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I had two.
My first was Valerie Castell, a half-orc assassin cultist of Kabriri. She wanted to become a demon, so she decided on a crazy plan. She'd go and found a nation, and then tunnel all the way under the city and undermine the whole capital, so it'll collapse all the way into the Darklands, creating the world's largest open grave and full of food for ghouls, nice and mashed. she fully intended this to take a long time, so everyone who helped her make it would die of old age or be her undead servant friends and help her. Then she wouldn't feel bad about breaking what they made together.
She was an ninja, bone oracle, Demoniac, shadowdancer. I wanted an sneaky character that can manipulate undead and such.
She was kind to friends, vicious to enemies and enemies were anyone who messed with her friends. She was friendly and protective and often stalked others to watch over them. She used disguises liberally and posed as a noble to her own castle and balls to get influence and keep a thumb on the undercurrents of everything.
She also loved eating people. She wore a magic hood that hid her features but made her teeth glow brightly whenever she wanted them too to give herself a means to terrify her enemies.
Also when she first met all but one of the other npcs, she pretended she was a zombie for the necromancer. Because she could. Dedicated to it too. Told to eat the soup, face plant in the hot soup and held it. One doesn't get demon convertees from the undedicated after all.
My second was in Ravenloft based campaign.
Friedrick the Life-shuffler.
Friedrick was a Lifeleech Soulthief Vitalist with an affinity for tarot cards. He didn't think he had powers, he figured it was the cards. To connect others to the Collective, they had to be carrying a card.
Stealing life from others in Ravenloft is an evil act. Friedrich was good aligned. Because rather than steal life from others, he would give them his own, and take their injuries upon himself instead.
Friedrich was very protective of others and tended to put them first. He came from a nation where it's people are strangled with taxes and had a very communal mindset to try and protect and help everyone.
As the group he was in was really amoral, he was basically group conscience. Unfortunately this ended as after an mist incident they all ended up in a heavily psionic region, and in protecting the party, he was murdered by a blood elemental.
In a sequel adventure however, he comes back, his body and mind fuzed and altered with the blood elemental into a woman with lots of hole filled memories, vaguely recalling a corruption of the name, so called herself Friedrica.
Friedrica was a Crimson Countess Harbinger. Her collective was corrupted to instead of drawing others ills to her, instead drew their blood out to her. Friedrica was unstable and mercurial in temperament. She'd be calm one moment and amused another and cruel and aggressive the next. She often would say things she wouldn't get the full context of and just knew she felt a kinship with these people but not entirely why.
Her urge to help others had changed to the eradication of threats to others in as brutal a fashion as possible. She was a tank of sorts. She built herself to be supremely durable and dodgy. The untyped endless damage on enemies around her that wouldn't end til she died put the fight on a timer. Enemies had to make a choice. Deal with the squishier enemies and constantly be stripped of their vitality, or try to focus down the incredibly evasive longspear wielding blood lady and ignore possibly more imminent threats.
Here is one I had. It was a drow Tielfing, only gaining the Tielfing stats and all. Anyway, she is a witch with a homebrew archetype of Nekomancer, and a Cleric of a Homebrew goddess of felines. Anyway, she will have an obsession with cats, and will often use Bestow curse in interesting ways. Such as applying the -4 con to a person to make them a child, a -4 str on a man to make them a woman, or have the -4 to dex make them fat.
The character I'm building right now is a bard in black knight's armor who's history involved putting down riots and involves none of that silly singing or artsy business. My last wizard wore spiked armor and a spiked shield and wore a mask to cover his face, and he never called himself a wizard. My last druid was a businessman with over 30 dipolomacy and bluff, but began his life raised in the forest. My last cleric went shirtless and punched people in the face diving around the battlefield. My last barbarian was an ex samurai with crane style who wielded a katana and saw his rage as channeling his inner pain.
I don't usually play a character who has anything to do with the pre written fluff if I can help it.
How did that spiked armor wizard overcome the ASF?
I'm reminded of a character That unfortunately saw very little play before the campaign collapsed : a Dwarf ranger/Deep Earth Sorcerer (gestalt) specializing in rifle combat (it was a Wyld West campaign with guns everywhere) ... he was a beardless Dwarf prospector, having been debearded and banished from his forme home for a crime he did not really commit (It was Self defence, Dammit!!)
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A character concept me and another party member working on together, since it takes 2 characters to pull off.
An uneducated farm boy who thinks all casters are called "Wizards"-- save nice priesty folks and scary hags out in the wilds-- is selected by fate or the gods or some other force, and given mystical abilities. To us, he would be an Oracle; to himself, he is a "Wizard".
But all he really knows about Wizards is that they cast spells and they, like, have some kind of magic pet, right? He doesn't know how they get one, but he's PRETTY sure it's part of being a Wizard.
So one day, there's a ruckus in his barn and when he investigates, just what does he find chasing after his chickens? Some kind Imp!
Except it's not an Imp; it's a goblin Tiefling, with red, scale-spotted skin and a long tail and horns. But after he catches her, and she figures out just what it is he's thinking-- that he's caught himself a powerful "magic pet", and now he'll be a "master Wizard"-- she decides, hey. Might as well play along and get some free food out of the rube, right?
She speaks Infernal, so that's the easy part; the real trick is bluffing everyone else into believing the story.
And that's how a farm boy Oracle and a small Tiefling Rogue play the part of Wizard and Familiar, one of them none the wiser.
My character concept for an upcoming game had the DM remark that it was one of the weirder ideas he had seen.
It's a hobgoblin kineticist(chaokineticist, specifically), which really isn't that unusual to my mind given that hobgoblins are one of the few races that have the ideal ability bonuses for a kineticist. But my DM doesn't appear to know that.
Idea is that he's an exile from hobgoblin society because they don't recognize the difference between what he does and arcane magic(he doesn't really understand it, himself; he just kind of does it).
Though to be fair it became more unusual as I discussed it with the DM and found that hobgoblins would face potential "kill on sight" discrimination from the locals in the DM's homebrew setting. He gets around the locals' inclination to kill him on sight for being a hobgoblin by wearing a fake beard and claiming to just be a particularly tall, ugly dwarf. He's got no points in disguise or bluff and a flat 10 in charisma so no one believes him, they just think he's crazy and harmless enough that they let him be.
Psychic bloodline sorcerer in heavy armor is one of my newer ones.
An old man who dresses like and claims to be a wizard, but admittedly only knows one spell, "but it's a good'un." He's actually a gunslinger who thinks he has a rechargeable special wand to focus his "spell". "Abracadabra! *BANG*"
Celestial bloodline tiefling or infernal blooded aasimar.
A Paladin who grew up in a culture where honor was used to justify all kinds of heinous crimes, and so disdains the very concept of honor.
In her mind, being truthful and helpful are dishonorable things, since her parents lied and acted badly all the time to preserve their honor.
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That also resulted in a custom class, one that imprisons outsiders within his body rather than letting them escape to the outer realms. The outsiders constantly vie for control of him and offer pacts that grant him a ton of power, but if he accepts too much corruption, things get ugly in a hurry.
That could be some freaky awesome flavor for a pact binder or medium character, that the vestiges or spirits he channels represent wicked and / or capricious entities (demons, fey, wicked ancestor spirits, etc.) bound within his body (perhaps via some elaborate tattoos or scarification) by his people, making him sort of a living prison for these spirits that plagued them (and also justifying why they send these people away, to keep them the heck away from the community / tribe / whatever).
That also resulted in a custom class, one that imprisons outsiders within his body rather than letting them escape to the outer realms. The outsiders constantly vie for control of him and offer pacts that grant him a ton of power, but if he accepts too much corruption, things get ugly in a hurry.That could be some freaky awesome flavor for a pact binder or medium character, that the vestiges or spirits he channels represent wicked and / or capricious entities (demons, fey, wicked ancestor spirits, etc.) bound within his body (perhaps via some elaborate tattoos or scarification) by his people, making him sort of a living prison for these spirits that plagued them (and also justifying why they send these people away, to keep them the heck away from the community / tribe / whatever).
The Fiend Keeper Medium archetype is basically all about this.