The character that wasn't meant to be?

[Altamont Ravenard]

I asked around in my gaming group, and I wanted to get the input of a bigger gaming community (well, the biggest, in fact).

Is there a character that you've always wanted to play, but never got a chance / didn't turn out in a satisfactory fashion?

The reasons that can be behind the fact that that character never saw the light of day can be multiple. Maybe he wouldn't have fitted in the campaigns you usually played him. Maybe the mechanics of the game you were playing didn't translate your concept well.

Whatever the reason, whatever the setting (although I'm more interested in fantasy-type settings), what's the character you've always wanted to play but never did (in a satisfactory matter at least)?

Thx in advance for your input,

AR

 

[Telas]

Any 3.x multiclass that wasn't taken specifically to qualify for a prestige class.

I ran a Goblin Sorcerer-Rogue in a 3E game who was horribly underpowered. His only saving grace was some good RP on my part which led to some powerful contacts, and the fact that he was the only stealthy character in the party. The GM came to the rescue with some targeted magic items, but even after he qualified for the Arcane Trickster PrC, he still didn't do as well as the rest of the party (nearly all single-core-class characters).

That, and a 3.5 human bard I ran as a "ladies man/duellest". I would have been better off just running a straight Rogue with "face" skills.

 

[StreamOfTheSky]

I'd have to break it up, there's been too many concepts I haven't been able to do.

For a background story, I was excited to make a Warblade "Samurai" of the Toyotomi clan, hoping to have his own little plotline setup chronologically a few years after the Seige of Osaka, with him presumably being one of the last living members of the Toyotomi family. (It would have been cool if it were part of the plot that Lady Yodo and Hideyori faked their deaths with body doubles [which would have burned in the fires to be too difficult to ID] and turned up alive later on.)

My character would be living as an outcast in a far-off land, trying to plan his next course of action. Grappling with the desire to proudly bear the golden gourd but yet needing to be secretive and disguised to survive in his homeland; wanting to overthrow the evil and despicable Tokugawa regime, but realizing the revolution would have to be done in a way that didn't plunge the land into chaos, lest Ieyasu's BS reasons for usurping power become justified.

It looked good, even had several other players on board to be friends and allies -- a Shimazu heir, one of the Sanada braves... but soon realized: this sort of thing had me in the center spotlight, I needed to be fully a player. But no one else seemed to know or care as much about the historical backdrop, so someone else being the DM wasn't going to happen.

Mechanically, I loved my Goliath Martial (feat) Wilderness Rogue / (racial variant) Lion Totem Wolf Totem Whirling Frenzy Barbarian, twinked to all hell to deliver crazy offense and fight like a circus performer, able to send guys twice his size flying across the room, bowling them into allies and knocking them both down, and more. Ironically, I built him more for combat tricks and versatility (outdoors skills, trapfinding, magic item use, able to do nearly all combat maneuvers well, acrobatics...) than pure damage, yet it was his damage output that drew the most anger from another player. The constant complaints of "broken" weren't all; I chose to RP him as a poor speaker of common and so despite his decent int score (whenever he spoke in Gol-Kaa or communicated telepathically he sounded very eloquent), he alternated between first and third erson and used a broken sentence structure. This led nearly all the other players, even the DM ("I love Forge's numbers, but can't stand his character") to really not like him. He effectively got retired from sheer unpopularity. I'm still bitter about it. I mean...the guy complaining about his damage had a character that did even more!

On the DM side, I REALLY want to do a Ronin Warriors themed game, but haven't gotten enough of my close friends hooked on the anime yet for it to catch steam. Maybe some day.

 

[Rechan]

Kobold rogue/paladin.

 

[Taureth]

Yes.

My first (and still best) exposure to gaming was my older brother's group, that played a bastardized hybrid of 1st and 2nd Ed. AD&D with some homebrew amendments tossed in for good measure. Quite nice, really. It allowed for a lot of flexibility with character classes, including some of the old npc classes out of Dragon Magazine, but not the hokey junk that was released in all those terrible "The Complete -- " and similar awful supplements that 2E spawned.

Anyway, I really wanted to create a witch hunter type character. That is to say someone who basically bounty hunted spell casters for a living. My concept of this was essentially someone with a pretty good set of fighting skills plus a grounding in abjuration type magics.

My first attempt was simply a fighter/incantarix multi-class, using the original 1E incantatrix npc class from Dragon Magazine. That original npc class was pretty well balanced; had its own spell list, that exlcluded almost any sort of purely offensive magics and focused in the defensive and negation type magics I envisioned this character being strong in.

No, I was told my brother/DM, no way would he take a multi-classed incantatrix. I never really did get a good answer why. It wasn't over powered or off the wall compared to what -other- players were running in this campaign, at the time. All told, it was (rather substantially) less powerful than a standard fighter/mage, if you were up against opponents who were not spell casters or enchanted creatures of some variety.

Okay, so I resorted to what we had sometimes done in this particular campaign: I sat down and designed a class from scratch. The class had neither as many magical abilities as the first concept, nor was it as powerful as a fighter in combat. (fighter THACO, but D8 hit dice, no specialization and no extra attacks at higher levels, no armor heavier than chain) This too didn't fly.

Now, sometime later, same gaming group, different DM. We're using a D&D like system this guy was into, called the Arcanum by Bard Games. So, this system actually -has- a witch hunter class. Which this game defines as a dual-classed hunter/mystic (the latter almost something like a psioncist under this system). So, the GM tells me, of the sixteen or so classes this game offers, this is the one he doesn't allow to players, for several reasons. Arrgh!!!!!

Now, cut to some years later. I'm playing in a campaign that uses Fantasy HERO -- a point based system where everybody builds their character from the ground up. I think, at last!! But then I discover this guy wants all the characters in the campaign to be "specialists." That is to say, if you do magic of any sort, then you don't take many martial skills, etc. *Doh*

Again, some years later, I'm playing in a free form writing game online. At LAST... I've found a perfect game to run this character in, after all these years, and there is no pesky system to get in the way this time!

So, I finally get the character in to play. Everything is going well at first. Then the person running the game gets all wierd. Turns out to be a vindictive SOB who goes psycho on anyone who questions his authori-ty. I end up leaving rather than try to work with this prick any longer.

I make ONE more attempt, not too long ago, in an online Planescape campaign. Why did I even dare to hope? The game folds before it ever really starts, because the DM goes flakey and vanishes.

That's my sad tale of the character who wasn't! Probably serves me right. I normally play spell casters. They are my favorite. So perhaps the powers that be just didn't dig me in the role of a witch hunter.