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Disclaimer: This is a thread on cool things your/your friends
characters have done. NOT about gaming theory and such.
So how have your characters impacted the world? Did they save the world from apocalypse? Start a war? Stop a war? Destroy evil artifact defeat a tyrant? Start a kingdom? Set up a powerful spy network? Etc...
Lets hear some stories.
Haverly of Chaal, peasant hero (2nd edition fighter kit) who wanted to be a Paladin but lacked the influence (that is to say the required 17 Cha) and the discipline (was CG). Spent all his wealth shaping his community. First building a protective wall for Chaal, then a road to the main city of Nineman (to replace what was really just a well traveled path). After a conversion to third edition and a story awarded leadership feat, he had his followers patrol the road so everyone had safe passage. He was eventually granted the right to mint his own coins (after stopping a dragon invasion by releasing a trapped god), he would often hold banquets in any town in which he stopped, paying for the meal (and stuffing the poor box) with coins with his face on them. Once he was made mayor of Chaal and given a position on the council (in Nineman), it wasn't long before his popularity got him elected leader of the council (sort of an elected king position). He then organized "adventuring parties" based off his own group, Tymora's Seven, to clear out problem areas (monster infestations, etc.). Eventually granted divinity for all his good deeds (plus that one god owed him a favor).
Epilogue: one young man, inspired by his noble deeds, did achieve paladinhood. His patron deity? Haverly of Chaal.
Narrating this as it was written by the GM in his narrative campaign journal (wrote out an entire 'legend of Kaluthar' for it). From the perspective of the Court Mage
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Decades ago, I happened upon Kaluthar the Unbroken (Unbreakable Fighter, Orc FCB) was often considered little more than your typical brutish Orc. He was large, he was buff, he was unruly, and he had absolutely no respect for those who had no power for themselves. Due to crimes in the city of Jarthal (Homebrew campaign), capitol of High Jothgar he was presented with two options. Quest in recompense, or be executed. Thus, the surprisingly cunning orc traveled with the adventuring party the Jarl of High Jothgar had commissioned, bearing the mystical brand of the court wizard.
After various harrowing adventures, the campaign culminated in a war between High Jothgar and the goblinoids of Shirkvane Valley. The Heroes of Jothgar commenced a daring rescue mission of the Prince, whom had been kidnapped in a raid by the goblinoid forces. They succeeded.
Kaluthar was the one who was to carry the prince's weakened body back to High Jothgar. Their pace was not slow, but neither was the enraged, fear-driven army behind them. As his horse began to flag on the narrow mountain road, unable to cope with the heavily armored brute and the portly prince, Kaluthar hopped off, and sent the horse running. The elven ranger, whom had taken the rear guard and always distrusted Kaluthar, queried him, only to get a grunt in reply as the orc unsheathed his blade and slapped the elf's horse on the ass.
Standing at the narrowest point, Kaluthar alone greeted the oncoming hordes. The battle was fierce, many times did the fighting flag as the advancing army had to toss the corpses in front of the massive orc off the road and down the mountain. It was during these lulls that gave Kaluthar the time he needed to drink the previously unnecessary healing potions his allies had insisted he buy, or gave him. Grateful was he of the little vials now, even if he rarely needed them.
For a full day and night, Kaluthar fought the Shirkvane forces. Meanwhile, his allies honored his sacrifice by shoring up the city's defenses, and prepared for invasion. By the time the moon began to set, the Heroes decided to go see what was going on for themselves.
Arriving at sunrise of the second day, they found Kaluthar's strength had finally waned. As he dealt a vicious death blow to a hobgoblin commander, a bug bear felled him with a spear. The Heroes engaged the weakened and tired enemy forces, laying waste to them arrow and sword, fire and acid, emboldened by Kaluthar's heroic might as they were.
The Cleric of Marthyne (this setting's death god) rushed to Kaluthar's side, to defend the body from being defiled by the enraged goblinoids. To his shock, he received word from his lord of death that Kaluthar was not yet within his grasp. With his vision of death (Deathwatch permanenced), he knew Kaluthar was dead. Regardless, he immediately began to heal Kaluthar, thinking to revive his noble ally, heeding the world of Marthyne.
It took nearly nearly a full minute, the cleric laying healing spell upon spell upon the orc's corpse. To everyone's surprise, Kaluthar awakened, springing to his feet. Without any delay, he charged into battle with his mighty roar!
The war ended on that mountain. The party's wizard brought the mountain down on the heads of the Army's commanders, and Shirkvane's rulers. The Heroes returned, to find the entire city rejoicing. The brand upon Kaluthar's breast acted as a scrying device, and the city had seen the entire battle.
Kaluthar was officially pardoned, and offered the title of lord, with command over an entire three regimens of the nation's army. He declined, and never gave reason why.
Kaluthar left the city at sundown that day, walking up that mountain pass, never to be seen again. The Jarl had an impenetrable gate constructed where Kaluthar stood, fell, and rose once more. It was appropriately named "Kaluthar's Gate". To this day, neither it, nor the warriors Kaluthar inspired, have ever fallen to enemy attack.
Rumors abound of a ferocious, unkillable orc destroying waves of enemies, and the people of Jothgar smile amongst ourselves, knowing Kaluthar was enjoying himself somewhere...
Court Mage of High Jothgar,
Elianderil Moonspark
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To sum it up... My orc, through lucky rolls, a ton of healing potions I'd saved up over the course of the adventure, and my GM loving awesome cinematic narrative, stood alone and prevented an enemy invasion. They constructed a fortress of a gate house, and formed a 'special forces' based around Kaluthar's "unkillable" example.
I retired him, because I felt there was absolutely no way I could top that. GM had me advance him to level 20 (we were close enough as is), and he quite literally became immortal. Marthyne had come to respect the orc's toughness, able to literally wrest free of Marthyne's personal grasp.
Unfortunately, the DM moved after that campaign wrapped up (I played the rest of it out as a low-key debuff-sorcerer that made excessive use of walls and pits). I was informed before he moved however that Kaluthar had become part of the world's lore, and was a high level roaming NPC. Got an email a while after Mythic came out. He has been granted Mythic tier 10, lol.
No, but you can have groupies, that must count for something.
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Now I'm sad I'm playing a bard. I could never do anything that awesome as a bard.
Oh, really?
My LE male Drow Bard conquered a continent.
Specifically, he started as the heir of a noble house of the Drow in a homebrew world. His sister had, naturally, been the heir but had tragically vanished under mysterious circumstances (ie: he'd had her killed). He was polite, friendly, considered racism to be another term for poor threat assessment, was the best boss ever for his retinue (ie: the other PCs), and was utterly without scruples when it came to advancing his own power.
Over the course of the game, he exposed the Gnomish nation to the North's plans to invade the Drow (and the traitorous Drow family that were helping them...coincidentally, the only family that stood between his and true power), recruited one of said family as his personal assistant/slave (she had nowhere else to go, given the whole family was sentenced to death...and he really was a good boss), and eventually conquered the Gnomish nation entirely, killing it's king in personal combat (not one on one combat, naturally...but it was personal).
Unfortunately, the Gnomes had mutual defense treaties with the Humans, Elves, and Dwarves...creating a World War I sort of scenario, only with the Drow lacking allies. This being a problem, he went off to secure allies for his people. He went to the Orcs first, who were always willing to war against the Elves, but needed the help of their Arcane Magic Users, who'd formed their own city after becoming annoyed at Orcish prejudice, so off he went.
The only way to secure an audience with the leaders of the city was to win a magical duel with the champion of their arena (two spires of rock separated by a pit with spikes on the floor) in magical combat. Naturally the group's Sorceress (a Tiefling Princess, and actually the Bard's fiance) went first. She was summarily defeated via Black Tentacles (casting while grappled? Not easy.) And so the Bard cast Mirror Image on himself...and simply shot the opposing champion into unconsciousness with a bow while she tried to effect him with magic (she was an optimized Witch...and tried Slumber, and his other saves were all good). This secured him an audience and provoked a conversation with one of the guards where he said "Of course I won, I'm very good at what I do...and what I do is cheat." Since archery wasn't really suppose to be a part of the magic duel per se...
In any case, he persuaded the leaders of the city to join the rest of the Orcs securing the Orcs as allies in the war. From there he traveled to the lands of the Gnolls, and met with their leader. A surprisingly erudite and intelligent fellow, he explained that his people had actually been working on a way to end the human threat for a while, and had come up with a plague to make the humans, in his words, "get along better" with his people. A modified form of lycanthropy where the humans never changed back from wolf shape...and eventually became more tractable. So he put it in the water supply of a nearby human border town as a test run. Then got a sample of the plague (which the Gnolls intended to use to wipe out humanity) so he could reverse engineer a cure, to be used to secure human servants/slaves in exchange for said cure. This plan worked...so he sorta both committed genocide on and enslaved the humans. As well as enslaving all the Gnomes, earlier.
He then found a lost island of Drow ruled by a Blue Dragon, who was just as happy to hand off ruling them to someone else, made a firm alliance with a 20th level Lich Necromancer, finished conquering upthe Dwarf lands, managed to convert one of the rulers each of the Elf and Dwarf lands to be Dukes of territories under his rule, and set up a non-racist LE nation with an excellent infrastructure and stable economy, giving high positions to all his friends and allies.
So...he committed genocide, and wound up personally ruling half a continent (and good personal friends with those who ruled the other half, one of whom was his mother). His original concept was "Evil Overlord Done Right". He lived up to it to a much greater degree than I was really expecting to be honest...
Sadly, few of my Good characters have accomplished as much, despite the fact that I play a lot more of them.
Oh, and if you're wondering what the rest of the party did...they helped with pretty much all of the above, just not in a lead role. Also, note how few fights are mentioned in the list above...those were common, and definitely a group effort.
Rannan: Really? Bards can be pretty epic. Deadmanwalking's for example, lol.
That said, I initially fully expected Kaluthar to die. I did it with the intent of finally killing him off (I'd been growing bored of his unkillabiity). However, like I said, my GM loves cinematic scenes, and my dice were rolling REALLY well. Didn't roll for ALL of the combat, just did an abstract generalization, starting off with five rounds at a time, then ten, then several minutes, then finally we just abstracted in half-hour increments. Kaluthar's seeming invulnerability kept stacking up demoralization penalties in Shirkvane's army.
Undoubtedly, there was other epic moments that other characters pulled off (it just seemed to be an epic game, in the flavor that mythic was trying to accomplish, without meaning to be). But, this thread was for 'your characters', not the rest of 'em. The party rogue just to happened to pick pocket one of the secondary BBEG's fiance, filching the phylactery of the lich that was going to bolster Shirkvane with undead (which Kaluthar would have died at that point, lol). The party bard seduced the Nascent Demon Lord-leveled succubus and wound up married to her (after the war). Our monk destroyed a Marilith posing as a helpful old weapons instructor (worked for said succubus above) with improvised weapons...
Also, DMW... Freaking awesome man. I've longed to play a character like that, but most of my games were always 'no evil allowed'. Those that were evil, I wound up having to play the straight (good) man in the evil party to keep everyone on track (at GM's request). *sigh*... Well, maybe one day I'll get to play in a game using kingdom building rules, and be able to make my army of undead and constructs...
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Also, DMW... Freaking awesome man. I've longed to play a character like that, but most of my games were always 'no evil allowed'. Those that were evil, I wound up having to play the straight (good) man in the evil party to keep everyone on track (at GM's request). *sigh*... Well, maybe one day I'll get to play in a game using kingdom building rules, and be able to make my army of undead and constructs...
Yeah...it was pretty great. Not an AP or an other planned game per se prior to us deciding to go Evil. The GM just structured the game around our evil ambitions. :)
Never had another Evil game of Pathfinder before or since, but that one sure went a long way towards scratching the itch.
My necromancer (actually a wizard specializing in necromancy), Sigmund Blackskull, was turned into a vampire before the campaign began, as were all players. Throughout the campaign, we prepared for taking over a city. At first it was the order of our master, but later on I used an elixir to gain free will for an hour and kill him, taking the city for myself. We could do it whatever way we wanted, so my plan was to amass undead in secret while covertly weakening the city's defences and pinning the blame on something else.
In the end, the whole town was massacred in a single night along with a platoon of Toothbreakers, guys specialized in killing vampires. I had created huge necrocrafts, allied myself with two more vampires and turned the powerful town cleric into a vampire under my control.
So I had myself a city, the Daemonic Book of Damned and was planning to turn myself into a Lich to rid myself of need to feed and near immortality. Everyone was dead, so all I had to do was raise every single one of them as an undead. It would be his first step on creating a nation all for undead. Though the campaign ended there so whether he succeeded or was deffeated along the way was left unanswered.
Nothing cool quite yet. Only been playing for a year. BUT I CAN HOPE!
You'll get there Will. Seriously. In all of my 21 years of TT gaming, I've only really had one as influential as Kaluthar. Others to varying degrees of success, but those were actually built for it. It'll come.
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One game we played as something like a prehistoric campaign with only certain classes allowed (no wizards since nobody had had the time to learn such things yet, to be a fighter you had to start as a barbarian etc.) And my character was an older dwarf who was training the nearby humans as he was a barbarian. At one point an evil career showed up with an army of slaves controlled by magical rings. Defending a ransacked tower one of the slaves (a player who had just joined the campaign) yelled out that the rings were controlling them. So my dwarf targeted the ring on one of the charging minotaurs horns ran down the hill and leaped rolled a 20 and sliced only the ring (I later learned cutting the minotaurs horn would have made him kill me.) We were able to fight off the bad guys and my dwarf struck an alliance with the minotaurs. The campaign later jumped forward a free hundred years, and the dwarf and minotaurswere still allied and one if the most powerful nations. The dwarven palace is protected by minotaurs and an ever shifting maze only minotaurs can navigate. The minotaur palace is guarded by dwarves with a series of hidden stone work passages only dwarves can find. The character I initially made was a guy who liked charging things (rhino hide armor) but ended up being one of the most significant people in the worlds history.
In the RotRl game I ran the players fortified Sandpoint and gave it stone harbor in addition to turning Thistle Top into a fort. They also manipulated evidence to get Mayor Grobaras of Magnimar under permanent censure leaving his duties to more competent and honest assistant. They also set up a new ruler for the stone giant tribes of the plateau. The bard in the group also started an organization to find dangerous knowledge and store it where it can't be seen or used. After the end of Karzoug they went fought in the outer planes for 3 or 6 months as part of a deal they made with with a few celestials.