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So, in spirit of another thread what is the worst or most underwhelming characters you have ever made?
Mine was a Wizard/Ranger Arcane Archer. I was still learning and I tjought the AA was such a cool idea... turns out the execution was poor..
7th lvl sword and board dwarf fighter in 3.5. I liked the character but wow, was that unplayable.
Core Rule Book Monk.
This was before I started reading the messageboards. I made a CRB monk in a Core Only game for a new GM. As a martial artist myself, I had high hopes for the character. I'm a judo practitioner, so I focused the character around a lot of grappling maneuvers. Great in concept, but I couldn't even grab anything! Or hit anything! But hey, at least it was fun to roleplay.
Started a campaign with the following character creation rules: roll 3d6, in order, those are your stats, now pick a class and race.
Played a druid so I could get an animal companion with better stats, the campaign only lasted one session.
Mine was an Undine Monk (Martial Artist)/Barbarian (Wild Rager). The combination looked like it had potential, but I could never quite make it work.
Generalist inquisitor.
First ever PFS experience, it didnt help I was level 1 in a party of level 2's and 3's.
Also bad teamplay. Cast obscuring mist in the middle of a fight where every player is currently using a ranged weapon, good call randon teammate, good call.
I was the GM for this one: 3.0e, fresh out of the box. One player made an equal-level half-elf cleric/sorcerer. That went about as well as could be expected.
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Nymph sorcerer, first orc she met crit her with a javelin and killed her.
GG orc, gg.
I played a wizard in a game that never got past 3rd level, and was one encounter after another. I was good after rest, and would decide one or two encounters, but then, spells were gone and I was just a bad archer. :(
Did you consider taking a level of ranger so you could be a slightly better archer?
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This one time my beloved rogue was paralyzed by a measly goblin, then coup de graced. The GM said I could start the new character at level 4 so it wouldn't be completetly useless compared to the other PCs.
With great glee and no long-term plans at all I made a gnome druid-2/wizard-2 and purchased a ton of alchemical weapons. Gnomes and alchemy go together like fire and orphanages, right? After two sessions I realized I had put together a walking cliché whom the other players struggled to keep alive. I resolved to improve the puny tree-hugging greaseslinger. In the middle of the third session we found a magic cloak. Others already had plenty of stuff so I appropriated it, barely identified it, and put it on. Turns out you don't automatically identify cursed items. That was the only time we ever encountered a poisonous cloak.
Usually I feel a tinge of sadness or anger when a PC kicks the bucket. This time I felt relief. I had finally been useful to the party.
I still don't plan my characters much, though.
I made a character focused on mind-affecting spells because I was told that the adventure would have a lot of potential for one. Then we played an AP where almost the entire first adventure was full of opponents who were immune to the very spells I had focused on. It was not fun playing a crossbowman rather than the sorcerer I had built.
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I have two:
The first was my first PC ever - a Faultspawn Tiefling (+2 Dex, +2 Wis, -2 Int) in the Curse of the Crimson Throne AP. I made every mistake one could make with a Monk - Dex over Str, didn't invest in anything ranged, took "Scorpion Style" as my 1st level Bonus Feat (that's by far my worst decision). The first flying foe we encountered (an Erinyes) I just sat helpless. And due to the low Int I had zero out of combat utility as well.
And the worst part is I just couldn't die. My AC was REALLY good (thanks Dex) and Monk saves made me a hard target. Most combats were just missing and then being missed while my party did the heavy lifting. Mercifully, my DM finally came to my rescue and let me roll a new character anyway (I didn't even know that was an option at the time - I figured I'd have to die first) and I made a Half-Elf Bard that was way more fun.
The 2nd is what I'd call my "Hawkeye" build - he would've actually been really great if he weren't stuck in a party that completely overshadowed him. We were doing straight 4d6 rolls - and I rolled lugubriously, a 14-pt buy equivalent that was not allocated well at all. But I rolled up a Druid/Barbarian that used Wild Shape and Rage to overcome his biggest weaknesses and did decently ..... except I was in an Evil Outsider/Undead Campaign (BBEG was a vampire from an earlier game who had snuck off to the Nine Hells) with a Paladin and Cleric who rolled 40-pt buy equivalents. I really thought I could overcome any shortcoming by gaming the parts of the system I knew well - but yeah, not even close.
A first lvl sorcerer in a city where magic is illegal. His arrogance got him in a fist fight with three Commoner, who knocked him out.
A Chaotic Neutral Ranger in a military style campaign. I didn't plan on being the typical backstabbing "I am Chaotic Neutral, because I am not allowed to play evil" -character. I was just an Archer, who prefers to stay in the back ´, but does his job. My party somehow didn't get that though and tried to send me off on suicidal scouting missions just to get rid of me.
We played a short homebrew campaign with premade characters, a bard,an alchemist and the gnome rogue Bob.
(that wasn't his real name of course but the sap lacked imagination and often fell back to the same alias every time he tried to cover his fairly well known i
Now Bob was a lot of fun to play and the short campaign was a blast, only; Bob didn't have anyone to help him utilize his powers all thag much.so we had a boasty rabble-rouser of a gnome, with non-optimized ability scores, who wasnt very fast, and had a bard who didnt want to flank with him and had to fight slimes, meaning a tad on the umderwhelming side. I'm not innocent in that story either,still being new to pathfinder, so I could've done more to help out.
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My first character was a mostly Core Monk; I had the Martial Artist archetype, but without knowing how to properly leverage it.
It was a trash tier character as unoptimized Monks tend to be. That first experience with Pathfinder has colored much of how I play the game now, I think.
I made this character but didn't play her, my husband did. For PFS, the deal was that, if I make the characters and manage the paperwork, Husband would come play with me. He asked me for a smart, sneaky, socially quiet character so I created a halfling Investigator slinger for him.
I think the character might have turned out well enough in mid to high levels but Investigators take a long time to come online--4 levels before you get Studied Target and being a slinger exasperated this because you have to wait another level before you can take Ranged Study. I also think it was just the wrong character for Husband, who is very gregarious, outspoken and enjoys the "face" role more than anything else, to play but, on the whole, I was rather underwhelmed by my creation.
The main thing I learned is that the first few levels of Investigator are incredibly painful. A different sort of build with the skills focused differently might have helped some but there's still those 4 levels before Studied Target.
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I made every mistake one could make with a Monk - Dex over Str,
Actually - that's not a mistake. Dex monks are the way to go - they're just weak for the first two or three levels until you can grab an Agile Amulet of Mighty Fists. If you're in a home group rather than PFS, you can probably convince the rest of the group to chip in and get it by 2nd and you'll pay them back over the next level or two. (They want you to actually deal damage too.)
My first character that I actually made was a 3.0 monk. it was a dwarf with 13 strength, ~16 con ~16 wis I don't know what I was thinking, but I wanted to play a monk, I didn't know how to play the game really, and the GM did not guide me in the least.
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I made every mistake one could make with a Monk - Dex over Str,Actually - that's not a mistake. Dex monks are the way to go - they're just weak for the first two or three levels until you can grab an Agile Amulet of Mighty Fists. If you're in a home group rather than PFS, you can probably convince the rest of the group to chip in and get it by 2nd and you'll pay them back over the next level or two. (They want you to actually deal damage too.)
Unfortunately, this was late 2009-early 2010. The "Agile" enhancement came from the Pathfinder Society Field Guide, which was copyright 2011. No Agile AMoF for me.
Now I did get Holy Brass Knuckles reflavored as Hand Wraps, but our DM thought they only worked on Evil Outsiders (Making them redundant with the much cheaper Bane (Evil Outsider) enchantment) so it cleaned me out to do 2d6 more damage occasionally.
A Dex monk is workable - now - but Str was the only way to go in the early days, and it's still more powerful now. (Even discounting the complete changes to the class like Zen Archer, Qinggong, and Sohei - if you wanted to do the 'best' melee monk type, I'd probably do a MoMS/Martial Artist for damage or Tetori for control - and both of those builds are better focused on Str.)
I know a DM that generally focuses heavily on role playing, dialogue, politics, etc, and his games tend to have little to no combat. One day he wanted to play a meatgrinder type game and the rest of the group seemed to know it but nobody told me that detail, so naturally I build a face type character, he was a halfling bard with high social skills but almost useless in combat. He died in the third round of the first fight.
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Made a Namer from the Tome of Magic back in 3.5 D&D, only character who got weaker every time i leveled despite my every attempt to break even.
A druid with Fire Domain. Joined a running campaign at level 8, so never had the chance to really get used to druid (but I also never really got the class in 2e and 3.0). Felt like a horrible sorcerer with my single fireball per day and like a bad cleric with my heal spells. Missing a RP identity didn't help. NEVER let the GM pick the role for you.
And the worst of it: Today I could probably kick some *** with a druid, but I still wouldn't enjoy it. Geez.
I wanted to make a wizard/psion/cerebremancer, and dump statted Con. He was 3rd level, I believe, and still had single digit hit points, and I didn't really know how to play a caster that well.
Our group was doing an experiment where we rotated as GM for each adventure, but all in the same campaign/party. When it got to my turn, I killed off my own character at the end of the adventure, and made a new one for the next session. I forget what my replacement was.
I made a Sorcerer 4/Druid 3/Geomancer 3 (3.5) in FR as an early character. Worked as well as having leopard spots or zebra stripes. Not the best worked out combo..
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IIRC two handed PA was literally twice as good as 1 handed.7th lvl sword and board dwarf fighter in 3.5. I liked the character but wow, was that unplayable.Why? Just bad stats? Dwarf was probably the most potent race in 3.5, and PA was such that two-handed didn't benefit as much. (Usable with two-handed, but still only situational.)
Yes - it was twice as good as something terrible - making it decent in certain situations... which is what I said. The only good reason to use PA one-handed in 3.5 was vs an ooze or some other extremely low AC corner case. But it wasn't very good two-handed either. It really just wasn't used much.
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Also, there were feats that mitigated the negatives (or traded it away entirely for something else, like the one that lets you apply it to AC instead of AB).
True - and that was the only good way to use PA - or if you did a combo with True Strike.
And by 1 dmg/point - you mean that it was the same penalty for 1/3 less damage with THW, and 1/2 for one-handed? There was a reason that Pathfinder buffed it.
First time playing Pathfinder, we were level....3 I believe. Decided that multiclassing a Magus and a Synthesist would be a good idea. I loved the imagery. Person running around in a translucent monster armor hitting people with spell swords. I quickly realized that it was a horrid idea. Then re-tooled him into a Fighter/Summoner mutliclass. Went better, still not great. GM let me "retire" that character by having him stay home to help defend the town we were from.
So first time I played Pathfinder. We decided to do a bit of a reboot of an old 4E game in with a new system, so I decided to remake my old guy who was a Warforged who punched and grappled people and had a shield. I made him into a fighter who took grapple feats and had a tower shield. Oh wow was it bad, especially as the DM felt the need to make sure my already bad build took the extra negatives to grapple for having only one hand on top of the tower shield negatives. I seem to remember other people in that game getting quite a bit of slack cut their way rules wise, but I'd be damned before that character got any of that.
Sadly, I have a few...
Monk. This was the first 3.5 character I ever made. Monks seemed so much more powerful then AD&D, I thought I would kick ass. I was wrong. It was especially bad because stuff like 5-foot-steping and grappling were totally new to us. The final suck was when later in the campaign, the GM redirected things into a kingdom building direction using rules that were based on Cleric/Fighter/Rogue/Wizard, and monk was never considered. No I don't want to start a thieves guild.
Rogue. Rolling for HP, and I just had bad luck. Even took a level of fighter, just for HP. The character was infamous for getting knocked into the negatives at the start of every combat. I think I had like 15 hp at level 4. Character became a were-rat, who was a FAR better NPC then PC.
Paladin. This one was played in the mid to higher levels, and was basically just a sidekick for the full casters. Actually, it would be more accurate to say that he was a sidekick for the casters summoned creatures.
Lizard man druid. By the time you factor in the two racial HD for lizardman, and a +1 level adjustment, I was 3 levels behind in druid. This might have been ok, except that the other party members expected me to be the healer - in combat. The fighter would get himself all banged up recklessly trying to "protect" me, even though I had a better AC.
Eldritch Knight. Why did I ever bother with the fighter stuff when magic was 10X more effective?
At least this was all 3.5 and not Pathfinder.
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RPG Superstar 2015 Top 32, RPG Superstar 2012 Top 32
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Prior to realizing how the game math worked, I made my first organized play character: a CRB-only halfling headed toward Eldritch Knight. First level was barbarian, with Weapon Finesse as my first feat. I attacked with a handaxe for 1d4 damage. I could rage to add +2 to damage, but no bonus to hit. Second level was sorcerer, which got me claws a few rounds per day. So now I had a choice of attacking once with a handaxe for 1d4 (rage 1d4+2), or attacking twice for 1d3 each (rage 1d3+2 each), or even casting burning hands for 1d4 (save for half) against multiple targets. Woohoo! :/
A single-classed Rogue with 18 Intelligence and 12s and 10s in all the other ability scores in a Living Greyhawk campaign.
He wasn't very good at melee or ranged, and all he had going was a lot of skill points, none of which were really good save for Disable Device and Search.
I've gone over my memories since this thread was begun. I thought it would be easy to come up with one. I still haven't thought of one. I've only felt underwhelmed based on campaign, not character.
Although I don't do multi-classing, which looks to be a theme in underwhelming on this list.
Conjurer wizard, using mostly the Create Pit line of spells, Web, and the Silent Image line of spells. Survived to 5th level mostly due to luck, and the DM's loose interpretation of Silent Image. Was promptly killed when an enemy charged me, and was closely followed by my own Rain of Frogs.
I once had a wizard who specialized in blasting people with toppling magic missiles. I used traits like Magical Lineage and feats like Preferred Spell to be able to cast toppling magic missiles all day, every day from level one up, and...it totally sucked!
I used it approximately 20 times in actual play and I had not been able to trip a SINGLE creature! Everything with an appropriate CR seemed to have too many legs, happened to be flying, or otherwise had an unbeatable CMD! The 1d20+caster level+casting stat mod just didn't keep up with the scaling of creatures' and characters' CMD values.
My first character was a Core+APG rogue before they could SA the undead or constructs. My first Gm's homebrew game naturally pitted us against the undead, constructs, and an elemental.
In fairness, my character was built like s&&%. He dual-wielded but blew a feat on getting Kukri proficiency so he couldn't hit anything. Had no archetype. Barely had any magical items. All he was good for was disable device except the fighter kept kicking down every door he could.
The most damage I did was on a critical fumble where I hit myself and the aforementioned fighter for max damage.
We converted some AD&D characters to 3rd edition and mine ended up something like a fighter 5/sorcerer 5 (he was a fighter/wizard with the swashbuckling fighting style). I had been DMing 3e and made the most of it.
First serious combat, I buff myself to oblivion (including a true strike). I charge, Power Attack AND Combat Expertise to the max, hit the monster, and deal something like 25 damage. The group's wizard casts a magic missile. 23 damage.
I love gish-types, but they always seem to underwhelm compared to either full casters or full martials. It took me like 7 levels to notice my Finesse arcane duelist bard simply didn't compare to the archer ranger or the sword-and-board cavalier in terms of damage. I always thought "Well, when I get to use all my buffs I'll get there." The time finally came and he came short.
At least after that I had found my niche - buffing and supporting the party while dealing medium amounts of damage.
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First character in 3.0, Joined an existing game I was a Ranger2/Bard8 in a Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil … Apparently not much use for a Face Character in the endless dungeon we found ourselves in. I mostly hung back and did ranged and sang. Felt very underwhelming.
I did manage to sneak off/scout a few times but anything I met could easily turn me into a sticky red paste.
Started off as a straight Bard but I took some Ranger levels to give me HP’s and some ranged ability. Still not good.
DM even gave me a magic instrument so I could cause some sonic damage. …
Bards in Pathfinder are much better …
Regards
Sic
That'll go to my very first 3E character (made from playtest materials a month before the game officially came out) - a tiefling bard who multiclassed into cleric and then into a Dragon magazine prestige class called Herald (which had its own spell list and a weird hodge podge of powers, though the unique spells were really strong).
IN short, the character was a mess who couldn't do anything well.
Her paladin cohort was much better made, and she would've been retired in his favor if the campaign hadn't ended for various reasons.
Nowadays, I look back and I'm floored that I stuck it out with that trainwreck of a character for about 17 levels.
(If I remade her today, I'd work out some sort of Divine Chord prestige class for allowing her to continue certain bardic progressions while getting cleric class abilities and spells.)
(I did remake her for an epic 3.5 ensemble campaign (combining the parties of like 4 different campaigns to combat an overwhelming incursion by the Far Plane led by Nyarlathotep), where I just made her a straight bard. Straight bards in 3.5 were still really, really underwhelming. She had amazing skill checks, but her actual combat ability was complete garbage compared to the bard-type characters with prestige classes.)
(Extra aside: when I remade the character for a 4E one-shot where she and other heroes were fighting Tiamat, I was able to make a pretty awesome version of her. 4E bards were really neat, and there was a divine chord paragon path that fit the concept perfectly.)
But yeah, poor Marie Silverrose was the character I made when I didn't know what the hell I was doing, and I've pretty much avoided ever doing that again.
(Honorable mention: my half-dragon monk in 3.0, that I played through The Sunless Citadel and Forge of Fury, who I retired because he was boring.)
My first ever character in 3.5 was, as many of the characters in this thread have been, a monk.
He was an elf... big dex, no strength, no con, low wis and on top of that he was LE since the GM gave me no guidance on my first ever RP character.... hitting stuff was hard, doing damage was even harder and the GM was a BIG pro-wizard (he forced the 2 sorcerors in the party to become wizards - actually forced them to in plot on pain of death...)
That character didn't last long at all! Ran off back to the forest when he realised that being the lord of a small castle wasn't worth the hassle!
EDIT: he couldn't speak common either...
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I made a character focused on mind-affecting spells because I was told that the adventure would have a lot of potential for one. Then we played an AP where almost the entire first adventure was full of opponents who were immune to the very spells I had focused on. It was not fun playing a crossbowman rather than the sorcerer I had built.
...reminds me of when I played my 0-XP Witch through Trail by Machine. The GM wrote on my character sheet, "masterful at opening the doors" - which is what I did throughout the entire scenario. The only thing I did, throughout the entire scenario.
-- Steve