Awkward Characters

[ccs]

I have a 1/2ling barbarian character who's not really any good at fighting (from a training PoV). She's effective & dangerous, but not actually skilled. She doesn't fight/rage because she likes to, but rather because she's scared to death.

When not raging I intentionally roll with disadvantage. And I don't have her willingly enter rage. Instead, every combat round past the 1st I roll an increasingly difficult Wis. save. Once she fails THEN she rages. Wich takes the form of hacking wildly at the foe (& with all the benefits of rage). Ok, great you say. But remember, she's not skilled.... Wich the rest of the party came to realize meant that anybody standing, friend or foe, in a square beside or in front of her might get hit if she missed the actual target (roll a d4: 1=Left, 2=Front Left, 3=Front Right, 4=Right, roll a normal attack).
When I purposed this flaw to the DM he loved it. The other players were cool with me having some type of dangerous flaw as well - though they learned the details of it the hard way.
This led to the other characters having to increase their tactical maneuvering & RP so they weren't making it seem like they were abandoning her during a fight (remember, she's fighting/raging because she's scared not just your typical combat junkie barb.).

At 8th lv I almost invested in 1 lv of fighter & dropping the flaw. But the Dragonborn fighter who'd just recently started actually training her got killed, the DM didn't think 1/2 a lvs worth of xp represented enough training, & so I took the linguistics feat instead. And the campaign wrapped up with us succeeding and gaining 9th lv with no downtime to train.
You know, the typical ending of a campaign: You all gain x amount of loot, so much xp, a bit of DM exposition & that's a wrap.... Next week session zero of the new campaign!

And thus it was that Rose Burfoot returned home a 9th lv barbarian - rich, with a hell of a story, tough as nails, still not actually trained in fighting & vowing she'd never go "adventuring" ever again.

Rose Burfoot will return....

 

[Iry]

Everyone is different. I once played a Wookie Hairdresser who used a Vox Box to say simple phrases (I selected 6 common ones). Most of the players were fine with it because I played it straight and made every effort to be a serious character despite the fact that it garnered frequent chuckles. But there was one player who walked out of the game because that character broke his immersion so hard.

Some may love what you are doing. Some may never even notice. Some may notice and be having a worse time because of it. In the end, communication with your group is key.

 

[Azzy]

Man, I was expecting something different from this thread.

I do have a character idea in which the character is essentially a hikikimori (with the Hermit background) that only is adventuring because he discovered some information/item/whatever (to be bashed out with the DM), and now he's being chased. Completely socially akward, clams up around people, misses social cues, doesn't like to be touched, and wants to hide in a stack of books as far away from other people as possible.

 

[S'mon]

Dang. I was right there with you until you had to go and use the magic phrase "breaks immersion". That just translates, from gamer-speak to English, as "is something I don't like".

It's just one particular way to do "something I don't like". Having my PC raped in game might well not break my immersion while being very much something I don't like.

 

[S'mon]

I don't like silly or joke characters.

I do like characters cast against type, eg my son is playing a Goliath Rogue Assassin and having a great time. He came down off the Tjokren Glacier and is currently schmoozing the Underworld & High Society of Quodeth.

 

[Imaculata]

I played a monumentally stupid barbarian called Logue for a while, who was terrified of heights. It would lead to a lot of hilarity, especially when Logue tried to teach his party his tribal superstitions, which involved honoring the spirit of the Great Bear by dancing naked around a fire while drinking heavily and painting your body. Even better was when the DM ruled that Logue's funny rituals actually worked. The Great Bear was the only deity to ever make his existence known in our campaigns.

 

[Older Beholder]

Limiting yourself to quotes as suggested would be a good way to play a Kenku,
Personally I think I would find it hard to ad-lib Simpsons quotes out of fear of saying something modern. But making a list beforehand and sticking to it could work.

The idea of having a Kenku that screams 'Queen of the Harpies!' has its appeals.

Do they have Monorails in Eberon?

 

[Kristmaus]

Wow. A lot of answers.

As I said earlier, I spoke with my DM before creating the character (and I am speaking with him), just because I didn't want to spoil the fun to anyone. Also, I mentioned I DM'ed some other RPGs so I know (or, at least I think I know) how it is to lose control of the table as a DM.

So far the rest of the table haven't found it. At least once a session, me or the DM made a reference to the "magical" book I carry, which I read trying to learn Common...

 

[ThePlanarDM]

As long the player consistently plays in character and is not just making out of game jokes, I'm fun with almost any character. It's the ones that break immersion or make it impossible for the rest of us to have and make interesting decisions that ruin my fun.

 

[TaranTheWanderer]

In a strahd game, our characters were all siblings and we all spoke an invented language called “Family Cant”. Only the family members knew it. Our monk refused to speak any other language, even though he was fluent in a few. It lead to awkward moments where he was speaking (sometimes loudly) to NPCs and they had no idea what he was saying. Sometimes it was frustrating and painful to watch.

In another game I played a creepy doctor who used ‘science’. He was a necromancer wizard. I always cast unseen servant and had refluffed the spell to be the spirit of his deceased daughter. He carried her stuffed toy as a focus for the spell and always spoke to the servant ike it was his child. He was searching for a way to bring back his dead wife and daughter and it lead to all sorts of creepy and awkward situations.