What is THE most boring, overused, non-contributing character archetype?

This. So much this. It's usually a ranger or a rogue too, warlocks tend to be louder and more obnoxious.

It’s incredibly sad how many people pack the creativity to expand past this warrior stereotype. I’m playing with a guy right now who’s literally just a bounty hunter that likes to fight. No other skills invested anywhere, no quirks, no backstory. Just big lizard man that likes to punch things. He’s less of a party member and more of a weapon we point at things nowadays.

It’s infuriating.

Hahaha you nerds really can't appreciate the subtleties of the drunken fighter archetype! Sad

Stop drinking alcohol.

You seem plesently well adjusted.

The same but as a dwarf, without the women.

lolrandom xd comic relief often has negative contribution.

It is not overly common but I have a particular dislike for the "wise" roadblock sensei that refuses to teach for an arbitrary amount of time up to 100% of the time. Nope, not communicating with you, you don't have enough inner calm. Disregard people are possibly dying or the world end is nearing and the pupil is completely following all busywork instructions perfectly. I decided he isn't ready.

Oh god, I hate the mating-fight trope where they are supposed to wave around their sexual tension.

>comic relief
youtu.be/MUZc7VPJPy8

I don’t understand your post.

>read the book
>thought he'd be even more gloomy
>Aragorn actually disses the shit out of the hobbits like he was the rightful king of banter
Aragorn in cheeky ranger-mode is the best Aragorn.

>>I am Rohan, a large muscular Fighter that loves booze, women, and of course a good fight
>I have strong opinions about what the role of a monarch and his representatives should be, and I've sworn to never let the promise of coin stop me from acting against what I think is immoral
>I'm more competitive when it comes to non-violent activities and consider lethal violence a far too serious affair to be taken up lightly, though I do enjoy the thrill
>I'm very impressed by the highly educated and would gladly die to protect the party loremaster, since I think he can contribute the most to society
>I'm religious and worry about when more rational arguments challenge my faith

>Just about everyone fucking despises comic relief characters
>Movies keep making comic relief characters
I don't get it.

>imagine all that
>"What's your name?"
>"Agaron"
>mfw

I'm not kidding

>my players usually give me even less than this, usually just "Name gender race class"
>sometimes without the name
>usually takes me the better part of an hour to get them to give me SOMETHING
>the character with the most personality so far was just urist axebeard
They've gotten slightly better, but..

The incredibly over zealous paladin played by a 40kid who won't ever shut the fuck up about heresy.

>The ranger/druid that insist on playing an eco-terrorst while still expecting to be regarded as wise and gentle

>The "stronk independent" rogue that decides to be an asshole to the rest of the party until something extraordinary happens to change his mind

>The warlock that plays the same old tired faustian shit and even chooses a demon as his patron, not even an attempt to give it a twist is made

>"haha i want play wrestler barbarian haha i want wrestle dargen haha"
>male human fighter who hates elves, mages, gnomes, undead, demons, why are you even playing D&D when there's historically accurate systems out there, devils, and constructs
>any chaotic neutral character that drinks in any capacity

>tough aggressive karate woman with leather pants
I love it

>"I grew up with brothers"
I've sworn an oath to kill every person who writes or says that shit. So I apologize, user, but an oath's an oath.

>Tough, gruff, barbarian who never speaks out of combat, only takes part in combat. Bonus points if they only time they do speak out of combat is to insult NPCs/Other PCs

>All you end up is a character that tries to actively avoid interacting with anything.
That reminds me how difficult was for me to roleplay this the first time, the first encounter was akward but slowly it got better
in the end my ranger became friends with the dwarf barbarian

>Succubus but good
>Grizzled "realistic" human fighter
>"Lovable" lecherous bard
>Moral relativism used as anything other than a source of inner turmoil for a paladin/cleric/blackguard
>"Chaotic good" pirates
>"Chaotic good" revolutionaries in a society that isn't tyrannical

This, followed closely by the lolsorandumb xD "I'm just playing my alignment (CN/CE)" / "it's what my character would do" / "I stab the innkeeper/mayor/king/questgiver" garbage player.

As someone who spent a 20ish years roleplaying on IRC, the *sits in a dark corner / the rafters and broods alone* type was by far the most common, across servers and genres, and almost exclusively played by people who participate in cross-media power level arguments. They're usually Naruto fans, too.

I'm also getting pretty tired of "good necromancer" types.

That would make for an interesting character arc. Gruff brooding ranger is actually just really bad with people. The gruff brooding is a front they've learned to cover for the fact that they're a deeply awkward dude who's spent most of his life alone in the woods and who's models for social interaction mostly have four legs.

Travels with the party, makes friends, is willing to follow them literally into hell because they're some of the first people he's ever really cared for.

Children, user.

The best way to go about "good necromancer" is to go with the "painless labor/painless army" approach instead of the "I want to cure death" or whatever bullshit. Like, have a necromancer that studies the art to reduce the number of casualties and do the more dangerous jobs.

Lighten up, Horace

>all according to keikaku wizard
>who then smugly explains that keikaku means plan

In the end I really had fun roleplaying that character, unfortunately I didn't get to develop him completely because we basically stopped the campaign

I hate any character who can be summed up as just their race and their class. I'm not asking for a enormous amount of depth, but when all you have going for you is "I'm an orc barbarian, so I'm really dumb and hit stuff good" there's not much to work with there.

>The best way to go about "good necromancer" is to go with the "painless labor/painless army" approach instead of the "I want to cure death" or whatever bullshit. Like, have a necromancer that studies the art to reduce the number of casualties and do the more dangerous jobs.

that's even worse

*lack the creativity

>permanent animal form druid
>completely just an NPC pet
>foreverial passive

Good can be shortsighted.

Why? What is the point of making a "good necromancer"? The point of making an evil necromancer is that it gives players a capital-E Evil organisation that they can tear down with no moral quibbles. The person at the top is Evil, and all their underlings are mindless drones that are toxic to life. Have at it, Heroes.

So why make a Good necromancer? How does that improve the story? If the heroes can just throw wave after wave of corpse-automatons at any problem, where's the tension? If there's an NPC building a communist utopia with an army of undead servitors, why are the PCs necessary? Why not just wait for that NPC to conquer the world and solve every problem?

A thing that solves every fucking problem with no downside does not make for an interesting story.

People have already bought up the main ones, but I've run into "The Angry Dude" several times.
He's the guy who doesn't talk much to the NPCs because his player knows that it wouldn't go well. He's usually playing a barbarian, a berserker, or some other close range or melee based character. He doesn't take a lot of useful skills besides intimidation and things that help with combat. Constantly argues with the party, attacks other party members often, and blames it on his character concept. He always gets into fights about stupid things, not "you insulted my tribe", or "you subtly threatened the party", more like "you wear a bead necklace like my rival and that pisses me off". This guy isn't useless for roleplay, he actively hinders progress.

The real answer is:
>a poorly role-played character, or not at all
Especially when the reason is:
>because the player doesn't actually care about the hobby and doesn't really want to be there

a thousand times this

Because the heroes don't have an endless supply of corpses, and being a good necromancer would give moral qualms to using corpses given a proper funeral, they'd only be able to scavenge a few from battlegrounds and the like. It can provide conflict, provide a gameplay niche that other classes don't really have, and as I said in another post, good can be shortsighted. They think they're building a utopia, but it's destroying the economy, putting people out of work, and harming relations between nations. Once they realize that, they have more conflict, and a crisis that can lead to character development - either they change their goals/methods, or they stick harder and fall from goodness.

Because they work, if it wasnt for that retarded robot the movie would have flopped even harder

I like TES Necromancy the most. The individual necromancer can be swell, but only through a lack of understanding of the real averse effects of the craft, since by forcing a spirit from the Dreamsleeve, the spiritual "realm" of the dead where it awaits reincarnation (or if the Dreamsleeve was just the conduit for ferrying the spirit between whatever afterlife they come to and the material realm for reincarnation, can't recall), into the waking material realm, you cause it indescribable agony which inevitably drives it mad and violent in time, which is why forcibly bound undead attack randomly unless forced not to by its conjurer. It explains why Necromancy is evil, without making all Necromancers evil. Although the guy who came up with it is the most insanely evil being in the entire setting, with the most evil cult worshipping him.

>"Chaotic good" pirates

Whats the problem with this?, if rogues can be chaotic good I dont see a reason why pirates cant

The way to play a gruff lone ranger is to be a quiet, brooding character who is the first to act and takes all the danger onto himself, leaving the unimportant parts of the plan to his party members who keeps at an arm's distance.

I have one of these in my party right now. He's one of my closest friends, but every time I talk to him about it (basically every session) we seem to come to an agreement and then he's back at it the next session.
While it tones down ever so slightly every week and while it does provide for some decent roleplaying stuff, it does bog everything down for about an hour while the players IC argue over dumb stuff.

Don't understand, they said they wanted to play and got offended that we were trying to start without them.

and then they keep trying to retcon everything they said/did in the previous session and leaving because "they're not feeling well"

It's because they've heard about all the crazy and amazing shenanigans that occur during a game of pen+paper whatever, amusing stories that usually take an entire campaign to pop up, and then they want to try it too.

Only to find that not every single second of every single session is thrillsville and that they actually have to contribute to the plot.

This is also coincidentally the same sort of person who takes like five minutes on their turn trying to think of the most overly complicated plan because of how 'epic' or 'cool' it would be.

The two overlap significantly.

>complaining about faustian warlocks
I bet you hate it when fighters use swords and wear armor too.

lazy, unmotivated character

i have one player i DM for that always plays a "common sense", intentionally dumb, blue-collar interpretation of whatever class/race he picks

really annoying

>[receives quest]
>him: "why cant you sort this out and kill the dragon yourself?"
>npc: "i am weak, sick, not an adventurer like you" etc
>him: "how about we train you, you pay a 5% the fee, and you can take the risk. honestly i am just a regular guy with a bit of common sense. trying to help you out here"

over and over and over
he turns every single game/interaction into a weird bartering conversation where he tries to do as little as work as possible

i dont know if this is normal but as a new DM its really frustrating that he actively tries to avoid motivating his character

Players who refuse to tie their characters to the campaign setting in anyway.

So where is your character from?
>He's a lone wanderer who came from a land so far away no one here has heard of it.
Does he have in family?
>No they all died.
How did they die?
>My character never talks about it. If the topic come up he just stares into the distance.
Then what's his motivation?
>To make a fortune.
What do you plan to do with that money?
>He's greedy, he just wants money for its own sake.

The character is a total non-entity in the world. He doesn't live in it, he may as well be a visitor from another dimension on a Westworld style vacation. Except even that is a more interesting backstory.

>Reading a background for a replacement 8th level character
>"My village was wiped out a few decades ago"
>Alright I can work with this I guess it gives me free reign to introduce some creature or enemy that can be agai-
>"But later in my life I found the monster and slew it! A mighty group of Griffins attacked my village and wiped us out, however I escaped and honed my skill as a ranger, I returned and killed them, And wear a cloak sewn with Griffin feathers wherever I go"
Fuck how do I save this?

Sit him down and ask him why he chooses to play characters who are as uninterested in adventuring as the NPCs. In D&D there's an unspoken assumption that the character you make wants to go on adventures.

This is a very poor understanding of the lore. Animus and AE are separate.

He's a level 8. It's find for him to have some accomplishments, and some pimpin' swag cloak. As long as he has personality traits, it's all good. You don't have to have a deep backstory with a lot of tie-ins to have a good time with a fun character.

Gunslinger cowboy 'themed' ''''''character'''''' in settings that aren't the Wild West.

>Is just the player
>And then they bitch whenever bad stuff happens to their self insert

>NPCs agree
>Get murdered mercilessly
>"How does you character feels about leading those people to death?"
Did you do that already?

You misunderstood my post, what Im complaining about is:

>My patron is a generic demon who is an asshole towards me and everyone else
>My character has no real motivations and only wanted power/pleasure
>My character is retarded and fell for the most basic of trappings when dealing with the devil, basically a bitch to his patron

Its boring, if you are going to play warlock then give it some flavor, dont just play the fucking archetype itself

Seems like he's read too many manga by One.

there are lot, but I'm particularly not too fond of Good Necromancers.

They're always done so lamely, and so much of it takes away everything that makes necromancy actually cool.
Neutral necromancers can be pretty okay, though.

I have seen one person do it decently well and it was basically an old gruff veteran of war who lost most of his friends, the only one left being the butcher of the village. The butcher's daughter was in the nearby church as a cleric, then the village was attacked by an evil empire, church gets burnt to the ground, everyone is massacred but him and the girl who he manages to save.

The whole thing was interesting, including a young soldier who was pronounced dead after his unit got ambushed, one swashbuckling noble in disguise who was out on a journey to try and free his mother (who at the time was the regent) from weird as shit possession, and a girl who became a wizard by accident. The ranger played something of a father figure to the group.

Comic relief character are potentially great, if that's not all they are, and if their jokes are good. Consider...
>Sokka, from Avatar
>Xandar, from Buffy
>Fred and George from Harry Potter
>Fat Amy from Pitch Perfect? I think? I remember liking her but idk if character was good. Whatever, you guys don't care, y'all didn't see Pitch Perfect.
>Joey Wheeler from YuGiOh.
>I like Mako from Kill La Kill but ymmv

Comic relief characters that double as one of the primary side kicks to the hero and have a strong relationship and personality, they're great to have! Walking jokes are less pleasant and often less funny.

There is literally no archetype I hate more then the "I am a normal man with no particular skills and I am in an adventure but I am still a normal town guard".

Making a character purposely boring to try and be interesting is the equivalent to ironically shitting your pants in public. It doesn't matter if you did it ironically, you still shit your pants. A boring character is just boring, no matter why they're boring.

I had one of those

But he was the manservent to another fighter/noble who more or less held him on a leash

>PC gets captured during a drinking contest and reveals who he is
>Banditos burlap sack his shit
>Angry Dude finds out
>Player describes his character as "Visibly disturbed, eye twitching, hand tightly gripping the mace."
>NervousLaughter.jpg

Mind you atleast two of our party was legitimately scared of him after he took a joke as a serious insult to his master and nearly brained the other player. He would also actively not listen to us unless explicitly told by the noble player.

>As the party ranger/scout/designated rogue dude track the bandits to a rickety warehouse by the docks
>Tell the fighter
>He silently walks towards the warehouse
>We reluctantly follow as he won't stop to make a plan
>Fighter arrives
>Immediately starts bashing a wall down with his mace.

He barely passed a roll to dodge when he Kool-aid manned into the warehouse. Ended up with a blood(his own) drenched face and starting roaring as we bumbledl our way in behind him

Good times.

Those are all cringe except Mako, but KlK was a Gainaxesque goofy pastiche of tournament battle anime from the start anyway so Mako doesn't stand out that much.

Imagine instead if Mako was in Technolyze.

I think I'm just mixing up Dagoth Ur and his Ash Vampire's weird displaced post-death existences in the Dreamsleeve (as I understand it, or maybe that was just Ur himself and his Ash Vampires were different yet) with how regular spirits behave after death and reincarnation. Been years since I paid any attention to TES.

Being an average joe in extraordinary circumstances can be a good time. Being ordinary notably doesn't mean having no personality; if the player chooses to interpret it that way, then they're doing a shitty job. But in that case their sin isn't playing an ordinary character, it's playing a boring one. The two aren't synonymous.

>the town guard who is an earnest and chipper young lady that wants to earn enough money to buy back her town from the cruel industrialists crushing it
>the town guard who is a bitter old man and wants to finally go have some reckless, over the top fun for the first time in his life
>the town guard whose indiscretion with a nobleman's daughter has lead to him being blacklisted, forcing him to take his irresponsible womanizing ways into the wider world
>the town guard who is also a concerned mother and must leave to find her child kidnapped by slavers

These people are normal, have no particular skills, and were town guards, who must now depart for adventure because of some problem or another. These traits alone don't make a character boring.

>Those are all cringe
You literally hate fun and I have no further explanation. Having a character that is kind of a schlub and tells jokes is not cringe. You're wrong by most accepted human standards, accepting some margin for personal taste.

I loved that movie as a kid and I don't remember that robot at all

Stoic warriors who take on the world through sheer will, championing the values of self-determination are far and away my favorite character achetype but I feel like it's overwhelmingly seen as the lazy default and discouraged.

A character like Guts from Berserk can easily be dismissed as an edgelord or generic but there's nothing more appealing to me than the idea of an individual who can, through sheer strength and willpower, literally set himself apart from the tides of determinism and carve his own path into the future. The only truly free man, the price of freedom being constant danger.

Rate my current group Veeky Forums

>ironically edgy "i only want to hang in brothels leave me alone" human rogue
>Wood elf ranger, whos main objective is to find her lost brother
>literally retarded dwarf druid who was actually a "beast of unknown origin" until he was "cursed" and became a dwarf. doesn't speak common or dwarven, only beast and fey. Uses the Elf as a translator
>half orc warlock with Insane intelligence. Owns a library, carries around his creature encyclopedia (Monster manual)
>Tiefling ranger
>Bullywug Bard

In session 0 they found a rickety old castle surrounded by a 20 foot moat. the bridge was broken and the door had a rusty padlock on it, so the tiefling threw an ax and broke the lock, while the bullywug used mage hand to push it open, revealing darkness. they still needed a way across so the strongest character (tiefling again) picked up the lightest character (the bullywug) and threw him across the moat into the castle. It was more or less empty except for a dead body and some furniture.

Thats all we got done in around 4 hours because having such an odd group was almost impossible to get them all to meet up in one area and agree to party. We spent most of the time in a starter town waiting for everyone to finish chatting

How do i get my group to be more cooperative?

>Guts
>carve his own path into the future
>Berserk ever ending or getting a conclusion

Children love them.

It's said many times that guts is literally able to break the chain of cause-and-effect, allowing him to accomplish feats that shouldn't have ever happened.

Sadly Idolmaster has the same power over Miura.

Are you the DM? Setting up such a puzzle for literally no reward or progression is kind of shitty.

Luchadores in a campaign that is not lucha themed.

It's not as funny as you think it is and the novelty has worn off before the character hits the table. Fuck even lazy cultural ripoffs like ninjas or pirates at least leave some room for character in there. Once you see someone roll a luchadore expect nothing but suplexes, bad Spanish, and maybe some vague concept of justice or honor.

Villains.
>I am smug, sassy, 2smart4u and FEMALE
Alternatively: rogue traders

I bet that's actually got something to do with Griffith and his wish when he became Femto, like somewhere deep down he recognized that Guts was greater than him and his wish to become King, and the he secretly wished for Guts to defeat the monster of spite he'd become. After all, Griffith's desires have always been what moved the plot of Berserk, with Guts being his implement, so it'd be ironic if Guts, by doing what he set out to do when he left the Band by defeating Griffith, actually once again fulfills Griffith's last human desire, thus fulfilling the cause-and-effect that always ruled their relationship. Femto is defeated, the Godhand slinks back to its corner, humanity is saved, but the cycle isn't over.

>The best way to go about "good necromancer" is to go with the "painless labor/painless army"
That's worse, a good necromancer can be fine, its the "I know, I'll solve all the worlds problems with my horribly stupidly broken statblocks like fucking christ WOTC what were you smoking." If everything is handy dandy fucking randy then what the fuck is there to do.

Also because just fixing a major problem with the snap of a finger just leaves a shit taste in my mouth.

Regardless, it's the ideal that speaks to me. Perhaps we'll see the truth in due time.

They've barely examined the room. I should of noted in my post that the bullywug got frightened of the room and ran to the only visible light in the castle/building which is a a hole in the ceiling. The tiefling used the rope from her pack and threw it into the air. the bullywug grabbed it with magehand, wrapped it around himself and was pulled out onto the roof.

Meanwhile, the edgy rogue was busy chopping down a tree from a patch of evergreen a few dozen feet away to use as a makeshift bridge. It fell and crashed into the side of the castle, setting up a "bridge", while also damaging a wall.

Next session they plan on going in together as a group to do a thorough examination. Their cooperation with EACHOTHER isn't entirely an issue, its more like two/three people do all the work and everyone else stands by and watches because they either
a) don't know what to do
b) physically cant due anything because of character limitations
c) aren't interested

>be user in 2002
>big into that yahoo chat freeform rp
>ayanee for life

>half the public rooms are taverns
>every single one of them has at least one person who is the ""bartender""
>this is yahoo chat in 2002 and no one really knows a fucking thing about bartending or how to make any kind of mix drinks
>many people just described their characters walking behind the bar and getting booze
>sometimes more than one person attempted to be the bartender without acknowledging the other party at all

Such a plague that by the end many rooms had "NPC BARTENDER - NO YOU CANT BE THE BARTENDER" or something like it in the header. I endured rp with multiple copies of Vash the Stampede, Inuyasha, supporting characters from whatever was on Toonami, koreans, people who freeform RP'd Vampire: The Masquerade with character sheets and nothing was ever worse.

>you don't like what I like so you must hate everything
>my subjective opinions are really facts
Wow, I didn't realize you'd turn out to be this much of a retarded faggot. I'm going to guess by your combination of enjoying weak humour and your obvious lack of intelligence that you're a 200% lolsorandum cringelord at the gaming table.

This. It's boring after the second session, if not before. And that assumes it's the first time one has ever seen that kind of character.

>be user in 1998
>discover AOL chatroom diceroll battle RP
>Rhy'din
>The Forest
HAHAHA I ROLL 100D100 YOU LOSE

He's been seduced by the power of Idolmatster. He is more pervert now than mangaka, twisted and lazy.

>Be lil baby user in 2006 browsing anime forums, especially the rp section thanks to my sister being on there.
>Even then, take notice how every girl plays an edgy mass murderer who specifically goes after the main characters romance.
>This was up to the hundreds, over several forums
It scares me to this day.

I mean I wasn't no saint either, sure I was 10-11 but most of my characters were stupid as fuck, all about farting, sassing and dying because its "funny"

It actually made me ruin a lot of games I was in when I found out about tabletops.

I'm fine with sassing and dying, you're the one that has to make a new sheet, but
>all about farting
What the fuck.

this
People have to realize they are not their character it is okay to do something you would not do.

I think the worst has to be when a player plays a character who's too smart for their own stupidity.

>18 Int, 12 Wis
>supposed to be genius with above average level of common sense
>Can't figure out simple puzzles, often forgets what they were supposed to do, isn't able to use common sense most of the time, almost never contributes a valid arguement, probably a post fact "OH I knew that already."

Might also be related to

>Some chaotic, neutral, and/or evil alignment [not chaotic evil]
>0 Moral compass, does whatever the fuck they want when they want figuring that's within reason
>Super edgelord who does whatever it takes... often fucking up whatever the plan was supposed to be
>Kills in cold blood if neutral because that's not evil to kill someone for no reason right?

Ugh some people really need to just make fucking likeable god damn characters.

Though... there is also

>Plays 7-9 Int, Wis, or Cha
>Makes the character mentally retarded levels of not paying attention or bad decision making arbitrarily when in the past they've been able to do otherwise.

>>all about farting
>What the fuck.
Kiddie humor, tooting was funny to me. And take in mind those three usually happened at the same time.

Maybe I did have a strange sense of humor as a kid.

>Thats all we got done in around 4 hours because having such an odd group was almost impossible to get them all to meet up in one area and agree to party. We spent most of the time in a starter town waiting for everyone to finish chatting

Do not start the group out separate without FORCING them together that's the best way to make the session take fucking ages. That or tell them No offense but this is a god damn game stop being children and play together already so we can actually start already.