Mine was a Wild Magic Sorcerer that vehemently believed he was a regular city guardsman and explained every bit of magic he produced away as pure happenstance.
I had a really neat idea about playing a changeling bladesinger who most likely pretended to be elven to learn the art, although I did have a not-quite-RAW idea about the old switched-at-birth changeling myth, where his elven “parents” would have taught him before he slipped up and they realized what he was.
He was actually three characters in one: a mostly nondescript human “bard”, spinning extremely tall tales about a mysterious elven bladesinger who doled out vigilante justice at night (also the changeling), and the changeling himself, who hated the way people looked at his true form, would only have revealed it to the party if he had no other choice, and really just wanted to be a hero in a group of adventurers, doing the kind of stuff he made up and sang about in taverns.
I came up with this concept a few years ago, but even before COVID I was kind of my group’s forever DM, so even if I ended up at a gaming table again soon I probably wouldn’t get to play it, so if you like it, feel free to use it. You cannot steal what is gifted!
A Gnome Artificer who was mute. It was interesting to use only visual langauge to communicate with people. I had a “system” where I could use the magic items / features you get from Gnome and Artificer to talk if I decided I really needed to, but I tried to limit that both for in universe reasons, and meta reasons. Kinda defeats the purpose if you can just magic your way out of it. The idea was that she was cursed by a fey creature, and could cheat a little bit with magic, but eventually the curse would hurt too much to talk more than a little. Eventually I started to feel like the trope of Nynaeve from The Wheel of Time, only replace hair pulling with glares and knowing smiles etc.
Reborn tabaxi artificer armorer with a mechanically different though RP similar “living armor”. The living armor is the reason i was “reborn” as its keeping me alive longer but the curse of the living armor is of divine nature as i stole it from an evil cult, so removing it required a monumental effort (high level NPCs basically didnt exist).
The character reached an actual satisfying conclusion as there was an “enlightenment” challenge we managed to find that was heavily skill based and artificers are obscenely good at skill challenges (dm also liked tool checks where relevant, and was lenient with the skill training rules, reborn helped too, resulted in being able to roll d20+stat+prof*expertise+int+guidance(d4)+reborn(d6) on checks i needed to push). The enlightenment ultimately lead to access to enough divine power to break both the curse of the armor and of my undeath.
Ultimately though, despite how fun the RP around it was, it was one of my more OP characters considering how much it trivialized skill checks which that DM really loved.
I tried and failed to tone it down with my next character, which thanks to party dynamic became the single most OP BS i ever made even if it wasnt crazy good alone. Wanted to make a magic infiltrator and went with changeling + aberrant mind sorcerer. Ended up getting a shadowfell shard too. Mindsliver leading to a subtle quickened shadowfell shard boosted CC spell (fav was psychic lance since it wasnt concentration and almost nothing is immune to incapacitated, though hold person, and hypnotic pattern, and the like were also thrown frequently too) was an obscenely powerful combo, and since another new player made a DPS rogue+gloomstalker build, the only way for anything to have any chance of living is lots of legendary resistance and an obscene health pool. This was also a crazy fun build, that the power of it ended up being its downfall as everything we fought ended up being several CR higher than anyone of our level had any right to tangle with. (also yes, i know you can’t normally subtle + quicken, read the Psionic Sorcery power of aberrant sorcerers)
Not mine, but a collaborativr effort: Young dryad loses physical body and is imprisoned in a robotic shell. She escapes and now all of her former magical druid powers are a combination of mechanical contraptions and just a dash of magic. She runs on magic energy, but her acid spray cantrip is truly a small vaporizer embedded in her palm. Really cool, but the Player stop playing that char vecause we restricted her wild shape to much :/ in hindsight, i really dont like my dming decisions regarding that char
We were playing a Ravnica campaign so I made an Orzhov Order Cleric who was a criminal attorney.
Life is short. Debt is eternal!
For a short adventure / one-shot, I played an intelligence-based tome warlock (using some of the play test materials). His patron was… himself, in the past. He was a terrible evil wizard who realized the error of his ways, wiped his own memory, and restarted. His tome was just his old spell book, most of which was pretty gnarly stuff. Slowly finding that out would have been a fun journey if he was a long-term character.
Low wis warlock who is convinced he’s actually a Paladin, and is confused why his oath keeps seeming to change arbitrarily. Thought that signing the contract was making his oath.
In the first campaign I ever played in, I ran a necromancy wizard that was neutral good.
Basically, he grew up a hermit and has zero awareness of the taboos surrounding his school of magic. However, because of his alignment, he has a very different approach to how he uses his magic.
Whenever he has to raise undead to fight for him, he does it by asking for their aid rather than outright raising them. He approaches the practice more as a way to preserve the lives of the living rather than a way of amassing servants or power. When he no longer needs their help, he thanks them and tries to make sure they either return to their resting place or are given a proper burial.
His overarching goal is to ensure everyone lives a long, full life and wishes to find a way to resurrect others in the way other classes can to help achieve that goal.
Didn’t get to play him for long since the group kinda fell apart
These are amazing.
I’m going to shamelessly steal some of these for NPCs in my campaigns.
A tiefling divine soul sorcerer with the Criminal background. He was born to two pious tiefling clerics of Lathander who saw their fiendish blood as a curse, and prayed to cleanse their unborn child of devilish influence. When he was born a Divine Soul, his parents tried to raise him as their perfect priestess. He had to be a model tiefling, a representative of his entire race as well as Lathander himself. He chafed under the obligation and ran away from home, living on the streets and stealing to get by, all while trying to hide his divine soul powers out of a combination of rejecting them and just trying not to draw attention.
Slinking around in the shadows eventually led to him wandering into the Mists of Ravenloft, and he found himself in Barovia. He found his way into a party and essentially just acted like the party rogue for a bit until combat came and he got backed into a corner and he suddenly started throwing around guiding bolts.
I was really looking forward to doing a whole arc with him reclaiming his powers and figuring out what it meant to be himself, but OOC stuff led to me leaving that group before he had a chance to leave his edgy rogue phase :c
A human beastmaster whose spellcasting focus was a tiny awakened shrub (which was slightly on fire) and had a flying snake pet.
He was a Pokemon trainer. “Cindertwig, use your Thorn Whip! Now, Create Bonfire!” “Flython, do a Poison Fang attack!”
We only had one very short combat for the 1 shot.
At first, I thought you were referencing the Old testament.
From Deadlands Classic:
A snake handling Pentecostal Blessed with the “grim servant of death” flaw. As he genuinely tries to save souls, people often get bit by the rattlesnakes he carries with him. Technically he doesn’t break the law but most sheriffs don’t want him sticking around. Sadly the campaign never got started.
I’ll preface this by noting that the sin of sloth has traditionally been understood to be a sin of omission, not just commission, i.e., you are insufficiently devoted to the things you ought to be.
Which means you could, in theory, have a (reflavored tiefling) devil paladin so devoted to sloth he works against evil causes. He’s not interested in good per se, it’s just that advancing the interests of good and traveling with a good adventuring party has the best ROI for failing to carry out his evil responsibilities.
Naturally, this has caused a fair amount of controversy among sloth devils, and there is a multi-century trial going on in the Hells about whether this ought to be allowed. This is not expected to be resolved in the foreseeable future because the advocates for both parties keep filing their responses well after petition deadlines expire.
I wanted to play a necromancer of no particular class, whose skeletal grandmother followed him around under his thrall. His village practiced a kind of ancestor worship where on holidays they animate the skeletons of their family and dress them up in clothes and jewelry and try to (symbolically) show them a good time as a gesture of appreciation. The tribe’s forest was burned down or village destroyed and PC had to run for it, taking only his most prized possession - the bones of his matriarch. Over the course of the campaign I’d like to add nicer clothes and jewelry to the skeleton, maybe give it magic items.
Ultimately it’s just not feasible to play a non-evil necromancer, and my table doesn’t play evil anyway either.
Throwaway idea: A Loxodon (elephant) bard named Harry Elefánte.
Silver Dragonborn Ancients Barbarian - I wanted to try a tanky build again, after not liking my attempt with paladin. He was Con primary, Str secondary, using a Warhammer and shield, and I was excited to see how the path of the ancients intersected with things like shield Master or sentinel. He was from a tribe of remnant Dragonborn after Abeir split back off. His tribe used to rely on shamans that communicated with their ancestors, but the last one had passed in his grandfather before he was identified as a new shaman. His sister died in a horrible accident, and his communication with her spirit was how he was identified. No one in the tribe knew how to help with his gift, so he went out into the world, accompanied by the spirit of his sister, to see what he could learn. His rage manifested as an icy white cloud rolling over him and falling to the ground, slowly revealing the spirits that accompanied him. I planned for him to notice and get to know more and more of his ancestors’ spirits as he got more powerful - including his grandfather, a taciturn half-dragon, and a happy-go-lucky silver dragon. Unfortunately, I had to bow out of the campaign just as we hit level 3, so I never got to experience any of it. ☹️
