|
A fighter, named Drake.
He was a king that was in self-exile, who had made his way with his fighting skills, posing as a skilled adventurer. Escaping from his kingdom far away, nobody in the nearby area would know he is a king.
I tried playing this character in two separate campaigns, both got shot down. Now I really only play Pathfinder Society, where this concept wouldn't work and is probably illegal for PFS play.
My monk character who was going to be a braggart who fancies himself a great kung fu master but only has half-baked skills learnt from spying on other monks in training. I thought it would be interesting to portray his development from a pretend-master to an actual master eventually.
This archtype is a staple of comedic Hong Kong kung fu flicks* (especially early Jackie Chan movies) so being a lifelong Hong Kong movie fan I figured I had an inexhaustible source of inspiration for playing this character.
About 10 years ago, I created what I thought was going to be a great character in a Silver Age Champions! campaign that never actually got off the ground. The setting was a Silve Age Comics version of New York City, in the year 1968. (Complete with late-'60s-style sci-fi technology.)
My character was Comrade Spartacus, Champion of the Proletariat.
He was an African-American communist superhero (red suit, yellow hammer-and-sickle as the insignia on his chest, no face-mask), who was a tactical combat genius, had heightened strength, stamina and agility, and highly-trained hand-to-hand combat skills. (In terms of powers, he was pretty much a Captain America knock-off. I don't remember what his equivalent gimmick to Cap's shield was.)
Anyway, the GM and one of the players were dating, but they broke up not long after the first session, and so did the group.
My first fully 3rd edition character was to be a human paladin who would have a homunculus (though that aspect disappeared in character creation), was going to take the Leadership feat, and a specialized prestige class created by the GM (I'd not seen it yet, but it sounded sweet); the young man had once had an intense relationship with a blue-colored fey woman in his father's summer home who disappeared the last day of his stay there. Son of a noble scion, he started with a horse, chain shirt (having the dexterity to use it well), and was otherwise sword-and-board.
I... can't recall his name, now, unfortunately.
War was coming, and strange events had occurred recently, including some bizarre tales of adventurers (including at least one fairy) narrowly averting a disaster in the Royal City. My character had come to town to investigate, been set up with his horse upon arrival, and was scheduled to go to the grand Court to understand the events better (having been sent by my father who not-so-secretly wished his son would get some real-world experience and get his head out of the clouds about some dumb fantasy-woman who never existed).
We met at Books a Million on Saturday in the mall (we'd contacted each other through the local gaming store, but there wasn't really anywhere to meet), and I met two other would-be players in the campaign (one was going to be a rogue or something similar, I think, and another was going to be a cleric). Since there were only three of us and none wanted to be a mage, the GM created a 'very mysterious' (read: "likely to go away at some point for 'mysterious reason' aka getting a new player") mage. There had been a previous adventure that other players had gone on to set the stage for this one, but that group had completely disintegrated due to time reasons followed by two members moving away. We emailed extensively during the weekend.
The adventure was scheduled to start Thursday while I'd get the information where to meet Tuesday.
Tuesday came, and nothing. Wednesday: nada. Thursday... nope. I emailed him and asked about stuff. No response. The following week I got an emailed apology, and it was rescheduled to the next month. Cool! We'll do it then.
In the meantime, the other two players (a husband-wife duo) invited me over to play a "one-shot gauntlet game", and I rolled up a half-elf paladin (eighth in his family, sent to the monastery, got the Calling from his god, and, being third level, was returning from the Crusade successfully), where I lied my way into the evil guys' hideout (bypassing the 'gauntlet' of kobold encounters), lied my way into the graces of an evil priest, and then got killed. (The wife had rolled up a dwarven cleric, but wasn't much into playing, as she was kind of distracted with the kids. She loved it, though. Her cleric also fell to greed instead when he lost site of the goal of kicking evil's butt.)
But! The good news is that I got to speak with a god... a dwarven god. The wife's character's dwarven god. Who wanted to play cards. So I came up with the most outrageous thing I could demand from him (hey, I was dead, it didn't really matter), and he said "no"; in return, I suggested that perhaps a real, manly and elven god might be more obliging/not afraid, and he agreed to my bet (though if I lost, I had to become his 'forever, to the point of my beginning'). I also had to win three contests in the cards, whereas he had to win only one. I won. Twice. The third time I lost by one point.
While true to my word, he decided to help us out anyway (as 'that was the best card game he'd had in 10,000 years, though I'd never remember it') and remade reality a bit so I was born a dwarf (the half-elf family still existed, I was just a dwarf paladin of him) and the evil fortress was remade into a healing spring (so a comparatively minor partial-fulfillment of my request).
So back to the other game!
... and then it evaporated.
But I made new friends and got into playing a 2E-modified version of 3E, though.
(And yeah, I know paladins aren't supposed to lie. It was a one-shot, I'd forgotten that at the time, and we were just having fun.)
|
Weirdly, all three of mine are paladins. In 28 years of active campaigns, I've never gotten to play a paladin beyond abortive start-ups.
* Celeste Camberson, a (genuinely rolled, 1E rules, my only one ever) psionic. Some folks will realize that's why her name was what it was. I think this was the last female PC I created.
* Tomais the Black, a grim sort in a 3.5 PBeM game that went about a month.
* A Shelynite glaive-wielding soft-gooey-center paladin in a RotR (converted to PFRPG) play-by-chat game that (although IMO surprisingly fun and "real D&D" feeling) went only three sessions before the GM cried "overwhelmed by life" and tapped out. I can't remember the paladin's name, but his personality was a cross between Lancelot and Lenny Nero from "Strange Days."