Mine was a Wild Magic Sorcerer that vehemently believed he was a regular city guardsman and explained every bit of magic he produced away as pure happenstance.
For a short adventure / one-shot, I played an intelligence-based tome warlock (using some of the play test materials). His patron was… himself, in the past. He was a terrible evil wizard who realized the error of his ways, wiped his own memory, and restarted. His tome was just his old spell book, most of which was pretty gnarly stuff. Slowly finding that out would have been a fun journey if he was a long-term character.
Game: Scion
A Scion of Odin, my concept is that when Odin gouged out his eye at Well of Urd at the base of Yggdrasil and tossed said eye in, he inadvertently created something new.
The droplets of blood and the eye were infused by the waters and bled into the roots of Yggdrasil. The most resilient among them trickled into the other realms. My character ultimately arrived in Midgard, in Venice Beach. Little more than a sentient blob of blood with a lone eye contained inside, he fed on smaller creatures and grew in the darkness.
Discovered by a bunch of surfers, he was taken in as a pet. He grew big and strong enough to take a form, amalgamating the looks of the other surfers into a new form entirely. At the start of his adventure he is called Grom, short for Grommet. He lives as a surfer bum, begging food and a few bucks off of people and living in an abandoned building by the beach. So long as he has the waves and his friends, he has everything he needs.
That is, until the arrival of a one-eyed young man who tries to kill him and cut his eye out. Grom wins the scuffle, coming out barely injured. It is only then that Odin comes to visit him, pleased at his victory. He forewarns Grom that because he has Odin’s other eye, others like him will be coming to try to claim that eye.
Grom is very physically adept, with points mostly put into Str, Dex, and Con. He’ll also have Appearance and Wisdom as backup stats. In the party he is the reluctant hero, wanting nothing more than to hang with his friends, but understanding that he must undergo this trial before he can live in peace again.
Mine was a minotaur gladiator turned monster hunter (ua fighter subclass). His name was Daniel Notmonster and he’d been called monster so much during his days in the arena that he internalized a hatred of monstrosities. He was driven to prove he wasn’t a monster by killing any he came across. He would also collect a bone from each monstrosity killed to scrimshaw a scene of the battle to kill it.
A stereotypical, run-of-the-mill wizard.
You know the type: Academic, aloof, bookworm, a bit naive, likes to use long Latin words, …Only he wasn’t a wizard. His parents couldn’t afford tuition at the academy, so he applied for a job as janitor to get access to the buildings. Spent several years mingling with the students and teachers so he could fake the lingo. And he pinched the odd magical item that let him “cast” some cantrips.
Now he’s faking being a wizard to rise up in society.Got to love a Fake Wizard. I wanted to play one who was a wizarding student who was grandfathered into a wizard school (literally his grandfather founded the school) who got expelled for messing up so bad he almost destroyed the entire school. The accident would have bound him to a celestial somehow which is why he is a scourge Aassimar and Zealot barbarian. He has these powers he doesn’t know where they are coming from and are slowly changing him into something less human and more divine.
He would of course still have a quarterstaff, wearing school robes, have a arcane sigil on his shield and be convinced he is a new type of wizard. He would have cantrips and some magic but doesn’t understand how or why.
Now I want to play the reverse…a fake barbarian. A really intelligent wizard that realized people don’t ask him to work as much if he pretends to be illiterate and dumb. Quickened True Strike when he rages, etc.
I wanted to play a necromancer of no particular class, whose skeletal grandmother followed him around under his thrall. His village practiced a kind of ancestor worship where on holidays they animate the skeletons of their family and dress them up in clothes and jewelry and try to (symbolically) show them a good time as a gesture of appreciation. The tribe’s forest was burned down or village destroyed and PC had to run for it, taking only his most prized possession - the bones of his matriarch. Over the course of the campaign I’d like to add nicer clothes and jewelry to the skeleton, maybe give it magic items.
Ultimately it’s just not feasible to play a non-evil necromancer, and my table doesn’t play evil anyway either.
Throwaway idea: A Loxodon (elephant) bard named Harry Elefánte.
A tiefling divine soul sorcerer with the Criminal background. He was born to two pious tiefling clerics of Lathander who saw their fiendish blood as a curse, and prayed to cleanse their unborn child of devilish influence. When he was born a Divine Soul, his parents tried to raise him as their perfect priestess. He had to be a model tiefling, a representative of his entire race as well as Lathander himself. He chafed under the obligation and ran away from home, living on the streets and stealing to get by, all while trying to hide his divine soul powers out of a combination of rejecting them and just trying not to draw attention.
Slinking around in the shadows eventually led to him wandering into the Mists of Ravenloft, and he found himself in Barovia. He found his way into a party and essentially just acted like the party rogue for a bit until combat came and he got backed into a corner and he suddenly started throwing around guiding bolts.
I was really looking forward to doing a whole arc with him reclaiming his powers and figuring out what it meant to be himself, but OOC stuff led to me leaving that group before he had a chance to leave his edgy rogue phase :c
A gnoll taken as a cub and raised by good clerics as a test of nature vs nurture. He was all about freeing slaves and offering redemption to evildoers, but was also bloodthirsty in battle with the truly evil.
A human beastmaster whose spellcasting focus was a tiny awakened shrub (which was slightly on fire) and had a flying snake pet.
He was a Pokemon trainer. “Cindertwig, use your Thorn Whip! Now, Create Bonfire!” “Flython, do a Poison Fang attack!”
We only had one very short combat for the 1 shot.
At first, I thought you were referencing the Old testament.
I got to play this character for several sessions, but he deserved more.
A lesser Devil
modified bardchef. D&D Pirate Game with a drow captain of a haunted ship.My bard powers were all based on cooking. In order to buff the crew I had to feed them. I had a constant supply of hors d’oeuvres, tiny deserts, etc. After combat, I would heal the party by cooking 5 star gourmet meals. I fought with a meat cleaver.
My back story: I was basically on the run. I was Gold Star Master of Sauces and Boilings, 3rd Degree Initiate of the Sulfur Ovens and Bonded Sous-chef of the School of Flesh and Broth in the City of Dis, 87 years into a 500 year Sous-chef contract that I was AWOL from. I got summoned to the Prime Material Plane in order to cater a wedding party for the daughter of a shady wizard and I managed to exploit a loop hole in the contract I signed with him to leave to get ingredients and never come back. He was pissed at me for ruining his daughter’s wedding reception and my masters at the School of Flesh and Broth told him “Capture and return our Sous-chef, or else!” So he was my primary antagonist.
But I had a plan! I wrote up a contract for people to sign to try to get them to be my apprentices. By Prime Material Plane standards, I was a genuine gold star level chef. All those poor sods you see competing on Hell’s Kitchen would kill to study under someone of my skill level. Basically, the contract was structured such that if they managed to complete an apprenticeship with me, they should be able to obtain employment with kings, popes and sultans. However, if they failed to complete their apprenticeship, I would own their soul. My goal was to be a complete dick to my apprentices to the point that they would give up and run away and fail to complete their training. Then, when I had a small collection of souls, I could return to the 9 Hells and buy out my contract and get them to stop chasing me.
Sadly, the campaign only lasted three sessions.
A few of my favourite clauses from the contract:
Apprentice certifies that, to the best of their knowledge, their Mortal Soul is in sound and original condition, not bound into their body through any enchantments, curses or blessings of undeath or deathlessness (or other mystical bindings), not owed to any other being of the Lower Planes or other Outer Planar Origin, not claimed by any deity or near-deity for any purpose and in no other ways is it’s transfer into Chef’s lawful possession in the event of a breach (5.0). impeded. Furthermore, that they will NOT promise, commit, sell, license or gift their soul to any third party during the terms of this contract.
Neither party shall be liable for any failure to perform their obligations under this agreement if prevented from doing so by a cause or causes reasonably beyond their control. Without limiting the generality of the foregoing, such causes include Acts of deities or near-deities, disruptions to the structure of the planes of existence, infernal war operations (the Blood War), temporal disruptions, Wishes made by third parties or other similar cause or causes which could not with reasonable diligence be controlled or prevented by the party. This clause IN NO WAY waives the obligations of the Apprentice with respect to clause clause 1.1 i.
If Apprentice abandons the apprenticeship due to unanticipated death (2.5), a grace period of 3 days will be granted, during which time Apprentice may be resurrected or otherwise returned to life (including as an undead being), upon which event Apprentice agrees to immediately and without delay return to their Apprenticeship. Failure to do so shall be considered a breach of this contract.
This was a glee to read.
Also “87 years into a 500 year Sous-chef contract” sounds like a job I once had.
