Personality

[Family]

I've noticed that sometimes when PCs build their characters they ignore the persona and end up with a blank minded kill driven machine akin to Casey Ryback, Jack Bauer, Jason Borne, or even Batman.

What emontionally dynamic avatars have you seen played or have played that were fun?

What in their build contributed to this? What were their motivations?

In our group right now an Eladrin Fey Warlock is stealing the show, a fey pact fey who take environmental issues VERY seriously but is wonderfilled and fun loving.

 

[El Mahdi]

IMO, "build" really doesn't have much to do with it, unless, you actually tailor the build to fit the character, not just what combos of skills, powers, feats and stats work best together. Personality is moving beyond the stats and alignment (or un-alignment). For me, it's the best part of creating a character. Their are no rules to limit this aspect. It's 100% you and your creativity. I agree, I hate "characters" with no "character".

I saw a martial artist type character (not D&D - Palladium) played that found himself in a virtual gladiatorial fight (damn Chi-Town). He was taking damage that caused pain, but realised that it wasn't real. So, he adhered to his Zen philosophy and refused to fight simply for the sake of fighting. He just sat down and meditated, no matter what happened to him. Kind of threw the GM a little, but it was pretty cool

 

[Primitive Screwhead]

I would echo that the 'build'..even the system, has little to do with this. I think its purely how the player approaches the game and what inspiration is being used to draw the character.

Recently there have been a flood of the "Jason Bourne"s unemotional killing machine archtypes in popular movies. It stands to reason that many people model thier characters along these lines.

I never claim to have strong, emotional characters.. but I always try to create a character that is tied to the setting and has a history. Many of these characters ended up with unfortunate endings

Examples:
RoleMaster, playing a Rogue in a group that learned that they were the only chance to stop the world from being destroyed... all they had to do is march two days south and defeat a powerful which. So I chose to head north for half a day and spend the remaining day and a-half of existance in blissful drunken debauchery! For some reason the party Paladin took offense to that...

Star Wars, playing a failed Jedi who seemed to always have a portable bar around. After three sessions where none of the party members noticed his adept use of telepathy and the Jedi mind trick {which saved the party much pain and potential dismemberment}... he was too good at hiding his powers and got left behind as a 'useless old drunk'.

Characters are lots of fun!


..of course, cold blooded killing machines are fun too

 

[Stormtalon]

Personally, I've played a Bariaur Warblade who, due to a VERY hard knock on the head, suffered from the delusion that he was merely a mount, while the true warrior and hero was.... a teddy bear which rode on his back. Due to a bit of DM fiat (he loved the concept), he was able to actually animate the bear and speak through it, leading to this stolid, silent fellow being ridden by a very loud, very flamboyant, very chivalrous stuffed toy.

He traumatized barkeeps the world over, he did.

 

[El Mahdi]

. . . playing a Rogue in a group that learned that they were the only chance to stop the world from being destroyed... all they had to do is march two days south and defeat a powerful which. So I chose to head north for half a day and spend the remaining day and a-half of existance in blissful drunken debauchery! For some reason the party Paladin took offense to that...

Star Wars, playing a failed Jedi who seemed to always have a portable bar around. After three sessions where none of the party members noticed his adept use of telepathy and the Jedi mind trick {which saved the party much pain and potential dismemberment}... he was too good at hiding his powers and got left behind as a 'useless old drunk'. . .

I'm seeing a theme here. I think some of your characters could benefit from the "12-step program" system rumored to be in the DMG2. (it could also help players with an unhealthy obsession to gaming and gaming forums)

 

[Henry]

To describe the memorable characters I've seen played would fill a small book. Very few times have I seen nothing but efficient killer types played at our game table in the past ten years, because everyone has a "hook" that they want to try.

I've seen noble warriors who were born of violence, and who served Bane because it promised real order to a war-torn land; I've seen Paladins whose ultimate destiny was to rebel against his own god and all other gods because they "treat all mortals as playthings", and so became his own deity; I've seen a pacifist shifter who was unbelievable at combat, but refused to kill anyone, in fact because of his exalted aura ending some fights completely without violence; and I've seen one artificer PC whose whole goal was to gain prestige in Sharn and set up his own shop to make money. In order to get him to adventure, you didn't talk about "cash rewards", you talked "profit shares in other companies." That latter guy I even had to come up with rules for running his company, and kept his profit and loss statements on an Excel spreadsheet, so in addition to adventuring, he had to worry about things like clientele and magic item component commodities....

I don't ever intend to do that again.

 

[Frostmarrow]

The single best character I've come across was a wizard. The player was unused to 2ed D&D and maybe that was what made the character so great.

He was an arcanist who meddled with magic from BeYoND. Every spell he cast had an element of unnaturalness to it. Even though the spells were strange, deranged even, the character came across as rather cute.

Everything was pods and tentacles. SuMMoN MoNSTeR produced small purple tripods eager to do the wizards bidding. WHiSPeRiNG WiND conjured up a small purple tripod with a mailman's cap that ran off with the message. eVArD'S BLaCK TeNTaCLes did pretty much what it says.

At one time when we were in particular hurry the arcanist suggested he would teleport us to the destination. We all agreed, but it turns out TeLePoRT wasn't an instant thing. No TeLePoRT only allowed us to trek through "bEyOnd" instead. It was a long and arduous journey, we spent hours sightseeing under the arcanist's guidance. BEYonD was an unsettling place to say the least.

 

[Oni]

You never know what'll lead to a character's personality. One of my favorite characters was a diviner who was a professor at Morgrave university at sharn who had one of his arms blown off by a trap on an expidition to xendrick. I had envisioned someone coolheaded and goodhumoured who had come to terms with his limitations. First game comes up, the PC's are just beginning to get together as a group and first time meeting the druid (who was a sailor) is greeted with "Hey! Stumpy." That character never became the happy fellow I thought of orginally but rather continously irritated and snippy (especially when he had to ask for help) and locked in a constant back and forth with said uncouth druid and probably one of the characters I've enjoyed playing the most over the years.

But my absolute favorite was in 2nd ed. I had only been playing rpg's for a year and thought it was really weird because logically with levels why would the most archtypal mage of fantasy be 1st level, that is the old white bearded wizard. My solution was he had been a brilliant archmage who through years of work to save to world found out he had been duped and in fact ended up doing something really terrible. As punishment the mage council had him level drained back to nothing (friends on the council kept him from being outright killed) but the trama was so great it snapped his mind. He winds up a drunk in a bar and wind up starting his adventuring career again years later when a stranger presses a spellbook into his hand and tells him he'll need it. Of course he's half off his rocker at this point has amnesia and doesn't remember very much of anything was very spacey and tended to trail off in the middle of sentances. Of course he wasn't as far gone as he let on and would often use his "senility" to get his way and was a bit of a con man. It was all very cliche but tons of fun and played complete with oldman voice (think like master roshi). I'd kind of like to play him again.

Of course I don't feel as though I've done either of these characters justice I could probably write quite abit about the mental landscape of either of them but I feel like one of those obnoxious people that ramble on about their past characters, but it's been nostalgic. I hadn't thought about Finius the Chastised for a long time.


[Lest I be totally self-absorbed I'll mention a moment that has alwasy stuck out in my mind from another player as sort of proof that even the merciless killing machine can have a bit of character when done with some flair. Party decides we can't take the goblins with us we've captured and they know to much to they'll have to be put to the sword, that cold hearted warrior immediately grabs up their spears walks over to them and she cuts their bonds. Throwing their weapons on the ground she demands they pick them up. Once they do she declares, "It's better to die with your weapon in your hand," and snicker snack two dead goblins. It was a little awe-inspiring.]

 

[That One Guy]

Soo... I was in a game recently where a player was pretty much a death-dealing machine. The player/character both were just out to kill stuff. He was an elven ranged ranger who multi-classed into cleric of the Raven Queen. Our DM had some fun with having him not really knowing his own past. If a person had developed their background more it'd be a bit frustrating, but if a player doesn't really develop their own character's BG something like that could get them more involved. A series of plot events propelled our combat-heavy group into a session that was hours of roleplay w/ a brief plot-oriented fight. Everyone really developed. Unfortunately, I moved out of town before we could play again.

...still waiting for DDI.

 

[DrunkonDuty]

Primtive Screwhead wrote:
Recently there have been a flood of the "Jason Bourne"s unemotional killing machine archtypes in popular movies. It stands to reason that many people model thier characters along these lines.

What, only recently?