I once rolled a really dreadful character and I’m trying to A) expand and exaggerate that concept, and B) recreate something similar. Could use some recommendations for the lowest possible stats that can still be made playable.
The character ended up multi class because of arguments around the table, and ended up playing something like Ranger + Rogue + Wizard. The character used only one offensive spell once in their life, at point blank rage for low damage, then got hit with a mace and the party had to pause and decide if the character should be rolling death saves three minutes out of the town gate and they ended up dragging my character back to town and trying to buy them a health potion. This continued twice more until my character was desperately in debt to everyone else and begging to just be left in town and stop being charged for things. They were down in one hit and because the cleric’s character had the temperament to order characters to act by their assumed races and classes that usually meant the character wasn’t allowed to use their hand crossbow from range and kept loosing stealth checks because the cleric was screaming ‘act like a wizard!’ whenever the character was doing anything that would otherwise work out just fine.
^- My idea is to make a character like that again as a quest giver who gets dragged along on another nightmarish adventure. Low AC and constitution both boosted by magic items (as that’s what happened in play) and a marginally high charisma because of how chatty, bold, and terrifying the character is (never failed an intimidation roll especially after the already ‘ain’t great’ looking elf got hit in the chest and face by that mace).
Recap:
STR - enough to throw a punch
DEX - enough for decent dodging and sneaking
CON - the living dead
INT - never studied magic but could theoretically do it if ever actually instructed; more instinct and blood over study
WIS - VERY street and social smart
CHA - enough of a con for being themselves and enough to convince someone this weakling with nothing to loose is plenty capable of hurting them as painfully as possible in every possible way (criminal connections helping with these threats)
Bonus:
The character made it to level three in our campaign and I was thinking on continuing with them and giving them necromancy, what level and class features would they need for that?
*clarifies* The party was a Dwarf Paladin, an Orc Barbarian, and me the Moon Elf murder sponge. I always forget Paladins are different from War Clerics.
I'm not sure what you're going for here. Are you a player that wants to be a weak, ineffectual party member, or are you a DM who wants to throw a weakling into an adventure for the party to protect?
If you're a player, this could be pretty disruptive. Likely the DM and other players have some expectations for how the adventure is going to go, and turning it into "lol look at how crappy I am. I died right away and you have to carry me back to the city" may not really be the game they want to play. D&D is about a team working together and if you want to play an intentional burden on the other characters, you will need the buy-in from the other players for that to work.
If you're the DM, I could see it being a pretty interesting escort mission challenge where the party had to work to keep the NPC alive. In that case you can stat as low as you want.
You absolutely MUST make his walking speed just below that of the rest of the party.
So, walking speed of 29 feet/turn?
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All stars fade. Some stars forever fall. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Homebrew (Mostly Outdated):Magic Items,Monsters,Spells,Subclasses ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- If there was no light, people wouldn't fear the dark.
You absolutely MUST make his walking speed just below that of the rest of the party.
So, walking speed of 29 feet/turn?
Or something like 23ft. if you have a dwarf in the party. Make sure to describe it to the players, that the guy starts evenly but is just not keeping up with their normal gait. If your players played enough RPG or MMO's they will get it :D
Lol these suggestions are awesome! So far the only character my players have mentioned having ready is a teifling, so I don’t know the walking number just yet.
I feel like there’s something I’m missing of how I could reduce the numbers more on base stats vs boosted stats. I want to make them as low as possible but I’m also getting the feeling there’s a likelihood the quest giver could end up the last one standing and I don’t want the players to loose just because of some really sucky rolls; if they fail the quest I want it to be from their own choices.
This is what I made up so far but it still feels like the numbers are too high to seem weak.
*adds* Also my players are aware I’m throwing this character at them, just not which group is going to get them.
The premise for the campaign is a previous adventuring party (made of my former characters) accidentally hiring 100+ people to complete their first quest (raid the abandoned evil bastion, which I also need to flesh out and plan more before we actually play).
Each of the players is going to have their traveling group and they’ll come into conflict with ‘rival’ groups along the way. At least four of which is going to end up with one of my OGs as their guide. (Of which two are wonderfully stacked)
Everyone is excited to see who ends up with Faraday- - -(the character being recreated in this thread, not the combo character I made for the previous game and who’s labeled that in my character page on here)- - -since Faraday is infamous and everyone but our newbie knows Faraday’s background is going to make them a former BBEG I played and guest stared as. I even got permission to use a friend’s first character to tie that first ever game with this new one.
...
On that note, could anyone here help me figure out how to make Ranger + Rogue + ‘Wizard’ = Necromancer? The only route I’ve found so far is through cleric and I’m not sure how to find necrotic spells at the lowest level without hitting* barriers from multiclassing.
*tangent about the campaign* *just me rambling you can ignore*
The campaign is seeming a bit Lord of the Rings, since it’s doing a quest again/finishing a quest, and should end in an substantially epic battle so far as my players are concerned (they’ve never played in a ‘war’ encounter either, set piece or not).
The bastion of evil is going to have something to do with fiends, as it did in the module some of the OGs were invented for, although I’ve not come up with a good plot reason for it existing. ’Sealing something away/trade hub to mortals’ isn’t reason why it would have been abandoned/still have things in it that the demons wouldn’t have come back for sooner.
One of the OGs is a teifling sorcerer I made but never got to actually play as himself, and his dad is going to show up again as one of if not the main BBEG of the finale. The OG is supposed to be a prince so not sure if he and his dad would need demoting to play in the campaign. (The OG isn’t human, purely Devil + Blue Dragon)
And speaking of dragons there’s going to be one maniac riding a black dragon in the background to kill anything the party and ally army can’t realistically defeat. (Haven’t made specific decisions on what will arrive as a demon army yet, and still figuring out how high a level I want the players to be before actually reaching the bastion and that battle).
*source material*
So this campaign is going to borrow from four that I’ve played in (hence the four actual OGs) and is the culmination of that lore. All but the newbie knows the rough details of those past adventures from chatting about them (they don’t have as large a one shot backlog as I do or I’d have added more for their OGs).
One of them was the ‘Faraday’s dead before leaving the town’ one shot which didn’t really have a plot before it ended. Another was a module where there was an evil temple/tower thing and giant crawfish in one of the tunnels (revenge on ‘breakfast’ is going to be a side quest while waiting four our other two players to get back and get ready).
The other campaign was the first I ever participated in. It was a homebrew and mostly revolved around my one friend’s character being influenced by whoever was available to play at the time (as some sessions were during school lunch without dice and missing players). My friend ended up being bonded to ‘a shard of gluttony’ and in one encounter bonded with a immature black dragon after consuming it with the shard’s power. This handily meant him gaining a dragon cursed berserker mode and having to constantly fight to keep his alignment.
- - -cue me, the ghost of an elvish maniac the shard had also once sealed, to counteract this pure evil with my pure chaos. My friend got the option of my suggestion or the dragon’s (sometimes played by another person they were friends with) on coin flip saves, and mine ranged from ‘preserve self’ to ‘sit on the throne while the guards aren’t looking then proclaim yourself king when the ruler walks back in’. It was fun save when the dragon won one time and killed an npc and opportunity we’d been looking forward to.
My friend and I referenced that first campaign in my third one (the one with Faraday) and canonized that it was either the maniac’s origin story or their next life. I’m excited to eventually play Faraday with some powers besides their words. :)
You absolutely MUST make his walking speed just below that of the rest of the party.
So, walking speed of 29 feet/turn?
Or something like 23ft. if you have a dwarf in the party. Make sure to describe it to the players, that the guy is starts evenly but is just not keeping up with their normal gait. If your players played enough RPG or MMO's they will get it :D
Hahah, if you're going to do that you absolutely have to make it so that they occasionally spot something on the ground, run quickly over to it to either investigate or collect, and then run back to the point they were at when they noticed the thing before continuing on at their original, slower-than-the-party pace. xD
I once rolled a really dreadful character and I’m trying to A) expand and exaggerate that concept, and B) recreate something similar. Could use some recommendations for the lowest possible stats that can still be made playable.
The character ended up multi class because of arguments around the table, and ended up playing something like Ranger + Rogue + Wizard. The character used only one offensive spell once in their life, at point blank rage for low damage, then got hit with a mace and the party had to pause and decide if the character should be rolling death saves three minutes out of the town gate and they ended up dragging my character back to town and trying to buy them a health potion. This continued twice more until my character was desperately in debt to everyone else and begging to just be left in town and stop being charged for things. They were down in one hit and because the cleric’s character had the temperament to order characters to act by their assumed races and classes that usually meant the character wasn’t allowed to use their hand crossbow from range and kept loosing stealth checks because the cleric was screaming ‘act like a wizard!’ whenever the character was doing anything that would otherwise work out just fine.
^- My idea is to make a character like that again as a quest giver who gets dragged along on another nightmarish adventure. Low AC and constitution both boosted by magic items (as that’s what happened in play) and a marginally high charisma because of how chatty, bold, and terrifying the character is (never failed an intimidation roll especially after the already ‘ain’t great’ looking elf got hit in the chest and face by that mace).
Recap:
STR - enough to throw a punch
DEX - enough for decent dodging and sneaking
CON - the living dead
INT - never studied magic but could theoretically do it if ever actually instructed; more instinct and blood over study
WIS - VERY street and social smart
CHA - enough of a con for being themselves and enough to convince someone this weakling with nothing to loose is plenty capable of hurting them as painfully as possible in every possible way (criminal connections helping with these threats)
Bonus:
The character made it to level three in our campaign and I was thinking on continuing with them and giving them necromancy, what level and class features would they need for that?
*clarifies*
The party was a Dwarf Paladin, an Orc Barbarian, and me the Moon Elf murder sponge. I always forget Paladins are different from War Clerics.
I'm not sure what you're going for here. Are you a player that wants to be a weak, ineffectual party member, or are you a DM who wants to throw a weakling into an adventure for the party to protect?
If you're a player, this could be pretty disruptive. Likely the DM and other players have some expectations for how the adventure is going to go, and turning it into "lol look at how crappy I am. I died right away and you have to carry me back to the city" may not really be the game they want to play. D&D is about a team working together and if you want to play an intentional burden on the other characters, you will need the buy-in from the other players for that to work.
If you're the DM, I could see it being a pretty interesting escort mission challenge where the party had to work to keep the NPC alive. In that case you can stat as low as you want.
My homebrew subclasses (full list here)
(Artificer) Swordmage | Glasswright | (Barbarian) Path of the Savage Embrace
(Bard) College of Dance | (Fighter) Warlord | Cannoneer
(Monk) Way of the Elements | (Ranger) Blade Dancer
(Rogue) DaggerMaster | Inquisitor | (Sorcerer) Riftwalker | Spellfist
(Warlock) The Swarm
DM this time. And yup inciting incident escort mission. :)
You absolutely MUST make his walking speed just below that of the rest of the party.
So, walking speed of 29 feet/turn?
All stars fade. Some stars forever fall.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Homebrew (Mostly Outdated): Magic Items, Monsters, Spells, Subclasses
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
If there was no light, people wouldn't fear the dark.
Or something like 23ft. if you have a dwarf in the party. Make sure to describe it to the players, that the guy starts evenly but is just not keeping up with their normal gait. If your players played enough RPG or MMO's they will get it :D
Lol these suggestions are awesome! So far the only character my players have mentioned having ready is a teifling, so I don’t know the walking number just yet.
I feel like there’s something I’m missing of how I could reduce the numbers more on base stats vs boosted stats. I want to make them as low as possible but I’m also getting the feeling there’s a likelihood the quest giver could end up the last one standing and I don’t want the players to loose just because of some really sucky rolls; if they fail the quest I want it to be from their own choices.
This is what I made up so far but it still feels like the numbers are too high to seem weak.
Gear on:
https://www.dndbeyond.com/profile/HelpMeKay/characters/41781107
Gear Off:
https://www.dndbeyond.com/profile/HelpMeKay/characters/41853343
This is as low as the creator here will let me go although I’m not sure if this is overkill or not.
https://www.dndbeyond.com/profile/HelpMeKay/characters/41853526
*adds*
Also my players are aware I’m throwing this character at them, just not which group is going to get them.
The premise for the campaign is a previous adventuring party (made of my former characters) accidentally hiring 100+ people to complete their first quest (raid the abandoned evil bastion, which I also need to flesh out and plan more before we actually play).
Each of the players is going to have their traveling group and they’ll come into conflict with ‘rival’ groups along the way. At least four of which is going to end up with one of my OGs as their guide. (Of which two are wonderfully stacked)
Everyone is excited to see who ends up with Faraday- - -(the character being recreated in this thread, not the combo character I made for the previous game and who’s labeled that in my character page on here)- - -since Faraday is infamous and everyone but our newbie knows Faraday’s background is going to make them a former BBEG I played and guest stared as. I even got permission to use a friend’s first character to tie that first ever game with this new one.
...
On that note, could anyone here help me figure out how to make Ranger + Rogue + ‘Wizard’ = Necromancer? The only route I’ve found so far is through cleric and I’m not sure how to find necrotic spells at the lowest level without hitting* barriers from multiclassing.
*tangent about the campaign*
*just me rambling you can ignore*
The campaign is seeming a bit Lord of the Rings, since it’s doing a quest again/finishing a quest, and should end in an substantially epic battle so far as my players are concerned (they’ve never played in a ‘war’ encounter either, set piece or not).
The bastion of evil is going to have something to do with fiends, as it did in the module some of the OGs were invented for, although I’ve not come up with a good plot reason for it existing. ’Sealing something away/trade hub to mortals’ isn’t reason why it would have been abandoned/still have things in it that the demons wouldn’t have come back for sooner.
One of the OGs is a teifling sorcerer I made but never got to actually play as himself, and his dad is going to show up again as one of if not the main BBEG of the finale. The OG is supposed to be a prince so not sure if he and his dad would need demoting to play in the campaign. (The OG isn’t human, purely Devil + Blue Dragon)
And speaking of dragons there’s going to be one maniac riding a black dragon in the background to kill anything the party and ally army can’t realistically defeat. (Haven’t made specific decisions on what will arrive as a demon army yet, and still figuring out how high a level I want the players to be before actually reaching the bastion and that battle).
*source material*
So this campaign is going to borrow from four that I’ve played in (hence the four actual OGs) and is the culmination of that lore. All but the newbie knows the rough details of those past adventures from chatting about them (they don’t have as large a one shot backlog as I do or I’d have added more for their OGs).
One of them was the ‘Faraday’s dead before leaving the town’ one shot which didn’t really have a plot before it ended. Another was a module where there was an evil temple/tower thing and giant crawfish in one of the tunnels (revenge on ‘breakfast’ is going to be a side quest while waiting four our other two players to get back and get ready).
The other campaign was the first I ever participated in. It was a homebrew and mostly revolved around my one friend’s character being influenced by whoever was available to play at the time (as some sessions were during school lunch without dice and missing players). My friend ended up being bonded to ‘a shard of gluttony’ and in one encounter bonded with a immature black dragon after consuming it with the shard’s power. This handily meant him gaining a dragon cursed berserker mode and having to constantly fight to keep his alignment.
- - -cue me, the ghost of an elvish maniac the shard had also once sealed, to counteract this pure evil with my pure chaos. My friend got the option of my suggestion or the dragon’s (sometimes played by another person they were friends with) on coin flip saves, and mine ranged from ‘preserve self’ to ‘sit on the throne while the guards aren’t looking then proclaim yourself king when the ruler walks back in’. It was fun save when the dragon won one time and killed an npc and opportunity we’d been looking forward to.
My friend and I referenced that first campaign in my third one (the one with Faraday) and canonized that it was either the maniac’s origin story or their next life. I’m excited to eventually play Faraday with some powers besides their words. :)
Hahah, if you're going to do that you absolutely have to make it so that they occasionally spot something on the ground, run quickly over to it to either investigate or collect, and then run back to the point they were at when they noticed the thing before continuing on at their original, slower-than-the-party pace. xD