We had a player who was an artificer, but died after a few sessions. However, even though the player made a new character, we could NOT let go of their first construct, a mechanical weasel. That player was allowed to act as the mechanical weasel with none of the benefits of their actual artificer character, so it was kind of like an NPC that both the DM and player used for various purposes, usually when we split the party and one half got in trouble (kind of like a "what is it lassie? they're stuck in the well?!" kind of vibe). One of our smaller party members used it as a mount, and I learned Mending to heal it. We kept that weasel alive for as long as possible until it was shredded to pieces in a terrible battle, at which point we took its core as a keepsake.
Yeah that'd actually be an awesome YA fantasy novel! A young girl who is kidnapped as a cult sacrifice, and then accidentally joins the adventure party that rescues her, leading to her own personal growth?
Soup Guy. The players enter a bar upon reaching the city, and ask for some soup. “Do you want… Green Ssoup, or Brown Ssoup?” The entire session was them learning The Art of Soup, and making Soup Guy proud.
In a OneShot series my siblings and I did called the Tower of Nine Trials where we alternated who DMed which adventure, I introduced a wizard based on a Miner act Illusioner which was fitting because my prompt was Illusion. He was supposed to disappear after the first room but after I made him pop back up near then end to call the players stupid, he became basically the Game Master of the tower. He was dubbed Omb, short for Old Man Ballsack since that’s what Minecraft Illager noses look like.
Not for DnD, but for Blood Bowl II (Look it up). I created three separate but equally endearing radio hosts with their own stations. Frans, the Black Orc with a temper; Bell Hugo, the flesh golem movie star; and Lashintro Gnaw, the surprisingly pleasant skaven. They interacted with each other as guest hosts and interviewed each other and other Blood Bowl players (characters) as online tournaments took place, speaking mostly about the outcomes of matches I personally played in. This became popular enough that other players (actual people) started their own similar programs like radio shows or podcasts, all in character. While no one asked for me to do this, and I was doing this for my own entertainment, tournament managers have told me many times how happy they were with how invested players (people) were in the interactions including themselves and looked forward to each subsequent after game report. Being one of the regular podium winners in these tournaments didn’t hurt things either.
One NPC in the campaign I am in ended up altering an entire plot because of how we reacted to him. Little goblin child who another party member quickly decided to bring with us because the child's parents were bad and the kid brings up being friends with a giant feral worm. Turns out we were supposed to have a midboss fight with the worm since it was causing some damage. Due to growing attached, we didn't want to kill the child's only friend so instead we found out WHY it was causing damage and fixed the problem with no fighting. The kid has basically become the other party member's little sibling at this point (but we keep them out of dangerous situations.)
0:38 I gave one of my NPCs a surfer voice and my players loved it so much that the throwaway character is a main resource for my players and it’s now canon that the whole species speak like surfers.
In our first session of Edge of the Empire we had an arena battle, one Rodian in the audience was especially into us as he kept shouting "BLUE TEAM!" the whole battle. That man basically became the party mascot and was being referenced *long* after his single appearance.
Lockjaw, the Mechanical Mutt. He's a dog that lost his lower jaw & an artificer gave him a hydraulic actuated lower mandible with razor sharp carbide tipped teeth. He also replaced the dog's upper K9's, Dew Claws & nails with the same carbide tips. He only does 1d6 for dmg, but also causes Bleed with every bite so our Barbarian LOVES teaming up with that damn dog
Bil. They started as a short slave dressed in robes who followed the party around, carrying things they didn't want to, doing jobs the party didn't want to do, and being knowledgeable in street lore the party didn't want to know. Most of the party did not question why they had a serf goblin doing such things as cooking and cleaning for them besides the Elvish Warrior Farlar Lunargrove who started to ask them simple questions. Fast forward a month or two in the game. One day, the party finds Farlar Lunargrove having intimate relations outside the camp parameter with a grey goblin woman with startling red hair and pale blue eyes. The elf had hidden much of what he had learned about their serf. Bil had willingly submitted to slavery to survive in an ever-growing harsh world and to the somewhat dismay of Farlar, she had become pregnant from all of the secret time they had together. This left the party in a strange situation. They had come to rely on Bil so much that they had no idea if she could do her tasks as well as carry a child. Over the next few days, however, Bil seemed more than capable of just that, losing none of her range of movement. Farlar assisted her as much as she allowed and the party tried to do everything they could to assist, even during quests. More months passed and she gave birth to two children in the heat of combat with bandits, an elven boy and a goblin girl. It was the first time the party, somewhat unruly and having their own objectives, banded together to form a defensive parameter at great risk to themselves to keep the mother and her children safe. The entire narrative changed as Farlar came to a personal decision after the battle, abandoning his life of adventure to give his children a better life than the one he has. The party accepted this loss but to Farlar's surprise, all of them retired at that moment, pooling all of their money together to get a decent life for their new charges. One of these children grew up to be Panrelli Lunargrove, a necromancer goblin trying to become the greatest goblin necromancer in the world. In a future campaign, we learned from her interaction with the undead barbarian Krixol Padaar that she just wanted to bring her mother back when the gods of light ignored her pleas. But that is a story for another time.
in my group it’s paul. he’s a castle guard that caught us but let us pass when we were given an infiltration mission. he wears a smiley face sticker on his armor, his official appearance is a stock photo of a white guy, and he’s engaged to the in-universe version of our friend who spectates (online campaign, originally couldn’t make the time) and fell in love with him. we love paul
My group acquired a keep that needed to be fixed up and so they needed a glassblower. Enter Rark a lizardfolk angry teen who should be a master glassblower but because his master screwed up and his species not being super trusted he isn't. He did a great job on their keep, so they are giving him a workshop and are determined to get him his master status.
Cadderly Mallershaft. He was an itinerant peddler that our party saved from bandits. He was so grateful that he let us each have a pick of any item in his inventory, some of which was junk, most of which was ordinary, and a few items were magical (unbeknownst to him). One of the items happened to be an early staff of an evil wizard named Asanther from a couple hundred years ago, but Cadderly thought it was a fancy walking stick. It had some simple spells on it that my low level wizard found to be useful (this was 2nd edition, so I've forgotten what they were). We freaked out when it discovered its history, since we were constantly fighting necromancers that were trying to bring Asanther back. We ran into Cadderly a few times later, since my now husband (the DM) loved our initial reaction to the guy. Cadderly would give us quest hooks or hints, since he travelled as part of his job and noticed things that could be useful to us. He was a funny old man that could be crotchety or merry depending on whether he had been at his favorite tavern (that had his favorite wine). Another throwaway NPC was Putch, the blind goblin. We ran into him a few months after our party and some knights killed a large number of goblin invaders. My wizard had killed a lot of them with fire, and Putch had been blinded. In my husband's game, "Putch" is goblin for "fisherman", a profession goblins take up when they are deemed useless to the tribe. The party felt sorry for him, and even my character didn't want to kill him since he was now harmless. One of our fighters decided to take him on as a valet/pet and tried to teach him manners and how to dress like a civilized person, even though the rest of us were against it. That lasted a few months, with much hilarity since Putch would relieve himself just anywhere, didn't bathe, and would chase down villager's small livestock and pets to eat them. Putch was eventually killed by some guardsmen who were tired of the trouble he caused.
I was player, not DM but my cousin created an NPC who was literally named Redshirt. He was intended to show up and die right away, but his rolls were constantly high and he WOULD NOT DIE, even when literally ringing a bell over and over again in an evil headquarters while we were stuck in different areas doing other things. He ended up coming with us, and he was our relief pilot (because he sucked at everything except for that, due to another ridiculously high roll) and survived the entire campaign. Second, in that same campaign was Chevron the Hutt, who was intended to be a boss fight but became our friend when my sister's character had a successful jam session with him. He followed us around giving us bardic inspiration and toasting things with his guitar/flamethrower until finally getting killed by Palpatine while we were stuck on a different planet.
The name of mine was Two Toed Johnny. Originally just a typical throw away blacksmith, he became legendary when my players tried to rob him. He single handedly took out three of the party members without a thought. The other party members who survived liked him so much that now its an unwritten rule that Two Toed Johnny must appear in every campaign, no matter where its set or whose running it.
For me it was Tom's Grandpa. Tom Ward was a sort of allied-recurring NPC in the campaign, a kind of gunsmith/inventor vaguely in line with an alchemist and an artificer, but had no actual classes or levels. His laboratory was quite a ways out of town, requiring a full day of travel to go there and back, but Tom made it worth it each time by crafting, enchanting and procuring us the equipment we needed to keep up with the campaign's ramping difficulty. And EVERY time we'd visit him we'd also meet his grandpa - an old, weathered moonshiner looking fellow complete with worn overalls, a tattered wide brim hat and a glorious beard; he'd be sitting under the pation on a rocking chair, greet us with a 'cordial nod' and go back to minding his own business. Tom's Grandpa existed, as far as we knew, in four states of being: mixing/sipping his tea, maintaining his crossbow (which he later exchanged for a blunderbuss), napping or petting his equally old, equally weathered looking, equally 'officially unnamed' big black dog. This didn't change even during a literal war, when we went to see Tom and found out his lab was attacked: a dozen bodies riddled with buckshot on the front lawn, Tom's Grandpa drinking tea and Tom himself none the wiser.
I made a clown goblin as a reacoring character that was supposed to be an annoying character that would but into conversations but immediately everyone loved him and I dont know why
Miranda, An Angel who lost most of her memory (we were stuck in a Demiplane where that was the case with every NPC, including her original name. In our first encounter with her, she was about to massacre the local Catfolks, being confused thinking they were fiends. We managed to talk her down. That didn't mean shr liked my character, a selfish, power hungry, overconfident, arrogant Goblin-shaped Abomination: Zirmek THE MIGHTY. The Angel called him a maggot. Zirmek didn't like her much either, still he gave her the Name Miranda, because we had to call her something. She was supposed to die during an encounter with a shapeshifting abomination to show us the Danger of that creature. It disguised itself as another civilian, which we rescued, before it transformed into a large Abberation, and causing chaos in the middle of the Tavern. Miranda lunged at it and was immidietly devoured and destroyed, Soul even rendered. Instead my Goblin Psychic Zirmek made a desperate Act to save the consumed Celestial. With a Nat 20 on an Arcana check and a healing spell, Miranda was rescued, though now only an aasimar, most of her power lost but alive. Skipping forward to almost the end of the Campaigne, she is not only a friend to the Party, who we also helped her recover her memories and celestial powers, she also said yes when Zirmek proposed to her. We had a beautiful Wedding, and she is expecting Zirmeks child. My GM totally wanted her to die early on, but a desperate act of Heroism by a otherwise selfish Goblin, changed both their lifes forever. Zirmek has changed from a petty arrogant powerhungry tyrant, to a caring, still arrogant, but well meaning leader, which Miranda did he help with a lot. And Miranda found the Love of her Life.
Penvro the changeling. He was a simple news reporter working for the Harpers who interviewed us about the fire at the town pub. We were the ones who caught the people who started it, so he wanted to get to know us so he could add our bios to the Harpers' records. We insisted that the best way to get to know us was to follow us around for a while. We (accidentally) slowly corrupted him with our antics, and now he's a murderous ninja with a kusarigami (a chain with sickle on one end and a weight on the other) that he got from God knows where and a body count high enough for him to be wanted by the town guard. We're good people, I swear!
Mom and Matchstick, two half orcs brothers, owner of local oddities shop. In their village they receive name after they break/defeat something, so Matchstick was Half-Orc wizard with extremely low Str, his brother was a barbarian, who at young age defeated his mother (later we found her name was Ancient Red Dragon). Their father sometimes appear in shop to borrow money (Bibo the Bard)
Maybe not a favorite for the whole party, but one of my players loved Eku(platonically) from Tomb of annihilation after they hired her as a guide. Liked her so much that they made a custom mini of her on Hero Forge, and she lasted all the way until the final battle of that campaign. (Not surprising considering how hard she is to kill)
First scenari to train myself, i put a Warforge to keep the only exit door. He was supposed to be unalived, stunned or passed threw with a little brain. My table talk to him a lot and discoverd he was name Anchor (Sound like "encore" in french (i'm french) meaning "again"), and that he had no vocabulary (yes, no, his name and "Valide" who was the child (key plot) the table was escorting). They found a way to pass, killed the Evil Guy and came back to get him out with them. Now he's the 4th of the team, they teaching him words and how to live in society. He's very protectiv (he's a figher with only a big shield) and very useful for 1 warlock, 1 mage and a rogue.
Roblin and Zoblin Scargrues. They were the first opponents the party ever faced. Two Goblins that the party adopted immediately. In only 5 sessions, Roblin has become a bardic savant who wields a rapier in one hand and a violin in the other, while Zoblin has become a monk and devout worshipper of Bahamut, the Platinum Dragon, whose signature move is a Stunning Strike into the balls.
Mozgub, a tauric goblin/giant wasp. Once, my original player character who both died and did not die at the end of a one shot where he was trying to overthrow his brother for king of the horde. He's now a recurring across campaigns. Introduced as a throwaway character and inside joke for the DM who oversaw that one shot, but was playing in this campaign. Now the owner/operator of mozgubs secret spells and bargain boons - a randomly occuring event in my campaigns, alongside his faithful assistant/guard/pet lizzie
In our first campaign there was a goblin who tried to steel our loot at camp. We tried to grapple him but kept rolling terribly, piling up in a cartoony way. Then our rogue sais "I take my rope and make a lassoo" the DM setting a rather high DC. NATURAL 20. We befriended the Goblin, named him Treasure and he kept showing up throughout our campaign, eventually gaining a friend named Goldie. They even fought a green dragon with us, and LIVED!
Willy the Fox. The party found him stuck in a trap and shortly learned that he's got a collar enchanted to speak his thoughts, but he's still a normal fox so his statements are very short, simple statements and always shouted in the same squeaky, enthusiastic tone that's my best impression of a fox scream. Things like "Happy!" "Angry!" "Man! Help Man!" They immediately went out of their way to accommodate the fox in their travels, going so far as to invest spell slots to help get him up and down cliffs they could easily climb with rope and healing any damage he suffered. When they left him outside so they could investigate a potentially hostile tomb, some goblins showed up, saw a fox, and tried to hunt. After being alerted to a fight with "Scared!" and bodying the trivially easy encounter, the Fighter took the goblin's weapons and lashed them into crucifixes to mount the goblins' corpses onto.
I introduced a gruff southern dwarf veteran called Stogey. After the crappy cigars he always puffed on. He was like the npc dad of the party and the players kept a running pool of guesses and bets on what his real name was since it had to be something embarrassing for him to try so hard to get people to call him Stogey. End of the campaign the adventurers finally retired and he told them all his name. Welvin
I ran a Star Trek: Starfleet Academy game. I created a diplomacy/language professor who was an exchange officer in the Klingon Defense Forces. He was born on Narendra III. As a child, he looked up in sky and witnessed the Empire's more recent ally- and longtime foes- the Federation, die defending the colony from the Empire's supposed ally turned enemy the Romulans. So he dedicated his life, instead of being a traditional Klingon who thinks any fight you can win is a good fight but instead making sure Klingons only fought in, and loyal soldiers of the Empire only sacrificed their lives for, causes of honor. Hence, he taught Klingons Federation standard, and Starfleet officers Klingon. (As well a few other languages.) He was originally meant to be a one-shot character... but the characters loved him. So, he later helped out in combat drills, and a Klingon culture/history course.
I wanted to convey to my players that just having PC levels made them extraordinary, so near the very beginning of the campaign, I had them run into a village boy, Alan, who was awed by his chance to meet real live adventurers. He was the nephew of the inkeeper, a strong but slightly dull-witted lad in his late teens who spoke in a "Warcraft peasant" type of voice. A couple of the players noticed that Alan had a sling, and thought that some extra bludgeoning damage might help out. They asked him to show them how good he was with his sling, and despite a pretty mediocre showing, convinced him to come along with them. He scavenged up some second-hand gear and left with the party when they departed. Through some good rolls, he was able to help them in combat despite the shoddy gear, and even developed a blossoming romance with one of the PCs (despite a rocky start). I ended up building him into a sort of support Fighter who could take hits for other players and use Aid without stealing the spotlight, as he became a full-fledged member of their party.
Oh, my players tend to love doing it. Just a few examples. Pallada (WH 40k). Just a nameless skitarii of a Dark Mechanicus, who fought against an Iron Warriors party and managed to fight the best swordsman in the group for several rounds. They were so impressed that they took her in, removed loyalty implants with epic rolls and now she is like their mortal sister and nigh second-in-command after the Warriors themselves. Another Black Crusade group gathered various NPCs on their ship, but their favourite was a Space Marine Sorcerer named Alaxtanis... sorry, as he says ALAXTANIS!!! Completely insane, with leaps of logic built on Moris Escher principles, and their favourite. Livi (Iron Kingdoms). Just a street urchin who was presented to the party by the city watch commander as a guide in the city. The party loved her and she ended up being a member and the adopted daughter of the team captain. Alice (World of Darkness). A lupus werewolf girl who was given to the characters' pack for introducing her into human society. She became their moral anchor and favourite pupil of their werebear ally (also a PC). And many others whom I cannot remember right now.
Something I DMed. A Chaotic Good Wild Magic Sorcerer Mimic named Mim-Z. I ended up rolling a lot of Fireballs. Intended to be a throwaway NPC, but they got him to join the party. Due to shenanagens, he ended up in the Fire Plane. Later on in the campaign, he came to greet his friends, he had become a creature of Flame and had somehow become Ruler of the Fire Plane. He was just there to give them a message from a more powerful being and leave. I never came up with a reason for how he become Ruler of the Fire Plane, but it did get a lot of laughs
One of our party members is a kobold and his brother had a clutch of eggs. We’ve made it a running joke that anytime the kobold runs into his nieces and nephews, the rest of the table gets to play tiny chaotic lizard children.
My party was fighting as a special forces unit in a war. While storming trenches, we see a random schlub holed up in a half collapsed room with two corpses. He tells us to stay away and we end up getting him to come with us peacefully as long as we promised to bury his friends' bodies in their home village, dozens of miles in enemy territory. It took weeks, lots of Gentle Repose, getting framed for a massacre we didn't commit, fighting a horde of zombies and wights, two of us getting kidnapped by magic trap, a bar fight, and evacuating the village in question away from an army of elite revenants, but we got it done. All to fulfill our promise to Hank. His stats are nothing special (he's probably 3 levels below us) but his rolls are hilariously good.
I am PRAYING that one day I will get this to happen. I got all the required books and equipment to dm at Christmas and have been writing a campaign where the party visitor the city of sinyail (a dnd counterpart for Las Vegas full of massive bronze and brass skyscrapers and tons of casinos) and end up getting their souls bound to a deck of many things with a few more custom chaotic cards than usual. Their only goal is to acquire 100,000 gold pieces and purchase the ingredients required to break the curse before they end up dying from exceptionally bad luck.
I had a campaign where a few of the party wound up as slaves after breaking a few laws, and enticing a guard captain's younger sister along for the ride. These players were given over to join a pack of loyal meatheads that served a sorceress on a bounty mission. Her five henchmen were meant to be fodder. The party managed to keep the meatheads alive through a mix of great rolls for them and horrid rolls for me. The party started calling them 'the squad' and making use of them in strategies. The squad had mixed backgrounds that the party took time to explore, and eventually learned their names. They had a mix of combat, crafting and farming skills that became relivent for the knowledge related. They became pivotal in prepping for some fights, including against BBEG. They had also become a source of exhibition, as the players were from another realm. One of the squad wound up dying to save a player during the climactic battle, a humble carpenter that had risen to glory in befriending the party, a man named Brad. He was a widower that was recruited after drinking himself into debt. He sacrificed himself for a party member that had found love. His last words were, "Love her..." Part of that final session involved his funeral. One of the players, not the saved one, actually teared up during it and as we all split up to go sleep that morning. Didn't expect to beak anyone with fodder NPCs that weren't meant to survive past two sessions.😅
I made a perpetually intoxicated hobo that the players adopted and drags into all of their adventures. after years of playing, the players were following journals of an influential captain to find some powerful Mcguffin device. Turns out the Hobo was this famous captain who originally discovered the device, however while it gave him incredible powers, it also caused him to lose his mind. I still remember his epic reveal in his filthy-frank-voiced speech as he battled in equal terms with a god-like baddie. In short, this is an example that a character that the players have more interest in becomes a bigger center piece of the story.
Gilford, Gilford was a messenger boy that we called upon to deliver a letter to the baron of a town, after I handed the letter I tipped him a silver the DM began describing how disheveled Gilford was, so I tipped him a platinum instead. We had letters sent to the baron often and the second time we did I asked for Gilford when he came up he was dressed much nicer than before and was eager to deliver the letter, I tipped him another platinum and cast Endure Elements on him so he wouldn't be bothered by the winter cold. It got to the point where he would start asking when we would be back. One time I missed a session so the wizard sent a letter and tipped him a gold he was very disapointed but still delivered it. Gilford was the best messenger boy ever and if we were still playing that campaign I'd tip him a platinum again.
Morris the Cat. It was part of a campaign in which the players were supposed to reverse the curse that locked her into a male cat body. Needless to say that party failed in said task, and Morris would show up here and there trying to get the Party to help her reclaim her self. Ended up being a "myth" type thing throughout multiple campaigns. Where random people would occasionally talk about the cursed druid who is stuck in animal form. 16 years of campaigns, and not once was anyone able to remove the curse or even figure out how it happened. Hard truth. It was a curse, but the curse was a loss of knowledge/abilities due to the Druid getting caught in animal form by a pack of wights. Yet she (Marrisa) believed that she was cursed by the lich who controlled those wights. She appeared in 11 different campaigns over 16 years....
the two standout-NPC's of my last campaign: first Johnny the bartender. My group planned on getting arrested by the city guard. So the witch of my group proclaimed "I go to the first person I see and punch 'em in the face." First person she saw was Johnny with his portable tavern, giving away beer for free, life advice and hugs for those in need. Witch stomped towards him, yelling at him and trying to wreck his little tavern. So he looked her in the eyes, gave her a smile, a mug of beer and said: "it's okay. I'm not the one you're angry with. You wanna talk about it? Do you need a hug?" He became the only bartender the group would ever go to. Second was the Nameless Cavalier. He was meant as a fun one off challenge for the groups fencing master. He was a devotee to the goddess of passion, traveling the continent with nothing but his swords and his horse. He beat the fencing master at their duel then seduced the witch without saying a single word to her (in a 20 minute session of just describing body language). He was meant to never return but the fencing master insisted on finding him to learn his secret combat technique ...
Regal, the son of a king that was a bit naive and sheltered. He had no experience in the world. Eventually the DM sent him away with a love interest who he didn’t realize she wanted to marry him.
Last session there was an ambush with some bandits and a couple thugs that had ties to a previous session. Early in the fight one of the thugs got knocked down to 1 hp in one go so i described him as losing the will to fight and surrendering. This wasn't supposed to go anywhere besides give them a tip for next time. Well now he's a named NPC and they've given him a job and my friend asked me to give him a southern accent; at least, more southern than I usually sound
Ok Bob the bandit is scarily close to Bob the reformed thug who was sent to work at the party's pie shop (which is a whole other thing that happened outside of my expectations)
Wow, and Dolf has a bit in common with an aasimar child I randomly inserted into a module when I replaced a boring rat fight. I just wanted to get them invested in the mission and kept making it so that taking care of the nearly mute orphan was completely optional with the help of other NPCs. My friends _love_ this kid. One of them threatened me saying I better not let anything happen to the child when they brought the kid on a mission. The keep asking when the kid will level up and gain a class and, well, I suppose I'd better make this DMPC a good one
There was a hobgoblin paladin(no subclass abilities) of maglubiet, that smoked and loved wine. We talked him into bringing his goblins to protect our town we were taking over from some tyrannical guards. we learned that he loves an elf princess(low on line for ascending to throne) after she healed him. So at the end of the campaign after dragging this one time helper through 3 campaign books of the Tiamat campaign, we went out gathering people to help us storm a castle she was in but then realized that the portal demon we were friends with could just make a portal to her and just grabbed her. After 3 hours of us grabbing favors and then we asked him if he could bring the army there. We laughed so hard.
Sahmish the magical junk dealer. Talks like a khajit and sells items that might be amazing or might be garbage, and there's no way to know until you buy them. He is the Nurse Joy of my world, either he or one of his many siblings pops up in every town and city.
Beethoven The campaign I’m in revolves around people and items from our world being transported to a homebrew dnd world. While the narrative focuses more on the items that crossed the rifts (like the bbeg having a nuclear bomb), the dm will drop in references to famous people who were taken mostly as jokes. One of these was a deaf owlin we found at a tavern playing very familiar music. We quickly found out that this owlin was actually Beethoven, who was taken to the dnd world when he “died” and returned to music. The cleric used lesser restoration to cure his deafness and recruited him as the personal musician of the emperor the party was working for He also used his newly discovered bard powers to kill one of the bbeg’s minions
(Player here) One of our recent favorites was a spirit thing (I forget the exact monster) that a party member’s sword summoned as an ally in combat. The sword summons multiple of these creatures at a time. This particular one however rolled nat 20’s almost constantly and got so many final blows on enemies that we just kept cheering it on. We got so sad when we knew it would fade after the fight. We collectively decided that this spirit managed to pass on to the afterlife, finally at peace, now that it had won such a great and glorious battle, which is what had left it regretful enough to become a spirit in the first place. So it was sorta a good end?
Greg Northrop, security guard turned party-favorite teammate. I was starting a campaign in an SCP Foundation setting (real world with heavy science fiction elements. The Foundation is an organization that tries to contain scientific anomalies to protect humanity). Greg's only purpose was to be escorting one of the player characters through the hallway (the PC was basically a prisoner), but when the facility all the PCs were in came under attack, instead of grouping up and abandoning Greg, they brought him along with them. Once they escaped and were organized into a proper team, they wanted to keep bringing him along on their adventures. I couldn't tell you why, he's basically a blank slate. He literally only existed in the first place to act as a vehicle to introduce party members, but here I am. It's gotten to the point where I had to give Greg a nonlethal injury to sideline him for a while because I'm afraid of what will happen if he actually dies. Though, now that, unfortunately, some of my players are no longer continuing the campaign, I think I may have to bring him back to help bolster the party's numbers. Fingers crossed that he doesn't die dramatically and provide more personal motivation to the party members to pursue the bad guys relentlessly >:]
Little Malone, the tavern boy turned squire. I ran A Song of Ice and Fire RPG campaign for a couple years. One of our players rolled up a new character, a hedgeknight named Ser Reyal who was looking for a house to serve. He wanders into the lands held by my wife's character, the true born heiress to her father's holdings. Well, naturally, Ser Reyal needs help getting around town, so he goes to the tavern and finds the barkeep, Big Malone, his wife Anna, daughter Molly and of course, Little Malone, an 8 year old loveable halfwit who sticks to the knight like glue. Reyal tried to dissuade Little Malone from a life of violence by absolutely demolishing a pig from the butchers' shop with his sword. Reyal asks Malone what he's learned, to which he replied, with an ear-to-ear grin "So what you're saying is, don't be the pig!" My players fell in love with the little goober, with the silly high pitched voice and limited vocabulary I gave him. I was going to have him die in a Wildling ambush north of The Wall, but it was clear that if I did, it would result in a TPK from the party trying to fight a 6 to 1 battle when the enemy already had bows drawn on them. So Little Malone lives on in our hearts to this day.
Not in D&D but a Street Fighter based White Wolf game. My character had a run in with another fighter from that session (aka tournament) and they wound up in a bar together. This was supposed to be a one-shot NPC that became my character's boyfriend due to some serious RP (not ERP!) and even joined our stable. The GM was laughing about how he had to now write up an entire character sheet for this guy.
Craig, the Uber driver. The only player that had a car had to miss, so the called an Uber. Enter Craig. A Tesla driving stoner who hot boxes anyone who rides with him. The players have to make a check or arrive at their destination half baked. Despite rarely knowing where he is or what's going on, he always gets them there safe and in a timely manner.
In my first ever campaign, I had a Bandit named Gerald who could only say “Hi, I’m Gerald”. That was it. The first ever encounter with him, the party was jumped by a few bandits, and while most of them were threatening the group, Gerald says the only thing he can say. The conversation was something along the lines of “Give us your money!” “Yeah, or we’ll slit your throat!” “Hi, I’m Gerald” “Shut up Gerald! We already know your name!” Needless to say, they kidnapped Gerald and made him a part of the party, and killed the rest of the Bandits… good times
Jezzabyl! The High Elf She was initially a plot device old friend of my Human Artificer Yusa in Waterdeep Dragon Heist. However moving on to further adventures outside waterdeep for level 5+, we still had only 2 player and 1 DM. So now, Jezz is Yusa’s love interest and an additional rogue party character voiced by my dm. And Yusa now has the promise made to become an elf somehow so they can live a happy life together (She also made a love interest paladin named Elohorn for the other player/sorcerer)
The group I play with have a problem of RP-ing for like 4hr at a time which wouldn't be a problem but our sessions are only scheduled to be 3 hr long. Anyway our DM created a smol goblin girl who was designed to pull us to the plot we were heading to. To skip a few details by the end of the campaign our rogue ended up adopting her and establishing a nice comfy with her (the rogue's) former employer turned midpoint BBEG turned wife.
Juniper the excitable thorn. She is a lovable thorn that I created to help a character get through an old fey forest haunted by a green hag that was stealing children and encouraging the illegal trade of offerings for gods. My friend liked her so much she became a main member of the adventuring party. She is the youngest princess of the thorns, is always wanting to be helpful, and has an abundance of energy. She has showed in up three additional campaigns now and everyone always falls in love with her.
I didn't make this guy, but probably Phil. I was playing a high-level alchemist who had a bunch of minions working at his giant communal lab called the Explodatorium. Everyone there had a particular specialty in their study, and Phil was a culinary scientist. Originally, he and all the other members of the Explodatorium were supposed to be extremely generic people who were supposed to be forgotten about and have us move on. However, considering my character and the other NPCs that my DM and I made to help run the Explodatorium were either dead or joined other parties on the island the game took place in, the Explodatorium needed a leader to keep everyone in check. I think that it ended up being Phil because out of everyone in the Explodatorium, that's the one we all remembered the name of. Phil then made a few more appearances, one of which was as a joke during one of the exhibition matches, where the party would be divided up to fight against other strong characters on the island or each other in an attempt to win prizes and just have some low-stakes fun. Nowadays, I had brought the Explodatorium and the alchemist I played back in the game that I'm running, and since said alchemist has retired from the Explodatorium to be the bartender at my players' tavern, Phil is currently the one in charge of the Explodatorium.
This technically isn't my story to tell, but I don't think our DM reads or listens to any reddit/youtube DnD stories, so I'll tell it in his stead. Our party was dealing with a scummy druid when we found our way to his place of business. It was set up like an expensive florist, complete with a sexy dryad receptionist. Several of our party members, including our party's own druid, took a liking to her and convinced the dryad to join us on our adventure. She was actually a fun character and pretty much grew on the entire party. Eventually, she became the most important npc in the campaign as the plot somewhat revolved around entities similar to her, and her two cents on the matters gave us an idea of how to progress from there. I even began to like her, and my gruff, no nonsense barbarian, started to see her like an adopted little sister. The funniest thing was, when the campaign was all said and done, our DM told us that he never planned for her to become so important and that she was originally intended to be just a throw away character just as a joke. Just goes to show you, you never know which of your npc's the party will grow attached to.
Jon "Brick" Jones What was supposed to be just another Young Christmas Elf on a Christmas One-Shot, quickly became a named NPC that now appears in every Christmas Adventure our group has. Jon "Brick" Jones was going to be a simple elf (orphan, if I remember correctly) that was trapped in a room with a couple of bugbears. I don't remember how or why, but it became canon that this particular elf had Down Syndrome. After encountering the bugbears, defeating one and confusing the other, my most chaotic player decided to quietly push Brick back into the room with the confused bugbear, expecting the result to be something out of a Looney Toons episode. The party moved on and defeated the BBEG, but when they went back to that room, they found brick drenched in blood holding the bugbear's head. This year, Jon "Brick" Jones made a new appearance at our Christmas One Shot as head of security for Santa Claus. Holding a warhammer bigger than himself, he could pretty much deal with the whole party, if provoked. They were smart enough to avoid confrontation this time.
Clark the Fortunate. Long story short, my Dragon of Icespire Peak party were dealing with a gang of Orcs and this one specific Orc ended up getting absurdly good saving throws against the multiple things the party threw at him that should've killed him. This includes an entire freaking tower dropped on his head. So at this point the party is both amused and befuddled at how in the actual heck this guy is still alive. So I just decided to name him Clark the Fortunate on the spot. Well, the party had a good time and really liked him, so I had him be resurrected by the cult for a round two, and now he's basically a Nemesis System antagonist who comes back stronger every time the party kills him. Note, his boss subtitle turned out to be very accurate, as his latest appearence saw him get the most absurd series of good rolls and the players' bad rolls possible that let him stay alive WAY longer than he should have. They're actually in rather friendly enemy turf with him, casually chatting with him while trying to kill him. Except the Druid, the Druid just freaking hates his guts and wants him to stay dead. Not the Druid's player though, his player likes him. He also explained he keeps coming back because his mother is a high ranking Cleric of Talos who keeps resurrecting him every time he dies, and is also rich.
Not a throw-away npc, but im planning on having a character that's continently at every restaurant, shop, hospital, police stations, or adjacent workplaces. Think nurse joy, officer jenny, but more akin to lazy larry from gumball. Where she is either a member of a large family with noy so creative parents naming all their daughters the same thing, or just one lady who's phenomenal cosmic existance is so great she appears everywhere the party goes to do some business. (Dont worrry she's not dangerous, but she can be provoked into defending herself)
Bupnast the battle smith artificer who sounds like dr.Doofenshmirtz He loves to Infuse weapons, wise crack, and talk in pop culture. He was a villain that my players had to take down. He was in leagues with the bbeg to create a warforged army. He was taken down by one of his own creations (own of my players who was the revived son of the bbeg) after he was killed in realized the voice was too good not to use again. So now I use him as nothing but comic relief. He has been the king of one liners in any campaign he has been in. For example when he met one the players in a campaign based in the city we live in. (She is an oath of throwing it back paladin) she was wearing booty shorts and a crop top. She comes up to say hello. And his response is ohh you must be one of those hollerback girls.
DOUG!!!! so I'm in a campaign and I'm one of many mutants. Doug is a person who lets people come in and out of an area that's basically the leaders' house. Doug has down syndrome and he's REALLY strong well I had to get him to let us in and he almost caught us in a quick thought my character flashes him and now he sees me and starts completely blushing and helps with a lot of things so now the joke is if anyone tries to fight us everyone says to my character to flash the big bad
We had a player who was an artificer, but died after a few sessions. However, even though the player made a new character, we could NOT let go of their first construct, a mechanical weasel. That player was allowed to act as the mechanical weasel with none of the benefits of their actual artificer character, so it was kind of like an NPC that both the DM and player used for various purposes, usually when we split the party and one half got in trouble (kind of like a "what is it lassie? they're stuck in the well?!" kind of vibe). One of our smaller party members used it as a mount, and I learned Mending to heal it. We kept that weasel alive for as long as possible until it was shredded to pieces in a terrible battle, at which point we took its core as a keepsake.
That last one was sweet
Yeah that'd actually be an awesome YA fantasy novel!
A young girl who is kidnapped as a cult sacrifice, and then accidentally joins the adventure party that rescues her, leading to her own personal growth?
Soup Guy.
The players enter a bar upon reaching the city, and ask for some soup.
“Do you want… Green Ssoup, or Brown Ssoup?”
The entire session was them learning The Art of Soup, and making Soup Guy proud.
In a OneShot series my siblings and I did called the Tower of Nine Trials where we alternated who DMed which adventure, I introduced a wizard based on a Miner act Illusioner which was fitting because my prompt was Illusion. He was supposed to disappear after the first room but after I made him pop back up near then end to call the players stupid, he became basically the Game Master of the tower. He was dubbed Omb, short for Old Man Ballsack since that’s what Minecraft Illager noses look like.
Not for DnD, but for Blood Bowl II (Look it up). I created three separate but equally endearing radio hosts with their own stations. Frans, the Black Orc with a temper; Bell Hugo, the flesh golem movie star; and Lashintro Gnaw, the surprisingly pleasant skaven. They interacted with each other as guest hosts and interviewed each other and other Blood Bowl players (characters) as online tournaments took place, speaking mostly about the outcomes of matches I personally played in. This became popular enough that other players (actual people) started their own similar programs like radio shows or podcasts, all in character. While no one asked for me to do this, and I was doing this for my own entertainment, tournament managers have told me many times how happy they were with how invested players (people) were in the interactions including themselves and looked forward to each subsequent after game report. Being one of the regular podium winners in these tournaments didn’t hurt things either.
One NPC in the campaign I am in ended up altering an entire plot because of how we reacted to him.
Little goblin child who another party member quickly decided to bring with us because the child's parents were bad and the kid brings up being friends with a giant feral worm.
Turns out we were supposed to have a midboss fight with the worm since it was causing some damage. Due to growing attached, we didn't want to kill the child's only friend so instead we found out WHY it was causing damage and fixed the problem with no fighting. The kid has basically become the other party member's little sibling at this point (but we keep them out of dangerous situations.)
A situation where the party doesn't use violence to solve problems? Impossible!
0:38 I gave one of my NPCs a surfer voice and my players loved it so much that the throwaway character is a main resource for my players and it’s now canon that the whole species speak like surfers.
Bleepo, the only kobold of 15 that survived, we saved him, adopted him, and made him ride my eldritch cannon force ballista as a tank
00:10 They thought he was a-door-able
1:06 Can we nicks it? Yes we cans!
In our first session of Edge of the Empire we had an arena battle, one Rodian in the audience was especially into us as he kept shouting "BLUE TEAM!" the whole battle. That man basically became the party mascot and was being referenced *long* after his single appearance.
Lockjaw, the Mechanical Mutt. He's a dog that lost his lower jaw & an artificer gave him a hydraulic actuated lower mandible with razor sharp carbide tipped teeth. He also replaced the dog's upper K9's, Dew Claws & nails with the same carbide tips. He only does 1d6 for dmg, but also causes Bleed with every bite so our Barbarian LOVES teaming up with that damn dog
Bil. They started as a short slave dressed in robes who followed the party around, carrying things they didn't want to, doing jobs the party didn't want to do, and being knowledgeable in street lore the party didn't want to know. Most of the party did not question why they had a serf goblin doing such things as cooking and cleaning for them besides the Elvish Warrior Farlar Lunargrove who started to ask them simple questions.
Fast forward a month or two in the game. One day, the party finds Farlar Lunargrove having intimate relations outside the camp parameter with a grey goblin woman with startling red hair and pale blue eyes. The elf had hidden much of what he had learned about their serf. Bil had willingly submitted to slavery to survive in an ever-growing harsh world and to the somewhat dismay of Farlar, she had become pregnant from all of the secret time they had together.
This left the party in a strange situation. They had come to rely on Bil so much that they had no idea if she could do her tasks as well as carry a child. Over the next few days, however, Bil seemed more than capable of just that, losing none of her range of movement. Farlar assisted her as much as she allowed and the party tried to do everything they could to assist, even during quests.
More months passed and she gave birth to two children in the heat of combat with bandits, an elven boy and a goblin girl. It was the first time the party, somewhat unruly and having their own objectives, banded together to form a defensive parameter at great risk to themselves to keep the mother and her children safe. The entire narrative changed as Farlar came to a personal decision after the battle, abandoning his life of adventure to give his children a better life than the one he has. The party accepted this loss but to Farlar's surprise, all of them retired at that moment, pooling all of their money together to get a decent life for their new charges.
One of these children grew up to be Panrelli Lunargrove, a necromancer goblin trying to become the greatest goblin necromancer in the world. In a future campaign, we learned from her interaction with the undead barbarian Krixol Padaar that she just wanted to bring her mother back when the gods of light ignored her pleas.
But that is a story for another time.
in my group it’s paul. he’s a castle guard that caught us but let us pass when we were given an infiltration mission. he wears a smiley face sticker on his armor, his official appearance is a stock photo of a white guy, and he’s engaged to the in-universe version of our friend who spectates (online campaign, originally couldn’t make the time) and fell in love with him. we love paul
My group acquired a keep that needed to be fixed up and so they needed a glassblower. Enter Rark a lizardfolk angry teen who should be a master glassblower but because his master screwed up and his species not being super trusted he isn't. He did a great job on their keep, so they are giving him a workshop and are determined to get him his master status.
Cadderly Mallershaft. He was an itinerant peddler that our party saved from bandits. He was so grateful that he let us each have a pick of any item in his inventory, some of which was junk, most of which was ordinary, and a few items were magical (unbeknownst to him). One of the items happened to be an early staff of an evil wizard named Asanther from a couple hundred years ago, but Cadderly thought it was a fancy walking stick. It had some simple spells on it that my low level wizard found to be useful (this was 2nd edition, so I've forgotten what they were). We freaked out when it discovered its history, since we were constantly fighting necromancers that were trying to bring Asanther back. We ran into Cadderly a few times later, since my now husband (the DM) loved our initial reaction to the guy. Cadderly would give us quest hooks or hints, since he travelled as part of his job and noticed things that could be useful to us. He was a funny old man that could be crotchety or merry depending on whether he had been at his favorite tavern (that had his favorite wine).
Another throwaway NPC was Putch, the blind goblin. We ran into him a few months after our party and some knights killed a large number of goblin invaders. My wizard had killed a lot of them with fire, and Putch had been blinded. In my husband's game, "Putch" is goblin for "fisherman", a profession goblins take up when they are deemed useless to the tribe. The party felt sorry for him, and even my character didn't want to kill him since he was now harmless. One of our fighters decided to take him on as a valet/pet and tried to teach him manners and how to dress like a civilized person, even though the rest of us were against it. That lasted a few months, with much hilarity since Putch would relieve himself just anywhere, didn't bathe, and would chase down villager's small livestock and pets to eat them. Putch was eventually killed by some guardsmen who were tired of the trouble he caused.
I was player, not DM but my cousin created an NPC who was literally named Redshirt. He was intended to show up and die right away, but his rolls were constantly high and he WOULD NOT DIE, even when literally ringing a bell over and over again in an evil headquarters while we were stuck in different areas doing other things. He ended up coming with us, and he was our relief pilot (because he sucked at everything except for that, due to another ridiculously high roll) and survived the entire campaign. Second, in that same campaign was Chevron the Hutt, who was intended to be a boss fight but became our friend when my sister's character had a successful jam session with him. He followed us around giving us bardic inspiration and toasting things with his guitar/flamethrower until finally getting killed by Palpatine while we were stuck on a different planet.
The name of mine was Two Toed Johnny. Originally just a typical throw away blacksmith, he became legendary when my players tried to rob him. He single handedly took out three of the party members without a thought. The other party members who survived liked him so much that now its an unwritten rule that Two Toed Johnny must appear in every campaign, no matter where its set or whose running it.
Aphese was a shop merchant that sold everything so long as you had coin. What made hom loved was my dm's accent when voicing him.
For me it was Tom's Grandpa.
Tom Ward was a sort of allied-recurring NPC in the campaign, a kind of gunsmith/inventor vaguely in line with an alchemist and an artificer, but had no actual classes or levels.
His laboratory was quite a ways out of town, requiring a full day of travel to go there and back, but Tom made it worth it each time by crafting, enchanting and procuring us the equipment we needed to keep up with the campaign's ramping difficulty.
And EVERY time we'd visit him we'd also meet his grandpa - an old, weathered moonshiner looking fellow complete with worn overalls, a tattered wide brim hat and a glorious beard; he'd be sitting under the pation on a rocking chair, greet us with a 'cordial nod' and go back to minding his own business.
Tom's Grandpa existed, as far as we knew, in four states of being: mixing/sipping his tea, maintaining his crossbow (which he later exchanged for a blunderbuss), napping or petting his equally old, equally weathered looking, equally 'officially unnamed' big black dog.
This didn't change even during a literal war, when we went to see Tom and found out his lab was attacked: a dozen bodies riddled with buckshot on the front lawn, Tom's Grandpa drinking tea and Tom himself none the wiser.
I made a clown goblin as a reacoring character that was supposed to be an annoying character that would but into conversations but immediately everyone loved him and I dont know why
Miranda, An Angel who lost most of her memory (we were stuck in a Demiplane where that was the case with every NPC, including her original name. In our first encounter with her, she was about to massacre the local Catfolks, being confused thinking they were fiends. We managed to talk her down. That didn't mean shr liked my character, a selfish, power hungry, overconfident, arrogant Goblin-shaped Abomination: Zirmek THE MIGHTY. The Angel called him a maggot. Zirmek didn't like her much either, still he gave her the Name Miranda, because we had to call her something. She was supposed to die during an encounter with a shapeshifting abomination to show us the Danger of that creature. It disguised itself as another civilian, which we rescued, before it transformed into a large Abberation, and causing chaos in the middle of the Tavern. Miranda lunged at it and was immidietly devoured and destroyed, Soul even rendered. Instead my Goblin Psychic Zirmek made a desperate Act to save the consumed Celestial. With a Nat 20 on an Arcana check and a healing spell, Miranda was rescued, though now only an aasimar, most of her power lost but alive. Skipping forward to almost the end of the Campaigne, she is not only a friend to the Party, who we also helped her recover her memories and celestial powers, she also said yes when Zirmek proposed to her. We had a beautiful Wedding, and she is expecting Zirmeks child. My GM totally wanted her to die early on, but a desperate act of Heroism by a otherwise selfish Goblin, changed both their lifes forever. Zirmek has changed from a petty arrogant powerhungry tyrant, to a caring, still arrogant, but well meaning leader, which Miranda did he help with a lot. And Miranda found the Love of her Life.
4:44 The spell, or the whiskey?
Yes
Penvro the changeling. He was a simple news reporter working for the Harpers who interviewed us about the fire at the town pub. We were the ones who caught the people who started it, so he wanted to get to know us so he could add our bios to the Harpers' records. We insisted that the best way to get to know us was to follow us around for a while. We (accidentally) slowly corrupted him with our antics, and now he's a murderous ninja with a kusarigami (a chain with sickle on one end and a weight on the other) that he got from God knows where and a body count high enough for him to be wanted by the town guard. We're good people, I swear!
Mom and Matchstick, two half orcs brothers, owner of local oddities shop. In their village they receive name after they break/defeat something, so Matchstick was Half-Orc wizard with extremely low Str, his brother was a barbarian, who at young age defeated his mother (later we found her name was Ancient Red Dragon). Their father sometimes appear in shop to borrow money (Bibo the Bard)
Makes sense then why he's Mom, his mom was a badass lmao
Maybe not a favorite for the whole party, but one of my players loved Eku(platonically) from Tomb of annihilation after they hired her as a guide. Liked her so much that they made a custom mini of her on Hero Forge, and she lasted all the way until the final battle of that campaign. (Not surprising considering how hard she is to kill)
First scenari to train myself, i put a Warforge to keep the only exit door. He was supposed to be unalived, stunned or passed threw with a little brain. My table talk to him a lot and discoverd he was name Anchor (Sound like "encore" in french (i'm french) meaning "again"), and that he had no vocabulary (yes, no, his name and "Valide" who was the child (key plot) the table was escorting).
They found a way to pass, killed the Evil Guy and came back to get him out with them. Now he's the 4th of the team, they teaching him words and how to live in society. He's very protectiv (he's a figher with only a big shield) and very useful for 1 warlock, 1 mage and a rogue.
Roblin and Zoblin Scargrues. They were the first opponents the party ever faced. Two Goblins that the party adopted immediately.
In only 5 sessions, Roblin has become a bardic savant who wields a rapier in one hand and a violin in the other, while Zoblin has become a monk and devout worshipper of Bahamut, the Platinum Dragon, whose signature move is a Stunning Strike into the balls.
I read that as Bahamut's signature move is a stunning strike to the balls. I will not be told otherwise
Mozgub, a tauric goblin/giant wasp.
Once, my original player character who both died and did not die at the end of a one shot where he was trying to overthrow his brother for king of the horde.
He's now a recurring across campaigns. Introduced as a throwaway character and inside joke for the DM who oversaw that one shot, but was playing in this campaign.
Now the owner/operator of mozgubs secret spells and bargain boons - a randomly occuring event in my campaigns, alongside his faithful assistant/guard/pet lizzie
“Never start a pillow fight with a drunk wizard that knows telekinesis.”
OUTSTANDING 😆
~_~
In our first campaign there was a goblin who tried to steel our loot at camp. We tried to grapple him but kept rolling terribly, piling up in a cartoony way. Then our rogue sais "I take my rope and make a lassoo" the DM setting a rather high DC. NATURAL 20. We befriended the Goblin, named him Treasure and he kept showing up throughout our campaign, eventually gaining a friend named Goldie. They even fought a green dragon with us, and LIVED!
Willy the Fox. The party found him stuck in a trap and shortly learned that he's got a collar enchanted to speak his thoughts, but he's still a normal fox so his statements are very short, simple statements and always shouted in the same squeaky, enthusiastic tone that's my best impression of a fox scream. Things like "Happy!" "Angry!" "Man! Help Man!"
They immediately went out of their way to accommodate the fox in their travels, going so far as to invest spell slots to help get him up and down cliffs they could easily climb with rope and healing any damage he suffered. When they left him outside so they could investigate a potentially hostile tomb, some goblins showed up, saw a fox, and tried to hunt. After being alerted to a fight with "Scared!" and bodying the trivially easy encounter, the Fighter took the goblin's weapons and lashed them into crucifixes to mount the goblins' corpses onto.
I introduced a gruff southern dwarf veteran called Stogey. After the crappy cigars he always puffed on. He was like the npc dad of the party and the players kept a running pool of guesses and bets on what his real name was since it had to be something embarrassing for him to try so hard to get people to call him Stogey. End of the campaign the adventurers finally retired and he told them all his name. Welvin
I ran a Star Trek: Starfleet Academy game. I created a diplomacy/language professor who was an exchange officer in the Klingon Defense Forces. He was born on Narendra III. As a child, he looked up in sky and witnessed the Empire's more recent ally- and longtime foes- the Federation, die defending the colony from the Empire's supposed ally turned enemy the Romulans. So he dedicated his life, instead of being a traditional Klingon who thinks any fight you can win is a good fight but instead making sure Klingons only fought in, and loyal soldiers of the Empire only sacrificed their lives for, causes of honor. Hence, he taught Klingons Federation standard, and Starfleet officers Klingon. (As well a few other languages.) He was originally meant to be a one-shot character... but the characters loved him. So, he later helped out in combat drills, and a Klingon culture/history course.
I wanted to convey to my players that just having PC levels made them extraordinary, so near the very beginning of the campaign, I had them run into a village boy, Alan, who was awed by his chance to meet real live adventurers. He was the nephew of the inkeeper, a strong but slightly dull-witted lad in his late teens who spoke in a "Warcraft peasant" type of voice. A couple of the players noticed that Alan had a sling, and thought that some extra bludgeoning damage might help out. They asked him to show them how good he was with his sling, and despite a pretty mediocre showing, convinced him to come along with them. He scavenged up some second-hand gear and left with the party when they departed. Through some good rolls, he was able to help them in combat despite the shoddy gear, and even developed a blossoming romance with one of the PCs (despite a rocky start). I ended up building him into a sort of support Fighter who could take hits for other players and use Aid without stealing the spotlight, as he became a full-fledged member of their party.
Oh, my players tend to love doing it. Just a few examples.
Pallada (WH 40k). Just a nameless skitarii of a Dark Mechanicus, who fought against an Iron Warriors party and managed to fight the best swordsman in the group for several rounds. They were so impressed that they took her in, removed loyalty implants with epic rolls and now she is like their mortal sister and nigh second-in-command after the Warriors themselves.
Another Black Crusade group gathered various NPCs on their ship, but their favourite was a Space Marine Sorcerer named Alaxtanis... sorry, as he says ALAXTANIS!!! Completely insane, with leaps of logic built on Moris Escher principles, and their favourite.
Livi (Iron Kingdoms). Just a street urchin who was presented to the party by the city watch commander as a guide in the city. The party loved her and she ended up being a member and the adopted daughter of the team captain.
Alice (World of Darkness). A lupus werewolf girl who was given to the characters' pack for introducing her into human society. She became their moral anchor and favourite pupil of their werebear ally (also a PC).
And many others whom I cannot remember right now.
Something I DMed. A Chaotic Good Wild Magic Sorcerer Mimic named Mim-Z. I ended up rolling a lot of Fireballs. Intended to be a throwaway NPC, but they got him to join the party. Due to shenanagens, he ended up in the Fire Plane. Later on in the campaign, he came to greet his friends, he had become a creature of Flame and had somehow become Ruler of the Fire Plane. He was just there to give them a message from a more powerful being and leave.
I never came up with a reason for how he become Ruler of the Fire Plane, but it did get a lot of laughs
Anytime I hear people mention Evening Glory, I smile. I love her and when I run Curse of Strahd, my party may be able to free her.
Oooh what a throwback, I played a dirge singer bard goth baddie like 15 years ago who was a follower of Evening Glory!
One of our party members is a kobold and his brother had a clutch of eggs. We’ve made it a running joke that anytime the kobold runs into his nieces and nephews, the rest of the table gets to play tiny chaotic lizard children.
My party was fighting as a special forces unit in a war. While storming trenches, we see a random schlub holed up in a half collapsed room with two corpses. He tells us to stay away and we end up getting him to come with us peacefully as long as we promised to bury his friends' bodies in their home village, dozens of miles in enemy territory. It took weeks, lots of Gentle Repose, getting framed for a massacre we didn't commit, fighting a horde of zombies and wights, two of us getting kidnapped by magic trap, a bar fight, and evacuating the village in question away from an army of elite revenants, but we got it done. All to fulfill our promise to Hank. His stats are nothing special (he's probably 3 levels below us) but his rolls are hilariously good.
I am PRAYING that one day I will get this to happen. I got all the required books and equipment to dm at Christmas and have been writing a campaign where the party visitor the city of sinyail (a dnd counterpart for Las Vegas full of massive bronze and brass skyscrapers and tons of casinos) and end up getting their souls bound to a deck of many things with a few more custom chaotic cards than usual.
Their only goal is to acquire 100,000 gold pieces and purchase the ingredients required to break the curse before they end up dying from exceptionally bad luck.
I had a campaign where a few of the party wound up as slaves after breaking a few laws, and enticing a guard captain's younger sister along for the ride. These players were given over to join a pack of loyal meatheads that served a sorceress on a bounty mission. Her five henchmen were meant to be fodder.
The party managed to keep the meatheads alive through a mix of great rolls for them and horrid rolls for me. The party started calling them 'the squad' and making use of them in strategies. The squad had mixed backgrounds that the party took time to explore, and eventually learned their names.
They had a mix of combat, crafting and farming skills that became relivent for the knowledge related. They became pivotal in prepping for some fights, including against BBEG. They had also become a source of exhibition, as the players were from another realm.
One of the squad wound up dying to save a player during the climactic battle, a humble carpenter that had risen to glory in befriending the party, a man named Brad. He was a widower that was recruited after drinking himself into debt. He sacrificed himself for a party member that had found love. His last words were, "Love her..."
Part of that final session involved his funeral. One of the players, not the saved one, actually teared up during it and as we all split up to go sleep that morning.
Didn't expect to beak anyone with fodder NPCs that weren't meant to survive past two sessions.😅
I made a perpetually intoxicated hobo that the players adopted and drags into all of their adventures.
after years of playing, the players were following journals of an influential captain to find some powerful Mcguffin device. Turns out the Hobo was this famous captain who originally discovered the device, however while it gave him incredible powers, it also caused him to lose his mind.
I still remember his epic reveal in his filthy-frank-voiced speech as he battled in equal terms with a god-like baddie.
In short, this is an example that a character that the players have more interest in becomes a bigger center piece of the story.
I've heard so many of these stories and yet it doesn't happen in my home games. I feel I'm missing out on something.
Gilford, Gilford was a messenger boy that we called upon to deliver a letter to the baron of a town, after I handed the letter I tipped him a silver the DM began describing how disheveled Gilford was, so I tipped him a platinum instead.
We had letters sent to the baron often and the second time we did I asked for Gilford when he came up he was dressed much nicer than before and was eager to deliver the letter, I tipped him another platinum and cast Endure Elements on him so he wouldn't be bothered by the winter cold. It got to the point where he would start asking when we would be back.
One time I missed a session so the wizard sent a letter and tipped him a gold he was very disapointed but still delivered it.
Gilford was the best messenger boy ever and if we were still playing that campaign I'd tip him a platinum again.
Morris the Cat.
It was part of a campaign in which the players were supposed to reverse the curse that locked her into a male cat body. Needless to say that party failed in said task, and Morris would show up here and there trying to get the Party to help her reclaim her self.
Ended up being a "myth" type thing throughout multiple campaigns. Where random people would occasionally talk about the cursed druid who is stuck in animal form.
16 years of campaigns, and not once was anyone able to remove the curse or even figure out how it happened.
Hard truth. It was a curse, but the curse was a loss of knowledge/abilities due to the Druid getting caught in animal form by a pack of wights. Yet she (Marrisa) believed that she was cursed by the lich who controlled those wights.
She appeared in 11 different campaigns over 16 years....
the two standout-NPC's of my last campaign:
first Johnny the bartender. My group planned on getting arrested by the city guard. So the witch of my group proclaimed "I go to the first person I see and punch 'em in the face." First person she saw was Johnny with his portable tavern, giving away beer for free, life advice and hugs for those in need. Witch stomped towards him, yelling at him and trying to wreck his little tavern. So he looked her in the eyes, gave her a smile, a mug of beer and said: "it's okay. I'm not the one you're angry with. You wanna talk about it? Do you need a hug?" He became the only bartender the group would ever go to.
Second was the Nameless Cavalier. He was meant as a fun one off challenge for the groups fencing master. He was a devotee to the goddess of passion, traveling the continent with nothing but his swords and his horse. He beat the fencing master at their duel then seduced the witch without saying a single word to her (in a 20 minute session of just describing body language). He was meant to never return but the fencing master insisted on finding him to learn his secret combat technique ...
Razortooth and the Kobolds sound like swell fellows.
D O O R. What a start. XD
1:06 O_0'
Regal, the son of a king that was a bit naive and sheltered. He had no experience in the world. Eventually the DM sent him away with a love interest who he didn’t realize she wanted to marry him.
Last session there was an ambush with some bandits and a couple thugs that had ties to a previous session. Early in the fight one of the thugs got knocked down to 1 hp in one go so i described him as losing the will to fight and surrendering.
This wasn't supposed to go anywhere besides give them a tip for next time.
Well now he's a named NPC and they've given him a job and my friend asked me to give him a southern accent; at least, more southern than I usually sound
Ok Bob the bandit is scarily close to Bob the reformed thug who was sent to work at the party's pie shop (which is a whole other thing that happened outside of my expectations)
Wow, and Dolf has a bit in common with an aasimar child I randomly inserted into a module when I replaced a boring rat fight. I just wanted to get them invested in the mission and kept making it so that taking care of the nearly mute orphan was completely optional with the help of other NPCs.
My friends _love_ this kid. One of them threatened me saying I better not let anything happen to the child when they brought the kid on a mission. The keep asking when the kid will level up and gain a class and, well, I suppose I'd better make this DMPC a good one
There was a hobgoblin paladin(no subclass abilities) of maglubiet, that smoked and loved wine. We talked him into bringing his goblins to protect our town we were taking over from some tyrannical guards. we learned that he loves an elf princess(low on line for ascending to throne) after she healed him. So at the end of the campaign after dragging this one time helper through 3 campaign books of the Tiamat campaign, we went out gathering people to help us storm a castle she was in but then realized that the portal demon we were friends with could just make a portal to her and just grabbed her. After 3 hours of us grabbing favors and then we asked him if he could bring the army there. We laughed so hard.
Sahmish the magical junk dealer. Talks like a khajit and sells items that might be amazing or might be garbage, and there's no way to know until you buy them. He is the Nurse Joy of my world, either he or one of his many siblings pops up in every town and city.
Beethoven
The campaign I’m in revolves around people and items from our world being transported to a homebrew dnd world. While the narrative focuses more on the items that crossed the rifts (like the bbeg having a nuclear bomb), the dm will drop in references to famous people who were taken mostly as jokes. One of these was a deaf owlin we found at a tavern playing very familiar music. We quickly found out that this owlin was actually Beethoven, who was taken to the dnd world when he “died” and returned to music. The cleric used lesser restoration to cure his deafness and recruited him as the personal musician of the emperor the party was working for
He also used his newly discovered bard powers to kill one of the bbeg’s minions
(Player here)
One of our recent favorites was a spirit thing (I forget the exact monster) that a party member’s sword summoned as an ally in combat. The sword summons multiple of these creatures at a time. This particular one however rolled nat 20’s almost constantly and got so many final blows on enemies that we just kept cheering it on. We got so sad when we knew it would fade after the fight. We collectively decided that this spirit managed to pass on to the afterlife, finally at peace, now that it had won such a great and glorious battle, which is what had left it regretful enough to become a spirit in the first place. So it was sorta a good end?
Greg Northrop, security guard turned party-favorite teammate. I was starting a campaign in an SCP Foundation setting (real world with heavy science fiction elements. The Foundation is an organization that tries to contain scientific anomalies to protect humanity). Greg's only purpose was to be escorting one of the player characters through the hallway (the PC was basically a prisoner), but when the facility all the PCs were in came under attack, instead of grouping up and abandoning Greg, they brought him along with them. Once they escaped and were organized into a proper team, they wanted to keep bringing him along on their adventures. I couldn't tell you why, he's basically a blank slate. He literally only existed in the first place to act as a vehicle to introduce party members, but here I am. It's gotten to the point where I had to give Greg a nonlethal injury to sideline him for a while because I'm afraid of what will happen if he actually dies. Though, now that, unfortunately, some of my players are no longer continuing the campaign, I think I may have to bring him back to help bolster the party's numbers. Fingers crossed that he doesn't die dramatically and provide more personal motivation to the party members to pursue the bad guys relentlessly >:]
Little Malone, the tavern boy turned squire.
I ran A Song of Ice and Fire RPG campaign for a couple years. One of our players rolled up a new character, a hedgeknight named Ser Reyal who was looking for a house to serve. He wanders into the lands held by my wife's character, the true born heiress to her father's holdings. Well, naturally, Ser Reyal needs help getting around town, so he goes to the tavern and finds the barkeep, Big Malone, his wife Anna, daughter Molly and of course, Little Malone, an 8 year old loveable halfwit who sticks to the knight like glue. Reyal tried to dissuade Little Malone from a life of violence by absolutely demolishing a pig from the butchers' shop with his sword. Reyal asks Malone what he's learned, to which he replied, with an ear-to-ear grin "So what you're saying is, don't be the pig!"
My players fell in love with the little goober, with the silly high pitched voice and limited vocabulary I gave him. I was going to have him die in a Wildling ambush north of The Wall, but it was clear that if I did, it would result in a TPK from the party trying to fight a 6 to 1 battle when the enemy already had bows drawn on them. So Little Malone lives on in our hearts to this day.
Last one was SO good
Not in D&D but a Street Fighter based White Wolf game. My character had a run in with another fighter from that session (aka tournament) and they wound up in a bar together. This was supposed to be a one-shot NPC that became my character's boyfriend due to some serious RP (not ERP!) and even joined our stable. The GM was laughing about how he had to now write up an entire character sheet for this guy.
Craig, the Uber driver.
The only player that had a car had to miss, so the called an Uber. Enter Craig. A Tesla driving stoner who hot boxes anyone who rides with him. The players have to make a check or arrive at their destination half baked. Despite rarely knowing where he is or what's going on, he always gets them there safe and in a timely manner.
In my first ever campaign, I had a Bandit named Gerald who could only say “Hi, I’m Gerald”. That was it. The first ever encounter with him, the party was jumped by a few bandits, and while most of them were threatening the group, Gerald says the only thing he can say. The conversation was something along the lines of “Give us your money!” “Yeah, or we’ll slit your throat!” “Hi, I’m Gerald” “Shut up Gerald! We already know your name!”
Needless to say, they kidnapped Gerald and made him a part of the party, and killed the rest of the Bandits… good times
Jezzabyl! The High Elf
She was initially a plot device old friend of my Human Artificer Yusa in Waterdeep Dragon Heist. However moving on to further adventures outside waterdeep for level 5+, we still had only 2 player and 1 DM.
So now, Jezz is Yusa’s love interest and an additional rogue party character voiced by my dm. And Yusa now has the promise made to become an elf somehow so they can live a happy life together
(She also made a love interest paladin named Elohorn for the other player/sorcerer)
The group I play with have a problem of RP-ing for like 4hr at a time which wouldn't be a problem but our sessions are only scheduled to be 3 hr long. Anyway our DM created a smol goblin girl who was designed to pull us to the plot we were heading to. To skip a few details by the end of the campaign our rogue ended up adopting her and establishing a nice comfy with her (the rogue's) former employer turned midpoint BBEG turned wife.
Juniper the excitable thorn. She is a lovable thorn that I created to help a character get through an old fey forest haunted by a green hag that was stealing children and encouraging the illegal trade of offerings for gods. My friend liked her so much she became a main member of the adventuring party. She is the youngest princess of the thorns, is always wanting to be helpful, and has an abundance of energy. She has showed in up three additional campaigns now and everyone always falls in love with her.
I didn't make this guy, but probably Phil. I was playing a high-level alchemist who had a bunch of minions working at his giant communal lab called the Explodatorium. Everyone there had a particular specialty in their study, and Phil was a culinary scientist. Originally, he and all the other members of the Explodatorium were supposed to be extremely generic people who were supposed to be forgotten about and have us move on. However, considering my character and the other NPCs that my DM and I made to help run the Explodatorium were either dead or joined other parties on the island the game took place in, the Explodatorium needed a leader to keep everyone in check. I think that it ended up being Phil because out of everyone in the Explodatorium, that's the one we all remembered the name of. Phil then made a few more appearances, one of which was as a joke during one of the exhibition matches, where the party would be divided up to fight against other strong characters on the island or each other in an attempt to win prizes and just have some low-stakes fun. Nowadays, I had brought the Explodatorium and the alchemist I played back in the game that I'm running, and since said alchemist has retired from the Explodatorium to be the bartender at my players' tavern, Phil is currently the one in charge of the Explodatorium.
Rhea the drunk wizard: I cast Fireball!
*picks up a bottle of whiskey
I immediately thought of little jimmy.
No because in BG3 when you find Ethel’s lair my first thought was “How do I free this door???” 😂😂😂😂
This technically isn't my story to tell, but I don't think our DM reads or listens to any reddit/youtube DnD stories, so I'll tell it in his stead. Our party was dealing with a scummy druid when we found our way to his place of business. It was set up like an expensive florist, complete with a sexy dryad receptionist. Several of our party members, including our party's own druid, took a liking to her and convinced the dryad to join us on our adventure. She was actually a fun character and pretty much grew on the entire party. Eventually, she became the most important npc in the campaign as the plot somewhat revolved around entities similar to her, and her two cents on the matters gave us an idea of how to progress from there. I even began to like her, and my gruff, no nonsense barbarian, started to see her like an adopted little sister. The funniest thing was, when the campaign was all said and done, our DM told us that he never planned for her to become so important and that she was originally intended to be just a throw away character just as a joke. Just goes to show you, you never know which of your npc's the party will grow attached to.
Jon "Brick" Jones
What was supposed to be just another Young Christmas Elf on a Christmas One-Shot, quickly became a named NPC that now appears in every Christmas Adventure our group has.
Jon "Brick" Jones was going to be a simple elf (orphan, if I remember correctly) that was trapped in a room with a couple of bugbears. I don't remember how or why, but it became canon that this particular elf had Down Syndrome. After encountering the bugbears, defeating one and confusing the other, my most chaotic player decided to quietly push Brick back into the room with the confused bugbear, expecting the result to be something out of a Looney Toons episode. The party moved on and defeated the BBEG, but when they went back to that room, they found brick drenched in blood holding the bugbear's head.
This year, Jon "Brick" Jones made a new appearance at our Christmas One Shot as head of security for Santa Claus. Holding a warhammer bigger than himself, he could pretty much deal with the whole party, if provoked. They were smart enough to avoid confrontation this time.
Clark the Fortunate.
Long story short, my Dragon of Icespire Peak party were dealing with a gang of Orcs and this one specific Orc ended up getting absurdly good saving throws against the multiple things the party threw at him that should've killed him. This includes an entire freaking tower dropped on his head.
So at this point the party is both amused and befuddled at how in the actual heck this guy is still alive. So I just decided to name him Clark the Fortunate on the spot. Well, the party had a good time and really liked him, so I had him be resurrected by the cult for a round two, and now he's basically a Nemesis System antagonist who comes back stronger every time the party kills him. Note, his boss subtitle turned out to be very accurate, as his latest appearence saw him get the most absurd series of good rolls and the players' bad rolls possible that let him stay alive WAY longer than he should have.
They're actually in rather friendly enemy turf with him, casually chatting with him while trying to kill him. Except the Druid, the Druid just freaking hates his guts and wants him to stay dead. Not the Druid's player though, his player likes him.
He also explained he keeps coming back because his mother is a high ranking Cleric of Talos who keeps resurrecting him every time he dies, and is also rich.
BOB THE BANDIT!!!!
Not a throw-away npc, but im planning on having a character that's continently at every restaurant, shop, hospital, police stations, or adjacent workplaces.
Think nurse joy, officer jenny, but more akin to lazy larry from gumball. Where she is either a member of a large family with noy so creative parents naming all their daughters the same thing, or just one lady who's phenomenal cosmic existance is so great she appears everywhere the party goes to do some business.
(Dont worrry she's not dangerous, but she can be provoked into defending herself)
Bupnast the battle smith artificer who sounds like dr.Doofenshmirtz He loves to Infuse weapons, wise crack, and talk in pop culture. He was a villain that my players had to take down. He was in leagues with the bbeg to create a warforged army. He was taken down by one of his own creations (own of my players who was the revived son of the bbeg) after he was killed in realized the voice was too good not to use again. So now I use him as nothing but comic relief. He has been the king of one liners in any campaign he has been in. For example when he met one the players in a campaign based in the city we live in. (She is an oath of throwing it back paladin) she was wearing booty shorts and a crop top. She comes up to say hello. And his response is ohh you must be one of those hollerback girls.
BARRY THE IMMORTAL MILLIPEDE
Hey Brian and other Mr. Ripper team members, have a great day guys!
Not original but THE BOULDER
THE BOULDER DEMANDS TO BE IN EVERY CAMPAIGN!
DOUG!!!! so I'm in a campaign and I'm one of many mutants. Doug is a person who lets people come in and out of an area that's basically the leaders' house. Doug has down syndrome and he's REALLY strong well I had to get him to let us in and he almost caught us in a quick thought my character flashes him and now he sees me and starts completely blushing and helps with a lot of things so now the joke is if anyone tries to fight us everyone says to my character to flash the big bad
Steven He's dad
First!