GM's and players, tell us about your favorite NPC's. What made them so special?

I guess I'll share one of my own.

Renard is the champion of a certain kingdom in my setting. Skipping the boring details, that essentially just means he's a super badass fighter. He's very antisocial, though, and tends to avoid conversation as much as possible. It's not because he's an edgy lone wolf, though. He wants to avoid talking because he has a speech impediment -- rhotacism, to be precise.

Now that I write it out, it doesn't sound all that great. I just thought it was interesting that this guy can be such a terrifying force in combat, but as soon as he has to speak he becomes an awkward and timid person, ashamed of his own voice.

I kinda had this with an NPC who just wouldn't die.
Started off as a shipwrecked castaway, no combat ability to speak of, but gets Persuaded (read: adopted like stray dog) by the party to fight with them. Winds up getting captured and tortured, loses an eye, his tongue, and most of his teeth in the interrogation, but refuses to snitch.
He's left for dead, of course, but they find him a much later as a deckhand on a mercenary galley, allegedly hired because he's quiet. Naturally, they're stoked to see him alive, so the PCs decide to swashbuckle the high seas with this ship for a while.
During a sea-battle, poor Jimmy-NPC ends up having both legs crushed/hacked off - with essentially 1hp left, he breaks his lantern over a cache of Alchemist's Fire, is set alight, and fireblasted overboard into the ocean.
But NOPE, a year later they bump into him in not!Toledo, after hearing rumours about a horribly burned one-eyed man with no legs, who forges the finest steel on the peninsula. Somehow alive, and somehow happy to see the party.
Now, he's a questgiver and makes magic items. He'll absolutely never be a combatant again (motherfucker has TWO peglegs) but I couldn't bear to retire him.

This sounds amazing.
Good on yah for this.

Not the only times he's shown up, but those were the most interesting recurring NPCs.
Like Guillame Verritte la Roche, a pompous Quixote-esque character, considers himself the very paragon and last hope of chivalry, and has far too much money and far too little sense.

Was actually unintentional as a recurring character, but since his death was completely ambiguous every time, I couldn't help but use him again for fun. I'm just glad it worked out well.

We have the daughter of a guy who recently became a Lich in our party, a young girl who looks absolutely innocent at first sight but that knows quite a big deal about necromancy thanks to her father. She's also quite a skilled medic, so she's kind of the support character of our party, but if angered she's quite terrifying.

There was this occasion in which one of our PCs intentionally shot her with a crossbow. She barely survived and took a few days to recover, but once she was back, she put a paralyzing potion in the soup of the PC who shot her and later on killed him while he was lying motionless in his tent, and then turned him into a zombie.

I was asked to make up a B-story NPC for the Main Big Bad. A mercenary.

He was a large barbarian that used a steel morning star with chain gloves. Very high Listen and Spot. He was effectively really fucking hard to sneak up on, really hard to hurt and make stick, and impossible to easily disarm.

Jobono Anabottlarum was his name.

I played him as a wise and flinty asshole. The sort of cunning you expect a smart person to have, but he wasn't smart, he was just expeirneced from having the shit kicked out of him by life, and the group felt that was conveyed amazingly.

It was supposed to be an optional boss. If he won vs. the two NPCs, a Shadow Dancer and a Bard, then something interesting would've happened to the story. But my rolls sucked. So I'd miss every swing.

Eventually the DM groaned at the slow progression and ruled they beat my barbarian guy, but even still they were impressed by just how difficult it was to land a hit and make it stick. I'd managed to destroy the Bard's rapier and make them burn through their spells and inventory just trying to take down a barbarian two levels higher.

They almost said they wanted him to appear later, but the DM decided not to. I don't blame them, but I got compliments for the character that really brought a wild cunning brute to life for them.

We hired a crew to man our ship. They turned out to be the entire cast of Brooklyn 99

Hell Horse

My crew had been hired to kill a Vampire that was being transported nearby. The group attacked the convoy and a typical battle ensued. As the battle was winding down, one of the final enemies was still riding his horse and fighting us. The DM rolls a natural 20 and we all stare in disbelief as the man and horse meld into 1 super being. The newly created Hell Horse got his shots in on us and then fled into the night screaming, "KILL ME? NNNNNNEEEEEEIIIIIIIGGGGGGGGHHHHHHH!"

>There was this occasion in which one of our PCs intentionally shot her with a crossbow. She barely survived and took a few days to recover, but once she was back, she put a paralyzing potion in the soup of the PC who shot her and later on killed him while he was lying motionless in his tent, and then turned him into a zombie.
Karmic. I like that and I like her, too. The PC had it coming.

Unhinged ex-Bosnian intelligence officer helping us by procuring valuable information in CoC campaign.
Was so mentally disturbed that he was adamant both the cult and the PCs were products of his imagination and he might as well just go along with the flow.

GM admitted to ripping him out of some comic book.

I thought getting killed was a bit of an exaggerated retribution, but the guy was total dick (both IRL and in game) and despite having enough hints of her absolutely hating him he didn't even apologize.

A skeleton enemy crit-decapitated one of the city guard that the adventurers brought with them. He stole the body, put on the brand new guard outfit, then disappeared in to the tomb.

He arrested a gargoyle and escaped in to the surface.

It sounds like a pretty classic flaw, I could see a knight with that in some medieval story, he's a butcher but when the fair maidens try to talk to him he goes stiff and doesn't talk

Dr. McConaughey from a gammaworld game. He was a small frontier town doctor and barely more than a background character but my group loved his unflappable chill in the face of danger and the fact that he was an eight foot spider.

A young adjutant of the Lord Commissar one of my guys were playing. He was stupid and clumsy, yet he had immense luck and were practically unkillable. My PC was using him to all sort of funny shit and made a great comic relief.

>dubs
>followed by trips
>followed by dubs
FUCKING GREAT GET MATE
C H E C K E D

The witch we hired blackmailed to help us find a rare herb to cure the princess. She live in the dark forest of the damned that no one dear to venture. She is quite prideful and yet so innocent at heart. We first met when I was stuck in a frog form because I just got polymorph. She ran away in shock, after curing my curse, with her ear dye red. Then later when we looking for expert of herbs. We met again after a season lost in the desert, where she was enjoying the beach; while, we were thirst. She escorted our party out of the forest and back to the kingdom. The last time we saw her was, when she was being penetrated by an twisted trent and pull into their creeper saving my sorry excuse of a mage. There no comfort death so I am hopeful that she is still live. I am not delusional, I am in love!

The Turnip Woman

She exists in every town. If a player ever says something like "I ask someone..." or "I ask the closest person..." It's always the turnip woman. She has four kids and her husband is in the army. She's returning from the market.

Looks pretty much like pic related, but with a basket of turnips.

this guy sounds hillarious

Stealing this.

Go right ahead, kiddo

Are you a hobgoblin?

An Adeptus arbite I made up on spot because the players managed to get by a locked down area. I needed a name for him when they showed him their inquisitorial seal, so the first thing I came up with was "John J Johnson Junior"

The players loved him so much that I brought him back later on during the campaign as a task force leader for some arbite enforcers when they needed to raid a cultist safe house/hideout.

Does he like bowling and big american titties?

What's "white slavery"?

I did something similar with a tavern called 'The Siren's Lap' that the players ran across in every town. It was basically a planar traveling agency in disguise.

Well, mostly the NPCs I like the idea of never become very prominent, and the NPCs the players like, I barely even remember they were in the game.

I made expies of the entire ISIS crew from Archer as the internal security bureau for our Rogue Trader captain's home planet. It was an extension of the background of one of our arch-militants, who was basically Archer. Playing !Mallory against his character was pretty fun, and playing her against the Rogue Trader captain was even more fun.

The captain exploded twice and lost a leg during that adventure. Both times when she sat down to have a drink. Archer came out scot free.

This sounds amazing.

...

An elderly Orc, pushing a broom, in every underground dungeon we've ever explored. Ignores the party, and is in turn ignored by the other dungeon inhabitants. Any attempt to talk with him is answered by "Leave me alone, I'm busy",

His key ring detects as moderately powerful Alteration magic: we've seen him use it to open doors and disarm traps. Usually, but not always, he locks the doors behind him.

No one's ever tried to attack him. We figure, what's the point?

Checking gets is /v/-tier.

He does.
My players love the obnoxious accent, as well.

Oh, yeah, I never told you guys about the Brat, did I?
He was a young male human fighter who would pop in on the party from time to time because he had goals that crossed over with the party's (among them being avenging his father against the group of assassins who had said dad killed). He basically acted like a more realistic version of the edgy avenger archetype, in that he was too youthful to be taken seriously as an experienced fighter initially and got blown the fuck out on his first attempt to kill the guy who had his father killed.
Once he even refused healing from the party ranger out of macho, she healed him anyways, and he sulked off in shame after what basically amounted to '...y-you too'.
His time with the party ended up getting them experience, and he gave them aid when he was around and they asked.
He eventually ended up on the other side of a war, but they never fought each other directly.

*him experience
Them too, but he was called the brat because he was a young human and the party was composed of two elves and a dwarf (which ended up being lodsafun).

It's difficult to pick one, but I kind of like Elias the Librarian, from our RT game.

Basically, he's an information broker. He's a daemon of Tzeentch that's ridiculously easy to summon, but is in turn very limited in his apparition. He's essentially the scribe the bigger, scarier daemons bully into doing their busywork. Thus, he has access to a lot of "cheap", simple knowledge from a daemonic perspective while being too weak to utilize the more interesting things he knows.

He also acts as a meek, cowardly nerd with a love for trashy novels, a tendency to correct people and an unusual lack of plans and lies for a creature of The Great Architect. It's just knowledge for knowledge. He is also, humorously, the guardian of lost paperwork.

Just don't EVER cut him short on a deal. The summoning also binds YOU, and good luck running your merchant empire when your paperwork seem to disappear when you look away. Because it does.

Marge Dooley, aka Literaly Satan
I used her three times, one in each game. What I intended to be just an elderly named NPC with an angry and confrontational demeanor, ended up being the finger of death for all my campaigns.

First time, she kills all PCs on account of bullshit luck, the players attempting to murder an old lady and shotguns being more powerful than initialy thought. Second time, I put her as a background NPC to get a reaction out of some returning players. The newbie looking at them overreacting decided to take a shot at her at his confusion, misses, kills a policeman and then the encounter goes tits up, they get caught in the crossfire and die. Third time is just unfathomable. This time I put her in a Dark Heresy game, completely unrelated, but described with the same demeanor, same rickety build and purple sweater, but in a different universe. It would be funny, until we noticed something.

Every time someone attacked her, they missed. Every time an explosive was to go up near her, it ended up being a dud. All out of luck. From that point forward, the players took her along and she followed them for a good 5 session, while remaining unharmed, unfazed and just grumpy. Eventually, it's final boss time. They load her with some heretical psycher fueled proton pack I can't remember the name off to fire at a very depowered Lord of Change from a distance, with a faint hope of her fucking up. She managed to resist posession with a shitty 5% chance of making it twice. The old bat was made of iron.

A few misses after it gets to a couple hitpointts and it turns that Marge is going for the ultimate kill steal.Then someone offhandidly mentions "at least she wont kill us this time". Then the weapon hits a random AoE attack. 38 damage to all. None survived. Third TPK.

At that point and after a solid minute of silence, I muster a "Marge Dooley enters whatever hellportal she came out of and leaves us forever."

I've never used her again
I dare not to

...

The butler for The Defenders of Pittsburgh! The defenders where a bunch of foppish questgivers for us.
Over the course of the campaign, most of them died, but the butler remained, and it became more and more obvious that the butler was the genius behind the defenders.

for example the defenders told us to go to an area, and retrieve something, said something was crazy world ending artifact, who knew?

Too good not to cap.

Best in thread
(also dubs)

A shady looking merchant named Salazaar. Salazaar appears almost everywhere the PCs are, usually in dimly lit alleyways or in the slums. He only really appears when you're not looking for him, though he once gave a PC a single calling card to summon him.

Salazaar sells magical equipment of dubious origins. Sometimes it's cursed, sometimes it's not. Even he isn't sure if it'll work as intended. Occasionally his potions misfire and his wands do something that isn't advertised. I always have him grow fond of the PCs, occasionally giving them discounts or hints and tips. He even goes out of his way sometimes to find items he knows the players will enjoy. He's a little like M'aiq the liar, but intent on selling things. I made him so I could include a vendor of magical items.

You head down to areas where the rank and file are partying. They seem to get the worst of it and for once they need the attention.

The first thing that you notice is the much more substantial presence of MP's. They're in full armor, though it's been dressed up a bit for the occasion. Four soldiers are being dragged away to the brig. Looks like they're keeping busy.

With the extra presence of MP's cracking down the NCO's seem to be doing their part to keep the troops from getting too rowdy. A little bit is okay though and there seem to be plenty of drinks.

The closest thing to a dance among the regulars are sections that are more like a rave.

"I almost miss my old unit." Rufaro comments. "Almost."

Your personal guard are kept busy watching for potential threats as you interact with the soldiers. A good portion of the visit is just spent keeping everyone from snapping to attention when you enter a room. The rest is spent trading stories and listening to how things have been on the front.

One thing is for sure, nobody liked the fighting on Rioja, but their experience training in the local environment gave them an edge against Nasidum troops. The equipment upgrades you've gone to the trouble of outfitting the army with have been helpful. NCO's are certain casualties would have been much worse without them.

"We've fought in campaigns with the older model body armor. The Marine suits may seem like barely any protection these days, but against older small arms you notice the improvement."

"If you see or hear about any good armor or other gear for the regular troops let me know." you tell a few.

Talking to some soldiers still waiting for replacement limbs helps to reassure them they'll get fixed up.

"Why did you go with a cybernetic replacement sir?" asks one.

>What say?

I stand tall and proud, and bellow "Wrong thread m8"

sorry

One of our party was a noble, and thus had three servants who traveled with him to carry his stuff.
One of them died almost immediately after being introduced, no thanks to our local edgelord. The second was chaotic evil and acted like a Disney villain, the evil vizier sort, and also died pretty quickly due to an unfortunate bear trap accident that surprisingly, was set up by our bard rather than the paladin with the sack of bear traps. The third one was an incredibly meek little man with an extremely quiet but rather squeaky voice, who was called Jimmy because nobody could remember his name, but he was too cowardly to correct them. Jimmy managed to fail every single mental save he ever had to make, but was otherwise absurdly lucky. He could be intimidated by anything and anyone, bullied into whatever you needed him to do, and was deathly scared of even the mildest of dim lighting. However, he managed to dodge everything from darts to pits out of what was mostly sheer dumb luck. He even survived brief use as a meatshield by our good-in-alignment only wizard, albeit with some major healing required afterwards from the cleric.
He went on to live through everything from medusa ambushed to one incident with a dragon, even barely making it through an encounter with one of the Princes of Hell.
He somehow outlived not only his master, but also his next character and all but one of the original party members.

The merchant from Resident Evil 4 somehow ends up appearing in all our campaigns, always selling strange things in strange places where there's no real good reason for him to be.

Except you can't even get dubs on /v/ anymore.

/v/ isn't even that bad as long as you avoid the obvious console war and assorted bait threads.

> Bertram Tiberius Motherford, an Ogryn who can only communicate by repeating the word 'motherfucker' in different intonations.

>Good guys
I make these a lot and I love them, but they usually end up inadvertantly killed or turned "antagonist" by the players well before they get to develop and do anything, or I just haven't made them a big enough part of the plot for those things to happen.
>Bad guys
A CR 1/2 man with an exposed bottom who bested the "brave heroes" in combat after living long enough as his friend was gibbed to realize his crossbow was shit, 5 foot steps are amazing to tactically fuck with PCs, he can hit the tanky guy on a 20, he had a miraculous penchant for rolling a 20, the PCs had no idea how to deal with the alchemist crap in his pocket, and his breastplate+shield combo made him nigh invulnerable to the spell-expended bard. He has become the eternal rival of the level 3 paladin of vengeance PC he downed in combat and shall return with allies in similar attire when I find a good place for them. Also, he will have a name.

Various others that have been more planned too, but that unplanned brilliant little guardsman/mook that learned the rules of the game he was in was a highlight.

I like it, user.

Interesting though.

Clever mooks best mooks

>/v/ isn't that bad as long as you avoid /v/

Reminds me of Boxcar Joe, the Magic Hobo. Anyone have that cap?