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Message: <blockquote data-quote="[OMENRPG]Ben" data-source="post: 5802460" data-attributes="member: 6677983">I have a tendency to make very memorable NPC's, often to my own dismay as they sometimes are never encountered.Two that stand out the most to me:Balasar, 4e Dragonborn Warlock, homebrew world. One of the party members, Skrok who was a wild dwarf from the savage Lexnon Forest and had never encountered a city before, stumbled into the third largest metropolis on a diplomatic mission from his homeland. He had never seen "domesticated" trees, large-scale buildings, or even clothing in a contemporary sense. He was in all effects a baby wandering into an incomprehensible nightmare land. Balasar, a drunken hobo continuously shunned by his family and society, found poor little dirty Skrok nestled in the branches of a tree in a city park. Together, they hunted a pack of wild (stray) dogs, ate a feast of dogflesh, and became life-long friends. Balasar went on to be by far the most powerful Warlock in the world, eventually moving along with the party into the upper twenties. Eventually he became an Aspect of Law, embodying the ability to control the laws of nature, energy, and somewhat time. He died once protecting the party, in which case my actual players were in tears. I was so shaken up and hurt by his tragic loss that I left early that night and stared at the ceiling in sorrow for hours. Eventually he was resurrected by the characters (now a considerably higher level) and slowly acquired his Demi-God powers. He sacrificed himself again, this time with the majority of the party, to bring harmony to the imbalanced material plane and saving billions of lives. He is and was my favorite and best creation I think as a DM.My other favorite is Toogan Harbeck, an industrious dwarf artificer with a boisterous and business-oriented personality. He is constantly heckling, stealing, creating, selling, and redesigning everything he can get his hands on. Think of a mixture between Barbosa from Pirates of the Caribbean (the first one, not when he gets all weird), a crazy wizard, and Friar Tuck (from Costner's version). He built a portable lab with magical tools to allow him to forge on the go, and would often make (and then sadly, lose) millions of gold in a matter of very short time. He was always very helpful to the party, but at the end of whatever deal they struck, they always seemed to get the shorter end of the stick, or often enough no stick at all. Occasionally he would prove to be truly useful, saving their hides a few times with some shady folk he had dealings with in the past. Two of my favorite villains:Maugras, a 3.5 master necromancer (CR~22) who wanted to effectively rule the world. He was so universally loved by nearly every city he visited that often once he conquered a people they threw elaborate parades for him to enter, at which point speeches were made to a fascinated populace. He was an exceptionally dangerous villain because in many ways the party agreed with his logic, and could understand his motivations. Unfortunately, one of his primary tactics was the Undying Legion, an ever-replenishing horde of undead soldiers kept under his control by a series of Eidolons and epic level artifacts. The other was the Primordial of Passion, an extremely emotional and violent creature of ancient power. He was the primary villain in the same campaign involving Balasar, and was the primary reason the Material Plane was so out of whack. He gave anger and exponential force to most living things, including plants, insects, etc. Picture cows that would spontaneously become pregnant, within a matter of minutes, their pregnancy would progress to term, the calf would burst forth without warning as it started to mature to near-adulthood, and the cycle would continue several times in less than an hour. As you can imagine, the world was very messy for a while...I think NPCs serve as one of the best ways for a party to experience the world. Nothing can embody the personalities, beliefs, or culture of a setting better than a character who the party can become close with. I like to make several such NPCs every game, and almost more attention goes into them than the quest line so that organic and natural quests will just, happen.</blockquote>

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