I had a friend who did a Mastermind Rogue that acted as a hireling that carried everyone's stuff. He would subtly use the Help Action to subtly help people while holding his action to attack when someone else did. GM let him use like a DC 15 or so check Sleight of Hand instead of his reaction to do this (he was also a Halfling and had Bountiful Luck, which he also used). Loved that character.
Lots of good ideas here! I once got to (briefly) play a very deceptive Warlock. Celestial pact, pretending to be a cleric. I worked with the DM to let him know I'd actually be using healing light whenever I *said* I was using healing word. The idea was to play a character who was ultimately good and served a good patron, but delved into some dark secrets that threatened to corrupt them. I'm so disappointed that I never got to see the look on the other players' faces when the "cleric" acted in a moment of crisis to suddenly whip out Eldritch Blast or Hunger of Hadar to make the difference in combat.
This was super interesting! And good things to keep in mind if you want to play a character like this, I really liked the idea of not using smite or another one of your class abilities, that's so cool. And like you said, this can for sure work really well in roleplay heavy games! Like in our campaign's first arc where our 2nd level cleric was just casting detect good and evil the whole time, and used cure wounds with their last spell slot before the last part of our final battle. And they went into it alone talking, while we hid and were all so worried for this big gentle friend. But then they just whipped out their channel divinity which as a light cleric deals 2d10 DAMAGE!!! Which is SO MUCH for 2nd level! It sure wasn't as long game of a thing as you were talking about here, but we all absolutely lost it when this happened! We were all so shocked and floored by this and it really made for interesting roleplay moments following it! So yes, when it's done well, it's GOOD
Cleric, Paladin, or Favored Soul Sorcerer would be good for this. You can do a lot for support and utility, but have awesome abilities to wreck shop when you want. Barbarian might be good also. You can fight. But you get limited rage, which can thematically be when your back is against the wall and you really need to step up.
Rogue or Wizard modeled after Jake Peralta from Brooklyn 99: can do all the normal stuff the character is supposed to be able to do, but their specialty is their investigative and deductive abilities. They see the necessary information, and rhen they know what to do with it
One of my favorite ways to do this mechanically takes a little coordination with your DM and is only for lv 5 and up characters. I asked my DM if I could start with a kind of hidden bag of holding that I would only use to store knives. I also was a wizard who knew glyph of warding and catapult. Every day, I would only use my level 3 (and higher once we hit higher levels) spell slots to cast glyph of warding with catapult on my knives, and put them in my invisible bag of holding. This meant I only used cantrips and level 1 and 2 spells for the whole adventure, but stored up an insane number of knives with catapult. When it was finally time for my wizard to unleash his badassary, I broke all the seals and obliterated the arch wizard who kidnapped my family with an avalanche of knives. The rest of the players at the table were utterly shocked when he took 200d8 damage, it was freaking awesome!
I toyed with a sorcerer for one shot. I really need to take it for a campaign. Dude has 8 int is total frat bro and thinks himself a wizard though he was expelled from all schools. And play metamagic as just a result of botched verbal and somatic components in arcane formulae ( I cast fire ball, and then the big ball of acid explodes)
Luffy from One Piece is another really cool example of this trope, because while knowledge and skill wise, all he really brings to the crew most of the time is his fighting skills, he also has a really good beat on people, he's not intelligent by any means but he is incredible at reading peoples intentions and feelings. That and after water seven his awareness of his responsibility as the Captain of the crew was also highlighted. Most of the time he is this goofball but when it's called for there's a reason his crew goes along with his descisions even if they complain, because he is that good a judge of character.
I had an idea for a cleric hidden in a city that was the opposite alignment and he cant use his clerical abilities in the open. He instead is a great healer and he fuses his cure spells in various herbs and salves
I have a wild magic Sorcerer variant human (metamagic adapt) that secretly has a 3 level dip in wild magic barbarian. Their backstory was that they were a magic Sleeper agent so when they used Rage during an important story point it shocked the party. I also think this was a pretty good way to stay balanced I had metamagic from my feat high AC and HP from barbarian and still had my spellcasting and cantrips.
I made basically a divine wizard that’s basically Luna Lovegood. Tiefling seer that has Synesthesia where she would see sound. Insight checks were geared toward emotions to the point where it was basically a Detect Thoughts surface lvl running. People think she’s just got a screw loose and would normally ignore her, but then patrons of her shop would get weird pieces of advice from her, where she hands them an item that she can “see” they’ll need.
For me, I was planning on making a CMHB as a naive kid who helps them out, using Fighter stuff, only to reveal that he has a level or 2 in Barbarian and rages in a crucial battle as the "no longer holding back" moment
I've had a wizard concept like this for a while. The wizard is scare of their powers so they don't use them. They try to be a fighter and use a sword and shield. Eventually, during a bad fight, they pull out the fireball or lightning bolt and decide that saving the party is better.
Playing a learned monk, maybe with arcane adept for some simple magic, who supports the team more out of combat or without combat and then suddenly in a dire or narratively appropriately moment they realize that they've become much faster and stronger throughout their adventuring career
I’m subbing off of vibe. I feel like I can sense what you’re about & I really fuck with it and am on board with whatever you’re aiming for on this platform. I’m strapping myself up to your ride as well friend, god speed! :)
One of my favorite ones is Mast Bo Rai Cho from the Mortal Kombat series. I like the subversion of the world's greatest warrior was trained by the most badass drunkard.
Paladin 2/HexBladelock 5/Divination Wizard 2 seems like an ok martial with maybe a bit of healing or utility spells. Until you cast Booming/Green-Flame Blade with Divine Smite, Eldritch Smite, and maybe a smite spell with a 19 or 20 portent to turn an enemy into blood mist in one hit.
As a power gamer, every character I make usually starts like that. I optimize the hell out of the character and read the room, have a lot of setups and novas in the pocket and pray for no one to read my sheet and figure it out what could happen if the character really tries to unleash hell. Its more a metagame and mechanic choince than roleplay, but I manage to fit in the character somehow, its just that it isn't hard to make some really crazy stuff, but its ofen resource heavy and not everyone in the table can bring up similar things, so if you spam that, the DM will have some trouble balancing stuff, other players wouldn't shine and always a buffed tarrasq will find your way to the table because 3 Dragons weren't enough and now everyone is drained and is expected to do even better. Just play with your resources, be conservative with them and let everyone shine, focus on your roleplay and building foundations for character development and bounds, but when the DM punches too heavy and almost Tpk in one round, you bring out that magic scroll that everyone forgot, you remember everyone that you have a lot of broken spells that you never used before, used some combat mechanics that you asked about 3 months ago, that good old nova in the pocket. You can convince everyone you are doing 100% of you character playing that paladin with polearm mastery and doing some broken stuff, but never spammed destructive eaves with metamagic and freak out everyone on the table once you do it in an uphill battle that no one was happy to be there.
I'm gonna play a Bonk (Barbarian Monk) as my next character. He lives for the fight so he won't use his dragon powers (Way of the Ascendant Dragon and Rage, I flavored as that) unless he has to, meaning he'll just appear like any other unarmed fighter until that one strong opponent comes and he pulls out all the stops, rage for the strength and resistance, breath attacks. The reveal will be great as the other players don't know how my character is built at all, the barbarian levels I took and the monk subclass will be a complete surprise to everyone (except the DM of course)
i know im a year late to comment this, but if you seriously optimize like the coffeelock example, but i mean a polearm master greatweapon master fighter echo knight vengeance paladin, that plays like a normal paladin fighter, maybe not using too many smites and using bless or healing spells, while being a normal PAM not using greatweapon master, or even just not using subclass features and then if you need to get serious you get the clone out, you use the GWP with the extra attacks, action surge and etc, and burst the f out of the enemy. This should be talked with the DM obviously, but while you get the fun of optimizing (A LOT) you dont ruin the party being useless or overshadowing everyone
I had a moon druid character pretend to be a shitty ranger until the end of the first dungeon. The party was not the brightest and never noticed that she was never in the same place as the two dire wolves they met or the giant spider. She revealed herself at the conclusion of the dungeon cause she was mad at the evil wizard.
You don’t have to make this character’s CMHB shtick a recurring thing. You can have it so that they stay badass after their first major encounter. Because by that point the novelty would be worn off. There are two characters from anime that I like to associate with this archetype. The first is Natsu in episode 1 of Fairy Tail. He is introduced as this kinda lazy idiot but is revealed to not only be a very powerful Wizard, but the very person Lucy is looking for. The next might come as a surprise to many but Shanks was a CMHB in the first few chapters of One Piece. He was introduced as a carefree person who didn’t seem to care much about anything. Then when Luffy gets captured he completely shifts and shows his badassery. Sure he still enjoys partying but now the audience knows what he’s capable of(sorta we’re still not really sure of how powerful this man is)
I disagree. If you leave the goofiness behind, you don't have a CMHB. You have a badass with an initial gimmick. Ideally you perform the miracle of not loosing the novelty by making the badass moments sparing and strategic. But if the novelty does wear off, then you should try to keep the the CMHB aspects barely alive in an inoffensive part of the character. Iroh still keeps a fraction of his CMHB by remaining jovial and simple near the endgame.
"the game is designed to have everyone on an equal playing field" mm no, that ain't true, fighters (dpending if you make it borken, which ain't difficult) and eldrich meme warlocks are strongest at least damage wise, its kinda annoying when a player using either one just kills everything and when the dm throws everything around combat.. its not really fun
Heard a story once of a player who players a rags wearing drunktard fighter who would constantly insult other PCs to annoyance of their players. The DM did nothing even as they complained. Then during a boss fight entire party but drunktard got knocked out. Drunktard: I grab the cleric and slap him in the face, yelling "GET UP YOU COWARD!" Other Players: Alright, listen here asshole... DM: Cleric, you are waken up with sudden shock and healed for 24 hit points. Drunktard: I want to use divine smite on the lich now.
I had a friend who did a Mastermind Rogue that acted as a hireling that carried everyone's stuff. He would subtly use the Help Action to subtly help people while holding his action to attack when someone else did. GM let him use like a DC 15 or so check Sleight of Hand instead of his reaction to do this (he was also a Halfling and had Bountiful Luck, which he also used). Loved that character.
Lots of good ideas here! I once got to (briefly) play a very deceptive Warlock. Celestial pact, pretending to be a cleric. I worked with the DM to let him know I'd actually be using healing light whenever I *said* I was using healing word. The idea was to play a character who was ultimately good and served a good patron, but delved into some dark secrets that threatened to corrupt them. I'm so disappointed that I never got to see the look on the other players' faces when the "cleric" acted in a moment of crisis to suddenly whip out Eldritch Blast or Hunger of Hadar to make the difference in combat.
I often play a variant of this called Crouching Moron, Hidden Moron.
This was super interesting! And good things to keep in mind if you want to play a character like this, I really liked the idea of not using smite or another one of your class abilities, that's so cool. And like you said, this can for sure work really well in roleplay heavy games! Like in our campaign's first arc where our 2nd level cleric was just casting detect good and evil the whole time, and used cure wounds with their last spell slot before the last part of our final battle. And they went into it alone talking, while we hid and were all so worried for this big gentle friend. But then they just whipped out their channel divinity which as a light cleric deals 2d10 DAMAGE!!! Which is SO MUCH for 2nd level! It sure wasn't as long game of a thing as you were talking about here, but we all absolutely lost it when this happened! We were all so shocked and floored by this and it really made for interesting roleplay moments following it! So yes, when it's done well, it's GOOD
Oh MAN thanks for sharing that story, that's the kind of stuff I live for! Absolutely love hearing about those kinds of things, thanks for sharing!
Did you mean to write 2d10?
Cleric, Paladin, or Favored Soul Sorcerer would be good for this. You can do a lot for support and utility, but have awesome abilities to wreck shop when you want.
Barbarian might be good also. You can fight. But you get limited rage, which can thematically be when your back is against the wall and you really need to step up.
Rogue or Wizard modeled after Jake Peralta from Brooklyn 99: can do all the normal stuff the character is supposed to be able to do, but their specialty is their investigative and deductive abilities. They see the necessary information, and rhen they know what to do with it
One of my favorite ways to do this mechanically takes a little coordination with your DM and is only for lv 5 and up characters. I asked my DM if I could start with a kind of hidden bag of holding that I would only use to store knives. I also was a wizard who knew glyph of warding and catapult. Every day, I would only use my level 3 (and higher once we hit higher levels) spell slots to cast glyph of warding with catapult on my knives, and put them in my invisible bag of holding. This meant I only used cantrips and level 1 and 2 spells for the whole adventure, but stored up an insane number of knives with catapult. When it was finally time for my wizard to unleash his badassary, I broke all the seals and obliterated the arch wizard who kidnapped my family with an avalanche of knives. The rest of the players at the table were utterly shocked when he took 200d8 damage, it was freaking awesome!
I toyed with a sorcerer for one shot. I really need to take it for a campaign. Dude has 8 int is total frat bro and thinks himself a wizard though he was expelled from all schools. And play metamagic as just a result of botched verbal and somatic components in arcane formulae ( I cast fire ball, and then the big ball of acid explodes)
Luffy from One Piece is another really cool example of this trope, because while knowledge and skill wise, all he really brings to the crew most of the time is his fighting skills, he also has a really good beat on people, he's not intelligent by any means but he is incredible at reading peoples intentions and feelings. That and after water seven his awareness of his responsibility as the Captain of the crew was also highlighted. Most of the time he is this goofball but when it's called for there's a reason his crew goes along with his descisions even if they complain, because he is that good a judge of character.
And Shanks was too in the first chapter
"Do you know why they call me the Dragon of the West?"
I had an idea for a cleric hidden in a city that was the opposite alignment and he cant use his clerical abilities in the open. He instead is a great healer and he fuses his cure spells in various herbs and salves
Another great video man. So happy you have videos on topics like this.
I have a wild magic Sorcerer variant human (metamagic adapt) that secretly has a 3 level dip in wild magic barbarian. Their backstory was that they were a magic Sleeper agent so when they used Rage during an important story point it shocked the party.
I also think this was a pretty good way to stay balanced I had metamagic from my feat high AC and HP from barbarian and still had my spellcasting and cantrips.
I made basically a divine wizard that’s basically Luna Lovegood. Tiefling seer that has Synesthesia where she would see sound. Insight checks were geared toward emotions to the point where it was basically a Detect Thoughts surface lvl running. People think she’s just got a screw loose and would normally ignore her, but then patrons of her shop would get weird pieces of advice from her, where she hands them an item that she can “see” they’ll need.
For me, I was planning on making a CMHB as a naive kid who helps them out, using Fighter stuff, only to reveal that he has a level or 2 in Barbarian and rages in a crucial battle as the "no longer holding back" moment
This sounds like a trope talk. I dig it.
I've had a wizard concept like this for a while. The wizard is scare of their powers so they don't use them. They try to be a fighter and use a sword and shield. Eventually, during a bad fight, they pull out the fireball or lightning bolt and decide that saving the party is better.
Conserve your berserker rage until oh no moments also works if you don't reckless so your just a fighter
Playing a learned monk, maybe with arcane adept for some simple magic, who supports the team more out of combat or without combat and then suddenly in a dire or narratively appropriately moment they realize that they've become much faster and stronger throughout their adventuring career
I’m subbing off of vibe. I feel like I can sense what you’re about & I really fuck with it and am on board with whatever you’re aiming for on this platform. I’m strapping myself up to your ride as well friend, god speed! :)
One of my favorite ones is Mast Bo Rai Cho from the Mortal Kombat series. I like the subversion of the world's greatest warrior was trained by the most badass drunkard.
Paladin 2/HexBladelock 5/Divination Wizard 2 seems like an ok martial with maybe a bit of healing or utility spells. Until you cast Booming/Green-Flame Blade with Divine Smite, Eldritch Smite, and maybe a smite spell with a 19 or 20 portent to turn an enemy into blood mist in one hit.
As a power gamer, every character I make usually starts like that. I optimize the hell out of the character and read the room, have a lot of setups and novas in the pocket and pray for no one to read my sheet and figure it out what could happen if the character really tries to unleash hell. Its more a metagame and mechanic choince than roleplay, but I manage to fit in the character somehow, its just that it isn't hard to make some really crazy stuff, but its ofen resource heavy and not everyone in the table can bring up similar things, so if you spam that, the DM will have some trouble balancing stuff, other players wouldn't shine and always a buffed tarrasq will find your way to the table because 3 Dragons weren't enough and now everyone is drained and is expected to do even better. Just play with your resources, be conservative with them and let everyone shine, focus on your roleplay and building foundations for character development and bounds, but when the DM punches too heavy and almost Tpk in one round, you bring out that magic scroll that everyone forgot, you remember everyone that you have a lot of broken spells that you never used before, used some combat mechanics that you asked about 3 months ago, that good old nova in the pocket. You can convince everyone you are doing 100% of you character playing that paladin with polearm mastery and doing some broken stuff, but never spammed destructive eaves with metamagic and freak out everyone on the table once you do it in an uphill battle that no one was happy to be there.
Could you please do a video on the spy archetype, like if the player is secretly working for someone else.
I'm gonna play a Bonk (Barbarian Monk) as my next character. He lives for the fight so he won't use his dragon powers (Way of the Ascendant Dragon and Rage, I flavored as that) unless he has to, meaning he'll just appear like any other unarmed fighter until that one strong opponent comes and he pulls out all the stops, rage for the strength and resistance, breath attacks. The reveal will be great as the other players don't know how my character is built at all, the barbarian levels I took and the monk subclass will be a complete surprise to everyone (except the DM of course)
engagement
Zenitsu from Demom slayer fits also into this stereotype, kinda.
Zenitsu very much fits this I think
i know im a year late to comment this, but if you seriously optimize like the coffeelock example, but i mean a polearm master greatweapon master fighter echo knight vengeance paladin, that plays like a normal paladin fighter, maybe not using too many smites and using bless or healing spells, while being a normal PAM not using greatweapon master, or even just not using subclass features and then if you need to get serious you get the clone out, you use the GWP with the extra attacks, action surge and etc, and burst the f out of the enemy.
This should be talked with the DM obviously, but while you get the fun of optimizing (A LOT) you dont ruin the party being useless or overshadowing everyone
I had a moon druid character pretend to be a shitty ranger until the end of the first dungeon. The party was not the brightest and never noticed that she was never in the same place as the two dire wolves they met or the giant spider. She revealed herself at the conclusion of the dungeon cause she was mad at the evil wizard.
You don’t have to make this character’s CMHB shtick a recurring thing. You can have it so that they stay badass after their first major encounter. Because by that point the novelty would be worn off. There are two characters from anime that I like to associate with this archetype. The first is Natsu in episode 1 of Fairy Tail. He is introduced as this kinda lazy idiot but is revealed to not only be a very powerful Wizard, but the very person Lucy is looking for. The next might come as a surprise to many but Shanks was a CMHB in the first few chapters of One Piece. He was introduced as a carefree person who didn’t seem to care much about anything. Then when Luffy gets captured he completely shifts and shows his badassery. Sure he still enjoys partying but now the audience knows what he’s capable of(sorta we’re still not really sure of how powerful this man is)
I disagree. If you leave the goofiness behind, you don't have a CMHB. You have a badass with an initial gimmick. Ideally you perform the miracle of not loosing the novelty by making the badass moments sparing and strategic. But if the novelty does wear off, then you should try to keep the the CMHB aspects barely alive in an inoffensive part of the character. Iroh still keeps a fraction of his CMHB by remaining jovial and simple near the endgame.
Nice vid but did you just say coffee locks let you cast a lot of eldritch blasts? i think you meant first level spells
miyagi...kinda started like that in karte kid
"the game is designed to have everyone on an equal playing field" mm no, that ain't true, fighters (dpending if you make it borken, which ain't difficult) and eldrich meme warlocks are strongest at least damage wise, its kinda annoying when a player using either one just kills everything and when the dm throws everything around combat.. its not really fun
0 dislikes, exactly do many as they should be
Heard a story once of a player who players a rags wearing drunktard fighter who would constantly insult other PCs to annoyance of their players. The DM did nothing even as they complained. Then during a boss fight entire party but drunktard got knocked out.
Drunktard: I grab the cleric and slap him in the face, yelling "GET UP YOU COWARD!"
Other Players: Alright, listen here asshole...
DM: Cleric, you are waken up with sudden shock and healed for 24 hit points.
Drunktard: I want to use divine smite on the lich now.