VoodistMonk |
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So, we had this horror themed game, 15pt buy, no archetypes, no traits, super stripped down version of PF1 to make it more scary.
My Bard, Syr, died horrifically in a dungeon due to not being prepared enough to overcome the DR of Zombies. Syr got his guts ripped out his own mouth, he did.
Per the rules of the game, I assumed the role of the nearest in-game, level equivelant NPC... a graverobber Tengu Rogue, named Izzek...
I was allowed to rewrite Izzek per our rules, but Izzek I now was. From Bard to Rogue, I go... I did get to pick some traits to ease the transition, though.
Since cRogue doesn't get Dex to Dmg, I chose to exploit the Tengu Swordtrained racial weapon proficiency to use a Greatsword... rebuilt him with my 15pt buy, focused on Strnegth. I was posted his build around here before.
Anyways, I am this big, buff bird wearing breastplate, right? We be but level 3-4, and some bruiser townsfolk start surrounding us in a bar... not letting us leave.
My Greatsword is on my back, my Morningstar on my hip, and dude is face-to-face with me... all up in my business.
I can tell the GM has something cooking, and I really want to throw a spanner in the works for him. Lol.
Tengu have a Bite attack, I declare my intent to initiate a Surprise Round, blast this flat-footed commoner in the chest with my beak. It almost kills him, his homeboys rush to stabilize him, and Izzek steps on him as he (and the party) walks out the door without saying a word.
It was unexpected to everyone, even me. I hadn't used his bite attack at all up to that point. The 2D6 Sneak Attack almost killed the commoner, even though he was a higher level/HD than me.
It was glorious. I had been playing a no nonsense character, but I was trying to redeem myself from my graverobber past. Apparently, Izzek just had enough of this dude's $#+!, and done did something about it. Lol.
Izzek later went on to literally earn the Scout archetype by charging a scary bug-person who brought Izzek with 1hp of death with the AoO from their syringe spear... but bless Izzek's dumb, bird heart... he made the freaking charge to save his friend from being sacrificed naked on an alter. It was a foolish charge, but effective in changing the course of events to follow. Upon leveling up, my bravery in battle earned me Sneak Attack on charge attacks...
Tell me a story of yours... please.
Bjørn Røyrvik |
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Unexpected as out of character or simply clever actions that the GM didn't see coming? I'm assuming the latter.
As a group:
We started a campaign as prisoners in the BBEG's labor camps, but those with class-critical items (such as a divine caster's focus) had those. The GM had set up an overly complicated plan for our escape that had a ton of points of failure, which basically hinged on the rogue at 1st level managing half a dozen Stealth checks, some Sleight of Hand, some Forgery, Disguise, Bluff and a few other skills which we either didn't have or were by no means assured of succeeding at.
Knowing the GM he would have had an awkward moment of silence at the first failed roll, then declared it worked anyway.
We decided to have the Druid summon giant badgers and tunnel our way out. Problem solved.
My crowning achievement of quick thinking and clever roleplaying was a V:tM game. My PC was a mousey little bureucrat who wanted to grow up to be Bernard Woolley. Things went wrong almost immediately. Note that this game had a lot of one-on-one scenes with the ST and a player out in the hall, to heighten paranoia and tension, so players and PCs keeping secrets from each other was part of the game and PCs getting into trouble on their own was not unexpected. As a general rule, if something was not known by all PCs, it was not introduced to all players.
We had started as ghouls of the vampires of the city, and were candidates for the Embrace. None of the characters trusted (and certainly didn't like) each other but worked together because they knew they had to in order to survive. Between the first and second sessions he was nabbed by an independent low gen vampire, Embraced, and bound to be a spy in the group.
With everyone in the group assuming I was a ghoul, I had to survive. At one point I was running out of a hotel where a hostage situation was in progress. The ST notes that the sun is coming up, so I curse, cover my skin as best as possible and jump down the nearest manhole into the sewers.
"Why did you do that?" the other players wondered.
"It's getting light out. I can't risk people seeing my face and recognizing me as having taken part in that kerfluffle. the Masters wouldn't like it."
"Ah, right."
At another point we were driving to a place which was on fire. I was told by my nominal superior to scout ahead, but being a vampire I failed my fear check against the fire and ran off. The other players aaw me coming looking like a panicked monster, crashing through the windscreen into the car, tearing off the door to get out and outrunning the Celeritied Brujah.
"WTF? How did you do that?" they asked.
"Apparently ghouls can get some Disads that give them vampire weaknesses like fear of fire. [death glare at the ST] And I did roll well on my running away checks."
"OK, that makes sense."
At some point I'm forced to stay awake during the day and pull another vampire PC who was being punished out of the sunwell before he died. I catch on fire while doing so.
"Yikes, how did you, a ghoul, take more aggravated damage from that than I, a vampire?"
"Damn ghoul disads. All the pain and no gain."
"That's rough, buddy."
I was caught in the act of feeding on someone by another PC.
"I'm so glad to see you! Quick you gotta help me hide this person. Apparently one of the Masters was careless when feeding and left her with holes in her neck."
"OK"
This sort of thing went on the whole campaign and none of the players ever cottoned on to it until the big reveal.
He just wanted a quite boring life but he ended up be a combat monster, to the point where he managed to (just barely) defeat a Mokolé that came after him while he was sleeping.
Sysryke |
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Nothing epic, but my very first charcater ever was a halfling cleric of some nature based river and sea goddess. This was 4e (system was new, and this was a store game). I built him to be a slightly atypical halfling, in that he was fond of swimming and the sea, and also had a somewhat dwarfish love of gemstones. Aside from that though, he was the dedicated heal monkey, and quite good at it.
Joined the group and game already in progress, I was brought in as a stonge statue in the lair of an evil mage they'd defeated the session prior to my joining, petrified (and then revived) by the removeal of an enchanted necklace they found on me. We all make the introductions, I say thanks and offer my services, and we basically do the "You look trustworthy. Join us!" bit. Anyway, I was the only small size party member, and not built for combat amazingness.
We proceed from the mage's sanctum room, into some catacombs, and come across a heavy stone door. No switches that we could find, ends up coming down to strenght checks to force the door. Everyone else is some big beefy fighter, ranger, or other martial type, and maybe one wizard. Everyone proceeds to fail their strength checks miserably. Then, my little cleric calmly walks up to the door, just trying to be helpful. I roll either an 18 or a Nat 20, can't recall. BOOM! Door gets blasted open. First roll, or my first game ever. Everyone is stunned for a moment, then bursts out laughing, and the little cleric somehow is the party can opener :p
MrCharisma |
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My Bloodrager died, but luckily we had a scroll of Resurrection. I took a level of Oracle (Dual-Cursed, Lame and Possessed) to represent the fact that he was now haunted. Then my GM discovered that Possessed is a "Curse of Corruption", so we looked up the CORRUPTIONS mechanics and decided to try them out. My character now has 3 manifestations of a possessing spirit (a Kasatha named Hetuah). Definitely not where I was planning on taking him, but I love it.
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In terms of clever actions, we chased an enemy into a dungeon (buried spaceship). My high-Strength Bloodrager had to strain (take 20) to open a door only to find a small room with no other exit, and our enemy within. The enemy fired at my helpless character (he was holding up a very heavy door) just as the sounds of creatures approaching came from behind us. We were being attacked on 2 fronts!
I dropped the door - now we were only being attacked on 1 front. Battlefield control at it's finest.
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But my favourite:
1st level characters, chasing some Mites further into their own burrow. We're pretty much crushing them, we're competing to see who can kill the most, rather than worrying about defense or tactics.
We got to a section where they were on the other side of a pit firing ranged weapons at our mostly-melee party. I decided my Monk was good enough at acrobatics that she could jump the pit and engage the Mites for long enough to give my allies a chance to climb across without being shot.
Nat-1
Almost good enough, I get a Reflex save to grab the edge.
Nat-1
Max damage on the fall -> unconscious Monk.
A huge worm-like abomination is awoken from it's slumber at the bottom of the pit and begins moving toward my unconscious character.
Cue some of the most eipic heroism I've ever seen in a game, with characters leaping down onto the monster while others cover them with arrows and shields, spending every last resource on a brutal and bloody conflict that should have been simple clean-up duty.
All because I failed (Spectacularly!) at a roll I didn't need to make =P
VoodistMonk |
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Oh man, Izzek's battle buddy in the horror game got himself a corruption... slowly started turning into a construct.
He was a Half-Orc Fighter, and eventually was going to lose control of his character. The way the GM ran it, though, made it lame.
It could have been fun and exciting... some of the things available were pretty neat, like natural armor and stuff... so, if he had allowed the player some control of the curse, or literally have any say in anything, the corruption could have been fun.
Ultimately, not having a say in his own character made the player not want to play, and the campaign ended shortly.
MrCharisma |
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Oh man, Izzek's battle buddy in the horror game got himself a corruption...
... The way the GM ran it, though, made it lame.
It could have been fun and exciting... if he had allowed the player some control of the curse, or literally have any say in anything ...
Yeah I think it needs player buy-in.
My GM and I read through the rules together (because they were totally new to us), so we discussed how we wanted to run it. I'd already had this character get some temporary insanities (Numerian Fluids), and while Paranoia and Schizophrenia were interesting to try to play, the Psychosis (character becomes CE and plots to kill his allies) was not. I basically ignored that insanity, and the GM applauded my decision not to initiate PVP (we ended up role-playing my character "murdering" his own NPC-brother ... who definitely died and won't be coming back to seek revenge).
The number one rule is that it's a game and everyone is there to have fun. If you're facilitating fun then basically anyting goes. If you're not then change something.
There are suggestions in corruptions about the player choosing vs the GM choosing vs rolling randomly, and about how severe the Corruptions are (hardcore corruptions give a stain but no gift, for example). I assume your GM implemented them as they were suggested for a horror game, but without player buy-in it basically seems like one player is being unfairly punished for a choice they didn't know they were making.
Sysryke |
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The insanity talk, reminded me of a different character. This was in a Marvel game. We were all playing mostly traditional mutant type characters. The Tim Burton Alice in Wonderland had recently come out, and I decided to make a character who was a pseudo-homage to the March Hare. To not be totally useless, he also had a lab background similar to Beast from the X-Men; also explaining how he was an oversized man-bunny.
Aside from his rabbity nature, he specialized in throwing unconvetional weaponry like tea cups, salt shakers, and soup laddles. He also had the (game mechanic) challenge of Insanity at a 3. That's relatively bats#!t.
First session or two was fun, but in my attempts to play him properly crazy I wasn't helping the party much. Other players weren't really focused on advancing the story, and I couldn't with the challenge. So, did a little brain storming with my GM, and we came up with a new way to play the crazy. We eliminated my out of character voice.
Litterly everything I said and did in game sessions, in conversations outside of and away from game, at work, at school, EVERYTHING was in character. If I was speaking instead of typing right now, this would be in character. As a result, I no longer had to try and be crazy. The character would have random conversations and respond to stimuli that had nothing to do with what was going on in game. Even when he was on task and advancing the story, he'd be narrarating himself, or tell "Zach" to go screw himself. Ended up being one of the most fun a memorable characters of that entire campaign. I still like to think that the Hare is haveing random outbursts from time to time :)
Firebug |
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I accidentally made a ninja camel.
It wasn't the focus of my character (blistering feint ifrit, sacred huntsmaster inquisitor) and picked a camel(because it can spit, and desert themed) that I had intended to 'not make it' after a few sessions to keep planar focus up all the time. But... it lived. And since it had so many options for skill bonuses(stealth, sleight of hand, climb) and movement (burrow, feather fall, swim etc), it actually annoyed (in a good way, because it was ridiculous) one of the other players(who was young). At level one, it attempted to climb up a 100' cliff to join the boss fight, and managed to make it up 80'... then fell. Didn't quite die from the damage, but actually made the stabilization check and survived.
Another time it attempted to jump over a ravine, and wasn't going to make it, so another player who was riding it jumped off it to get to the baddies, while it feather-falled to the bottom.
Entangling(tangling attack skirmisher trick), sickening spit attack(camel) was probably also part of the reason the young player got a kick out of it, because gross.
Bjørn Røyrvik |
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My players, for some incomprehensible reason, took a liking to a totally random evil ogre NPC (and barely even an NPC for the amount of screen time he had) in my game and wanted to know if he could be turned to good. Then for an even less comprehensible reason they started wondering if he could become a paladin. I said if someone wanted to take him as a cohort I'd make it happen.
So one player did.
I rolled stats for him and everything and got the best damn set I've ever rolled, and now one of the group's paladins has an ogre barbarian/paladin cohort the whole group loves.
Saffron Marvelous |
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Completely forget to screw a PC over for taking a profane gift from a Succubus. Group was level 14ish, I believe. They'd killed a bunch of demons, so I had this succubus I named Calliope appear to the party's mysterious stranger gunslinger in a dream and be like hey wow *hairtwirl* you just killed my ex, let me give you some stat bonuses. The player took it, knowing full well that I'd be bringing it back, and because profane gifts give the succubus mental contact with you, she just kind of became his headmate and was doing various things with that.
So the idea was that at a very critical moment in the campaign's climax, Calliope was going to blackmail him (she had access to his daughter) into throwing the final battle to ingratiate herself with the villain, and if he said no, she'd pull her gift and send him into the final battle with crippling cha damage (mysterious stranger, and he had various things specced to cha, so this would be bad).
Completely slipped my mind with everything going on at the end of the campaign, so we've got a series of jokes about this now, like she got up to go to the bathroom and then the campaign was over when she got back. Or she's a succubus who took a bunch of fighter levels and is actually really bad at subtle machination.
On the subject of demons I had a planar-binding-summoned Nalfeshnee and a bunch of lesser demons being employed by a high level villain. When the players killed the Nalfeshnee, he had a contingency go off that poofed his body and left behind a box of chocolates with a little "no hard feelings" note and a little advertisement suggesting that if your enemies are siccing demons on you, maybe you should have demons on your side too, instructions to contact one of his quasit slaves to make a deal. Everybody thought that was pretty funny.
Tim Emrick |
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So, this is not about MY character, but it's one of the first great war stories my own two children acquired in their gaming careers.
My wife and I started teaching our kids RPGs at a young age, starting with some simplified 3.5, then later some Pathfinder 1E. One of the earliest PF games I ran for them was a fairly simple adventure involving defending a farm from goblin bandits, then following them to their lair to deal with the rest of the band. They were 1st level, so most of the goblins were bog-standard 1st-level warriors, which they handled pretty easily.
But then they met the goblin chief in the lair, who I had made a fighter 1/rogue 1 to be more challenging. Perhaps TOO challenging, because the boss soon started knocking them unconscious, one after another. After a few rounds, they were down to my youngest's squishy little sorcerer being the only PC still standing. He sensibly ran away, but into the other half of the cave complex that they hadn't explored yet. He proceeded to have the wildest string of luck, as his "move away and acid splash every round" strategy resulted in small but consistent hits to whittle down the boss, who--without any fudging by me--could not land a single hit for the entire running battle. (And just one hit would have likely ended that fight.) Eventually, the boss went down, and the sorcerer was able to limp back to the rest of the party, all or most of whom had stabilized on their own by then. Being one of the small races, and with no access to healing magic, he was unable to do much except bind wounds and keep watch until the next morning, when the party cleric recovered enough to wake up and start healing the others just enough for them to limp home again.
And that's the story of how my kid's bizarre dice luck turned an imminent TPK into an accidentally heroic, nailbiting rescue.