Tell me about the strongest mortal in your setting, how did they gain such power, what was their greatest failure and triumph, did they die in battle or do they get the luxury of death by old age.
pick related, its Umibozu, the strongest mortal in the Gintama setting.
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umibozu pretty good
good dad
best math-teacher-looking badass
In a sense she's not all that strong, but overtime accumulated a number of magic items and artifacts which together, make her the most powerful. Greatest triumph, saving the dragons from extinction, worst failure being unable to settle or stop warring among the common races. She's technically still alive, just magically frozen but everyone assumes she died long ago and those that froze her want her that way.
The ancient Alexander the Great expy, probably. Rose to throne at thirteen, proceeded to unite the continent and liberate it from the orcs, ruled for half a century before being assassinated, their empire proceeded to survive them by another thousand years or so.
He gained his power by being the Chosen One - i.e. secretly sponsored and manipulated by powerful alien lords.
His greatest failure was the death of his family when he was but a child, as a rival lord tried to dispose of him so that he could never reclaim the throne. He fucked that guy up good.
A man who wanted his cat back.
He was no magician but he had four bloodlines he could manifest, assuming he had the time to meditate each morning. The bloodlines let him cast some spells but he paled in comparison to even the dopiest wizard. But the weird gifts bestowed by the bloodlines plus his knack for throwing things earned him a place in the village militia.
When the Almighty General's forces stampeded through the village, the Almighty General took the Bloodlord's cat as a gift for his son. Needless to say, the Bloodlord fumed and went full Donald Duck on what remained, swearing he'd get his "little man" back come hell or high water.
So he set out and came across the local soldiers as they mustered. One thing led to another and the Bloodlord found himself in charge of a unit and eventually became one of the Alliance's generals after some wild stunts. Things the Bloodlord did:
-Form a whole unit of other bloodlords
-Earn the trust and eventual loyalty of the frogfolk
-Singlehandedly laughter an entire bandit gang in the belief they somehow had his cat
-Recruit the machismo-addled, hot-tempered Nation of Olio after leading a successful charge against a contigent of the Almighty General's army
All the Almighty General wanted as a challenge. Instead, what he got was the most brutal beatdown the world had ever seen. The final battle saw the Bloodlord fly off the handle against a titanic man with four bloodlines of his own. Regardless, sheer military experience didn't match up to a guy who was:
1-fucking insane with rage
and
2-really wanted his fucking cat back.
As the Almighty General choked on his own teeth the Bloodlord rushed off and found his cat with the Almighty General's son. The cat was given up (no questions asked) and the General's army was routed.
The Bloodlord died of old age after an easy day of tending his garden. His "little man" was waiting for him at the Holy Gates.
In Legends of the Wulin, the strongest mortal to have ever lived is part of the backstory of the current state of the world.
>The true history of the Wulin is uncertain, but there are legends amongst the elders of the Martial Brotherhood that claim their origins date back to mythic times. The legends say that, long ago, men could learn the secrets of Godly Kung Fu, a power that allowed them to defy Heaven itself. The stories speak of a man named Kuafu, who attained terrible and magnificent power through cultivation of chi; after achieving a tyrannical enlightenment, he decided to storm Heaven and challenge the Gods themselves.
The game doesn't provide any more detail save that they eventually fell, through a lack of wisdom rather than a lack of power. A plot point in my game involves their grave/tomb/prison, although none of the PC's know that's actually what it is yet.
>Be Me, as a scrub GM
>PC wants a homebrew rock man from FTL
>Soundsgood.jpg
>Accidently make his abilities and defense god tier by level 7, because of regeneration through rocks and forming other rocks.
He became so powerful, that by level 14 he could fight a dragon without taking any hits.
I tried combatting this all throughout the campaign but the PC's enjoyed it too much for me to dick them out of their god.
Because all my campaigns are within the same universe and he was immortal, he still wanders the forests as a crazy, immortal monster. CR 37
as far as "normal" people go, probably just the chief of police (the setting is just one city)
its a supers setting, his power is basically just unlimited heroic willpower
as far as actually normal people, that would be the S.T.A.L.K.E.R expies. the strongest of them is probably the one running that shit bar in the flooded district. He actually directly enabled a mad man who was looking into how powers worked. Wound up discovering how to force power based mutations.
that kinda made him partially responsible for about a third of the mutants in the city.
to give you an example of a mutant the party picked up, her power is to naturally produce acid from her skin, and can even phase into a pure acid state to avoid damage/move quickly. she can even absorb organic matter she dissolves through her skin to heal.
which she needs to do a lot because shes not immune to acid damage and can't turn her power off.
so yeah, lotta people want ol chernov dead. including himself probably. not before he finds that kid though
First and greatest of the old wizards. Studied under the goddess of magic for half a century, then betrayed her and ate her heart to gain power. Ruled as a god king for 300 years before a coalition of minor gods and spirits defeated him. His fate was nasty, they essentially dismembered him and fed him to a giant, ancient dragon, being eternally digested but unable to die
He was a character I made as a joke. An Aarakocra Monk/Barbarian experiment to see what the maximum AC you could get is (35 using PHB rules and magic items alone alone). Then I decided to throw him in, and use him as an excuse to keep the race out of the game.
He was a king who sought ultimate martial power, and so made a deal with the God of Contracts. He was impossibly strong, but he sold the souls of his people into damnation. Now he can only be freed if someone beats him in all out mortal combat.
Depends on what you mean by mortal. The first magic user would likely rate up there. But he mostly got there via finding an artifact grimore that is linked to the creators mind and so gives him effective omniscience.
If we assume that is too close to divine instead of mortal then likely one of the last descendants of the first humans or the king of the first humans.
I'm no expert on Magic lore, but I think at the moment it's Niv Mizzet. Hivemind leader of a magic guild, a dragon, and a fucking dragon. If not among the most magically apt and the biggest nerd on the plane, just having a dragon's beef would get some serious bonus STR
In reality it is the pcs from the last campaign within the same timeline. Played by different players.
The strongest living mortal (with no divine lineage and no bullshit that makes them functionally act immortal like lost wizard king Ra or the clone-mother-daughter chain Lemina) is probably some hybrid hobgoblin/sahuagin supersoldier on a continent that my players will almost certainly visit. I don't know who is he because it's not important to the story of this campaign, but he was born into an empire that retains remnants of genetic science from a lost age and raised from birth to be an elite aboleth hunter.
That or an aboleth king.
From a historical game we played, a player character became basically female Genghis Khan and ganked much of Not-Asia and even a little of Not-Europe. She gained the power through carefully but forcefully uniting her steppe peoples, and then confederating people they conquered. Her greatest triumph I think would have to be managing to hold it all together even after her death, leaving her family to continue her efforts. For failures, she never managed to fully conquer Not-China, and also that she had to kill as many people as she did (including family) to both be taken seriously and secure her right to rule. In the end as I recall she died of illness as a result of an accidental injury, but she'd lived for a long time.
That's fucking cool.
So is this.
But umibozu is not the strongest (even though he is best girl). That's just something people keep saying to him.
I half suspect that the OP included him (with that picture) to draw hitler comparisons and inflate the thread count.
He's more or less like alyosha from brothers K. He's genuinely nice person. He doesn't put on airs or hold himself above others. Now on it's own thats not really noteworthy, but over the years he managed to retain that same kindness despite living in...well the world he lives in. And so he made friends. He reached out to people who had been mocked or rejected or feared all their lives. He's ended conflicts that could have torn entire nations apart, mostly by forcing one side or another to actually sit down and talk, face to face, with the other.
He himself isn't particularly strong, not a wimp mind you but there are certainly stronger people. It's just that some incredibly powerful people hold him as a genuine friend.
Not a mortal. You failed. I just lost The Game.
Probably Truk, the Champion of Roth, and the Mortal Who Slighted Ranvig. He's the goliath cleric-warlord who brought together his people under the red banner of Roth, the God of war, smithery, and Honorable Rule. He's known for pissing off Ranvig Saadi, the elven God of Strength by breaking his golden blade Durandal... Just to prevent any Got-damn elves from making shit EVEN WORSE THAN THEY ALREADY HAD CLOSE THE FEYWILD I MEAN BY ROTHS HAMMER! Not by any means harsh or cruel, nor a clever man. He got right to the point of things. I miss that player :'/ too much of an alky he was tho
Or maybe he's just not caught up on Gintama.
Atypical definition or strongest but seems cool.
This is a old setting that I used but it is the one that I though of this matter.
There are many ways of measuring strength. This man does is the one of the great combat monsters of the setting. Rather he is a leader of men. Born to a lesser wife of the emperor of not!china this man was not destined for great things. He had a great education but that was merely a side effect of his fathers great wealth, not the appearance of talent. That father had near a hundred children and did not even bother to place the name he gave to that son to that sons face. There was older brothers born of more important wife's that the Emperor eyed as possible successors.
A power struggle broke out among the princes over the matter. A attempt was made on the life of the future most powerful man. At this point he knew fear. He knew weakness. Turing to a old general at the court who had talked of bravery he asked for help.
The old general got the boy a body double and a sword instructor. Not the well mannered ones of the court. Rather a slayer of men. For months he trained. Accepting his own pain and killing other in back ally brawls so neither would bother him when the time came. He challenged the brother who likely tried to have him killed. at the end of his victorious duel he looked out and saw fear in other. Fear of him! Ten of his brother sand seven of his sisters died by his own hand. He showed strength and father rewarded him by naming him his heir. His frist act on getting the mandate of heaven was to wage war on his southern neighbor. He personal commanded the army, leading from the front. He challenged enemy officers and boosted of the kills made by his own hand to his soldiers. To the soldiers he was one of them, when most men of high class were very much not one of them. The officers are mostly the sons of rich men who failed to get into the civil services. Not the best and not really there by choose. They gave the Emperor respect. con.
So to start I have to describe a weapon related to him. This is in Pathfinder.
A strangely long and slender musket with a stylized fiend's face at the end of the barrel. When in dim light the reflections on the fiend's mouth looks as if it is gnashing its teeth. They know it is named Yuhmis Alrraed meaning Whispering Thunder. The item has int 14, wisdom 13, and charisma 16, is Neutral Evil, empathy, blindsense, ability to move 10ft per round (which it uses to force itself into the gunslinger's hands while he sleeps), and can cast magic aura on itself at will. It is a +3 Lucky Distance Seeking Musket. Once per day you can make it fire a much more dangerous round. Acts if you are vital shotting, but does the damage to everything in a 10 foot area and triple to objects.
The entity is a malignant desert spirit tricked into a clay urn. The urn was full of dates, figs, and peaches, and left to ferment in honey. The spirit greedily tasted the fruit, gorging itself on the mixture. However in its greed it did not notice the trap, becoming ensnared in the sticky honey. A plug was put upon the urn, sealing it inside. Try as it might it could not break the clay, the surface having been reinforced by the one who had left it there, a traveling monk, come from the south at the behest of the sultan to rid the desert of this viscous spirit. For the rest of its days the spirit was stuck upon the sultan's pedestal, a example and warning. Its cries were enjoyed as the sultan, and then his son, and his son's son, taunted him. Much later one of the sultan's ancestors, in his fear, sought turning the spirit into a weapon, and succeeded. In the hands of the artisan the spirit took control, hunting the sultan's family. It rid itself of the sultan's line, but was not satisfied, it now seeks the dreadful monk, to cut away the family tree at its roots.
The monk is the strongest mortal. It's been 600 years since the spirit was captured, and 150 since it became a rifle. The monk himself is actual alive, a strange ancient one armed mountain hermit, and his descendants are alive as well, albeit scattered. A few of them, what would constitute the main family, are aware of the monk's presence. The monk only descends from the mountain in "times of great need", as he says, however these times range widely. Often he is not there in moments of what would be considered national peril, but there in smaller more personal conflicts. He soothes pain, exorcises spirits, heals the sick, and smites the wicked.
Waraqat Qadima, the monk's official title Meaning Aged Paper is a level 16 Unchained Monk who reached enlightenment. Once he was a wicked man, left to die by his enemies, lain upon a mountain stream bleeding. He drank from the water, cradling his body. For three days he lay there, drinking of the tepid water. On the third day he did not drink, and he was enlightened. The monk lived a simple and righteous life from that day onward, righting the wrongs around him.
Thus the young Emperor knew power. In the first 20 years of his reign he had waged 5 wars and won them all. He changed the pay scale and the system for officers tests. Made it possible to become one without years of philosophy education as a glass ceiling against those of lower birth.Imported cannons from lands far away. It mattered not that there was men stronger at arms then him, because most of them were on his pay roll at that point. Many of them would even die for him.
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The heavens grew angry at his ways and punished the nation drought. The emperor simply extorted food from his neighbors.
The PCs were cats paws of a couple of gods to kill the emperor and yes they did it.
Neat
In an old 3.5 game I ran for years the most powerful mortal was a necromancer named Beshlatar. He was at first a prominent detective in, and then the head of an investigative agency for the crown. His group used modified speak with dead magic as post-mortem interrogation to solve crimes and to figure out secrets. Any time a noble died, the investigative agency would be tasked with gathering up any kind of information that might be useful to maintaining royal power.
In the end he got fed up with the inappropriate and unlawful use of his agency. He took over the country by means that I never fully fleshed out because the party was on another planet by then and the game ended shortly after that. But at that point he was an epic level caster with networks of living and dead informants.