To start this off, for me it was...
(1) Half-Orc Warpriest (with a two handed weapon...but more importantly he could use a wand of cure light wounds!)
(2) Human Barbarian (had an archetype for turning into a shark when raging. Had a two handed weapon)
(3) Human Fighter (Archer)
(4) Gnome Monk (with tiny fists)
This was PFS. Nobody had detect magic. Nobody had spellcraft. Nobody had a glib tongue. Everyone's go-to strategy was to kick the door in.
Our job was to investigate a monastery. The barbarian walked into a room that was cursed and he proceeded to fail a will save and slice his own throat. He survived this (yay barbarians!). Given how we had no tools for gaining information outside of intimidate and crappy diplomacy (again, no spellcraft, detect magic, etc), we did the only thing we could think of. We kidnapped a monk, and an intimidate test later, he dragged him everywhere we went. Any room we went into, the poor NPC was forced to go in first. Anything we wanted to touch we made him do it first.
Eventually we had to move on without him. Our barbarian punched the NPC. Unsure of whether or not the punch killed him (he wasn't moving... ) we hid his limp form and moved on.
Tripped a trap, causing a statue to fall on us. It did more damage than the ensuing encounter (entire table rushing a few very, very outclassed skeletons).
Eventually it was time to fight the big bad. He...could climb walls and cast spells. If you've ever seen Monty Python and the Killer Rabbit scene, you can guess what happened next. Yes, we all ran away into the next room. We ended up coming back in and threw stuff at him. This included the gnome monk, who punched the big-bad, fell down and landed in a stunned heap on the ground. I mean...it's not like we had many options.
Eventually the big-bad just used his magic to get away. We considered it a great victory. Though it did drum home the problem of having an all martial party. A single caster handed us our collected arses when it became impossible to close with him.
What the pathfinder society was thinking when they sent us there is anybody's guess...
Anyways, that's my story. What's yours on the strangest party you've been a part of?
What went wrong with trying to shoot the big bad (archer)?
Very poor dice rolling, and getting the spell caster's attention. :P
One of the GMs on our gaming group had the wonderful idea of making an all-wizard game. As he feared we would be too limited he decided to give us all a lot of points to spend on ability scores so we all ended having intelligence scores of 30.
The main theme of the campaign was magic against technology and we couldn't use technology. GM thought technology would be overpowered against magic.
I was playing an enchantment specialist with a lot of SoS spells. I couldn't use technology but I could use technology users. With my awfully high saves it was almost impossible that enemies got a passed save.
The game lasted for 2 sessions. We were low level Wizards.
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One of the GMs on our gaming group had the wonderful idea of making an all-wizard game. As he feared we would be too limited he decided to give us all a lot of points to spend on ability scores so we all ended having intelligence scores of 30.
The main theme of the campaign was magic against technology and we couldn't use technology. GM thought technology would be overpowered against magic.
I was playing an enchantment specialist with a lot of SoS spells. I couldn't use technology but I could use technology users. With my awfully high saves it was almost impossible that enemies got a passed save.
The game lasted for 2 sessions. We were low level Wizards.
Seriously?
Even at low levels, wizards can usually do more than martials. I mean, I like martials alot better, but this game makes the wizard king. I just don't get his thought process.
"Man, the best class is the game is going to have trouble against technology. Let's give them even more advantages, because remaking reality with their mind just isn't enough."
That said, this certainly fits the bill of the thread.
Oh, I forgot! To make our characters have access to different kind of spells he allowed us to take some spells from other spell lists depending on our specialisation school. I was able to cast Command and with my bonus spells because of my high intelligence I could almost spam it.
We knew his idea wouldn't work before we started playing.
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CN Half orc inquisitor of Desna (me) heavy pick and quickdraw light wooden shield, exploration subdomain
NN Tielfing witch with an arbiter familiar just to piss off her (demon lord) dad. Sometimes summoned her cousins via summon monster.
NG Aasimar fighter/cleric of Sarenrae, fire and healing domains, I forget if he was greatsword or sword n board
CN Fetchling rogue, rapier and dagger
So we have the sun worshiper and the night worshiper, an assimar and a tiefling, a LN talking familiar who hates half the party's guts, and along the way we ended up caring for wyrmling black and green dragons. Oh, and since everyone in the party had darkvision we had 0 need for light sources. Though my inq had spark and blistering invective.
I ran a PBP where the PCs were monsters escaping into undermountain.
The party was a githyanki psion, an ethereal dragon spellcaster of some description, a bard ghost, a hobgoblin fighter and a goblin-wererat rogue.
It was fun but short lived as RL got in the way. :(
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2 players played an ettin (one for each head) one player played a Cajun were-shark. One player played an imp witch with a human slave who pretended to be the imps master. Oh and a vampire. (monstrous game)
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The imp witch is really cool! I'd totally play it!
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Oh and I forgot we house-ruled in a Mindflayer (cause why not?) With a really bad sense of humor.
mind flayer: "Why did the chicken cross the road? So I wouldn't eat its brain!" Other players: "Laugh you fools or he will eat our brains!" *nervous forced laughing ensues*.
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Bad side of having aberration type. Only aberrations understand your sense of humor. Racial sense of humor, , you know.
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The Twinkie, Vaseline and black light party. Definitely the weirdest. Of course I didn't actually go. I just saw the survivors dragging themselves across campus.
I'm pretty sure the Administration has killed it by now. Modern educators have no sense of whimsy.
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Another curious party I've had was my ninja's. Races were mostly quite common: 3 of them were human and I was playing a devkarin elf (something similar to a drow. The setting was an adaptation of M:tG's Ravnica). But the class selection made our group kinda unique:
1 ninja.
2 bards, both of them skilled in stealth and with invisibility and such.
1 fighter, also stealthy and a bit rogue-like.
So we stealthed our way through the whole story. My light vulnerability also made our party start living by night. It was a kinda different way of playing.
We were sort of a super-ninja team! We are saving the World but nobody will ever know! We are stealthy, we are deadly and we are... definitely not here xD
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I haven't had any Pathfinder parties that I would consider strange. I was in a rather hilarious party in AD&D2e some years ago though.
The setting was we were students in an Adventuring Academy. Basically, Adventurer High School. The party at first glance wasn't that terrible.
A human Fighter, with INT as his dump stat and a high charisma. The player was something of a tactical genius, so every time he had a good idea we made him roll an INT check to see if his character actually had that idea.
A halfling thief, emphasis on thief, he was really into breaking and entering. Was also stubborn and kind of a dick.
A dwarf fighter/thief, he generally helped out where he could, frequently that was running backup. He was a new player and didn't really know what he was doing. The character had his own hilarious traits, but those are kind of R rated so won't be discussed.
A human Alchemist that did stuff, and may have gotten more power than deserved by virtue of being DM's girlfriend, but Alchemy does lend itself to some crazy stuff.
And finally, my character, a bard named Brad with nothing going for him except for an 18 Charisma, which didn't help because back then Bard cast spell with INT. I had 1 Color Spray/Day. At the time I also had zero social skills as a person. My roleplay for Brad involved me declaring that I would use "The Winning Smile," at which point I would stand up at the table strike an impressive pose and throw on the biggest smile I could. NPC's crumple before my super power.
Anyway, this entire group was characterized by an incredible degree of incompetence as traditional adventurers. All problems were solved via some combination of shenanigans. The thieves did a lot of breaking and entering to solve our problems. The alchemist had tricks up her sleeve. And myself and the Fighter were something of an unstoppable social team. At one point the fighter almost got the whole group into a lot of trouble by very publicly promising that an enemy with some degree of power and influence would die. I quickly turned it around and convinced everyone present that that "The Great Prophet had spoken," and suddenly word of our fighter's gift of prophesy spread like wildfire across the land.
We accomplished a lot as a party, but to put it all into perspective 4 goblins proved to be a serious threat to that party, Brad was so incompetent that he proved to be a liability in combat.
I was in a group recently with an Inquisitor, Occultist, Investigator, and Bard and due to background skills, collaboration, and using traits to gain class skills we had every single skill in the game (except all the various options for craft, perform, etc.) was represented by someone in the party who had it as a class skill with max ranks.
Everybody in that group had a double digit bonus to diplomacy rolls by level 4, too.
Another curious party I've had was my ninja's. Races were mostly quite common: 3 of them were human and I was playing a devkarin elf (something similar to a drow. The setting was an adaptation of M:tG's Ravnica). But the class selection made our group kinda unique:
1 ninja.
2 bards, both of them skilled in stealth and with invisibility and such.
1 fighter, also stealthy and a bit rogue-like.So we stealthed our way through the whole story. My light vulnerability also made our party start living by night. It was a kinda different way of playing.
We were sort of a super-ninja team! We are saving the World but nobody will ever know! We are stealthy, we are deadly and we are... definitely not here xD
Oh, I've been in couple of stealth parties. They can be really nasty. And that's before you add in stealth synergy. When it's a single bad guy, the surprise round is a flurry of tumbles into flanking positions, and the monster is often dead before it gets it's action in the first round.
Right now I'm in an all kobold Skull and Shackles game. That is really fun.
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Oh, I've been in couple of stealth parties. They can be really nasty. And that's before you add in stealth synergy. When it's a single bad guy, the surprise round is a flurry of tumbles into flanking positions, and the monster is often dead before it gets it's action in the first round.Right now I'm in an all kobold Skull and Shackles game. That is really fun.
We were so stealthy that we either finished fights in the first round or we had a really hard time. We loved going into extremes. xD
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There was this one game where it turned out we were playing F.A.T.A.L. instead of Pathfinder....
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Pick up game- All Paladins. Yes, five of us (one was a var and CG) tromping across the landscape, ignoring clues, not looting crushing all evil...
Savages Species. All Evils I played a Rakshasa. Didnt last long.
One of the GMs on our gaming group had the wonderful idea of making an all-wizard game. As he feared we would be too limited he decided to give us all a lot of points to spend on ability scores so we all ended having intelligence scores of 30.
The main theme of the campaign was magic against technology and we couldn't use technology. GM thought technology would be overpowered against magic.
Been there. I played a Transmuter/Conjurer wizard with Summon Monster AND Summon Nature Ally. And the GM thought that we would suffer without a tankish character... Plus, the GM gave us a cohort who could refill our spell slots. It was crazy.
Another funny party:
Morrigan: Human Bloodrager
Lexi: Human Wizard/Fighter/Eldritch Knight
Ylenia: Half Elf Dervish Dancer Bard
Shalia: Human Rogue with Minor and Major Magic
All of them spellcasters with good INT, superb CHA and dumped-to-the-extreme WIS. Whenever they bluffed an enemy, they all ended believing their own lies. The roleplaying was hilarious. The Enchantment-focused enemies... too.
It began as a serious story, but it quickly derailed into the most funny story I've been in.
Another funny party:Morrigan: Human Bloodrager
Lexi: Human Wizard/Fighter/Eldritch Knight
Ylenia: Half Elf Dervish Dancer Bard
Shalia: Human Rogue with Minor and Major MagicAll of them spellcasters with good INT, superb CHA and dumped-to-the-extreme WIS. Whenever they bluffed an enemy, they all ended believing their own lies. The roleplaying was hilarious. The Enchantment-focused enemies... too.
It began as a serious story, but it quickly derailed into the most funny story I've been in.
I love GMing that story! It's really nice to rest a bit from deep and complex stories and just have some fun!
When they are not enlarging themselves so they can throw elephants through the window they are hunting a giant octopus in the bathroom. And somehow, in a bizarre way, everything seems to make sense.
Currently in a PbP. The party is composed of...
(1) Dwarven Deep Marshall Magus (6)
(2) Dwarven Shield Champion Brawler (6)
(3) Dwarven Warpriest (6)
(4) Elven Occultist (6)
(5) Goblin Brawler/Rogue (3/3)
It's actually a pretty balanced team. We have 1 healer, 2 arcane users, 1 trapfinder and 2 tanks.
And in another one...
(1) Dwarven Ranger (1)
(2) Dwarven Cleric (1)
(3) Dwarven Telekineticist (1)
(4) Gnome Paladin (1)
Very strange to have two campaigns at the same time that are so dwarf heavy. The second one especially so, as the Telekineticist only speaks dwarven...which works out as it is a language shared by the entire party.
Here's the current makeup of our 3.5 Eberron campaign:
Changeling Cleric (primarily Death domain, only raises dead when absolutely necessary)
Changeling Rogue (who prestiged into Thief-Acrobat)
Hobgoblin Fighter (switch-hitter)
Thri-Kreen Ranger (whirling dervish of multiple arms)
And finally myself as a Warforged Warblade (from the Book of Weeaboo... err the Tome of Battle)
As you can see, we basically have no face (because our Dwarf Bard got sucked into a sphere of annihilation) and we have no arcane caster (our Human Wizard got mind controlled and has turned against the party). Before even that we had a Tengu Monk who punched first and forgot to ask questions after punching. He promptly ran into a Hydra and was ripped to shreds.
We're far from normal.
I play an Eberron based Changeling race (Wizard) and am the closest to normal (The race must reproduce with humans, so we're all half-human.). The other members are either Aberrations or Outsiders of some type. Well, we do have a animate plant, too.
Vinling Wizard using Druid spells (3.0 Oakling) [P]
Tiefling Rogue with access to ninja stuff [NO]
Azer Battlerager (includes fire) [O]
Humanoid Blink Dog race Fighter (teleports in combat)[A]
Levitating race of XT Oracle that avoids physical contact [A]
Sylph Ranger/archer [NO]
Aasimar Sorcerer [NO]
We have cycled a Bugbear Barbarian, a Halfling Monk and a flying Elf in the last several games.
I don't have one of my own that I have actually run in to offer, but check out these:
this Mummy's Mask PbP (unfortunately defunct) (everybody was a monster, or close to it);
this Iron Gods PbP (unfortunately defunct) (funniest takes I have ever seen for both Aasimar and Orc);
party that I thought up myself that I'd LIKE to see or better yet be part of, but has yet to see play (all Small + optional Dwarf, preferably all Halfling, preferably in a Giantslayer PbP).
In the first campaign I played in, while it started out pretty normal, our party became a zoo when everyone rolled new characters after the first adventure.
We had: a tengu alchemist, a kobold oracle, and a ratfolk witch. We later got two cohorts added into the mix: a kobold fighter and a catfolk bard.
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Our parties tend to be pretty Tolkien-esque, but our Iron Gods games that we're currently playing may actually take the cake for our group.
* Goblin Grenadier/Winged Marauder Alchemist with a 38 Intelligence and his:
* Lizardfolk Vivisectionist/Chirurgeon/Internal Alchemist cohort with a third arm and the mummification discovery (We're *kind* of a Dr. Frankenstein & Igor pairing.)
* Small-size Skinwalker (scaleheart) Goliath Druid that exclusively uses dinosaur forms and his:
* "Dinosaur" Herald (reskinned dragon herald) kobold bard cohort (from a canonical kobold tribe that worships dinosaurs.)
* Ifrit Mysterious Stranger Gunslinger
The party is *weird* and we play up the oddity. Fortunately it's Numeria, so it kind of flies. Our next game is already back to core races, though (characters are already built.)
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Our current party includes a cleric of Groetus.
I was tempted to just let that speak for itself, but what's interesting about threads like these IMHO is how something works when it looks like it shouldn't. In this case, her player did significant prep work to create a believable and functional character.
- She has an actual mental illness: she hears the voices of her dead, pet mice in her head, and sometimes carries on conversations with them. Each mouse has a different personality, and when the player reaches a decision point where it's not obvious what his character would do, he uses a die roll to represent her getting "advice" from one of the mice, and uses that mouse's personality to influence the character's decision process. It has added an element of unpredictability to the game. The player is careful to not deliberately screw the rest of the party, but she (the character) will act impulsively if she grows impatient and the rest of the party is not acting or coming to a consensus quickly. He's shared all of this with us so another player can run her if he misses a game session.
- He has a whole backstory for how she fell into the cult of Groetus, and what keeps her functional enough to be an accepted member of the party. It very closely aligns with the "Sign of the Destroyer" doom (see Inner Sea Faiths, though the character predates this sourcebook).
- It doesn't generally occur to her to heal people. She'll do it if she's asked and in a position to do so, but it's not her first instinct and she won't do it in the middle of combat unless it's really obvious to her that someone is in trouble.
- She has only one rank in Knowledge (religion). Obviously her bonus is higher than that, but still.
It also helps that our collective backgrounds establish that some of our characters have been friends since they were young children. Hence we have a reason to want to work together.
In this same party, I am playing a wizard evangelist of Shelyn (note: she has a significantly higher Knowledge (religion) bonus than our cleric). The vast majority of her spells are non-lethal and she functions mostly as a utility caster. This is far from an original idea, but my spin on this is: while she's not a pacifist, she doesn't like to be in a position where she has to directly hurt a living creature. Given the option, she would rather avoid a fight. If a fight is inevitable, she'd rather support than attack. Only if she has no better options or we are being over whelmed as a party will she pull out lethal spells, or a crossbow since she doesn't have many lethal spells.
Part of the fun in playing this character has been finding ways to avoid a fight, or convincing the rest of the party that we don't need to fight something. Just as much fun to play has been having reality and her ideology come into conflict with one another, and how I have her deal with it.
We're a large group (currently six PC's) so we can get away with playing weird stuff like this. It's a lot harder to vary from traditional builds when you're just a group of four. I've also been playing PF and D&D in all its forms since the very late 70's, and the typical stuff doesn't have the same appeal that it used to. What makes the game fun now is putting the pieces together in unusual ways, and figuring out how to make them work within the parameters and assumptions of the game, and mesh with the rest of the group so that we are all having fun at the table.
I played a dwarven fighter with multiple personalities,one was a cleric and one was a rogue, in stressful situations he'd role a d6 to see which persona would take control. Super fun, he had no clerical abilities at all, or rogue but truly believed he was "blessing" comrades or "sneaking up on the enemies. It was great role playing for the whole group.
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Half-elf Rogue
Half-elf Fighter
Human Fighter
Catfolk Monk
Lizardfolk Warlock
Changling Draconic Sorcerer
Eladrin
Such good times, they ended up being called the Menagerie by the snooty nobles.
Half-orc Scarred Witch Doctor
Half-orc Winter Oracle
Catfolk Ranger
Troll Brawler
Human Cavalier
Warforged Ranger
And the half-orcs were the strangest ones...
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Our current Mummy's Mask AP group is probably the oddest, as we've only got two 'standard' race PCs and only one player who's using a core class.
Half-orc shaman
Nagaji bloodrager
Suli-jann druid
Tengu unchained monk
Human inquisitor (and the inquisitor's player misses games often, so his character is seldom present)
Years ago we had a short-lived RuneQuest campaign in which all of our PCs were either anthropomorphic animals or non-humanoid races. One character was a sort of naga-like race, and the rest were an anthropomorphic lemur, a bariaur (deer centaur), and a centaur.
Hmmmm....possibly the PbP Carrion Crown group with the following:
An angry, forlorn elven ranger
A human wizard that was basically a slobby, slightly less-snarky Severus Snape
A halfling Dirge Bard who basically dressed like Marilyn Manson
An Osiriani priest of Pharasma
A largely cold and emotionless tiefling investigator
A changeling inquisitor of Iomedae (me)
It's a wonder we ever managed to get anyone to like us in Book 1 with that kind of a lineup...
The PbP Legendary Planet group I'm in is also a contender:
A goblin alchemist whose goal is to mutate himself as much as possible
An oversized goblin fighter who wants to eat everything and fights with a chain
A goblin barbarian/gunslinger that's actually pretty smart and yells at everyone else a lot
A human summoner (me) that wonders who she offended to get stuck with such a group...and her eidolon who is largely happy to take the goblin shenanigans in stride (and even joins in/encourages them sometimes)
(The group also had a gnome oracle at one point who thought she was a goblin and whose life goal was to find a way to pull down the sun...)
The Pathfinder Freeport campaign that I wrapped up this past summer had an undine cleric, an undine druid, a sylph witch, an azhari freebooter (setting-specific cognate to ifrit/new setting-specific class), and...a hadozee ranger (which I converted as a vanari subrace). The hadozee's player joked that if and when his PC died, he would play an oread, just so they'd have a complete set of elemental planetouched. In addition, the druid had an alligator companion, the ranger acquired an elasmosaurus, and the the freebooter eventually recruited a nagaji bard cohort.
Then my wife ran a short campaign while I was gearing up for our next long-term game. She allowed almost any class and race from CRB, APG, and ARG, so that crew was even more motley:
- tengu cleric of Iomedae (me)
- dhamphir inquisitor of Pharasma (whose main schtick was his big honkin' repeating crossbow)
- kitsune rogue
- nagaji summoner with a marilith-like eidolon (and, in time, a vishkanya alchemist cohort)
- gillman barbarian
- elf wizard (the token "normal" character)
Plus two part-time PCs, a human paladin (who later got a elf ranger cohort) and a gnome bard.
My newest Iron Gods party consists of the following:
--An amnesiac lashunta psychic with a strange egg who
--An android brawler who punches robots with eerie calmness;
--An aasimar priest of Nethys, who's married to a tiefling alchemist with one bunny-eared daughter and another child on the way;
--A 'murder bunny' galvanic saboteur, who was the product of Technic League meddling with the native rabbit wildlife of Numeria, and is currently a fanboy of the android brawler.
Admittedly, I think this comp is rather tame compared to others posted on this thread. I like to think of them as my version of the Guardians of the Galaxy. XD
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This is more in spirit of the opening post. I saw some strange parties in my last couple of PFS games. I play an unusually charming and charismatic Universalist Wizard (I have +0 on Diplomacy).
In the last game, between the barbarian and actual character Harsk, I had the highest level of social skills, which I realized pretty late in the game, so we probably failed in some parts because I let the others play out interactions with NPC-s while trying to not hog the spotlight. Overall, we did the rol(l/e)play part well enough because I had most of the knowledge checks covered.
The game before that I had a party which had a paladin that didn't speak, so I forgot that he was there, and took on the face duties for the early part of the game, until I noticed that we had a paladin and ordered him to talk to NPCs. He objected saying he has no ranks in Diplomacy. I still had him talk to the NPCs anyway because he had an actual bonus, making him better qualified than me to take that role.
In the same game another player had a cleric with INT 20, so he could exploit the knowledge domain better. Both players were newbies I was given to mentor, who were on their 2nd PFS characters (they played with our resident killer GM few days earlier).
All together, we drained 38 charges from my wand of CLW in that one (some of that was spent on clearing haunts). We were all level 1.
A group of 5 AntiPaladins, all commanded by their deity to work together to further his ends. Party in-fighting was punished by level loss, so as much as they hated each other, they had to work together, causing as much chaos and spreading as much evil as possible.
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I ran a 2nd edition AD&D game where the party was comprised of a Githzerai, an Elf, and a Rogue Modron (not a modron that was a rouge by class, but a modron out-cast that had broken its connection with other modrons).
The Githzerai was a Psionicist, the Elf was a Ranger, and the Rogue Modron was a Fighter.