Best character concepts you have heard / seen / played

[The Big L]

Corvinus Dawnchild, Tiefling Priest of Sarenrae. Reasons for extremem enjoyment?
It was my first character, and even though he had Darkvision, had an IMMENSE fear of the dark. Not a huge problem most of the time, as the humans in the party had to carry torches anyway. Also, instead of the darkness spell, the DM let me take Light as an At-Will spell, which was constantly on my spell focus (gold tip of Corvinus' tail).

It BECAME a problem when the BBEG in our RotRL game dropped a darkness spell on him. Suffice to say, Fireball when on the 4th floor of a flamable building led to ALOT of questions from local authroities, and a large bon fire for all to enjoy...

[Azten]

Urizen wrote:

White Bishop to C4.

If I may? *flips the board*

Can the thread get back on track now?

[Lokio]

Played a kalashtar wilder in the Eberron setting one time. Technically he was half-kalashtar. Kalashtar can have children with any race humans can, and the child will match the species of the same-gender parent. Since basically kalashtar are humans just with an extra soul in there, and they look human, he was not aware he was kalashtar. He heard voices in his head sometimes, and had "dreams" that were actually memories from the soul he shared a body with. Of course this creature was a dream spirit from a plane that would be maddening to understand for a child. Naturally, children raised by their kalashtar parents would be taught all this from birth. Kalashtar lead very strict lifestyles to cope with this. My character had no such luxury, and as such was slightly insane. He would randomly change languages in mid sentence, stop what he was doing at the drop of a hat, and talked about things no one else (not being psionic) understood. In his debut session, the party awakens on an airship under attack. The others all look for ways off the ship when the elemental ring is destroyed, sending the airship into free fall, but he decides to stay on and enjoy the ride. He survived through magic item shenanigans and screamed "Let's do it again!" in a language only knew spoke.

[Jerry Wright 307]

I have a Barbarian named Balahir (some call him "Bellyhair the Beer-bellian"), who lost control of his greatsword in a combat, and was forced to snatch up a halberd from an armorial display nearby.

He rolled multiple criticals with the halberd in the fight, and afterward declared it must be magical, since it seemed to cleave handily through everyone's armor. When the mage checked it and determined it didn't radiate magic, Balahir promptly declared it an artifact.

And so the legend of Balahir the Barbarian and his artifact Halberd was born.

Balahir, as you can surmise, was not very bright. But he was immensely strong (Strength 25)

Later on in life, he married a great amazonian woman, and they gave birth to a beautiful blonde daughter, named Valkyr. She inherited her father's brawn and her mother's beauty.

Since Valkyr was so pretty, Balahir nicknamed her Valkyr the Good-Looking (best said in a faux "Norse" accent). Unfortunately, if brains were matches, she'd freeze to death.

Valkyr had a daughter, by a paladin whom Valkyr described as "the Pretty Man" (she never found out his name). She named her daughter Georgette. Georgette was even more beautiful (and blonde) than her mother. She also inherited the family strength.

It doesn't seem possible, but, if anything, Georgette was less intelligent than her mother, as well. She was the quintessential airhead. Early on in her career, she did a favor for the Mad Mage of Ludlum, a truly weird NPC from a friend's campaign, who had a different selection of spells every time he was encountered.

Ludlum (as he was known) was rescued by Georgette from children throwing rotten fruit, and her beautiful outfit was splattered with foul-smelling fruit in the process. Ludlum cast a spell to remove the stains, and wound up draining all the color from Georgette's clothes. The spell became permanent; everytime Georgette's clothing became soiled, it was instantly cleaned, restored to pristine whiteness.

And so Georgette the Everwhite became reknowned throughout the land as "that bimbo you can't look at in the sun", and had many adventures, most of which involved people taking advantage of the girl's 5 Intelligence. When she gets the joke, it is to be hoped she doesn't realize it's on her, because she tends to forget how strong she is and breaks people. She always apologizes for it afterward, but that can be to a grieving widow.

This wonderful family has entertained many players and DMs over the years.

[Josh M.]

This thread got me thinking about other characters (that were more than on-the-spot slung-together dice fests).

I recall one ex-slave character from a Star Wars Saga game set in the Legacy era. She was Aranu Fen, a female Twi'Lek noble, whose family got caught up in some shady dealings and her clan was kidnapped and sold into slavery.

Aranu was eventually sold to the leader of a Mandalorian clan. She was treated as one would expect a clan of warborn mercenaries would treat "property," especially when they found out she was nobility.

After a few years, instead of just crumbling under the weight of her oppressive surroundings, she had built up an amazing resilience and restraint. She was so determined to get free and find her family, she refused to let being a slave stop her. She used her wiles and influence to get closer to the Mandalorian clan leader, and eventually earned his favor enough to be his exclusively.

He was impressed with her unbreakable will, and eventually promoted her out of the ranks of slavery, to be his concubine. Aranu agreed to this, knowing in the back of her mind this was the fastest means to finding a way out of the camp and look for her family. The Mando leader taught her combat basics, how to use firearms, and more. She absorbed as much information about combat and survival as was available, for she knew that there was a very good possibility she'd have to fight her way out.

But, before she could put much of this newfound knowledge to good use, fate came calling in the shape of a Galactic Alliance assault team; after a recent pillage of a GA controlled world, the GA had been tracking the Mandalorians and traced them back to their home camp, and attacked relentlessly. Under the cover of the chaos of battle, Aranu tried to escape. She had almost made her way to a GA craft when she was caught in an explosion and horribly wounded; her left arm had been completely incinerated, and much of the left side of her body scarred by shrapnel and burns. The GA overtook the Mandalorian camp, and Aranu was rushed to safety.

Fast forward two years; Aranu Fen, now sporting a cybernetic eye and artificial arm(with a built in computer relay in her forearm) had found her freedom, and now searches the galaxy for her lost family, and the person who kidnapped them in the first place. Her time with the Mandalorians left her cold and unfeeling, and hopes that once she has found her family, maybe she can find herself again.

[Armour]

I would say my best concept I've had was for a large scale/economic game which I joined late. The other characters were all Lawful Evil, building towns and businesses. I decided to get into the arms manufacturing biz.

The character was a warforged wizard, but stayed under illusions to make people think he was human. He was Chaotic Good, and treated all his workers extremely well. He exported high-grade, extremely powerful defensive weapons, and sold them to EVERYONE. This meant the coming war (which the campaign was ramping up to) would be difficult to win by any side as every city would be armed with anti-siege weaponry.

Slavery was a major part of the setting (for the evil empires) and my character was secretly working against it. Every night (warforged don't have to sleep) he would drop his illusion, load up on spells, and go destroy slavers, setting free the slaves or hiring them himself.

I was describing the character to a friend, and he said "Dude... you're Tony Stark."

I hadn't even realised it. But that is how I played it. it was amazing.

Even though the DM was incredibly pissed off when I started ripping down her slave economy piece by piece.

[Cuchulainn]

I have a character that I am running both in an online campaign here on the boards (Skulls and Shackles), as well as in a tabletop (home brew) campaign.

He is a gillman, aberrant-bloodline sorcerer.

In the tabletop game, my GM is allowing me to use feats from 3.5 (on a case by case basis). So, I started him with Scavenging gullet, and have been giving him Aberrant and Abyssal heritor feats with each feat level. He is slowly evolving into a Cthuhlian-nightmare.

All of the spell choices I have taken for him are creepy (no magic missiles, or fireballs) madness-inducing, body-warping, depths of the ocean kinds of stuff.

The rest of the party are sometimes amused, sometimes wary, and often nauseated by his actions.

The GM for the online campaign is going strictly with Pathfinder material, so he won't evolve quite as much, but I am striving to keep him unnerving.

In both instsnces, I'm having a blast playing him.

[EntrerisShadow]

That concept is awesome. Would actually fit well with the campaign I'm in right now; a homebrew Pirate-themed campaign our GM calls The Rogue Isles.

Sigh. Oh well.

My favorite concept to date though would have to be the Int 14 Wis 7 Abyssal-bloodline Sorcerer a friend played in a campaign I was DMing about a year ago. You had to be very specific in your line of questioning or else things could go very wrong. My favorite exchange:

Party Cleric: (Finds an artifact that radiates evil, but botches the Spellcraft check to identify it.) This has to be destroyed right now! Sorcerer, if I destroy this with my hammer will it explode or release negative energy?
The Sorcerer rolls a 30 on his Spellcraft check
DM: Although the artifact won't explode or release any sort of immediate impact, destroying it in such an abrupt fashion could tear a rift between dimensions that would provide a gate between this world and whatever level of the abyss it was crafted within. It could very likely be the beginning of creating a literal hell on earth.
Sorcerer: . . . Nope, won't explode.

[Cuchulainn]

It might ve amusing to play an adolescent dwarf who is a "late bloomer" and hasn't yet grown a beard. He is a bit of an embarrassment to his family, so they shipped him off to boarding school.

[Orthos]

Twigs wrote:

My GM is booting up a "magical academy" game in the coming weeks, and I'm having real trouble coming up with anything to play. Apparently a 19 year old character is "too old", so I'll be, for the first time, stuck with a character YOUNGER than me. Given that my last two characters were older than a hundred, I'm balking at the idea, and it pretty much rules out most of the long lived races as well.

I'd confirm with him whether or not he means ages literally or "human equivalent"... a 19 year old elf for example is a toddler at best and won't be adventuring or schooling anywhere.

If you can manage a teen-ish elf or dwarf, both of which would assume the age around 70-80 or so, and the DM agrees to human equivalents then that might help.

[Tirq]

Play a fighter and say there was a mistake in the "Amount of magic I can use."

[xanthemann]

the Bard-barian. Need I say more?

[Turin the Mad]

Inspiration from classical Greek mythology: a Master Summoner whose Eidolon is Pegasus. Plants "teeth" to summon monsters. It'd be nice to figure out feats or whathaveyou that work netter with this concept....

[xanthemann]

Everyone has heard of this one...A blind archer. When done right.

[Tirq]

xanthemann wrote:

Everyone has heard of this one...A blind archer. When done right.

Define Blind, an oracle with the Couded Vision is blind to things beyond 30'/60'. What truley would be impressive would be a Blind Wizard who writes in his spellbook in Brail.

[Fiendish_Dr_Wu]

Blindsight and Blindsense seem like they would work and have him go the Zen Archer route (just off the top of my head) would seem to fit the whole motiff.

Ideas are sparking, but they are mine I tell you...mine!

[xanthemann]

As long as it isn't an idea of a sparklie vampire your good.

[xanthemann]

I have yet to find anything offensive or creepy, yet. Back to the topic at hand...something simple but pulled it off once, very well I might add, before I was told to tear up the character. The GM never wanted to see it again....A fighter whose only weapon was a shield.
Yes, like Captain America...sort of. The concept was actually based on the shield carrier for a Paladin. The Paladin was a real pain, all high and mighty, above the common man...you get the idea. He treated shield boy like poo. What he didn't know was the shield boy had been practicing with the shield and seeing as how he was a little orphan boy from the monastery, he was able to incorporate some of the monks moves as well.
Then comes the day shield boy gets fed up with the snooty Paladin. Big fight ensues over the shield and Pally looses.
Thus was begun a new class. That was the history of the class I had envisioned, but when I made a character for that class and used him...It was very effective, but...the GM was not happy with it. (I didn't tear it up.)

[Tirq]

I once played with a hilarious character. He is a human Spellslinger who only whispers to his gun. Doesn't talk to anyone else, just his gun. Spells? Whispers to his gun. "What do you think of this?" *Glares* "That's what I thought."

I doubt that anyone would find that offensive.

[Dorn Of Citadel Adbar]

Elven monk/magus with the blackblade and kensai archetypes. Quite fun an almost impossible to hit.

[zohaletha]

I have played and played with a multitude of characters in a variety of game sessions over the decades. I can list 3 favorites of my own characters and some of other player characters.

One of my own characters that was a favorite for years in a large role-playing group was a 7th Sea priest I made. And I always remembered he was a priest...on a pirate ship. He was great. I used confessional booths to pass secret messages, get information and hide things. I used administering last rites as a way to get onto otherwise inaccessible crime scenes. I used ordination immunities to go whereever I wanted. I rarely used a sword, wasn't a healer and didn't touch magic. My character was completely skill based...and he became the single most important character in the group in a campaign that lasted years and even had a few annotations in some gamer magazines.

My favorite character from a fellow player was a Middle-Earth character played in the original I.C.E. system who was a mage and fumbled a spell check. He internalized his spell and lost all spellcasting abilities for a month. Instead of whining about the situation or insisting on changing characters, he walked over to a fallen goblin we had just slain, picked up it's short sword and held it up and said, "I'll use this." Pathfinder, the mage's name, became one of our most valuable characters in another campaign that lasted years.

[EntrerisShadow]

I'm glad to see this thread hasn't been locked yet, but I think we're on dangerous ground here. We might need to reign it in.

But getting back to the main, another favorite of mine was my friend's foul-mouthed, erotic-fiction writing dwarf. Unfortunately this has been over a year so I forget the name, but I enjoyed it despite my usual dislike of dwarves, if only for the innumerable dwarf specific euphemisms for -ahem- "mining the lower tunnels". This came to a hilarious peak (nadir?) when he began teaching the simpleton half-orc all the wrong things about how to properly impress a woman.