I’ll go first.
A person seeks out a fey to get a warlock pact. The person doesn’t know, however, that they’re a sorcerer with strong fey ancestry that just hasn’t manifested yet. The fey obviously agrees to the “pact” and makes a ridiculous contract that the person agrees to. The person lives their entire life believing they’re a warlock when they’re actually a sorcerer. The only thing the fey did was help the person’s magicky shit manifest.
A Warforged Thief Rogue with a Guild Artisan background and a Bard dip, with a bag of holding installed in his chest.
Name: Bender B. Rodriguez
That’s incredible omg
Jimmy cracks corn
An old granny bard, based in no small part on my own grandma. She doesn’t channel her magic through song or dance, but through her sassy remarks, telling stories about her childhood, and making baked goods, sweets, and presents for her adopted grandkids (the adventuring party).
Bardic Inspiration? Reminding you how much she loves you and is proud of you. Alternatively, giving you some candy for later or promising that if you do well, she will bake you a pie or take you out for icecream for being so brave.
Healing spells? Blown kisses, band-aids, and warm cookies.
Hypnotic Pattern/Hold Person/etc? Telling a rambling story (that she forgot what the point/moral was before she even started) but the enemies are too polite to interrupt her.
Dissonant Whispers/Visious Mockery/etc? Asking when you are going to get a boyfriend/girlfriend, graduate, get married, or get a real job. Telling bad (and slightly innapropriate) jokes, for her own amusement, often messing up the punchline. Asking if you have talked your mother recently (“You know, she won’t be around forever, and I am sure she wishes you’d write more.”) Simply saying “Bless your heart.”
Party Buffs? Giving you knickknacks, homemade gifts, or old hand-me-downs she really thinks you’ll like. Passing down age-earned wisdom and giving encouragement to just try your best. Making breakfast for the party, using far too much butter, cream, and other artery clogging goodness.
Borrowing an idea from a friend:
A halfing that grew up believing he is a great and powerful wizard. His parents could never talk him out of it before he left home. So, being a wealthy family, they sent a troupe of stage hands to protect him and his imaginative little mind.
Mechanically speaking, the character is a wizard. However naratively, all of his spells involve his troupe. Magic missle? One member for each missle brandishes a knife and stabs the target. Levitation? The troupe lifts him on a platter and carries him around. Presdigitation? A costume change, or a member rapidly cleaning the mud off of the targets boot, etc…
The halfing will never acknowledge the existence of the troupe. After all, they’re stage hands. No one is supposed to see the stage hands…
I had a fantastic idea for a pair of D&D characters.
See, the two of them were originally Oath Of Conquest Paladins, but even though their boss is kind of hardass neither of them were ever that devout.
One of them would rather be an Artificer, and spends most of her time building gadgets.
The other, he would rather be a Ranger, spends all his time talking to his animal companion (who isn’t a Raven but uses Raven rules so he speaks one language… but he’s actually a cat).
Despite being the Ranger’s animal companion, the cat would also rather spend his time tinkering…
But they still recite their oath at the start of every major fight.
“To protect the world from devastation…”
It’s kind of simple, but I always wanted to play a rogue with proficiency in perform that declares he’s a bard. I had a friend who played a typical rogue, and would try to skim a bit off the top whenever the party would get money. The other people in the party would catch him since he was a thief and they were always watching him. So, I figured declaring yourself a thief is kinda dumb. So, I’d be a rogue with absolutely no magic power pretending to buff people, and taking credit when things worked out ince my music must have helped.
Yoink, your idea is now mine. I’m totally gonna try to play a character like this at somepoint
Enjoy it!
John Smith, human fighter.
A farmer driven from his farm by increasingly hostile monsters, not violently driven out, it just became too expensive to get goods and the bank forced him to sell it.
He seeks to join a adventuring party to make just enough money to put a downpayment on a new farm. Once he has enough he will promptly leave the party.
Intentionally the most boring character possible
I feel like this could be a brilliant recurring NPC.
Joins the party initially when they’re low level and down on their luck, just looking for some extra muscle for a job.
Has a few adventures with them and just when the party starts to get used to having him around and actually start to like and get to know him, he asks to be cashed out and takes his share of the loot to buy the plot of ground where he wants to farm.
But it doesn’t end there.
Some time later, the party is in a bind and need a place to lie low, so it’s off to John’s farm. He’s doing okay… modestly successful, having slightly more than he started with at the end of each season. Still having trouble with local ne’er-do-wells (which the party may help with) but his adventuring time has served him well in dealing with them.
They part ways wishing each other well.
Some time later, the big bad that the party was hiding from discovers that John had been sheltering them and razes the farm, John barely escaping with his life by hiding in his well. In the well he discovers a cavern passage leading to a significant ore deposit, so he gets out of the farming business and into the mining business. Still, he needs to have protection from big bad, someone to clear out nasty things from the cave, help him procure mining equipment from a nearby city, and make contact with both vendors and buyers. Enter the players. With their help, John successfully gets his mine going and starts to make profit and turn his fortunes, even helping to improve the town.
Turns out he’s massively successful and it goes to his head. He becomes a sort of robber baron, basically owning the town and treating it as his own private labor pool. Wages are slim, conditions are harsh, and pollution from the smelting furnaces has poisoned the land. He’s got no need for the party anymore, having hired a cutthroat mercenary company to protect his holdings and intimidate the townspeople. When the party returns after some far off adventure, the town is unrecognizable.
Of all people, it’s the former big bad that reaches out to them: it would seem some sort of a greed demon has been behind things all along, first forming a pact with Big Bad but later abandoning him when he failed to kill John years ago. When John discovered the cave, the demon realized that the end of the ore vein, way down there, sealed off a portal to it’s hellish domain. So the demon formed a pact with John, in the guise of some less evil entity, helping him succeed in his business venture at the expense of all else, knowing that as soon as the vein runs out, the portal will be opened.
From there it’s up to the heroes to try to stop the demon (and John, and maybe the Big Bad, bent on revenge) or if they fail, dealing with the effects of the portal to hell opening beneath the town.
A drow with multiple personalities who intends to bring down menzoberanzen (I know I spelled that wrong, but I can’t be arsed to look it up. Besides, someone will correct me lol) by a series of explosions in key places.
His name: Ty’ler Do’urden
Grum is half orc. Not sure what other half. Grum is fearsome warrior. He yell, enemy run.
Grum has axe. Is favorite axe. Grum had dream once about axe. Asked for piece of Grum’s shoe. Promise axe. Grum accept trade. Now Grum have axe.
People say Grum do scary magic. Silly people. Grum is warrior, not know magic. Grum just have axe, and yell loud. Sometimes yell so loud enemy explode. Silly enemy.
What would that be mechanically? Warlock?
Yep, hexblade. A warlock who doesn’t know he’s a warlock. Spellcasting is just yelling loudly, and I’d choose spells that could be explained as him just being really scary.
A wizard that was born blind and has learned to develop their other senses to compensate their lack of sight. Often, after attempting to do something he won’t be sure he’s done it. So he’ll ask the party. “did I do that?”
The character’s name: Steev Ur’khell.
I’ve got an old AD&DII Character. She is a half-elven Thief/Wizard, but she is quite religious, too, basically a devout follower of Hanali Celanil. She often wears white & golden dresses like their priests, and also a real holy symbol (A heart-shaped golden brooch, given to her for a service). Because of that, she has often been mistaken as a cleric. Boy, are people in for a surprise when they encounter a “worthless” love cleric throwing fireballs or climbing walls…
I have a couple.
One is a Great Old One pact Warlock, who finally found that tome of infinite eldrich knowledge. When he read it, it broke a piece of his brain. It didn’t kill him and somehow didn’t drive him completely insane, but now he has difficulty controlling his mouth and facial expressions. He can’t control what he says anymore or when he says it, and is normally spouting an endless stream of eldrich gibberish. He gets around this by communicating telepathically, since he can no longer speak normally.
But sometimes…the gibberish starts making sense, and that part of him can still exert some control over the body…
The other is a heavy metal College of Valor Bard from the far north. Basically think fantasy Nathan Explosion who doesn’t quite understand how his music makes people’s heads explode, or why he has a bunch of skeleton groupies and roadies following him around. But he also doesn’t care, since he dumps Wisdom and Intelligence.
I’m actually very proud if this one. I made a Kenku warlock for a one shot whose background was that he had previously been an actor in a traveling troupe that performed “The Great Wars of the Astral Plane.” Being a Kenku, he only spoke in quotes from the play, which he mimicked perfectly.
For the entire night, I only communicated via Star Wars soundboard. It was glorious.
His name? Ujheddye the Fourth. “I am Uhjeddye (a jedi)…like my father before me.”
My undead warlock was a graverobber in the business of stealing and selling ancient artifacts. In an ancient tomb that had already been looted, he unearthed an ancient slab and unknowingly released its curse, and is now possessed by the mummy it previously belonged to.
They made a deal and, if he helps the mummy retrieve all the missing artifacts from its tomb, including the body itself, he gets to live (and show off his sick powers).
The first few sessions, his patron was like: Return the slab… and he would refuse out of stubborness, but now they are good pals. Although he secretly plans on stealing his patron’s powers and become the lord of undeath.
Incredible
In 5e: Simon the Devious and the Leather Skins (from What We Do In The Shadows) as a Dhampir Hexblade Warlock with Pact of the Chain.
Between the chain familiar (Count Rapula), a zombie from Undying Servitude (Ken the Accountant), Summon Undead (Blagvlad the Exsanguinator, or Desdemona the Shrieker, or Impussa) and an Accursed Specter (Carol), you have a 4-person posse by level 6. It grows situationally or permanently when you gain access to Danse Macabre, Create Undead, and Finger of Death.
Mechanically, you’re done by 13, and can either finish off with Bard (probably Whispers) or Paladin (Oathbreaker). Either way, take Inspiring Leader once you’ve maxed Cha, and then go get yourself that cursed witch’s hat!
