How to make the most boring character possible.


Advice


When playing games I'm normally the type to try and make as "Out-there" of a character as possible. But for my next upcoming one, I really wanna shake things up by making a character as boring as possible. Like so boring it's funny. I already have it in my mind that they'll speak in a monotone and have some heavy NPC face going on. But what else can I do to make them more boring? What's a good boring alignment and class? How do I make the ultimate boring adventurer? Thanks in advance for the help.


Be a Gunslinger... you have no real personal choice, as ranged builds and firearms pretty much lock your feats in place, just like your Deeds... you are exactly like every other Gunslinger. Always...

The Exchange

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Play an archivist bard. They have class features with names like "Lamentable Belaborment" and "Pedantic Lecture."


Play with the core rulebook only. Literally nothing interesting can be made then, relative to what you could be making otherwise.


NihilsticBanana wrote:
What's a good boring alignment and class? How do I make the ultimate boring adventurer?

A pure heal bot is a candidate. Take cleric with the Healing domain and do nothing but casting CLW. Dumping Cha fits to the boring way to speak and you don't want channel energy anyway - it would break the monotony of casting CLW.

When it comes to alignments, I think N is hard to beat, at least the "I don't care" version of it.


Sword and board fighter with entirely numeric traits and feats like PA, Improved Initiative, Weapon Focus, Iron Will and Dodge. Neutral, probably human. No AWT or AAT, unless it's just numbers.

The Exchange

I think the original poster is looking for ideas to make his character boring to the NPCs who encounter him, not to the real humans who are creating characters.

Shadow Lodge

Why would you do this to yourself? Wouldn't a boring character leave you bored with the game? Why shoot yourself in the foot like that?


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Cast haste and polymorph into a buggane for max burrow speed...wait, wrong kind of boring.

A cipher investigator could be so boring that you forget they're there as a class ability. There's NPC-type archetypes like the pack mule fighter which are more or less playable if you want to go that way.


Just be a Wizard and magic everything away...

The Exchange

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gnoams wrote:
Why would you do this to yourself? Wouldn't a boring character leave you bored with the game? Why shoot yourself in the foot like that?

If done well, this kind of character can add fun to a game.

I was in a group for a while where one character was a pompous, vacuous, self-centered noble who loved to talk about himself. In other words - boring. After a while the characters of a more chaotic bent started rolling their eyes and making rude gestures behind his back every time he started talking. The characters, that is. The player leaned into it even harder and between us we easily communicated to impatient NPCs "this is the stupid diplomatic stuff, we'll get to the details once this blowhard stops talking." (In the game lore, he was the one "funding" our adventuring and therefore we had to take him along.) It was a lot of fun for everyone as we tried to one-up each other. Him with outrageously boring dialogue and us with background shenanigans.

In another game I played a character who was very mousy. Never wanted to venture an opinion, always deferring to others. If asked, he would admit that he was a cartographer. No, not mapping new wildernesses. He updated existing maps. He was particularly upset that very few mapmakers bothered to note the pitch of the stairs on their maps or how many steps each contained. And would talk at great length on the subject if you let him.

Spoiler:
That was his social identity. In his vigilante identity. . .

The key is to have a variety of boring topics that no sane person would want to have a conversation about. And the absolutely critical part (that you can't teach) is reading your group and knowing just how long to make the speeches so they hit that tiny "funny" gap between the huge swathes of territory where your character is just annoying.


True Primitive Barbarian... literally illiterate... gets mad at big words.

Or, Cawn... a Tengu Rogue/Bard... not necessarily boring, unless he says he is... Cawn is so good at lying, he is whatever he says he is, if he wasn't, why would he say he is?


The Vizier Mesmerist can make it look like all his powers come from someone else. Pick up a familiar to blame your powers on and call it good.


As I think is evidenced above, any build can be boring to those around the character. It's all in the presentation. This is entirely a theatrical choice, not a mechanical one.


I agree with Quixote, this not mechanical, this is entirely narration.

Just as for any other part of the story, find inspiration in other works. Which characters do you find boring? I find Paul Atreides to often be boring, I find Force-users in Star Wars, besides Obi-Wan Kenobi, to always be boring. Characters that are too smooth are boring, River Song in Doctor Who is a good example.


Maybe "boring" is too broad or subjective a term. How about "dry" or "apathetic" or "dull" or something like that? That seems to be more in line with what the OP was talking about.
A boring *character* is not the same as a boring *person*.

How about the Dry Eyes guy, Ben Stein? Monotone, calm, steady. So nonplussed you wonder if maybe there's a chemical imbalance in his brain. Like that?

I'd be tempted to play a wizard with....maybe a focus on abjuration or enchantment? You could, say, conjure up an invisible field and save your comrades from certain doom and be like "Alright. Neat. Shall we move along?" or you could be the most uninteresting personality in the room, with all the charm and wit of an empty pickle barrel, and then your foes stop in their tracks and you're like "Oh, good. Would you mind terribly if you just...let us through? Mmmhm, thaaanks, that's great guys, bye now."


I second IT, play a wizard. Flavor the character after the "One Punch Man" character. Essentially he's SO powerful that there's nothing left to challenge him and everything falls to his one attack, so he can't even enjoy defeating his enemies.

Talk like Ben Stein.

Alignment = neutral


VoodistMonk wrote:
Be a Gunslinger... you have no real personal choice, as ranged builds and firearms pretty much lock your feats in place, just like your Deeds... you are exactly like every other Gunslinger. Always...

I should probably let the mysterious stranger/archeologist bard in my party know he's breaking someone on the internet's heart right now.

Or the gunquisitor (sin-eater) of Ragathiel who can go full gun and sword mode?

Or the musketmaster who wields an axe-musket and blunderbuss, and sometimes just the knuckle dusters when he's in a mean mood...

Oh, you meant an optimized gunslinger? Sorry, my mistake.


Artofregicide wrote:
VoodistMonk wrote:
Be a Gunslinger... you have no real personal choice, as ranged builds and firearms pretty much lock your feats in place, just like your Deeds... you are exactly like every other Gunslinger. Always...

I should probably let the mysterious stranger/archeologist bard in my party know he's breaking someone on the internet's heart right now.

Or the gunquisitor (sin-eater) of Ragathiel who can go full gun and sword mode?

Or the musketmaster who wields an axe-musket and blunderbuss, and sometimes just the knuckle dusters when he's in a mean mood...

Oh, you meant an optimized gunslinger? Sorry, my mistake.

Not saying everyone that uses firearms are boring... just saying it is very easy to make a cookie cutter Gunslinger given the overwhelming lack of personal choice.

I have thrown together a few "gunslingers" with plenty of flavor... very few actually use Gunslinger as the main chassis of the build. I Really like how my Sleuth-Steel Hound Investigator turned out with a few levels of Maverick Gunslinger.


Mark Hoover 330 wrote:
Flavor the character after the "One Punch Man" character.

"My armor, made to contain my immeasurable, irresistible power...has been broken."

"Okay."


Batman is a wonderful example of a comically serious character.

Here is an illustration of this trope: https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/rsz_batgarden.png


Playing a boring character is more about RP. You could be the most well designed character others wouldn't notice if you don't really play him that way. I'm in two campaigns one my character is well known and enjoyed because I play him that way. In another other players often forget I'm there cause I don't talk hardly at all. In Wrath of the righteous we had a rogue we often forgot about because if he wasn't sneaking around disarming traps or backstabbing monsters he waited for the party to do whatever. He did almost nothing outside what was expected of him to do.
On the flip side you could play a vanilla fighter sword and board and still be remembered for who you are by RP. You run around with a longsword and heavy shield eventually plate armor. Nothing exciting about that at all. Had a friend played a fighter a lot. Yet we remembered each different one because he played them all differently.

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