What is the best Schtick you've ever...

[Gronin]

just remembered my favourite NPC who had a bit of a schtick.

This NPC has appeared in every Shadowrun campaign I have run and he/she is alsways popular with the players. This individual is always a contact of one of the players and while the details of the contact may vary one thing is always the same, no matter what time he/she is contaacted (he/she is always inthe middle of a firefight). There is always some chuckles at the situatons that this NPC found him/her self and I am sure that calls were made just to try to challenge my creativity.

 

[Traveon Wyvernspur]

Thestu - Human Paladin NPC that frequently talks to himself. This NPC traveled with the party for a long time and was always talking to himself. He became an ex-Paladin for fleeing a major combat that caused the party Cleric to die. The Cleric was resurrected and Thestu retired in shame and gave the PC his magic morningstar as a gift. When the Cleric held it for the first time, the morningstar telepathically introduced himself as Dakhut. It was the first time the party realized that Thestu was talking to a sentient weapon the entire time.

I loved this one and the thought occurred to me that if I did this I'd have a weapon named "Dammet" and the character would start everything off when talking to the weapon with "Damn it..."

Reminds me that I played a wizard who was a bit mad, he had an invisible friend he'd always talk to and he into arguments with. The other PCs always looked at him funny, but kept him around because his AOE spells were very effective.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Drow Ftr/MU/Th who thought she was a specially programmed robot from a LARP theme park (think Westworld or Dream Park). Spoke in modern terms. The truth of her situation was never revealed.

Standard 3.5Ed Sorcerer who wore scale armor and used a Maul- channeled all of his spells into Draconic Lightning Breath in combat.

 

[john112364]

I had an npc magic user (a high level contact for the players) in 2e that at every opportunity would play chess against his unseen servant. And usually lost!

 

[SkredlitheOgre]

As a DM:

When I started DM'ing a 3/3.5 campaign, one of my players randomly decided that he was going to go this way instead of to the meeting with the informant. He picked a house off of the map and said 'I'm going there.' He opened the door and found himself facing what would have amounted to a goblin Mafia don meeting, if he had stuck around. The lead goblin did the 'pulling your thumb across your throat' gesture and pointed at the PC. From that point on, every session, a goblin 'hitman' would show up and do 1 point of damage to the PC, regardless of his armor class.

As a Player:

When I last played GURPS, the GM was basing the world off of Black Lagoon. Smuggling, gunfire, insane women...the whole nine. Seeing as how I was branching out as a player at that point, I decided to make a male exotic dancer/'drink boy' at a club called Mama-san's. His name was Jacque Burr-ton. He worked his way into the neutral graces of a smuggler (not good graces, because the player who was running the smuggler hated my character) and got a job as a smuggler. I was mediocre with guns and other weapons, but I was awesome with people. Oh, and even though there were gunfights pretty much every 10 minutes, I was a hemophiliac. He survived only due to incredible rolls on my part. If we had kept up that campaign, Jacque would have realized that he never died because he had been 'chosen by God' to perform some insanely stupid quest.

 

[OnlineDM]

I love Factotum the Bard. This is a character I created for a semi-regular Living Forgotten Realms game, where a particular DM would be running a game every week with the goal being that the same characters would keep playing and leveling up together over time (it sort of worked).

Factotum, as you might guess from the name, does everything. And he thinks he's fantastic at everything. "Oh sure, I know lots about history. Let me tell you a story..."

For instance, the party came upon a woman kidnapped by monsters. When we found her, she was in the middle of giving birth (and the monsters weren't trying to hurt her). The labor wasn't going well, and Factotum waded through combat on his way to the woman. "Oh, I've delivered lots of babies before. Piece of cake."

Yeah, she died. Factotum decided to actually take training in the Heal skill after that.

Mechanically, he's a Bard with equal stats in all ability scores except Charisma, where he tossed his one extra point buy and his human racial bonus. Every feat he takes is a multiclass feat, giving him training in more skills. At level 4, he's a Bard / Fighter / Rogue . Warlord / Druid.

No, he's not especially effective in combat, but he's extremely confident. The DM played along with this, and in one game where Factotum was not involved he had the party discover some teenagers with Factotum posters hanging on their walls. He has his own trading cards (which he prints himself and hands out). He's a little like Gilderoy Lockhart from the Harry Potter books, without the underlying malevolence.

Extreme confidence is a fun shtick.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

To paraphrase a dirty joke:

"Heyyyy...nice schtick!"

 

[Thagdal]

I currently have a Dwarf Cleric that will eat anything, he tries to cook up every enemy creature that he runs across after killing it and then purifying it with a cleanse spell.

What are your best or favorites that you've seen?

I had a player do that. In a space/sci fantasy type game. Ended up eating too much of the wrong things, started mutating. Had to quest to save his form, had the glibbering mouther mini all ready for him.

 

[Kzach]

Every character I play has some schtick or other, usually related to a mechanic as well as a roleplaying element.

A current example would be my sunpriest who likes to 'bless' people with the Cleansing Light of Amaunator, aka Sun's Glow

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

A buddy of mine played a cleric of St. Cuthbert who, in order to use his Heal spell, had to deliver it with a strike from his cudgel.

Another buddy of mine played a PC who would kill foes instead of releasing them if certain other PCs told him to "show _____ the door" in order to conceal the killings from a LG PC in the party.