_"Nobody eats Grimshard but Grimshard!_ Then I rip out one of it's teeth and stab it with it! What do I need to roll?" "...Grimshard succeeds." "But we haven't rolled any..." _"He succeeds."_
One of my most legendary characters was a mind-flayer, but I have a problem with slavery in general. Playing an anti-slavery mind-flayer would've felt too much like an outcast and I wanted him to feel like a mind-flayer. So I would "recruit" slaves with the line: "Have you ever considered the opportunities of Illithid employment?" and treat them like employees most of the time and only have them act like slaves around other mind-flayers. Well we were exploring this ruined city with a colosseum in the center, while everyone else was poking around in ruined buildings I went right to the center and found... an ancient red dragon. I knew the others were too far away to do anything and I didn't have anything that could fight a dragon solo, so I was pretty much toast, only enough time for one action. I looked up at the dragon and asked: "Have you ever considered the opportunities of Illithid employment?" to which it chuckled and promptly incinerated me.
Kinda reminds me of the ending of my 5E story in the 4th ring of hell. So me (a pun loving human warlock) and my 3 friends (another warlock who had a hole in his head as a custom race, a fighter who liked stealing and was almost a rouge with his luck and the GM.) were already long done in our pre-built game and we were just dicking around for no reason. Now all 4 of us are talking about doing another different campaign once we all die even if its super early. That led to me convicting 10 goblins to kill the boss, the other warlock literally eating hell fire from a Satan rock band reject because he rolled a natural 20 on performance and the fighter got a magic fire sword from a talking door's ass. Now onto the ending, the GM was running outta enemy types to throw at us because we were getting really lucky on rolls and surviving shit we really should have died from so he said the fighter lost his soul from the demon who haunted him and we had to make a blood sacrifice to reach hell. This involved killing everyone in town and drawing a blood circle with dead civilians. We again were doing great getting though most of hell until we found 4 undead beholders. It was a slaughter with us all losing. The fighter who was still alive just more mopey was the first to die but not before one shoting one of them. Next the other warlock who killed the 2 of them and me because the hell fire was apparently still stuck in him as while it wasnt hurting him per se it was still there. My last words were "I guess i must have been a sinner because i had a such a hell of a time!"
I feel like the best characters I've seen were always made in tandem with another character. I remember a paladin and cleric who were both raised in the same church. the cleric was antisocial and weak but a near genus, were as the paladin was exceptionally tough and outgoing. The paladin did all the talking between the two of them but always deferred to the clerics judgment, and the cleric always seemed to have an idea. those two made the game a lot more interesting.
This is something I HIGHLY recommend! Making a co-op gimmick with a good friend that you trust and are on the same wavelength with will really just boost both of your roleplaying and enjoyment a ton! I do it in most games I join, because of that! C:
That's known as a character foil, a trope that is very common in fiction, and for good reason. Your comment shows why it is so popular. Because it is a very good trope. Characters who are opposite of each other in some way allow the 2 to bounce off of each other and allow their traits to shine whenever they are interacting. There is the ever popular foil archetypes of the brain and the brawn, the inexperienced optimist and the experienced realist, and many more.
Sounds alot like the relationship between Caramon (heavy fighter) and Raistlin (frail wizard) from 2E Dragonlance. I still remember their intro story in Dragon magazine.
A 6th point. You can't say your own character was an epic character, people constantly over rate their performances and characters and say how great they were. Chances are your "epic character" wasn't that entertaining to others. For a character to be truly epic, other people have to talk about it, and go on about it, that aren't the player.
Fair enough. I have a character that fits this video's definition of epic, and we had great fun with her. What takes the cake though was that players from other tables on Adventurer's League night would come watch us just to see her. Nyx was a forest gnome ranger who escaped a zombie invasion in her village by casting Minor Illusion of a tree and hiding behind it. By a sheer stroke of luck, she became the main damage-dealer of the party and for some reason kept getting stuck having to be the Party Face... with a CHA of 8. Dunno what the bard and paladin were doing, but whatever. LOL.
" that players from other tables on Adventurer's League night would come watch us just to see her" Yeah, that's the key right there. Other people were entertained. I have a bunch of characters i've played that I think are pretty awesome, but its when other people mention it that it really counts.
The longest campaign I ran as a DM was also the most epic (literally, the characters went from level 1 to level 25 before we ended the campaign). There was the tiefling sorcerer with the most depressing backstory (his village freaked out at his birth, burned his mother at the stake and threw him- a newborn baby- into a river, where he was rescued by a travelling circus and displayed in a freakshow). Growing up with nothing, he was hilariously greedy, nearly dying in a burning building trying to drag a chest of gold that was too heavy for him to carry. He actually fell in love with an NPC paladin who sadly didn't return his affection and was constantly trying to "slay the evil demonspawn"-i.e. him. She always failed of course, and he would tie her up, leaving her fuming next to a box of chocolates or flowers. The other person in the party was a "bard", but was actually a turnip farmer with delusions of grandeur and an affected upper-class accent. He carried his "turnip-harvester"- a scythe- which caused the party to break into a fit of laughter, because who harvests turnips with a scythe? He ended up getting along really well with the tiefling, to the point that they became blood brothers, swearing an oath to defend each other. It was a really heart warming event. He managed to scam his way into inheriting a castle by fabricating a story that he was the real son of the now-deceased duke and the other son was in fact, a bastard child. The final player was a "pirate captain". Actually he was a barbarian with a rowboat, but he always insisted he had a pirate ship... he just misplaced it... somewhere. He wore fine silks, a red velvet jacket, the biggest plumed hat; but for all his pretensions, he still couldn't read or write, and he was still a scion of the Bonebreak Tribe in the frozen north. That player was the unluckiest guy I'd ever seen; if a 1 was rolled on the table, 90% of the time he rolled it. But it was awesome because he chewed the scenery in a Scottish accent while failing hilariously. He had a rival, a half-orc pirate captain with a sophisticated palate, a French accent, and a love of opera, and their battles became legendary. Other players came and went, we had the Wizard who tried to kill a Red Dragon with a fireball. The Rogue who never disarmed traps but instead sent in the pirate barbarian. A second Bard who never used bardic music and instead tried to duel-wield two bastard swords he wasn't proficient in (and he had no duel-wielding feats). A Necromancer who tried to become a lich, but forgot that you are supposed to make a phylactery BEFORE you take poison and die. And the air-head blonde Cleric who constantly forgot they had healing magic. The game became so popular at our local gameshop, that we had a party of 12 players and I needed a co-DM to help me run the campaign. Only 6 were regular enough to form the core party though. And only those 3 were considered Epic enough for me to remember, even now 20 years later.
One of my favorite characters was a half elf red draconic sorcerer. I had been getting bored of the character after a couple levels, so decided to act a bit dumb and took a leak on an evil goddesses alter. The dm rolled on a Baleful Polymorph table, and he was cursed into the form of a lizard (though still allowed to cast spells and was allowed to speak, but only in draconic.) I decided on the spot that he believed himself to be blessed by a dragon god with a shape closer resembling a dragon as a reward for insulting this false god* The other players loved their new mascot, and made this high charisma lizard the ruler, and thus our groups Lizard King was born. Following some fun bluffs where even being evil he talked his way past a lawful good true dragon by turning in a random encounter evil pseudo dragon on the good dragons turf, claiming a reward, and bluffing a few wyverns into believing he was a true dragon and earning their submission after nuking one with his 1/day dragon breath while flying and invisible, the legend was fully born.. To the point where I have had two different friends run games where they asked me to bring him in as my main character because they wanted their friends who weren't in first group to get to meet him :)
I had a character I played in WoW (basically used WoW as the game map, and just played D&D using that world). I had an old human priest with a limp, who was a doctor, counsellor, and eventually actually the head of a militia regiment. I left because of life. The guild folded several months later (nothing to do with me leaving). I had kept a journal for him on the guild's website, so one day out of boredom I hopped on to the website (which no one had been on for months at that time) and wrote his death. Simple. Died in his sleep. A couple of hundred views by the end of the week. And dozens of angry or tearful messages about his death. Pretty sure that was the sign. Will never have a character as good as you, Igor.
Our gaming group has an Epic NPC. His real name is lost to the sands of time, to us, he is known only as Poor Bastard. He started out as a mini-boss our group encountered. Instead of fighting him, we got really lucky on a bluff to convince him the sparkly pink mace our pre-teen warlord was wielding was the mcguffin Poor Bastard's boss was searching for. (we had cast an illusion on it) So Poor Bastard confiscated the mace, and confidently lead us to his master the ice king. Unfortunately for Poor Bastard, the Ice King instantly saw through the illusion and charged us in anger. Poor Bastard got knocked into frigid waters as the king went by. Now that was just the beginning. Through sheer luck of the dice, anytime Poor Bastard attempted anything he rolled really low, with one exception: Anytime he would die on a failure, he succeeded. In the end, Poor Bastard has shown up in several campaigns, and is cursed to always have bad things happen to him, and never to die.
Lol did something similar myself, as my character's deity was Sarenrei goddess of redemption my character converted a module boss to our side as that particular boss had their prior faith shaken, still had to fight them, but didn't kill them, 3 modules later that npc-pc is now our teams healer. Anything can happen!
How does all of this play out in a game? If it's all make-believe and in your head how is any of this happening? What rules and limitations are there to follow that still result in such unique and personalized stories? This is so confusing.
T R U T H well the thing about dnd is everyone is kinda playing their own version. Sure there are consistent rules, but ultimately what happens is up to the dm, and often times the rules are modified, replaced, or ignored. Watch an episode of critical role to get the gist.
Flatmate came home from a session laughing his ass off, asked him what was up 'This fucking bard. We had this boss on 3 hp, it was limping away, bleeding to death, if it left it lived, if it stayed it died. It was about to escape and this bard uses Unnatural Lust. He slides along the ground on his knees screaming "LOVE ME!", the boss came back over enthralled and died. What really did it was the table next to us when he uses that ability, one guy looks dead at him and says "No! You fucking fuck! AGAIN?!?!?" You know a characters great when the other players friends know about them
I think the only Epic Character I've encountered thus far in any of my games would be Sesu-Ra the Unbending Spine, a character who once refused to take cover from an explosion because Sesu-Ra bows to no-one, damnit! To this day, whenever a character is going to take an action they know will result in failure, and they dive right in anyway, it's done to a shouted chorus of "UNBENDING SPINE!"
willofbob i sometimes do something similar, though not as badass. my tiefling druid had an intelligence of 8 starting out, so whenever i was about to make a bad decision and my DM would give me the mom look, i'd roll my dice while screeching "I HAVE AN INTELLIGENCE OF EEEIIIIIIGHTTTT!!" i know it's a bad decision, but it's fun to make bad decisions sometimes.
1:05: #5 Class and race doesn´t matter 2:00: #4 They´re not perfect 3:45: #3 Everybody knows their names 5:29: #2 A good voice is essential 7:09: #1 They embrace failure
I totally agree with you. I noticed that memorable characters are often the most helpful to players but players should be careful to not overshadow the rest of the team with their Superiority of epik hero .
It's easy to do if your not careful. But if you have trouble with overshadowing the group then try this character archetype. The average unassuming guy that's secretly a badass. I played a vampire in a very long running LARP. We are talking years. Characters came and went but I played pretty much the same character constantly sitting in the background being every ones toady. One day the Storyteller was looking over my character and says, "You know, point for point your character may be the most powerful character in the game.". It was true, While the rest of the court killed each other over intrigues my character remained a useful tool for everyone while simultaneously perusing his own agendas. He survived princes, primagines, and all manner of titled characters who looked down on him as a tool all while in the background he pulled strings they never knew about and amassed a small empire. It was fun.
Krulik080 I just give shit away, gold, trophies that aren't too personal, etc. Just gave my ranger friend wolf skin leather bracers from wolves we fought together against 4 months ago upon meeting him again, seeing he was a ranger and had only one trophy. He loved them but for me, I had the cloak I carved out of the dire wolf that day upon my heavy armor and helm, I wasn't missing out on too much
In mutants and masterminds you can be any kind of super hero. Seeing a lack of "utility based" PC in the team i choose to be a human with tons of skills, a bard of sorts in a DC/Marvel world. A know non-sense character to remind the players that having superpowers is not everything. Throughout the adventure I failed HARD in all sort of different tasks, but every time I failed I always put the blame in the "metahuman" and by the end my character went from a standard government agent to be the one known as "The metahater". The DM was having lots of fun with this character specially the fact that he literally was an average human being, and so he started a mythos around "The metahater" turning him into the Kaiser Sose of this world: An entity who is more rumor than certainty. So whenever I procalimed to be the one and only... everyone was like "Nah, everyone nows the metahater has 6 arms and can punch through solid steel".
I like most of this list, particularly the different voice for the character (which I try to do on the rare times I get to play instead of run). I disagree with calling a character in the 3rd person, however, and have always preferred both myself and for my players to talk about their characters in the first person to give it a more personal feel. Despite a character being epic, I always let the dice fall where they may, though you're right, it's harder to pull the trigger on an epic character.
One of the biggest reasons I like them using their names is because I've run characters for months and would still have to regularly ask, "What's your character's name again?" And anytime I've had to ask that should be a huge warning sign to a player. They're boring characters if the player thinks of the PC as just themselves. It can also lead to issues where a player takes things personally that happen to their character because they lack the line between themselves and the PC. And yeah, I've killed a few epics. No one is 100% immune. But I won't deny fudging a damage roll or two. I figure that earning their way into everyone's heart is worth a few small favors.
What I do to make sure I learn the characters' names (and I should have mentioned it before) is that I call to them in character at the table. If I want to know what a certain person's character does, I ask (say Ambralyn) "What does Francis do?" or "What does Jaimes do?" to use an example of her character from the recent Elizabethan game. That helps me learn both the interesting and the boring characters. I feel like it helps the players get into character when they refer to themselves directly, personally.
It can, and they'll still use "I" and "me" sometimes. But just to be clear, I'm not telling my players to refer to themselves by their character names. I'm saying that they just do it. I'd never really thought about it before until i was writing the video as to what traits epic PCs share. And all of them regularly refered to their character by their names. If I'd forced them to do it, it wouldn't have the same impact as when the player just naturally does it. But because the player is using the name, it hammers home in all the players' minds that the PC and the player are different and then all the players, including me, start naturally calling them by their PCs name.
Another way of getting your character's name out there without playing in the third person (which is really weird if only 1 player at the table is doing it), is to announce yourself during the introduction to the NPCs that you meet in game. Even for the unnamed NPCs, if you are trying to get famous you throw your name out there a lot.
For me, calling a character in the 3rd person is useful specifically because it makes it less personal, helps separate the player and character. This way the players are less likely to get mad at each other for in-game actions, and less likely to feel personally attacked when something bad happens to their character.
One of my favorite characters was an elf cleric who was the unheard voice of reason and the mom of the group. We were in the middle of a battle and I was hit with a crit, other players were like: oh my god, the cleric lost half her life. In character, I simply turned to the hobgoblin who attacked me and said: Your misbehaviour disapoint me young man. The I killed him in one hit.
Zomg I know what you're talking about since we have one. A Monk with crazy stats. I gave my Blessing of the Forge to her weapon since I figured out she had the highest dps in the party, and it paid back tenfold. She teamed up with our BB and they became a half-naked blender.
Embracing failure I think is one of the best points here. Most of the others (minus the voice) are pretty standard in my group; since we play online the dialogue is delivered through text and everyone knows each other's characters names pretty well by the 2nd session at least. One of my current favorites is Beskan, a black Dragonborn Fighter Sorcerer and he was the worst rolled character I've got by far; our GM's are pretty generous with rerolling but despite rolling 4 sets of stats and picking the best from all of them, his best two stats were 15 after racial bonuses, while other players had at least one 18 and 14-16's to spare for less important ability scores. Despite that Beskan has had some great moments, the best one came while we were exploring a dungeon. There were 3 paths and a riddle to hint where to go. Our GM told us if we can't figure it out then we can roll Wisdom if we want to get a hint. I had a pretty good idea which path was right, but I rolled anyway and got a 1. Well, now Beskan confidently walked down the wrong pathway, dismissing the other party member's attempts to convince him that he was going the wrong way - he simply replied "I know where I'm going." The GM took me to the side and we played something out in secret. Meanwhile the rest of the party were fighting the boss of the dungeon when halfway through the fight they get this message _"The far left well explodes outwards in a hail of acid and half-melted stone. Charging through it is a screaming multi-eyed beast, Beskan's massive greatsword buried in its back and being used to steer it like a joystick."_ Just one example of the many times Beskan's turned natural 1's or otherwise just bad rolls around.
Maybe wasn't an epic character. But I had a player once that insisted I let him randomize an entire character, race, class stats everything. He ended up with an elf ninja (playing pathfinder) with like a 7 con. So he decided that his character just has a weak stamina and so whenever he did a stealth check or acrobatics check he had to make a fort save or else he'd go into an uncontrollable coughing fit. Happened a lot. The guy had a lot of fun with it. Also had a player (long story sorry) the party had taken to sleeping in the trees so they wouldn't get attacked from monsters in their sleep. Middle of the night 2 giant Allosaurus attack them. The ranger says "i want cut my ropes, jump on the dino, stab it with my two swords and ride him". I said make the checks. He makes the rolls based on where they are on his sheet, attack roll good, grapple check good, jump check fail badly. So the dino gets an attack of opportunity. Between that and fall damage the ranger is now at like 1 or 2 health. Fight changes from kill the dino's to "oh crap he's about to die". Next turn, the Ranger says "wait... I'm going to cast charm animal" I roll the creature save in the open, it gets a 1. He ended up riding the dino after all.
In my current campaign, my DM tossed a couple bandits riding Triceretops at us. Within 2 turns, we had taken the dinos, and trampled the bandits to death. (Slate, my very elderly fighter, did an arial DDT on one of the riders) At another point, Slate gained a spell that allows him to fly for 15 minutes. He was so overjoyed that he didn't realize the spell ended until he was falling.
One of my best characters was my Dark Heresy 2. Ed character, Sister Miranda. She was an Adeptus Sororitas Hierophant from a Shrine World, meaning she was good in melee and very charismatic and possessing a high will, but dumb as a bag of rocks with horrible agility. She was also in her sixties which led the group to comment that she didn't have a chain-sword, she had a chain walker. Over the course of our adventures she remained incredibly oblivious to the nature of the groups work for a long time. Zombies were teenagers on drugs, a chaos cult was a band of street thugs, and the acolytes were nice young servants of the Emperor. She even became best friends with the shadiest and most bloodthirsty of the acolytes, simply because of the fact that he was great at lying and she could never see past his lies. Whenever she was in a boat, she fell out. When she tried to climb, she fell. On more than one occasion she was completely separate from the action, the most memorable being when everyone was fighting a daemon possessing 100 nuclear weapons, she was in her quarters reading quietly. She became friends with all the wrong people, corrupt church officials especially. She got taken in by a cult whose leader won her over with her true and devout love for the God-Emperor. And when her cult attacked an important festive gathering, she tried to convince the Cardinal of the planet that they were good people and that there was a misunderstanding. The incredible harsh rebuke she suffered led her to have an existential crisis, and she walked through a massive firefight, completely unscathed, trying to put her world back together. Eventually a floating mountain/mausoleum descended in front of her, courtesy of the tech-priest, which she took as a sign that the God-Emperor truly favored her, and that the Cardinal was a heretic. Throughout all of her adventures, she was the least corrupted and injured of the entire party. Sadly our GM moved away shortly after this awesomeness, so the adventures of Sister Miranda were brought to an end. Gone, but not forgotten.
Let me tell you of the story of a character that was in my group. An alchemist of the name of Bane Songsteel. The first time our group saw him, he was but a triffling merchant with an anormal desire for gold and riches. Armed with explosive potions that he would throw or occasionaly tie on a long range melee weapon, he was ensuring mayhem whenever he could. He had a very ''Star Trek Ferengi'' vibe (for those who don't know, check out Ferengi rules of acquisition) and would often make up proverbs related to greed and money making. But they always had a link to what happened. ''A gold coin well or dishonestly earned still have the same shine'' or ''Someone incorruptible doesn't exist: you simply didn't find the right price to buy his confidence''. While he didn't have a peculiar voice, he did had a peculiar laughter after a good/bad deed done. When we first met him, we had a battle into a tavern. On a unlucky roll, he slipped on the ground and came crashing done into the bar. When he got up, he said ''Well, usualy I need to pay people to pour alcool on me. Guess that was a bargain !'' But the story i like to recall is we call the hearth beat. Since he was an alchemist, and the group needed money, he took on the job to create an health elixir to cure a rich old man. The potion backfired horribly, with a catastrophic failure. The poor man drank the potion, started to convulse and after a long painful sight, spat out his heart. While the still beating heart was on the bed, under the traumatised look of his now widow wife, Bane simply said, excitedly: ''Don't you see ? I have cured this heart of his fleshly body ! Now, about my reward...'' We didn't get paid and had to flee the little town, but the mischiefs of the alchemist became reknowned, getting as much fame as infamy (due to an abnormal number of natural 1 rolled). Long after the story of this group was over, his legacy remained. A few campain later, in the same world but hundred of years later, our group went inside a luxurious city. One of the attraction was in the biggest chappel. Inside of it, a powerful relic was preserved: a still beathing heart. ''The legend says that a stranger passed in this town while in it's infancy. He offered us the gift of immortality, but we rejected him and chased him from our lands. Since then, we place many gold offerings on this altar... So that he may come one day get his just reward.''
Oh god by the logic of the name rule, my halfling sorceress Beth "Biscuits" Butterfield is an Epic Character. Now that I think about it she did do some fun things....high charisma. Almost (DM took me aside and said he really didnt want to) talked a Drow male into giving up life in the underdark to be with Beth. Hit a high level former warlock with a pan and convinced him to help us. It's been two years and people are still bringing her up. And my Gnome Druid got eaten by a monster and at first I was all sad but then I looked up, "Sidian turns into a bear." The DM looked at me with this look of shock and a veteran player start busting out laughing.
Oh god the names... My very first played character was a dwarven druid. Now I had just got the 5e players hand book and the dwarfs description were short and stout, so her name was Teapot. Although if we're talking memories I got em. I was the youngest of the group the second youngest being twice my age. Now the whole group but my brother went to the third floor of a prison. Now he was talking to a minotaur pirate. Great, So we set the building on fire after we did want we needed and he let out the guy and he went back his promise. After a few minutes hes knocked unconscious but I thought he was dead so I went up and hacked his fancy ass peg leg off, but mid way he swung his head up using his horns and slashed my intire front half, So since the dm thought one blow would be enough he just asked for how hard I landed, then I rolled. It was a nat 20. I took my shillelaghed club and snapped his neck back instantly killing him then went back to his leg. After then it was used as my club.
One of my fav character ever was a kobold paladin named Narshoon Dragontoe, played him totally over the top cause he was an idiot but brave. He would disarm traps by throwing himself onto them to protect the party. He'd cast his smite attacks into kneecaps to be a party distraction for others when they debated how to do things. We once had to fight a wizard that was standing on top of a tower, so the party decides to use some dungeoneering knowledge and rolls to knock the keystone loose so it would all come tumbling down, everyone ran out of the way, Narshoon said he wasn't running so rolled an acrobatics and nat 20ed dodged a bunch of falling stone blocks.
As a DM and a player, I've found Epic characters supplement point #3 by referring to their fellow characters by their names--and as a DM I love seeing that! I love it! I love it! I love it!
I still remember one of the characters my friend played in a Wild Talents game. He rolled up a guy who could summon an unlimited number of Prinnies at will as minions. We're playing a mildly gritty modern superhero game as a team of misfit metahumans who are basically paid by an underfunded government agency to be legit vigilante heroes. Now the prinnies are hilarious enough as they came with a voice and cheerfully obeyed his every command no matter what but weren't smart so if he wasn't specific or they were left unattended the GM decided they got up to mischief. (getting us banned from several bars and cafe's) At one point a Tarrasque gets loose and starts causing havoc just outside the city. We meet it and all have a crack at hitting it to no effect. At this point he tells us he's got an idea and starts summoning a conga line of prinnies to simply walk up to the tarasque and let it eat them. It's distracted we think to ourselves, we can come up with a plan. Just then news crews started turning up and we had to explain why we were feeding hundreds of small penguins to the giant beast and that was okay because they're actually not penguins but reincarnations of sinful souls. That didn't fly, they're talking about getting animal rights people involved and we're desperately trying to get them to leave us alone. Eventually the tarasque got full and went to sleep so we made a hasty retreat back to base and let the authorities put the tarasque back where it came from.
First character I built in Rifts was a Cactus-Man Psislinger. Cactus-Men, for reference, are a race that is listed as 90% pacifist, while Psislinger is exactly what it says on the tin: a psionic gunslinger. I gave this character a few combat skills to complement his starting equipment (an "endless revolver" that is reloaded through the character using their "inner strength", a military-style hoverbike with integrated weapons, two revolvers explicitly stated to be silver-plated, and some light MDC armor), but used most of my points in random, thematically appropriate skills (it was a "New West" campaign, so think "Bandits, Cyborgs, Cowboys, Vampires, Wizards, Psychics, Aliens, and combinations of those things you probably didn't expect to be possible"), including cooking (if you're days from civilization, and you can't guarantee someone won't shoot you on sight just for not being human, you need to be able to cook), juggling (because trick-shots and juggling your guns go hand in hand), and singing (because what's a cowboy that can't sing? A drain on morale, that's what). This character somehow managed to end up outdoing the CQC specialist when it came to initiative (Juggling, for some reason, gave a +1 to initiative, as well as the ability to catch thrown weapons), while also being able to intimidate his way out of most non-combat situations (Cactus-Men have an inherent racial Horror Factor, while Psislingers have a level-dependent Horror Factor, resulting in a character who is just absolutely terrifying to most NPCs). I knew none of this when making this character. I just wanted to play a psychic Cactus-Man that used a revolver to kill literal tanks. Play the character you want to see someone play, but keep the setting in mind. If you're playing the western-themed game, feel free to play the character that practically embodies the tropes of the setting, but be sure to check with the GM if there's a way to justify playing a Viking.
Yeah, gave my player TWO nice drow scimitars, at lower level, but they disintegrate on a roll of 1 in sunlight. Of course that the first time she even draws them, she rolls double crit fail.
Sneaking into a dragon's lair, our Monk sneaks onto the ceiling with her slippers of spiderwalking, the ranger sneaks into a better vantage point, the Cleric and Bard wait for an opportunity to join the battle once we get it's attention, and I the rogue sneaking to get over into a position to ambush this dragon as it runa past... And I roll a nat one on stealth.. and kick a rock...
#2 is spot on. The greatest character I ever played was the passionate and sometimes bumbling paladin Georg Redcrosse, who became instantly unique when I had him speak with an AHNOLD SCHWARZENEGGER accent! It was actually a spur of the moment thing: our DM had told us our campaign setting was a fantasy AU of Europe, and Georg happened to come from the place where Austria would have been, and AHNOLD was the coolest Austrian I knew of!
My favourite thing about this and your other videos is the little cut-scenes you use for examples. Its great, emphasises the point, and brings forth a good giggle.
One of my favorite characters i made in a Legend of Zelda campaign, his name was Gram, he was a Subrosian Bard, and adopted prince of Labrynna, he aquired these gauntlets that basically him a 20 in strength so he would often "RKO" enemies, but in this universe this move had no name so it became dubbed the "Gram Slam"
Imagine a 6'6" cleric of death and darkness. Now take away the idea of him being the standard emo necromancer and think of him being almost annoyingly upbeat. Now give him a silly Swedish accent. "Oh, hello, I am Rodan Bjordson." The setting I'm in right now two of the players are playing dragons. The way Rodan was introduced to them was he was on a pilgrimage to... I forget the name of the kingdom, but it's irrelevant, because we renamed it when we took it over, but anyway he was on a pilgrimage and all the sudden there was this wavy thing in the air and he woke up in a field with a dragon. He woke up in a field with a dragon. And then a house fell out of the sky. "No, no, no. Clearly I am drunk in a bar. One does not yust wake up in a field with dragons and falling hooses." So, now everything that happens I come up with a plausible explanation as to what is probably happening in the real world that he's seeing with his drunk eyes. Like how the dragons are actually just twins with dragon tattoos and he's probably been abducted by carnies more than once, which he's completely okay with, because they're not bad people. Then there was the kitsune lady who was riding a dinosaur. The dinosaur picks up Rodan in its mouth. Awful dragon breath, you know. But then it dropped him, to which he figured he just fell off his bar stool. She asked us to find her bracers (some kind of thing to do with her being royalty and it being a mark of her position). Something about them being in a dark place. We ended up fighting a bunch of bat people, which made Rodan think they were probably just in her attic and she was afraid of bats. He figured that the kitsune lady was really just the barmaid and that she was probably "yust a little hairy, and probably kind of big, on account of how she thundered off." Being that she was riding a dinosaur. So when the party was negotiating payment for the return of her bracers the rest of the party was asking for wealth and favors, and when it came around to Rodan he asked her for a date. It's been one hell of a bender so far.
I need to play a barbarian next. Give him some kind of brain thing where every day he wakes up believing he's something else. Today, Krunk is Wizard. Krunk "casts" magic missile by yelling "Magic missile!" and throwing daggers. Krunk casts Obscuring Mist by tossing a pocket full of sand into his opponent's face, which then blows back into Krunk's face so no one can see. I'm imagining the other characters questioning him while he's filling his pockets full of sand and his response being something along the lines of "Gathering spell components."
My barbarian Thokk seems to be trying hard to be an epic character. He has killed three enemies in combat with a bear trap he swung around by the chain. Inspired the druid to make a large vibration to call ankegs when we were being outmatched by displacer beasts. And apparently impregnated a tiefling... Which will lead to a child only Thokk and it's mother will love as it's dad is a half orc. Quarter human, quarter orc, half tiefling... not a pretty image. And despite being female, I think I give him a pretty memorable voice. Every combat the rest of the party plans and plots while I sit back and doodle. They do their stuff, then the DM sighs and says, "What does Thokk do?" "He looks down into the hold." "He see's enemies staring up at him, he can get to them by smashing through if he really wants to or there's a doo-" "He pee's on them." "...What?" "Thokk pees on them." Following that they all started rushing up to get at Thokk, who then giddly tucked himself back into his loincloth and placed caltrops and bear traps outside the door, then stood back a ways with hammer ready. It was a good day for wack-a-pirate.
one of my fave characters i played was one i rolled dice to decide the race and class *half orc warlock* and the reason he became an adventurer was to get away from his ex. people loved he had such a non typical reason to adventure.
I'm currently playing a half-elf bard who pissed off his noble family by leaving a bride at the altar and running off to become a bard. He became an adventurer after he kept getting heckled by bar patrons.
Great video and great points. I've been playing D&D since 1982, and all the best and most memorable characters I have seen exhibited one or more of these traits.
The one D&D type game that I remember playing in, I was playing a warrior/barbarian type character, and me and my party were escorting a wagon of goods from one town to the next, I heard a rustling in the bush and threw my great sword at it, when I went to retrieve it it had stabbed through a bandit and his horse, now pay attention to the wording of the next part. "I pick up the sword and strap it to my back confident that any other bandits would have been scared away" We then got to the next town, where while we were going over our equipment, it was pointed out to me that I never removed the bodies of the bandit and horse from my sword. It then became my quest to skewer as many enemies as I possibly could, when I was almost out of sword I'd find a black smith to extend the blade or I'd use another sword until I could find a blacksmith. We ended the campaign with me having one sword about 10 feet long and the blade was totally concealed with the bodies. I had made it a secondary goal to try and have each thing impaled oh my sword be different, I had human, horse, elf, squid, shark, and at the end a dragon, at the start of each day I'd have to roll for strength, if I failed I had to drag the blade around and be unable to use it in combat aside from moving it to block. It's been a while since that and to this day Im not entirely sure if it actually happened or if it was a dream. At the very least I know the horse and bandit part actually happened, I just can't remember if what happened after was real, (as in what happened after we left the town we escorted the wagon too and I found I was carrying a horse and bandit)
Definitely something I always try to do with my characters is make bad decisions as long as they make sense for the character. GMs love characters that take the bait and/or do the wrong thing, in my experience. My favorite example of crazy risks making a character epic: we did a quest for a turtle dragon in the A D & DOriental Adventures and it tried to gyp our low level party out of our reward. Our kensei challenged it to a psychic duel and won. The GM told us that if Takezou had failed, and there was high chance he'd lose to the epic monster, that it would have ate him. Recently, in a 5e game, we were trying to figure out the best way to kill some bugbears in the middle of a huge river and steal their boat. I cast invisibility upon our halfling ranger, told the wizard to cast invisibility upon me and told the warlock to cast fly. I carried the halfling on my back, flying invisibly, and let him snipe the bugbears from my back over the river while my character's pet duck distracted them. It was stupid but I'll never forget it.
The most fun I've had playing a character in a TTRPG was definitely my first time playing Stars Without Number, a sci-fi themed RPG. In a game where pretty much everyone has a gun, ballistic or energy-based, my character carried a greatsword, a shield, and a few grenades, and was mostly specialised in strength. The party was performing a raid on a heavily defended military base, and our plan of action was to sneak up to the main hangar and use the element of surprise to our advantage. One of our party members got spotted, however, and it immediately went loud. Due to some unfortunate circumstances, I had to step away from the game for a couple of turns to handle something unrelated to the game and entrusted my character's turn to another player who I felt was competent. A couple turns later and I come back to a party split in two and getting their asses handed to them. One half of the party was being mauled by a single soldier, and the other half was pinned outside the hangar and mostly ready to die. At some point, a mech had shown up inside the hangar and was causing all number of issues for my half of the party. I didn't have too much faith in the continued life of our party so I decided to charge the mech with just my sword and shield. Over the span of about 4-5 turns, I grappled onto the mech with my hands, began bullriding it, pried the top turret off with my sword and finally ripped the door off the cockpit to kill the pilot. It just about managed to turn the tide of the fight and we were able to survive that encounter. Sadly, I don't play with that party anymore, but every now and then my friends bring it up. Easily the most fun experience I've had in a single sitting of any RPG.
my favorite epic character was named Krythox, minotaur slave turned barbarian/fighter and on occasion mercenary and adventurer but usually a member of an order of warriors that protect a keep and its citizens. he loved to eat beef, had a crush on a dobbleganger prostitute, was friends with a dragonshaped druid and Flind/Gnoll paladin knight. great and fun character to play.
One of the characters I remember the most was someone called Adam snowfield, the main reason I remember him was because of just how bad he was, it became a meme within our group, everytime he did something and failed (which was often) he would just sort of weakly say "aaaaadaam snowfieeeeld"
I love audio books, and one of the easiest ways I've found to create a unique character voice has been to simply borrow from memorable characters in those books. The narrator's voice acting skills have done most of the work for me, so all I have to do is deliver my version. It's allowed me to tap into a source of voices that is only limited by the books I've listened to and my imagination to bring them to life.
One of my most epic characters is my YT namesake. Humphrey Gobo was a middle-aged, alcoholic, grizzled detective, from d20 Call of Cthulhu) whose catchphrase was "My name's Gobo and I don't give a damn!" Best part is that I got to tell Monte Cook the tale of Gobo. He loved the character concept (or was just being nice to a fan) and then told me about the initial playtest of d20 CoC being the creators all playing different cop clichés through a murder mystery.
Totally agree, especially with the whole voice thing. A variant of that was writing up a diary for my Buffyverse slayer character, in *her* voice. This was really helpful, and even though he lost most of his gaming books during a renovation, my buddy who ran it still has those to remind him of the game, and some of the big ups and downs. The downside to that was that one other player wrote up diary entries for his character, but he was playing more of a lone wolf type. Sometimes, he'd get perturbed when things he mentioned in his diary didn't happen, and would ask the GM "...did you even read my diary entry for this week?"
This is easily the most wholesome Dungeons & Dragons Channel that I watch, your advice is always genuine and seems to come from a place of experience. Here's to hoping you can double that subscriber pool by next year.
Holy shit. I wound up hitting all of these traits before even seeing this video. Gror the Bear, Lord of the North, King of All That He Sees. A hulking Half-Orc voiced by The Iron Shiek. Mind-Controlled into murdering his entire village by an Arch-Lich. Sold into slavery. My first action in my first session was to charge the first thing I saw. It turned out this thing was to be our first quest giver. I rolled a crit. "FAHQ YOO!" I screamed as my fist wrenched through its face. It died. I really wish our group hadn't had 2 flakers. I wanna play Gror. :(
You got me back so many epic moments we played with my friends… thanks! Watching your video makes me wander back to the university time and endless campaigns 😊 keep up with the greatest job 👍
I'd say another trait of an epic character is buy-in. You could be the life of the table with a very animated character that's fun to watch but if you're not engaging with the rest of the party on a level they enjoy then they're just spectators. If your character creates moments for others to express themselves, if they set up others to say something witty, if they drastically underestimate other character or even overestimate them, you end up with a game where the character amplifies the fun others have. I'm currently playing changeling with a goofy impulsive character that does what it does very well, and whom makes it very easy for me to steal scenes when we play. The character is very meta in that it is a creature that's very clever that plays the fool, played by a player that's fairly clever. So a lot of what I do is setting up situations where Numan is underestimated. However, the part of my character that other players love is how I piss them off and make bad excuses for my behavior when they chew me out, or the stupid elaborate plans I come up with, or the occasions where my character "randomly" says something very helpful or inspiring that lets them have a genius idea. I wouldn't say that that character is epic, but he's a driver for fun roleplay around the table and just a few sessions in he's already a character that people are telling stories about.
My half orc assassin tried to shoot the villain with a bolt action rifle and nat oned. He became enraged and gave away his position. A squad of riflemen nearby saw and gunned him down. Good times.
Found this video extremely entertaining and enjoyable. These tips should be used by everyone not only for their own enjoyment but the whole groups. Great advice Seth, thanks.
Something you forgot about is body language and facial expression. I find it even more important to bring a character to life than voice (if you are not playing online). It does a lot for a character if act out the crazy eye he give someone to intimidate someone or if she puts on the most charming smile if she wants to persuade someone to help them
Embracing failure is important, like when my bard was literally on death's door, unconscious in an acidic slime, and out of no where our crowlike ranger pulled out a goodberry he had for the longest time, since this campaign, healing magic is unheard of (goodberry not counting because it was creating food, not healing)
One of my favorite characters to play was an Assault Marine in Deathwatch named Cornix. Well, during character creation we decided he was going to be part of the Raven Guard then we rolled his power armor history. Lead from the front. His power armor had very loud speakers in it. On something that was suited for stealth. We even had a catch phrase for him. "Ignore me!" played from his speakers at all time.
WITH CATLIKE TREAD, UPON OUR PREY WE STEAL! IN SILENCE DREAD, OUR CAUTIOUS WAY WE FEEL! NO SOUND AT ALL! WE NEVER SPEAK A WORD! A FLY'S FOOTFALL COULD BE DISTINCTLY HEARD! (LOL! Just joking with a reference to G&S's Pirates of Penzance. The pirates were sneaking up on the Major General and they sang really loudly.)
One of my favorite characters was a werewolf (in World of Darkness) named Wise Beyond Wit that sounded like Bill Murray from Caddyshack. He gained a lot of his wisdom from bad dice rolls. A lot.
Love this, I think the hardest thing for me has been referring to my character in third person so their name is in play. It's so easy to get wrapped up in the character generation process and just start thinking of your character as "I" when referring to what they are doing. But it definitely helps to make them more memorable when they have a name that is used by the person playing them, not just the NPCs and GM.
Before Hodor was even a thing I rolled up a half orc barbarian whose primary means of speaking was the use of his own name (obviously not as restrictive as Hodor as that would get tiresome). I rolled him expecting the game to last 2 sessions max. Because he was supposed to be so short lived I'd min-maxed just for the ability to hit people hard with a double ended axe. Oh, and to have an animal side-kick (deeply important...). A year later I was still playing Krunk and his animal companion Fluffy the bunny rabbit. His many weaknesses and eccentricities were such that he's always a topic of conversation on the rare times that I am able to spend time with that group.
I agree with everything here, love it! And I can vouch for that last one, had a character that hit the notes here, a bumbling buffoon of a pirate that somehow through insane complete bs dice gods shine upon thee kinda dice rolls sacked a navy military port town with just the other player characters, one ship, and one medium sized crew, but the bumbling buffoon aided in the rescue of several nobles who were about to be hung in said port city unjustly as a trap for him and his crew. In the process of all this sheer chaos of the port town's defenses and guards scrambling to try and regain control of the situation (and failing) the original plan for the DM was one or multiple of the player character would get captured as this was suppose to be a part of the plot. My character managed to nearly single handedly derail the story (due to this stupid and insane rescue plan was his idea in the first place) in such a ludicrous and badass fashion with both failed nat 1s and nat 20 rolls at the end of it we all managed to get back on the ship and start to sail away. We all braced for impact ready for the entire navy to come sailing after us in fiery vengeance assured of our destruction we readied ourselves to fight with one ship verses an entire fleet. Thats when it happened, the DM while he had to burn a large portion of his main story line, loved the batshit insane outcome so much better that he had one of the npc's whos name I'll never forget, Cookie the Orc, our ships cook and he was actually very intelligent for an orc, just dont go into his kitchen if you want to keep your fingers. The orc had kept guard on the ship while everyone else sacked the port, during this time he had gotten bored and used some spare diving gear we had to go around to *all* of the other ships, and tied their anchors together. So from our perspective we're ready for a total party wipe, then we see all of the enemy ships start to leave port, then slowly turned and smashed into eachother, none of us had a clue what to make of it until we noticed Cookie was trying to dry off and put away the diving gear still casually, "WHAT? I got bloody bored while you hooligans were off havin fun without me!", and he stomped off back to his kitchen. While many of my friends remember my goofy pirate, I will never forget that epic npc who saved our asses from a watery grave cause the DM decided he liked our party's insane antics.
Reminds me of my After The Bomb character, Hans van whiskers, a German housecat, accent and all, with human ectoplasmic arms prepping an rpg warhead whilst riding atop his trusty steed, a hammerhead with primal rage.
Thank you so much for making this list and for all the examples that you made. Tomorrow on the weekly dnd session everyone will hear barbaric battle cry of the Hordock The Slayer Of Giants
One that really sticks out in my mind is an ARMY buddy of mine back in 1989. His Dwarf Fighter named Metallican's Grandfather was a Blacksmith who willed him his Smith Hammer. The hammer was known as "Duh-Hammer Offhand." He always played it to the hilt and sometimes a bit overboard, but that was the fun of it.
Some of the most epic PCs I've DMed with had something else in common: I worked with the players to make them. In this urban fantasy, I asked the characters for two things: how they learned of the supernatural world, and how they learned of the organization they were now a part of. Once they gave me that, I asked for more, bit by bit fleshing out the details, until it was finally time to play. By our first game night all PC's were fleshed out and personal. And then I made sure to integrate those backstories into the campaign as to best turn them on their heads. Tristan's knightly ancestors whom he based all his honor on had only accomplished so much due to their pact with a demon whom he was now contractually obligated to serve. When Max, the college scientist helping to re-discover alchemy, finally found his lost love, his professor had made dozens of homunculi of her for later experiments, and he could tell one from another. The truth about Damien's fiance is that she didn't leave because she had been possessed by a demon: "I never possessed Amelia. There was no Amelia: I possessed you." When you add to or change a character's backstory, the player suddenly becomes invested in the mystery of who they are. The character's character becomes a forcalpoint of the storytelling, both forward and backward. To all DM's out there, I strongly advise you tie your character's backstories into the game. There is just such a great immersive beauty that is born when you manage to marry a PC to the world you've built.
While I’m not one to boast, I played a Scottish-accented Claymore wielding ( kilt-wearing) fighter named Alistair. Our first session we were introduced as a group of rag tags that had just completed an escort mission for a caravan. On our way to collect payment we made camp just off the roadside leading to the desired settlement when we were attacked by a group of deserting soldiers looking for an easy payday. Their leader demanded we give them all that we have. Alistair’s response? “I PREFER TO PAY IN STEEL,” as he crits and kills the leader with a thrown hand axe. It set the tone for him for the entire campaign and my buddies still quote it to this day. Really warms my heart. ❤️ I watched tons of videos of Scottish actors/actresses to really nail down the voice and it was super worth the extra effort.
Ironically the most "epic" character I've ever had was possibly my stupidest. Olyx Turbodeath, a chaotic evil half-golem fighter with an intelligence of 6.I voiced him with a reasonable impression of Nathan Explosion and his entire decision-making process was revolved around what decisions were the most "metal". Fucker literally destroyed the world.
He did that as the world literally exploded around him from him having successfully sundered the Pillars of Creation. Technically it didn't kill him, but...
One memorable character I played at one point was a fairly early one, but died due to my forgetfulness to heal myself, and underestimate the need for it. (We didn't go into combat often, so although I could've made it at-will, I didn't because again, I didn't see the need for it). Anyway, the GM and I had an EPIC backstory for him, even did a nice little flashback when we were low on players one day. He was the reluctant hero moral-compass of the group, who was from a heavily Aztec-themed utopian world where everyone was not only psychic to SOME extent, but didn't have to take special medication like the rest of the sector did. The GM loved the idea of this character so much, his planet ended up being part of the end-game: the big, climactic end that was planned and we haven't gotten around to, just yet. Xicohtencatl was often outshone by the gritty Asian-Greek ex-investigator mercenary-police that came from the super-capitalistic Arcadia, was the antithesis of Xicoh, as we called my character, for short. To avoid rambling on too much more, Xicoh was a badass on his home world, but came to Dorian's (the antithesis character the other player played). Now that I think about it... Xicoh and Dorian had a sort of a Han and Chewbacca dynamic. Two opposites, from completely opposite planets, joining forces with common goals and various monetary and moral debts to pay. Except with more psitech. And mercenaries. And a much grittier, more limited setting. Also, insert a "You're a psychic, Dorian" moment with a hispanic/African accented Aztec Hagrid.
My nine year old decided his Ranger would take a nap as his first combat action early on in the campaign. I thought he was just being a troll but he was serious. Evidently John Ironwand, "Lord of the Forest" (Oh yes, the quotes are important!) is a narcoleptic. It's actually made for some funny moments so far. Epic potential for certain.
A character that the old group still talks about is an elf fighter named Igno Ramis. He had 18 double ought STR & a 7 INT. I played him like Forest Gump where he was very “innocent” in his world views. He saved the party in an adventure where there were 2 jars in a room. 1 had a Genie the other a Jin. He picked the jar w/ the Jin. When asked what his which was he replied I wished I’d opened the other jar. When he opened the other jar he used his wish to free the Genie. Everybody loved Igno
My First good character was an old B1 battle Droid in Star Wars: Edge of the Empire. His name was his serial number: DDR 49874521 (which didn't actually mean anything) But everyone remembered him as "Dumb Dumb Robot". The fearless/reckless battle droid that was great in battle but absolutely awful in any other situation. While he often caused alot of trouble, he was an endearing moron that eventually proved to be a huge asset to the team.
Hey, as a player I usually talk in first person in our sessions to imerse myself in the character, so.I was kinda worried. But then you mentioned the "making a voice" and I relaxed, because thats my thing hahah From 6 year olds to 60, I always impersonate my character voices. Awesome channel, man!
I NEED TO TELL YOU ABOUT MIRK. My nephew is 11 its his design. a halfing ranger who was kidnapped and raised by orcs. he doesn't know how old he is and has an obsession with giants. right before a sneak attack, Mirk decided to try to talk to a hill giant and gets two smacks to the face putting him on deaths door. after the much harder battle, with some impressive roleplaying he outs himself as not being an expert giant hunter as he said before, he was just fascinated with them. I gave him inspiration for that. he is constantly trying to out class everyone at everything and failing. He carries a oathbow but has yet to use its ability.
Storm kings? My Wood Elf Ranger- who is afraid of buildings has the same bow. In releated topics, he speaks giant, so in one encounter - the newly single hill giant in the stone tower, as the two melee-combatants were climbing the tower to ambush her from inside, Elfrik started to talk to her. With a carisma mod of 0, he rolled pretty decent stats to convince her that her husband left Gu, and that they met him in the swamps, and that she should go look for him in the swams. Jupp, he social-encountered away an hill giant. We still bring that up sometimes.
One of the best characters whose always seemed to return in our Edge of the empire campaign was my friend Gamorrean pilot with a “Han Solo jacket” Piggs Huttfighter. We remember the many adventures he’s been on because of his numerous and hilarious failures. Such as attempting to bribe a dark Jedi and having his “almost” last words be “no wait I can pay you”. The accepting failure is definitely one of the best parts of a legendary character.
I have an epic character that died in a zero session. But everyone still talks about the party planner of Rome simply named Eagle. A straight up hedonist in ancient Rome. Died to a fire sword from a werewolf
My first campaing playing RPG (Numenera was the system) was my first epic character. I played a clever jack with a homebrew focus of shadow powers called Dot. It started slow, as the attention of the table was centeres on the paladin of the table. As the game progressed, and more infiltration, spying and exploration was done, all the players started looking at Dot as the leader of the group, because I was the most helpful character on the table. I still enjoy revisiting my anotations and stories about him sometimes...
My group has had the good fortune of having several epic characters over the last few years. Our first campaign as a group was set in Camelot, with a neutral to evil party who initially were helping Morgana against Arthur. Everyone remembers everyones character years later in great detail... They really were like friends in themselves. Gwevyl the Irish Pagan cleric, Geboren the black Viking, Cenric the Insidious, who became a lich in a secret solo session and wasn't discovered until the end of the campaign, And the late Walter Wainwood. In another campaign, Sam Hain the changeling warlock and The Fists Of Justice (who was himself an homage epic character from that players home town group) cemented themselves into the pantheon.
It was strangely weird when Grinchard's player spoke in Jack's voice at the end of the video. The fact that I can't remember the name of Grinchard's player, but I can remember Jack's name, makes Jack an Epic NPC.
I definitely agree with the name aspect. Ive been in so many quests where I don't know everyone's characters name, yet they know mine because I make a point to introduce my character to nearly every NPC. it definitely makes the character EPIC.
I have had at least three epic characters, one a superhero, captain America type. This character had been in play for nearly 30 years, reinventing him as styles changed or as a way to create change, many friends still know his name , Hellion leader of the international group called OutReach. The other two in rifts game, one a cyber knight that is very well know name wise, his last name is my personal license plate on my truck , my wife offered to use his first name for our first child, she is not a role player but she knows the noble Sir Richtor Lazlo, and the bearman Tak, he was a master engineer, mechanic, inventor, bio-engineer, a 9 ft tall bearman that had many a unique gadgets and weapons and a very unique voice. All of these three are at least 20-25 years past and know even by people in our town that do not know games…Great times
Thank you so much for bringing up CP2020. I wish that you could have spent a bit of time with an example of WHY the Rockerboy is not useless. Mike et al did a great job addressing what was a lack of appreciation for Netrunners, and with publications like the Guide to the Net, they were able to show how what was considered by many player groups to be the most NPC of the classes... how this character class COULD be the most OP of the options. Having played a Solo for many years, and having developed that character into something that would impress even John Woo... I am of the opinion that Netrunners (if properly played) are the ultimate cyberpunk. That said, I have never seen a Rocker achieve anything more than (admittedly awesome) comic relief.
He was a gangsta rapper. Absolutely obsessed with his Rep and his image. He hooked up a sim-stim/braindance recorder and when he'd get in combat, or be doing something cool like riding on a speedboat, he'd start recording and begin rapping and often dancing. He'd edit all this together to make his music videos, so combat rolls were made in conjunction with Dance and Perform rolls. At heart he was an absolute coward. If you watch my review of "Cabin Fever" he was the one that hilariously turned dime on everyone the moment he was alone and thinking he might go to jail. For whatever reason, when ever he started recording, his dice would bless him with insanely good rolls, so he developed a reputation of being the guy that did the craziest, most over the top crap that usually worked. But the biggest thing was that the player never broke character. He played him to the hilt and embraced every aspect of him (good and bad), which was weird because he'd never been the type of player that got really into role-playing.
I've been blessed with three very long time play groups, which intermixed as the decades went on. The Epic characters for us where the ones that even if the player was away in the can, or missed the session, or whatever we could all say what the character would say or do because that was how Elvisian, Fury, Psimond, Naomi, or whatever PC it was would act.
I recently started watching Critical Role & those pro voice actors tend to even narrate their character in-character: speaking in 1st person & (nearly)constantly talking with the character’s voice, “Oi tear open the bullets’ jaw king-kong style & rip out its tongue wid me teef!” I think both are good ideas, speaking in the 3rd person to narrate your character & use her/his name; & speaking in 1st person, either just when the character speaks or all the time.
Warning there is a lot to read as it is a summary of an entire session but it shows how accepting failure can lead to some awesome moments. I remember in one session I was playing an elf cleric. As the group was traveling through a dungeon we came upon a rope bridge that had a trap that sent you flying towards the ceiling. My character was clad in heavy armor and felt that it was safer to jump onto the underside of the bridge. Sadly he failed to land on the bridge and flew upward. Because the ceiling was high up for maximum damage he had enough time to cast one spell, and he chose to cast Death Ward. He ended up not taking enough damage to kill him when he hit the ceiling, but he began falling towards the floor. Deciding that he couldn't die from hitting the ground, he decided to belly flop onto the ground. When the other pc's observed the hole he left they gave him ten points for execution like he had dived into a pool. Immediately following that he ended up triggering a trap that banished him from the material plane for one minute. Knowing the banish spell and how it worked he decided to banish himself from his banishment. This however did not go as planned as he ended up in an armor shop, but instead of giving up he quickly bought some better armor and stopped concentrating on his spell before it ended. He then was brought back to where the trap was because the minute was up. Everyone's characters asked mine where he got the armor from. He just said an armor shop. By this time everyone's characters needed a rest so we set up an alarm spell and decided to take a long rest. In the middle of the rest a burrowing worm came through a wall and ate my character. I knew there was little chance for me if I stayed swallowed so I decided to banish myself once again so I wasn't inside it. I lost concentration on the spell because I knew I couldn't placed in an occupied space, so I ended up next to the creature. The party killed it, but they could only talk about how had the most creative uses for the banish spell.
I think that the character I made that was the most memorable might have been a Rogue/Alchemist multiclass I made with a wisdom of 8, though I played them like a 6. And of course the most memorable moment had to have been when they got hit by a madness bomb and took 6 wisdom damage, lowering them temporarily to a wisdom score of 2… We still quote the line they said while laying down under a tree in the rain with that 2 wisdom, “The sky is crying so I don’t have to!”
Had a Star Wars scoundrel who was quick as a snake & not too bad at fixing things. He had anger issues & swore a lot & preferred alien women to humans. He started out owing a lot of money to a crime lord but paid it off with services & deeds. His defining moment was when the entire party were double crossed by a Hutt who trapped them in a room that had a massive ion charge destroy weapons, droids & wiped about 20m credits. He let his anger get the better of him & got plans to the Hutt"s palace & put a concussion missile into the Hutt's lap. This got him the biggest bounty in the galaxy. Many bounty hunters tried & were met with quickdraw blasters to the face & thermal detonators. He ended up owning a planet & having a small army at his disposal over a period of 5 years that he was played.
My only problem with failure is how the DM I play with manages it. A crit 1 can spawn a freaking dragon just because I failed a Perception roll to keep a watch during travel, even if skill checks are not crits.
![[UNCUT] The Loyal Pin ปิ่นภักดิ์ EP.15 (2/4)](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/qbHbshrA1f0/mqdefault.jpg)
_"Nobody eats Grimshard but Grimshard!_ Then I rip out one of it's teeth and stab it with it! What do I need to roll?"
"...Grimshard succeeds."
"But we haven't rolled any..."
_"He succeeds."_
One of my most legendary characters was a mind-flayer, but I have a problem with slavery in general. Playing an anti-slavery mind-flayer would've felt too much like an outcast and I wanted him to feel like a mind-flayer. So I would "recruit" slaves with the line: "Have you ever considered the opportunities of Illithid employment?" and treat them like employees most of the time and only have them act like slaves around other mind-flayers. Well we were exploring this ruined city with a colosseum in the center, while everyone else was poking around in ruined buildings I went right to the center and found... an ancient red dragon. I knew the others were too far away to do anything and I didn't have anything that could fight a dragon solo, so I was pretty much toast, only enough time for one action.
I looked up at the dragon and asked: "Have you ever considered the opportunities of Illithid employment?" to which it chuckled and promptly incinerated me.
Kinda reminds me of the ending of my 5E story in the 4th ring of hell. So me (a pun loving human warlock) and my 3 friends (another warlock who had a hole in his head as a custom race, a fighter who liked stealing and was almost a rouge with his luck and the GM.) were already long done in our pre-built game and we were just dicking around for no reason. Now all 4 of us are talking about doing another different campaign once we all die even if its super early. That led to me convicting 10 goblins to kill the boss, the other warlock literally eating hell fire from a Satan rock band reject because he rolled a natural 20 on performance and the fighter got a magic fire sword from a talking door's ass.
Now onto the ending, the GM was running outta enemy types to throw at us because we were getting really lucky on rolls and surviving shit we really should have died from so he said the fighter lost his soul from the demon who haunted him and we had to make a blood sacrifice to reach hell. This involved killing everyone in town and drawing a blood circle with dead civilians. We again were doing great getting though most of hell until we found 4 undead beholders. It was a slaughter with us all losing. The fighter who was still alive just more mopey was the first to die but not before one shoting one of them. Next the other warlock who killed the 2 of them and me because the hell fire was apparently still stuck in him as while it wasnt hurting him per se it was still there. My last words were "I guess i must have been a sinner because i had a such a hell of a time!"
Jaojin Talonis screenshot this, imma pass it around
Last words. Omg yes
if you can't have an epic last stand, might as well deliver the best final words you have
So... like the Grandmaster in Thor: Ragnarok? :D
I feel like the best characters I've seen were always made in tandem with another character. I remember a paladin and cleric who were both raised in the same church. the cleric was antisocial and weak but a near genus, were as the paladin was exceptionally tough and outgoing. The paladin did all the talking between the two of them but always deferred to the clerics judgment, and the cleric always seemed to have an idea. those two made the game a lot more interesting.
That sounds cute.
This is something I HIGHLY recommend! Making a co-op gimmick with a good friend that you trust and are on the same wavelength with will really just boost both of your roleplaying and enjoyment a ton! I do it in most games I join, because of that! C:
That's known as a character foil, a trope that is very common in fiction, and for good reason. Your comment shows why it is so popular. Because it is a very good trope. Characters who are opposite of each other in some way allow the 2 to bounce off of each other and allow their traits to shine whenever they are interacting.
There is the ever popular foil archetypes of the brain and the brawn, the inexperienced optimist and the experienced realist, and many more.
If me and a friend of mine play those characters, we only get accused of just playing personal characters again. :)
Sounds alot like the relationship between Caramon (heavy fighter) and Raistlin (frail wizard) from 2E Dragonlance. I still remember their intro story in Dragon magazine.
A 6th point. You can't say your own character was an epic character, people constantly over rate their performances and characters and say how great they were. Chances are your "epic character" wasn't that entertaining to others.
For a character to be truly epic, other people have to talk about it, and go on about it, that aren't the player.
Fair enough. I have a character that fits this video's definition of epic, and we had great fun with her. What takes the cake though was that players from other tables on Adventurer's League night would come watch us just to see her. Nyx was a forest gnome ranger who escaped a zombie invasion in her village by casting Minor Illusion of a tree and hiding behind it. By a sheer stroke of luck, she became the main damage-dealer of the party and for some reason kept getting stuck having to be the Party Face... with a CHA of 8. Dunno what the bard and paladin were doing, but whatever. LOL.
" that players from other tables on Adventurer's League night would come watch us just to see her"
Yeah, that's the key right there. Other people were entertained. I have a bunch of characters i've played that I think are pretty awesome, but its when other people mention it that it really counts.
The longest campaign I ran as a DM was also the most epic (literally, the characters went from level 1 to level 25 before we ended the campaign).
There was the tiefling sorcerer with the most depressing backstory (his village freaked out at his birth, burned his mother at the stake and threw him- a newborn baby- into a river, where he was rescued by a travelling circus and displayed in a freakshow). Growing up with nothing, he was hilariously greedy, nearly dying in a burning building trying to drag a chest of gold that was too heavy for him to carry. He actually fell in love with an NPC paladin who sadly didn't return his affection and was constantly trying to "slay the evil demonspawn"-i.e. him. She always failed of course, and he would tie her up, leaving her fuming next to a box of chocolates or flowers.
The other person in the party was a "bard", but was actually a turnip farmer with delusions of grandeur and an affected upper-class accent. He carried his "turnip-harvester"- a scythe- which caused the party to break into a fit of laughter, because who harvests turnips with a scythe? He ended up getting along really well with the tiefling, to the point that they became blood brothers, swearing an oath to defend each other. It was a really heart warming event. He managed to scam his way into inheriting a castle by fabricating a story that he was the real son of the now-deceased duke and the other son was in fact, a bastard child.
The final player was a "pirate captain". Actually he was a barbarian with a rowboat, but he always insisted he had a pirate ship... he just misplaced it... somewhere. He wore fine silks, a red velvet jacket, the biggest plumed hat; but for all his pretensions, he still couldn't read or write, and he was still a scion of the Bonebreak Tribe in the frozen north. That player was the unluckiest guy I'd ever seen; if a 1 was rolled on the table, 90% of the time he rolled it. But it was awesome because he chewed the scenery in a Scottish accent while failing hilariously. He had a rival, a half-orc pirate captain with a sophisticated palate, a French accent, and a love of opera, and their battles became legendary.
Other players came and went, we had the Wizard who tried to kill a Red Dragon with a fireball. The Rogue who never disarmed traps but instead sent in the pirate barbarian. A second Bard who never used bardic music and instead tried to duel-wield two bastard swords he wasn't proficient in (and he had no duel-wielding feats). A Necromancer who tried to become a lich, but forgot that you are supposed to make a phylactery BEFORE you take poison and die. And the air-head blonde Cleric who constantly forgot they had healing magic.
The game became so popular at our local gameshop, that we had a party of 12 players and I needed a co-DM to help me run the campaign. Only 6 were regular enough to form the core party though. And only those 3 were considered Epic enough for me to remember, even now 20 years later.
One of my favorite characters was a half elf red draconic sorcerer. I had been getting bored of the character after a couple levels, so decided to act a bit dumb and took a leak on an evil goddesses alter. The dm rolled on a Baleful Polymorph table, and he was cursed into the form of a lizard (though still allowed to cast spells and was allowed to speak, but only in draconic.) I decided on the spot that he believed himself to be blessed by a dragon god with a shape closer resembling a dragon as a reward for insulting this false god*
The other players loved their new mascot, and made this high charisma lizard the ruler, and thus our groups Lizard King was born.
Following some fun bluffs where even being evil he talked his way past a lawful good true dragon by turning in a random encounter evil pseudo dragon on the good dragons turf, claiming a reward, and bluffing a few wyverns into believing he was a true dragon and earning their submission after nuking one with his 1/day dragon breath while flying and invisible, the legend was fully born..
To the point where I have had two different friends run games where they asked me to bring him in as my main character because they wanted their friends who weren't in first group to get to meet him :)
I had a character I played in WoW (basically used WoW as the game map, and just played D&D using that world). I had an old human priest with a limp, who was a doctor, counsellor, and eventually actually the head of a militia regiment. I left because of life. The guild folded several months later (nothing to do with me leaving). I had kept a journal for him on the guild's website, so one day out of boredom I hopped on to the website (which no one had been on for months at that time) and wrote his death. Simple. Died in his sleep. A couple of hundred views by the end of the week. And dozens of angry or tearful messages about his death. Pretty sure that was the sign. Will never have a character as good as you, Igor.
Our gaming group has an Epic NPC. His real name is lost to the sands of time, to us, he is known only as Poor Bastard.
He started out as a mini-boss our group encountered. Instead of fighting him, we got really lucky on a bluff to convince him the sparkly pink mace our pre-teen warlord was wielding was the mcguffin Poor Bastard's boss was searching for. (we had cast an illusion on it)
So Poor Bastard confiscated the mace, and confidently lead us to his master the ice king. Unfortunately for Poor Bastard, the Ice King instantly saw through the illusion and charged us in anger. Poor Bastard got knocked into frigid waters as the king went by.
Now that was just the beginning. Through sheer luck of the dice, anytime Poor Bastard attempted anything he rolled really low, with one exception: Anytime he would die on a failure, he succeeded.
In the end, Poor Bastard has shown up in several campaigns, and is cursed to always have bad things happen to him, and never to die.
Ertwin123 Eyy- that's me!
Lol did something similar myself, as my character's deity was Sarenrei goddess of redemption my character converted a module boss to our side as that particular boss had their prior faith shaken, still had to fight them, but didn't kill them, 3 modules later that npc-pc is now our teams healer.
Anything can happen!
Any chance of you actually doing a quest to HELP him?
How does all of this play out in a game? If it's all make-believe and in your head how is any of this happening? What rules and limitations are there to follow that still result in such unique and personalized stories? This is so confusing.
T R U T H well the thing about dnd is everyone is kinda playing their own version. Sure there are consistent rules, but ultimately what happens is up to the dm, and often times the rules are modified, replaced, or ignored. Watch an episode of critical role to get the gist.
Flatmate came home from a session laughing his ass off, asked him what was up 'This fucking bard. We had this boss on 3 hp, it was limping away, bleeding to death, if it left it lived, if it stayed it died. It was about to escape and this bard uses Unnatural Lust. He slides along the ground on his knees screaming "LOVE ME!", the boss came back over enthralled and died. What really did it was the table next to us when he uses that ability, one guy looks dead at him and says "No! You fucking fuck! AGAIN?!?!?" You know a characters great when the other players friends know about them
Got to love the Traveling Bards of Unlimited Charisma.
I think the only Epic Character I've encountered thus far in any of my games would be Sesu-Ra the Unbending Spine, a character who once refused to take cover from an explosion because Sesu-Ra bows to no-one, damnit!
To this day, whenever a character is going to take an action they know will result in failure, and they dive right in anyway, it's done to a shouted chorus of "UNBENDING SPINE!"
willofbob i sometimes do something similar, though not as badass. my tiefling druid had an intelligence of 8 starting out, so whenever i was about to make a bad decision and my DM would give me the mom look, i'd roll my dice while screeching "I HAVE AN INTELLIGENCE OF EEEIIIIIIGHTTTT!!" i know it's a bad decision, but it's fun to make bad decisions sometimes.
"I punch the glowing man,(a god)." -Gorak level 1 barbarian, 2018
1:05: #5 Class and race doesn´t matter
2:00: #4 They´re not perfect
3:45: #3 Everybody knows their names
5:29: #2 A good voice is essential
7:09: #1 They embrace failure
My gnome barbarian highly agrees that race and class do not matter
@@terryfeynman
As does my halfling cavalier (1st edition). All 2' 11 and 7/8" of him. Don't you dare call him 3' tall.
9:13 "what do i need to roll for that"? If they have to ask that question, they're doing something right IMO.
It would be a str check with a high dc. I'd give advantage because it's an awesome idea but it would still count as an action.
I totally agree with you. I noticed that memorable characters are often the most helpful to players but players
should be careful to not overshadow the rest of the team with their Superiority of epik hero .
It's easy to do if your not careful. But if you have trouble with overshadowing the group then try this character archetype. The average unassuming guy that's secretly a badass. I played a vampire in a very long running LARP. We are talking years. Characters came and went but I played pretty much the same character constantly sitting in the background being every ones toady. One day the Storyteller was looking over my character and says, "You know, point for point your character may be the most powerful character in the game.". It was true, While the rest of the court killed each other over intrigues my character remained a useful tool for everyone while simultaneously perusing his own agendas. He survived princes, primagines, and all manner of titled characters who looked down on him as a tool all while in the background he pulled strings they never knew about and amassed a small empire. It was fun.
So you were basically the Petyr Baelish of vampires?
Krulik080 I just give shit away, gold, trophies that aren't too personal, etc. Just gave my ranger friend wolf skin leather bracers from wolves we fought together against 4 months ago upon meeting him again, seeing he was a ranger and had only one trophy. He loved them but for me, I had the cloak I carved out of the dire wolf that day upon my heavy armor and helm, I wasn't missing out on too much
In mutants and masterminds you can be any kind of super hero. Seeing a lack of "utility based" PC in the team i choose to be a human with tons of skills, a bard of sorts in a DC/Marvel world. A know non-sense character to remind the players that having superpowers is not everything.
Throughout the adventure I failed HARD in all sort of different tasks, but every time I failed I always put the blame in the "metahuman" and by the end my character went from a standard government agent to be the one known as "The metahater".
The DM was having lots of fun with this character specially the fact that he literally was an average human being, and so he started a mythos around "The metahater" turning him into the Kaiser Sose of this world: An entity who is more rumor than certainty. So whenever I procalimed to be the one and only... everyone was like "Nah, everyone nows the metahater has 6 arms and can punch through solid steel".
I like most of this list, particularly the different voice for the character (which I try to do on the rare times I get to play instead of run). I disagree with calling a character in the 3rd person, however, and have always preferred both myself and for my players to talk about their characters in the first person to give it a more personal feel. Despite a character being epic, I always let the dice fall where they may, though you're right, it's harder to pull the trigger on an epic character.
One of the biggest reasons I like them using their names is because I've run characters for months and would still have to regularly ask, "What's your character's name again?" And anytime I've had to ask that should be a huge warning sign to a player. They're boring characters if the player thinks of the PC as just themselves. It can also lead to issues where a player takes things personally that happen to their character because they lack the line between themselves and the PC.
And yeah, I've killed a few epics. No one is 100% immune. But I won't deny fudging a damage roll or two. I figure that earning their way into everyone's heart is worth a few small favors.
What I do to make sure I learn the characters' names (and I should have mentioned it before) is that I call to them in character at the table. If I want to know what a certain person's character does, I ask (say Ambralyn) "What does Francis do?" or "What does Jaimes do?" to use an example of her character from the recent Elizabethan game. That helps me learn both the interesting and the boring characters. I feel like it helps the players get into character when they refer to themselves directly, personally.
It can, and they'll still use "I" and "me" sometimes. But just to be clear, I'm not telling my players to refer to themselves by their character names. I'm saying that they just do it. I'd never really thought about it before until i was writing the video as to what traits epic PCs share. And all of them regularly refered to their character by their names. If I'd forced them to do it, it wouldn't have the same impact as when the player just naturally does it. But because the player is using the name, it hammers home in all the players' minds that the PC and the player are different and then all the players, including me, start naturally calling them by their PCs name.
Another way of getting your character's name out there without playing in the third person (which is really weird if only 1 player at the table is doing it), is to announce yourself during the introduction to the NPCs that you meet in game. Even for the unnamed NPCs, if you are trying to get famous you throw your name out there a lot.
For me, calling a character in the 3rd person is useful specifically because it makes it less personal, helps separate the player and character. This way the players are less likely to get mad at each other for in-game actions, and less likely to feel personally attacked when something bad happens to their character.
ha! took me way longer than it should have to realize it was you playing the dude bro
SAME
Unit Jax Holy crap, he is!
that char is totes a dudebro
Omfg. How have I not seen this.... you've enlitened me
One of my favorite characters was an elf cleric who was the unheard voice of reason and the mom of the group. We were in the middle of a battle and I was hit with a crit, other players were like: oh my god, the cleric lost half her life. In character, I simply turned to the hobgoblin who attacked me and said: Your misbehaviour disapoint me young man. The I killed him in one hit.
Lol
Zomg I know what you're talking about since we have one. A Monk with crazy stats. I gave my Blessing of the Forge to her weapon since I figured out she had the highest dps in the party, and it paid back tenfold. She teamed up with our BB and they became a half-naked blender.
Embracing failure I think is one of the best points here. Most of the others (minus the voice) are pretty standard in my group; since we play online the dialogue is delivered through text and everyone knows each other's characters names pretty well by the 2nd session at least.
One of my current favorites is Beskan, a black Dragonborn Fighter Sorcerer and he was the worst rolled character I've got by far; our GM's are pretty generous with rerolling but despite rolling 4 sets of stats and picking the best from all of them, his best two stats were 15 after racial bonuses, while other players had at least one 18 and 14-16's to spare for less important ability scores.
Despite that Beskan has had some great moments, the best one came while we were exploring a dungeon. There were 3 paths and a riddle to hint where to go. Our GM told us if we can't figure it out then we can roll Wisdom if we want to get a hint. I had a pretty good idea which path was right, but I rolled anyway and got a 1. Well, now Beskan confidently walked down the wrong pathway, dismissing the other party member's attempts to convince him that he was going the wrong way - he simply replied "I know where I'm going."
The GM took me to the side and we played something out in secret. Meanwhile the rest of the party were fighting the boss of the dungeon when halfway through the fight they get this message _"The far left well explodes outwards in a hail of acid and half-melted stone. Charging through it is a screaming multi-eyed beast, Beskan's massive greatsword buried in its back and being used to steer it like a joystick."_ Just one example of the many times Beskan's turned natural 1's or otherwise just bad rolls around.
Just think. If he'd had dual-wielding, it could've been a dual stick controller.
Maybe wasn't an epic character. But I had a player once that insisted I let him randomize an entire character, race, class stats everything. He ended up with an elf ninja (playing pathfinder) with like a 7 con. So he decided that his character just has a weak stamina and so whenever he did a stealth check or acrobatics check he had to make a fort save or else he'd go into an uncontrollable coughing fit. Happened a lot. The guy had a lot of fun with it.
Also had a player (long story sorry) the party had taken to sleeping in the trees so they wouldn't get attacked from monsters in their sleep. Middle of the night 2 giant Allosaurus attack them. The ranger says "i want cut my ropes, jump on the dino, stab it with my two swords and ride him". I said make the checks. He makes the rolls based on where they are on his sheet, attack roll good, grapple check good, jump check fail badly. So the dino gets an attack of opportunity. Between that and fall damage the ranger is now at like 1 or 2 health. Fight changes from kill the dino's to "oh crap he's about to die".
Next turn, the Ranger says "wait... I'm going to cast charm animal" I roll the creature save in the open, it gets a 1. He ended up riding the dino after all.
That's absolutely genius.
I need more dinosaurs in my games.
In my current campaign, my DM tossed a couple bandits riding Triceretops at us. Within 2 turns, we had taken the dinos, and trampled the bandits to death. (Slate, my very elderly fighter, did an arial DDT on one of the riders)
At another point, Slate gained a spell that allows him to fly for 15 minutes. He was so overjoyed that he didn't realize the spell ended until he was falling.
One of my best characters was my Dark Heresy 2. Ed character, Sister Miranda. She was an Adeptus Sororitas Hierophant from a Shrine World, meaning she was good in melee and very charismatic and possessing a high will, but dumb as a bag of rocks with horrible agility. She was also in her sixties which led the group to comment that she didn't have a chain-sword, she had a chain walker. Over the course of our adventures she remained incredibly oblivious to the nature of the groups work for a long time. Zombies were teenagers on drugs, a chaos cult was a band of street thugs, and the acolytes were nice young servants of the Emperor. She even became best friends with the shadiest and most bloodthirsty of the acolytes, simply because of the fact that he was great at lying and she could never see past his lies. Whenever she was in a boat, she fell out. When she tried to climb, she fell. On more than one occasion she was completely separate from the action, the most memorable being when everyone was fighting a daemon possessing 100 nuclear weapons, she was in her quarters reading quietly. She became friends with all the wrong people, corrupt church officials especially. She got taken in by a cult whose leader won her over with her true and devout love for the God-Emperor. And when her cult attacked an important festive gathering, she tried to convince the Cardinal of the planet that they were good people and that there was a misunderstanding. The incredible harsh rebuke she suffered led her to have an existential crisis, and she walked through a massive firefight, completely unscathed, trying to put her world back together. Eventually a floating mountain/mausoleum descended in front of her, courtesy of the tech-priest, which she took as a sign that the God-Emperor truly favored her, and that the Cardinal was a heretic. Throughout all of her adventures, she was the least corrupted and injured of the entire party. Sadly our GM moved away shortly after this awesomeness, so the adventures of Sister Miranda were brought to an end. Gone, but not forgotten.
Let me tell you of the story of a character that was in my group. An alchemist of the name of Bane Songsteel. The first time our group saw him, he was but a triffling merchant with an anormal desire for gold and riches. Armed with explosive potions that he would throw or occasionaly tie on a long range melee weapon, he was ensuring mayhem whenever he could. He had a very ''Star Trek Ferengi'' vibe (for those who don't know, check out Ferengi rules of acquisition) and would often make up proverbs related to greed and money making. But they always had a link to what happened. ''A gold coin well or dishonestly earned still have the same shine'' or ''Someone incorruptible doesn't exist: you simply didn't find the right price to buy his confidence''. While he didn't have a peculiar voice, he did had a peculiar laughter after a good/bad deed done.
When we first met him, we had a battle into a tavern. On a unlucky roll, he slipped on the ground and came crashing done into the bar. When he got up, he said ''Well, usualy I need to pay people to pour alcool on me. Guess that was a bargain !''
But the story i like to recall is we call the hearth beat. Since he was an alchemist, and the group needed money, he took on the job to create an health elixir to cure a rich old man. The potion backfired horribly, with a catastrophic failure. The poor man drank the potion, started to convulse and after a long painful sight, spat out his heart. While the still beating heart was on the bed, under the traumatised look of his now widow wife, Bane simply said, excitedly: ''Don't you see ? I have cured this heart of his fleshly body ! Now, about my reward...'' We didn't get paid and had to flee the little town, but the mischiefs of the alchemist became reknowned, getting as much fame as infamy (due to an abnormal number of natural 1 rolled).
Long after the story of this group was over, his legacy remained. A few campain later, in the same world but hundred of years later, our group went inside a luxurious city. One of the attraction was in the biggest chappel. Inside of it, a powerful relic was preserved: a still beathing heart. ''The legend says that a stranger passed in this town while in it's infancy. He offered us the gift of immortality, but we rejected him and chased him from our lands. Since then, we place many gold offerings on this altar... So that he may come one day get his just reward.''
My God, this is glorious.
Oh god by the logic of the name rule, my halfling sorceress Beth "Biscuits" Butterfield is an Epic Character. Now that I think about it she did do some fun things....high charisma. Almost (DM took me aside and said he really didnt want to) talked a Drow male into giving up life in the underdark to be with Beth. Hit a high level former warlock with a pan and convinced him to help us. It's been two years and people are still bringing her up.
And my Gnome Druid got eaten by a monster and at first I was all sad but then I looked up, "Sidian turns into a bear." The DM looked at me with this look of shock and a veteran player start busting out laughing.
Oh god the names... My very first played character was a dwarven druid. Now I had just got the 5e players hand book and the dwarfs description were short and stout, so her name was Teapot. Although if we're talking memories I got em. I was the youngest of the group the second youngest being twice my age. Now the whole group but my brother went to the third floor of a prison. Now he was talking to a minotaur pirate. Great, So we set the building on fire after we did want we needed and he let out the guy and he went back his promise. After a few minutes hes knocked unconscious but I thought he was dead so I went up and hacked his fancy ass peg leg off, but mid way he swung his head up using his horns and slashed my intire front half, So since the dm thought one blow would be enough he just asked for how hard I landed, then I rolled. It was a nat 20. I took my shillelaghed club and snapped his neck back instantly killing him then went back to his leg. After then it was used as my club.
One of my fav character ever was a kobold paladin named Narshoon Dragontoe, played him totally over the top cause he was an idiot but brave. He would disarm traps by throwing himself onto them to protect the party. He'd cast his smite attacks into kneecaps to be a party distraction for others when they debated how to do things. We once had to fight a wizard that was standing on top of a tower, so the party decides to use some dungeoneering knowledge and rolls to knock the keystone loose so it would all come tumbling down, everyone ran out of the way, Narshoon said he wasn't running so rolled an acrobatics and nat 20ed dodged a bunch of falling stone blocks.
As a DM and a player, I've found Epic characters supplement point #3 by referring to their fellow characters by their names--and as a DM I love seeing that! I love it! I love it! I love it!
I still remember one of the characters my friend played in a Wild Talents game. He rolled up a guy who could summon an unlimited number of Prinnies at will as minions. We're playing a mildly gritty modern superhero game as a team of misfit metahumans who are basically paid by an underfunded government agency to be legit vigilante heroes. Now the prinnies are hilarious enough as they came with a voice and cheerfully obeyed his every command no matter what but weren't smart so if he wasn't specific or they were left unattended the GM decided they got up to mischief. (getting us banned from several bars and cafe's)
At one point a Tarrasque gets loose and starts causing havoc just outside the city. We meet it and all have a crack at hitting it to no effect. At this point he tells us he's got an idea and starts summoning a conga line of prinnies to simply walk up to the tarasque and let it eat them. It's distracted we think to ourselves, we can come up with a plan.
Just then news crews started turning up and we had to explain why we were feeding hundreds of small penguins to the giant beast and that was okay because they're actually not penguins but reincarnations of sinful souls. That didn't fly, they're talking about getting animal rights people involved and we're desperately trying to get them to leave us alone. Eventually the tarasque got full and went to sleep so we made a hasty retreat back to base and let the authorities put the tarasque back where it came from.
First character I built in Rifts was a Cactus-Man Psislinger.
Cactus-Men, for reference, are a race that is listed as 90% pacifist, while Psislinger is exactly what it says on the tin: a psionic gunslinger.
I gave this character a few combat skills to complement his starting equipment (an "endless revolver" that is reloaded through the character using their "inner strength", a military-style hoverbike with integrated weapons, two revolvers explicitly stated to be silver-plated, and some light MDC armor), but used most of my points in random, thematically appropriate skills (it was a "New West" campaign, so think "Bandits, Cyborgs, Cowboys, Vampires, Wizards, Psychics, Aliens, and combinations of those things you probably didn't expect to be possible"), including cooking (if you're days from civilization, and you can't guarantee someone won't shoot you on sight just for not being human, you need to be able to cook), juggling (because trick-shots and juggling your guns go hand in hand), and singing (because what's a cowboy that can't sing? A drain on morale, that's what).
This character somehow managed to end up outdoing the CQC specialist when it came to initiative (Juggling, for some reason, gave a +1 to initiative, as well as the ability to catch thrown weapons), while also being able to intimidate his way out of most non-combat situations (Cactus-Men have an inherent racial Horror Factor, while Psislingers have a level-dependent Horror Factor, resulting in a character who is just absolutely terrifying to most NPCs).
I knew none of this when making this character. I just wanted to play a psychic Cactus-Man that used a revolver to kill literal tanks.
Play the character you want to see someone play, but keep the setting in mind. If you're playing the western-themed game, feel free to play the character that practically embodies the tropes of the setting, but be sure to check with the GM if there's a way to justify playing a Viking.
Exactly. As long as the character fits into the theme or spirit of the campaign, everything else is wide open.
Totally Agree I have found the most fun RP moments I have had have come from a low roll or a Natural 1.
Yeah, gave my player TWO nice drow scimitars, at lower level, but they disintegrate on a roll of 1 in sunlight. Of course that the first time she even draws them, she rolls double crit fail.
That sucks for the player. But overall sounds like a Great moment XD
Botches can become spectacular stories.
As a ST my opinion is that a good botch should be rewarded.
She was, in a way. She is now in quite a good standing with local Elven "kingdom". Pretty good for a drow.
Sneaking into a dragon's lair, our Monk sneaks onto the ceiling with her slippers of spiderwalking, the ranger sneaks into a better vantage point, the Cleric and Bard wait for an opportunity to join the battle once we get it's attention, and I the rogue sneaking to get over into a position to ambush this dragon as it runa past... And I roll a nat one on stealth.. and kick a rock...
#2 is spot on. The greatest character I ever played was the passionate and sometimes bumbling paladin Georg Redcrosse, who became instantly unique when I had him speak with an AHNOLD SCHWARZENEGGER accent! It was actually a spur of the moment thing: our DM had told us our campaign setting was a fantasy AU of Europe, and Georg happened to come from the place where Austria would have been, and AHNOLD was the coolest Austrian I knew of!
"I put the old lady and her shop into my bag of holding" -Kriv, 2017
I will never forget
My favourite thing about this and your other videos is the little cut-scenes you use for examples. Its great, emphasises the point, and brings forth a good giggle.
One of my favorite characters i made in a Legend of Zelda campaign, his name was Gram, he was a Subrosian Bard, and adopted prince of Labrynna, he aquired these gauntlets that basically him a 20 in strength so he would often "RKO" enemies, but in this universe this move had no name so it became dubbed the "Gram Slam"
Imagine a 6'6" cleric of death and darkness. Now take away the idea of him being the standard emo necromancer and think of him being almost annoyingly upbeat. Now give him a silly Swedish accent. "Oh, hello, I am Rodan Bjordson." The setting I'm in right now two of the players are playing dragons. The way Rodan was introduced to them was he was on a pilgrimage to... I forget the name of the kingdom, but it's irrelevant, because we renamed it when we took it over, but anyway he was on a pilgrimage and all the sudden there was this wavy thing in the air and he woke up in a field with a dragon.
He woke up in a field with a dragon.
And then a house fell out of the sky.
"No, no, no. Clearly I am drunk in a bar. One does not yust wake up in a field with dragons and falling hooses."
So, now everything that happens I come up with a plausible explanation as to what is probably happening in the real world that he's seeing with his drunk eyes. Like how the dragons are actually just twins with dragon tattoos and he's probably been abducted by carnies more than once, which he's completely okay with, because they're not bad people. Then there was the kitsune lady who was riding a dinosaur. The dinosaur picks up Rodan in its mouth. Awful dragon breath, you know. But then it dropped him, to which he figured he just fell off his bar stool. She asked us to find her bracers (some kind of thing to do with her being royalty and it being a mark of her position). Something about them being in a dark place. We ended up fighting a bunch of bat people, which made Rodan think they were probably just in her attic and she was afraid of bats.
He figured that the kitsune lady was really just the barmaid and that she was probably "yust a little hairy, and probably kind of big, on account of how she thundered off." Being that she was riding a dinosaur. So when the party was negotiating payment for the return of her bracers the rest of the party was asking for wealth and favors, and when it came around to Rodan he asked her for a date.
It's been one hell of a bender so far.
its so much better if you read the whole story in a bad Swedish accent.
I just read in the voice of PuffinForest's Abserd.
I need to play a barbarian next. Give him some kind of brain thing where every day he wakes up believing he's something else. Today, Krunk is Wizard. Krunk "casts" magic missile by yelling "Magic missile!" and throwing daggers. Krunk casts Obscuring Mist by tossing a pocket full of sand into his opponent's face, which then blows back into Krunk's face so no one can see. I'm imagining the other characters questioning him while he's filling his pockets full of sand and his response being something along the lines of "Gathering spell components."
I had a character that I modeled after William Shatner. "You're not.... gettingaway... this.. time."
My barbarian Thokk seems to be trying hard to be an epic character. He has killed three enemies in combat with a bear trap he swung around by the chain. Inspired the druid to make a large vibration to call ankegs when we were being outmatched by displacer beasts. And apparently impregnated a tiefling... Which will lead to a child only Thokk and it's mother will love as it's dad is a half orc. Quarter human, quarter orc, half tiefling... not a pretty image. And despite being female, I think I give him a pretty memorable voice.
Every combat the rest of the party plans and plots while I sit back and doodle. They do their stuff, then the DM sighs and says, "What does Thokk do?" "He looks down into the hold." "He see's enemies staring up at him, he can get to them by smashing through if he really wants to or there's a doo-" "He pee's on them." "...What?" "Thokk pees on them." Following that they all started rushing up to get at Thokk, who then giddly tucked himself back into his loincloth and placed caltrops and bear traps outside the door, then stood back a ways with hammer ready. It was a good day for wack-a-pirate.
one of my fave characters i played was one i rolled dice to decide the race and class *half orc warlock* and the reason he became an adventurer was to get away from his ex. people loved he had such a non typical reason to adventure.
I'm currently playing a half-elf bard who pissed off his noble family by leaving a bride at the altar and running off to become a bard. He became an adventurer after he kept getting heckled by bar patrons.
Great video and great points. I've been playing D&D since 1982, and all the best and most memorable characters I have seen exhibited one or more of these traits.
The one D&D type game that I remember playing in, I was playing a warrior/barbarian type character, and me and my party were escorting a wagon of goods from one town to the next, I heard a rustling in the bush and threw my great sword at it, when I went to retrieve it it had stabbed through a bandit and his horse, now pay attention to the wording of the next part.
"I pick up the sword and strap it to my back confident that any other bandits would have been scared away"
We then got to the next town, where while we were going over our equipment, it was pointed out to me that I never removed the bodies of the bandit and horse from my sword.
It then became my quest to skewer as many enemies as I possibly could, when I was almost out of sword I'd find a black smith to extend the blade or I'd use another sword until I could find a blacksmith. We ended the campaign with me having one sword about 10 feet long and the blade was totally concealed with the bodies.
I had made it a secondary goal to try and have each thing impaled oh my sword be different, I had human, horse, elf, squid, shark, and at the end a dragon, at the start of each day I'd have to roll for strength, if I failed I had to drag the blade around and be unable to use it in combat aside from moving it to block.
It's been a while since that and to this day Im not entirely sure if it actually happened or if it was a dream.
At the very least I know the horse and bandit part actually happened, I just can't remember if what happened after was real, (as in what happened after we left the town we escorted the wagon too and I found I was carrying a horse and bandit)
Just found your channel. Looks like the perfect replacement for Counter Monkey that I've been looking for.
Definitely something I always try to do with my characters is make bad decisions as long as they make sense for the character. GMs love characters that take the bait and/or do the wrong thing, in my experience.
My favorite example of crazy risks making a character epic: we did a quest for a turtle dragon in the A D & DOriental Adventures and it tried to gyp our low level party out of our reward. Our kensei challenged it to a psychic duel and won. The GM told us that if Takezou had failed, and there was high chance he'd lose to the epic monster, that it would have ate him.
Recently, in a 5e game, we were trying to figure out the best way to kill some bugbears in the middle of a huge river and steal their boat. I cast invisibility upon our halfling ranger, told the wizard to cast invisibility upon me and told the warlock to cast fly. I carried the halfling on my back, flying invisibly, and let him snipe the bugbears from my back over the river while my character's pet duck distracted them. It was stupid but I'll never forget it.
The most fun I've had playing a character in a TTRPG was definitely my first time playing Stars Without Number, a sci-fi themed RPG. In a game where pretty much everyone has a gun, ballistic or energy-based, my character carried a greatsword, a shield, and a few grenades, and was mostly specialised in strength. The party was performing a raid on a heavily defended military base, and our plan of action was to sneak up to the main hangar and use the element of surprise to our advantage. One of our party members got spotted, however, and it immediately went loud. Due to some unfortunate circumstances, I had to step away from the game for a couple of turns to handle something unrelated to the game and entrusted my character's turn to another player who I felt was competent.
A couple turns later and I come back to a party split in two and getting their asses handed to them. One half of the party was being mauled by a single soldier, and the other half was pinned outside the hangar and mostly ready to die. At some point, a mech had shown up inside the hangar and was causing all number of issues for my half of the party. I didn't have too much faith in the continued life of our party so I decided to charge the mech with just my sword and shield. Over the span of about 4-5 turns, I grappled onto the mech with my hands, began bullriding it, pried the top turret off with my sword and finally ripped the door off the cockpit to kill the pilot. It just about managed to turn the tide of the fight and we were able to survive that encounter.
Sadly, I don't play with that party anymore, but every now and then my friends bring it up. Easily the most fun experience I've had in a single sitting of any RPG.
my favorite epic character was named Krythox, minotaur slave turned barbarian/fighter and on occasion mercenary and adventurer but usually a member of an order of warriors that protect a keep and its citizens.
he loved to eat beef, had a crush on a dobbleganger prostitute, was friends with a dragonshaped druid and Flind/Gnoll paladin knight.
great and fun character to play.
One of the characters I remember the most was someone called Adam snowfield, the main reason I remember him was because of just how bad he was, it became a meme within our group, everytime he did something and failed (which was often) he would just sort of weakly say "aaaaadaam snowfieeeeld"
I love audio books, and one of the easiest ways I've found to create a unique character voice has been to simply borrow from memorable characters in those books. The narrator's voice acting skills have done most of the work for me, so all I have to do is deliver my version.
It's allowed me to tap into a source of voices that is only limited by the books I've listened to and my imagination to bring them to life.
One of my most epic characters is my YT namesake. Humphrey Gobo was a middle-aged, alcoholic, grizzled detective, from d20 Call of Cthulhu) whose catchphrase was "My name's Gobo and I don't give a damn!" Best part is that I got to tell Monte Cook the tale of Gobo. He loved the character concept (or was just being nice to a fan) and then told me about the initial playtest of d20 CoC being the creators all playing different cop clichés through a murder mystery.
Totally agree, especially with the whole voice thing. A variant of that was writing up a diary for my Buffyverse slayer character, in *her* voice. This was really helpful, and even though he lost most of his gaming books during a renovation, my buddy who ran it still has those to remind him of the game, and some of the big ups and downs.
The downside to that was that one other player wrote up diary entries for his character, but he was playing more of a lone wolf type. Sometimes, he'd get perturbed when things he mentioned in his diary didn't happen, and would ask the GM "...did you even read my diary entry for this week?"
This is easily the most wholesome Dungeons & Dragons Channel that I watch, your advice is always genuine and seems to come from a place of experience. Here's to hoping you can double that subscriber pool by next year.
That double 6 roll story made my heart warm. EPIC!
Holy shit. I wound up hitting all of these traits before even seeing this video. Gror the Bear, Lord of the North, King of All That He Sees. A hulking Half-Orc voiced by The Iron Shiek. Mind-Controlled into murdering his entire village by an Arch-Lich. Sold into slavery. My first action in my first session was to charge the first thing I saw. It turned out this thing was to be our first quest giver. I rolled a crit. "FAHQ YOO!" I screamed as my fist wrenched through its face. It died.
I really wish our group hadn't had 2 flakers. I wanna play Gror. :(
10:00 As a long-time DM, I can say that I have definitely done that for a beloved character...more than once.
Would love to see a "war story" review of these 12 epic characters. You, sir, are a gem to the hobby.
lets get this one to the top! (even if this is an old video :) )
You got me back so many epic moments we played with my friends… thanks! Watching your video makes me wander back to the university time and endless campaigns 😊 keep up with the greatest job 👍
That last bit is insanely true
These videos are some of the best advice I've recieved about writing well rounded likable characters. Thanks a bunch!
I remember a gnome warrior in ridiculously large armour in EverQuest. Such a cute thing to see, it was EPIC!!!
I'd say another trait of an epic character is buy-in. You could be the life of the table with a very animated character that's fun to watch but if you're not engaging with the rest of the party on a level they enjoy then they're just spectators. If your character creates moments for others to express themselves, if they set up others to say something witty, if they drastically underestimate other character or even overestimate them, you end up with a game where the character amplifies the fun others have.
I'm currently playing changeling with a goofy impulsive character that does what it does very well, and whom makes it very easy for me to steal scenes when we play. The character is very meta in that it is a creature that's very clever that plays the fool, played by a player that's fairly clever. So a lot of what I do is setting up situations where Numan is underestimated. However, the part of my character that other players love is how I piss them off and make bad excuses for my behavior when they chew me out, or the stupid elaborate plans I come up with, or the occasions where my character "randomly" says something very helpful or inspiring that lets them have a genius idea. I wouldn't say that that character is epic, but he's a driver for fun roleplay around the table and just a few sessions in he's already a character that people are telling stories about.
your honestly one of the best D&D youtubers I've found. subbed. your hilarious
Thsnks.
My half orc assassin tried to shoot the villain with a bolt action rifle and nat oned. He became enraged and gave away his position. A squad of riflemen nearby saw and gunned him down. Good times.
khartog01
Oh. My Emperor.
You played. An Ork sniper.
Well done, sir- Well done
Correction. A terrible ork sniper.
That's all right- the Inquisition will still use you as a cover-up for an assassination :P
Found this video extremely entertaining and enjoyable. These tips should be used by everyone not only for their own enjoyment but the whole groups. Great advice Seth, thanks.
Just found you guys today and I love your commentary, great stuff!
Glad you're enjoying it. Thanks.
Something you forgot about is body language and facial expression. I find it even more important to bring a character to life than voice (if you are not playing online).
It does a lot for a character if act out the crazy eye he give someone to intimidate someone or if she puts on the most charming smile if she wants to persuade someone to help them
This. It's amazing what a little space work or a simple gesture can do to bring a character to life.
Embracing failure is important, like when my bard was literally on death's door, unconscious in an acidic slime, and out of no where our crowlike ranger pulled out a goodberry he had for the longest time, since this campaign, healing magic is unheard of (goodberry not counting because it was creating food, not healing)
One of my favorite characters to play was an Assault Marine in Deathwatch named Cornix. Well, during character creation we decided he was going to be part of the Raven Guard then we rolled his power armor history. Lead from the front. His power armor had very loud speakers in it. On something that was suited for stealth. We even had a catch phrase for him. "Ignore me!" played from his speakers at all time.
WITH CATLIKE TREAD, UPON OUR PREY WE STEAL! IN SILENCE DREAD, OUR CAUTIOUS WAY WE FEEL! NO SOUND AT ALL! WE NEVER SPEAK A WORD! A FLY'S FOOTFALL COULD BE DISTINCTLY HEARD! (LOL! Just joking with a reference to G&S's Pirates of Penzance. The pirates were sneaking up on the Major General and they sang really loudly.)
One of my favorite characters was a werewolf (in World of Darkness) named Wise Beyond Wit that sounded like Bill Murray from Caddyshack. He gained a lot of his wisdom from bad dice rolls. A lot.
Love this, I think the hardest thing for me has been referring to my character in third person so their name is in play.
It's so easy to get wrapped up in the character generation process and just start thinking of your character as "I" when referring to what they are doing. But it definitely helps to make them more memorable when they have a name that is used by the person playing them, not just the NPCs and GM.
Before Hodor was even a thing I rolled up a half orc barbarian whose primary means of speaking was the use of his own name (obviously not as restrictive as Hodor as that would get tiresome). I rolled him expecting the game to last 2 sessions max. Because he was supposed to be so short lived I'd min-maxed just for the ability to hit people hard with a double ended axe. Oh, and to have an animal side-kick (deeply important...). A year later I was still playing Krunk and his animal companion Fluffy the bunny rabbit. His many weaknesses and eccentricities were such that he's always a topic of conversation on the rare times that I am able to spend time with that group.
Was fluffy a space rabbit?
I agree with everything here, love it! And I can vouch for that last one, had a character that hit the notes here, a bumbling buffoon of a pirate that somehow through insane complete bs dice gods shine upon thee kinda dice rolls sacked a navy military port town with just the other player characters, one ship, and one medium sized crew, but the bumbling buffoon aided in the rescue of several nobles who were about to be hung in said port city unjustly as a trap for him and his crew.
In the process of all this sheer chaos of the port town's defenses and guards scrambling to try and regain control of the situation (and failing) the original plan for the DM was one or multiple of the player character would get captured as this was suppose to be a part of the plot.
My character managed to nearly single handedly derail the story (due to this stupid and insane rescue plan was his idea in the first place) in such a ludicrous and badass fashion with both failed nat 1s and nat 20 rolls at the end of it we all managed to get back on the ship and start to sail away. We all braced for impact ready for the entire navy to come sailing after us in fiery vengeance assured of our destruction we readied ourselves to fight with one ship verses an entire fleet.
Thats when it happened, the DM while he had to burn a large portion of his main story line, loved the batshit insane outcome so much better that he had one of the npc's whos name I'll never forget, Cookie the Orc, our ships cook and he was actually very intelligent for an orc, just dont go into his kitchen if you want to keep your fingers. The orc had kept guard on the ship while everyone else sacked the port, during this time he had gotten bored and used some spare diving gear we had to go around to *all* of the other ships, and tied their anchors together.
So from our perspective we're ready for a total party wipe, then we see all of the enemy ships start to leave port, then slowly turned and smashed into eachother, none of us had a clue what to make of it until we noticed Cookie was trying to dry off and put away the diving gear still casually, "WHAT? I got bloody bored while you hooligans were off havin fun without me!", and he stomped off back to his kitchen. While many of my friends remember my goofy pirate, I will never forget that epic npc who saved our asses from a watery grave cause the DM decided he liked our party's insane antics.
Reminds me of my After The Bomb character, Hans van whiskers, a German housecat, accent and all, with human ectoplasmic arms prepping an rpg warhead whilst riding atop his trusty steed, a hammerhead with primal rage.
some rando I loved after the bomb
Thank you so much for making this list and for all the examples that you made. Tomorrow on the weekly dnd session everyone will hear barbaric battle cry of the Hordock The Slayer Of Giants
One that really sticks out in my mind is an ARMY buddy of mine back in 1989. His Dwarf Fighter named Metallican's Grandfather was a Blacksmith who willed him his Smith Hammer. The hammer was known as "Duh-Hammer Offhand." He always played it to the hilt and sometimes a bit overboard, but that was the fun of it.
Some of the most epic PCs I've DMed with had something else in common: I worked with the players to make them. In this urban fantasy, I asked the characters for two things: how they learned of the supernatural world, and how they learned of the organization they were now a part of. Once they gave me that, I asked for more, bit by bit fleshing out the details, until it was finally time to play. By our first game night all PC's were fleshed out and personal.
And then I made sure to integrate those backstories into the campaign as to best turn them on their heads. Tristan's knightly ancestors whom he based all his honor on had only accomplished so much due to their pact with a demon whom he was now contractually obligated to serve. When Max, the college scientist helping to re-discover alchemy, finally found his lost love, his professor had made dozens of homunculi of her for later experiments, and he could tell one from another. The truth about Damien's fiance is that she didn't leave because she had been possessed by a demon: "I never possessed Amelia. There was no Amelia: I possessed you." When you add to or change a character's backstory, the player suddenly becomes invested in the mystery of who they are. The character's character becomes a forcalpoint of the storytelling, both forward and backward. To all DM's out there, I strongly advise you tie your character's backstories into the game. There is just such a great immersive beauty that is born when you manage to marry a PC to the world you've built.
I agree with your points, except for the one about names, I personally like to refer to I when I'm describing, as it helps with the immersion.
While I’m not one to boast, I played a Scottish-accented Claymore wielding ( kilt-wearing) fighter named Alistair.
Our first session we were introduced as a group of rag tags that had just completed an escort mission for a caravan. On our way to collect payment we made camp just off the roadside leading to the desired settlement when we were attacked by a group of deserting soldiers looking for an easy payday.
Their leader demanded we give them all that we have.
Alistair’s response? “I PREFER TO PAY IN STEEL,” as he crits and kills the leader with a thrown hand axe.
It set the tone for him for the entire campaign and my buddies still quote it to this day. Really warms my heart. ❤️
I watched tons of videos of Scottish actors/actresses to really nail down the voice and it was super worth the extra effort.
Ironically the most "epic" character I've ever had was possibly my stupidest. Olyx Turbodeath, a chaotic evil half-golem fighter with an intelligence of 6.I voiced him with a reasonable impression of Nathan Explosion and his entire decision-making process was revolved around what decisions were the most "metal".
Fucker literally destroyed the world.
Kevin Cooper Half GOLEM? Goddamn bards, is there NOTHING they won't sleep with?
Dead Meme heh it’s actually more of a cyborg thing, replacing limbs with golem parts
Well if he died, I hope he did it in the most metal way possible.. Throwing his hands up in rock horns and exploding
He did that as the world literally exploded around him from him having successfully sundered the Pillars of Creation. Technically it didn't kill him, but...
One memorable character I played at one point was a fairly early one, but died due to my forgetfulness to heal myself, and underestimate the need for it. (We didn't go into combat often, so although I could've made it at-will, I didn't because again, I didn't see the need for it). Anyway, the GM and I had an EPIC backstory for him, even did a nice little flashback when we were low on players one day. He was the reluctant hero moral-compass of the group, who was from a heavily Aztec-themed utopian world where everyone was not only psychic to SOME extent, but didn't have to take special medication like the rest of the sector did. The GM loved the idea of this character so much, his planet ended up being part of the end-game: the big, climactic end that was planned and we haven't gotten around to, just yet. Xicohtencatl was often outshone by the gritty Asian-Greek ex-investigator mercenary-police that came from the super-capitalistic Arcadia, was the antithesis of Xicoh, as we called my character, for short.
To avoid rambling on too much more, Xicoh was a badass on his home world, but came to Dorian's (the antithesis character the other player played). Now that I think about it...
Xicoh and Dorian had a sort of a Han and Chewbacca dynamic. Two opposites, from completely opposite planets, joining forces with common goals and various monetary and moral debts to pay. Except with more psitech. And mercenaries. And a much grittier, more limited setting. Also, insert a "You're a psychic, Dorian" moment with a hispanic/African accented Aztec Hagrid.
good videos man, some genuine humour in here, you're like the Wayne's World of dnd!
My nine year old decided his Ranger would take a nap as his first combat action early on in the campaign. I thought he was just being a troll but he was serious. Evidently John Ironwand, "Lord of the Forest" (Oh yes, the quotes are important!) is a narcoleptic. It's actually made for some funny moments so far. Epic potential for certain.
Okay, your picks for actors to voice your characters are epic
A character that the old group still talks about is an elf fighter named Igno Ramis. He had 18 double ought STR & a 7 INT. I played him like Forest Gump where he was very “innocent” in his world views.
He saved the party in an adventure where there were 2 jars in a room. 1 had a Genie the other a Jin. He picked the jar w/ the Jin. When asked what his which was he replied I wished I’d opened the other jar.
When he opened the other jar he used his wish to free the Genie.
Everybody loved Igno
My First good character was an old B1 battle Droid in Star Wars: Edge of the Empire. His name was his serial number:
DDR 49874521 (which didn't actually mean anything)
But everyone remembered him as "Dumb Dumb Robot". The fearless/reckless battle droid that was great in battle but absolutely awful in any other situation. While he often caused alot of trouble, he was an endearing moron that eventually proved to be a huge asset to the team.
Hey, as a player I usually talk in first person in our sessions to imerse myself in the character, so.I was kinda worried. But then you mentioned the "making a voice" and I relaxed, because thats my thing hahah From 6 year olds to 60, I always impersonate my character voices. Awesome channel, man!
I NEED TO TELL YOU ABOUT MIRK. My nephew is 11 its his design. a halfing ranger who was kidnapped and raised by orcs. he doesn't know how old he is and has an obsession with giants.
right before a sneak attack, Mirk decided to try to talk to a hill giant and gets two smacks to the face putting him on deaths door. after the much harder battle, with some impressive roleplaying he outs himself as not being an expert giant hunter as he said before, he was just fascinated with them. I gave him inspiration for that. he is constantly trying to out class everyone at everything and failing. He carries a oathbow but has yet to use its ability.
Storm kings? My Wood Elf Ranger- who is afraid of buildings has the same bow. In releated topics, he speaks giant, so in one encounter - the newly single hill giant in the stone tower, as the two melee-combatants were climbing the tower to ambush her from inside, Elfrik started to talk to her. With a carisma mod of 0, he rolled pretty decent stats to convince her that her husband left Gu, and that they met him in the swamps, and that she should go look for him in the swams.
Jupp, he social-encountered away an hill giant. We still bring that up sometimes.
One of the best characters whose always seemed to return in our Edge of the empire campaign was my friend Gamorrean pilot with a “Han Solo jacket” Piggs Huttfighter. We remember the many adventures he’s been on because of his numerous and hilarious failures. Such as attempting to bribe a dark Jedi and having his “almost” last words be “no wait I can pay you”.
The accepting failure is definitely one of the best parts of a legendary character.
Subbed! I really appreciated these stories, anecdotes, and examples.
I have an epic character that died in a zero session. But everyone still talks about the party planner of Rome simply named Eagle. A straight up hedonist in ancient Rome. Died to a fire sword from a werewolf
This is just brilliant. I am sharing your videos with my son and we discuss them (he plays d and d and also dms). Thank you.
My first campaing playing RPG (Numenera was the system) was my first epic character. I played a clever jack with a homebrew focus of shadow powers called Dot. It started slow, as the attention of the table was centeres on the paladin of the table. As the game progressed, and more infiltration, spying and exploration was done, all the players started looking at Dot as the leader of the group, because I was the most helpful character on the table. I still enjoy revisiting my anotations and stories about him sometimes...
My group has had the good fortune of having several epic characters over the last few years. Our first campaign as a group was set in Camelot, with a neutral to evil party who initially were helping Morgana against Arthur. Everyone remembers everyones character years later in great detail... They really were like friends in themselves.
Gwevyl the Irish Pagan cleric,
Geboren the black Viking,
Cenric the Insidious, who became a lich in a secret solo session and wasn't discovered until the end of the campaign,
And the late Walter Wainwood.
In another campaign, Sam Hain the changeling warlock and The Fists Of Justice (who was himself an homage epic character from that players home town group) cemented themselves into the pantheon.
It was strangely weird when Grinchard's player spoke in Jack's voice at the end of the video. The fact that I can't remember the name of Grinchard's player, but I can remember Jack's name, makes Jack an Epic NPC.
Thanks for the insights. A group of my friends are just starting out with our own experiences so this is very helpful.
Is "Your name is Scanlan" on this list?
Twoswordsdrizzt ayyyy
What about "Oghee The Honorary Dwarf?"
I definitely agree with the name aspect. Ive been in so many quests where I don't know everyone's characters name, yet they know mine because I make a point to introduce my character to nearly every NPC. it definitely makes the character EPIC.
I have had at least three epic characters, one a superhero, captain America type. This character had been in play for nearly 30 years, reinventing him as styles changed or as a way to create change, many friends still know his name , Hellion leader of the international group called OutReach.
The other two in rifts game, one a cyber knight that is very well know name wise, his last name is my personal license plate on my truck , my wife offered to use his first name for our first child, she is not a role player but she knows the noble Sir Richtor Lazlo, and the bearman Tak, he was a master engineer, mechanic, inventor, bio-engineer, a 9 ft tall bearman that had many a unique gadgets and weapons and a very unique voice. All of these three are at least 20-25 years past and know even by people in our town that do not know games…Great times
Thank you so much for bringing up CP2020. I wish that you could have spent a bit of time with an example of WHY the Rockerboy is not useless. Mike et al did a great job addressing what was a lack of appreciation for Netrunners, and with publications like the Guide to the Net, they were able to show how what was considered by many player groups to be the most NPC of the classes... how this character class COULD be the most OP of the options.
Having played a Solo for many years, and having developed that character into something that would impress even John Woo... I am of the opinion that Netrunners (if properly played) are the ultimate cyberpunk.
That said, I have never seen a Rocker achieve anything more than (admittedly awesome) comic relief.
He was a gangsta rapper. Absolutely obsessed with his Rep and his image. He hooked up a sim-stim/braindance recorder and when he'd get in combat, or be doing something cool like riding on a speedboat, he'd start recording and begin rapping and often dancing. He'd edit all this together to make his music videos, so combat rolls were made in conjunction with Dance and Perform rolls. At heart he was an absolute coward. If you watch my review of "Cabin Fever" he was the one that hilariously turned dime on everyone the moment he was alone and thinking he might go to jail. For whatever reason, when ever he started recording, his dice would bless him with insanely good rolls, so he developed a reputation of being the guy that did the craziest, most over the top crap that usually worked. But the biggest thing was that the player never broke character. He played him to the hilt and embraced every aspect of him (good and bad), which was weird because he'd never been the type of player that got really into role-playing.
I've been blessed with three very long time play groups, which intermixed as the decades went on. The Epic characters for us where the ones that even if the player was away in the can, or missed the session, or whatever we could all say what the character would say or do because that was how Elvisian, Fury, Psimond, Naomi, or whatever PC it was would act.
Love the player examples. The humor turns a decent video into an awesome one.
The moment the GM goes "He is going to do what?" you know you have accomplished something
I recently started watching Critical Role & those pro voice actors tend to even narrate their character in-character: speaking in 1st person & (nearly)constantly talking with the character’s voice, “Oi tear open the bullets’ jaw king-kong style & rip out its tongue wid me teef!”
I think both are good ideas, speaking in the 3rd person to narrate your character & use her/his name; & speaking in 1st person, either just when the character speaks or all the time.
Warning there is a lot to read as it is a summary of an entire session but it shows how accepting failure can lead to some awesome moments.
I remember in one session I was playing an elf cleric. As the group was traveling through a dungeon we came upon a rope bridge that had a trap that sent you flying towards the ceiling. My character was clad in heavy armor and felt that it was safer to jump onto the underside of the bridge. Sadly he failed to land on the bridge and flew upward. Because the ceiling was high up for maximum damage he had enough time to cast one spell, and he chose to cast Death Ward. He ended up not taking enough damage to kill him when he hit the ceiling, but he began falling towards the floor. Deciding that he couldn't die from hitting the ground, he decided to belly flop onto the ground. When the other pc's observed the hole he left they gave him ten points for execution like he had dived into a pool. Immediately following that he ended up triggering a trap that banished him from the material plane for one minute. Knowing the banish spell and how it worked he decided to banish himself from his banishment. This however did not go as planned as he ended up in an armor shop, but instead of giving up he quickly bought some better armor and stopped concentrating on his spell before it ended. He then was brought back to where the trap was because the minute was up. Everyone's characters asked mine where he got the armor from. He just said an armor shop. By this time everyone's characters needed a rest so we set up an alarm spell and decided to take a long rest. In the middle of the rest a burrowing worm came through a wall and ate my character. I knew there was little chance for me if I stayed swallowed so I decided to banish myself once again so I wasn't inside it. I lost concentration on the spell because I knew I couldn't placed in an occupied space, so I ended up next to the creature. The party killed it, but they could only talk about how had the most creative uses for the banish spell.
I think that the character I made that was the most memorable might have been a Rogue/Alchemist multiclass I made with a wisdom of 8, though I played them like a 6. And of course the most memorable moment had to have been when they got hit by a madness bomb and took 6 wisdom damage, lowering them temporarily to a wisdom score of 2… We still quote the line they said while laying down under a tree in the rain with that 2 wisdom, “The sky is crying so I don’t have to!”
Does it include the + 1 because he has the crown.
Gm's mind : I totally forgot about that.
Gm's mouth : Yes. Yes it does.
Seth is awesome
Had a Star Wars scoundrel who was quick as a snake & not too bad at fixing things. He had anger issues & swore a lot & preferred alien women to humans. He started out owing a lot of money to a crime lord but paid it off with services & deeds. His defining moment was when the entire party were double crossed by a Hutt who trapped them in a room that had a massive ion charge destroy weapons, droids & wiped about 20m credits. He let his anger get the better of him & got plans to the Hutt"s palace & put a concussion missile into the Hutt's lap. This got him the biggest bounty in the galaxy. Many bounty hunters tried & were met with quickdraw blasters to the face & thermal detonators.
He ended up owning a planet & having a small army at his disposal over a period of 5 years that he was played.
My only problem with failure is how the DM I play with manages it. A crit 1 can spawn a freaking dragon just because I failed a Perception roll to keep a watch during travel, even if skill checks are not crits.
Sounds like a shit DM.
Yeah, that's a shit DM.
DatBritishMexican I suggest f*cking the shit out of him.
Battletech! I have that very box over his left shoulder. Great game. Would love to see a video about it along the lines of his Call of Cthulhu videos.