Mine was a Wild Magic Sorcerer that vehemently believed he was a regular city guardsman and explained every bit of magic he produced away as pure happenstance.
I’ll preface this by noting that the sin of sloth has traditionally been understood to be a sin of omission, not just commission, i.e., you are insufficiently devoted to the things you ought to be.
Which means you could, in theory, have a (reflavored tiefling) devil paladin so devoted to sloth he works against evil causes. He’s not interested in good per se, it’s just that advancing the interests of good and traveling with a good adventuring party has the best ROI for failing to carry out his evil responsibilities.
Naturally, this has caused a fair amount of controversy among sloth devils, and there is a multi-century trial going on in the Hells about whether this ought to be allowed. This is not expected to be resolved in the foreseeable future because the advocates for both parties keep filing their responses well after petition deadlines expire.
It’s hard to get anything through the court in hell, what with every lawyer in history getting involved.
A wizard whose primary job was at a (magical) Whitesmith’s guild. He etched his spells onto sheets of metal, inlaid his armor, and constantly talked about how guilds were part of a functioning society, unlike those peasants and lords, and definitely not a bunch of monopolistic corporation-cum-ruthless-gangs and how it was definitely just a coincidence that the son of the previous ruler was always elected in their city.
A stereotypical, run-of-the-mill wizard.
You know the type: Academic, aloof, bookworm, a bit naive, likes to use long Latin words, …Only he wasn’t a wizard. His parents couldn’t afford tuition at the academy, so he applied for a job as janitor to get access to the buildings. Spent several years mingling with the students and teachers so he could fake the lingo. And he pinched the odd magical item that let him “cast” some cantrips.
Now he’s faking being a wizard to rise up in society.Got to love a Fake Wizard. I wanted to play one who was a wizarding student who was grandfathered into a wizard school (literally his grandfather founded the school) who got expelled for messing up so bad he almost destroyed the entire school. The accident would have bound him to a celestial somehow which is why he is a scourge Aassimar and Zealot barbarian. He has these powers he doesn’t know where they are coming from and are slowly changing him into something less human and more divine.
He would of course still have a quarterstaff, wearing school robes, have a arcane sigil on his shield and be convinced he is a new type of wizard. He would have cantrips and some magic but doesn’t understand how or why.
Now I want to play the reverse…a fake barbarian. A really intelligent wizard that realized people don’t ask him to work as much if he pretends to be illiterate and dumb. Quickened True Strike when he rages, etc.
For a short adventure / one-shot, I played an intelligence-based tome warlock (using some of the play test materials). His patron was… himself, in the past. He was a terrible evil wizard who realized the error of his ways, wiped his own memory, and restarted. His tome was just his old spell book, most of which was pretty gnarly stuff. Slowly finding that out would have been a fun journey if he was a long-term character.
Not mine, but a collaborativr effort: Young dryad loses physical body and is imprisoned in a robotic shell. She escapes and now all of her former magical druid powers are a combination of mechanical contraptions and just a dash of magic. She runs on magic energy, but her acid spray cantrip is truly a small vaporizer embedded in her palm. Really cool, but the Player stop playing that char vecause we restricted her wild shape to much :/ in hindsight, i really dont like my dming decisions regarding that char
An insane Bavarian retired geology professor, turned conspiracy theorist, who was trying to bring his dead wife back, and win back the approval of his estranged daughter. Died one session in after being bitten by an insane cultist.
Yes, I did a Bavarian dialect the whole time. No, I’m not good at it. Yes, there where real Bavarians at the table (well, one of them was Franconian, but same difference (don’t tell her I said that)).
He sounds like he’d have his own Telegram channel.
Well, the campaign took place in Berlin in the '20s (Call of Cthulhu, specifically Berlin: The Wicked City), but in modern times, sure.
A Reborn Necromancer that acted like a Children’s Edutainer. All my undead were just guests on the show to teach people morals, math, and words.
Delightfully deranged.
In the first campaign I ever played in, I ran a necromancy wizard that was neutral good.
Basically, he grew up a hermit and has zero awareness of the taboos surrounding his school of magic. However, because of his alignment, he has a very different approach to how he uses his magic.
Whenever he has to raise undead to fight for him, he does it by asking for their aid rather than outright raising them. He approaches the practice more as a way to preserve the lives of the living rather than a way of amassing servants or power. When he no longer needs their help, he thanks them and tries to make sure they either return to their resting place or are given a proper burial.
His overarching goal is to ensure everyone lives a long, full life and wishes to find a way to resurrect others in the way other classes can to help achieve that goal.
Didn’t get to play him for long since the group kinda fell apart
Game: Scion
A Scion of Odin, my concept is that when Odin gouged out his eye at Well of Urd at the base of Yggdrasil and tossed said eye in, he inadvertently created something new.
The droplets of blood and the eye were infused by the waters and bled into the roots of Yggdrasil. The most resilient among them trickled into the other realms. My character ultimately arrived in Midgard, in Venice Beach. Little more than a sentient blob of blood with a lone eye contained inside, he fed on smaller creatures and grew in the darkness.
Discovered by a bunch of surfers, he was taken in as a pet. He grew big and strong enough to take a form, amalgamating the looks of the other surfers into a new form entirely. At the start of his adventure he is called Grom, short for Grommet. He lives as a surfer bum, begging food and a few bucks off of people and living in an abandoned building by the beach. So long as he has the waves and his friends, he has everything he needs.
That is, until the arrival of a one-eyed young man who tries to kill him and cut his eye out. Grom wins the scuffle, coming out barely injured. It is only then that Odin comes to visit him, pleased at his victory. He forewarns Grom that because he has Odin’s other eye, others like him will be coming to try to claim that eye.
Grom is very physically adept, with points mostly put into Str, Dex, and Con. He’ll also have Appearance and Wisdom as backup stats. In the party he is the reluctant hero, wanting nothing more than to hang with his friends, but understanding that he must undergo this trial before he can live in peace again.
From Deadlands Classic:
A snake handling Pentecostal Blessed with the “grim servant of death” flaw. As he genuinely tries to save souls, people often get bit by the rattlesnakes he carries with him. Technically he doesn’t break the law but most sheriffs don’t want him sticking around. Sadly the campaign never got started.
Currently torn between a summoner who’s eidolon is a devil butler that is very disapproving of basically their entire existence or a changeling gravewalker witch (or whatever the undead archetype was), both for the same carrion crown campaign so one will go unused.
Currently got an idea for a changeling punk singer that leans heavily into summer and pyretics, with a dash of primal. Very emotional and hot headed, with a partner (basically the literal exact opposite of them) they want to find. Unfortunately I’m the only one who runs changeling.
Really want to play a lunar exalted some day, a low class ‘king’ that other outcasts choose to follow. Very much unhappy the forces of chaos that threaten the world, the forces of order that demand control, and people in general. Sadly i don’t see us running exalted any time soon since everyone in my group that’s wants to run something is.
I wanted to play a necromancer of no particular class, whose skeletal grandmother followed him around under his thrall. His village practiced a kind of ancestor worship where on holidays they animate the skeletons of their family and dress them up in clothes and jewelry and try to (symbolically) show them a good time as a gesture of appreciation. The tribe’s forest was burned down or village destroyed and PC had to run for it, taking only his most prized possession - the bones of his matriarch. Over the course of the campaign I’d like to add nicer clothes and jewelry to the skeleton, maybe give it magic items.
Ultimately it’s just not feasible to play a non-evil necromancer, and my table doesn’t play evil anyway either.
Throwaway idea: A Loxodon (elephant) bard named Harry Elefánte.
I had one of these, a Aarakokra Druid named Wyrd.
If this is 5e, you could probably have done the first idea as a battlesmith artificer, flavouring your steel defender as the thrall.
It’s been so long, either a Mega Juicer or Titan Juicer from RIFTS. https://rifts.fandom.com/wiki/Juicer . Essentially a steroid user but with super science. Massive person. Think Strong Guy from X Factor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strong_Guy . He loved western wear, but often got into situations where mega damage would destroy his outfit, so he had cargo crates full of the same black cowboy hat and duster. He became a juicer to save his sibling, they were both poor kids and sibling needed medical help, so he answered an ad for experiment subjects.
Mine was a minotaur gladiator turned monster hunter (ua fighter subclass). His name was Daniel Notmonster and he’d been called monster so much during his days in the arena that he internalized a hatred of monstrosities. He was driven to prove he wasn’t a monster by killing any he came across. He would also collect a bone from each monstrosity killed to scrimshaw a scene of the battle to kill it.
