Have you ever played a "guardian" character...

>every Good aligned powergamer
:D

7/7.
Don't ask for a source. I forgot or its on the comic.

Thanks for posting this user. The watercolouring is gorgeous, and I actually stuck around this thread to wait for the ending.

Beast of Burden, innit?

Not THAT bad. Priestess of old pagan god. Became its avatar / vessel to our realm.

...

Oh, you had me worried for a second there. How'd that work out for ya?

besides the emotional part the party´s front line fighters could be called its guardians

hell if the party manages to stay alive then eventual an emotional bond will be there too

No... But I should, now you mention it. I want to play the monster bodyguard.

That's a nice pic, the suffering of the tale is delicious.

It makes me cry every time

What is your pic from, user. It's nice

Yes. More of unluck than anything else.
>Big old buff barbarian. Rest of the party is a Ranger+panther companion, a tribal cleric of nature, and a Druid of nature.
>Generic "you all are a part of the same tribe" starting.
>Go clear a few weak monster dens and a infestation of mutated kobolds.
>Come back and our village is toast, everything is on fire and the invaders have left hours ago.
>We scramble to search through for survivors and anything left in tact.
>GM rolls in the open a D12 for survivors after we spent the day searching.
>1. 1 small 11-year old boy I recognize as my character's little cousin.
>The little boy (named Cardin) was traumatized and would refuse to leave my character's side for 4 days.
>Eventually he got used to the other party members and the panther in short order afterwards.
>We have to bring cardin along due to no orphanages for miles around and us not wanting to force my character to leave his cousin behind.
>Adventures continue with babysitting duty consisting of the ranger keeping Cardin hidden with his panther (which Cardin lovingly nicknamed Kitter) while the rest of us are dealing with combat.
>When we hit level 6 Cardin suddenly woke up screaming and shooting fire out of his mouth.
>Welp. Little Cardin is a sorcerer.
>End up dying from a literal "rocks fall, everyone dies" after we set off a barrel of explosives on a mountain cliff trail to stop our persuers. Ended up causing a rockslide that buried us all after horrible rolls.

Poorly. The deity was more a a wrathful force of nature and the girl didn't live through being used as its locus. The party survives. Mostly.

Not lying, but that makes me start to tear up even after this long.

This was supposed to be a cute thread, not a feels thread.

Everyone's lives have their ups and downs. And when your ups are cute, your downs are gonna be sad.

...

My half-orc fighter, Herry.
>Grew up in orc raider tribe. Finally realized how fucked up their shit was and ran off.
>Found a book telling of a lost kingdom, with a lost princess (think an "Anastasia" kind of situation.
>Decided returning this princess to her home would be his first good act.
>Went adventuring to find the princess.
>Saved a girl in a pub (one of our PC's) with the help of the other PC's, who all happened to be there by chance.
>She looked strikingly like the princess, but had amnesia.
>Find out she has unique magical birthmark, proving she IS the princess.
>Swore an oath to devote himself, for the moment, to returning her to her kingdom.
>Party adventures, we all get close.
>Whenever I make a judgement call, I base it on how it affects the princess. Other than that, I'm kinda the strong silent type.
>Later in the campaign, due to severe fuckery on the DM's part, I get dropped in a portal to Hell.
>Meet an evil deity, basically this campaign's version of the devil. I beg of him to bring me back to life, so I can protect the princess.
>He curses/blesses me... He gives me five lives, where if I die, I'll come back almost immediately. As the price, he gets to subtly warp and distort my mind, twisting my alignment and my desires as he chooses.
>I've died three times in this campaign, and my alignment is all over the place.
>Party still has no idea, but is extremely worried about my character's health.
>Yet amongst all the chaos the bastard put me through, the one thing he hasn't managed to warp is my devotion to the princess.

...

S-sauce?...

I remember one image of a dragon sitting over a crib and holding a toy over the baby (or whatever that spinning thing with shiny stuff dangling under it is called. A parasol?).

This one? It's a mobile by the way.
Parasols are those dainty umbrella-like items which are only designed to cast shade.

Yes. Thanks!

It's so heartwarming seeing a creature so powerful caring for something so defenseless.

Ain't no one fucks with a baby.

Currently.

Massive barbarian princess.
Savage murderhobo (which is a highly respected profession among her barbarian tribe) who after much roaming and wandering found out she was a major pretender to the throne of a (major) not-chinese noble house. Heir. Princess. Hell, she didn't even know what a princess was beforehand. She thought it meant something like chieftain-to-be.

House is in bad shit, and its current legendary leader has come a long way down from where she once was. Further, the world (and country) are in danger, yada yada yada, gods of the land have chosen five champions and five emissaries to bring their will, unite the fractious houses against right, right, you're falling asleep, I get it.

Barbarian, this burly foreign motherfucker, gets chosen as a champion by her House's patron goddess (direct ancestor, allegedly).
Goddess chooses an Emissary too.
Emissary was a peasant girl who proved of redoubable spirit, and essentially got reborn into a noble's body and role. The purpose of Emissaries is to be the voice of the gods, make their will known. The purpose of Champions is to be the fist of the gods, enforce their will and defend their Emissaries.

Barbarian comes from a superstitious background. Don't trust magic (unless you *really* trust the magicuser). Gods and spirits are real and can totally ruin your day. And someone who has that secret knowledge and can talk with or about them with authority? It's a good idea to listen to them no matter how physically capable they look. And having been told by Goddess that Emissary is Her Voice And Will, Barbarian knows her job is to protect and serve her Emissary.

And is crushing on her super hard because she's got literally nobody else, is going through a lot of stress, and Emissary is her constant companion and friend right now. Only problem being that Barbarian doesn't understand p/u/rest love at all.

Beasts of Burden: The View from the Hill

No but I've played the ward before.
SR 4th edd. Was a surged elf with amnesia, didn't know i was a badass spirit caller so i stuck to sniper/support on combat and my guardian outside of it. Played up her adorable cluelessness and was generally pretty river tam minus the massive psychological trama.
Best moment i had in game was when the ward became the protector, unleashing every spirit i had bound and mopping up what should have been a TPK after my guardian went down. The game fell apart after that cause the DM was a whiney bitch about how "broken" i was.
He forgot the first rule of shadowrunning, geek the mage first.

Wow, your DM sounds like a newb. It's like he forgot just how badass a mage can get once they decide to crack open all their pokeballs at once.

My most memorable characters wind up being these to another PC.

Not surprising.

A character with a reason to interact with another tends to get more development.
It isn't the whole belligerent bodyguard thing, it's just that that's a reason to interact.

Yeah he was. Kept trying to give us "epic battles!" In what is a gank or be ganked system. Best part was i didn't even have access to all my spells yet so i was still like 30% gimped. But then this dm is a whiney little shit IRL and also obsessivly bitches about how broken casters are in any system. Meanwhile he only plays martials cause he "doesn't play overpowered classes/builds." Noob doesn't begin to cover his laundry list of flaws. But, to be fair, it was his first time running SR4 after mostly doing 3.PF for years. Still no reason to underestimate the pokemon trainer and get butthurt when i went all out to save my IG lover/guardian from certain death.

The other players reactions were the best when the 5 foot nothing finnec fox girl goes from cute mascot to unholy bringer of death in one pass, snatches her lover from deaths jaws then asks if we can go get ice cream as we speed away from the firestorm i turned that warehouse into.

And she did get ice cream, with real strawberrys.

Pic Literally happened in one game.

Human Imperious Bloodline Sorcerer, befriended then fell in love with a female Kobold Dragon sorcerer. Ended up getting his soul half-eaten by a Death God trying to save the Kobold from becoming a conduit for said Death God, only survived because of his MASSIVE ego. Ended up making her his queen despite the setting hating dragons, she turned into a Dragon, and the dune-lords rose up and tried to rebel. Turns out, Dragoness Mommy considered her Husband and Child her hoard, and slept coiled around them both.

Rebellion got put down when the two dropped some Heavenly Wrath on them via a whole day's spell list of Meteors and Fireballs, while doing strafing runs because Dragon. It got even crazier from there.

I did this to a young cleric girl on my lizardfolk barbarian. The party rescued her from some folks and he managed to sniff her out as they searched the lair.

Unfortunately she didn't find a necklace of her captors ears as heartwarming as my barbarian did. Though he won her over by intentionally swaying his tail which made her think he was like a dog.

Ayup.
>Big dumb Croc-man from a Caribbean island chock full of voodoo.
>Growin' up with mama croc, she tell stories of how vuduon priests be the Croc Goddess' representatives.
>Also told how young'uns should be kept safe, as the world is pretty dangerous.
>When still fairly young, get snatched up along with bro by some French slavers
>Brought to France, while being offloaded, notice old dark man who looks awful much like vuduon, talking with young lady.
>Notice cart full of barrels rolling down gangplank towards both.
>Bro and I spring into harms way, get banged up, but protect both.
>Voodoo man knows where we from, convinces young lady to buy us.
>Month or two later, Voodoo man comes to us when we're in our hold, tells us he's had it with bein' a slave, we headin' back home(with young lady's well wishes. She was sweet on Voodoo Man)
>We swear by the Salt Mama that we follow him to ends of earth.
>While stealing ship, Voodoo Man get's shot. We rip crew to shreds, then steal boat.
>Voodoo man becomes our captain, we become co-first mates/boarding party.
And that was just the setup for the game.
During the course of the actual game, the croc brothers kept the captain relatively safe, and if he, or chilluns, came to harm, they rampaged hardcore.
I even hugged a child banshee and helped her pass on.

Once had a necromancer that otherwise functioned as a relatively normal wizard/zombie factory for a party, one of her quirks was that she kept the corpse of an unidentified loved one locked in a trunk in the back of a coach that she operated with zombie horses. I always liked to keep it secretive, and liked to drop hints of her doing strange things with it, like going to it every so often to feed it bottles of red fluid.

I have not. You'd be a fool to entrust me with your life, and trying to protect me is about as good an idea as trying to act as a Tarrasque's defense attorney.

In my changeling game I'm essentially this to my two Wizened motley-mates. I'm the huge bruiser Ogre with a ton of health and a nasty set of teeth, they're the spindly little ones that I take hits for.

Well, Its not exactly the same, but I did play a "guardian", but I called it Aegis.
>Cavalier(aid another)/Bard/Battle herald
>Mechanically I could give massive ac boosts to my allies and tank hits if they still got managed to get through.
>Super attached to my Roc (my mount/animal companion/bestie)
>Character dedicated his life to protecting others, because he failed to protect his parent from a bandit raid when he was a child.
>Super righteous-hero type, needs to save the world kind of thing.
>Massive emotional attachment, not to one specific thing per say, more "I must protect the everyone important to me."
>Focuses on shield tactics, and helping party, not really attacking myself.
>I ain't bad at it, just better at helping than hurting.
>my dwarf buddy runs ahead, out of my reach
>Gets sneak attack crit three times by vicious plant monsters. Dies instantly
>fuckthisgayearth.jpeg

Pic related, picture of dwarf and me made by a drawfriend.

If I boot up a new campaign, this will probably be my BBEG backstory.

I'll never play a protective older brother, or a dutiful knight, or a talented butler, not even a childhood friend. Playing the guardian of a character is just not possible. No matter how many times I try to work with another player to make characters with some kind of history or relationship, they all want to fuck off and play a loner with no past and no attachments.

...

Play the cheerful imoutosan who starts recounting embarrassing anecdotes any time they start being edgy and broody.

That sounds like fun but it's really hard to find players that are willing to work with other players in character creation.

Well, if you could, that wouldn't be necessary.

But find better people to play with, desempaisu

>implying

Edgelords have more confidence and tend to actually think they're cool.

Most of my characters end up down the Big Daddy road. I usually play martial classes, with a race of a larger build, and of neutral alignment but our Forever DM keeps on putting orphans, abandoned animals, or physically frail NPCs in our adventures and the fucker know that I'm going to end up being their caretaker/bodyguard to force me to go along with whatever stupid shit the party wants to do. And he's always right.

Every time.

Sort of.
I played a giant assault robot for our orc ship in that D&D based space game (star something)

I had enough sentience to make the character interesting to play and he was an absolute beast but failed to work when submerged or really wet as a drawback.

I had to protect the crew at all costs but otherwise I had free agency as a character.

We used to fire me from the ship at other ships to perform boarding actions, another party member could fit inside my pressurised chest compartment.

I used to RP in the MGCYOA IRC. I had a character who got attached to and adopted a little sister monster girl. Her whole motivation was to protect that smile with her life, especially when the little sister's former big brother kidnapped her and mind-raped her into a monster.

bump

WHY WOULD YOU FUCKING POST THIS I WAS HAVING SUCH A GOOD FUCKING MORNING GOD DAMNIT EVERYTHING IS RUINED

Your heart needed to be hardened, user.

And then she discovers the Emissary is straight and things get terribly awkward.

That said, it's totally possible to crush on someone without actually being attracted to them.

Well, they're already (chastely) sleeping together... But that was more of a necessity thing anyway.

But yes. If that happens, courtly love is entirely doable. It's not like your FORCE living avatars of your Goddess.

> Elder Scrolls setting
>Campaign takes place in High Rock
>Play the last remaining Knight of a noble house, other PC is the last heiress of said house
>Character's backstory is tremendously sad. One side of his face and upper chest got burned escaping when the Noble house fell. Dragged into a rowboat by another Knight who then dies of his wounds
>Floating for a few days alone with his burns and the corpse before hitting land
>Eventually finds the heiress, blames himself for the house's fall and pledges to watch over her always
>Becomes a father figure to her, teaches her to use a dagger and gradually introduces her to the wider world
>Travels with party, becomes infatuated with Dunmer mercenary travelling with us
>Goes through hell for the heiress, gets shot, stabbed, loses an eye, insists on taking a sip of her drink every time she sits down to eat to ensure its not poisoned
>Eventually get separated from the rest of the party due to Thalmor-induced rockslide (Setting takes place a few years after the events of Skyrim, our party is part of High Rock's resistance faction, DM called it the Sassenach)
>Me, heiress and Dunmer mercenary get separated from rest of the party, Dunmer says she knows a safehouse
>At the safehouse, Dunmer merc reveals the Thalmor had her sister the entire time, asks my Knight to choose between the lives of her and her sister, or the heiress (who, it is revealed, is the last distant relative of Daggerfall's assassinated King)
>Knight mournfully engages and beheads Dunmer, but she manages to nick him with a poisoned blade and he dies slowly over the next three days, nothing heiress can do
>She drags his body outside and buries him, uses stones to mark the grave and curls up to sleep on top of it

We both rolled new characters and later took part in a campaign that took place ten years later. The Thalmor had solidified their hold on High Rock and only Hammerfell and Blackmarsh still resisted. (cont.)

you mean literally EVERY ESCORT MISSION EVER!?

>New characters are the shattered remnants of the High Rock resistance, which crumbled without a royal figurehead to lead them
>Refugees in Hammerfell, new intelligence emerges from Alik'r in High Rock that a group of Reachmen may know where the last in the royal bloodline might be located
>My character is a hardline Vigilant of Stendarr/Dawnguard with a passionate hate for any religion that isn't the Nine
>Travel to the Reach, after going through some shit we find a Reachman tribe who worship deities called The Mourning Lady and Father Deer
>Begin fighting through these Reachmen, using stealth where we can to reach their leader
>We're caught and taken to The Mourning Lady
>Turns out to be the heiress from the previous campaign, wearing my old Knight's armour and wielding his sword
>Turned his grave into a shrine and raised a religion around him, still sleeps there every night curled up
>Reachmen misinterpreted Dear as Deer
>Inform her she's the last heir to the throne of Daggerfall, after a lot of persuasion checks she finally agrees to leave the shrine and help reclaim High Rock

Initially, in the first campaign we were meant to discover she was the last heir to the throne by accident and get her safely to Hammerfell, joint Redguard and Breton forces were then going to retake High Rock from the Dominion.
As it stands now, we HAVE retaken High Rock via the Reachmen, but she has enforced the worship of Father Deer and is almost as bad as the Thalmor were. My Dawnguard has been exiled for refusing to renounce the Nine, and she's made the site of my Knight's grave a place for pilgrimage.
Shit's fucked up.

What a cruel GM.

Fucking. Awesome.

Even if it's bullshit, it's still a fucking cool story. Good incentive for GMs to recycle NPCs/PCs

I want to hear more of your TES adventures.

Seconded

MOVIE WHEN?!

Neh, desu a lot of our current group like a good tragedy. Also helps not to get too attached. That said I usually run with the grizzled warrior archetype.

Thanks friendo.
Up to you whether or not you think its real, though.

Not much more to tell, desu. That was kind of the main twist of the plot(s). I could tell you how the first campaign ended after the Knight and Heiress effectively disappeared.
Or I could even go into greater lengths about the entire campaign.

Regardless, first, I need to make/eat dinner.

Do you think they fucked?

Okay, words keep being changed to desu, is this a new thing?

No. This is almost as old as hiroshimoot.

Took care of a peasant girl throughout the entirety of a campaign because she kept claiming she was something of importance

>first time I came across her in the streets she said she was a princess that had run away from her fallen kingdom
>later claimed she was next in line to be the fairy queen (there weren't any fairies in the world to my knowledge)
>gave herself all sorts of titles and backstories like "Baroness of Chlorian" or "Lady of the Purple Tower"

I figured out early on that she was full of shit, but I was happy enough to let her tag along anyhow.

Never even called her out, just sort of offhandedly agreed with whatever she said as I watched over her

Sounds like a slice of life anime

Yup. Saved a little girl from a tribe of cannibals/raiders, adopted her, and am teaching her how to live a proper and fulfilling life. She's almost learned to read.
Turns out she's a nascent natural necromancer, and was being kept/browbeat by the tribe until the cursed item that was controlling them would flip over to her and use her as a host, unleashing a tide of blood and misery across the island, and then the world. As I thwarted that particular plan, it decided to start playing the long game and it magicked itself into her possession (via suggestion) and is now playing the shoulder-devil to my good influence.

...

You can't fall. They're counting on you.

Currently

i play a freeform with my friends about a group of soldiers from across multiple worlds that came to the gameworld after dying in their own worlds. (think rift, but we can't go back)
we work as mercenaries now, together with allies we met in the game world.
my character is a hyperactive marksman that fancies himself a hero (read: arrogant as hell with a heart of gold).
in life, he wasn't really a soldier for long (died before actually being deployed/seeing combat. haven't elaborated or decided on exactly what happened) so he sticks out like a sore thumb among all the hardened military men, with his cheery optimism and whatnot.
he was also a huge nerd in life, without a lot of friends, so he cherishes the merc company as his new home, and the other mercs as his friends/family.
while they aren't necessarily weaker than him, he does put a lot of stock in making sure nothing happens to anyone.

I'm playing one right now in an Ironclaw game; a vagabond shield-bearer who has come to the protection and personal bodyguard of a naive young lord and heir to a noble house. She hopes to protect him and his values until he can assume patriarch of the entire house and do more good than she ever could.

mfw I play the small losers that need protecting

I can never decide if I want to play the protectee, or a Booker DeWitt-style "fuck you, I'm going to protect my charge even if I have to genocide a civilisation to do it" inspired fighter.

oh, neat, kinda spooky but interesting and-
that last page
FUUUUUUCK

That didn't sound edgy, it just sounds like user is a walking disaster area, constant victim of poor planning and/or dice luck.

I like this thread.

No. The idea of having an anchor disgusts me. Fuck weaklings.

If they are weak because they are in a state of growing into a future badass, then I can get behind that.
If it ends with them growing into a greater killer than myself then I can die proud papa.

You're a big boy, aren't you?

He's probably just Evil aligned. That's the only reason one of that type would take a "pet", after all.

...

I've never been afraid of a pillow case before but that baby eating space eel masquerading as a furry can fuck all the way off.
the stuff of nightmares those things.

Yeah

Sometimes I think he's TRYING to get himself killed

i can't even be trusted to keep a cactus alive i'm pretty sure i'd fuck shit up terribly

bamp