What's the Most Asinine Character Idea/Concept You've Dealt With?

[Allensh]

When I used to run Champions, one person in my group decided that, since organizations were built on points like characters were, he wanted to play an organization as a PC. The whole organization.

Later, he decided that, as an excuse to be involved in the campaign but not actually have to risk a character in combat, that he would play the headquarters. All the staff, all the equipment, and the sentient computer system.

I said No to both of these.

Allen

 

[Hodgie]

My landlord told me about his game...

He plays a flying squirrel based upon Dr. Hibbard from Simpsons and Kichwa (sp?) (when Peter Griffin finds out he is black). The only other person in the party is a giraffe who he uses as an aircraft carrier to take off and land.

 

[VirgilCaine]

My landlord told me about his game...

He plays a flying squirrel based upon Dr. Hibbard from Simpsons and Kichwa (sp?) (when Peter Griffin finds out he is black). The only other person in the party is a giraffe who he uses as an aircraft carrier to take off and land.

Wow, that's an interesting mix of psilocybin, ecstacy, LSD, and marijuana, that he has there.

 

[Zappo]

That's totally cool. If I had a pc that did that, I would try to find some way of mechanically awarding him... even if it was just extra XP. And I think I'd try to have the villians do it too so that she/he didn't feel stupid or silly.

As incredible as it feels to say it, this is covered under core rules. Check "demoralize an opponent" under the Intimidate skill.

 

[Evilhalfling]

Well there are the characters that I make for convention games- but they are wierd on purpose and fit together, mostly - I will be running some of these games again at the next gencon - so spoiler tags are used on the games I plan to run again.

Catching a Cloud
a halfling thief/ranger, who got drunk, drank his own potion of flying when he ran out of booze, and woke up on a solid cloud - where he was trapped for at least a year with no way to get down. He became a ranger in th process of surviving.

A whimiscal Cleric/Bard/Thief/Fighter/ex-Paladin(CG)/Fighter - who had a story reason for each class taken, and had accidently broken her paladin vows. She was in love with the party wizard, and kept studying his books.

A Bard who had no ranks in perform. He was a climbing daredevil - and the 3.0 spells and skills were perfect, but he had no ability to inspire. He thought Spider Climb was cheating but feather fall was a good substitue for saftey ropes.

Kittens! : the Ascension (WoD)
most of the party are shapechanging housecats, archtypes of cat personalities.
One is an actual witches cat. Telepathy and light Telekineses at will. No combat abilities to speak of, but this game is all about the Roleplay.

Spoiler

Dark and Stormy Night:
* Transvestite elven woman, trying to ruin, but not kill the rest of the party for crimes done by the grandfather of other PCs.
* Military procurerer (CE thief) trying to prove he is a knight, and worthy of a relatives estate.
* Bard (circus acrobat) also trying to prove he is a knight, and worthy of a relatives estate.
* Sorcerer housemaid - primary power - summoning poodles.

Saga of the Sands:
*A Jinn, pretending to be human he carried vials of colored water saying they were potions of flying, invisiblity, enlarge etc.
* A Shair genie binder LE, the only person in a good/neutral party who wanted to finish the quest. The quest wasn't evil, but he would benfit politcally from finishing it.
In playtest he never had a clue about the above, but was supcious of the .....
* Blink Dog, who could take human form - the compainon of an exalted, but insane druid. He also wore fake magic items to explain his powers.
* The insane VoP druid who thought that a mysterious talking yellow dog was his spirit guide.
in playtesting it took him over an hour to realize that the dog was real, and in the party.
* The spoiled princess/cat burglar archtype - she pulled an Amadalla and went with the party to collect her own Dowery, with a good chance of chucking the quest/marriage and running of with the .....
* Bandit Lord. a ranger/thief with a tribe of 80 bandits under his command posing as a simple desert guide while tring to woo the above character.
In the playtest game she ran off with the Jinn instead, after he had accidently proposed.

 

[eris404]

3) A juggler that triple wields longswords. He's got the normal two hands, but he constantly juggles three swords, so it's triple-wielding :\

That is hilarious. I can't stop giggling over it!

I know there has to be several in our group (we had some doozies as players), but for some reason the only one I can think of is the guy who played a monk who was always biting people (the character not the player). There was no real reason for the character to bite anyone - he was just a human monk - but we'd get combat actions like this:

DM: The ogre sees you - what do you do?
Player: I do a backflip over the ogre to land behind him. Then I bite him on the shoulder.

Do you think some players have issues that they use RPGs to work out?

 

[Ferret]

Four words, Character Name: Foreplay Forbidden

 

[Mighty Veil]

Most retarded PCs

1. Druid characters who are radical enviormental-militants (I've seen too many).

2. An arch-mage played by someone who thinks he's *real* smart, just like his alter ego/PC. But in reality he's an idiot. Poor spell prep and when to use them. Ideas in combat always fail.

3. The thief PC who always steals from other PCs, and the player rubs it in the faces of the other players.

4. Most Mary-sue characters, especially if they're an NPC.

5. An annoying low wisdom knight character one player made once. The player cheated by taking advantage on a inexperienced DM, so his gear and stats were high. His horse mount was even stronger! He gave this guy high STR and CON but a low WIS. So he always said and did the dumbest things the player could think of. It was an annoying character on so many levels. But at least he died in his first adventure.

6. A Saurial sorceror. The player had a okay concept. A saurial saurial with a bunch of familiars who travelled in his alchemist wagon. But the player cheated with the PC. He took advantage of an inexperienced DM (same one as above). He didn't want to use the saurial or any lizardmen templates. Instead it was a human template with extra lizard abilities. He got to use spells the wrong way (unseen servant flew his wagon around). And his stats were cheat rolled ("I may have an extremely high CHA but my low STR makes up for it").

7. PCs with cheat stats (The fighter is allowed to have over 18 STR and CON since he has a low CHA and the rest of his stats are 10 or 11).

8. The anti-social character. I suppose the above mentioned thief falls into this too. It's funny to me seeing players act surprise when their anti-social/anti-party PCs are killed off or abandon by the rest of the party.

9. Once me and a DM created on purpose the most stupid character we could think of, RETOAD THE RETARD! Basic D&D Magic-user with 3s in all stats, who could only cast ventriloquism . He was dumb so he only ventriloquism in a bad sounding cat meow ("Meow! Meow! Meow!). He actually made it to second level. We were impressed.

10. BATMAN
By the same player who poorly played the "smart" Archmage. It was for Champions and the characters really needed to be... tough! But he spent too much in skills and talents, leaving a PC who had troubles defeating henchmen. What had started out as this player's attempt to play his favorite comic book hero turned into some PC who became a running joke. The GM even had the butler act as if this guy was nuts, ie. he's some jerk who thinks he's Batman. Come to think of it. This player had a hard time making workable PCs for Champion. But Batman was a classic for stupid characters.

 

[Mighty Veil]

I just remembered, Robbie the Ice Cube. It was a joke character I created for an adventure. I had the real character (an elf) in my pocket. Just wanted to see the DM's reaction. Robbie was an intelligent ice cube who fought with a toothpick. Joke was on me, because the DM wasn't paying attention to the character and thought I had made an Ice Gensai, and okay'ed the character.

... I didn't play him even with the chance too.

 

[Jenna_Darknight]

Insane character concepts is something I personally do a lot (I'm currently running a former dwarf, who before being reincarnated as an Air Genasi, came down from the mountains and decided she was going to be a PRIATE, goddamnit, even if she didn't know the first thing about sailing.) This stems from a few things; my first DM gave me NO creative control over what I was playing and I was running with a group that played Lawful Good as Lawful Stupid. This has led me to tend to play a lot of monster races who hang around Chaotic Neutral to Neutral Evil and tend to be either over the top or just snarky. Personal favorite is still Sesshessmala, a sarcastic Mindflayer Hexblade/Tempest whose name was such a pain to say my group just dubbed him 'Otis'.

It's probably not surprising as a DM I'm very 'if you can make it work believably, I'll let you do it' about character creation. However, in the first session of a dead campaign I was running on Friday evenings, we had a player who decided he was going to homebrew himself a Grue PC. I never saw a character sheet until the game got rolling and we learned he'd made himself fire immune. The first session saw our Satyr Druid gouge his eye out and the group seriously consider leaving him to be eaten by an Assassin Vine.

Outside of that though, the players who come up with something stupid generally make it work excellently. In an upcoming campaign I have the nicest necromancer ever in a party with a Gnome with an INT of 8 whose trying to both become a Mercykiller and a Paladin. I love my players. ^.^