About the mounted thing, an easy solution would be to play a small rider with a medium mount like a lynx or a riding dog. Halfling cavaliers seem like a fun time
@@starbird3939 I'm sure someone has. It's got a great inspiration. You can always keep it in the back pocket for your tables though, just in case the chance comes up.
In a previous campaign, our gnome rode an Irish Wolfhound. During a mounted combat an enemy attempted to dismount the gnome by attacking the dog. This didn't sit well with the party as each member risked the attack of opportunity for retribution. *insert Green Lantern getting punched by multiple dudes meme* The dog was fine.
I personally hate tropes like Joss Whedon writing where some characters that are incredibly annoying or stupid never seem to get punished for their action but SOMEHOW when you try to punish or reccomend another idea to them YOU get the blame instead despite what they do before is clearly dumb and
So chaotic stupid energy mixed with plot armor and character favoritism, which in this case means the D.M. is the biggest problem here. People trying to be bugs bunny forget that in the episodes that he is supposed to win he is often minding his own business, and the guy got beaten by a tortoise in a race when he was being insufferable. What they often make is daffy duck, a person who is stupidly stubborn, and always expects things to go his way. If a D.M. feeds that problem by giving them what they want, the best solution would be to walk away, as no one has fun when a self important Daffy Duck is given power over the story.
My first game ended because a PC wanted his girlfriend to join. She wanted to play " the most beautiful elven ranger who always hits the target". Started a downward spiral that ended the game. I liked that game because the gm was good at putting us in situations that gave our PCs their time to shine
One of my party members in a previous game made a cavalier, with a specialty for mounted combat... problem was we were never able to keep our horses for very long... He found another solution though... my PC...the moon druid... It actually worked out quite nicely. My favorite form was the dire wolf, which gets pack tactics and thus has advantage on all attacks if an ally is within 5 feet.. and the wolf's back is certainly within 5 feet. Still there were limits...he could not mount up once I turned into a giant elk inside a dungeon... not without slamming his head into the ceiling.
Reminds me of my first character I ever made, a human rogue who had... loving parents that to his knowledge were still alive. a friendly young man who tried to be kind to everyone he met, he was only 'sneaky' because he had an intense desire for knowledge which led to him sneaking around people to look at books or artifacts that he wasn't allowed near. He was also a joker when it came to things, EX: when in a bar fight he picked up two tankards and said 'you wouldn't hit a guy with glasses would you?' then got decked.
I'm a way bigger fan of the more charismatic rogue over the typical edgy rogue. Had a human rogue character with a love for jokes and work play named Nikolai who had the nickname "Nickel Eye", he was a good one
Going to be playing a rogue assassin with the stereotypical tragic bad parents backstory but is a unintentional follower of Shar so she just tries to forget all the horrible stuff shes done and wants to be better. to escape her past she's taken on the face and persona (via the faceless background) of one of her previous targets who was a local hero. done right i can play a character whos done horrible things from being manipulated by a sadistic goddess and had her reputation destroyed but wants to reclaim her own fate. decent charisma so good at lying, but also good at persuading and intimidating. Gets angry easily but has to play the goody two shoes so she has to bite her tongue.
For me it’s people who think they can pull of a character that everyone is supposed to hate and then later come to love. It’s good in concept but rarely can one pull it off without just making session not fun or seem like someone who just wants to hog the spotlight.
I tried that once. Not sure if the issue was really mine though. Started off snobbish wizard who's proud of his ability to manipulate reality. Classic neat freak, thinks throwing fire is "the lowest form of magic", that sort of thing. Planned to have him mellow out rather quickly but the other players were never interested in looking past their first impression. I even had him try to reach out but they just gave him the cold shoulder. Should've given him to the dm and been like "Here. They hate him that much? Make him their enemy."
To defend the Multiple Personas one a bit It CAN be done correctly, and enjoyably. for everyone. I had a player who was possessed by basically a demoness. Swapping permitted them to switch both bodies, sheets, and personality, (always the three together, so you knew who you were facing at all times.) And they both were decent people. The demoness was completly unhinged with enemies, that she basically loved to torture during/outside the fights, but she was chill, and even cute the rest of the time. After a while (since she appeared mid campain to spice up a character that was originaly quite bland) the dude who was possesed by her became super protective of her and she kind of became his adoptive little sister. He was a fighter and she a mage that fired needles. an incredible duo both for RP and fights, and they let plenty of space for everyone. The characters became a recuring Duo in several other campains were they would often do cameos, and were loved by the whole table. However, they had the same HP and Mana/spellslots for both, so there was never any possible cheese with them.
There is only one trope i hate that isnt on the list of things you shouldnt do, and thats the character who doesn't interact with the rest of the party. Play your character in anytype of appropriate way you like, but please interact with the party. Shy, Loner, Hardass, give me something more than "They just look at you for a moment then leaves." You dont even have to interact with me, but just someone in the party. Other than that i can deal with most of the tropes people complain about in and out of character but i cant deal with someone who doesnt interact. I have a mute friend i played with and they interacted by typing it out or doing sign language and we took it as the character speaking telepathically.
One of my best friends plays a “lone wolf” tiefling paladin, former noble turned hardened criminal and zhentarim agent. Everything about him gives the energy of someone who wouldn’t want to work with the party. However, his big secret is that he’s actually a huge softie who loves his friends and would lay down his life to protect us. He has once already and we keep telling him not to do it again and he refuses to listen. We love him so much.
Surprised the "no fun allowed" paladin isn't mentioned. I intentionally went with a neutral good paladin rather than lawful good and spun my backstory to compliment my naive attitude so I wouldn't step on other players' actions.
Eeeeeeeeh Lawful good isn't meant to be "Ultra strict towards everyone". A good paladin is stricter towards himself than anyone else. Lawful good is not lawful, and it's not good. It's more than the sum of its parts. No fun allowed is LN. Lawful Good - for a paladin in particular - is someone who is good - and holds themselves to the standard of a knight of justice, neither overbearing (punishment must fit the crime), nor overly lax (You won't let the group get away with blatant criminal acts) - but maintaining a sense of priorities. Instead of refusing to work with people, you do what's needed to stop the greater evil at the moment, then in private you'll tell them what you think they did wrong... Because there's a method to justice. Naturally that doesn't apply when they start killing children - but at that point they're being problem players- Lastly, obviously. A lawful good paladin is a hero in the truest sense of the word. You don't expect anyone to be perfect or to follow your oath. Your oath was yours to take and they haven't sworn it. You can chastise people for common sense morality... But well if the rogue lies... Not like he swore the oath of devotion that forbids it. He *was* trying to help the hostage situation so maybe you'll just stay quiet... Maybe sulk a little but yanno
I'm currently playing a LG character who happens to be an assassin. Technically he is an "scout and archer who had as misspent youth" and I flavour his sneak attack like Legolas skills (he is a wood elf noble). I got asked why he was always so bloodthirsty. My response. Every time he has killed its been a violent law breaker or monster. He isn't a murdohobo but if he knows a fight will happen he is going to strike first from the shadows for sure. LG has a bad reputation but honestly I find it quite fun. Especially in 5e where you can pick your own code for the lawful part. Ie he follows the Wood Elf code rather than the law of the human lands.
@@Oznerock I've got a religious fighter character who does exactly this. He holds himself to a set of creeds that he holds himself to, but he doesn't fight the mostly good people he surrounds himself with just because they don't hold the same values as he does, and even when they do have issues that he disagrees with, he's more then forgiving as long as there was actual purpose to it. One of my particular favorite moments was him chastising a particularly holier-than-thou member of his order which basically was "a soft touch often works better then an steel blade". Kindness and forgiveness can bring more good then merely slaying evil.
Such paladins can actully ber very finny, i had lawfull good and even lawfull netral burocratic paladins in party, and they brought more fun than druid and bard combined.
I've actually seen an instance of somebody who always plays basically the same character done really well. This guy I played with was always a monster hunter (usually a vampire hunter but sometimes it changed), and despite this all his characters were really unique, and the thing tying them together was that they were all related. He went in depth with it to, he made a whole family tree detailing their lineage and how they ended up in various magical worlds when they started in a grounded setting. The dedication alone made it work
Those “lone wolf” characters that refuse to work with the party. It is ok to have an occassional 1 on 1 rp time, but these guys just want to play 1 Player dnd and treat the others like NPC’s. Go play BG3 or Skyrim if you want a solo game
I played a sort of lone wolf character and just played them as someone who just prefers to keep to themselves but will still work in a team. Overall became the quiet one of the group. Next campaign, someone played a similar character who became the butt of many jokes but said character still overall helped the group out and really opened up as the campaign went on.
I have a type of “lone wolf” character. The party actually enjoyed them because they understood that their goals aligned and were starting to get her out of her comfort zone. I did have notes for the character on when they would shut down. Typically it was when she was forced to deal with emotional situations or when someone was forcing her to do something she genuinely was extremely uncomfortable with. Other players picked up and realized that if they casually talked with her, she would bring things up on her own. Or if they showed her “hey doing x, y, and z may suck but this is the outcomes for doing it” in a more logical sense instead of emotional driven, she was much more willing to take on said roles without a fight. But with Lone Wolf and edgy characters, the goal to make them work is to actually give them a reason as to why they would work with a party if they were so used to doing things by themselves or with very few people.
I don't mind a lone wolf, if they understand that this is a "team game" first and foremost. They can have their moments of - "Hey, I'll be back, trust me.." - and be all epic and cool, but don't steal the thunder 24/7.
I found that's basically how the DnD game I'm currently in was working when 1 player was there. His character had a dagger that was possessed by a demon that would talk to him and convince him to commit violent unalivings. The sessions were usually split 50/50 between his solo RP with the DM and the rest of the game. The group finally caught on to his dagger being evil and dealt with it, to which he ragequit.
A personal fun theme of mine that i ran was a strength focused rogue. Put my expertise in Athletics and took the tavern brawler feat. His backstory was that he was the bouncer for the theives guild base, and got demoted when he let an undercover officer in due to low wisdom and intelligence stats. Went to work as an adventure where he could put his fists to use
@venerablebrothergoriate5844 thanks haha. Admittedly at the time I wanted to play a character a little similar in personality to Gaston from beauty and the beast. Was a one shot so it was fine, but could have gotten annoying later on.
@@pyrosfyre789 I’ll usually go for a Warforged Juggernaut with a personality not unlike HK-47 from Star Wars KOTOR. It’s fun, especially when the DM plays along and all the NPC’s start getting nervous around me. 😂
Rogues are just great canvases for any character that's particularly talented at something that isn't "swinging giant hunks of metal" or "wielding the elemental tapestry of the universe." Gotta love that expertise. Wish bards were the same, but they're too closely tied to the concept of performance.
I am guilty of something like this. My group started a new campaign, an 'ancient rome with D&D races' kind of thing. I sadly missed the first month due to work, but I had heard from the other players that all they were doing is fighting undead and no actual greek/roman monsters at all, just some new chaos god disrupting everything. So when I finally made it to the table I unveiled 'Fantiago Rompedor De Los Muertos' (Breaker of the dead) who was a half-orc spanish Luchador Monk in a bull mask and a bodysuit. The DM raised a brow to that and he asked why I was a luchador instead of a more 'Roman/Greek' style character, and I simply stated 'From what I heard, there were no Roman/Greek monsters anyway, so I would fit right in. He just sighed and let it happen. He took the hint, and soon the rest of the group and I were happily fighting minotaurs, harpies and the like, went into the past and killed/ate the first/last ever deer, and ended with an epic battle against the god of chaos.
Recently made and am test running an "insufferably lawful good" character. He was meant to be a paladin but one of my party mates is running his first campaign and wanted to paladin so i stepped aside and worked his backstory a bit to let him be the paladin. The rework actually helped lean in to how insufferable my guy is. The guy he was going to take his vows for failed to match up to his lofty ideals so he leaned in his natural magical talent and became a wizard and his goal for the adventure is to find a pure god worthy of his worship. Character could easily ruin a campaign because hes 100% a no fun allowed style character but i sat each one of my mates aside and told them what my plans for the character were and asked how much hamming it up they were ok with. Every one of them told me to go all out so i have been. We're two sessions in and as far as RP goes every single character hates his guts, but out of character every one is im stitches when his cringey ass gets going. Hes 100% dying to a fellow party member before we hit level 5 because hes umbearable but everyone outside of it spends half the session laughing at him. Terrible character tropes have their place, its usually the moron behind the character sheet thats making it a bad time for everyone else.
6:26 I feel as though I did this right in a CoS campaign. My second character, near the end of the campaign, was a Shadar Kai Hexblade 4 arcane archer 5. Being a Shadar Kai, they knew of the Raven Queen, and being a Hexblade warlock, they served the Raven Queen. The Raven Queen is the goddess of death. Her anathemas are basically treat life and death as a natural cycle of life, and do NOT disrupt it. Aka revival/necromancy magic. In the final fight with Strahd, my character was grappled by Strahd and got a natural one on their first death save. Had Strahd killed me, he would have raised me as undead. My friend healed me, and my bow being elsewhere, I grabbed Strahd's sword, and coup de grâce'd himself, lobbing off his own head so Strahd couldn't turn him into a zombie. It is absolutely something my character would do, and it made for an awesome story.
My friends suffered trying to deal with this trope for years: the Selfish Edgelord who uses their backstory as an excuse. Someone who had a fucked up childhood, usually with one or both scumbag parent(s). If one parent wasn't scummy, they were abused and/or murdered. Insert living as a humanoid lab rat/slave/toy. Goes on and on about how much they've suffered, and thinks they can commit as much crime and evil as they want, because "it's not nearly as bad as what I had to go through". Doesn't acknowledge at all how they've become a scumbag themselves, and then gets pissy when guards maul them, or when the other PCs call them out. One iteration was hated so much that the gods themselves promised to obliterate the edgelord's soul at every possible corner. Literally had the God of Death breathing down his neck as he was written out of play. Reading their horror stories, I've banned that trope from my table.
I had an interesting thought on the multiple personalities idea: Play an eldritch knight. One personality thinks they're a fighter, the other thinks they're a wizard. Neither personality knows about or remembers the actions of the other. The character would become more powerful when they go through growth and both personalities reconcile, so then they start using both magic and weapons in tandem. Important: both personalities are friendly toward the rest of the party!
I am currently playing a charater that has two different personalities and sets abilityscores etc. Fighter and barbarian. However whilst both are fine withthe party they initially did not like eachother until they realised neither of them were the original character.
The OP of that bit here and, I mean it might've been? I'm not too familiar with Rick and Morty so I couldn't say for sure but as could be seen with the rest of my babble, my table quite likes to reference stuff and that player is no exception. Though his first character didn't start out very 'Florida Man' so much as he developed that over time; originally his 'very distressed boxer/part time mechanic from our world Florida isekaied in just his boxers' backstory was actually played pretty damn seriously (mostly in terms of 'this guy has literally nothing here and joined the party in desperation' and 'almost killed himself with his own magic/skills multiple times early on because he had an established flaw of not having a clue of what he was doing until he got to practice with it' kinda ways though there was a little 'hope my grandpa and dog are still doing ok' moments) but well, eventually his player playing off every failed wis and cha roll for comedy, the character's habit of going full '' as a coping mechanism/our amusement and us realizing he was from Florida kind of made the meme write itself. Then his player decided to officially lean into the madness, specked into Echo Knight on top of his Defender Artificer so his guy could 'accidentally' summon AU versions of himself to help him (in universe making us realize that that was probably how he got pulled into the setting) and welp, many games later and with the help of the DM, that's how we eventually got The Organization... Which was almost certainly a Kingdom Hearts Organization 13 parody now that I think about. XD (Sorry for babbling, I just have a lot of nostalgia for the 1st Florida man since his character and my very first character, a bright yellow cockatiel aarakocra Way of Mercy monk, were two thirds of a 'best buddies beating up enemies with their fists' trio -3rd was a bright purple kobold Sun Soul monk/WM barb- and I can't resist gushing about them whenever I'm given the chance
My first ever time playing dnd was as the dm. Me and the group decided that each of us should make up a story in our heads and dm that, and once the story is complete, another person would dm their story. I started off as the 1st dm. There wasn't a lot of time for world-building, so I decided to just kick things off with the characters getting news of mysterious occurances in a remote settlement, which would lead to horror-fantasy encounters which seerved as the base for the world-building later on. One of the players had made a dark-elf character and a few sessions in the campaign my brain did a 360 spin after hearing the character talk about Azura the tribunal etc (for everyone that doesn't know, Azura and the resst are based on Elder Scroll lore aka a video game). Man I was so disappointed, cause the premise that each of us would add to the universe together and build a unique world with our stories, was just turned into "fuck it - let's make fantasy soup. I add Elder Scrolls lore as canon to this world". I regret not speaking out regarding it or putting down consequences as the dm (aka every time the dark elf character mentioned Azura or whatever, the locals treating them like a madman, Azura's miracles not working etc).
I'm a big fan of that last type of player, who makes a well designed character with defined flaws and mortal weaknesses but is very likeable. When they have that tragic death it can incite intense feelings for everyone involved. Tragedy and loss have inspired some of the most beautiful creations, and you have to admit nothing tugs on the heartstrings more than a dramatic death.
I've definitely been one of those annoying players before. My first 5e character was an attempt at what I thought was realistic. They were an ordinary citizen who got tricked into accepting a boon from an otherworldly source, becoming a warlock. They wanted nothing more than to return to the shire and quit the adventuring business. I thought it would be a cool idea to have this character deal with the temptation of power through their pact, using evil for good, and seeing where the campaign takes me in terms of character development. MFW i realized neither the party or the DM were big roleplayers and I was too dumb to realize that switching tack was probably the better option. No one wanted to deal with a reluctant adventurer or deal with the tyranny of realism - they just wanted to suplex dragons and act as themselves.
Meh, don't think anyone did anything wrong there. Just an unfortunate clash of expectations for the game. That said, my first attempts at D&D were with Adventure's League. I quit pretty early on because I've zero interest in a TTRPG light on RP. Would rather just play videogames.
3 character Types I dont like: - The super cute murder hobo. The player chooses a tiny cute race (like a halfling) pretends to be a barbie doll or something but is secretly the most lethal warrior in the group. - The City Phobic woodsman. Usually a barbarian, ranger or druid but played in such a way that they refuse to enter a city. - The annoying musician. Your typical Bard or Rockerboy that expects just because he starts playing in the center of town that everyone is gonna come running to watch. He expects every building should now be empty, everyone has donated their life savings and their town virgins.
Agreed that is the execution rather than the trope itself what can make or break a character, for example: Our group's Rogue is a kleptomaniac...but only with food, having almost died from starvation in their backstory now they have a BIG issue with anyone leaving leftover food and will gladly put anything that's tasty and people would let "go to waste" otherwise into his bag of holding. P.S: Yes he has a Bag of Holding, No he doesn't uses it for anything other than storing food (The Wizard's bag of Holding is where importan stuff goes to avoid the magic mcguffing getting sticky.)
Definitely agree on multiple/split personality characters, they usually end up being disruptive spotlight hogs. The "everyone look at me" personality always seems to turn up when the other party members are having a moment to shine... I'd also add the "contrarian" character. The player who always wants to do exactly what they're told not to do. You know the one, the player who insists on playing that one race the GM banned, the one who absolutely has to be a Jedi in a Star Wars game when the GM asks for no Force users, the one who will make a barbarian in a magic academy setting, basically the one who has to always be the "odd one out" in any group or setting, especially if the GM imposed any rules/limitations on character creation at the start of the campaign. And finally, the "joke" character in a setting that doesn't fit. This applies both to characters who are based off a joke or meme, and characters who have to make everything a joke, no matter how serious the setting or the rest of the group is.
for the split/multiple personality char it depends on how they're played. i had a friend play as one and it was fun and he wasn't abusing it in everyway.
It really doesn’t get better than playing thragg the half-orc “wizard” who’s only spell is “shatter” that he casts from his oddly tree trunk-shaped “wand”
One way to do a warlock in a tech-sci-fi setting is to make the Patron an A.I. Most of his "Spells" are tech gadgets supplied by the A.I.'s cult. The best part? The Ai can communicate with The WLK by nural-implant.
Add powerfull alien/other dimension beings, synbiotic parasite (tech or organic), shady organisation/cult with tech/drug thatgive super powers that only leader/s can make. You need very grounded seting to make warlock invalid and he would be not only one.
Some of these feel like a partial GM issue more then a player-only issue. Its partially their job to curate the characters to be able to prevent disruptive play. Like, all these ones needed was a "hey, this character you brought in doesn't seem to fit the campaign, would you perhaps want to try with a different concept?" And should they not, then perhaps they should sit this one out and wait for a game that more suits the characters they want to play. Like, I'm all for removing problem players, but the best time to reduce issues related to character build or personality is before the beginning of the game, where you settle expectations. The first one in particular screams "I don't actually look at the sheets or characters before accepting them", and thus is easily solved by doing so and using logic like "the other players are all playing elves, perhaps I should point this out to the player who wants to play a character that hates elves for whatever reason". Or the Meneagerie, where you can see that the PC is grabbing every summon spell under the sun. Perhaps you could realize that they're looking to being a massive summoner and talking to them about how many creatures you're feeling okay with running to keep combat running smooth. Or the "mounted mounty". If they made a mounted character and you primarily have indoor and dungeon-type encounters in mind for the game, why didn't you point out this problem before Session 1 so that they can adjust, or step away themselves once they realize they can't drag their horse into Moria so that the Cavalier can do things? 8:15 immediately fits what I'm seeing. GM saw an issue with the character concept in context of the setting, didn't immediately treat the player as if he's wanting to be the "i'm special and unique and will bully the setting into accepting it" character, and they work on something that was more appropriate for the story the GM was trying to tell. If character build issues actually ended up being an issue, *why did you let them bring it to the table anyway?* Some of these are 100% just disruptive players, like the edgy witch girl or the "moment-chaser", but that's a player issue, and can only be discovered through play. Other note: "Hey, subverting stereotypes good!" No, your Ace bard isn't inherently interesting just because she's not interested in sex. They become intersting when they have something inherent within themselves that is interesting other then "look, my character isn't like the other bards". You also don't need mechanical penalties to play character flaws. If you wrote into your backstory that your character is a recovering drug addict, I shouldn't need to bully you through Con saves into fighting the urges, since you are clearly interested in playing out that story *considering that you wrote it* and should be willing to "take the bait" as it were.
I had a bard that used the stereotypical bard ad his "on stage" persona but off stage he resented the hell that he had to act that way. Kept sending the groupies to the paladin to hook him up lol
6:45 So random story. When One Punch Man was new a player joined at a fairly high level and wanted to play Saitama but fantasy. I had never seen the show but the character description sounded like it could be a fun monk backstory. So I designed a magic item for him which was a Glove of Striking so he could do extra big punches with it. But the funny part was, in all the reference images I got for the character, only one hand was visible. And because of his name, for some reason I thought he only had one glove. So the magic item was literally one red glove.
The only concepts that really bother me are the ones that a player can't actually commit to. Don't play a dumb or unwise character unless you are willing to hurt yourself, don't play a brilliant tactician if you don't want to bother reading and understanding the base rules of 5e and remembering your allies capabilities, don't play a healing and tender care cleric if your only going to take healing word and forgo the other healing spells because they aren't "optimal". Etc, etc. If you like the aesthetic of a character concept but not the mechanics just choose a different but related concept that allows you to do what you want (ex: a cleric that started with a healing focus but wants to broaden their understanding of their deity through the spells it grants them).
I have been addicted to videos like this or other "horror stories". I've only ever played dnd/ttrpg's with friends, and everyone is pretty casual about it. So hearing all this feels like looking into another world.
I must admit I'm a bit of a Menagerie, though the key to doing those types of things right is to make the turn order more concise through various rulings. For example small minions could share a singular turn in Initiative, or you could just focus on summoning 1-2 large minions so they don't effect turn order as much, or just act as extensions of yourself if they go after you or share a turn with you.
Personally, I'd have to say that the worst would be a party that outright refuses to work together, all because folks of certain races are supposedly evil or because dwarves are supposed to hate elves, or because members of certain races are not native to the setting. Now, give me an orc that's trying to go, "Just because orc raiders destroyed your home, doesn't mean that all orcs are evil" or a dwarf that's willing to put aside his dislike in order to work with the elf, and maybe the giff is just someone trying to locate the means to head to their home, and the party as a whole decides to work together.
I love bards and to this day have never played a horny one. I've been a secret assassin that uses his music to get into venues, a dancer very into perfecting his art, and even a collector of stories in a quest to uncover history and turn it into educational songs. It's not hard and wayyyy more fun IMO.
"BBEG killed my parents in my backstory" I like this if it happens in the campaign. Give the player a chance to actually feel the hatred they're supposed to be playing. Whenever it's in the backstory with characters that, for all purposes, haven't actually existed, it just falls flat. Half the time, they forget it happened. Even if it's session 1, make it part of the game.
The Elder Scrolls Kleptomaniac: Will try to steal everything that's not nailed down, everything that's nailed down, the nails, silverware, shiny pebbles, and clothing that PCs/NPCs are actually wearing at the time.
The one for me is we will call The Ousider - The character that is so out there, so detached from the game concept/genre that they don't fit in and everything becomes about explaining things to them. Once had someone want to play a Predator in a Star Trek game and I did have to explain eating with a form to them. Things that no matter who hard you try the story always will come back to them.
2:30 I played a Mounted Mounty once. He was a halfling paladin riding a St. Bernard. D&D 3.5 had "riding dogs" specifically for small characters to ride, and since said riding dogs are Medium-sized creatures, they can easily function in a dungeon.
I Have a split character in a star wars campaign (a glitching droid). It's interesting as he has no additional benefits or skills and will in fact lock off weapons and abilities dependent on his personality at the time, I roll for what personality is playing but its a D4 role to myself and that's what the dice said, it's what I play. It's lead to some interesting times when I've had to play a healer in a fight instead of security, an engineer in a drug trade or security in a town setting. the other players have found they can force a reroll if they twat me over the head but it doesn't grantee the result they want. I originally made this character to increase the challenge of the campaign for me without inflating the challenge for first time players, I was hobbling myself so I would have fun without harming their play and I NEVER did a "psycho mode that needs to be restrained!"
Most hated character concepts: 1. The "LOL-Random I'm sooo kooky, look at all of my belts! You're heading to see the town mayor? I'm gonna blow him up with a million bombs because it's funny. Have I mentioned my fishnet stockings in the last 30 seconds?" 2. "My trauma *is* my character" or the worse variant; "The person I fetishize, and *their* trauma, is my character."
1:38 Don’t be mistaken, dual personalities/split personalities can be good if you play it out well, a character in a campaign of mine had multiple personalities as a result of their patron shattering their mind upon coming into their life. It’s less like “ohhh I get to swap characters and skills based on the scenario” but more exactly of a personality switch that was flicked on. Think of V and Johnny from cyberpunk. Appearing in your peripheral vision, berating you, and the points in time when that persona takes over are few and far between story moments that are planned by the DM and PC beforehand. I absolutely loved seeing that roleplay and I actually used their character as inspiration for my BBEG in my next campaign. Tldr multiple personalities can be cool, just they have to be played really well and shouldn’t give the player bonuses without drawbacks.
People playing an idealised version of themself never ends well, especially in LARP. The character bleed is always a problem. And yes I did that with my first LARP character and learned the hard way.
Easy solution to the Menagerie: - Large groups of the same beings get combined into a "swarm" monster that basically counts as all those beings together. Due to being a large group they are easy to target, but have a higher AC then the original monster due to simply being "more", and its health is much higher too. It can't attack all at once as its a huge mass of the same beings, so instead they get multi-attack (so if you have like 20 monsters, you still only get 3 attacks minimum per turn with that) - If you have a large variation of beings, spread out the control of those monsters for the party, so everyone gets to play instead of just the Menagerie player.
The mounted Mounty honestly let them play that. There is a fighter subclass now called the cavalier. I mean specializing in mounted combat comes with its own challenges. There are multiple spells that can cause difficult terrain. One of my favorites the third level spell sleet storm makes the ground icy and has a chance of knocking you prone and breaking concentration. You wouldn't be the one making the dex save it would be your mount. Then you'd have to roll an athletics check or be thrown off of it. Not to mention crushing damage if your mount were to fall on top of you.
The most agreagous character i made was homicidal to goblin kind. And would be all to happy to go on goblin slaying missions even at lvl 15. Became a bargaining chip to get the evil mage to do good things willingly.
@@unnameduser5647 no. It was before gobline slayer. I was making a CE character, and needed something that fit but wouldnt disrupt the party. I was pretty happy to see the party use her vice to get their way.
I was the “guy with a bunch of pets”. Though they weren’t really pets but rather a growing list of NPC allies, family members, and extended family. It started with a horse my character named Cycloneous. Then he met an NPC named Jessica, they started dating and he moved in with her. He then bought a hunting dog which he named Bjornhard. And later he hired and then became friends with a halfling thief and mapmaker named Pheleous, who became “Uncle Pheleous” when my character had a child with Jessica. Then later on I picked up two former cultists from the Cult Of The Reptile God adventure module, two clerics, Misha and I think the other was named Alexis. Anyways Misha became my character’s secretary once he started running a crime syndicate out of a hideout he had built by some kobolds and dwarves in the city sewers. And Alexis was kind of just there. Oh and he bought his wife a horse too so we each had our own horse and a carriage for personal use. Pheleous was our chauffeur as a cover for why I had originally hired him.
@@mishagaming1075 This was Misha Devi who is apparently an iconic character from the Cult Of The Reptile God module that takes place in the town of Orlane. Long story short she was one of the main cultists and so my party and more specifically my character captured her pretty early on after she failed to stage an ambush against us. Over the period of the adventure my character worked very closely with her, showing his guile in figuring out which cultist she trusted most outside of Alexis and then “accidentally” freeing them for her under the guise that my character was going to join the cult. So I followed the freed cultist to a safehouse and then slowly but surely captured every brainwashed cultist in the city one by one until all that was left was finding the temple in the swamp. Essentially I spent most of the adventure flexing on her. After we killed the naga I basically told her “I can either leave you here and the townsfolk will probably kill you for your crimes, or you can come back to the capital and work for me.” She obviously chose the option that didn’t get her killed and eventually we became good friends since I was providing her housing, a job, and a new start in a new city. And that’s when I revealed that she was working for a mob boss. She was surprisingly chill with that.
I was a little disapproving of the mounted combatant objection. I am currently in a campaign playing a cavalier. A dullahan actually. First time experiencing playing an undead too. As a dullahan I have lore reasons for not wanting to be without a mount. It's a staple of the character. So far I've found: The type of setting is what limits a cavalier's effectiveness for mounted combat. If you're in a tight cave fighting some kobolds, your dragonnel mount probably won't be effective. On the flip side I would say it's perfectly reasonable to bemoan a DM who constantly forces a cavalier into situations where their mount is incapable of following. Especially for important boss fights. Cavalier is too nuanced of a balance and setting issue to completely place the burden of responsibility on the player when things turn problematic. A DM has to realize who they're running the game for. If a player has a requirement that needs to be met, it's in good faith to try to meet it within reason. Introduce options for the players which gives them opportunities to use the class features that they invested in.
I played a guy with MPD on one occasion. I wasn't aware that it was such a hated trope. Although my guy was on the lower end of the "abusing multiple personalities for benefits" spectrum. His three personalities just shifted around his mental stats (Int, Wis and Cha) and gave him a different favoured weapon for each personality. He remained a fighter in every personality, (so no "Today I am a Wizard!" shenanigans) and rolled a D3 to see which personality was "out" after every long rest.
I just recently had the pleasure of DMing a short campaign with one of those "Split personality characters", but I trusted the player who had the idea so i gave it a go. And boy I was not disappointed. The character was well written and played, despite the concept having so many opportunities to fail miserably. Goes to show, almost any idea can be made to work if someone knows what they're doing
The walking veto isn't inherently bad. It's the player's responsibility to either somewhat go with the party or realize that there's no way the character will work with everyone and roll up something new. If the DM doesn't want to deal with it, then they should be the one doing the vetoing. The menagerie: more of the DM's fault. The moment a player wants to do it, DM should either veto or start putting down the restrictions that would make it acceptable. Don't even bother arguing from a realism standpoint. Just let the player know that sort of thing has a good chance of making combat encounters exponentially longer and makes balancing things a pain. Subvert Stereotypes: This is just as annoying if the "subverted stereotype" is the personality. Don't try to "subvert” when making the character. Just ignore them instead. Also, it's weird that "a rogue who isn't a kleptomaniac" is a subversion. There are so many types of rogues it's stupid. Even if sticking to "crime," just look at all the kinds of crime that doesn't consist of stealing random shinies. The guy making his characters lovable, giving them a fatal flaw almost guaranteeing some tragic fate, and then angling towards it when tired of playing the character is hilarious. More power to his maudlin ways.
OP of the fatal flaw/long rambley end section and I just want to clarify something I don't think my comment in video made quite as clear as I was hoping: The guy I mentioned tries to build up his characters dying of their fatal flaws from the moment he introduces them and actively grows bored of them the second it they fail to perish to their intended fate (to the point he tried to convince us all to let him offscreen kill a much beloved character we'd spent a whole campaign finale saving, right after she'd already peacefully retired offscreen with her love interest, who was another player's retiring PC and had very much earned her happy ending). Think of it as the very rare inverse of the 'players have to accept PC death is a possible outcome' issue. If it was just him getting bored of the character any old time or his love for angst I wouldn't have even mentioned him since he's honestly an amazing player, acts as DM catnip for the entire server and did actually back off when he realized his love of angst was starting to push too far, but like, he's why that Discord now has a 'Accept that your PC's survival is a possible outcome of RPing with other people' rule and helped all of us learn how killing one's own PC post retirement could be something of a dick move to other players (especially if you were the one that encouraged the DM to use your character's doom vs salvation drama as the central plot stakes for the arc's finale and literally every other player's crowning moment of awesome was wrapped up in your PC's survival XD). So yeah. Absolutely great guy but no. No more power to his maudlin ways! He's already got exactly enough to balance out the rest of the entire Discord being a bunch of happy ending inclined saps as it is, and no doubt he'd get bored if his angst plots didn't have a failure outcome~ XDDD
@@FaisLittleWhiteRaven Lol, thanks for going into it further. I still find it hilarious, but totally get the dick move aspect of it. I’m far more used to the other end where people see a character too much as a self-insert. Not that you can’t do it, but it’s a personal pet peeve due to the problems it can cause (such as conflicts or death in-game causing issues irl). Anyways, sounds like a great guy and glad you’ve all sorted things out so well.
We have a fighter in the party who just has a bad case of Goku syndrome. They fight literally everything and HAVE to do it RIGHT NOW even when it makes far more sense to wait literally one hour in game so that I, the cleric, can finish my spell prep. Then they have the nerve to go "Well you should've come in to heal us" when I was openly saying "I don't have any more spell slots." Worst part? Fighter's so hard to kill that he just never learns a lesson. I'm starting to seriously debate just *not* healing him anymore till he gets his act together.
When a player wants to be some random nondiscript thing for no reason then to be unquie in the setting despite the fact most of the setting would kill them on sight because they look like a mindflayer abomination
1:15 in my last campaign we actually had a menagerie of sorts, there was a goblin we adopted at the beginning of the game, a magic ox that was very eloquent when spoken to and my character's werebear girlfriend. Our dm allowed us to have one active at a time while the others rested in this magic painting that worked as an ever-expanding storage area we found very early on. Edit: grammar error
I think any character that adamantly sticks to whatever arbitrary alignment they're given at character creation is insufferable a lot of the times. It's definitely more noticeable in parties where you have the lawful good or chaotic evil characters who constantly clash with the rest of the party and the player in question uses "Well it's his alignment" as an excuse for him refusing to work with the party. If a person was so terribly unsuited to be in the party because of their alignment the most realistic thing would be that they'd fuck off already. Either they'd be kicked out or they'd realize that the party is getting in the way of whatever ViRtUAllY RiGHtGeOUs or DaStARdLy EvIL thing they're trying to do. And on the player side if they can't realize when a character is making it less fun for the others despite outcries against it then a serious discussion needs to be had with that player. For how to avoid this remember that you're SUPPOSED to be playing a PERSON. Not a robot with set coding. People are people because we're not black and white. People have constantly changing feelings and desires. When friends, family, innocents, etc are at risk people are willing to bend their knee. In DnD you're in a party setting and party members are supposed to care about each other at least to a certain extent. Don't make decisions that actively go against the party without at least getting the go ahead from the rest of the players. That's what I do even as a DM sometimes. It's important that when you're about to make a decision or do something that might upset the party or cause an argument that you're transparent about what you're doing and the fact that you want to do it. If you have a good party who is working with you it won't even break the RP and they'll appreciate it later when their time to do the same comes.
Hate the evil priest trope. I understand some may not be faithful or have problems with irl religion but for Christ sake (he he) not everyone who believes in a higher power has to illogically evil. DM d a game where I had a priest in a village besieged by an evil god. The players thought he was the one summoning it and they tried a thousand methods to find out his “evil” plan, but all said and done he was the only thing keeping the villagers alive. Also it’s always Christian based, I want to see an evil Bhuddist or Rabi or something not just “Pope bad”
For me it is more of the players that can't differentiate between the game and real life. Like the characters have to be best friends and can't argue because the players are good friends irl. Basically if your character isn't like you irl, they get upset. But had one that was also the "can I make this my pet?" or "Can I ride that now?"
Chaotic characters can actually be played without annoying the party. I once played a psychopathic bard in a homebrew cypher system Witcher setting. Bards don't have magic like in 5e, and are really only good at social skills and a few suave fighting moves. My character had a ton of social abilities (Essentially Command and Suggestion, but non-magic), and his whole thing was he was excellent at tricking people. He loved money and saved his own skin alot. And he often pushed the party to do things that would profit them, or him, even at the expense of others. But despite all this, he was never uncontrollably chaotic, because *the survival of the party was paramount to him* If the party died, so did he. And I think thats one of the most important things a person should somehow include in their character if they are making an evil or chaotic character.
I hate when a character’s backstory has little to no parts of their backstory that link them to the world. Whenever I want to make a character, I always see if I can have a 1 on 1 with the DM to figure out a logical origin for my character from within that world. Usually it boils down to them being a secret project made by dwarven artificers and I’m okay with that. And yes, I’m almost always a Warforged Juggernaut.
@@venerablebrothergoriate5844 see that's not as big a problem as you'd think. It's not hard to form a story for your character as you play and figure out what you want to do with them. It can actually be kind of fun because you can take inspiration from the game as you experience it. But what am I supposed to do with a reincarnated warlord from ancient times that has been awakened by some powerful entity or god? That's a level 10 boss enemy story, not a low level character that my friend insisted on.
@@graveyardshift2100 right, I agree with you. It’s just like… when a DM makes a whole damn world for you and other players to be a part of in a campaign, why would you disrespect that by refusing to engage with it, y’know???
@@venerablebrothergoriate5844 bro, sometimes people just want to hang out and play the game. It's great when they do put in the effort, but man it is still a game to be enjoyed and not a stage play. I get what you're saying, but it is still just a game.
I've seen a few of these. The Mounty is challenging, unless the character and mount are small. A grugach blink dog rider is fun. We had a real mess up in a 2E game where one character was horse-oriented and another had Dream Journeying; you can't take animals on a Dream Journey and if the party has that ability they will use it for long-distance travel. The menagerie problem is special to 5E; it is a major issue with the system that it can't handle large numbers of creatures in combat. In earlier editions the menagerie was almost expected; see the rules for Followers that have been around since there were 3 little booklets. My pet peeve - Pythonisms; there's always one player who thinks it's clever to recycle 50 year old humor.
There are ways to make the mount or menagerie more portable. I've seen DMs create customized Figurines of Wondrous Power to enable it. I've written Pact Boons of the Steed and the Mastiff where the animal can be summoned/unsummoned. Both these Boons have good literature examples (e.g. Dilvish for the Steed and The Omen movie for the Mastiff).
'Menagerie' is strongly game-depended. In a game like D&D 5 ed., the rules make it very bad, as the action economy is not created with such builds in mind. It is much better in some other games (even some D&D-like and OSR), and some were still written with such gameplay in mind. I play in a game where EVERY character has some kind of minions (from animals through mooks and apprentices to strong allies under player control) and it goes smoothly because the game is designed this way. It is another point for the 'find the game that suits your needs and don't try to do everything in a game that is not designed for it' camp.
So another player and I worked together with each other and the DM to pull off the walking veto AND the lone wolf renegade together in a way that didn’t ruin the game, and the whole point of our joint character arc was for me to overcome my status as the walking veto (as the lone wolf renegade character WAS of the group that I hated,) and serve as a vehicle for the lone wolf renegade to learn how to trust and depend on others. by the end of the campaign, the two characters were great friends and my character even sacrificed a chance to see his dead family again in order to bring the other guy’s sister back to life
THERE'S SOME DAYS WHERE MY RAGE IS UNPARALELLELELELEDDDDD... But overall I just want to make people smile and be happy, while also acknowledging some things are actively BAD.
Gnomes or Halflings playing a smaller thing would be awesome, but the problem here is the grandeur illusion. Some people have power-play-boners and without their EPIC MASSIVE THUNDERCOCK STEED - they feel small and wimpy.
@BrianVaughnVA indeed. I actually dmed an ebberon campaign, and one player was an autognome (flavored as a small warforged) battlesmith artificer that rode sround their mechanical companion
I think a lot of character concepts CAN work with the right roleplayers so it's hard for me to say "I hate edgy loner rogues" I think it gets annoying for me when it's a character concept that simply can't work under the basic rules. Like one time I started a campaign and the character pitched to me was this wolverine style warlock who was essentially immortal and had no memory. Luckily he was cool when I explained that it's not a bad premise for a character just that it wouldn't necessarily work in D&D because mortal peril is part of the game. If you can't functionally die there's no challenge you just get up and keep fighting. But I did assure him that I there is resurrection magic in the game and even created a mechanic where his patron could return him but would ask a price of the party trying to resurrect him. Essentially the resurrection as a quest bit.
When I decided to look into a lot of githyanki stuff from the various editions of DnD, talked to the DM about it, and rolled up a character. Someone else saw what I was rolling up, decide they liked the race (or rather, the numbers and abilities of the race since they didn't care about anything else about it), and rolled up not only the same race but the same class only to play like someone who escaped from a psych ward.
I struggle with players, who either want to play a character that does not fit into the universe created or that tries to shoehorn in ideas from other settings. It’s frustrating to me how many times I experience people who want to bring in Pokémon to a high fantasy game, or who would like to use their anime character in a sci-fi world. I also do not like when characters try to use a disability or mental health issue that they have no context for. Sometimes I think this one bugged me because I am a psychologist and so I am constantly fighting in my head. What someone with that mental health issue would do versus what that character is doing. as far as disabilities, I often see characters who want the disability for the interest that I give their character but they don’t want to seriously consider the implications that having that kind of disability might have in the setting that they are in. For example, someone who wishes to play a blind character but then also wants to play a warlock of the Thome character. Unless you work it out with the DM how are you supposed to read the book unless you have come up with your own system a Braille. I have a blind player at always cracks me up seeing what people try to do with blind characters.
I made a tortle wizard who got a menagerie because i rolled character trait of loving studying monsters. They help me and the party run the inn we got from volo.
Kinda want to hear other people's take on a sorcerer I made for a pathfinder campaign a couple years back. Was told that a high charisma means good at talking, or very attractive, and i'm bad at talking, so I just made her drop dead gorgeous, this was contrasted by the fact that she was asexual, and also generally an 'eccentric' person. She fully understood she was conventionally attractive though and tried to use it in her own awkward way to persuade people to let her into places or to buy things. She had an obsession with magical items, to the point where I put a large portion of her stats into crafting related skills, her whole thing was she was fascinated by her innate magical ability, and wanted to learn more about how it could be manipulated into items using natural magics (AKA she was a magic item nut, not for having them, but just to see how they worked and how she could replicate or create the items herself.)
When ppl insert themselves into your characters backstor without asking, our rogue did that, it was annoying but yeah I said while I wished he had asked me first before doing so I had to admit it made sense that two characters with a criminal background may come from the same gang, its just my character ran away from the gang, his left amicably then just expected my to trust his when he turned up out of knowehre telling me he had been trackiong me when other gnang members had and had tried to kill me? He didnt mean any malice about it, he was totaly new to ttrpgs and just over exicted
I tried a 'multi-personality character' with a DM's permission once (character didn't start out that way, but then the DM revealed my character wasn't a mid-20s halfling but an early-100s halfling with brain damage, amnesia, PTSD and was under the effects of various illegal psionic and enchantment effects). Concept was cool, and the backstory I revised that the DM accepted was (while dark & twisted) generally well-received by the party (party didn't have much opinion of the personality gimmick, but that was largely because it barely had a chance to come up as the DM began rushing the campaign to a crazy degree compared to what we were doing, imo). Was set up that each personality (7 in total) had a different goal & outlook, but would generally follow the party & plans until a trigger came up (or character suffered a crit or rested, which had a high chance of changing the dominant personality).
I once played a Warforged that had 2 personalities. The one that everyone saw was the cold, mechanical, unfeeling, calculating drone that he was primarily built to be, but the other side, partitioned away from the exterior and kind of hidden away inside its consciousness was everything that could be defined as emotion. It was basically 2 consciousnesses inside the same mechanical body. One was very clearly in control, the other one was unaware that it wasn’t in control. Kind of like locked-in-syndrome, only you don’t ever realize you’re not in control of your body or what you say. A mage/artificer multi class in our party once used a detect thoughts on my character and found the two separate spheres of consciousness, and after much work, she was able to merge them. His personality was now just as much of a human as any of them. The artificer and my character even started a romance. Of course, it wouldn’t lead to children or anything, but she took some schematics of my character and basically used them to build us children in kind of the epilogue of the campaign. It was great. Unless we’re talking about animals or something I don’t typically use the word “cute,” but their relationship most definitely was.
Honestly type of player I really dislike is the type of player who goes above and beyond in the subversion of the expectation of your character based on your race or class to the point where they are detrimental to themselves and the party mechanically. For example I can get the idea of being a warlock but doesn't want to use elfish blast but a warlock that doesn't wants to use any spells whatsoever and they completely disregard their Patron to the point where they always get into situations where spells that they have would be solved and yet they do not cast them. Or A barbarian who refuses to do any sort rage mechanically because their character isn't actually mad even though raging doesn't necessarily need to be anger. ( at one point I played a barbarian who was a very jovial man but was also a masochist so he enjoyed actually being attacked and the gleeful excitements to be in battle is kind of what the rage was for that character)
I don’t necessarily hate them but character concepts that I don’t allow at my D&D table are fully Blind or Mute characters (especially if they are a Spellcaster). I run D&D 5e games and the mechanics of the game just simply don’t accommodate that kind of character. Spells in particular almost all require the ability to see, and or speak in order to be used at all. If you want to play a blind or mute mage then there are really only two or three spells that you could actually use in the entire game.
Think this is more an issue of making it clear how what they want will interact with mechanics? Most people wanting to do this don't want to actually cripple their character this hard anyways. Though it might be an interesting character concept to "regain" the ability to see through the devil sight invocation, if you and the rest of the party is okay with you RPing dead weight until you can get it.
@@skycastrum5803 No the issue is people thinking that the only way to make an interesting character is to give them a crippling handicap in a system that doesn’t accommodate it.
@@shadowmyst9661 I mean, yeah, but they tend to not want it once they realize it means their character.... "has a crippling handicap in a system that doesn't accommodate it." Admittedly, that may take an actual session of "no, you can't cast spells. You can't speak. You can't aim your crossbow either. Ahh, if you run towards the noise you can maybe try to hit the enemy with disadvantage."
@@skycastrum5803 That’s why I don’t allow those characters. If someone asks me if they can play a blind or mute character I will tell them straight up that it is not going to work in my game. I keep my games by the books when it comes to most aspects of the system I’m running. I want to keep everyone on a fair and level playing field. And above all I don’t want one player to be constantly punished, hold everyone else back, or be left out because of a needless self-inflicted handicap. I don’t care if you want to play a character with one arm, one eye, and/or one leg as long they are still capable of doing the base requirement for what they need to function within the rules used at the table. For most spells that is the ability to see, speak, and/or have at least one hand (even if it’s a magical prosthetic made by an Artificer).
Mute characters can be fun when it's not a spellcaster. I've never played an explicitly mute character, but I've definitely played characters with inabilities to communicate outside of body language for one reason or another. It can be an interesting challenge if done well. Blind... Yeah, I guess there's not a lot of options that work for that, in 5e. I know you can make it work in Pathfinder, though. I haven't played a blind character since my freeform RP days on MMO's, though. Where being a blind summoner who used summoning magic for a seeing eye dog wasn't that much of an issue.
It was kind of funny- in my Pathfinder game, the Bard was the *least* horny person in the party. (She actually was a bit of an exhibitionist that liked going around in skimpy clothes, or even nude, but sex? Not interested.) She was chaste up until... about level 10 I think? She met an NPC at level 7, had a long romance (Which was interrupted when said NPC got turned into a Death Knight- long story- don't worry, we killed the Death Knight and raised her in her original form), and now they're engaged (and fucking), but both are totally monogamous and exclusive to each other.
Split personalities yaaaay......I love when somebody shows up essentially playing 2 characters to everybody else's 1. Doesn't cause issues or seen spotlight hoggy at all.
Yeah no split personality doesn't mean you turn into a better you just because someone triggered your bipolar disorder so I agree 1 health bar and no split mana/anything it's the same dude just having a mental breakdown lmaos. Now if that person was instead a werewolf or lycanthrope of some kind then sure a separate hp bar and the like as your physically changing not just mentally
EVERY time I have EVER seen anyone playing a Rogue, they must always try to steal everything that isn't nailed down that they think they can get away with, or absolutely MUST sneak around everywhere and disappear from the group at every possible moment. This, apparently, is mandatory of the Rogue class, even though that is not stated anywhere in the books.
I play rogue a good number of times. I never have stolen, especially from a party member and I don’t tend to leave the group unless I’m doing as intended which is scout ahead, and that’s informed. Oh wait, I did steal once but it was proof off some bandits that they were working for a nearby cult and I took it to the town leadership and that was how the party got together. More a story sequence. But yeah, other than that, I don’t really steal. I’ve played a number of rogues and this is sort of my forte. I always try to make thoughtful personalited ranged type characters. But that’s me. I have heard plenty who lean into the theft and being standoffish and trying to be away from the group. Doesn’t vibe with me personally but I enjoy the mechanics of the rogue class and they fit a lot of the concepts I like to throw together for story and rp reasons.
I never played a rogue or a character that does that, but stealing everything i can get away with, including nailed down and the nails, is a fantasy I sometimes want to act on, so it's probably a matter of time til all my friends find all the items they don't really need missing, and instead finds that I bought everyone a crowbar to help me clear the room.
The character stereotype I hate the most is "level 1 character who is clearly handicapped or crippled but the player came up with a 'cool' (read: astoundingly expensive and time consuming to manufacture) way to ignore that so they can just wear a disability like a cosmetic". Nah man, you make a disabled character, you're living that life. "Oh, she's tragically blind due to a childhood mauling buuuut-" Nope, no buts. If she's blind, she's blind. You automatically fail anything to do with sight. You want to fix that, you have to go through *my* trials and tribulations, and suffer character growth. "My artificer can't walk but-" but nothing, he can't walk. When you reach an appropriate level to build a machine that can handle terrain rougher than "paved concrete", *then* you can have that walking chair concept. Disability isn't a hat you can wear as shorthand for tragedy, and then ignore when it comes to gameplay. I am playing a character with a crippling fear of water. Because he's psychic, this crippling fear manifests as a hand made of water that tries to drown him. And I'm sticking with this decision. I cannot swim at all, anyone trying to save me from the hand has to beat my will save with their athletics. I have already missed out on things in game because of this, but this is character I chose to play, and I'm not setting aside a portion of that just to wear this crippling mental disorder as a quirky hat. I'm treating it seriously.
I mean, blind characters CAN exist with effective sight at level 1. Literally an entire fighting style for it that gives you near-perfect perception within 10 feet, actually. But yes, generally wearing a disability like an accessory is tasteless. I just happen to think that your example of a blinded character is a rare exception, so long as the setting isn’t incredibly realistic.
In my opinion, a disabled character should probably have a *partial* fix to their problem that allows them to be *functional,* but not something that completely eliminates the issue right away. If you're so brutal on a character with a disability that they simply can't play the game for several levels (most likely to a point of even ruining the fun for the other party members), it just makes them not want to play. Personally, I always strive for this solution to be something with a mechanical backing that functions RAW to moderate the issue. That said, I'm more used to Pathfinder, and don't know many solutions for many of these sorts of issues in 5e, to give proper examples.
The "Florida man" guy could be fun to use as a plot device for the dm after a while, you could have the group stumble upon a bunch of vats that all have clones of that character, with a wizard who greets the PC with a number, rather then a name, "ahh, such a pleasure to get to speak with you directly 537, how are you feeling? What's going through your mind right now? As he constantly writes things down on a clipboard. Having all these duplicate characters be the wizards experimenting to see what would happen in certain situations, and anything bizarre he's done before, be 'intuitive thoughts' the wizard put there to get him to do those things for his experiments lol
Right now I’m playing a charismatic arcane trickster. He’s basically the embodiment of an evasive support, and my motto when making him was “Whatever he stole from you, it isn’t worth trying to get it back.” His entire build is around being impossible to pin down in combat, and then just utility to help the party as much as possible(prestidigitation, mage hand, silvery barbs, etc.). That combined with flight and solid charisma has already been pulling so much weight outside of combat so far since I’m the only caster in this quest, and I’m really looking forward to seeing how it does in combat.
"It's what my character would do" when doing something insanely stupid or mean to another party member. How about you roll up a character that wouldn't do that?
When we play with my friends and something like that happens we try to be objective like "if you do this you can't be a part of the group, I don't care if you are paying us or whatever", up to the point of straight killing them if needed. If they complain about that, then you have a player issue, not a character issue.
The multiple personas could work, but it would require combining many things with the DM, if it were on the table i usually play, the DM would roll the dice at certain moments to determine which persona was in control at the time.
Now THAT sounds cool. Leaving the switching of personas to a roll of the dice would probably be far more immersive and fun for RP - after all, if the character can’t control or predict which persona will take control, why should the player?
@@vee1267 we never tried it, but i can garantee you that if i wanted to play a character such as this, either i or the DM would suggest we do it like that, and we'd do it, if i had 3 personas for example, it would probably be by rolling a d6, with 1-2 corresponding to one persona, 3-4 to another... or, one or three personas would be by dice, and a last one would be triggered by something, whatever it is, either would be revealed by the DM when the time was right, or combined with the DM, since multiple personas are a result of a mental condition, be it psycholocal or supernatural if we're talking Vampire, DnD or Chtulhu, i know my DM and know this was how he would do it.
i did play that way long ago, either the dice or a certain event (like getting hit) would trigger hte personality switch, between certain number of a d100 would get a certain personality, it would vary between a coward, a good guy, a f*ck everything guy and a murderhobo, never landed on the murderhobo but i did run away from a fight because it was a small spiders.
Funny because you could just say your character had fantasy DiD and suddenly you get actual studies on how these personas could have been formed. Which could really help when trying to come up with a backstory that answers why your character has funny lil people in their head.
I actually created a split personality mage that was literally a mother and her 2 children trapped in the same body. Though this was in GURPS, which has mechanics for disadvantages. (Including split personality) If I tried to create this character in 5th Ed, I'd probably go wild magic sorcerer with a modified wild magic table to include personality shifts.
Tbf cavaliers are just tanks. The mounted stuff is just extra. Still you are right in that it's stupid to dislike a character concept when a whole archetype is built around it. It's like someone saying they hate characters that wield pikes because the don't fit in the same dungeons horses dont fit it.
1:36 I swear the way to fix this character concept is for both to want the same thing, have the same abilities, but have their personalities different enough for it to not to matter
It's funny how you mention "Main Character without consent", in one of the posts you read. I hate players that do that to their party without making sure everyone was okay with it (especially since 9 times out of 10, they aren't), but I had the reverse occur to me, or at least perceived it as such, in a group that I had joined. On session 0, We all entered the Discord call to discuss our characters and sort of acquaint ourselves with one another, since most of us were mutual friends with at least one person in the group, in one way or another. The chemistry between us, I felt, was pretty great. Until it came time to talk about our characters. In a completely homebrewed setting, One player had created a Goblin Cleric, who worshipped a Dwarven god. To keep it brief, the idea of the character, which I had helped them to write, was one who was raised by Dwarves and grew to love their culture, and was disgusted at the one they had been born to. Second player was, by mere coincidence, a Goblin, but the class was either Sorcerer or Druid? I don't actually recall, but I do remember the first player being rather disparaged at the idea of not being unique, since the original plan, according to the DM, was for everyone to play different races, but because Player Two was not part of a tribe, and was isolated, from what I remember, there wasn't really an issue between the two players-- they both actually seemed to like the creative spin each player had put on their racial background. Player Three, myself, was a Half-Orc Fighter. Without deeping too hard into my backstory, My characters mother was killed by his Father's tribe, and his father died trying to avenge his lover. I had put a lot of effort to make sure that my character would serve as a disciplined advisor, and a shield, because he knew the consequences of allowing emotion and tension to boil over. Player Four was... a Goblin Rogue. I do not recall getting much more of a backstory than joining the group because it viewed my character as a father figure. I already felt singled out as the only non-goblin in the party. It could have been a very interesting game, if I had stuck it out, and I regret it deeply, but I think what really pushed me over the edge to leave the game before session 1 was the fact that a player had outright said, during session 0, that their character would default to my judgement, as the strongest/biggest member of the party. It just made me really uncomfortable, because this would have been my first group outside of school. I think I told the DM about a week or so later that I would not be participating, though there is a lot more to the story than I can share without consulting the rest of the party about their thoughts on the matter. I know this'll get buried because your video is 3 months old, but I just wanted to share because I sometimes wonder what could have been, and because of my discomfort, I backed out before I could find out.
I love playing against stereotypes I will even pick sub optimal races to play into that. My favorite thing to do is actually work with the DM and leave holes in my back story for them to fill I will create a skeleton that fits everything else, but there will be one or two pieces of details I don't fill in this way I can often be surprised as a player for what direction the DM takes.
About the mounted thing, an easy solution would be to play a small rider with a medium mount like a lynx or a riding dog. Halfling cavaliers seem like a fun time
Sad no one has done this but in mythology, fairies used to ride corgi’s into battle. It helped that the corgi’s fur patterns looked like a saddle
@@starbird3939 I'm sure someone has. It's got a great inspiration. You can always keep it in the back pocket for your tables though, just in case the chance comes up.
Colby made a build like this time ago
In a previous campaign, our gnome rode an Irish Wolfhound. During a mounted combat an enemy attempted to dismount the gnome by attacking the dog. This didn't sit well with the party as each member risked the attack of opportunity for retribution. *insert Green Lantern getting punched by multiple dudes meme* The dog was fine.
Currently running a gnome riding a st. Bernard. He is a great time
I personally hate tropes like Joss Whedon writing where some characters that are incredibly annoying or stupid never seem to get punished for their action but SOMEHOW when you try to punish or reccomend another idea to them YOU get the blame instead despite what they do before is clearly dumb and
...................................And what?
@@Tribozomi think if he continued, we'd be here all day, and yes i'd hear their rant all day, i really like his rant.
What a tiresome rant.
So, women then.
So chaotic stupid energy mixed with plot armor and character favoritism, which in this case means the D.M. is the biggest problem here. People trying to be bugs bunny forget that in the episodes that he is supposed to win he is often minding his own business, and the guy got beaten by a tortoise in a race when he was being insufferable. What they often make is daffy duck, a person who is stupidly stubborn, and always expects things to go his way. If a D.M. feeds that problem by giving them what they want, the best solution would be to walk away, as no one has fun when a self important Daffy Duck is given power over the story.
My first game ended because a PC wanted his girlfriend to join. She wanted to play " the most beautiful elven ranger who always hits the target". Started a downward spiral that ended the game. I liked that game because the gm was good at putting us in situations that gave our PCs their time to shine
Fixed the typo
Ah so you all just let it happen then?
Yes.
that's actually (just about) possible to create without bending the rules, if you take gloom stalker and elven accuracy
Yeah personally i never would let people bring their GF to the table. Bringing your SO to the table leads to nothing but favoritism and infighting.
One of my party members in a previous game made a cavalier, with a specialty for mounted combat... problem was we were never able to keep our horses for very long... He found another solution though... my PC...the moon druid...
It actually worked out quite nicely. My favorite form was the dire wolf, which gets pack tactics and thus has advantage on all attacks if an ally is within 5 feet.. and the wolf's back is certainly within 5 feet. Still there were limits...he could not mount up once I turned into a giant elk inside a dungeon... not without slamming his head into the ceiling.
Lol, I've thought of a workaround. Dire Dachshund.
@@skycastrum5803"Modern problems require modern solutions"
Y'all haven't seen anything until the beastmaster ranger pulls out the giant owl mount
@@skycastrum5803 or dire corgi
Made a Cavalier in Pathfinder but he was Small and rode a Medium wolf to be able to fit in dungeons
Reminds me of my first character I ever made, a human rogue who had... loving parents that to his knowledge were still alive. a friendly young man who tried to be kind to everyone he met, he was only 'sneaky' because he had an intense desire for knowledge which led to him sneaking around people to look at books or artifacts that he wasn't allowed near. He was also a joker when it came to things, EX: when in a bar fight he picked up two tankards and said 'you wouldn't hit a guy with glasses would you?' then got decked.
I'm a way bigger fan of the more charismatic rogue over the typical edgy rogue. Had a human rogue character with a love for jokes and work play named Nikolai who had the nickname "Nickel Eye", he was a good one
Going to be playing a rogue assassin with the stereotypical tragic bad parents backstory but is a unintentional follower of Shar so she just tries to forget all the horrible stuff shes done and wants to be better. to escape her past she's taken on the face and persona (via the faceless background) of one of her previous targets who was a local hero. done right i can play a character whos done horrible things from being manipulated by a sadistic goddess and had her reputation destroyed but wants to reclaim her own fate. decent charisma so good at lying, but also good at persuading and intimidating. Gets angry easily but has to play the goody two shoes so she has to bite her tongue.
I *love* the Organization Florida Man one, that's fantastic
Council of Ricks, except with more "Hold mah beer!"
Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Gators
I love it too, although I can't seem to shake an odd sense of nostalgia, almost like I've heard of it before...
It's a PREFECT plot for an Unknown Armies campaign.
Every Villain in my campaigns has a 1 per day "power word: silence" in case someone tries to interrupt their monolouge.
Same
For me it’s people who think they can pull of a character that everyone is supposed to hate and then later come to love. It’s good in concept but rarely can one pull it off without just making session not fun or seem like someone who just wants to hog the spotlight.
my chaotic cleric asking the dm if i could turn villagers into ghouls
I tried that once. Not sure if the issue was really mine though. Started off snobbish wizard who's proud of his ability to manipulate reality. Classic neat freak, thinks throwing fire is "the lowest form of magic", that sort of thing. Planned to have him mellow out rather quickly but the other players were never interested in looking past their first impression. I even had him try to reach out but they just gave him the cold shoulder. Should've given him to the dm and been like "Here. They hate him that much? Make him their enemy."
To defend the Multiple Personas one a bit It CAN be done correctly, and enjoyably. for everyone.
I had a player who was possessed by basically a demoness. Swapping permitted them to switch both bodies, sheets, and personality, (always the three together, so you knew who you were facing at all times.)
And they both were decent people.
The demoness was completly unhinged with enemies, that she basically loved to torture during/outside the fights, but she was chill, and even cute the rest of the time.
After a while (since she appeared mid campain to spice up a character that was originaly quite bland) the dude who was possesed by her became super protective of her and she kind of became his adoptive little sister.
He was a fighter and she a mage that fired needles. an incredible duo both for RP and fights, and they let plenty of space for everyone.
The characters became a recuring Duo in several other campains were they would often do cameos, and were loved by the whole table.
However, they had the same HP and Mana/spellslots for both, so there was never any possible cheese with them.
There is only one trope i hate that isnt on the list of things you shouldnt do, and thats the character who doesn't interact with the rest of the party. Play your character in anytype of appropriate way you like, but please interact with the party.
Shy, Loner, Hardass, give me something more than "They just look at you for a moment then leaves." You dont even have to interact with me, but just someone in the party. Other than that i can deal with most of the tropes people complain about in and out of character but i cant deal with someone who doesnt interact. I have a mute friend i played with and they interacted by typing it out or doing sign language and we took it as the character speaking telepathically.
One of my best friends plays a “lone wolf” tiefling paladin, former noble turned hardened criminal and zhentarim agent. Everything about him gives the energy of someone who wouldn’t want to work with the party. However, his big secret is that he’s actually a huge softie who loves his friends and would lay down his life to protect us. He has once already and we keep telling him not to do it again and he refuses to listen. We love him so much.
Surprised the "no fun allowed" paladin isn't mentioned. I intentionally went with a neutral good paladin rather than lawful good and spun my backstory to compliment my naive attitude so I wouldn't step on other players' actions.
It's extremely difficult to play any Lawful Good character, especially with new players who are still going to mostly be in their murderhobo phase.
Eeeeeeeeh Lawful good isn't meant to be "Ultra strict towards everyone".
A good paladin is stricter towards himself than anyone else. Lawful good is not lawful, and it's not good. It's more than the sum of its parts. No fun allowed is LN.
Lawful Good - for a paladin in particular - is someone who is good - and holds themselves to the standard of a knight of justice, neither overbearing (punishment must fit the crime), nor overly lax (You won't let the group get away with blatant criminal acts) - but maintaining a sense of priorities. Instead of refusing to work with people, you do what's needed to stop the greater evil at the moment, then in private you'll tell them what you think they did wrong... Because there's a method to justice. Naturally that doesn't apply when they start killing children - but at that point they're being problem players-
Lastly, obviously. A lawful good paladin is a hero in the truest sense of the word. You don't expect anyone to be perfect or to follow your oath. Your oath was yours to take and they haven't sworn it. You can chastise people for common sense morality... But well if the rogue lies... Not like he swore the oath of devotion that forbids it. He *was* trying to help the hostage situation so maybe you'll just stay quiet... Maybe sulk a little but yanno
I'm currently playing a LG character who happens to be an assassin. Technically he is an "scout and archer who had as misspent youth" and I flavour his sneak attack like Legolas skills (he is a wood elf noble). I got asked why he was always so bloodthirsty. My response. Every time he has killed its been a violent law breaker or monster. He isn't a murdohobo but if he knows a fight will happen he is going to strike first from the shadows for sure.
LG has a bad reputation but honestly I find it quite fun. Especially in 5e where you can pick your own code for the lawful part. Ie he follows the Wood Elf code rather than the law of the human lands.
@@Oznerock I've got a religious fighter character who does exactly this. He holds himself to a set of creeds that he holds himself to, but he doesn't fight the mostly good people he surrounds himself with just because they don't hold the same values as he does, and even when they do have issues that he disagrees with, he's more then forgiving as long as there was actual purpose to it. One of my particular favorite moments was him chastising a particularly holier-than-thou member of his order which basically was "a soft touch often works better then an steel blade". Kindness and forgiveness can bring more good then merely slaying evil.
Such paladins can actully ber very finny, i had lawfull good and even lawfull netral burocratic paladins in party, and they brought more fun than druid and bard combined.
I've actually seen an instance of somebody who always plays basically the same character done really well. This guy I played with was always a monster hunter (usually a vampire hunter but sometimes it changed), and despite this all his characters were really unique, and the thing tying them together was that they were all related. He went in depth with it to, he made a whole family tree detailing their lineage and how they ended up in various magical worlds when they started in a grounded setting. The dedication alone made it work
Those “lone wolf” characters that refuse to work with the party.
It is ok to have an occassional 1 on 1 rp time, but these guys just want to play 1
Player dnd and treat the others like NPC’s.
Go play BG3 or Skyrim if you want a solo game
I played a sort of lone wolf character and just played them as someone who just prefers to keep to themselves but will still work in a team. Overall became the quiet one of the group. Next campaign, someone played a similar character who became the butt of many jokes but said character still overall helped the group out and really opened up as the campaign went on.
I have a type of “lone wolf” character. The party actually enjoyed them because they understood that their goals aligned and were starting to get her out of her comfort zone. I did have notes for the character on when they would shut down. Typically it was when she was forced to deal with emotional situations or when someone was forcing her to do something she genuinely was extremely uncomfortable with. Other players picked up and realized that if they casually talked with her, she would bring things up on her own. Or if they showed her “hey doing x, y, and z may suck but this is the outcomes for doing it” in a more logical sense instead of emotional driven, she was much more willing to take on said roles without a fight.
But with Lone Wolf and edgy characters, the goal to make them work is to actually give them a reason as to why they would work with a party if they were so used to doing things by themselves or with very few people.
I don't mind a lone wolf, if they understand that this is a "team game" first and foremost. They can have their moments of - "Hey, I'll be back, trust me.." - and be all epic and cool, but don't steal the thunder 24/7.
Even BG3 punishes you for lone wolfing lol
I found that's basically how the DnD game I'm currently in was working when 1 player was there. His character had a dagger that was possessed by a demon that would talk to him and convince him to commit violent unalivings. The sessions were usually split 50/50 between his solo RP with the DM and the rest of the game. The group finally caught on to his dagger being evil and dealt with it, to which he ragequit.
A personal fun theme of mine that i ran was a strength focused rogue. Put my expertise in Athletics and took the tavern brawler feat.
His backstory was that he was the bouncer for the theives guild base, and got demoted when he let an undercover officer in due to low wisdom and intelligence stats. Went to work as an adventure where he could put his fists to use
That’s a pretty good one. I like it.
@venerablebrothergoriate5844 thanks haha. Admittedly at the time I wanted to play a character a little similar in personality to Gaston from beauty and the beast. Was a one shot so it was fine, but could have gotten annoying later on.
@@pyrosfyre789 I’ll usually go for a Warforged Juggernaut with a personality not unlike HK-47 from Star Wars KOTOR. It’s fun, especially when the DM plays along and all the NPC’s start getting nervous around me. 😂
Rogues are just great canvases for any character that's particularly talented at something that isn't "swinging giant hunks of metal" or "wielding the elemental tapestry of the universe." Gotta love that expertise. Wish bards were the same, but they're too closely tied to the concept of performance.
To be fair in Dragon Age Origins (and most DA games) it's smarter to just play a Warrior with Rogue-Like abilities lol.
I am guilty of something like this. My group started a new campaign, an 'ancient rome with D&D races' kind of thing. I sadly missed the first month due to work, but I had heard from the other players that all they were doing is fighting undead and no actual greek/roman monsters at all, just some new chaos god disrupting everything. So when I finally made it to the table I unveiled 'Fantiago Rompedor De Los Muertos' (Breaker of the dead) who was a half-orc spanish Luchador Monk in a bull mask and a bodysuit. The DM raised a brow to that and he asked why I was a luchador instead of a more 'Roman/Greek' style character, and I simply stated 'From what I heard, there were no Roman/Greek monsters anyway, so I would fit right in. He just sighed and let it happen. He took the hint, and soon the rest of the group and I were happily fighting minotaurs, harpies and the like, went into the past and killed/ate the first/last ever deer, and ended with an epic battle against the god of chaos.
Recently made and am test running an "insufferably lawful good" character. He was meant to be a paladin but one of my party mates is running his first campaign and wanted to paladin so i stepped aside and worked his backstory a bit to let him be the paladin. The rework actually helped lean in to how insufferable my guy is. The guy he was going to take his vows for failed to match up to his lofty ideals so he leaned in his natural magical talent and became a wizard and his goal for the adventure is to find a pure god worthy of his worship.
Character could easily ruin a campaign because hes 100% a no fun allowed style character but i sat each one of my mates aside and told them what my plans for the character were and asked how much hamming it up they were ok with. Every one of them told me to go all out so i have been. We're two sessions in and as far as RP goes every single character hates his guts, but out of character every one is im stitches when his cringey ass gets going. Hes 100% dying to a fellow party member before we hit level 5 because hes umbearable but everyone outside of it spends half the session laughing at him.
Terrible character tropes have their place, its usually the moron behind the character sheet thats making it a bad time for everyone else.
6:26 I feel as though I did this right in a CoS campaign. My second character, near the end of the campaign, was a Shadar Kai Hexblade 4 arcane archer 5. Being a Shadar Kai, they knew of the Raven Queen, and being a Hexblade warlock, they served the Raven Queen.
The Raven Queen is the goddess of death. Her anathemas are basically treat life and death as a natural cycle of life, and do NOT disrupt it. Aka revival/necromancy magic.
In the final fight with Strahd, my character was grappled by Strahd and got a natural one on their first death save. Had Strahd killed me, he would have raised me as undead. My friend healed me, and my bow being elsewhere, I grabbed Strahd's sword, and coup de grâce'd himself, lobbing off his own head so Strahd couldn't turn him into a zombie. It is absolutely something my character would do, and it made for an awesome story.
THAT'S SO COOL
My friends suffered trying to deal with this trope for years: the Selfish Edgelord who uses their backstory as an excuse.
Someone who had a fucked up childhood, usually with one or both scumbag parent(s). If one parent wasn't scummy, they were abused and/or murdered. Insert living as a humanoid lab rat/slave/toy.
Goes on and on about how much they've suffered, and thinks they can commit as much crime and evil as they want, because "it's not nearly as bad as what I had to go through".
Doesn't acknowledge at all how they've become a scumbag themselves, and then gets pissy when guards maul them, or when the other PCs call them out.
One iteration was hated so much that the gods themselves promised to obliterate the edgelord's soul at every possible corner. Literally had the God of Death breathing down his neck as he was written out of play.
Reading their horror stories, I've banned that trope from my table.
I had an interesting thought on the multiple personalities idea:
Play an eldritch knight. One personality thinks they're a fighter, the other thinks they're a wizard. Neither personality knows about or remembers the actions of the other. The character would become more powerful when they go through growth and both personalities reconcile, so then they start using both magic and weapons in tandem.
Important: both personalities are friendly toward the rest of the party!
I am currently playing a charater that has two different personalities and sets abilityscores etc. Fighter and barbarian. However whilst both are fine withthe party they initially did not like eachother until they realised neither of them were the original character.
Yo, the Florida man character concept just sounded like a D&D plot of Rick and Morty.
The OP of that bit here and, I mean it might've been? I'm not too familiar with Rick and Morty so I couldn't say for sure but as could be seen with the rest of my babble, my table quite likes to reference stuff and that player is no exception.
Though his first character didn't start out very 'Florida Man' so much as he developed that over time; originally his 'very distressed boxer/part time mechanic from our world Florida isekaied in just his boxers' backstory was actually played pretty damn seriously (mostly in terms of 'this guy has literally nothing here and joined the party in desperation' and 'almost killed himself with his own magic/skills multiple times early on because he had an established flaw of not having a clue of what he was doing until he got to practice with it' kinda ways though there was a little 'hope my grandpa and dog are still doing ok' moments) but well, eventually his player playing off every failed wis and cha roll for comedy, the character's habit of going full '' as a coping mechanism/our amusement and us realizing he was from Florida kind of made the meme write itself.
Then his player decided to officially lean into the madness, specked into Echo Knight on top of his Defender Artificer so his guy could 'accidentally' summon AU versions of himself to help him (in universe making us realize that that was probably how he got pulled into the setting) and welp, many games later and with the help of the DM, that's how we eventually got The Organization... Which was almost certainly a Kingdom Hearts Organization 13 parody now that I think about. XD
(Sorry for babbling, I just have a lot of nostalgia for the 1st Florida man since his character and my very first character, a bright yellow cockatiel aarakocra Way of Mercy monk, were two thirds of a 'best buddies beating up enemies with their fists' trio -3rd was a bright purple kobold Sun Soul monk/WM barb- and I can't resist gushing about them whenever I'm given the chance
My first ever time playing dnd was as the dm. Me and the group decided that each of us should make up a story in our heads and dm that, and once the story is complete, another person would dm their story. I started off as the 1st dm. There wasn't a lot of time for world-building, so I decided to just kick things off with the characters getting news of mysterious occurances in a remote settlement, which would lead to horror-fantasy encounters which seerved as the base for the world-building later on. One of the players had made a dark-elf character and a few sessions in the campaign my brain did a 360 spin after hearing the character talk about Azura the tribunal etc (for everyone that doesn't know, Azura and the resst are based on Elder Scroll lore aka a video game). Man I was so disappointed, cause the premise that each of us would add to the universe together and build a unique world with our stories, was just turned into "fuck it - let's make fantasy soup. I add Elder Scrolls lore as canon to this world". I regret not speaking out regarding it or putting down consequences as the dm (aka every time the dark elf character mentioned Azura or whatever, the locals treating them like a madman, Azura's miracles not working etc).
The mounted mounty works in dnd if your race size is small because youu can take your mounts in dungeons like koblds riding mastiffs.
For anyone curious, you can actually play a "mounted mounty" and still effectively dungeon delve. I recommend a cavalier halfing riding a giant badger
I'm a big fan of that last type of player, who makes a well designed character with defined flaws and mortal weaknesses but is very likeable. When they have that tragic death it can incite intense feelings for everyone involved. Tragedy and loss have inspired some of the most beautiful creations, and you have to admit nothing tugs on the heartstrings more than a dramatic death.
I've definitely been one of those annoying players before. My first 5e character was an attempt at what I thought was realistic. They were an ordinary citizen who got tricked into accepting a boon from an otherworldly source, becoming a warlock. They wanted nothing more than to return to the shire and quit the adventuring business. I thought it would be a cool idea to have this character deal with the temptation of power through their pact, using evil for good, and seeing where the campaign takes me in terms of character development. MFW i realized neither the party or the DM were big roleplayers and I was too dumb to realize that switching tack was probably the better option. No one wanted to deal with a reluctant adventurer or deal with the tyranny of realism - they just wanted to suplex dragons and act as themselves.
Meh, don't think anyone did anything wrong there. Just an unfortunate clash of expectations for the game.
That said, my first attempts at D&D were with Adventure's League. I quit pretty early on because I've zero interest in a TTRPG light on RP. Would rather just play videogames.
It's always a good idea to make sure right off the bat whether a campaign is going to be RP focused or combat focused or somewhere in the middle.
3 character Types I dont like:
- The super cute murder hobo. The player chooses a tiny cute race (like a halfling) pretends to be a barbie doll or something but is secretly the most lethal warrior in the group.
- The City Phobic woodsman. Usually a barbarian, ranger or druid but played in such a way that they refuse to enter a city.
- The annoying musician. Your typical Bard or Rockerboy that expects just because he starts playing in the center of town that everyone is gonna come running to watch. He expects every building should now be empty, everyone has donated their life savings and their town virgins.
Agreed that is the execution rather than the trope itself what can make or break a character, for example:
Our group's Rogue is a kleptomaniac...but only with food, having almost died from starvation in their backstory now they have a BIG issue with anyone leaving leftover food and will gladly put anything that's tasty and people would let "go to waste" otherwise into his bag of holding.
P.S: Yes he has a Bag of Holding, No he doesn't uses it for anything other than storing food (The Wizard's bag of Holding is where importan stuff goes to avoid the magic mcguffing getting sticky.)
Definitely agree on multiple/split personality characters, they usually end up being disruptive spotlight hogs. The "everyone look at me" personality always seems to turn up when the other party members are having a moment to shine...
I'd also add the "contrarian" character. The player who always wants to do exactly what they're told not to do. You know the one, the player who insists on playing that one race the GM banned, the one who absolutely has to be a Jedi in a Star Wars game when the GM asks for no Force users, the one who will make a barbarian in a magic academy setting, basically the one who has to always be the "odd one out" in any group or setting, especially if the GM imposed any rules/limitations on character creation at the start of the campaign.
And finally, the "joke" character in a setting that doesn't fit. This applies both to characters who are based off a joke or meme, and characters who have to make everything a joke, no matter how serious the setting or the rest of the group is.
for the split/multiple personality char it depends on how they're played. i had a friend play as one and it was fun and he wasn't abusing it in everyway.
It really doesn’t get better than playing thragg the half-orc “wizard” who’s only spell is “shatter” that he casts from his oddly tree trunk-shaped “wand”
One way to do a warlock in a tech-sci-fi setting is to make the Patron an A.I.
Most of his "Spells" are tech gadgets supplied by the A.I.'s cult. The best part? The Ai can communicate with The WLK by nural-implant.
Add powerfull alien/other dimension beings, synbiotic parasite (tech or organic), shady organisation/cult with tech/drug thatgive super powers that only leader/s can make.
You need very grounded seting to make warlock invalid and he would be not only one.
Some of these feel like a partial GM issue more then a player-only issue. Its partially their job to curate the characters to be able to prevent disruptive play. Like, all these ones needed was a "hey, this character you brought in doesn't seem to fit the campaign, would you perhaps want to try with a different concept?" And should they not, then perhaps they should sit this one out and wait for a game that more suits the characters they want to play.
Like, I'm all for removing problem players, but the best time to reduce issues related to character build or personality is before the beginning of the game, where you settle expectations. The first one in particular screams "I don't actually look at the sheets or characters before accepting them", and thus is easily solved by doing so and using logic like "the other players are all playing elves, perhaps I should point this out to the player who wants to play a character that hates elves for whatever reason".
Or the Meneagerie, where you can see that the PC is grabbing every summon spell under the sun. Perhaps you could realize that they're looking to being a massive summoner and talking to them about how many creatures you're feeling okay with running to keep combat running smooth.
Or the "mounted mounty". If they made a mounted character and you primarily have indoor and dungeon-type encounters in mind for the game, why didn't you point out this problem before Session 1 so that they can adjust, or step away themselves once they realize they can't drag their horse into Moria so that the Cavalier can do things?
8:15 immediately fits what I'm seeing. GM saw an issue with the character concept in context of the setting, didn't immediately treat the player as if he's wanting to be the "i'm special and unique and will bully the setting into accepting it" character, and they work on something that was more appropriate for the story the GM was trying to tell.
If character build issues actually ended up being an issue, *why did you let them bring it to the table anyway?*
Some of these are 100% just disruptive players, like the edgy witch girl or the "moment-chaser", but that's a player issue, and can only be discovered through play.
Other note: "Hey, subverting stereotypes good!" No, your Ace bard isn't inherently interesting just because she's not interested in sex. They become intersting when they have something inherent within themselves that is interesting other then "look, my character isn't like the other bards".
You also don't need mechanical penalties to play character flaws. If you wrote into your backstory that your character is a recovering drug addict, I shouldn't need to bully you through Con saves into fighting the urges, since you are clearly interested in playing out that story *considering that you wrote it* and should be willing to "take the bait" as it were.
7:35 Resisting those temptations should be a WISDOM check, not a CONSTITUTION one.
I had a bard that used the stereotypical bard ad his "on stage" persona but off stage he resented the hell that he had to act that way. Kept sending the groupies to the paladin to hook him up lol
6:45 So random story. When One Punch Man was new a player joined at a fairly high level and wanted to play Saitama but fantasy. I had never seen the show but the character description sounded like it could be a fun monk backstory. So I designed a magic item for him which was a Glove of Striking so he could do extra big punches with it.
But the funny part was, in all the reference images I got for the character, only one hand was visible. And because of his name, for some reason I thought he only had one glove. So the magic item was literally one red glove.
The only concepts that really bother me are the ones that a player can't actually commit to. Don't play a dumb or unwise character unless you are willing to hurt yourself, don't play a brilliant tactician if you don't want to bother reading and understanding the base rules of 5e and remembering your allies capabilities, don't play a healing and tender care cleric if your only going to take healing word and forgo the other healing spells because they aren't "optimal". Etc, etc. If you like the aesthetic of a character concept but not the mechanics just choose a different but related concept that allows you to do what you want (ex: a cleric that started with a healing focus but wants to broaden their understanding of their deity through the spells it grants them).
I have been addicted to videos like this or other "horror stories". I've only ever played dnd/ttrpg's with friends, and everyone is pretty casual about it. So hearing all this feels like looking into another world.
I must admit I'm a bit of a Menagerie, though the key to doing those types of things right is to make the turn order more concise through various rulings. For example small minions could share a singular turn in Initiative, or you could just focus on summoning 1-2 large minions so they don't effect turn order as much, or just act as extensions of yourself if they go after you or share a turn with you.
Personally, I'd have to say that the worst would be a party that outright refuses to work together, all because folks of certain races are supposedly evil or because dwarves are supposed to hate elves, or because members of certain races are not native to the setting.
Now, give me an orc that's trying to go, "Just because orc raiders destroyed your home, doesn't mean that all orcs are evil" or a dwarf that's willing to put aside his dislike in order to work with the elf, and maybe the giff is just someone trying to locate the means to head to their home, and the party as a whole decides to work together.
I love bards and to this day have never played a horny one. I've been a secret assassin that uses his music to get into venues, a dancer very into perfecting his art, and even a collector of stories in a quest to uncover history and turn it into educational songs.
It's not hard and wayyyy more fun IMO.
"BBEG killed my parents in my backstory"
I like this if it happens in the campaign. Give the player a chance to actually feel the hatred they're supposed to be playing. Whenever it's in the backstory with characters that, for all purposes, haven't actually existed, it just falls flat. Half the time, they forget it happened. Even if it's session 1, make it part of the game.
The Elder Scrolls Kleptomaniac: Will try to steal everything that's not nailed down, everything that's nailed down, the nails, silverware, shiny pebbles, and clothing that PCs/NPCs are actually wearing at the time.
The walking copyright infringement, who is always played by the Edge lord.
That last guy with the fatal flaws definitely enjoyed Breaking Bad.
hmmmmmm....
The one for me is we will call The Ousider - The character that is so out there, so detached from the game concept/genre that they don't fit in and everything becomes about explaining things to them. Once had someone want to play a Predator in a Star Trek game and I did have to explain eating with a form to them. Things that no matter who hard you try the story always will come back to them.
2:30 I played a Mounted Mounty once. He was a halfling paladin riding a St. Bernard. D&D 3.5 had "riding dogs" specifically for small characters to ride, and since said riding dogs are Medium-sized creatures, they can easily function in a dungeon.
I Have a split character in a star wars campaign (a glitching droid). It's interesting as he has no additional benefits or skills and will in fact lock off weapons and abilities dependent on his personality at the time, I roll for what personality is playing but its a D4 role to myself and that's what the dice said, it's what I play. It's lead to some interesting times when I've had to play a healer in a fight instead of security, an engineer in a drug trade or security in a town setting. the other players have found they can force a reroll if they twat me over the head but it doesn't grantee the result they want. I originally made this character to increase the challenge of the campaign for me without inflating the challenge for first time players, I was hobbling myself so I would have fun without harming their play and I NEVER did a "psycho mode that needs to be restrained!"
Most hated character concepts:
1. The "LOL-Random I'm sooo kooky, look at all of my belts! You're heading to see the town mayor? I'm gonna blow him up with a million bombs because it's funny. Have I mentioned my fishnet stockings in the last 30 seconds?"
2. "My trauma *is* my character"
or the worse variant;
"The person I fetishize, and *their* trauma, is my character."
1:38
Don’t be mistaken, dual personalities/split personalities can be good if you play it out well, a character in a campaign of mine had multiple personalities as a result of their patron shattering their mind upon coming into their life. It’s less like “ohhh I get to swap characters and skills based on the scenario” but more exactly of a personality switch that was flicked on. Think of V and Johnny from cyberpunk. Appearing in your peripheral vision, berating you, and the points in time when that persona takes over are few and far between story moments that are planned by the DM and PC beforehand. I absolutely loved seeing that roleplay and I actually used their character as inspiration for my BBEG in my next campaign.
Tldr multiple personalities can be cool, just they have to be played really well and shouldn’t give the player bonuses without drawbacks.
People playing an idealised version of themself never ends well, especially in LARP. The character bleed is always a problem. And yes I did that with my first LARP character and learned the hard way.
Easy solution to the Menagerie:
- Large groups of the same beings get combined into a "swarm" monster that basically counts as all those beings together.
Due to being a large group they are easy to target, but have a higher AC then the original monster due to simply being "more", and its health is much higher too.
It can't attack all at once as its a huge mass of the same beings, so instead they get multi-attack (so if you have like 20 monsters, you still only get 3 attacks minimum per turn with that)
- If you have a large variation of beings, spread out the control of those monsters for the party, so everyone gets to play instead of just the Menagerie player.
The mounted Mounty honestly let them play that. There is a fighter subclass now called the cavalier. I mean specializing in mounted combat comes with its own challenges. There are multiple spells that can cause difficult terrain. One of my favorites the third level spell sleet storm makes the ground icy and has a chance of knocking you prone and breaking concentration. You wouldn't be the one making the dex save it would be your mount. Then you'd have to roll an athletics check or be thrown off of it.
Not to mention crushing damage if your mount were to fall on top of you.
The most agreagous character i made was homicidal to goblin kind. And would be all to happy to go on goblin slaying missions even at lvl 15. Became a bargaining chip to get the evil mage to do good things willingly.
did you base that on goblin slayer?
@@unnameduser5647 no. It was before gobline slayer. I was making a CE character, and needed something that fit but wouldnt disrupt the party. I was pretty happy to see the party use her vice to get their way.
egregious*
A half vampire, half dragon, half werewolf, half demon, halfling. Sorry, but I just couldn’t accept the math of it.
Also aasimar.
I was the “guy with a bunch of pets”. Though they weren’t really pets but rather a growing list of NPC allies, family members, and extended family.
It started with a horse my character named Cycloneous. Then he met an NPC named Jessica, they started dating and he moved in with her. He then bought a hunting dog which he named Bjornhard. And later he hired and then became friends with a halfling thief and mapmaker named Pheleous, who became “Uncle Pheleous” when my character had a child with Jessica. Then later on I picked up two former cultists from the Cult Of The Reptile God adventure module, two clerics, Misha and I think the other was named Alexis. Anyways Misha became my character’s secretary once he started running a crime syndicate out of a hideout he had built by some kobolds and dwarves in the city sewers. And Alexis was kind of just there. Oh and he bought his wife a horse too so we each had our own horse and a carriage for personal use. Pheleous was our chauffeur as a cover for why I had originally hired him.
Man when I play Diablo 2 - especially back when it was new - I was the dork with 99 skeletons, 99 mages, 50 revives and a bad ass bitchin fire golem.
Yeah, I can see that from the wall of text about your "extended family" :D
i wouldn't be a cleric.
@@mishagaming1075 This was Misha Devi who is apparently an iconic character from the Cult Of The Reptile God module that takes place in the town of Orlane.
Long story short she was one of the main cultists and so my party and more specifically my character captured her pretty early on after she failed to stage an ambush against us. Over the period of the adventure my character worked very closely with her, showing his guile in figuring out which cultist she trusted most outside of Alexis and then “accidentally” freeing them for her under the guise that my character was going to join the cult. So I followed the freed cultist to a safehouse and then slowly but surely captured every brainwashed cultist in the city one by one until all that was left was finding the temple in the swamp.
Essentially I spent most of the adventure flexing on her. After we killed the naga I basically told her “I can either leave you here and the townsfolk will probably kill you for your crimes, or you can come back to the capital and work for me.” She obviously chose the option that didn’t get her killed and eventually we became good friends since I was providing her housing, a job, and a new start in a new city.
And that’s when I revealed that she was working for a mob boss. She was surprisingly chill with that.
@@VidelxSpopovichWow, what a lore bomb.
I was a little disapproving of the mounted combatant objection. I am currently in a campaign playing a cavalier. A dullahan actually. First time experiencing playing an undead too. As a dullahan I have lore reasons for not wanting to be without a mount. It's a staple of the character. So far I've found: The type of setting is what limits a cavalier's effectiveness for mounted combat. If you're in a tight cave fighting some kobolds, your dragonnel mount probably won't be effective.
On the flip side I would say it's perfectly reasonable to bemoan a DM who constantly forces a cavalier into situations where their mount is incapable of following. Especially for important boss fights.
Cavalier is too nuanced of a balance and setting issue to completely place the burden of responsibility on the player when things turn problematic. A DM has to realize who they're running the game for. If a player has a requirement that needs to be met, it's in good faith to try to meet it within reason. Introduce options for the players which gives them opportunities to use the class features that they invested in.
I played a guy with MPD on one occasion. I wasn't aware that it was such a hated trope. Although my guy was on the lower end of the "abusing multiple personalities for benefits" spectrum. His three personalities just shifted around his mental stats (Int, Wis and Cha) and gave him a different favoured weapon for each personality. He remained a fighter in every personality, (so no "Today I am a Wizard!" shenanigans) and rolled a D3 to see which personality was "out" after every long rest.
I just recently had the pleasure of DMing a short campaign with one of those "Split personality characters", but I trusted the player who had the idea so i gave it a go. And boy I was not disappointed. The character was well written and played, despite the concept having so many opportunities to fail miserably. Goes to show, almost any idea can be made to work if someone knows what they're doing
The walking veto isn't inherently bad. It's the player's responsibility to either somewhat go with the party or realize that there's no way the character will work with everyone and roll up something new. If the DM doesn't want to deal with it, then they should be the one doing the vetoing.
The menagerie: more of the DM's fault. The moment a player wants to do it, DM should either veto or start putting down the restrictions that would make it acceptable. Don't even bother arguing from a realism standpoint. Just let the player know that sort of thing has a good chance of making combat encounters exponentially longer and makes balancing things a pain.
Subvert Stereotypes: This is just as annoying if the "subverted stereotype" is the personality. Don't try to "subvert” when making the character. Just ignore them instead. Also, it's weird that "a rogue who isn't a kleptomaniac" is a subversion. There are so many types of rogues it's stupid. Even if sticking to "crime," just look at all the kinds of crime that doesn't consist of stealing random shinies.
The guy making his characters lovable, giving them a fatal flaw almost guaranteeing some tragic fate, and then angling towards it when tired of playing the character is hilarious. More power to his maudlin ways.
OP of the fatal flaw/long rambley end section and I just want to clarify something I don't think my comment in video made quite as clear as I was hoping:
The guy I mentioned tries to build up his characters dying of their fatal flaws from the moment he introduces them and actively grows bored of them the second it they fail to perish to their intended fate (to the point he tried to convince us all to let him offscreen kill a much beloved character we'd spent a whole campaign finale saving, right after she'd already peacefully retired offscreen with her love interest, who was another player's retiring PC and had very much earned her happy ending).
Think of it as the very rare inverse of the 'players have to accept PC death is a possible outcome' issue.
If it was just him getting bored of the character any old time or his love for angst I wouldn't have even mentioned him since he's honestly an amazing player, acts as DM catnip for the entire server and did actually back off when he realized his love of angst was starting to push too far, but like, he's why that Discord now has a 'Accept that your PC's survival is a possible outcome of RPing with other people' rule and helped all of us learn how killing one's own PC post retirement could be something of a dick move to other players (especially if you were the one that encouraged the DM to use your character's doom vs salvation drama as the central plot stakes for the arc's finale and literally every other player's crowning moment of awesome was wrapped up in your PC's survival XD).
So yeah. Absolutely great guy but no. No more power to his maudlin ways! He's already got exactly enough to balance out the rest of the entire Discord being a bunch of happy ending inclined saps as it is, and no doubt he'd get bored if his angst plots didn't have a failure outcome~ XDDD
@@FaisLittleWhiteRaven Lol, thanks for going into it further. I still find it hilarious, but totally get the dick move aspect of it.
I’m far more used to the other end where people see a character too much as a self-insert. Not that you can’t do it, but it’s a personal pet peeve due to the problems it can cause (such as conflicts or death in-game causing issues irl).
Anyways, sounds like a great guy and glad you’ve all sorted things out so well.
We have a fighter in the party who just has a bad case of Goku syndrome. They fight literally everything and HAVE to do it RIGHT NOW even when it makes far more sense to wait literally one hour in game so that I, the cleric, can finish my spell prep. Then they have the nerve to go "Well you should've come in to heal us" when I was openly saying "I don't have any more spell slots."
Worst part? Fighter's so hard to kill that he just never learns a lesson. I'm starting to seriously debate just *not* healing him anymore till he gets his act together.
"I am [previous character's name] twin, here to avenge their death!"
*also a carbon-copy of said previous character
🙄
When a player wants to be some random nondiscript thing for no reason then to be unquie in the setting despite the fact most of the setting would kill them on sight because they look like a mindflayer abomination
1:15 in my last campaign we actually had a menagerie of sorts, there was a goblin we adopted at the beginning of the game, a magic ox that was very eloquent when spoken to and my character's werebear girlfriend. Our dm allowed us to have one active at a time while the others rested in this magic painting that worked as an ever-expanding storage area we found very early on.
Edit: grammar error
I think any character that adamantly sticks to whatever arbitrary alignment they're given at character creation is insufferable a lot of the times. It's definitely more noticeable in parties where you have the lawful good or chaotic evil characters who constantly clash with the rest of the party and the player in question uses "Well it's his alignment" as an excuse for him refusing to work with the party.
If a person was so terribly unsuited to be in the party because of their alignment the most realistic thing would be that they'd fuck off already. Either they'd be kicked out or they'd realize that the party is getting in the way of whatever ViRtUAllY RiGHtGeOUs or DaStARdLy EvIL thing they're trying to do. And on the player side if they can't realize when a character is making it less fun for the others despite outcries against it then a serious discussion needs to be had with that player.
For how to avoid this remember that you're SUPPOSED to be playing a PERSON. Not a robot with set coding. People are people because we're not black and white. People have constantly changing feelings and desires. When friends, family, innocents, etc are at risk people are willing to bend their knee. In DnD you're in a party setting and party members are supposed to care about each other at least to a certain extent. Don't make decisions that actively go against the party without at least getting the go ahead from the rest of the players. That's what I do even as a DM sometimes. It's important that when you're about to make a decision or do something that might upset the party or cause an argument that you're transparent about what you're doing and the fact that you want to do it. If you have a good party who is working with you it won't even break the RP and they'll appreciate it later when their time to do the same comes.
The worst is by far is a character that isn't motivated to go adventuring. A close second is the lone wolf that doesn't want to work with the party.
Hate the evil priest trope. I understand some may not be faithful or have problems with irl religion but for Christ sake (he he) not everyone who believes in a higher power has to illogically evil. DM d a game where I had a priest in a village besieged by an evil god. The players thought he was the one summoning it and they tried a thousand methods to find out his “evil” plan, but all said and done he was the only thing keeping the villagers alive.
Also it’s always Christian based, I want to see an evil Bhuddist or Rabi or something not just “Pope bad”
For me it is more of the players that can't differentiate between the game and real life. Like the characters have to be best friends and can't argue because the players are good friends irl. Basically if your character isn't like you irl, they get upset. But had one that was also the "can I make this my pet?" or "Can I ride that now?"
Chaotic characters can actually be played without annoying the party. I once played a psychopathic bard in a homebrew cypher system Witcher setting. Bards don't have magic like in 5e, and are really only good at social skills and a few suave fighting moves.
My character had a ton of social abilities (Essentially Command and Suggestion, but non-magic), and his whole thing was he was excellent at tricking people. He loved money and saved his own skin alot. And he often pushed the party to do things that would profit them, or him, even at the expense of others.
But despite all this, he was never uncontrollably chaotic, because *the survival of the party was paramount to him*
If the party died, so did he. And I think thats one of the most important things a person should somehow include in their character if they are making an evil or chaotic character.
Anything with a higher level backstory at level 1
I heard from a friend that that happens in baldurs gate 3 lol
I hate when a character’s backstory has little to no parts of their backstory that link them to the world. Whenever I want to make a character, I always see if I can have a 1 on 1 with the DM to figure out a logical origin for my character from within that world. Usually it boils down to them being a secret project made by dwarven artificers and I’m okay with that. And yes, I’m almost always a Warforged Juggernaut.
@@venerablebrothergoriate5844 see that's not as big a problem as you'd think. It's not hard to form a story for your character as you play and figure out what you want to do with them. It can actually be kind of fun because you can take inspiration from the game as you experience it.
But what am I supposed to do with a reincarnated warlord from ancient times that has been awakened by some powerful entity or god? That's a level 10 boss enemy story, not a low level character that my friend insisted on.
@@graveyardshift2100 right, I agree with you. It’s just like… when a DM makes a whole damn world for you and other players to be a part of in a campaign, why would you disrespect that by refusing to engage with it, y’know???
@@venerablebrothergoriate5844 bro, sometimes people just want to hang out and play the game. It's great when they do put in the effort, but man it is still a game to be enjoyed and not a stage play. I get what you're saying, but it is still just a game.
5:06 this time its actually "rouge" (as in the powder) and not "rogue" (the class). the character of Rouge the Bat is from Sonic
i guess d&d players are just too used to autocorrecting it in their heads because no one can every spell rogue 😭
I've seen a few of these. The Mounty is challenging, unless the character and mount are small. A grugach blink dog rider is fun. We had a real mess up in a 2E game where one character was horse-oriented and another had Dream Journeying; you can't take animals on a Dream Journey and if the party has that ability they will use it for long-distance travel. The menagerie problem is special to 5E; it is a major issue with the system that it can't handle large numbers of creatures in combat. In earlier editions the menagerie was almost expected; see the rules for Followers that have been around since there were 3 little booklets. My pet peeve - Pythonisms; there's always one player who thinks it's clever to recycle 50 year old humor.
There are ways to make the mount or menagerie more portable. I've seen DMs create customized Figurines of Wondrous Power to enable it. I've written Pact Boons of the Steed and the Mastiff where the animal can be summoned/unsummoned. Both these Boons have good literature examples (e.g. Dilvish for the Steed and The Omen movie for the Mastiff).
'Menagerie' is strongly game-depended. In a game like D&D 5 ed., the rules make it very bad, as the action economy is not created with such builds in mind. It is much better in some other games (even some D&D-like and OSR), and some were still written with such gameplay in mind. I play in a game where EVERY character has some kind of minions (from animals through mooks and apprentices to strong allies under player control) and it goes smoothly because the game is designed this way.
It is another point for the 'find the game that suits your needs and don't try to do everything in a game that is not designed for it' camp.
So another player and I worked together with each other and the DM to pull off the walking veto AND the lone wolf renegade together in a way that didn’t ruin the game, and the whole point of our joint character arc was for me to overcome my status as the walking veto (as the lone wolf renegade character WAS of the group that I hated,) and serve as a vehicle for the lone wolf renegade to learn how to trust and depend on others. by the end of the campaign, the two characters were great friends and my character even sacrificed a chance to see his dead family again in order to bring the other guy’s sister back to life
Y’all don’t hate character concepts. Y’all hate players who don’t respect that collaborative storytelling is a team sport.
I've never heard Brian walk onto set with such dripping venomous spite before
THERE'S SOME DAYS WHERE MY RAGE IS UNPARALELLELELELEDDDDD...
But overall I just want to make people smile and be happy, while also acknowledging some things are actively BAD.
@@BrianVaughnVA for sure my dude tell em what's UP
Im sorry but there is an incredibly easy amswer to the mounted character problem... play a small race and ride a saint bernard
Gnomes or Halflings playing a smaller thing would be awesome, but the problem here is the grandeur illusion. Some people have power-play-boners and without their EPIC MASSIVE THUNDERCOCK STEED - they feel small and wimpy.
@BrianVaughnVA indeed. I actually dmed an ebberon campaign, and one player was an autognome (flavored as a small warforged) battlesmith artificer that rode sround their mechanical companion
I think a lot of character concepts CAN work with the right roleplayers so it's hard for me to say "I hate edgy loner rogues" I think it gets annoying for me when it's a character concept that simply can't work under the basic rules. Like one time I started a campaign and the character pitched to me was this wolverine style warlock who was essentially immortal and had no memory. Luckily he was cool when I explained that it's not a bad premise for a character just that it wouldn't necessarily work in D&D because mortal peril is part of the game. If you can't functionally die there's no challenge you just get up and keep fighting. But I did assure him that I there is resurrection magic in the game and even created a mechanic where his patron could return him but would ask a price of the party trying to resurrect him. Essentially the resurrection as a quest bit.
When I decided to look into a lot of githyanki stuff from the various editions of DnD, talked to the DM about it, and rolled up a character. Someone else saw what I was rolling up, decide they liked the race (or rather, the numbers and abilities of the race since they didn't care about anything else about it), and rolled up not only the same race but the same class only to play like someone who escaped from a psych ward.
Whenever I have a weird character I want to run, I _always_ run it by the DM first, so that everything runs smoothly.
I struggle with players, who either want to play a character that does not fit into the universe created or that tries to shoehorn in ideas from other settings. It’s frustrating to me how many times I experience people who want to bring in Pokémon to a high fantasy game, or who would like to use their anime character in a sci-fi world.
I also do not like when characters try to use a disability or mental health issue that they have no context for. Sometimes I think this one bugged me because I am a psychologist and so I am constantly fighting in my head. What someone with that mental health issue would do versus what that character is doing. as far as disabilities, I often see characters who want the disability for the interest that I give their character but they don’t want to seriously consider the implications that having that kind of disability might have in the setting that they are in. For example, someone who wishes to play a blind character but then also wants to play a warlock of the Thome character. Unless you work it out with the DM how are you supposed to read the book unless you have come up with your own system a Braille. I have a blind player at always cracks me up seeing what people try to do with blind characters.
I made a tortle wizard who got a menagerie because i rolled character trait of loving studying monsters. They help me and the party run the inn we got from volo.
Kinda want to hear other people's take on a sorcerer I made for a pathfinder campaign a couple years back. Was told that a high charisma means good at talking, or very attractive, and i'm bad at talking, so I just made her drop dead gorgeous, this was contrasted by the fact that she was asexual, and also generally an 'eccentric' person. She fully understood she was conventionally attractive though and tried to use it in her own awkward way to persuade people to let her into places or to buy things. She had an obsession with magical items, to the point where I put a large portion of her stats into crafting related skills, her whole thing was she was fascinated by her innate magical ability, and wanted to learn more about how it could be manipulated into items using natural magics (AKA she was a magic item nut, not for having them, but just to see how they worked and how she could replicate or create the items herself.)
When ppl insert themselves into your characters backstor without asking, our rogue did that, it was annoying but yeah I said while I wished he had asked me first before doing so I had to admit it made sense that two characters with a criminal background may come from the same gang, its just my character ran away from the gang, his left amicably then just expected my to trust his when he turned up out of knowehre telling me he had been trackiong me when other gnang members had and had tried to kill me?
He didnt mean any malice about it, he was totaly new to ttrpgs and just over exicted
I tried a 'multi-personality character' with a DM's permission once (character didn't start out that way, but then the DM revealed my character wasn't a mid-20s halfling but an early-100s halfling with brain damage, amnesia, PTSD and was under the effects of various illegal psionic and enchantment effects).
Concept was cool, and the backstory I revised that the DM accepted was (while dark & twisted) generally well-received by the party (party didn't have much opinion of the personality gimmick, but that was largely because it barely had a chance to come up as the DM began rushing the campaign to a crazy degree compared to what we were doing, imo). Was set up that each personality (7 in total) had a different goal & outlook, but would generally follow the party & plans until a trigger came up (or character suffered a crit or rested, which had a high chance of changing the dominant personality).
I once played a Warforged that had 2 personalities. The one that everyone saw was the cold, mechanical, unfeeling, calculating drone that he was primarily built to be, but the other side, partitioned away from the exterior and kind of hidden away inside its consciousness was everything that could be defined as emotion. It was basically 2 consciousnesses inside the same mechanical body. One was very clearly in control, the other one was unaware that it wasn’t in control. Kind of like locked-in-syndrome, only you don’t ever realize you’re not in control of your body or what you say. A mage/artificer multi class in our party once used a detect thoughts on my character and found the two separate spheres of consciousness, and after much work, she was able to merge them. His personality was now just as much of a human as any of them. The artificer and my character even started a romance. Of course, it wouldn’t lead to children or anything, but she took some schematics of my character and basically used them to build us children in kind of the epilogue of the campaign. It was great. Unless we’re talking about animals or something I don’t typically use the word “cute,” but their relationship most definitely was.
For the multiple personalities one, that one can be so amazing when done right. However it’s done wrong over 99% of the time.
Honestly type of player I really dislike is the type of player who goes above and beyond in the subversion of the expectation of your character based on your race or class to the point where they are detrimental to themselves and the party mechanically.
For example I can get the idea of being a warlock but doesn't want to use elfish blast but a warlock that doesn't wants to use any spells whatsoever and they completely disregard their Patron to the point where they always get into situations where spells that they have would be solved and yet they do not cast them.
Or
A barbarian who refuses to do any sort rage mechanically because their character isn't actually mad even though raging doesn't necessarily need to be anger. ( at one point I played a barbarian who was a very jovial man but was also a masochist so he enjoyed actually being attacked and the gleeful excitements to be in battle is kind of what the rage was for that character)
This Florida man organization story sounds like such a PERFECT plot for an Unknown Armies campaign.
I don’t necessarily hate them but character concepts that I don’t allow at my D&D table are fully Blind or Mute characters (especially if they are a Spellcaster). I run D&D 5e games and the mechanics of the game just simply don’t accommodate that kind of character. Spells in particular almost all require the ability to see, and or speak in order to be used at all. If you want to play a blind or mute mage then there are really only two or three spells that you could actually use in the entire game.
Think this is more an issue of making it clear how what they want will interact with mechanics? Most people wanting to do this don't want to actually cripple their character this hard anyways. Though it might be an interesting character concept to "regain" the ability to see through the devil sight invocation, if you and the rest of the party is okay with you RPing dead weight until you can get it.
@@skycastrum5803 No the issue is people thinking that the only way to make an interesting character is to give them a crippling handicap in a system that doesn’t accommodate it.
@@shadowmyst9661 I mean, yeah, but they tend to not want it once they realize it means their character.... "has a crippling handicap in a system that doesn't accommodate it." Admittedly, that may take an actual session of "no, you can't cast spells. You can't speak. You can't aim your crossbow either. Ahh, if you run towards the noise you can maybe try to hit the enemy with disadvantage."
@@skycastrum5803 That’s why I don’t allow those characters. If someone asks me if they can play a blind or mute character I will tell them straight up that it is not going to work in my game. I keep my games by the books when it comes to most aspects of the system I’m running. I want to keep everyone on a fair and level playing field. And above all I don’t want one player to be constantly punished, hold everyone else back, or be left out because of a needless self-inflicted handicap. I don’t care if you want to play a character with one arm, one eye, and/or one leg as long they are still capable of doing the base requirement for what they need to function within the rules used at the table. For most spells that is the ability to see, speak, and/or have at least one hand (even if it’s a magical prosthetic made by an Artificer).
Mute characters can be fun when it's not a spellcaster. I've never played an explicitly mute character, but I've definitely played characters with inabilities to communicate outside of body language for one reason or another. It can be an interesting challenge if done well.
Blind... Yeah, I guess there's not a lot of options that work for that, in 5e. I know you can make it work in Pathfinder, though. I haven't played a blind character since my freeform RP days on MMO's, though. Where being a blind summoner who used summoning magic for a seeing eye dog wasn't that much of an issue.
It was kind of funny- in my Pathfinder game, the Bard was the *least* horny person in the party. (She actually was a bit of an exhibitionist that liked going around in skimpy clothes, or even nude, but sex? Not interested.) She was chaste up until... about level 10 I think? She met an NPC at level 7, had a long romance (Which was interrupted when said NPC got turned into a Death Knight- long story- don't worry, we killed the Death Knight and raised her in her original form), and now they're engaged (and fucking), but both are totally monogamous and exclusive to each other.
Split personalities yaaaay......I love when somebody shows up essentially playing 2 characters to everybody else's 1. Doesn't cause issues or seen spotlight hoggy at all.
It can be done right. I seen it done right. But HP and Mana/Spellslots MUST be linked. No having 2 hp bars.
Yeah no split personality doesn't mean you turn into a better you just because someone triggered your bipolar disorder so I agree 1 health bar and no split mana/anything it's the same dude just having a mental breakdown lmaos. Now if that person was instead a werewolf or lycanthrope of some kind then sure a separate hp bar and the like as your physically changing not just mentally
EVERY time I have EVER seen anyone playing a Rogue, they must always try to steal everything that isn't nailed down that they think they can get away with, or absolutely MUST sneak around everywhere and disappear from the group at every possible moment. This, apparently, is mandatory of the Rogue class, even though that is not stated anywhere in the books.
I play rogue a good number of times. I never have stolen, especially from a party member and I don’t tend to leave the group unless I’m doing as intended which is scout ahead, and that’s informed.
Oh wait, I did steal once but it was proof off some bandits that they were working for a nearby cult and I took it to the town leadership and that was how the party got together. More a story sequence. But yeah, other than that, I don’t really steal.
I’ve played a number of rogues and this is sort of my forte. I always try to make thoughtful personalited ranged type characters. But that’s me. I have heard plenty who lean into the theft and being standoffish and trying to be away from the group. Doesn’t vibe with me personally but I enjoy the mechanics of the rogue class and they fit a lot of the concepts I like to throw together for story and rp reasons.
I never played a rogue or a character that does that, but stealing everything i can get away with, including nailed down and the nails, is a fantasy I sometimes want to act on, so it's probably a matter of time til all my friends find all the items they don't really need missing, and instead finds that I bought everyone a crowbar to help me clear the room.
Rogue quirk: a rogue that only steals things that are nailed down, out of assumption that they must be valuable
The character stereotype I hate the most is "level 1 character who is clearly handicapped or crippled but the player came up with a 'cool' (read: astoundingly expensive and time consuming to manufacture) way to ignore that so they can just wear a disability like a cosmetic".
Nah man, you make a disabled character, you're living that life. "Oh, she's tragically blind due to a childhood mauling buuuut-"
Nope, no buts. If she's blind, she's blind. You automatically fail anything to do with sight. You want to fix that, you have to go through *my* trials and tribulations, and suffer character growth.
"My artificer can't walk but-" but nothing, he can't walk. When you reach an appropriate level to build a machine that can handle terrain rougher than "paved concrete", *then* you can have that walking chair concept.
Disability isn't a hat you can wear as shorthand for tragedy, and then ignore when it comes to gameplay.
I am playing a character with a crippling fear of water. Because he's psychic, this crippling fear manifests as a hand made of water that tries to drown him. And I'm sticking with this decision. I cannot swim at all, anyone trying to save me from the hand has to beat my will save with their athletics. I have already missed out on things in game because of this, but this is character I chose to play, and I'm not setting aside a portion of that just to wear this crippling mental disorder as a quirky hat. I'm treating it seriously.
I mean, blind characters CAN exist with effective sight at level 1. Literally an entire fighting style for it that gives you near-perfect perception within 10 feet, actually. But yes, generally wearing a disability like an accessory is tasteless. I just happen to think that your example of a blinded character is a rare exception, so long as the setting isn’t incredibly realistic.
Psychonauts ref?
In my opinion, a disabled character should probably have a *partial* fix to their problem that allows them to be *functional,* but not something that completely eliminates the issue right away. If you're so brutal on a character with a disability that they simply can't play the game for several levels (most likely to a point of even ruining the fun for the other party members), it just makes them not want to play.
Personally, I always strive for this solution to be something with a mechanical backing that functions RAW to moderate the issue. That said, I'm more used to Pathfinder, and don't know many solutions for many of these sorts of issues in 5e, to give proper examples.
The "Florida man" guy could be fun to use as a plot device for the dm after a while, you could have the group stumble upon a bunch of vats that all have clones of that character, with a wizard who greets the PC with a number, rather then a name, "ahh, such a pleasure to get to speak with you directly 537, how are you feeling? What's going through your mind right now? As he constantly writes things down on a clipboard. Having all these duplicate characters be the wizards experimenting to see what would happen in certain situations, and anything bizarre he's done before, be 'intuitive thoughts' the wizard put there to get him to do those things for his experiments lol
Right now I’m playing a charismatic arcane trickster. He’s basically the embodiment of an evasive support, and my motto when making him was “Whatever he stole from you, it isn’t worth trying to get it back.” His entire build is around being impossible to pin down in combat, and then just utility to help the party as much as possible(prestidigitation, mage hand, silvery barbs, etc.). That combined with flight and solid charisma has already been pulling so much weight outside of combat so far since I’m the only caster in this quest, and I’m really looking forward to seeing how it does in combat.
"It's what my character would do" when doing something insanely stupid or mean to another party member.
How about you roll up a character that wouldn't do that?
When we play with my friends and something like that happens we try to be objective like "if you do this you can't be a part of the group, I don't care if you are paying us or whatever", up to the point of straight killing them if needed. If they complain about that, then you have a player issue, not a character issue.
The multiple personas could work, but it would require combining many things with the DM, if it were on the table i usually play, the DM would roll the dice at certain moments to determine which persona was in control at the time.
Now THAT sounds cool. Leaving the switching of personas to a roll of the dice would probably be far more immersive and fun for RP - after all, if the character can’t control or predict which persona will take control, why should the player?
@@vee1267 we never tried it, but i can garantee you that if i wanted to play a character such as this, either i or the DM would suggest we do it like that, and we'd do it, if i had 3 personas for example, it would probably be by rolling a d6, with 1-2 corresponding to one persona, 3-4 to another... or, one or three personas would be by dice, and a last one would be triggered by something, whatever it is, either would be revealed by the DM when the time was right, or combined with the DM, since multiple personas are a result of a mental condition, be it psycholocal or supernatural if we're talking Vampire, DnD or Chtulhu, i know my DM and know this was how he would do it.
i did play that way long ago, either the dice or a certain event (like getting hit) would trigger hte personality switch, between certain number of a d100 would get a certain personality, it would vary between a coward, a good guy, a f*ck everything guy and a murderhobo, never landed on the murderhobo but i did run away from a fight because it was a small spiders.
Funny because you could just say your character had fantasy DiD and suddenly you get actual studies on how these personas could have been formed. Which could really help when trying to come up with a backstory that answers why your character has funny lil people in their head.
I actually created a split personality mage that was literally a mother and her 2 children trapped in the same body. Though this was in GURPS, which has mechanics for disadvantages. (Including split personality)
If I tried to create this character in 5th Ed, I'd probably go wild magic sorcerer with a modified wild magic table to include personality shifts.
With the Mounted Mounty: So... No cavaliers then is what they're saying.
Tbf cavaliers are just tanks. The mounted stuff is just extra. Still you are right in that it's stupid to dislike a character concept when a whole archetype is built around it. It's like someone saying they hate characters that wield pikes because the don't fit in the same dungeons horses dont fit it.
Honestly, the “it was me” part was just funny
1:36 I swear the way to fix this character concept is for both to want the same thing, have the same abilities, but have their personalities different enough for it to not to matter
You can totally do a mounted character in a dungeon campaign. Just be small and ride a medium. Like the dog riding guy in Labyrinth. :P
It's funny how you mention "Main Character without consent", in one of the posts you read. I hate players that do that to their party without making sure everyone was okay with it (especially since 9 times out of 10, they aren't), but I had the reverse occur to me, or at least perceived it as such, in a group that I had joined.
On session 0, We all entered the Discord call to discuss our characters and sort of acquaint ourselves with one another, since most of us were mutual friends with at least one person in the group, in one way or another. The chemistry between us, I felt, was pretty great.
Until it came time to talk about our characters.
In a completely homebrewed setting, One player had created a Goblin Cleric, who worshipped a Dwarven god. To keep it brief, the idea of the character, which I had helped them to write, was one who was raised by Dwarves and grew to love their culture, and was disgusted at the one they had been born to.
Second player was, by mere coincidence, a Goblin, but the class was either Sorcerer or Druid? I don't actually recall, but I do remember the first player being rather disparaged at the idea of not being unique, since the original plan, according to the DM, was for everyone to play different races, but because Player Two was not part of a tribe, and was isolated, from what I remember, there wasn't really an issue between the two players-- they both actually seemed to like the creative spin each player had put on their racial background.
Player Three, myself, was a Half-Orc Fighter. Without deeping too hard into my backstory, My characters mother was killed by his Father's tribe, and his father died trying to avenge his lover. I had put a lot of effort to make sure that my character would serve as a disciplined advisor, and a shield, because he knew the consequences of allowing emotion and tension to boil over.
Player Four was... a Goblin Rogue. I do not recall getting much more of a backstory than joining the group because it viewed my character as a father figure.
I already felt singled out as the only non-goblin in the party. It could have been a very interesting game, if I had stuck it out, and I regret it deeply, but I think what really pushed me over the edge to leave the game before session 1 was the fact that a player had outright said, during session 0, that their character would default to my judgement, as the strongest/biggest member of the party. It just made me really uncomfortable, because this would have been my first group outside of school. I think I told the DM about a week or so later that I would not be participating, though there is a lot more to the story than I can share without consulting the rest of the party about their thoughts on the matter.
I know this'll get buried because your video is 3 months old, but I just wanted to share because I sometimes wonder what could have been, and because of my discomfort, I backed out before I could find out.
I love playing against stereotypes I will even pick sub optimal races to play into that.
My favorite thing to do is actually work with the DM and leave holes in my back story for them to fill I will create a skeleton that fits everything else, but there will be one or two pieces of details I don't fill in this way I can often be surprised as a player for what direction the DM takes.