Have you ever played a cowardly, or at least less-than-brave, character? Or are all your characters fearless badasses?

My last character was actually pretty cowardly. She just ran away and hid when there was a fight, letting the party's warriors deal with the threat while occasionally shooting her flintlock gun (end missing. She was a poor shot).
She was ironically pretty useful besides being a comic relief, being both the party's face, healer, and artificer.

RIP Bill Paxton.

Somewhere, someday, someone
Will help us to survive
They're gonna show us hell
And bring us back alive

Last time I played before becoming forever GM was with coward. I played shaman who was actually street urchin with tiniest spark of magic.

>Only fought back when cornered or could see immediate monetary gain to be gained from fighting.
Even when fighting party tank had to act as living shield even though my character was capable to fend for itself. When tank was too injured to continue I would save the day by killing nearly dead enemy by lucky strike. This was seen to be OK as I always saved any and all situations by sheer luck. (and failed every lore check ever)
>Faked every single bit of lore and just evaded when proven wrong almost every single time.
Except I was mostly correct when it really mattered and that is why I convinced party to use portal shortcut only to end up in future hell of different timeline. How was I supposed to know that screaming portal was dimensional gate?

Only reason this worked was my most ex ordinary oratory skills, this is also my downfall to forever GM. Best moment was when in session 5 one of the players asked ooc my characters gender, revelation was met with facepalm and "now everything makes sense" I mean you never asked and you really can't tell that from orc

This was also my first character ever and last. No one should try to repeat this.

My Pathfinder gunslinger ran from the final battle that ended up destroying what was left of his kingdom.

He's a bitch of a pussy now, doesn't want to start fights anymore.

My lizardman is pretty good at close combat, an enthusiastic amateur, you could call it, and unlikely to retreat in the face of mundane danger - He s not very smart.

But if there is something magical or demonical involved, his stupidity gets the better of him. His teammate fired of an illusional firework - on failed self control check and he jumped headfirst into cold water to escape the "hellfire" - as a coldblodded creature.

>Have you ever played a cowardly, or at least less-than-brave, character?
Twice, kinda.

One was a calamari scientist for a star wars one shot horror story. I constantly pushed to get the fuck out as soon as possible, and spend most of my time concentrate on tech stuff (mostly hacking) trying not to think about the horrible beasts that may be around any corner. Also pretended I was just an honourable scientist unlike the other characters who were just brutal henchmen in my eyes. They were there do deal with monstrosities, I was here to open the road so please protect me!

Another is a chaotic evil goblin bard (in an evil campaign). I tend to go full evade mode while annoying everyone. Though sometime I chose a quirk for a session:
> Druids force us into some sort of trial? I go full feral, I'm the dancing voice of the forest man!
> I have to pretend being another PC's servant for infiltration? I'm now some sort of house-elf, loyal to my master!
In short, coward by default, but get way too much into whatever role he put himself into. That allows me to play the fleeing goblin at first, when not much shit is going on while being useful when I found a role as things got real.

Played a wizard once, an underhanded, rogue-as-a-wizard sort, who was extremely scared of death and acted selfishly because of it.

BBEG commands an army of beings that, if they kill you, they wipe you from existence, and the timeline changes as if you didn't exist. The civilization he was a part of was wholesale fleeing via boat to escape the incoming army; now the boats were made thanks to his magic, and the party paladin got the idea that it'd be better for the party to kill ourselves to protect the rest of humanity. My character declined, and after the people on his boat were whipped into an angry mob calling for my blood, I spent most of the trip teleporting between boats.

I played a homeless dwarf archmage in shadowrun. Story was I went a little crazy working at some corp and an experiment gone wrong. Corp tried to kill me to keep me from revealing knowledge, so the character was a master of disguise and detection magic as I was constantly on the run through the streets and back alleys of the city.

The games opening scene is we were all in what basically amounted to a 7-11, for various reasons. I was trying to steal some food. The first fight was some gangsters blew out the windows and started shooting up the place because of some beef they had with one of the other party members characters. The very first roll of the game I did was to hide underneath an overturned food shelf, steal all the food I could carry, then run out the back door and not participate in the fight at all.

My current character is a coward.
He wasn't intended that way, but we started a level 0 campaign, and when weird stuff happened during the first session he got magic powers (He's a wild magic sorcerer) and it freaked him out. It was fun, and so I spun that out into a large part of his character.

He's slowly getting more bold, but the only reason he's still adventuring is he figures he was given the powers for a reason, so he'd best use them to the best of his abilities.

Absolute blast to play, and makes me want to play another coward. An idea I hope I'll get to use some time is a bard aware of all the stories and songs, so wants to avoid being an adventurer as he knows how poorly they go for adventurers and their families before they triumph. I doubt I'll find an opportunity to play it any time soon, but it'd be fun.

I played a cowardly halfling sorcerer once. He did his darndest to hide and pelt people without getting seen, and even had social anxiety so wouldn't really talk.
He did survive what probably would have been a TPK with or without his full help, but then he died to an "accident" set off by the new ranger who was convinced his character would have survived if mine hadn't bolted.

I've sometimes portrayed characters as comically cowardly, but I'd never fuck my group over by actually running away.

A great way to be a coward without screwing everyone over is doing it like Ciaphas Cain. Doesn't want to be involved, but kind of keeps getting dragged in by poor luck.

It's played for laughs, I'm not into doing anything more than getting a giggle.

First character I played in a TTRPG (Pathfinder) was pretty cowardly, though that stemmed from character creation feeling like a giant clusterfuck to me, hence I really didn't want to have to reroll and go through that process again.

I played a really charismatic but cowardly snake oil salesman in a old west campaign. I avoided fucking the group over by playing him as being more scared of the possibility of the group coming after him if he ran away than he was of whatever we we were fighting. I did manage to talk our way out of shit pretty regularly though

Rest in peace, Bill.

i played a bender clone. Basically he acted all badass did one or two amazing things to save everyone, but most of the time he was a bitch who avoided combat when possible through baleful transposition. was obnoxious as fuck but worked well to buff other players

Played a cowardly character once. A lizardfolk that hid in every fight and only picked people off from afar. Survived a team wipe by crawling up a hole in a cavern.

I either play badasses or naive idiots with a fearless streak.

I'm a big fan of the strategic benefits of cowardice both in TTRPGs and in real life. I've played numerous cowards.

My Spy in the FFG Star Wars games basically had weaponized cowardice as his personal philosophy. He was highly effective, once keeping a Star Destroyer off-planet with his lies during his first campaign.

Hudson wasn't a coward though.
>not understanding Hudsons character.
He was a realist.

I played a full blown coward in a supernatural monster of the week type game. The big secret government agency had had severe budget cuts, and so my character's filing clerk ass was sent out into the field.

He screamed a lot, shot a gun poorly a lot while running away, and generally added nothing to combat. But goddamn if he wasn't effective when the party infiltrated the lab of an evil cult with an eldritch filing system.

I did and i was mostly mocked for it.

My pc was alone in a sealed off room and heard a noise after being told there was a possible intrusion breach. She proceeded to walk out of the room and lock the door and I was berated for the other players for the decision.

Mainly cause it was a necron lord who survived being point blank in a crash of a military cruiser into the planet and had a scythe that could cut through the door easily.

But how the fuck was I supposed to know that?

She mostly tried to get out of missions cause as the janitor she just wanted to clean not get shot at. She was therefore punished by being forced to go on missions. Such is life.

I try to play my characters as pragmatists. If it's an enemy they are confident in beating, then they'll be fearless and gung-ho (what's the point in fearing a few orc bandits when you've already handled 3x plus a shaman before?), but if it's something they haven't encountered, or are in general unaware of some aspects, they will be cautious and keep the option of retreat open. If it's something obviously out of our league, then fuck looking badass, it's time to GTFO

I play them in most things, to be honest, but I try and balance it with what the rest of the party wants to do OOC. I don't want to run away and hide because it's 'authentic to my character' when the rest of the party wants to fight this fight we're most likely going to win.

Reminds me of a character I played a few years ago. Fun times.
>playing a cowardly Halfling Oracle
>spend the entire campaign cowering in fear behind the two paladins, providing healing and support
>end up taking leadership; have a following as a blessed holy oracle, most of my followers are commoners who praise my healing prowess and connection to the gods
>campaign reaches the end, we're fighting the BBEG
>He's nearly dead, but all our fighter-types are also near death and our wizard is busy dealing with the horde of undead shambling toward our position
>check my character sheet to see if I can do anything to stop him from killing us next turn and remember that the DM gave me an artifact mace earlier in the campaign
>fuck it, I'm out of healing and we're going to die anyway, lets hit him in the face
>nat 20, confirm crit
>kill the BBEG
>after the campaign, the DM informs me that my followers spread the tale of how I heroically led a band of ragtag heroes on a holy quest to rid the land of evil and single-handedly defeated the BBEG
>next time he ran a campaign in this universe, the primary church of the main kingdom we're in is the Church of St. user's Character
>mfw

I disagree with Hudson being characterised as a coward. He's the first member of the party to panic in the face of death at the hands of a strange new enemy, but he keeps his head when it counts, personally saves Newt's life, and goes down fighting to buy his buddies time.

Not really, no.

I don't try to be escapist in my games if I can, but I don't enjoy including flaws I see in myself in my characters. I'd rather have a brave, or at least foolishly brash, character than a coward, and have flaws of other sorts. It might be fun to play a cowardly knight for a change, but I'd really only do it for a humorous game.

As well, it can be difficult to sell to a group that you would rather hide than be helpful in combat, even in an indirect way (unless you're a face and statted for everything but combat). I remember a guy I played with getting rebuked because his character hid behind a door until the fight was over to grab a share of loot. And I know a person who was scolded for having their character run to keep from getting close to an enemy for in character reasons, even though ranged combat was their focus. People can be bitter if you don't do your job, or do it less than ideally, and cowardice can definitely affect that.

Had a high agility, moderate strength, and low mind character in a homebrew, in-the-works RPG who would approach things very cautiously and try to avoid combat if possible.

In that game we had a sanity and mind system based on your mind points, and killing people lowers your "sanity pool". Mine reached below 0 into the negatives where debuffs happen due to the small mind stat. At that time, I played him much more cowardly who became ill at just fighting someone, throwing up when he does kill, particularly because of a specific debuff that causes paralysis for one turn on a bad roll.

Eventually, multiple killings in the wastes and far too little rest to regain "mind points" degraded his sanity to the point of heightened aggression, and killing slowly went from a preferable option to the only option. What tipped him over the edge was getting completely smashed, meeting some goon the group fought long ago and didn't kill while alone, and getting into a "to the death" knife contest-fight that ended with the goon's hand getting chopped off before my character ran off with the hand.

Everything just kept getting worse and worse. Had him get aggressive to the party. First just trying to leave the others to track down the handless goon, then attacking after getting drugged and wildly confused, and finally nearly having them all executed because he tried to gut a prison guard with a shard of glass left in the jail cell.

Shit was whack, yo.

I frequently checked with the others and GM if everything I was doing was alright and that I wasn't being "that guy" to them. They were cool with it all, at least I believe, so I'm a bit relieved. After the near execution, he finally got enough rest to regain his sanity and continue on as normal. It was quite the experience.

I have play a coward. GM walked me through the character creation bit for the mythic campaign.

Ended up a "son" of a religious merchant. Real father was Norgorber (sp), which sucked. Dude was chosen for this quest, never fought a day in his life.

Rest of the party were former Soldiers.

Got relentlessly made fun of for it. Never again.

Played a power-armoured anti-mech sniper in a mecha game. Basically, imagine an Elemental from BattleTech with a bit less focus on jumping on a mech and killing it in melee by blowtorching the reactor to hell, but scanning for the pilot and putting a railgun slug right through the cabin.

Needless to say, being "a coward" was just how my character needed to survive.

> Have you ever played a cowardly, or at least less-than-brave, character?
Actually, that's my go-to choice of character. He's the first one to say "that's a really bad idea, guys", he's the first one to say "when everything looks right, prepare for it to go wrong"., and he's the first one to say "this shit ain't worth it, let's just do what we came here to do and get out".
That said, he always pulls through when required.

Played a fat and cowardly trader in The Dark Eye once,
was pretty fun but useless for most part, also basically sold my party's homebase to the Horasians