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I don't know where to put this so ill put it here. I just wanted to share an experience with a main protagonist I created that I thought was funny.
I had the players fight to try and get an important item and as soon as they did i had Cosmo (annoying bad guy) teliport in, say something sarcastic and leave. I also made it so a bell dings whenever he teliports. My Idea was to engrave the sound of this bell into the heads of my players to make them remember this guy.
Fast forward about one in game day and the players find another one of said important item. Right before they grab it I ring the bell. All 3 players all say at once "I shoot at the sound of the bell"
This is how you know you have successfully made a hated character.
Any one else have fun annoying character experiences?
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You are literally employing Pavlovian training on your PCs. That is hilarious.
I had a BBEG (well, SWEG actually, small, weak evil guy) who simply reformed every day, naked...
They disintegrated him, plane shifted him...
He always just came back.
All he could do though was follow them around and point out where they were/minor harassing. He wasn't a caster or anything, just cursed with eternal existence in proximity to THEM.
Sort of a super-manifested ghost, I guess.
He would (if allowed to live) bang rocks together or otherwise make noise to prevent them from sleeping... point out their location to other monsters...
Steal food...
A total jerk.
It got really funny once they started getting into kingdom building, he would go around town telling people about all the horrible stuff the party had done to him (all true).
Eventually they befriended him and gave him a tavern to run, just to get him to leave them alone.
Well there was an NPC which I started with "Imagine Thranduil, he talks like him and..." that's all I had to say, the diplomacy was over and initiative was rolled...
Well I did create a figure known as Giggles. He basically was a man hidden behind a Harlequin mask, which depicted a wide promising grin. He would randomly show up when the PC's were in different situations, and of course players got sick of that eventually.
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A friend of mine came up with a really amusing idea. A party picks up an item that happens to be a lich's phylactery, which they don't know, chuck it in a bag of holding and forget about. Then at some point a naked lich crawls out of the bag, having been killed by a higher level party and runs off. Then periodically crawls out of the bag as it keeps getting killed by it's nemeses.
You are literally employing Pavlovian training on your PCs. That is hilarious.
I had a BBEG (well, SWEG actually, small, weak evil guy) who simply reformed every day, naked...
They disintegrated him, plane shifted him...
He always just came back.
That is a classic to make a party hate a foe.
The Sins of the Saviors module starts with Xaliasa, a high priest of Lamashtu, resurrecting by the power of the runewell in the underground ruins beneath Sandpoint. The surge of power causes an explosion which town guards go investigate and never return.
I decided to enhance Xaliasa. I gave him the ability to use the runewell to animate the seven guards he killed as copies of himself, each one motivated by a different cardinal sin. The slothful Xaliasa greeted the party over tea, monologued insanely about having missed the Chelish invasion of Varisa, and Dimension Doored away. The prideful Xaliasa tricked the party and died laughing as he killed himself. The gluttonous Xaliasa escaped to the surface and raided a bakery, while summoning demons to delay the party. The wrathful Xaliasa fought viciously. Etc. While the party killed the fakes, revealing a dead guard each time, the real Xaliasa slipped away and left town, wearing an Amulet of Nondetection. Even that was not the end of it. The party paladin felt obliged to use his Ultimate Mercy to raise all the dead guards that he had helped re-kill. And Xaliasa's heavily trapped secret treasure room was his collection of exotic cursed magic items.
They really hated Xaliasa.
From the murals and scribblings on the walls, the party learned that the runewell resurrected Xaliasa once every thousand years and Xaliasa would usually grow in power from 12th level to 20th level and try to destroy civilization in Varisia. Which was one more reason why Varisia had so many ruins. The party found some signs of Xaliasa in other historic places, now that they could recognize the signs, and cursed his name.
At 19th level, in adventures after the Rise of the Runelords completion, the party's lore master, now an expert in runewells, detected runewell energies in Nidal. They traveled down to that foreign country and found Xaliasa leading a tribe of halfling super-werewolves charged with runewell energy. They had learned that if he died, he could steal the body of any werewolf minion to return to life. They Baleful Polymorphed him into an owl, Feebleminded him, and traveled to the plane of Elysium to have him imprisoned forever by the servants of Desna.
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As long as it's not a PC, or a NPC the PCs have to work with, without good reason.
Nothing is more grating than the PC/NPC you have to metagame the crap out of, to decide not to abandon, or kill.
By the way, a good idea is a Horse under a permanent Anthropomorphic Animal spell with a magically increased intelligence, who cat calls the PCs.
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As long as it's not a PC, or a NPC the PCs have to work with, without good reason.
Nothing is more grating than the PC/NPC you have to metagame the crap out of, to decide not to abandon, or kill.
By the way, a good idea is a Horse under a permanent Anthropomorphic Animal spell with a magically increased intelligence, who cat calls the PCs.
Oh, yeesh, I just remembered something I totally forgot about. I was inexperienced, bored, and semi-unprepared for a session of a home brew campaign, so I threw in a party of awakened animals with equal class levels to the party. That was shocking brutal. Cat throwing chain lightning, a ninja getting inside one of the party's armor.
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A 'back in the day' post.
I can remember running a 2nd edition series of adventures centred around a Bard called Marco Volo. He was specifically created to be a bit of a ***hole from the start, only growing up as they get towards the end. He was a joy to play from a GM point of view, but the players hated him.
Brodert Quink from Rise of the Runelords. Everyone hates him, including the sheriff of Sandpoint. I've made him so annoying, so arrogant, that- come to think of it- even I hate him. He begins every theory by describing the current mode of thought on history and then rants about how stupid people are for believing it is and what he thinks is the reality. All delivered in a grating Welsh accent. Every time a PC starts talking he interrupts them saying "I haven't finished yet!"
The party have to consult with him now and then but there's always a huge sigh before they call for him.
Great Idea. I'm GMing ROTR at the mo and never thought of making Quink Welsh. I made him sound like Johnny Ball from think of a number. I know, aging myself again!
Great stuff Barry, probably be in touch. we get together about once a month for marathon sessions in Sheffield.
By the way, a good idea is a Horse under a permanent Anthropomorphic Animal spell with a magically increased intelligence, who cat calls the PCs.
Or one who gives valuable hints and advice... For the adventure the players have just finished.
(Ultima reference.)
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In the campaign I'm currently playing in, there's a recurring villain named the "Bistro Bastard". He just kind of shows up whenever he feels like it. He's an orc that wears nothing but a chef apron and chef hat, doesn't really say anything, and uses kitchen-ware as weapons (a pan, rolling pins as a thrown weapon, etc). He has disarmed almost every martial in our party using his "pan-fu", some of them twice. One person got disarmed twice in one combat (they started with a weapon in each hand, and by the end of the fight they had both weapons laying on the floor). The only reason he hasn't been able to disarm me is that I'm a monk. What's worse is that it seems 75% of our 1s that we roll are against this one person. He always gets away from the fight when he's the last one alive and we all hate this guy.
We hear the words "You see a chef hat" and we all groan. We all have plans about what to do to his body to make sure he never comes back if we ever manage to take him down. Such is the legacy of the Bistro Bastard.
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There's also a character that could be seen as annoying but the people in my group love him. His name is Darrius Von Barry, the berry merchant. Our low-level druid happened across him looking to buy some berries to cast Goodberry on (we were in the middle of a desert area, not many berries to find). Darrius Von Barry is... an interesting man. He has all the pompousness of Xerxes from the movie 300 and talks in third person. The druid rolled on his Knowledge: Nature check to determine if this berry merchant's berries were as high quality as Darrius said they were, and of course the roll promptly showed a big glaring "1" so the druid takes Darrius' word wholeheartedly (without rolling Sense Motive) and thinks these berries must be the best berries in the world. Turns out, they pretty much are. There's been talk of basically turning him into the Cabbage Salesmen from Avatar to keep showing up. Famous quotes: "My berries are great but I think my wife is getting tired of them" and "Want to know what's great? These berries. Want to know what's not great? Darrius' wife".
Although he's a pompous ass, he gave us a quest so we're cool with him.
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In MY experience, it doesn't take much to get players to hate NPCs. Two of the easiest ways:
1) Bad guys who run away and generally show a will to preserve their own lives.
"Hey, that jerk is making it harder for us to kill him and take his stuff!"
2) Bad guys who drink healing or buff potions when in sight by the player characters.
"Hey, that jerk is drinking OUR TREASURE!"
Traekwondo, the half-human, half-halfing (or as he called himself, threequarterling) bard shopkeeper. He referred to himself exclusively in the third person, had a nasally, squeaking voice, constantly talked about how he had seen some "stuff" and gave the PCs extremely pointless quests that turned out to have a very high chance of danger. For example: He wanted them to kill the rats in his basement. Turns out, they were actually several quasits.
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A kid the PCs had to protect.
We had to do this once. I can't remember how it started, but we ended up having to fight this group of "true believers" of this god in the GMs home game that felt that magic and non-human races were blasphemous and should be burned at the stake.
After the combat, we found a little girl and decided that she needed to be protected and brought back to civilization. That meant that we had this little girl with us that called us heathens and thought (and would say loudly) that we were all damned and belong in Hell.
Basically, the GM would heckle us in a really bad Southern drawl, "GAWD WILL PUNISH YOU!", and there was nothing we could do about it. Good times.
Although one time that 7 year old girl did end up saving the entire party "WITH THE POWAH OF GAWD!"... She was truly insufferable after that.
The PCs in my campaign hate any character that lies to them. No matter how minor. Even if they had a good reason to deceive them.
The most annoying character in our Eberron campaign is probably the Android Magus named Sabre (he also screams his name at the top of his lungs). Between him and his goons, he is always above a reasonable power level for us to beat. So far we've locked him in an adamantium vault and crashed an airship on him and left him in the mountains. He still came back!
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What about him?A kid the PCs had to protect.John Connor?
John Connor in Terminator 2, was notoriously the worst part of the film.
He was a grating, obnoxious douchenozzle, and many of us hoped secretively, that he would die. Some, not so secretively.
Basically, he epitomizes the annoying little sh*t you have to constantly protect.
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What about him?A kid the PCs had to protect.John Connor?
John Connor in Terminator 2, was notoriously the worst part of the film.
He was a grating, obnoxious douchenozzle, and many of us hoped secretively, that he would die. Some, not so secretively.
Basically, he epitomizes the annoying little sh*t you have to constantly protect.
Really? I mean, he was kinda annoying in the beginning, but after he was explained the stakes he tightened up considerably. And, unlike some idiots that need escorting, he was largely intelligent about what he did and was even helpful a decent chunk of the time. Just saying, it could be a LOT worse.
I made my party experience the magical shop. Its an old wooden shack, without a door that has an old man inside and shelves lined with adventuring equipment. Theres a door in the back that leads to a blacksmith, a tannery, or something else depending on what they need. The items on the shelves are all illusions, the old man just a man who's convinced everything real, the room at the back is always poorly designed so you can't use it, and if they leave and continue traveling, they pass it again a few days later. They have killed the man twice and burned it down once.
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Sometimes, competence is all it takes.
In Shadowrun, one of the PCs who greatly valued his anonymity was captured and processed by a corp mage. He hadn't been found doing anything wrong, so he wasn't killed right then, but to ensure the company's security, the corp mage took a blood sample and sent it off to a repository without making eye contact once, ensuring that he wouldn't be ensorcelled to do something different until the sample was gone and it was too late. The PC hated that guy.
Of course, the corp mage's smug grin and 90s-throwback soul patch greatly assisted in making him annoying.
@Ryzoken: out of curiosity, why did the other party members move away from the gnoll chieftain after he took down the fighter?
Ah, gotcha.
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@Ryzoken: out of curiosity, why did the other party members move away from the gnoll chieftain after he took down the fighter?
Player failed his morale role?
That's what does it at my table.Had one low level mook that was just a hired thug sent to harass the party, basically. She was one of a group, and her particular s%@+ick was just an agile and hard to hit sarcastic quipped that liked using dirty tricks. It so happened, however, that she rolled ... Spectacularly WELL at her tricks, and tripped, knocked over, and otherwise humiliated multiple party members without actually killing any. She made a getaway in time to avoid being caught after her companions went down. She made quite an impression on the party, so next time I needed a mook lieutenant, I used her, powering her up gradually. She ended up someone who both dropped in and helped them from time to time and made them despise her for doing it.
Interesting, I am thinking of doing something simlar, with a Fighter/Rogue(Thug) or something, just to harrass and annoy players, who starts out as a hired thug for the bad guy.
Avner from savage tide. Hatred him. Hatred. Even more when my lawful good wizard kept saving his life, including from other party members, and he continued to talk smack to her, call her worthless, and make comments about her legitimacy.
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Depending on your definition of annoying...
I once had a tribe of gnolls that was run by a human frenzied berserker. For those unfamiliar with the class, the FB has an ability called "deathless frenzy" that basically lets them ignore HP damage while they are frenzied (frenzy being a souped up version of rage). They still take damage, but they keep fighting as normal until their frenzy ends regardless of how much damage they take during. So, this fight gets ridiculous, I think by the end she had downed three out of six party members and was somewhere in the negative hundreds of hit points. She. Would. Not. Die. Half the players were laughing hysterically, the other half were super pissed.
Avner from savage tide. Hatred him. Hatred. Even more when my lawful good wizard kept saving his life, including from other party members, and he continued to talk smack to her, call her worthless, and make comments about her legitimacy.
This is slander. Avner frequently tried to get this character to take the high and noble path, but she insisted on tying herself to the fortunes of a thuggish brute who attempted to solve all problems via violence. And I do not believe he ever called her worthless.
To top it off, she was illegitimate in the most literal sense of the word.
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My players made jokes about Gnomes outside of the game. Naturally, as any good DM, I took this input as what they expected ^_^
The setting they were going into was Eberron. As fate would have it, one of their missions in Zilargo, a Gnome nation of masterful magical artisans. Of course I applied their stereotypes about them into these Zilargo Gnomes and turned it into Oz, had Oz been run by a benevolent Joker and Scarecrow.
They had to do a special dance that I demonstrated to gain entry. This had to be followed physically by the Player. I demonstrated both male and female variants of said dance.
The avenues of the lands were shades of amber, saffron, and mustard.
Their containers and personal clothing were broken into. Nothing stolen. Just... "tinkered"
They were watched while they were sleeping. They were watched while they were awake. The Gnomes knew when they were being bad or good...
When they tried to get these unnaturally happy Gnomes to do something self-destructive, the Gnomes happily complied with these foreign "dignitaries" in good sport and faith and for example one devoured a silver spoon, mangling his mouth happily in the process.
Being punted by a PC became a sport complete with contests for best entry method into someone's personal space. Again, there were girls in the group.
Every apparatus in the city was a Rube-Goldberg Machine... magically enhanced. This included the latrines.
Upon speaking Common to these Adventurers, the Gnomes adopted childish sing-song cadences. When a Player ingeniously cast comprehend languages, they immediately dispelled their own spell upon hearing even more demented statements the Gnomes were communicating to each other.
The Gnomes' idea of retaliation when Players became unruly were nonlethal Prismatic and Illusory magic backed up by good ole chemical effects.
The Players happily accepted a suicide mission just to get the hell out of Zilargo. No allied support or nothing. Charge the enemy before the Zilargo contingent got here? Got it!
Post-Zilargo-Stress-Disorder
And just to dig it in, in the parallel campaign we ran where a Player and I switched DM roles in Pathfinder (my debut into this RPG btw), I was a transplated Gnome from Eberron. The party made very sure not to arouse my quaint regional interests. They could never stop that Meta Fear, no matter how many times I reassured them I was raised in Sharn...
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In Vampire Dark Ages, I had the PCs wake up as prisoners of the Inquisition and blood-bonded to obey any of its members. Then they were given the mission to investigate strange and deadly happenstances in an area where a sergeant of the Inquisition led them.
That sergeant so enjoyed flouting his power to command mighty creatures of the night. He taunted the PCs mercilessly and they could do nothing against him.
That is until they traveled unknowingly within the cursed area which had the interesting side-effect of breaking their blood-bonded fealty to the Inquisition.
After some time traveling the area, the sergeant again taunted them so much that one of the PCs used a minor mental power against him, fully expecting it to have zero effect.
It took the PCs a few seconds to realize that the power had worked. The sergeant was cut to ribbons by the whole party in a heartbeat.
Gip has become a staple character of mine that my play groups all enjoy, because he's just so crazy and useful and hindering at times.
Once, in an Underdark campaign, he nearly convince a pair of guides it was okay to leave the Duergar party member behind because he'd said he didn't want to keep traveling with them. He explained this by describing the events backwords, and yet still made perfect sense.
The captain's log, which he promptly burned.
A sea map, which he promptly burned.
A ship in a bottle, which he promptly took back to the island with him, intent on "hatching the ship egg" and sailing off the island. He wanted to burn the entire jungle down when monkeys 'killed his baby'.
Gip is strange, Gip is funny, Gip is very, very annoying at times.
That halfling in the confirmation