Character concepts thread

Come and post your ideas for characters, put down something you want to play but havent gotten a chance, give other people ideas for characters in their games.

Sir Reginald the Errant, Gnome Suit Seeker - Luck Inquisition. Originally an adherent to Ithreia and a member of her militaristic arm. Concerned by the onset of the bleaching he had become distant in his duties until one day he had a "eureka" moment. Every need is fulfilled by a hunt be it a hunt for water, for shelter, for coin to spend. or for someone to warm his bed. His plan to venerate his Goddess in the purest way possible he has declared that his life will be dedicated to living the greatest hunt. His single minded dedication grew disinterest in his order on both sides. He was deemed heretical by his order and asked to leave. A harsh winter and a forest turned against him he barely made it out, he claims that Ithreia came to him and now he can read the patterns of reality. The church denies his past membership and brands him lost. The question then raises, from where does he draw his power, and why did a snowy owl enter his tent the night before "The Beast of [local town]" was slain.

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Would play him as an adherent to Ithreia, but rules wise he would be dedicated to the ideal of hunting. He claims that Ithreia showed him the afterlife and that it's basically Valhalla where a tale of a great enough hunt will get your songs sung by the totally not Valkyrie bards, who sing eternal. While the soul may go through cycles of Valhalla and the waking world, the bards sing eternal. His goal is eternity and to such aims he will create a song worth singing

I've always wanted to play a 5e monk that acts like a Victorian old-timey pugilist. Having him speak with a british accent and assortment of slang "WHAT HO CHAPS, seems these ruffians wish to engage in a bout of fisticuffs", with a bond to his mustache and a flaw of never wearing shirts or ripping them off at the first sight of a challenge.

Either that or Macho Monk Randy Savage

I've had this idea for a character to use if I ever do play a tabletop game. I haven't actually played one before but I really want to.

Anyway, I had the idea to make a human sorcerer character in his mid-to-late twenties, maybe very early thirties, who's somewhere between Lawful Neutral and Lawful Evil. His name is Laurence Samuel Williams. While he despises needless suffering and death, he will torture and/or kill if genuinely needed. And by "genuinely needed" meaning innocent lives are on the line.

The most notable things about him are first that while he will use it if needed, he tends to use magic other than fire if given the option. The second notable thing about him is that he carries a locket with the picture of a woman around the same age as he is. If asked he explains that it's a picture of his wife.

If he becomes friendly with the other party members he'll explain that she died seven years ago, and he's out adventuring looking to kill the person who took her away from him.

If he becomes very close to his party members, and he's sufficiently drunk, he'll explain that she was mildly talented in magic, though never given the opportunity to learn, so he taught her a few spells. She accidentally set their home on fire and burned to death. He can't escape his own innate instinct for self-preservation, so instead of taking his own life he's out adventuring hoping the monsters and bandits do what he couldn't.

If asked why she looks his age if she died seven years ago, he'll explain that she was twenty-eight when he was twenty.

This is actually a pretty good idea, i don't go for the whole older woman thing, but that's still really cool user.

Well one character i've always wanted to play but never had the chance yet because it would require some cooperation from the dm is a chaotic good half-orc barbarian. I can't decide on a name, i originally wanted to name him leathduine and say the father named him, but recently i've been thinking given his story having the mother name him would make more sense.

His father is a warrior of a highland clan, and his mother a mountain orc thrall taken in a raid. He himself was a thrall until he was freed for saving the life of the chiefs second son on a boar hunt that went wrong. The chief bought and freed him, but would not pay for his mother.

After some time among the tribe learning to fight and preparing he has left the clan and descended from the mountains to the low lands, seeking wealth so he can buy his mothers freedom. A large half orc in furs and tartan with covered in woad war paint, he strikes fear in the hearts of many, but is quite pleasant once you get too know him, so long as you are neither an elf nor a slaver. Perhaps the only thing he hates more than elves are slavers. He refuses to trust elves, and loudly decries Galluck (the word for elf in his mothers tongue) as "monsters" who "eat the flesh of their foes and steal children for their stews". When asked why he believes such a bizarre thing, he responds "my mum told me, and me mum don't lie" (if i can i want to have him passing down his mother wisdom to children they meet. "listen boy don't go wandering off and always listen to your parents, or the Galluck will get you and bake you into a pie"). He insists that the elves the party encounters are fooling them, and that secretly in their forests and behind locked walls they eat the flesh of kidnapped children. I kinda want to play it for laughs, a kinda "look at that, we tell our kids horror stories about orcs and trolls to keep them in line, and orcs tell their kids about elves" kind of thing

1/2

I like it. In Mutants and Masterminds, The Pugilist is the stock martial artist archetype. I always liked that.

Eventually, if they ever venture to the region his mothers tribe is in, they will encounter a tribe of feral cannibalistic elves, who are the basis for that orc tribes legends about flesh eating Galluck. This is the bit i would need dm cooperation for.

I havent had a chance to play in years, but I just moved back to my old hometown with some old gamer friends, so we are gonna start soon. I wanted to try something different, so I'm playing an elf barbarian. Basically, his religious order believes that the only constant in the universe is entropy, and they exhort it through berserker combat. Elves have been around for so long, they hold up everything as an artform, even being a crazy berzerker.

I'm pretty proud of it, actually. Interested to see how it plays.

That's pretty awesome user, I like it. So how sophisticated would he be? I mean he extols the virtues of loosing yourself in a berserk rage, but it's religious and a sort of art form, which implies a certain level of culture in my mind unless your going for a noble savage kind of thing. It just doesn't read like he came down off a mountain, it reads like he came from some sort of barbarian monastery inside elfdom, which is really cool.

In my head it is more of monastic order without the morality. To them cutting loose would be something between artform and prayer. I'm still hammering out the concept . I think outside of combat he'd be kind of like Karnak from marvel comics, sort of "nothing really matters and everything is going to crumble away in the end anyway" kind lf dude.

cool man, as one aspiring barbarian player to another, 10/10 would adventure with. That could lead to some great plot hooks and interactions when you've fleshed it out.

A violent, savage, unforgiving druid. No happy happy bullshit. No totem animal noble native shit either. He's as much the wilderness as he is man, he comes from a coven rather than an order, and he is exacting and brutal and final when he takes action to preserve the balance of nature. Cities sicken him. Mankind's "progress" is his enemy. His weapon is a natural spear wreathed in thorns, and a small, sharp rock, and he is naked and filthy. He summons roots to bind and impale his foes.

He sounds malevolent, but he isn't evil. He's just neutral in an extremely broad, long view of things. In any individual case he might kind of look like the terrifying bad guy, because he just violently caved in the head of a nobleman and strung his hunting party up in trees near enough to a village to be visible but clearly inaccessible, but with the context zoomed way out it becomes clear this nobleman has been poaching more game than his whole house could possibly eat in a lifetime just for the sport of it for years. He seems like a bogeyman tale because he watched callously as wolves devoured a boy and then burned the wolves afterward, but on closer inspection the boy was flagrantly pestilent. He seems nasty because he commanded armies of insects to descend on the crops of a village, but the village was raising an immense army to conquer nearby townships and lay waste to their fields and render them fallow while trampling through the landscape and felling forests wholesale to keep the army in timber. It's all a really long context kind of thing.

He's not my current character because it's pretty antagonistic to a lot of parties/campaigns and it's important to fit the themes and expectations of a cooperative game, but he'd make a fantastic npc one of these days when I run my own game. I like my druids inscrutable and downright opposed to civilization.

Gorm the Gormless - A dumb but well meaning Gnoll Fighter that thinks he's a Paladin.

Still thinking about a backstory. Old pack he used to belong to raiding/kidnapping merchant groups & learns from a hostage?

"Book-man say people like Shiny-men, so Gorm be Shiniest-man!"

I've been wanting to play a half-orc, half-elf half-brother pair with another player. I even have a convoluted backstory written out for the two of them, but I doubt I'll ever find the right kind of game and right kind of player to go along with it.

I was once playing an character who was "secretly" a worshiper of Tiamat. Honestly nobody ever asked. Was gonna be a big kinda reveal when I'd finally get Form of the Dragon, but the game never got that far. Nobody even batted an eye when I used a breath weapon though, so maybe they never would've pried.

I am currently playing something of the same vein on a victorian /colonial setting, a french boxer, it's ton of fun but our DM is ill and I have no idea if we are going to ever continue this campaing

I have done this and it was very fun. However mine died very early since my character always had the obsession that he must always pin his enemies before killing it. I realized that was a bad idea once he got torn apart after trying to pin a dire crocodile.

I played a similar character once. A cleric. I was secretly actually straight up just a cultist of a forgotten CN god and I carried around a tiny artifact of his in my backpack scooping up soul remnants from our kills until he had enough energy to begin giving me boons. I was absolutely untrained religiously because my religion sort of didn't exist anymore. No order remained for this lost god. My armor and vestments had been recovered from the body of an adventurer in the tomb where I discovered the artifact as a simple blacksmith's assistant peasant type who fell into a pit. But as far as the party knew, I was just "a cleric." Nobody asked me about my god. At all. I was dressed in simple chain mail and a dark grey tabard and occasionally asked for alms while the party went to buy supplies or whatever. Nobody cared about the cleric as long as the heals happened and I could whoop on undead every once in awhile. Nobody noticed when the DM started describing my dark grey tabard as being covered in embroidery of religious symbols in passing after awhile. Nobody noticed when the DM mentioned a shadow dancing on the walls behind us in firelight except for to sense evil and the DM say it was merely a flickering trick. Nobody noticed when my "holy rod" started getting described more and more as a large iron cudgel of sorts.

They did notice when I finally had enough for the god to manifest himself and bestow upon me a great boon around 8th level as we went to confront the BBEG as the DM described us walking into the White City one by one, and described a man in pauldrons wrought of black iron twisted into a thousand expressionless faces with his shadow obeying no natural laws as it danced behind him, carrying an iron maul shaped like a screaming face, with a grey tabard covered in embroidery that now seemed to shimmer. Someone asked who the fuck that guy was, and the DM grinned, and we waited, and it dawned on them.

"Now is not the time for questions."

A dark cultist who is basically a cleric of comfiness. He's not (particularly, aggressively) evil, he has orders to support the party, he's become genuine friends with them, so there's no betrayal subplot implied. His cult was an offshoot of a different cult where they learned too much and were forever restless and worried, when one high ranking official fled in desperation and made a new one in an attempt to put his fearful mind at ease. This sect is based around the sense of human comfort, and uses practices such as sleepwalking and eternally teetering on the edge of being half asleep to obtain it.

He's a rather frail main but wears several robes and pajamas to ensnare him with sleep-like warmth while also giving him the appearance that he's quite larger than he is. He heals people with bandages torn from soft blankets and a warm black milk-like liquid. This substance has an uncanny ability to inflict the notion upon the beholder that the liquid is precious, like if it were their child, or their mother's ashes, and as such having the liquid slavered on you fills the recipient with a sense of wholeness. He uses a giant mallet wrapped tightly in soft wool, which he unwraps when shit gets real and things are no longer comfy.

Picture somewhat related, but if every part was as snug as the crown, and if it were black.

It reminds me of a french comics and audioshow The Naheulbeuk Donjon, there are cultist of the god of sleep Dlul, the cultist and paladin are always looking for comfiness and want to bring the great blanket, a period of eternal sleep on the world

Half-Orc Blackguard. Brutal, angry and wanting revenge on those around him, especially the goodly. The reason being is that during his earlier years his trials to joining the Paladin Order was shut out because he was a bastardized Half-Orc, they chased him off with fire and sword. Swearing revenge he was contacted by a Demon or Devil and swore to his service as a Blackguard.

The way you tell the story make it sound like the Paladins made the right choice. If he really wanted to be fight for Good he would have done it with or without the approval of the order.

Eh its an interesting twist to me, but my local groups pull the "I wanted to be good but they said no, so I became good anyways" trope to a fault

Nobody really joins to fight the good fight, they join for prestige, for ideals, for the glory and respect and the honor people have for them. Very few, outside of those who were conditioned from local churchs and raised to be Knights would join just to be good people.

Its not really an order of paladins in the DnD sense then. More like a knightly order.

That would be the enjoyable bit to play, has he been manipulated by the Demon giving him power to extract revenge? Would anybody else of walked off to join a lesser order or just been a the tired trope of wandering do-gooder?

Its just like those lottery winners that go fucking nuts with money as they have not earned it, they have no investment in keeping it, they want to use it. Just like power, power corrupts especially when it has not been earned and tempered with trial.

Tomato tomm-ayto my friend. We tend to bundle all Paladins and Knightly ORders of Law and Order in to roughly the same types. Of course the Paladin Orders are on top.

A friend and I want to collaborate on a pair of rough tribesmen Barbarian/Druid style. Their small clan, headed by a vicious 2-headed ogre, "Won the great war" and has since decided to expand. Many scouting parties have been sent out, just like theirs was. Unfortunately, they are the only remnants scouting party, and they have gotten severely lost ever since

The duo plays inquisitive to technology, not understanding how it works and either observing it and abusing it, or constantly trying to brutalize it into submission. The business of cities make them sick, and they take great joy in smashing civilization when nobody is looking.

I always imagine the Barbarian wearing salvaged scraps of his past opponents' armor, pieced together with animal hide and complimented by animal bones. He would be the type to take small trophies from his opponents and incorporate them in his armor. Under that he would have a motley collection of tattoos, most of them tribal, and would apply war paint every day to channel the spirits of nature.

I would love to build on that with somebody else a Druid and Barbarian-like combo that want to rebuilt or build a clan.

A sentient Deer.

It's fully Awakened and actually has class levels. It knows several languages and understands as much of the world as a man would.

But it still acts like a deer, because it doesn't give a fuck. It still has the priorities of an animal. It would never actually speak except to fuck with someone. For the most part it just does it's own thing. Grazing, shitting, trampling/impaling enemies. But anyone who spends enough time around it realizes how terrifying it actually is, because you have no clue what's going on in it's head or how it would respond to a given situation, except that it will murder the shit out of anyone who disturbs it.

Pic Related: The Inspiration

You literally cannot be a paladin if you are not motivated by lawful good

I've been keen to get another player interested in joining me in playing a pair of rogues: Possibly brothers, possibly just best friends. Having grown up together on the city streets in poverty, they work together to get whatever they can. That means lots of bluffing, stealing and performing, with a dash of old fashioned flanking and backstabbing in combat. Teamwork feats aren't generally much use, but if they were built from the ground up to work as a pair it suddenly starts looking pretty dangerous, not to mention fun.

Never said you could not be, but Lawful Good people seldom exist in a realistic way. But this is not a discussion of the moral system but a justification for turning away from Paladinhood to embrace the power of a being a Blackguard. We try to make realistic characters (Not having a dig) that have real mindsets, there is nobody who doesn't get mad and want to smack the shit out of somebody, we deal with the macro not the micro, i a Paladin smakcs around a bandit abit that is fine, if he maims him and kills him then no, you've gone to far.

Besides, when you are young say 14-16 which is the age I envsioned him getting turned away, is there any way to justify on a moral ground doing that?

You have my attention

I've been introduced to a post-apocalyptic setting and I'm planning on creating what could best be described as a junker samurai.

He was the member of a roaming tribe of scrap-collecting merchants when raiders wiped out his clan while he was off digging through a trash pile.

During which he discovers a flawless, preserved katana amongst an old feudal Japan museum and basically takes on the role of a rhonin, but with strong LG morals as he trots around with an artifact of a dead age, protecting the weak and culling the wicked, to honor his fallen friends and family.

I don't want him to be the paladin of the party, because he's still a sleezebag at heart and it is the apocalypse but he wants to do right

That's pretty much how I envisioned

>Flawless, preveserved katana

Your character is absolutely fucking derivative and you reek of teenager.

I don't think the idea's that bad. Better than some others in this thread at least.

I always like pair dynamics where one is more impulsive than the other, getting into scrapes and such. Getting each-other out of trouble is second nature, and while they bicker frequently neither could envision life without the other. A little bit of difference in personality there leads to consistent dynamics and lots of opportunity for role-play. Fluff-wise, living on your wits one step ahead of trouble is the most fun game to play in my opinion, and it's much easier when you have a partner in crime. Also, if either dies then great RP, even if mechanically it is suddenly quite difficult.

Crunch-wise, all of these are possible with the right feats: (assuming 3.pf)
Big bonuses to Hit and AC,
Every feint or critical by either provokes an attack of opportunity from his partner,
Non-verbal silent communication between partners,
Sharing the highest stealth role between you,
Immediate action pickpocketing while your partner bluffs.

Just for starters. With the right skills it could be fun on the bun.

Change it to a pipe-iron or something, a katana just stinks of something you'd find in a World War Z book. It reeks of teenage angst like the above poster said.

Does it really? It's an actual weapon in a setting where history is fucked. The whole gimmick is lost if it's just another improvised piece of junk. Does the weeaboo element irk you? Would you feel better if it was a zweihander or something?

A post-apoc samurai-wannabe could probably be done, but it'd have to be done right. Being a good-aligned sleeze-bag is a good way to have a character whose actions make no sense whatsoever and that everybody wants to avoid being around. I'd rather see him go full imitation-sensei and spout out a lot of proverbs that he made up on the spot, or something friendlier.

But for the love of god don't be the edgy kid with the katana

If everything has collapsed you aren't going to find "flawless" anything.

The only reason some of those museum pieces are in good condition is that they were heirlooms that were cared for by families or collectors. Stop oiling any blade and let it out of a climate controlled environment it will rust to shit in a few short years.

Make a lawnmower-blade samurai then we can talk.

Don't find your katana. Find something that looks like one, or that your character then was inspired to make into a blade by cutting, welding, beating it out with a hammer, etc.

It would, yes. As the main bonus of a zweihander is the strength and weight of the blade, it is a sword that fills a role and that role is, I'll smash your fucking head in with my large sword, it could still do this longer after being discarded as the metal was of a better quality than your typical katana and was entirely dependant upon a keen edge. The katana is not a flawless weapon, it is a heavily worked weapon because the ores in Japan are garbage needing it to be, look at pattern welding. Without an edge to it, the katana is literally a big metal stick, an edge that is easily lost if left to the elements for even a couple of days.

>Zweihander was not dependent on keeping a keen edge.

This, it makes it much cooler and less snowflake if your character is a little deluded about samurai culture too.

Take it to /k/, boys.

>PING!

Finding one in a museum would provide a hook for why the character is even interested in samurai culture in the first place. Everything they know about it was learned from a (heavily embellished) plaque on a museum piece.

No idea on race, possibly a rogue.
But a character who focuses entirely on trap building, for dungeons.
So even out of dungeons, he might be building traps for enemies rather than outright fighting them. And in dungeons he'd have a super good eye for finding and disabling them/scrapping them for parts.

Could be cool, and I think I might want to try to make one someday.

For D&D 5E, I'm pondering a warlock that doesn't know who his patron is. Or rather, he's slipped in the head enough that he knows his patron - he just doesn't recognize his patron is an otherworldly entity. He just calls him Lawrence, and is one hundred percent convinced that there is nothing out of the ordinary about the way his pact works. It's just a contract, same as the one he signed with the adventurer's guild (which, by the way, is a TOTAL rip off... it doesn't even give you acid breath...).

The catch is that I'd have to have the GM pick my patron/pact/etc for me. I'd want to go in blind, the same way this arsehat is.

hi, i'm kinda new to this stuff, so this character is really just a concept now, but I've been thinking of making an insectoid teenage ant girl that falls under the delinquent stereotype of Japan and carries around a full on steel baseball bat and only joins in battles/quest for the thrill of the fight, and to probably defeat some kind of authority figure along the way
please don't roast me

What setting would this be? Insectoid races are few and far between

Yeah, that's a pretty shit idea

idk man, i really just want to play in a world where crazy shit happens, like robots and giants and all types of weird shit living in the same weird enviroment.
thanks for being honest user, could you tell me what you don't like about it?

NPC I recently did up. Fighter 4 rogue 4 (5th Ed)

He was a stuck on his high horse second son of a second son who managed to get command of the Iomedaen Gallants, a military organization consisting of nobles and men at arms who swear a short stint with the organization. Usually to fight evil wherever larger military might is needed. Paladins and clerics being fairly rare and all that's

He is a master duelist but didn't think much of the small folk and so he didn't try to protect them. He was defeated in a duel for acting leader of the gallants by a young upstart I realize now is a lot like Jon snow. Fuck.

Anyway, he lost due to the other guy maneuvering his ass to the ground and beating the snot out of him with a mace before he could get to his feet. Fluke.

However as leader of the gallants the PC monk of Ng had a package for him, the sun sword.

To defeat the whispering Thant in ustalav for all time.

PC hands locked package to him while he's in prison, he opens it, cue light sabre sounds and he cuts his way through the keep to the stables where he rides to freedom.

Obviously disgraced but swearing he would repay this kindness to the PC as he rode past.

Not amazing but he's going to be the big villain of the second or third act of the campaign.

Possibly after making some kind of pact and becoming a green knight or some such.

Not sure yet. Thoughts?

Or maybe he becomes the robber knight, stealing from everyone and creating a large ramshackle military force to take out the whispering tyrant himself.

Cliche characters get boring quick, your questing motivation is weak and your racial choice seem tacked on.

>idk man, i really just want to play in a world where crazy shit happens, like robots and giants and all types of weird shit living in the same weird enviroment.
Try tenra bansho zero

Tieflings that are actually good or at least respectably neutral are a popular thing now, even right in the 5e core, right?
I want to run a neutral, pragmatic, and humanly selfish aasimar. Sure, he understands good, and knows that he's supposed to do it, but whatever. He'd rather be doing things for himself. Not actively looking to hurt others, but willing to use them to his advantage.
Someone gets upset that a creature with 'celestial blood' isn't a paragon of holiness?
They're the same brand of fuckers that ruined his childhood tiefling friend, they get a special kind of comeuppance.

i see what you mean user,honestly, with the race thing, i tend to to do that alot. i like the race, but i really don't know how to make that synthesize with the character themselves, also, i usually do use cliche characters, but only to have a base personality for the character, then as the story continues, i take off/build on different personality traits to them, until they become their own thing.
>Try tenra bansho zero
what is that? what's the lore behind it?

Had an idea for a tiefling barbarian with a lion animal companion. Deal is that his demon dad didn't really have much discretion when it came to what he fucked and the lion is his half brother.

Other than that he's a standard take no shit barbarian with dreams of conquest. Originally meant him as a contrasting character for an urban game, his intro would be being found in chains as an attraction at a freakshow of some kind.

Young woman who thinks she's a normal human sorcerer. Turns out she's a tiefling/half-demon who was polymorphed as a child either to give her a normal life or to plant her as a manchurian agent sleeper.

I may steal this.

If my current wizard dies I'll probably run my current wish build swashbuckling duelist with your write up as a basis.

He'll offset the evil as shit tiefling nicely.

A fellow born into a snooty noble house who was trained in all the ways of noble combat (rapiers, dueling, the like) but was never very good at it and instead of learning finesse he just got more and more angry each time his instructor bested him.

Then one day he "accidentally" killed his instructor and realized he would be better off as a barbarian instead. But on the outside he still dresses in the clothes of nobility and is very learned on a variety of subjects relating to the art of war.

Just don't make him mad.

I've wanted to play a street samurai obsessed with cats in a shadowrun/cyberpunk game. His deal was he grew up in an abusuve (but rich) home and only found solace in his pet cat. When his parents threw it off the balcony, in a moment of madness he jumped off after it. Both of them landed on their feet, but he shattered his legs in the process. He got cyberleg replacements that vaguely looked like digitgrade/cat feet, and ever since his mind just sort of snapped and he's been augmenting himself to more and more resemble a cat. Clawed hands, spinal augmentations, reflex enhancements, etc. Guy now lives alone in a house full of cats and pays for more augs through shadowrunning or what have you. Might work better as a female to incorporate the crazy cat lady cliche too

Eh, finesse-barian might be neat.

I did something similar but played him like the mountain from got.

He was also 8 feet tall.

He then became emperor in warhams.

That was fun.

I did this in pathfinder. Female Aasimar lunar oracle with a celestial tiger companion

Gets old fast.

I really want to play a game now.

>mfw I've never played.

I actually made this guy. He was my first ever dnd char, a barbarian/warblade mc. Got disowned by his family after murdering his sparring partner in a fit of rage.

Well that's disappointing to hear

I've got characters I've never been able to play, since I'm a forever DM. I've got a dryad who grew from a man's back and they got married, but he grew old and died so now she has to find something to live for without her tree or her love. I have a gladiator who's been freed but knows nothing but fighting. I have an elf fencer who got trounced by an adventuring swordsman (someone who has actually fought to kill) and now wants to improve by becoming an adventurer. I've got a wood elf shaman who got lost from her tribe and has had to make a living among humans as a sort of outcast doctor. I've got a tiefling who couldn't hack it as a mage and became a barbarian.

>Without an edge to it, the katana is literally a big metal stick, an edge that is easily lost if left to the elements for even a couple of days.
Seems like it would be interesting to play a character that thinks his katana is the best thing ever without ever realizing it's so damaged it's little better than a club

I recently made a traveller character who was planned to be a young, scrawny korean intellectual. He had natural 10 education and 12 intellect, so a doctor was the obvious choice. But he miraculously failed to get into a university.

With the DM's permission, I tried to enter a military college and got in. He graduated with honors and ended up joining the marines. So here he was, a young man with no combat experience whose original skills taken were in chemistry, biology and medic, was now a ground troop in the marines. He got very good with a gun and eventually left the marines when he turned 30, after eight years in the military. He had reached a high rank in the military as well.

I planned on stopping here, but something interesting happened: He got arrested. I devised that because he was such a goodie two-shoes he must've been framed. While in prison, he picked up some street smarts and fist fighting skills. He gained a contact when in prison, and because I had no ideas who it should be, the DM suggested that he could be a police officer who defended my character from the thugs and gang members of the space-jail.

I then planned on giving up and starting as a 34 year old, fresh out of prison, but when I rolled on the ageing table and got no penalties, I knew I had to keep going.

He ended up joining the police with his friend and getting incredibly good at using a gun, since he already had a decent score in his gun combat skill from being in the marines.

Long story short, my character stays in the police force for 20 years and becomes a grizzled 54 year old whose dreams fell apart around him. He envies our 30 year old doctor, despite saving him and protecting the entire group the whole way. To make things better he never suffered any ageing penalties.

The rest of the party doesn't know his backstory so they all treat him like a grumpy old man who barely speaks, but he looks after them like his own children. Interesting character I think. I feel bad for him.

Now that is something, makes a good twist to it.

Vampire warpriest, grants his followers undead strength by "blessing" (biting) them.

Werewolf warlord, commands a superpack as a general commands an army.

Genasi alchemist, experiments with the composition of matter to beter understand his own existence

>But I've read about these swords! They're often folded over a THOUSAND times!
>Guys, I'm serious.

>And they can cut through -anything-

>God of trickery and assholery "blesses" the sword (replica katana made of cast stainless steel) each time the character uses it so it can live to the hype
>Mostly because the reaction of the people seeing the idiot actually cut stuff with his hunk of metal is amusing to him
>One day, the God thinks the joke has become stale and stops blessing the edge

>My sword is razor sharp and will slice your head clean off your shoulders, raider!
>The sword bangs noisly against the side of the raiders bare head, angering him immensly
>The weeaboo is horrifically raped, beaten and then robbed

I really like this concept. Can I steal it?
If you say no, I won't do it.

OP of this post, digging all the suggestions.
Totally going to give him a lawnmower sword. I thought having a "relic" (that being the katana) would inspire this sleezebag of a character to doing good in a world of Mad Max antics and the weeb aspect was meant to be a joke.
But I can see a plaque or whatever inspire him to do the same.
Thanks for not making me a cringy edgelord Veeky Forums

Tbh neither choice is right or wrong.
Depends entirely on who you're playing with and if they'll think it's dumb and edgy or not.

Fair enough. I put up the idea because I wanted feedback and that's what I got. I'll still play around with the idea but the lawnmower blade idea sounded way more sick than
>Hey guys look at what I found
>unsheathes pristine weeb sword

kek go ahead

Take the dragon worship focus another direction entirely, and have an empire of pseudo-imperial-chinese kobolds.
Now take alchemy, and add a bunch of silly ninja shit (well, silly lin kuei shit in this case I guess) to it.
Kobold pyrotechnician that fights with flashbangs, smoke bombs, hotfoots, just plain lighting people on fire, and shady sands shuffling bombs into their clothing, all the while zipping, hopping, and leaping around the battlefield like a bouncing rocket himself.

No idea on personality, probably obnoxious artiste with kobold pragmatism to back it up and make it function.

A gunslinger who literally slings guns. I've always been tickled by the old Superman scene where Superman tanks the bullets but goes out of his way to dodge the gun thrown by the robber, like the gun itself is more dangerous than the bullets being fired.

Probably more plausible in a medieval setting where guns aren't very reliable and you have few shots. I also think Pathfinder has something where your guns blow up more often.

It was funny until you made it edgy. You anti-weeaboos are worse than the actual weeaboos

Found the weeaboo.

But that's a hobbit in the picture.

what if a line of caltrops with crossbow archers behind them

A normal fighter with a sword.

The thing is, the sword is the player character. It's an obscure forgotten deity whose rare worshipers willingly let it posses them, for they believe it will make them a vessel for their god's glory.

Thought it would be fun, since the sword would of course try to get as many followers as possible and basically act like a Jehovah Witness in every town they visit. Other players would be none the wiser, except if the sword's carrier dies and suddenly a new fighter with the exact same sword joins the party.

Psssh. Miguel is totally a bard.

A pit fighter monk, taking a more cheap shots and back-stabby approach to the traditional eastern flavour.

Essentially the guy was raised in a merc company founded by criminals that had developed their 'use whatever is at hand' combat style into an actual, trainable martial art. Replace 'ki' with 'nerve' and things like purity of body with the character actively drinking small doses of poison or something.

It's a concept i've been tossing around for a while and haven't really gotten a chance to play. Kinda imagining him fighting like Champion Gundyr from dark souls youtube.com/watch?v=gbm1cQR_ciM.

I just want to play a cute girl who is miserable at combat and not particularly good in stressful situations but is just really nice to be around and tries to help out however she can.

Its a shame nobody wants to drag around useless party members especially when they're PCs.

Funny how fighters usually serve brawler types better than monks

I'll just post the backstory I wrote for my Backup character in my current game.
Aelenwen Mithanseer
(“Mitha” to friends, or “Banshee” to enemies)

Mitha recently celebrated her 150th birthday, and in doing so she reflected on her life. From a young age she loved the arts; Dancing, singing, and music. When she was old enough to begin her education she was introduced to the temple of Druaddela, the goddess of many fine things: Protection, knowledge, creativity, passion, sex, fertility, growth, trees, and forests.
At this young age she was willing to commit herself to this temple and study to be a cleric of Druaddela. It was not long before this dream of a peaceful life was shattered when her people were beset by war.
Industrious peoples – the Dwarves, the humans, and more – desired the resources that lay within the forest of her home, and her people were not willing to give them up. The first attack came without warning – Dwarves burrowed up from beneath the ground and laid destruction in their path. No elves died and only a few were injured, but to see the trees in flames awakened an anger within the young elf, an anger that did not abate with time.
She pledged herself instead to Gwynn Areddel, the god of the underworld, a hunter god who hunted the souls of the liv-ing and brought them to Anwnn, the land of the dead. She took training from the warriors of the Gwynn Areddel temple, as well as the temple of Cyhiraeth, the Goddess whose scream echoes death. It was from the temple of Cyhiraeth that she learned her habit of screaming as she enters battle, which is how she earned her nickname ‘Banshee’, also from which she learned her habit of wearing a battle mask.
In the hundred years since she first set out as a fully-fledged warrior she has tempered somewhat. Her burning hatred of the mayfly races has calmed to a mistrust, and instead of cutting down the exploiters of nature where they stand she, in-stead, warns them to stay way.