Well, one of my players wanted to play as the reincarnation of a golden dragon, and I reasoned them down to being somehow linked to the soul of a dead golden dragon.
The way this became creative was because it shaped an entire swathe of the world as I integrated their backstory into the game, wiping out the ancient dragons and writing 2 pages of lore as to what the golden dragon did to try and survive and how it all went wrong for them, leaving their soul bound to their bloodline until their treasure horde is remade. It was a lot of worldbuilding, just because they wanted cool dragon flavours for their magic!
I have a character in a campaign (I'm one session in so far) who is a path of the beast barbarian called Malth Borla. The campaign world is heavily norse inspired, so I wrote a folklore tale of an old bear who killed anyone who went into his woods, who fell in love with a woman from the local village. She tamed him, and he became a friend of the village instead of the scourge of the woods. When the village was attacked by Orc raiders, he charged into battle to defend them, and though he slew many Orcs, he was ultimately slain. The worlds equivalent of Odin came to the bear after he died, and told him that had he been a person and not a beast, he would have earnt his place in valhalla when he died so courageously in battle. He gave the bear another chance, as Gods can be prone to do, and resurrected him as a human. Ever since, Malth has been learning stories and defending those who need it, and trying to live a good life with his second chance. He has a big heart, and it is conflicted in his hopes - on one hand, he hopes to die in battle one day, but on the other, he fears that if he does so then the battle would be lost, and those he was fighting for with it.
Malth now lives in an unnamed village, defending it from vampires and protecting the weak. He carves wooden toys for the children, and tells them the tales he has learnt. They particularly love the one of the old bear who fell in love with the dwarven woman, but he has never told them of his part in it. The children call him Old Malth, to his amusement, for they don't realise that Malth Borla literally means "Old Bear" in Dwarven, so are calling him "Old Old". He is in his mid to late 50's, still strong as a bear, and is very slow to anger for a barbarian, always thinking first, taking his moment before responding. Most think he is perhaps a bit slow, but Malth is simply aware that should he show his true colours, and release the scourge of the woods that still lives within him, it tends to become very messy. Thus far, he's destroyed a fair few enemies in that first session, and hasn't even raged yet!
One of my most creative characters is a Bronze Dragonborn rogue assassin . (Sound familiar? That's cause Kay is a toned down recycled version of her lol.) She was born into a noble family, and after a tragic betrayal, she was cursed with a homebrew type lycanthropy. She did acquire an amulet which held the curse at bay. But recently, it's magic seams to be fading.
I had an high elven knowledge domain necromancer who had reached the age where he began to experience his past lives during reverie. He rediscovered that he was but one of a long iteration of selves that was oriented around perfecting the knowledge pertaining to one thing: the soul.
To pursue this task he had previously warped his flesh, implanted his soul, and/ or erased parts of his mind in order to experience different walks of life, on different planes, with different goals. All to examine the world and his topic of interest with new eyes from species native and alien to the material planes before being reintegrated into his “self”. The last goal he was working towards was understanding the nature of divinity and our relationship to it. How do such beings influence us and how are they influenced by us? Are they symbols given sentience by our psychic influence (not unlike how the Kua-toa will gods into creation by belief, do we do so too through a more coherent consensus of thought?) or are we merely extensions of these higher creatures? What entitles such creatures to our souls and to what end? Most of his prior research efforts were understanding the soul by examining what happens when parts of our whole are excised (such as in the case of undead). Undead can be literal manifestations of memory, raw emotions, primal passions/ urges, or even amalgamated/ individuated souls without a continuity of self. Even in the case of vampires the individual entity is effectively a warped carbon copy of the creature they once were, they just lack a soul…. But is it you? what is the mind without the soul, the soul without the mind and what not.
A sort of ”meta meta character” as the concept basically assert that each character I’ve ever played has effectively been the same entity, despite being different. Much like how even though the spirit of a creature (in this case, I the player) remains constant even if the mind, body, and soul are altered through each iteration of destruction and rebirth. The character itself borrows it’s research and beliefs from smatterings of Buddhist ideas regarding the afterlife, jungian concepts pertaining to the collective unconscious, and to other such musings that touch on metacognition.
any game I’ve tried to play the aware “self” in never lasted long enough to really go anywhere with the idea. Though he and his iterations are spread about lightly in the lore of my home game.
Easily the most creative would be a fellow player who made a Pact of the Archfey Warlock who was a chef.
He could take random objects, and through the illusory, realty-altering properties of his Patron, alter them into food.
”Magic Stone” became magic muffins that could be thrown…”Hex” was activated by snapping breadsticks…eventually he wielding a pizza-peel as his Pact weapon, and “Hold Person” snared targets with spaghetti noodles.
By all accounts, the mechanics of the concept were against him…but the brilliant b*stard made it work.
What is the most Creative Character Concept you have seen, played, or want to play?
I'm pretty happy with the characters I am currently playing. I'm just curious to what other people have come up with. :)
Well, one of my players wanted to play as the reincarnation of a golden dragon, and I reasoned them down to being somehow linked to the soul of a dead golden dragon.
The way this became creative was because it shaped an entire swathe of the world as I integrated their backstory into the game, wiping out the ancient dragons and writing 2 pages of lore as to what the golden dragon did to try and survive and how it all went wrong for them, leaving their soul bound to their bloodline until their treasure horde is remade. It was a lot of worldbuilding, just because they wanted cool dragon flavours for their magic!
I have a character in a campaign (I'm one session in so far) who is a path of the beast barbarian called Malth Borla. The campaign world is heavily norse inspired, so I wrote a folklore tale of an old bear who killed anyone who went into his woods, who fell in love with a woman from the local village. She tamed him, and he became a friend of the village instead of the scourge of the woods. When the village was attacked by Orc raiders, he charged into battle to defend them, and though he slew many Orcs, he was ultimately slain. The worlds equivalent of Odin came to the bear after he died, and told him that had he been a person and not a beast, he would have earnt his place in valhalla when he died so courageously in battle. He gave the bear another chance, as Gods can be prone to do, and resurrected him as a human. Ever since, Malth has been learning stories and defending those who need it, and trying to live a good life with his second chance. He has a big heart, and it is conflicted in his hopes - on one hand, he hopes to die in battle one day, but on the other, he fears that if he does so then the battle would be lost, and those he was fighting for with it.
Malth now lives in an unnamed village, defending it from vampires and protecting the weak. He carves wooden toys for the children, and tells them the tales he has learnt. They particularly love the one of the old bear who fell in love with the dwarven woman, but he has never told them of his part in it. The children call him Old Malth, to his amusement, for they don't realise that Malth Borla literally means "Old Bear" in Dwarven, so are calling him "Old Old". He is in his mid to late 50's, still strong as a bear, and is very slow to anger for a barbarian, always thinking first, taking his moment before responding. Most think he is perhaps a bit slow, but Malth is simply aware that should he show his true colours, and release the scourge of the woods that still lives within him, it tends to become very messy. Thus far, he's destroyed a fair few enemies in that first session, and hasn't even raged yet!
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my characters tend to be destructive.
Those are both super cool Thoruk!
One of my most creative characters is a Bronze Dragonborn rogue assassin . (Sound familiar? That's cause Kay is a toned down recycled version of her lol.) She was born into a noble family, and after a tragic betrayal, she was cursed with a homebrew type lycanthropy. She did acquire an amulet which held the curse at bay. But recently, it's magic seams to be fading.
I had an high elven knowledge domain necromancer who had reached the age where he began to experience his past lives during reverie. He rediscovered that he was but one of a long iteration of selves that was oriented around perfecting the knowledge pertaining to one thing: the soul.
To pursue this task he had previously warped his flesh, implanted his soul, and/ or erased parts of his mind in order to experience different walks of life, on different planes, with different goals. All to examine the world and his topic of interest with new eyes from species native and alien to the material planes before being reintegrated into his “self”. The last goal he was working towards was understanding the nature of divinity and our relationship to it. How do such beings influence us and how are they influenced by us? Are they symbols given sentience by our psychic influence (not unlike how the Kua-toa will gods into creation by belief, do we do so too through a more coherent consensus of thought?) or are we merely extensions of these higher creatures? What entitles such creatures to our souls and to what end? Most of his prior research efforts were understanding the soul by examining what happens when parts of our whole are excised (such as in the case of undead). Undead can be literal manifestations of memory, raw emotions, primal passions/ urges, or even amalgamated/ individuated souls without a continuity of self. Even in the case of vampires the individual entity is effectively a warped carbon copy of the creature they once were, they just lack a soul…. But is it you? what is the mind without the soul, the soul without the mind and what not.
A sort of ”meta meta character” as the concept basically assert that each character I’ve ever played has effectively been the same entity, despite being different. Much like how even though the spirit of a creature (in this case, I the player) remains constant even if the mind, body, and soul are altered through each iteration of destruction and rebirth. The character itself borrows it’s research and beliefs from smatterings of Buddhist ideas regarding the afterlife, jungian concepts pertaining to the collective unconscious, and to other such musings that touch on metacognition.
any game I’ve tried to play the aware “self” in never lasted long enough to really go anywhere with the idea. Though he and his iterations are spread about lightly in the lore of my home game.
Easily the most creative would be a fellow player who made a Pact of the Archfey Warlock who was a chef.
He could take random objects, and through the illusory, realty-altering properties of his Patron, alter them into food.
”Magic Stone” became magic muffins that could be thrown…”Hex” was activated by snapping breadsticks…eventually he wielding a pizza-peel as his Pact weapon, and “Hold Person” snared targets with spaghetti noodles.
By all accounts, the mechanics of the concept were against him…but the brilliant b*stard made it work.