I've been building the idea for a while now of a gnome barbarian. He's middle-aged, worked his entire life in some dead-end job, finds out his wife's been having an affair with his boss, none of his kids are actually his and so he snaps. He'd have decent STR and CON from years of heavy labour. INT be high, WIS okay but TERRIBLE charisma. Just a grumpy, surly, miserable ball of barely suppressed rage. Goes on adventures just to find something to take his anger out on.
In a YouTube series, there's a Human Wizard whose spells usually went awry - wrong spell would be cast or the effect would be somewhat opposite of the intended effect (like Mend would cause his robe to unravel completely - he conjured milk during an encounter against some Orcs who were stunned with confusion).
An Orc called him a "Retrocaster" - someone whose failed casts always have an effect, not just a fizzle - a Wizard who has "hekkashotz" in Orcish because there's no word in Common for it. As one can guess, his stats cause most of his spells to fail. So most often, something weird happens instead of what he wanted to cast. (He drove away a corpse worm by covering it with boiling lemon juice from old fruit placed as a lure for the thing when he was trying to cause the cave to collapse on the worm.)
(According to the subtitles, "hekkashotz" means "Dyslexia". The runes in any of his spellbooks keep shifting around when he tries to read them. As someone with a very mild form of Dyslexia, it's hilarious.)
He also has a semi-autonomous sword that boosts his strength and dexterity bonuses but wants him to die so it can be owned by someone more worthy. ...and of course, it's cursed so neither of them can be rid of each other.
Human. Male. Possibly. Don't be a divider. My characters' backgrounds are written like instruction manuals rather than stories. My opinion and preferences don't mean you're wrong. I am 99.7603% convinced that the digital dice are messing with me. I roll high when nobody's looking and low when anyone else can see.🎲 “It's a bit early to be thinking about an epitaph. No?” will be my epitaph.
Mine would have to be one character concept that I actually want to bring into reality. You know the Horror Frog, that one animal that breaks its toes and turns them into weapons? Now, imagine that, but it's a Bullywug (or Grung) Blood Hunter. Now, imagine after a little while, when you've given up explaining to people what it's actually based off of and start telling people it's "Wolverine Kermit". Yeah, that's the character in a nutshell.
A wizards apprentice who doesn’t take any damage spell. He was interested in theoretical magic and thus his spellbook is filled with random “useless spells” his master kicked him out because he wasn’t focusing on practical application of magic and thought going on an adventure would help him figure out the real world.
The character was a young kobold illusion wizard. While I had a lot of situational spells. I was able to come up with creative spell usage. It ended up being a lot of fun. Full on support though takes a different mindset as a player.
I have a gut feeling this idea isn't nearly as original as I thought it was when I came up with it, but as a joke for a one-off I came up with a Monk who's convinced he's a polymorphed chicken. Not actually one, just convinced that he is.
Alternatively, I also (as a joke for a one-off) came up with an Oath of the Ancients Paladin who's been cursed to only be able to speak by reciting passages from old out of date farmer's almanacs.
I remember someone said they wanted a character that would speak only in palindromes. It made my brain hurt just imagining someone trying to figure out a palindrome for everything the character said.
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Human. Male. Possibly. Don't be a divider. My characters' backgrounds are written like instruction manuals rather than stories. My opinion and preferences don't mean you're wrong. I am 99.7603% convinced that the digital dice are messing with me. I roll high when nobody's looking and low when anyone else can see.🎲 “It's a bit early to be thinking about an epitaph. No?” will be my epitaph.
I once played a pacifist firbolg barbarian. It was a rather rp-heavy campaign, but it wasn't a big deal until we got to combat and he was the only combat-skilled character. We ended up going with the idea that instead of raging, he does some minor druidic magic to assist him. It was a lot of fun to play!
It's interesting that you say this. One of my friends plays a 675 pound orc named Chumbo, and he has +11 stealth. my DM decided that he could make his stats out of wack if he wanted, so he has +5 to strength, dex, and con, -4 to int, and -5 to wis and charisma. My friend's drawing of him is simply hilarious.
Interesting story: He once rolled a natural twenty to jump on a basilisk's back, and wound up being so chunky that he broke its back and we killed it.
It's interesting that you say this. One of my friends plays a 675 pound orc named Chumbo, and he has +11 stealth. my DM decided that he could make his stats out of wack if he wanted, so he has +5 to strength, dex, and con, -4 to int, and -5 to wis and charisma. My friend's drawing of him is simply hilarious.
Interesting story: He once rolled a natural twenty to jump on a basilisk's back, and wound up being so chunky that he broke its back and we killed it.
The only thing that makes me sad about this story, is you made no mention of whether or not he had a friend named Wumbo.
Borbble thunderfist a hill dwarf who speaks only in third person about his political beliefs in a deep man voice while yelling everything and somehow has an entire web of contracts to important people also he’s a fighter But licks everything rock he’s finds
Something like Two Face: Before each encounter and each dialog statement, the character flips a coin to act with goodness or evil...ness.
An encounter with Orc zealots trying to show Gruumsh who's boss by slaughtering townfolk across the countryside to raise an undead army in an effort to betray the Betrayed. Character fights defensively with mercy and as much amiability and reasoning as possible.
An encounter with xenophobic Elf Druids who just want outsiders to go away. Character slaughters them all mercilessly without a word.
Politely asks for directions to a particular mansion. Thanks the NPC by punching her in the gut for taking too long to respond. Threatens a surly bartender supposedly harboring a criminal. Profusely apologizes and buys rounds of drinks when the bartender refuses to give up her friend.
I think my face would be red from all the face-palming.
Human. Male. Possibly. Don't be a divider. My characters' backgrounds are written like instruction manuals rather than stories. My opinion and preferences don't mean you're wrong. I am 99.7603% convinced that the digital dice are messing with me. I roll high when nobody's looking and low when anyone else can see.🎲 “It's a bit early to be thinking about an epitaph. No?” will be my epitaph.
A mutated child soldier from a post WW III local warlord militia. Very good at combat, bad at anything else, and carrying the emotional baggage you'd expect from a 12 years old that was more or less abandoned in infancy due to her mutations and raised as cannon fodder for a post apocalyptic militia and left for dead after a fight with another militia (her militia lost, the other militia looted her but didn't care enough to heal her or execute her). Predictably clinging to the character of the party with medical skills because he healed her ("No one cared enough to do that for me before!").
The post nuclear war wasteland is a horrible place after all... But some people try to make it a slightly less horrible place...
And yes, there is a 5th edition homebrew conversion of the D20 Modern line, which includes D20 Apocalypse on the Internet.
Grung Path of the Beast Barbarian, taking the jumping ability and claws. When you enter into a rage, you grow hair, and your bones burst through your fingers, (like the frogs that do this) and you hop around the battlefield slashing people with your claws, and croaking insults in Grung. His name will be, Amph'ina'cluino.
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Please check out my homebrew, I would appreciate feedback:
Some of them I actually love, from a purely character standpoint-- Aviur is an aasimar paladin who absolutely Should Not Be a paladin. He's the OPPOSITE of optimized for it, just in mechanical terms, being high INT/low WIS, etc. And beyond the mechanics, like... he just SHOULDN'T have that job, because at heart he will always prioritize Mercy over Justice, he's not keen on the fighting, and over time, like... his relationship with the Divine changes as he grows into his own nature and realizes he has a personal connection to all things divine which is so much more than living in service to a single god and acting according to that god's alignment, riding under one banner, following rules meant for non-celestial followers... Like, if I said 'hey, I'll play a paladin this time' and then I whipped this bad boy out, my group would have every right to be mad at me just based on how bad at his job he would be.
And then other characters are purely the dumbest thing possible, like 'what if I was a bard with a CON of 18 and an INT of 6?', or 'A warlock named Krelborn the Magnificent and look, he's a nice guy who did not intend to make a dark pact with a complete monster, but in the moment that he was offered anything his secret, greasy little heart desired for the low, low starting price of murdering his barber, hey, I mean, things happen, and now he's a Cool, Powerful Magic User, but the price is steeper than he'd initially imagined and he kind of thought being a warlock would clear up his adult acne'.
On the theme of wrong-stats classes: Wrong equipped classes - Paranoid Wizard or Ranger who wears plate no matter what anyone says - needs the protection, which comes with all kinds of other problems with the abilities. Monk who uses anything other than Monk weapons and unarmed - no proficient items including no improvised weapons, either. It's against the Monk's monastic order.
I read about a Paladin that could only wear kitchenware as armor and could only use improvised weapons that were also kitchen utensils. (Can't remember if it was a curse or part of the Paladin's Order's rituals - possibly a bit of both? Can't remember where I read about this one.)
Human. Male. Possibly. Don't be a divider. My characters' backgrounds are written like instruction manuals rather than stories. My opinion and preferences don't mean you're wrong. I am 99.7603% convinced that the digital dice are messing with me. I roll high when nobody's looking and low when anyone else can see.🎲 “It's a bit early to be thinking about an epitaph. No?” will be my epitaph.
On the theme of wrong-stats classes: Wrong equipped classes - Paranoid Wizard or Ranger who wears plate no matter what anyone says - needs the protection, which comes with all kinds of other problems with the abilities. Monk who uses anything other than Monk weapons and unarmed - no proficient items including no improvised weapons, either. It's against the Monk's monastic order.
I read about a Paladin that could only wear kitchenware as armor and could only use improvised weapons that were also kitchen utensils. (Can't remember if it was a curse or part of the Paladin's Order's rituals - possibly a bit of both? Can't remember where I read about this one.)
I would most definitely use the Paladin. A knight of the kitchen sink sounds amusing.
A Bard that keeps hoarding and, then, throwing away all the Guild's (party's) gold. This continues to happen even though he's no longer the Guild's treasurer.
It usually ends up in a medium-sized lake in a lake district... somewhere. Often, it's given away in a very poor trade agreement as he extremely, extremely undervalues gold. One time, swallowed a bag of gold that was to be the Guild's reward - or, as he said, "it's banked" and that the Guild would "get it back with interest". Ew.
Given what I've read in so many places regarding Bards, "seduce" is never associated with him but, rather, associated with the bloodthirsty Warlock in the Guild who sports terrifying Tiefling horns.
He's the one with the CG good-intentioned and poorly-thought bright ideas that usually turn out terribly wrong.
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Human. Male. Possibly. Don't be a divider. My characters' backgrounds are written like instruction manuals rather than stories. My opinion and preferences don't mean you're wrong. I am 99.7603% convinced that the digital dice are messing with me. I roll high when nobody's looking and low when anyone else can see.🎲 “It's a bit early to be thinking about an epitaph. No?” will be my epitaph.
I just recently got the idea to create a gnome wizard who believes in cryptids (like bigfoot), but ones specifically made up/altered for dnd. He just goes around assuming everything is some dumb made-up monster that doesn't exist but he knows is out there.
What got him kicked out of his wizards' guild and began his adventuring was his thesis on the brink frog - a giant frog that only appears when the world is on the brink of extinction. supposedly a lot of people claim to have seen the brink frog the last time Tiamat had risen.
He's otherwise perfectly normal, he just really thinks that cryptids totally exist
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Full of rice, beans, and bad ideas.
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I've been building the idea for a while now of a gnome barbarian. He's middle-aged, worked his entire life in some dead-end job, finds out his wife's been having an affair with his boss, none of his kids are actually his and so he snaps. He'd have decent STR and CON from years of heavy labour. INT be high, WIS okay but TERRIBLE charisma. Just a grumpy, surly, miserable ball of barely suppressed rage. Goes on adventures just to find something to take his anger out on.
In a YouTube series, there's a Human Wizard whose spells usually went awry - wrong spell would be cast or the effect would be somewhat opposite of the intended effect (like Mend would cause his robe to unravel completely - he conjured milk during an encounter against some Orcs who were stunned with confusion).
An Orc called him a "Retrocaster" - someone whose failed casts always have an effect, not just a fizzle - a Wizard who has "hekkashotz" in Orcish because there's no word in Common for it. As one can guess, his stats cause most of his spells to fail. So most often, something weird happens instead of what he wanted to cast. (He drove away a corpse worm by covering it with boiling lemon juice from old fruit placed as a lure for the thing when he was trying to cause the cave to collapse on the worm.)
(According to the subtitles, "hekkashotz" means "Dyslexia". The runes in any of his spellbooks keep shifting around when he tries to read them. As someone with a very mild form of Dyslexia, it's hilarious.)
He also has a semi-autonomous sword that boosts his strength and dexterity bonuses but wants him to die so it can be owned by someone more worthy. ...and of course, it's cursed so neither of them can be rid of each other.
EDIT: Lysdexia corrections. :P
Human. Male. Possibly. Don't be a divider.
My characters' backgrounds are written like instruction manuals rather than stories. My opinion and preferences don't mean you're wrong.
I am 99.7603% convinced that the digital dice are messing with me. I roll high when nobody's looking and low when anyone else can see.🎲
“It's a bit early to be thinking about an epitaph. No?” will be my epitaph.
Mine would have to be one character concept that I actually want to bring into reality. You know the Horror Frog, that one animal that breaks its toes and turns them into weapons? Now, imagine that, but it's a Bullywug (or Grung) Blood Hunter. Now, imagine after a little while, when you've given up explaining to people what it's actually based off of and start telling people it's "Wolverine Kermit". Yeah, that's the character in a nutshell.
I is the feels good.
- Kefko, the Traveler
A wizards apprentice who doesn’t take any damage spell. He was interested in theoretical magic and thus his spellbook is filled with random “useless spells” his master kicked him out because he wasn’t focusing on practical application of magic and thought going on an adventure would help him figure out the real world.
The character was a young kobold illusion wizard. While I had a lot of situational spells. I was able to come up with creative spell usage. It ended up being a lot of fun. Full on support though takes a different mindset as a player.
Your secret is safe with my indifference - Percy
I have a gut feeling this idea isn't nearly as original as I thought it was when I came up with it, but as a joke for a one-off I came up with a Monk who's convinced he's a polymorphed chicken. Not actually one, just convinced that he is.
Alternatively, I also (as a joke for a one-off) came up with an Oath of the Ancients Paladin who's been cursed to only be able to speak by reciting passages from old out of date farmer's almanacs.
I remember someone said they wanted a character that would speak only in palindromes. It made my brain hurt just imagining someone trying to figure out a palindrome for everything the character said.
Human. Male. Possibly. Don't be a divider.
My characters' backgrounds are written like instruction manuals rather than stories. My opinion and preferences don't mean you're wrong.
I am 99.7603% convinced that the digital dice are messing with me. I roll high when nobody's looking and low when anyone else can see.🎲
“It's a bit early to be thinking about an epitaph. No?” will be my epitaph.
I once played a pacifist firbolg barbarian. It was a rather rp-heavy campaign, but it wasn't a big deal until we got to combat and he was the only combat-skilled character. We ended up going with the idea that instead of raging, he does some minor druidic magic to assist him. It was a lot of fun to play!
It's interesting that you say this. One of my friends plays a 675 pound orc named Chumbo, and he has +11 stealth. my DM decided that he could make his stats out of wack if he wanted, so he has +5 to strength, dex, and con, -4 to int, and -5 to wis and charisma. My friend's drawing of him is simply hilarious.
Interesting story: He once rolled a natural twenty to jump on a basilisk's back, and wound up being so chunky that he broke its back and we killed it.
Goth cleric firbold
The only thing that makes me sad about this story, is you made no mention of whether or not he had a friend named Wumbo.
Borbble thunderfist a hill dwarf who speaks only in third person about his political beliefs in a deep man voice while yelling everything and somehow has an entire web of contracts to important people also he’s a fighter But licks everything rock he’s finds
Something like Two Face: Before each encounter and each dialog statement, the character flips a coin to act with goodness or evil...ness.
An encounter with Orc zealots trying to show Gruumsh who's boss by slaughtering townfolk across the countryside to raise an undead army in an effort to betray the Betrayed.
Character fights defensively with mercy and as much amiability and reasoning as possible.
An encounter with xenophobic Elf Druids who just want outsiders to go away.
Character slaughters them all mercilessly without a word.
Politely asks for directions to a particular mansion. Thanks the NPC by punching her in the gut for taking too long to respond.
Threatens a surly bartender supposedly harboring a criminal. Profusely apologizes and buys rounds of drinks when the bartender refuses to give up her friend.
I think my face would be red from all the face-palming.
Human. Male. Possibly. Don't be a divider.
My characters' backgrounds are written like instruction manuals rather than stories. My opinion and preferences don't mean you're wrong.
I am 99.7603% convinced that the digital dice are messing with me. I roll high when nobody's looking and low when anyone else can see.🎲
“It's a bit early to be thinking about an epitaph. No?” will be my epitaph.
These are all so good. I love these characters. You guys have some hilarious imaginations
Full of rice, beans, and bad ideas.
A mutated child soldier from a post WW III local warlord militia. Very good at combat, bad at anything else, and carrying the emotional baggage you'd expect from a 12 years old that was more or less abandoned in infancy due to her mutations and raised as cannon fodder for a post apocalyptic militia and left for dead after a fight with another militia (her militia lost, the other militia looted her but didn't care enough to heal her or execute her). Predictably clinging to the character of the party with medical skills because he healed her ("No one cared enough to do that for me before!").
The post nuclear war wasteland is a horrible place after all... But some people try to make it a slightly less horrible place...
And yes, there is a 5th edition homebrew conversion of the D20 Modern line, which includes D20 Apocalypse on the Internet.
Grung Path of the Beast Barbarian, taking the jumping ability and claws. When you enter into a rage, you grow hair, and your bones burst through your fingers, (like the frogs that do this) and you hop around the battlefield slashing people with your claws, and croaking insults in Grung. His name will be, Amph'ina'cluino.
Please check out my homebrew, I would appreciate feedback:
Spells, Monsters, Subclasses, Races, Arcknight Class, Occultist Class, World, Enigmatic Esoterica forms
I love coming up with Terrible Character Ideas!
Some of them I actually love, from a purely character standpoint-- Aviur is an aasimar paladin who absolutely Should Not Be a paladin. He's the OPPOSITE of optimized for it, just in mechanical terms, being high INT/low WIS, etc. And beyond the mechanics, like... he just SHOULDN'T have that job, because at heart he will always prioritize Mercy over Justice, he's not keen on the fighting, and over time, like... his relationship with the Divine changes as he grows into his own nature and realizes he has a personal connection to all things divine which is so much more than living in service to a single god and acting according to that god's alignment, riding under one banner, following rules meant for non-celestial followers... Like, if I said 'hey, I'll play a paladin this time' and then I whipped this bad boy out, my group would have every right to be mad at me just based on how bad at his job he would be.
And then other characters are purely the dumbest thing possible, like 'what if I was a bard with a CON of 18 and an INT of 6?', or 'A warlock named Krelborn the Magnificent and look, he's a nice guy who did not intend to make a dark pact with a complete monster, but in the moment that he was offered anything his secret, greasy little heart desired for the low, low starting price of murdering his barber, hey, I mean, things happen, and now he's a Cool, Powerful Magic User, but the price is steeper than he'd initially imagined and he kind of thought being a warlock would clear up his adult acne'.
On the theme of wrong-stats classes: Wrong equipped classes - Paranoid Wizard or Ranger who wears plate no matter what anyone says - needs the protection, which comes with all kinds of other problems with the abilities. Monk who uses anything other than Monk weapons and unarmed - no proficient items including no improvised weapons, either. It's against the Monk's monastic order.
I read about a Paladin that could only wear kitchenware as armor and could only use improvised weapons that were also kitchen utensils. (Can't remember if it was a curse or part of the Paladin's Order's rituals - possibly a bit of both? Can't remember where I read about this one.)
Human. Male. Possibly. Don't be a divider.
My characters' backgrounds are written like instruction manuals rather than stories. My opinion and preferences don't mean you're wrong.
I am 99.7603% convinced that the digital dice are messing with me. I roll high when nobody's looking and low when anyone else can see.🎲
“It's a bit early to be thinking about an epitaph. No?” will be my epitaph.
I would most definitely use the Paladin. A knight of the kitchen sink sounds amusing.
I is the feels good.
- Kefko, the Traveler
A Bard that keeps hoarding and, then, throwing away all the Guild's (party's) gold. This continues to happen even though he's no longer the Guild's treasurer.
It usually ends up in a medium-sized lake in a lake district... somewhere. Often, it's given away in a very poor trade agreement as he extremely, extremely undervalues gold. One time, swallowed a bag of gold that was to be the Guild's reward - or, as he said, "it's banked" and that the Guild would "get it back with interest". Ew.
Given what I've read in so many places regarding Bards, "seduce" is never associated with him but, rather, associated with the bloodthirsty Warlock in the Guild who sports terrifying Tiefling horns.
He's the one with the CG good-intentioned and poorly-thought bright ideas that usually turn out terribly wrong.
Human. Male. Possibly. Don't be a divider.
My characters' backgrounds are written like instruction manuals rather than stories. My opinion and preferences don't mean you're wrong.
I am 99.7603% convinced that the digital dice are messing with me. I roll high when nobody's looking and low when anyone else can see.🎲
“It's a bit early to be thinking about an epitaph. No?” will be my epitaph.
I just recently got the idea to create a gnome wizard who believes in cryptids (like bigfoot), but ones specifically made up/altered for dnd. He just goes around assuming everything is some dumb made-up monster that doesn't exist but he knows is out there.
What got him kicked out of his wizards' guild and began his adventuring was his thesis on the brink frog - a giant frog that only appears when the world is on the brink of extinction. supposedly a lot of people claim to have seen the brink frog the last time Tiamat had risen.
He's otherwise perfectly normal, he just really thinks that cryptids totally exist
Full of rice, beans, and bad ideas.