ports line her upper body due to upgrades made to her ravaged respiratory system. She also wears a gas mask most of the time, typically leaving only one human eye still exposed. Even her heartbeat is no longer human, but a low, constant mechanical whirring noise. Overall I RP her as elegant and human-like, but with constant reminders that she really only barely qualifies as a living person anymore.
In the grim darkness of the future, there is only unsightly skin conditions.
40k is a good point in terms of setting. No one is noble knights or fairy princesses there. Everyone is creepy. I guess that’s half the appeal: getting to revel in the weirdness.
I’m currently playing a Drow Blight Druid. One of his abilities is to emit an aura of sickness that causes creatures to become nauseated when within 5 feet. Oh, and it can’t be turned off.
Unplayable? Maybe. I’ll just let the other party members do the stealth. And diplomacy. And seduction. *cries* I’m so alone in the world.
I guess on the bright side I did buddy up with the ghost of a dead necromancer. At least HE won’t judge me.
Evil campaign, or just misunderstood campaign?
I always wanted to do a “bad punch” drow monk/cleric of Cyth-V’sug. From my character building notes:
1. Declare attack.
2. Announce Stunning Fist.
3. Roll attack. Hit like a champ with your unarmed strike.
4. Announce your intention to use Domain Strike as a swift action.
5. Resolve the Touch of Chaos effect. No save involved.
6. Roll damage and resolve damage.
7. If the creature was actually damaged, continue to next step. Otherwise stop.
8. Use a free action to apply Bestow Curse via the spell storing property.
9. Conduct a town hall style debate to decide whether poison or stunning applies next.
10. Duck the copy of the Core Rules that your GM just threw at your head for making him roll three saves.
11. Ask if it’s too late to declare that you meant to deal nonlethal damage, because it would be nice to roll intimidate for the Enforcer feat you picked up last level.
12. After an extended argument about the whole Enforcer thing, use a move action to quick channel your Variant Channel: Disease (harm) to apply the sickened condition.
13. Make petty comments on the group’s forum after you’re kicked out of game night.
Yeah evil campaign. But very lawful evil, not “chaotic stupid” like some evil campaigns go. I guess more of a “from my perspective, YOU’RE the evil ones.”
Also your character concept sounds pretty hilarious. As long as you can streamline it so it doesn’t take a half hour to complete your turn. 🙂
So how about this for a Star Wars one-shot session? Everyone is Anakin. PC choices include little kid Anakin, angsty teen Anakin, Darth Vader, and force ghost Anakin. The mission is to make it to Kylo Ren’s birthday party on time.
But yeah, I sat down and tried to figure out how to force the most saving throws in a single round. I bet you could still squeeze some more out of that turkey if you really tried.
Yeah, there’s more saves in there, mostly using Flurry of Blows.
* Pile up more Stunning Fist conditions if you have them.
* Use Blood Crow Strike with Burning Amplification. Next turn, a successful attack forces a save against catching fire.
* Use a cestus that the party alchemist dosed with sticky poison.
I can’t think of too many uncool characters I’ve played apart from perhaps one, the abnormally short halfling barbarian. However some of my friends have played characters that would fit this question such as the Goblin Druid pyromaniac, he slept in garbage. Even other goblins didnt like him. Then there was the Triton Wizard who specialized in fire spells. The other Tritons had sent him on an away mission because he was quote “too nerdy and stuck up” to around them anymore
Found a pic of your buddy’s triton.
There was a gnome, yes, mhmmhmm, and he was a True Neutral cleric in a death goddess’s temple. He’d dyed his hand blue in an alchemy mishap when he was a child, and it was permanent, yeeeeeess. He spoke as I speak, mhmmhmm, of course, to you now, punctuated with his mutterings and almost silent excitement for what comes next. His name was Norbert Boggar Zeut Huddins, and his favorite pastime was Plane Shifting people into various locations and seeing who had the most animated screams as their new environs killed them in the way most fitting of the realm.
For the record, the Negative Energy plane was tied for first with the Amorphous Planes where the C’thulu stuff lurks, mhmmyessyes.
You played Yoda. You sent everyone to the cave to face Vader. Vader was Cthulhu. Definitely qualifies as “non-traditional PC” in my book, lol.
Im pretty sure ive talked about it here in a few previous strips. Back in highschool we had silly campaign and “cool” was not part of the equation. i played some sort of caveman obsessed with cooking the meat of EVERYTHING he came across, down to the bones and keep the latter to make armor weapon and tools. (he was dumb as a brick too. No actually scratch that, i think the brick was smarter.) And i played a chicken themed summoner (or rather the equivalent back then, it was dnd3.5 and we didint have many books. Basicly every single spell was chicken flavored. Im not throwing a fireball, im throwing a flaming, explosive chicken
I think that half-orc chef was my fluff for a vivisectionist / barbarian build. Kill things, buthcher ’em, then eat ’em to gain their powers. ‘Twas good fluff, but still a silly min/max build. I don’t know that I’ll ever actually play the dude.
Also of note, have you ever heard of Totally Accurate Battle Simulator? I think they cribbed notes from your Poultrymancer’s spellbook:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FQMOyA4FNzI
Uncool characters, you say? Look no further than Styx, my ratfolk rogue in a Pathfinder game where the entire party played ratfolk brothers. We were sly, loud, obnoxious little blighters who slept in a pile and had a habit of sticking our nose in everyone’s busuness. The best part is we completely broke our characters and our DM nearly quit DMing for us because we would bumble about and manage to come out on top no matter what. Personally, I broke myself with the 1d3+7+1d6+(14d6, reroll 1’s and 2’s) damage per attack, and the fact that I got 6 attacks on my turn… And almost always an extra 2 on someone else’s turn.
After I got back into gaming post-college, my first real character was a goblin cabin boy. Dude was loud, obnoxious, cockney as all get out, and likewise a rogue. There’s nothing better than calling the captain of a Spanish galleon a plug-ugly wazzock before pistol whipping him with a blunderbuss.
I dunno, to me the whole “Alchemist of Theseus” approach is the very definition of cool in RPGs. I love slapping on parts for my character and seeing just how messed up they can get.
I dunno man. One extra arm is cool. But like a red dragon spanking a giant, it’s easy to go too far.
Too far? Pfft. As long as “Human” is still the thing written in her Race entry, there’s still room to grow. Heck, beyond the half dozen or so discoveries dedicated exclusively to adding to her body, I lump in her Extracts, too. The general flavor is that she steals monster organs to implant into her body, so I flavor the Extracts as organs that only function when a proper ‘catalyst’ is added to her body.
I really should get some art made, though. Describing her multiple mutations at the start of each PFS scenario is getting to be quite the endeavor!
ಠ_ಠ
Disapproving face aside, that actually is a pretty cool concept. I’m guessing blood transcription for days?
Sadly, that spell is banned in Organized Play. But she does have a fair share of other spells that resulted from her escapades. Alter Self coming from a Faceless Stalker skin graft, or Countless Eyes coming from a Gibbering Mouther tranfusion.
It physically pains me that the Temporary Graft spell only lasts for one minute per level.
I once played a character in a Marvel Superheroes campaign who was basically a humanoid electric eel.
He was very uncool. One of his hobbies was really bad sleight of hand magic tricks. He was GOOD at it as a kid, but it’s hard to hide the card up your sleeve when you don’t wear sleeves anymore. So he always flubbed the tricks. He liked technology, but when you’re wet, slimy and build up static electricity, smartphones don’t last long and he was kind of a walking techbane which kinda pissed off the other party members. He had a habit of laughing at weird moments, too. He felt like he was losing his humanity and he frequently tried to force emotional reactions, but since he wasn’t good at gauging emotional states, he’d often have an exaggerated emotional response at the wrong time.
I think he weirded the rest of the party out.
But when they needed somebody to RIP AND TEAR they knew who to bring.
Wait a minute… Wasn’t this the party of super sexy people?
Edit: Yeah! This guy:
So I guess garbage pail PCs still have to play well with others. Still bums me out for you that the character didn’t work. He sounds like a blast.
I’m still looking for an opportunity to play as a variant Worm That Walks that only THINKS it’s the sorcerer whose corpse and memories it consumed.
Well then. Nicely done. A Worm that Walks is in no way “conventionally attractive.” Also of note, jibblies.
I got to be a player for once in a one-shot my sister was running. The abjuration wizard I rolled up had a Charisma of 6 (as well as a Strength of like 5, but that’s a little more par for the course for us noodly spellcaster nerds).
Berk had spent time as a wizard apprentice, but was always kind of a social outcast (high intelligence + low charisma = someone who is very knowledgeable, but has great difficulty in getting along with people unless talking about magic is involved). Due to a previous incident (possibly involving a dare-gone-horribly-wrong), he decided it would be best if he left town and tried his best to live on the fringes of society without bothering or being bothered by anybody else.
Several years of this has left him as basically a magical hobo. Scruffy, unkempt, and with somewhat sub-par hygiene, he mostly lives out in the wild (yay for humans and their free feat — Survival isn’t a wizard skill) while occasionally going into more settled areas to look for minor wizarding work when he needs supplies he can’t scrounge up himself. Mending is always useful, after all, and occasionally somebody needs an Alarm set for a night or something like that.
Within the party, he had a tendency to keep to himself, forget to explain why he did things, and assume that other people knew more about magic than they actually did. At one point, he started casting Alarm as a ritual around the campsite as per his usual routine only to discover that people look at you funny and ask you annoying questions if you start mumbling and waving spell components around while walking in a big circle.
It’d be cool to get to play him again and see what sort of shenanigans happen if we get into a situation where he has to use the atrophied “function socially as a person” side of his brain.
(On a side note, Berk is also one of the first legit minis I have ever owned — my sister got a friend of a friend to customize a mini for me for last Christmas, which was super rad.)