Quick story: when I was in high school, me and a bunch of friends were in a campaign and we played characters loosely based off characters from the books/poems were were studying in English and would constantly use quotes. It helped us memorise them for essays and get a sense of their character.
@@davea6314great question Dave! If I could follow up, we’d also love to know the name of your primary school, your first pet’s name, and your mother’s maiden name.
We had a not-too-bright Fighter who, after making a kill, would summon up much gravitas and say a quote he thought was a James Bond-style quip, but would actually make no sense. Like after impaling a bugbear on his sword deep in a mine he’d turn and face the party and say… “we’re gonna need a bigger boat.”
Yeah, if you're actively aiding people in killing, you're not a pacifist. You just don't like to get your hands dirty. It's like hiring an assassin and being like "Well I didn't _personally_ kill them!"
my favorite character I've ever played was a Quoth the Raven. Reanimated skeleton bard whose bones were coated in silver, but he was so old that even he didn't remember his backstory & how that happened. So every time someone asked him what his deal was, he would weave a tall tale. while creating the character, I prepared 12 different stories explaining how a skeleton came to be coated in silver - one of them true, but only i and the DM knew which.
Irrational fears, especially of random innocuous things in a home, or other place are so fun. I had a character who was an ancient war-hero robot with 500 years of facing the worst of that setting but he was terrified of all staircases because he had been tricked one too many time by sliding stair traps and had damaged programming. This led to him, climbing the railings, and swinging on chandeliers, and more in order to avoid going up a single flight of stairs. He was killed by falling down normal stairs
My favorite superstition that I used was “always enter caves/caverns/mines shortest to tallest. “Shortest to tallest makes the loss smallest” My dwarf character grew up on that old superstition and made his party follow it. The poor balding wizard though… rip 😂
The superstitions one gave me an idea: A character who is loaded with misconceptions about monsters and magic in their world. As if they got all their information from a complete BS artist who was a minor celebrity in their town growing up. Stuff like Trolls can only sense you if you're moving, if you ring a horseshoe around a beholder's eyestalk it has to grant you a wish, or wrapping your head in cloth soaked in rancid tallow protects you from psychic influence.
As a DM having a bard NPC feeding my players info like this sounds hilarious; but on the very rare occasion he gets it right it pays off big time. Keeps my players doing the goofy stuff expecting nothing to happen; knowing nothing will most likely happen, but doing it anyway
I'm going to use the "if you ring a horseshoe around a Beholders eyestalk, it has to grant you a wish" and add, "Eating the central eye of a Beholder grants one unmatched beauty" because beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
I have an unused Dwarf character that is convinced the sky sentient and actively trying to kill him. His clan's mine was flooded after a severe storm, so now his life goal is to destroy the sky.
I'm playing a shadow monk rogue who used to be a shy/awkward/scared little bookworm who returns to his hometown years later, now a trained deadly assassin...and immediately reverts back to his old behavior the minute he runs into anyone who used to know him. He will never be taken seriously no matter how many bodies he leaves in his wake😂
I have a Caregiver in my party: A Tortle Circle of the Land (Coast) Druid going for a healer build who's simply known as Gramps. The characters barely get along at this point, but he's the glue holding the group together with his pearls of wisdom. He's basically their therapist. The party motto so far is essentially just "Protect Gramps at all costs."
You're description of the Caregiver made me think of Mal Reynolds from Firefly. He's very protective of his crew even when he doesn't particularly like them. This lead to that great moment where he confronts the mercenary character Jayne for betraying the crew.
I think I also recall a scene where Simon is baffled that Mal would stick his neck out for him when they don't even get along, which annoys Mal. To him, crew is crew.
@@ikaemos That did indeed happen. It was the episode where they delivered the cows, and they had to leave Simon and River behind temporarily to save Book.
I love the Brave Fool. One of my buddies played it so well. His cleric was with the party at the top of a bowl in the terrain. Down in the bowl we couldn't see much due to dark mist but we could hear screams. He laid his shield down and, with a cry for his god, rode it like a sled down to the screams. The rest of us, of course, had to follow.
I have a LE Cleric/Warlock who is a Quoth the Raven with a Sleezeball twist. Whenever a discussion comes up on what the characters need to do next, talking to NPCs she needs to persuade/deceive, to fill the air in a conversation, or even to rally during battle, she will quote some words of wisdom or dogmatic law of one god or another. The twist is that she (and I) are typically making them up on the fly to fit the point she is trying to make. And it's not really clear if she believes they are actual quotes or not... An example would be when the characters have discussed a plan to death and it's time to act she might say: "We have gathered all the knowledge we can for this fight, but as Lord Helm tells us, knowing is only half the battle. To arms!"
One thing I love playing into is my characters compulsive curiosity. Yes, their more known trait is their habitual caretaking, but the more subtle one is their curiosity, which an npc has called them out on, and also complimented them on. For context, we were given permission to go enter a dragon’s hoard (not going into detail about that but suffice to say, we had permission from the hoard’s owner). In that hoard was more than just jewels and trinkets and magic items, etc. There was also books, scrolls (not spells), and papers. And on those papers was tons and tons of the dragon’s personal knowledge from over the many many centuries (ancient dragon, might be wyrm actually) they had lived. In the party there is my fighter and the artificer who are actually well respected scholars of their field. While the other members retrieved the one item we were there for, the artificer and I sat down and started copying the notes we found in the hoard. We didn’t take anything else. My character then poured over it later back at our temporary base….before realizing they shouldn’t have this. They then returned it to the dragon who sent us to his hoard and apologized. The dragon npc actually said they were perfectly fine with my character, happy I returned it, nostalgic over seeing their own research, but over all complimented my character for being curious and told them to keep doing that. My character pointed out that this is why they are known as a trouble maker in their faction (researchers/archivists/scholars/librarians, etc) to which he laughed and said that my finding trouble was a sign that I was in the right track. It was very sweet and a good moment for the two and my character is an elf and so has a difficult time finding mentors older than them that aren’t just more elves. They kind of have slipped into being the mentor role. So it was nice to show my character being the student with a fond teacher being encouraging. But yeah, personality trait of being curious to the point of getting sidetracked is fun to play sometimes.
I've done the blade must taste blood, it is one of my favorite characters. In an L5R game I played a Matsu Berserker and that lead everyone in setting to assume he'd be arrogant or bloodthirsty, but instead he'd made a vow and that vow meant that he held an incredible amount of respect and weight to violence. And it also meant that he didn't easily "take prisoners". To choose the blade is to choose death, yours and that of others...a thing he wanted all he met to understand as a lesson his clan drilled into him. He was introduced with a group of thugs threatening him and a woman in a market place. He tries to talk them down, but it ends with them all dead, the woman he "saved" in tears and covered in their blood. He couldn't even bring himself to comfort her, because she saw something horrific and he was that thing.
When you were talking about the Quoth the Raven section, I immediately thought of the Seventy Maxims of Maximally Effective Mercenaries. "#30: A little trust goes a long way. The less you use, the further you'll go."
My current character is definitely the Brave Fool, although it's more that she really LOVES to fight - she's a Zealot Barbarian, and her goddess is basically the embodiment of the joy of battle (her Rage is reflavored as a state of euphoria). Also, periodically her goddess fights her followers in the afterlife and gets cut to pieces and scattered, and then whoever collects the most of those pieces becomes her new avatar, so that's something she'll always go after. She does very much care about her friends, though.
The first character I really clicked with was a Brave Fool. He was a thrill seeking rogue who came from money and so REALLY struggled to understand the concept of consequences. He managed to piss off two separate thieves guilds, a bunch of important nobles and the Church of the Platinum Dragon. He got briefly imprisoned in the Astral Plane by messing around with a Deck of Many Things, he made a deal with a devil to find out if someone had ordered a hit on him and didn't realise that "selling your soul" was VERY literal. I as a player knew, but he thought the devil was just going to ask him to do something horrible later, and thought 'selling your soul' was a metaphor. Then after the party BARELY survived an encounter with a blue dragon, with it retreating to its lair. I pushed for us to attack it in its lair before it could rest, despite us being REALLY bad shape too. My Brave Fool didn't learn his lesson by something horrible happening to someone else. He was literally almost torn apart by this dragon, died (and was lucky enough to have someone with a revivify spell nearby) saw the devil watching him in those 6 seconds of death, and realised not only did he get KILLED, but he's sentenced himself to something far worse. Not to mention that the second fight with the dragon was ANOTHER draw. It collapsed its lair and both sides were forced to run, meaning a DRAGON now has a personal grudge with our party. After that I used a massive amount of my gold to make peace with the Thieves Guilds, because now my Rogue is TERRIFIED of dying again. And while before he was a carefree jokester, now he's becoming a cutthroat murderer. He is changing, but he's learning a lot of the wrong lessons.
I am currently playing a Druid with a feylost background. She sees omens everywhere (from her fear of being taken back to the feywild) and has a three step process for making best friends (dislike someone on sight, then decide they are nice, next immediately start calling them her best friends). She has no filter and it’s so much fun to just let her rip. She also makes up words that actually already exist, and is pleased when other people use them (“I think ‘sinkhole’ is really starting to catch on”). So much fun.
My favorite personal rule is "If at first you don't succeed, destroy all evidence you ever tried... ... Including witnesses." I had a bbeg with that self rule, and it was great.
This is super good, lots of people are not comfortable doing roleplay but you can just explain how you want them to without specifics even. I've had times where I drop a voice and just say then they do this this way and I want this kind of effect. Because I feel I can't present what it is I want with out being goofy or something.
I have a list of scenarios I decide how my character would react in them and try to stick to those personality traits. Such as: your party has just had a meal at a tavern, do you: pay for everyone, pay only for yourself, or do you try to weasel your way out of paying anything. And then thranslate that to other situations.
These work so well alongside the background personality traits baked into the game, I'm currently playing a grave domain cleric who's a murder detective and the personality trait "Once I start a task I fixate on seeing it completed" led to me making a cleric who's basically an insatiable greed character but her greed shifts to whatever knowledge or lead or evidence she's currently after.
I once had an idea for a Kenku Pact of the Old Ones warlock. Being that Kenkus canonically only repeat what they've heard, he'd constantly be muttering insane laughter, while his spell casting was quoting the Lovecraftian language of R'lyehian.
I actually didn't realize I was already doing this with my necromancer. He very much has Insatiable Greed when it comes to necromantic power, but he's also By The Book in that he won't animate the corpses of innocents unless he gets their permission with Speak with Dead first. He also has a massive fear of fae, but I'm not sure if that's "irrational". 😉
10:15 Chilli Dogs! 21:24 in 3.5 I played with a mage who was afraid of oozes, we went into a runescar and he ended up with a living spell following him ( for anyone who doesn't know, living spells are oozes that are born from a spell being cast within an area of magical fallout and have the properties of that spell, think a fireball becoming a bomb from Final Fantasy). It adored him and would bring him (often stolen) gifts at random intervals.
The Brave Fool is the one that *always* pushes the Big Red Button. Another nickname for the Insatiable Greed is The Magpie. For "By the Book" - one roleplaying opportunity is coming across a situation that isn't covered in the book! For the caregiver - there's an excellent essay out there on the interwebs about how Tuvok, the cold emotionless full-blooded Vulcan by-the-book Commanding Officer was actually Voyager's Ship's Counselor to everyone in the ensemble cast at one point or another. For all of Janeway's Compassionate Leadership, the Mother Role was Tuvok's.
When it comes to Affably Dim-witted (something I really should try to play more... assuming I can get some games in), I've always liked the phrase "not the sharpest spoon in the drawer", and feel like that's a good quote to build a character around. Sharp as a club, but that doesn't mean they can't hit people. Hard.
Yeah, but that's not on people like us! These days it's weird to be social, cause many are connecting only through a phone and find it awkward to do otherwise.
I'm in a campaign that's set in the Norse during ragnarok. My character is a wizard with a bag of tricks. For whatever reason I consistently roll up badgers from the bag, like to the extent I have used it a dozen times, and I can count the non badgers on one hand. It's become a bit of a running gag at this point that I have a bag of badgers. It's fucking hilarious and I love how fates worked out with this character.
One of my favorite old (like 2nd edition) character trope I played was a Dudley Do-Right Paladin. He was dumb as a rock, but pure as the driven snow. He had a hard time seeing evil in anyone, super trusting, but blind, dumb luck kept him alive and un-fallen. Another one from back in the 1990's was a Dwarven Fighter-Cleric berserker kit. In general, he was played as being kinda dumb, but in actuality, it was just the result of a lot of head trauma from using his forehead as a weapon. Every now and again, he'd break out with some incredibly erudite and well thought out comment or argument to the complete confounding of the rest of the part, at which point he'd just look around at everyone and be like, "What?" having no real memory of what he just said.
I once had a monk character that I said came from a monastery where they were forbidden from killing. They could fight just fine, but only knock opponents unconscious. This ended up working out because one of the other characters was an edgy, murder happy ninja, so they would go and finish off all the enemies I knocked out.
I played a wizard once who hated fire. He refused to learn or use a single fire based spell other than Prestidigitation for lighting candles and campfires. It was a fun quirk.
I'd love it if you guys could do a follow-up video to this with 10 more traits. Researching or thinking about them is one thing, but they take on another form in the context you provide.
18:20 I played a Peace domain cleric in my last campaign. He would never directly harm anyone, prioritize healing and buffs, and ensure that any enemies that he could stabilize or otherwise save their lives would be spared. He couldn't stop anyone from harming others, but he'd ensure any sentient creature would at least survive. This periodically caused a little friction with the party, but there were moments where the power of mercy was allowed to shine, like when he was able to convince some mercenaries to just leave the area after I went out of my way to revive one.
I played a “Quoth the Raven” Blood Hunter. He was a mutant tielfing, and he was a scholar of unusual beasts (think Newt Scamander). He carried two greatswords and always rattled off facts about monsters in combat like it was no big deal to him. Love that trope!
My first character ever was a barbarian brave fool. He unintentionally became the party leader with the party often looking towards my character for what to do next. I found that always being ready to rush in but asking other player characters their advice and opinions first before charging in was a great way to drive the party into conflict's but was also be a good battlefield commander who they trusted because my character would allow the party to plan first. So even though we are usually rushing into conflicts we weren't rushing in totally unprepared. The only time a situation like that would happen where we rush in with no plan was whenever my character was driven into a rage where the party also could see a million miles away that we would soon be rushing into something unprepared, which also in itself gave them time to prepare.
The funnest is the one who is there to explore the unknown. My character has a very Luffy-like sense of adventure, and a habit of getting into trouble because he has a very act first-think later mentality. A Tabaxi that follows the 'curiosity killed the cat, but satisfaction brought him back' trope.
In my game I am playing a magical slacker. I don't do anything by hand that I can do with magic. That has been good for a lot of fun at the table so far. Another character is working and studying hard to learn magic and it just comes effortlessly to me and make for a fun dynamic.
I recently played a character who was super old (like basically dead). All his life he was told he’s „the chosen one“ who will have to sacrifice himself in order to save the world. but up until this point, everything was always super peaceful wherever he went. So when the wine cellar of this tavern he stayed at got robbed, he immediately offered to help find and turn in whoever did the crime, despite his old old age. During this quest he always tried to sacrifice himself (even when it was absolutely not necessary). It was a stupid silly one shot, so i really wouldn’t have cared much if the character had died. He actually didn’t. It was just super fun to play such a old and low key stupid character because I’d never do that for a longer campaign.
Running my current monk character as a affable dimwit. Rolled three ones in five minutes, and with a seven Int, decided to run with it and have a blast! Having a goblin trying to be a superhero, and coming out the total schmuck is a ton of fun! As for quoth the raven, had a chef character (yeah, the artificer Alchemist I used to never shut up about). The best part about this character is you can find new stuff about an interest (I'm not a chef, but I found out how to make homemade pasties)!
Great tip for DMs when a player brings an “In it for the money” character to the table: ask what they want to use it for. It’s not like they’re just going to keep it in a hoard never to be spent for all of eternity. If that were the case, they may as well be broke. Even something as simple as acknowledging the fact that a character is adventuring because they need to in order to make a living and have food on their table can add a world of depth to a character.
I think a classic example of the sleazeball salesman would be Axel Foley from the Beverly Hills Cop movirs. He can lie his way into or out of a lot of situations, and he even lies to his friends from time to time. In that same vein, I also think of Covetous Shen from Diablo 3, and in that particular instance it certainly doesn't hurt that James Hong did an amazing job with the dialogue he was given.
On personal favorite archetypes: * The Overconfident Coward (Think Starscream, Usopp or Uncle Ruckus): A character who is full of bravado & confidence until the time comes to put their money where their mouth is; an ineffective braggart. Can be quite fun to play; be gung-ho and supportive whenever things are good & safe, then dial the panic up to 11 when the pressure actually hits. Doesn't mean you're actually ineffective either - you can be an excellent fighter or strategist while under pressure still; just remember that your character's brain & confidence both went out the window the moment they actually have to do something, so whatever they do right is more out of reflex/instinct than anything they actually planned to do. * The Stoic / The Grump (Buzz Lightyear, Husk, Cobra Bubbles, Agent 47, Lapis, Nico Robin, Zoro, Smoker): A character who either doesn't say much for one reason or another, or who keeps up a mask of confidence most of the time. The type of character prone to dry humor, biting sarcasm, and generally acting 'above it all' or unaffected by the insanity around them. I've found this one to be especially fun when the character does something absolutely ridiculous while keeping a straight face, or when the character tries to 'act up' for the sake of a bit & fails miserably due to just lacking the energy or their unfamiliarity with acting emotionally.
20:00one of my dad's characters was a hafling rogue, and he said that the two biggest consistencies about them is that he hates goblins, (like it's kill on sight hate) and that he's deathly afraid of trolls.
High charisma, socially awkward is how my favorite TTRPG character ever was. She was a thaumaturge (Pathfinder class, someone who fights magic with occult knowledge) who would freak out in any social setting but her high charisma would manifest itself in her unhinged ramblings that were used as intimidations and strange but sweet gestures for diplomacy rolls.
Hey Dungeon Dudes I just wanted to say that your videos have taught me more than how to just play DnD. A lot of your content displays an incredible consideration for people, their complexities, and how to make compelling stories out of our lives. So thanks for being real cool dudes haha it always makes my day when I have time on a day off to just sit around, drink tea and listen to you and watch my WIS score increase!
Can confirm that Quoth the Raven is a fun and easy way to roleplay. I once jumped into a campaign as a guest character, and my Bard used "bawdy limerick" as his Bardic ability. 😁
In college, I played a long form Legend of the Five Rings campaign (fantasy feudal Japan setting) and my character was a nezumi who naively dreamed of becoming a samurai (in L5R, nezumi are barely recognized as sentient beings, let alone capable of the honorable life of a samurai.) I played him as both the brave fool and one who is also a total outsider to the culture he is trying so desperately to join. Throughout the campaign I boldly, sometimes recklessly took actions that either I thought would get me closer to that goal OR that I thought a True Samurai would do, while at the same time criticizing a lot of the rituals and customs of the humans around me that seemed bizarre. This sometimes led to conflict as samurai would be expected to do certain things that my character just could not understand (such as ritual suicide after a failure) and this caused a few crises of faith in the goal. It was a blast, and by campaign’s end, after helping to defeat the big bad and save the empire, the emperor himself proclaimed my character would be samurai, in service to one of the other PCs who was being elevated to a high noble rank himself.
Another potentially fun archetype you could play as, and that works well depending on how you do it, is the amnesiac that's recovering their memories and finding out who are they were, who they are, and what they can remember or what they forgot. The idea I've been wanting to try for a long time is a monk who, as part of a secret order of assassins, after killing his targets, when reporting to his superiors, he would have his memory modified so that he can't remember his target's names or faces. So he genuinely doesn't remember who he's killed. The RP potential I see here is the consequences he has to deal with following all those murders, and him trying to redeem himself and recover his memories, while trying not to kill unless its absolutely necessary. That sort of story can be a lot of fun for both the rest of the party and the DM too. DM can use it in a lot ways in terms of narrative and NPCs, and it can be interesting to see how the rest of the party reacts to the recovered memories, and whether they accept who the amnesiac is vs who they were before losing their memories. Thoughts? :)
1)thank y’all for this! Absolutely wonderful both in the idea/explanation & in Monty walking through how the character arcs typically change. Truly great work! 2)Since y’all have brought this up twice now, as a DM, if someone has a dump stat (-0 to -…), I make them role for their choices along that stat. So Int/Wis checks constantly for sorcerers (just watched your all Sorcerer video) to see if they would stack their spells in a wise & planned manner. Or barbarians to see if they would be smart enough to go block off the back of the house in case the suspect tries to escape. It makes it things really fun when a character acts according to their scores and not player Int/Wis. Wizards constantly tripping, especially in battle in mountains or woods, because low Dex makes for some funny natural interactions. And the players start playing into the stat disadvantage shortly after a fun moment.
As an example for the "quirky thing to bring into the game": my Merfolk is an archeologist, which is what I have studied so far. And the lore of the Merfolks in our world is based on Aztec/Mayan/... culture. Hasn't come to bear fruit yet, but my characters goal is to find out more about his peoples past. And on top, he's a warlock. So, who knows to what shennanigans that might lead :)...
I played D&d for a while now and I love role-playing, I thought that I wouldn't find much in this video, but It has been a blast! Thank you Dungeon Dudes, you never disappoint me! 💪
It is also possible to add new role play characteristics based on in game experience. I was playing “the second cleric on the party” as a rich diplomat noble type that was proving to be too vanilla to play. But when he had a near death / near party kill experience he had his “Road to Damascus” moment and became a grim sack-cloth and ashes believer in his own religion, as opposed to just a job. Still a Diplomat, but he stopped being vanilla and it all tied in as believable character development.
Great list, guys. It brings a smile to this 40+ year rpger to think about how many new players are going to see this and how much joy it's going to bring when they bring your advice to their table. If I could add/reiterate a couple of other pieces of advice: 1. Know where you/your group/your game is on the roleplay spectrum Imagine a spectrum. On the left side there are roleplay/story-telling games. These games encourage or even require players to roleplay and improvise. The mechanics of these games reward roleplaying. For example, if your character's flaw of "greed compels me" makes your character make bad decisions, you are rewarded for that. In these games the player and the character are separate: the player is a storyteller and the character is their tool. Being a good player often means making your character do things they shouldn't, just as you'd do if you were writing a book or screenplay. The advice to players in one of these games, Blades in the Dark, is "drive your characters like a stolen car!" On the right side of the spectrum are tactical/mastery games. These games encourage/require players to use their character's abilities to perform as well as they can. It's great to roleplay, but the game doesn't reward you for having an interesting character or making them act a certain way. DnD is on the right side of the spectrum. I have friends who've been playing since AD&D who have never and will never developed traits for their characters. They like dice-rolling and using their abilities, not thinking about characters. The great thing about DnD is that you can have a great time without roleplaying. The unfortunate thing is DnD can make roleplaying hard because the roleplay choice (making bad decisions) can be against the goal of the group (defeating enemies). So it's good to talk about expectations with your group and get a feel for what people want to do. 2. Choose simple traits that force your hand Choose traits like "is always honest," "is a coward," or "is righteous to a fault," traits that *require* you act a certain way. If you do this you don't have to think about what your character would do because it's always clear. The trait forces the behavior. Traits like "hates the rich" or "wants to be wealthy" don't force you to make decisions, and this makes them harder to roleplay because you have to think about the decision. Imagine the Guardian of the Galaxy characters. They never stop to think about their traits (overconfident, greedy, affable but dumb, naive) because their traits "I am always overconfident," "I need to steal every gadget I like," "I always make dumb decisions," and "I'm smart but am too optimistic" tell them exactly what to do. This is particularly important in games like DnD because the game doesn't encourage you to roleplay, so you have to make the opportunity. 3. Tell your group your traits Don't make anyone guess your character's traits. Tell them directly. This will help the other players and the GM predict what you will do so they can have fun with it. Don't surprise them or expect them to guess why you do things.
This is one of those things only us old farts remember. We had it in the PHBR books. I remember playing characters that were nearly unplayable in current games because the books & culture have changed. One of my favorite was a goblin that carried a set of manacles in his pack and enough chain to secure him in the stables when the group spent a night in an inn, but was always cheerful about it because there were rats in the stables.
One of the players in the campaign I'm running currently is playing a wildfire druid that makes fireworks for a living and is obsessed with everything flamable or explosive. He plays to this trait briliantly. When it's appropriate he plays it out in detail, however, when the spotlight is on another player or it might disrupt the flow of the game, he just quickly drops 1 or 2 lines about how his character feels or how they visually respond when triggered. It adds so much flavor to the character without getting in the way of anyone's fun and I love it.
One of my favorite one shot characters I made was a dimwit. Hard to maintain, because you don't want it to impede the party. My trick was to make them right, but for the wrong reasons. That way we all have a chuckle but we keep up our momentum.
Mt character is a mix of the by the book, quoth the raven, and the reckless fool. He wants to be a hero so I made a small set of rules that he follows. They're things like "a hero always gives second chances (never third)" and "a hero would never abandon their allies." Also, instead of "what's the worst that could happen" I say "it'll be fine. Heroes never die"
A D&D pacifist, if the player isn't going light on the theme, should always be looking for non-violent or diplomatic solutions in difficult situations (such as cutting off a path, dropping enemies down a pit, feeding the opponents a lie to convince them your party isn't dangerous, etc), encouraging knock-outs & escapes otherwise. And if such isn't possible, the pacifist should be avoiding aggressive fighting themselves until pushed to the edge (think Charlie from Hazbin Hotel as an example), focusing more on healing/buffing allies, debuffing enemies & trying to force them to surrender, or even trying to tank hits themselves (even if they are fragile). Having exceptions to one's pacifism also helps (such as not showing pacifism towards undead, beasts or constructs, or only showing pacifism towards humanoids & creatures that can communicate with the character).
Just sent this to a player who needed help. I can even point out like combos of my characters in these traits. It's great advice. One of my characters is of course Lawful so By the Books is their go-to. Whether they're lawful good, Evil, or Neutral. But Insatiable Greed- will never turn down that wine. Long live wine-mom. (But heck she's no caregiver even if she's the mom of the group.)
I think it the traditional bonds and flaws are really useful. Who am I allied to and what are my issues/personal challenges? That gets the core intent down. Then you add in a quirk or two and let the character evolve
A character archetype I love to play is one I affectionately refer to as "The Girl In the Tower." She (or he or they) is someone who was sheltered and isolated but was always curious about the outside world, and tried to understand it or prepare for it as well as they could from where they were. They're probably, intelligent, skilled, and a quick thinker, but is naive in an odd way. They may approach situations based on how the protagonist in a favourite book would approach them, draw all of their assumptions from the holy texts of their faith, approach all fights as though they were formal duels, or have trouble disabling kobold traps that aren't following proper engineering practice with precision parts. In less stressful situations this makes them excited. It's something new and interesting, after all, an experience they never had the chance to have before. It's a fun challenge to overcome and another wonder of the Real World (tm), but when it gets dangerous they may freeze or panic. They're equal parts the character who will brush off a complication in the plan because of COURSE the party will figure it out and the character who may, if things get dangerous, scary or go horribly wrong, openly say that they want to go home and that the adventure isn't fun anymore (Their player, on the other hand, is having SO much fun giving the poor bean the novel experience of T R AU M A). They're the gifted student leaving the academy, the brave young noble leaving the affairs of court behind, the tavern girl full of wanderlust and raised on adventurers' tales, the priest raised in a temple now on a first pilgrimage, or the literal princess who grew up locked in the tower. They're optimistic and doing their best to be world-wise with the information they have, and have well-honed skills which don't always hold up in the field or against the weird nuances of real situations. They're a very fun way of giving a character flaws by just making their viewpoint a metaphorical small, high-up window looking in a single direction. It lets them see far, but in a limited way.
I recently made an evil redemption paladin who for backstory reasons can never deal damage but is gleefully exploiting the “pacifist” loophole to still be an adventurer by buffing/healing the party as they kill people (they’re not even evil, just normal doing normal PC things) and it’s been so fun to play
10:44 - a "real world" version of the Quoth the Raven in action? Quark and the Rules of Acquisition from DS9. And I love the By the Book trait for challenging me to play outside the box. My current Star Wars character is essentially the Lone Ranger. Never kills, shoots the guns out of bad guys's hands, doesn't swear, tells kids to stay in school and drink their milk. It's a complete opposite of the loosy-goosy devil may care character that I usually do. Our next campaign sprung out of me just casually asking "I wonder how hard it would be to play an orthodox Mandalorian?" (You know, the "This is the way", never rermove their helmet type) and the rest of the table went "Yeah! That sounds fun!" So my next character is going to be a hard religious zelot about the Six Actions that all Mandos follow. It's shaping up to be a goddamned blast.
OMG yes! 26:21 this is briliant! being in on the joke with the story teller to help tell the story is a great feeling, especially when they enjoy it and doubly so when the party dose🖤
Thank you for your vids, love watching them. This advice helps a lot. I struggle to add character and personalities to characters because I end up just making them like myself in some way...or specifically opposite to what I'm like, but then it just feels like I'm being a tryhard. Nuance is difficult!
This is a fun video! I think my current character is a socially awkward caregiver with an insatiable appetite for information, especially information you can get from going in weird holes in the ground. And I got to say, twilight cleric is a fantastic subclass if you like to play a caregiver type. You get aid going with twilight sanctuary, aura of vitality, it's a total Wammawink moment
This was really fun and helpful. I love easy archetypal stuff like this. I’m the king of making a 10 page backstory but then not even knowing what they’d do 5 minutes from now lol
I recall my first D&D character having an over exaggerated fear of bears because his merchant Guildmaster had pet bears that would come in and sleep on my character during his training days.
You guys are fantastic thank you for the hours and hours of content! You are my go to when I want to brainstorm some idea that’s hit me on the head- I’ll TH-cam it and look for the dudes 💯
Something _really_ important to note with all of this is something I think a lot of people forget when trying to make better/deeper characters. _It’s totally fine to do the basic stuff too._ My first ever D&D PC, and only my second character ever, is an old veteran who got flung through time by about 2,000 years. Int is +1, charisma is -1, wisdom is +2. Physical stats are stacked. So he’s a gruff old man who can be physically intimidating, is a little outclassed for book smarts but isn’t stupid, is fairly shrewd & very perceptive, but is lacking in any sort of non-coercive social situation. Between being an old man, a soldier, being from different time, and not being a native common-speaker, it adds up to his -1.
My rogue was all about delivering punchlines. She was kind of a badass with sharp knives and she knew how to intimidate someone. My improv was ok but sometimes I pulled one I thought about the day before. Playing while watching for the right time to drop one was always fun. A classic, I know. But my group seemed to like it a lot! A friend of mine had a character who wouldn't miss an opportunity to debate about anything with anybody. It often faded to black and turned into a roll, but the way he did it was always fun! His trait was a sort of "I MUST be always right". Good thing it toned down during the campaign. His character grew up!
This is a great resource, and one I would love to see more of. I don’t know if you would want to do top five archetypes for different genres or something like that, but this is one of my favorite videos you all have done on something other than mechanics
Having direction is so important to maintain great consistent RPing. It's why traits/types are so nice to have. There's positives and negatives to all of them and that creates well rounded personalities. My current character is a fun mix of brave fool, hopelessly naive, and affably dimwitted. He's a wild magic bard-barian who was born into a rich family. He doesn't want to take up the family business (which is just a lot of managerial nonsense) and has a rose-colored glasses approach to adventuring. He sees the best in everyone and takes people at face value, but doesn't often understand the common folk's plights due to not coming from the same social class which leads to the naivety. He's kind of a bit of a himbo in that way. It definitely leaves him vulnerable to being taken advantage of by others due to just accepting what people say. Not to mention the constant rushing into danger just to fulfill a romanticized ideal that doesn't exist isn't great for ones lifespan. Everything works so fun with our party too. For instance, our wizard used my character's eagerness to explore old ruins while the party rested because they wanted to rationalize their insatiable greed for historical knowledge. Our sorcerer is also a brave fool/affably dimwitted combo so the two of them also support each others bad ideas. We have a by the book rogue who's on multiple occasions had to put the dad-foot down on shenanigans. It's been such a blast having unique dynamics, and using traits to drive interesting moments between characters
I really appreciate this vid. I feel like so much of your content is so stat based (which is great to some extent), but this is some of the stuff im really into learning.
> "Insatiable greed" I was in a campaign where one player had managed to steel over 90% of the campaigns loot without others noticing, and was now setting up his own criminal empire on the side... that campaign didn't last long.
Ive got an example of a "Quothe the Raven" character that Ive really enjoyed. She was an amnesiac diviner who used the spell Encode Thoughts to record her memories so she doesnt forget them and whenever she is using divination magic its a sort of "Oh! I think Ive seen this before!" and she retells a memory from one of her memory strands. Which I have a list of like 60 memories for her to pull from.
Another trope I found I’ve enjoyed with one of my characters is what I call the Runaway. She’s a very sweet and lovable person, comes off as ditsy only because Common isn’t her first language and she’s very distractable. But she’s run away from home because she was confined to her clan to the point of suffocation, until it all boiled over, people got hurt, and she ran. The key roleplaying detail about the Runaway is that she’s chronically avoidant. She talks about everyone else’s feelings but her own, deflects when things start veering too close to uncomfortable emotions, and is afraid all of her friends are going to eventually think of her as a child, like her clan did. It’s been very fun watching how much stress she can take and what the eventual breakdown is going to look like - because I know she’ll rise from the ashes a stronger person
I did a twist on the brave fool. My pc wasnt confident in themselves at all. But believed in one of the other pcs so much he became the reckless overconfident when around the other pc. Its a great way to do it because it alows u to sometimes play timid and other times bombastic. Plus it grows a special connection between two of the pcs and makes the player that plays the other pc feel great
Quick story: when I was in high school, me and a bunch of friends were in a campaign and we played characters loosely based off characters from the books/poems were were studying in English and would constantly use quotes. It helped us memorise them for essays and get a sense of their character.
That’s so awesome.
~_~
Good. What is your native language?
That's so sick dude
That's seriously cool
@@davea6314great question Dave! If I could follow up, we’d also love to know the name of your primary school, your first pet’s name, and your mother’s maiden name.
We had a not-too-bright Fighter who, after making a kill, would summon up much gravitas and say a quote he thought was a James Bond-style quip, but would actually make no sense. Like after impaling a bugbear on his sword deep in a mine he’d turn and face the party and say… “we’re gonna need a bigger boat.”
I actually really love that
Monty in the (I believe) Mercy Domain subclass video: "If you helped your party murder those people... you're not a pacifist -- you're an accessory!"
It's called the peace domain, and it was in the subclass tier list video, but yes he did say that
I believe that was the Redemption paladin
@@awilson5684it was Peace Domain Cleric, I made a character based off of that statement and what that means, she was super fun to play!
Yeah, if you're actively aiding people in killing, you're not a pacifist. You just don't like to get your hands dirty. It's like hiring an assassin and being like "Well I didn't _personally_ kill them!"
@@0Fyrebrand0”I never said _we_ should kill him!”
"a couple d6s short of a fireball" killed me
Totally going to use this from now on ❤
Added to the lexicon
DM, "You find a button."
Me, "I push the button."
Group, "Noooooooooooooooooooooooooo!"
Me, "It's pushed."
DM,
Group, “Yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeees!”
dont play that char in tomb of annihilation ^^
Plot twist: there are 6 big chests in the room and every single one of them is a hungry mimic.
my favorite character I've ever played was a Quoth the Raven. Reanimated skeleton bard whose bones were coated in silver, but he was so old that even he didn't remember his backstory & how that happened. So every time someone asked him what his deal was, he would weave a tall tale. while creating the character, I prepared 12 different stories explaining how a skeleton came to be coated in silver - one of them true, but only i and the DM knew which.
I made bikbuk the riddle skeleton. A little guy from a dungeon who became a traveling entertainer
Superstitions: “It’s bad luck to estimate the size of a room before casting fireball.”
Irrational fears, especially of random innocuous things in a home, or other place are so fun. I had a character who was an ancient war-hero robot with 500 years of facing the worst of that setting but he was terrified of all staircases because he had been tricked one too many time by sliding stair traps and had damaged programming. This led to him, climbing the railings, and swinging on chandeliers, and more in order to avoid going up a single flight of stairs.
He was killed by falling down normal stairs
He was right to be wary!
My favorite superstition that I used was “always enter caves/caverns/mines shortest to tallest. “Shortest to tallest makes the loss smallest”
My dwarf character grew up on that old superstition and made his party follow it. The poor balding wizard though… rip 😂
The superstitions one gave me an idea: A character who is loaded with misconceptions about monsters and magic in their world. As if they got all their information from a complete BS artist who was a minor celebrity in their town growing up. Stuff like Trolls can only sense you if you're moving, if you ring a horseshoe around a beholder's eyestalk it has to grant you a wish, or wrapping your head in cloth soaked in rancid tallow protects you from psychic influence.
That’s an interesting one.
As a DM having a bard NPC feeding my players info like this sounds hilarious; but on the very rare occasion he gets it right it pays off big time. Keeps my players doing the goofy stuff expecting nothing to happen; knowing nothing will most likely happen, but doing it anyway
I'm going to use the "if you ring a horseshoe around a Beholders eyestalk, it has to grant you a wish" and add, "Eating the central eye of a Beholder grants one unmatched beauty" because beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
What if you have a bard player on your party who weaves tall tales about everything, and your character just believes them
I have an unused Dwarf character that is convinced the sky sentient and actively trying to kill him.
His clan's mine was flooded after a severe storm, so now his life goal is to destroy the sky.
I'm playing a shadow monk rogue who used to be a shy/awkward/scared little bookworm who returns to his hometown years later, now a trained deadly assassin...and immediately reverts back to his old behavior the minute he runs into anyone who used to know him. He will never be taken seriously no matter how many bodies he leaves in his wake😂
I have a Caregiver in my party: A Tortle Circle of the Land (Coast) Druid going for a healer build who's simply known as Gramps. The characters barely get along at this point, but he's the glue holding the group together with his pearls of wisdom. He's basically their therapist. The party motto so far is essentially just "Protect Gramps at all costs."
You're description of the Caregiver made me think of Mal Reynolds from Firefly. He's very protective of his crew even when he doesn't particularly like them. This lead to that great moment where he confronts the mercenary character Jayne for betraying the crew.
Such a great moment.
I think I also recall a scene where Simon is baffled that Mal would stick his neck out for him when they don't even get along, which annoys Mal. To him, crew is crew.
@@ikaemos That did indeed happen. It was the episode where they delivered the cows, and they had to leave Simon and River behind temporarily to save Book.
Do you want to be in charge?
Yes.
Well you can't.
“If you don’t hear from me in an hour… you come and save me!”
“And risk my new ship?”
😂😂😂
I love the Brave Fool. One of my buddies played it so well. His cleric was with the party at the top of a bowl in the terrain. Down in the bowl we couldn't see much due to dark mist but we could hear screams. He laid his shield down and, with a cry for his god, rode it like a sled down to the screams. The rest of us, of course, had to follow.
I have a LE Cleric/Warlock who is a Quoth the Raven with a Sleezeball twist. Whenever a discussion comes up on what the characters need to do next, talking to NPCs she needs to persuade/deceive, to fill the air in a conversation, or even to rally during battle, she will quote some words of wisdom or dogmatic law of one god or another. The twist is that she (and I) are typically making them up on the fly to fit the point she is trying to make. And it's not really clear if she believes they are actual quotes or not... An example would be when the characters have discussed a plan to death and it's time to act she might say: "We have gathered all the knowledge we can for this fight, but as Lord Helm tells us, knowing is only half the battle. To arms!"
One thing I love playing into is my characters compulsive curiosity. Yes, their more known trait is their habitual caretaking, but the more subtle one is their curiosity, which an npc has called them out on, and also complimented them on. For context, we were given permission to go enter a dragon’s hoard (not going into detail about that but suffice to say, we had permission from the hoard’s owner). In that hoard was more than just jewels and trinkets and magic items, etc. There was also books, scrolls (not spells), and papers. And on those papers was tons and tons of the dragon’s personal knowledge from over the many many centuries (ancient dragon, might be wyrm actually) they had lived. In the party there is my fighter and the artificer who are actually well respected scholars of their field. While the other members retrieved the one item we were there for, the artificer and I sat down and started copying the notes we found in the hoard. We didn’t take anything else. My character then poured over it later back at our temporary base….before realizing they shouldn’t have this. They then returned it to the dragon who sent us to his hoard and apologized. The dragon npc actually said they were perfectly fine with my character, happy I returned it, nostalgic over seeing their own research, but over all complimented my character for being curious and told them to keep doing that. My character pointed out that this is why they are known as a trouble maker in their faction (researchers/archivists/scholars/librarians, etc) to which he laughed and said that my finding trouble was a sign that I was in the right track. It was very sweet and a good moment for the two and my character is an elf and so has a difficult time finding mentors older than them that aren’t just more elves. They kind of have slipped into being the mentor role. So it was nice to show my character being the student with a fond teacher being encouraging. But yeah, personality trait of being curious to the point of getting sidetracked is fun to play sometimes.
I've done the blade must taste blood, it is one of my favorite characters. In an L5R game I played a Matsu Berserker and that lead everyone in setting to assume he'd be arrogant or bloodthirsty, but instead he'd made a vow and that vow meant that he held an incredible amount of respect and weight to violence. And it also meant that he didn't easily "take prisoners". To choose the blade is to choose death, yours and that of others...a thing he wanted all he met to understand as a lesson his clan drilled into him.
He was introduced with a group of thugs threatening him and a woman in a market place. He tries to talk them down, but it ends with them all dead, the woman he "saved" in tears and covered in their blood. He couldn't even bring himself to comfort her, because she saw something horrific and he was that thing.
That’s badass. Love it.
When you were talking about the Quoth the Raven section, I immediately thought of the Seventy Maxims of Maximally Effective Mercenaries. "#30: A little trust goes a long way. The less you use, the further you'll go."
My current character is definitely the Brave Fool, although it's more that she really LOVES to fight - she's a Zealot Barbarian, and her goddess is basically the embodiment of the joy of battle (her Rage is reflavored as a state of euphoria). Also, periodically her goddess fights her followers in the afterlife and gets cut to pieces and scattered, and then whoever collects the most of those pieces becomes her new avatar, so that's something she'll always go after. She does very much care about her friends, though.
One of my favorite characters, a 1E Cavalier (they know no fear) was Beaswyn, which means "battle joy" in Gaelic, AFAIK.
19:00 - Shephard Book would like to correct you. The Bibke was very clear about killing, but it is a bit more fuzzy about kneecaps.
"Quite specific. It is however, a little fuzzy on the subject of kneecaps"
The first character I really clicked with was a Brave Fool. He was a thrill seeking rogue who came from money and so REALLY struggled to understand the concept of consequences. He managed to piss off two separate thieves guilds, a bunch of important nobles and the Church of the Platinum Dragon.
He got briefly imprisoned in the Astral Plane by messing around with a Deck of Many Things, he made a deal with a devil to find out if someone had ordered a hit on him and didn't realise that "selling your soul" was VERY literal. I as a player knew, but he thought the devil was just going to ask him to do something horrible later, and thought 'selling your soul' was a metaphor. Then after the party BARELY survived an encounter with a blue dragon, with it retreating to its lair. I pushed for us to attack it in its lair before it could rest, despite us being REALLY bad shape too.
My Brave Fool didn't learn his lesson by something horrible happening to someone else. He was literally almost torn apart by this dragon, died (and was lucky enough to have someone with a revivify spell nearby) saw the devil watching him in those 6 seconds of death, and realised not only did he get KILLED, but he's sentenced himself to something far worse. Not to mention that the second fight with the dragon was ANOTHER draw. It collapsed its lair and both sides were forced to run, meaning a DRAGON now has a personal grudge with our party.
After that I used a massive amount of my gold to make peace with the Thieves Guilds, because now my Rogue is TERRIFIED of dying again. And while before he was a carefree jokester, now he's becoming a cutthroat murderer. He is changing, but he's learning a lot of the wrong lessons.
I am currently playing a Druid with a feylost background. She sees omens everywhere (from her fear of being taken back to the feywild) and has a three step process for making best friends (dislike someone on sight, then decide they are nice, next immediately start calling them her best friends). She has no filter and it’s so much fun to just let her rip. She also makes up words that actually already exist, and is pleased when other people use them (“I think ‘sinkhole’ is really starting to catch on”). So much fun.
That’s a brilliant character! The making up words that already exist is charming!
@@apollyon1 aw, we are both chuffed that you like it!
I absolutely adore this character, she’s so funny
@@cormorantcolors Thank you, I love her too. More every time I play with her.
My favorite personal rule is "If at first you don't succeed, destroy all evidence you ever tried...
... Including witnesses." I had a bbeg with that self rule, and it was great.
This is super good, lots of people are not comfortable doing roleplay but you can just explain how you want them to without specifics even. I've had times where I drop a voice and just say then they do this this way and I want this kind of effect. Because I feel I can't present what it is I want with out being goofy or something.
19:36 This makes me think of Desmond Doss. The medic who received a Medal of Honor while never touching a weapon, because of his faith.
Doss is a badass.
I’m presuming you’ve seen the film? They had to scale back his achievement to make it believable for the big screen.
@apollyon1 so ridiculous that that was the case. he saved I think like 200 more people than the film depicted. it's ridiculous
I have a list of scenarios I decide how my character would react in them and try to stick to those personality traits.
Such as: your party has just had a meal at a tavern, do you: pay for everyone, pay only for yourself, or do you try to weasel your way out of paying anything. And then thranslate that to other situations.
There should be a character questionnaire made like this. Five or so probing questions that shuffle us into role play archetypes.
These work so well alongside the background personality traits baked into the game, I'm currently playing a grave domain cleric who's a murder detective and the personality trait "Once I start a task I fixate on seeing it completed" led to me making a cleric who's basically an insatiable greed character but her greed shifts to whatever knowledge or lead or evidence she's currently after.
I once had an idea for a Kenku Pact of the Old Ones warlock. Being that Kenkus canonically only repeat what they've heard, he'd constantly be muttering insane laughter, while his spell casting was quoting the Lovecraftian language of R'lyehian.
I actually didn't realize I was already doing this with my necromancer. He very much has Insatiable Greed when it comes to necromantic power, but he's also By The Book in that he won't animate the corpses of innocents unless he gets their permission with Speak with Dead first. He also has a massive fear of fae, but I'm not sure if that's "irrational". 😉
10:15 Chilli Dogs!
21:24 in 3.5 I played with a mage who was afraid of oozes, we went into a runescar and he ended up with a living spell following him ( for anyone who doesn't know, living spells are oozes that are born from a spell being cast within an area of magical fallout and have the properties of that spell, think a fireball becoming a bomb from Final Fantasy). It adored him and would bring him (often stolen) gifts at random intervals.
The Brave Fool is the one that *always* pushes the Big Red Button. Another nickname for the Insatiable Greed is The Magpie. For "By the Book" - one roleplaying opportunity is coming across a situation that isn't covered in the book! For the caregiver - there's an excellent essay out there on the interwebs about how Tuvok, the cold emotionless full-blooded Vulcan by-the-book Commanding Officer was actually Voyager's Ship's Counselor to everyone in the ensemble cast at one point or another. For all of Janeway's Compassionate Leadership, the Mother Role was Tuvok's.
When it comes to Affably Dim-witted (something I really should try to play more... assuming I can get some games in), I've always liked the phrase "not the sharpest spoon in the drawer", and feel like that's a good quote to build a character around. Sharp as a club, but that doesn't mean they can't hit people. Hard.
Biiiiiiiiiig fan of the distinction between character traits and motivations - great advice!
I had a trickery cleric who served a god of strategy and was on a journey to write her own Art of War. It was really fun!
I really liked this video. I like hearing discussions between you two about general aspects of dnd.
I'm not socially awkward... I'm awkwardly social 😅😎
Yeah, but that's not on people like us! These days it's weird to be social, cause many are connecting only through a phone and find it awkward to do otherwise.
I'm in a campaign that's set in the Norse during ragnarok. My character is a wizard with a bag of tricks. For whatever reason I consistently roll up badgers from the bag, like to the extent I have used it a dozen times, and I can count the non badgers on one hand. It's become a bit of a running gag at this point that I have a bag of badgers. It's fucking hilarious and I love how fates worked out with this character.
One of my favorite old (like 2nd edition) character trope I played was a Dudley Do-Right Paladin. He was dumb as a rock, but pure as the driven snow. He had a hard time seeing evil in anyone, super trusting, but blind, dumb luck kept him alive and un-fallen.
Another one from back in the 1990's was a Dwarven Fighter-Cleric berserker kit. In general, he was played as being kinda dumb, but in actuality, it was just the result of a lot of head trauma from using his forehead as a weapon. Every now and again, he'd break out with some incredibly erudite and well thought out comment or argument to the complete confounding of the rest of the part, at which point he'd just look around at everyone and be like, "What?" having no real memory of what he just said.
I once had a monk character that I said came from a monastery where they were forbidden from killing. They could fight just fine, but only knock opponents unconscious. This ended up working out because one of the other characters was an edgy, murder happy ninja, so they would go and finish off all the enemies I knocked out.
That thumbail art is killing me with how beautiful it is❤
By the Book reminds me of Gibbs on NCIS. He encounters a situation, or one of his teammates needs guidance he just says, “rule 7,” or “rule 12.”
Dudes, straight up the best, most useful of your vids in a while. More, more, more!
I played a wizard once who hated fire. He refused to learn or use a single fire based spell other than Prestidigitation for lighting candles and campfires. It was a fun quirk.
I'd love it if you guys could do a follow-up video to this with 10 more traits. Researching or thinking about them is one thing, but they take on another form in the context you provide.
18:20 I played a Peace domain cleric in my last campaign. He would never directly harm anyone, prioritize healing and buffs, and ensure that any enemies that he could stabilize or otherwise save their lives would be spared. He couldn't stop anyone from harming others, but he'd ensure any sentient creature would at least survive.
This periodically caused a little friction with the party, but there were moments where the power of mercy was allowed to shine, like when he was able to convince some mercenaries to just leave the area after I went out of my way to revive one.
I played a “Quoth the Raven” Blood Hunter. He was a mutant tielfing, and he was a scholar of unusual beasts (think Newt Scamander). He carried two greatswords and always rattled off facts about monsters in combat like it was no big deal to him. Love that trope!
My first character ever was a barbarian brave fool. He unintentionally became the party leader with the party often looking towards my character for what to do next. I found that always being ready to rush in but asking other player characters their advice and opinions first before charging in was a great way to drive the party into conflict's but was also be a good battlefield commander who they trusted because my character would allow the party to plan first. So even though we are usually rushing into conflicts we weren't rushing in totally unprepared. The only time a situation like that would happen where we rush in with no plan was whenever my character was driven into a rage where the party also could see a million miles away that we would soon be rushing into something unprepared, which also in itself gave them time to prepare.
The funnest is the one who is there to explore the unknown. My character has a very Luffy-like sense of adventure, and a habit of getting into trouble because he has a very act first-think later mentality. A Tabaxi that follows the 'curiosity killed the cat, but satisfaction brought him back' trope.
In my game I am playing a magical slacker. I don't do anything by hand that I can do with magic. That has been good for a lot of fun at the table so far. Another character is working and studying hard to learn magic and it just comes effortlessly to me and make for a fun dynamic.
I recently played a character who was super old (like basically dead). All his life he was told he’s „the chosen one“ who will have to sacrifice himself in order to save the world. but up until this point, everything was always super peaceful wherever he went. So when the wine cellar of this tavern he stayed at got robbed, he immediately offered to help find and turn in whoever did the crime, despite his old old age. During this quest he always tried to sacrifice himself (even when it was absolutely not necessary).
It was a stupid silly one shot, so i really wouldn’t have cared much if the character had died. He actually didn’t. It was just super fun to play such a old and low key stupid character because I’d never do that for a longer campaign.
Cohen the Barbarian from Terry Pratchett :) brilliant!
This video is so useful it's irritating. Great video guys - really useful advice for beginners and experts alike. Love your content
Running my current monk character as a affable dimwit. Rolled three ones in five minutes, and with a seven Int, decided to run with it and have a blast! Having a goblin trying to be a superhero, and coming out the total schmuck is a ton of fun!
As for quoth the raven, had a chef character (yeah, the artificer Alchemist I used to never shut up about). The best part about this character is you can find new stuff about an interest (I'm not a chef, but I found out how to make homemade pasties)!
Great tip for DMs when a player brings an “In it for the money” character to the table: ask what they want to use it for. It’s not like they’re just going to keep it in a hoard never to be spent for all of eternity. If that were the case, they may as well be broke. Even something as simple as acknowledging the fact that a character is adventuring because they need to in order to make a living and have food on their table can add a world of depth to a character.
I think a classic example of the sleazeball salesman would be Axel Foley from the Beverly Hills Cop movirs. He can lie his way into or out of a lot of situations, and he even lies to his friends from time to time. In that same vein, I also think of Covetous Shen from Diablo 3, and in that particular instance it certainly doesn't hurt that James Hong did an amazing job with the dialogue he was given.
Gents longtime subscriber here great video! I'm thinking of running my first game (LMOP) and will send any players here first. Awesome video.
On personal favorite archetypes:
* The Overconfident Coward (Think Starscream, Usopp or Uncle Ruckus): A character who is full of bravado & confidence until the time comes to put their money where their mouth is; an ineffective braggart. Can be quite fun to play; be gung-ho and supportive whenever things are good & safe, then dial the panic up to 11 when the pressure actually hits. Doesn't mean you're actually ineffective either - you can be an excellent fighter or strategist while under pressure still; just remember that your character's brain & confidence both went out the window the moment they actually have to do something, so whatever they do right is more out of reflex/instinct than anything they actually planned to do.
* The Stoic / The Grump (Buzz Lightyear, Husk, Cobra Bubbles, Agent 47, Lapis, Nico Robin, Zoro, Smoker): A character who either doesn't say much for one reason or another, or who keeps up a mask of confidence most of the time. The type of character prone to dry humor, biting sarcasm, and generally acting 'above it all' or unaffected by the insanity around them. I've found this one to be especially fun when the character does something absolutely ridiculous while keeping a straight face, or when the character tries to 'act up' for the sake of a bit & fails miserably due to just lacking the energy or their unfamiliarity with acting emotionally.
20:00one of my dad's characters was a hafling rogue, and he said that the two biggest consistencies about them is that he hates goblins, (like it's kill on sight hate) and that he's deathly afraid of trolls.
"High charisma, socially awkward" is the Doctor from Doctor Who in literally every incarnation.
High charisma, socially awkward is how my favorite TTRPG character ever was. She was a thaumaturge (Pathfinder class, someone who fights magic with occult knowledge) who would freak out in any social setting but her high charisma would manifest itself in her unhinged ramblings that were used as intimidations and strange but sweet gestures for diplomacy rolls.
Hey Dungeon Dudes I just wanted to say that your videos have taught me more than how to just play DnD. A lot of your content displays an incredible consideration for people, their complexities, and how to make compelling stories out of our lives. So thanks for being real cool dudes haha it always makes my day when I have time on a day off to just sit around, drink tea and listen to you and watch my WIS score increase!
Can confirm that Quoth the Raven is a fun and easy way to roleplay. I once jumped into a campaign as a guest character, and my Bard used "bawdy limerick" as his Bardic ability. 😁
In college, I played a long form Legend of the Five Rings campaign (fantasy feudal Japan setting) and my character was a nezumi who naively dreamed of becoming a samurai (in L5R, nezumi are barely recognized as sentient beings, let alone capable of the honorable life of a samurai.) I played him as both the brave fool and one who is also a total outsider to the culture he is trying so desperately to join. Throughout the campaign I boldly, sometimes recklessly took actions that either I thought would get me closer to that goal OR that I thought a True Samurai would do, while at the same time criticizing a lot of the rituals and customs of the humans around me that seemed bizarre. This sometimes led to conflict as samurai would be expected to do certain things that my character just could not understand (such as ritual suicide after a failure) and this caused a few crises of faith in the goal. It was a blast, and by campaign’s end, after helping to defeat the big bad and save the empire, the emperor himself proclaimed my character would be samurai, in service to one of the other PCs who was being elevated to a high noble rank himself.
Another potentially fun archetype you could play as, and that works well depending on how you do it, is the amnesiac that's recovering their memories and finding out who are they were, who they are, and what they can remember or what they forgot.
The idea I've been wanting to try for a long time is a monk who, as part of a secret order of assassins, after killing his targets, when reporting to his superiors, he would have his memory modified so that he can't remember his target's names or faces. So he genuinely doesn't remember who he's killed. The RP potential I see here is the consequences he has to deal with following all those murders, and him trying to redeem himself and recover his memories, while trying not to kill unless its absolutely necessary.
That sort of story can be a lot of fun for both the rest of the party and the DM too. DM can use it in a lot ways in terms of narrative and NPCs, and it can be interesting to see how the rest of the party reacts to the recovered memories, and whether they accept who the amnesiac is vs who they were before losing their memories.
Thoughts? :)
Now I need to make a bard that inspires the barbarian with Smash Mouth:
🎶Hey now, you’re a rock star. Get your axe out, swing hard🎶
Ideally an earth genasi barbarian 😉
I came up with a more general but also meta:
🎶Hey now, here's a d6, bardic inspir-a-tion🎶
1)thank y’all for this! Absolutely wonderful both in the idea/explanation & in Monty walking through how the character arcs typically change. Truly great work!
2)Since y’all have brought this up twice now, as a DM, if someone has a dump stat (-0 to -…), I make them role for their choices along that stat. So Int/Wis checks constantly for sorcerers (just watched your all Sorcerer video) to see if they would stack their spells in a wise & planned manner. Or barbarians to see if they would be smart enough to go block off the back of the house in case the suspect tries to escape. It makes it things really fun when a character acts according to their scores and not player Int/Wis. Wizards constantly tripping, especially in battle in mountains or woods, because low Dex makes for some funny natural interactions. And the players start playing into the stat disadvantage shortly after a fun moment.
As an example for the "quirky thing to bring into the game": my Merfolk is an archeologist, which is what I have studied so far. And the lore of the Merfolks in our world is based on Aztec/Mayan/... culture. Hasn't come to bear fruit yet, but my characters goal is to find out more about his peoples past. And on top, he's a warlock. So, who knows to what shennanigans that might lead :)...
For my Paladin, I borrowed a lot from these guys called the Dungeon Dudes. They have this Eternal Flame religion with Tennants and everything ❤
love your general advice videos, especially with your fun examples and applications for all GMs and Players
I played D&d for a while now and I love role-playing, I thought that I wouldn't find much in this video, but It has been a blast! Thank you Dungeon Dudes, you never disappoint me! 💪
It is also possible to add new role play characteristics based on in game experience. I was playing “the second cleric on the party” as a rich diplomat noble type that was proving to be too vanilla to play. But when he had a near death / near party kill experience he had his “Road to Damascus” moment and became a grim sack-cloth and ashes believer in his own religion, as opposed to just a job. Still a Diplomat, but he stopped being vanilla and it all tied in as believable character development.
Great list, guys. It brings a smile to this 40+ year rpger to think about how many new players are going to see this and how much joy it's going to bring when they bring your advice to their table. If I could add/reiterate a couple of other pieces of advice:
1. Know where you/your group/your game is on the roleplay spectrum
Imagine a spectrum. On the left side there are roleplay/story-telling games. These games encourage or even require players to roleplay and improvise. The mechanics of these games reward roleplaying. For example, if your character's flaw of "greed compels me" makes your character make bad decisions, you are rewarded for that. In these games the player and the character are separate: the player is a storyteller and the character is their tool. Being a good player often means making your character do things they shouldn't, just as you'd do if you were writing a book or screenplay. The advice to players in one of these games, Blades in the Dark, is "drive your characters like a stolen car!"
On the right side of the spectrum are tactical/mastery games. These games encourage/require players to use their character's abilities to perform as well as they can. It's great to roleplay, but the game doesn't reward you for having an interesting character or making them act a certain way. DnD is on the right side of the spectrum. I have friends who've been playing since AD&D who have never and will never developed traits for their characters. They like dice-rolling and using their abilities, not thinking about characters. The great thing about DnD is that you can have a great time without roleplaying. The unfortunate thing is DnD can make roleplaying hard because the roleplay choice (making bad decisions) can be against the goal of the group (defeating enemies).
So it's good to talk about expectations with your group and get a feel for what people want to do.
2. Choose simple traits that force your hand
Choose traits like "is always honest," "is a coward," or "is righteous to a fault," traits that *require* you act a certain way. If you do this you don't have to think about what your character would do because it's always clear. The trait forces the behavior. Traits like "hates the rich" or "wants to be wealthy" don't force you to make decisions, and this makes them harder to roleplay because you have to think about the decision. Imagine the Guardian of the Galaxy characters. They never stop to think about their traits (overconfident, greedy, affable but dumb, naive) because their traits "I am always overconfident," "I need to steal every gadget I like," "I always make dumb decisions," and "I'm smart but am too optimistic" tell them exactly what to do. This is particularly important in games like DnD because the game doesn't encourage you to roleplay, so you have to make the opportunity.
3. Tell your group your traits
Don't make anyone guess your character's traits. Tell them directly. This will help the other players and the GM predict what you will do so they can have fun with it. Don't surprise them or expect them to guess why you do things.
This is one of those things only us old farts remember. We had it in the PHBR books.
I remember playing characters that were nearly unplayable in current games because the books & culture have changed. One of my favorite was a goblin that carried a set of manacles in his pack and enough chain to secure him in the stables when the group spent a night in an inn, but was always cheerful about it because there were rats in the stables.
One of the players in the campaign I'm running currently is playing a wildfire druid that makes fireworks for a living and is obsessed with everything flamable or explosive. He plays to this trait briliantly. When it's appropriate he plays it out in detail, however, when the spotlight is on another player or it might disrupt the flow of the game, he just quickly drops 1 or 2 lines about how his character feels or how they visually respond when triggered. It adds so much flavor to the character without getting in the way of anyone's fun and I love it.
This is easily one of my favourite videos that you've done. Thank you.
One of my favorite one shot characters I made was a dimwit. Hard to maintain, because you don't want it to impede the party. My trick was to make them right, but for the wrong reasons. That way we all have a chuckle but we keep up our momentum.
Mt character is a mix of the by the book, quoth the raven, and the reckless fool. He wants to be a hero so I made a small set of rules that he follows. They're things like "a hero always gives second chances (never third)" and "a hero would never abandon their allies." Also, instead of "what's the worst that could happen" I say "it'll be fine. Heroes never die"
A D&D pacifist, if the player isn't going light on the theme, should always be looking for non-violent or diplomatic solutions in difficult situations (such as cutting off a path, dropping enemies down a pit, feeding the opponents a lie to convince them your party isn't dangerous, etc), encouraging knock-outs & escapes otherwise. And if such isn't possible, the pacifist should be avoiding aggressive fighting themselves until pushed to the edge (think Charlie from Hazbin Hotel as an example), focusing more on healing/buffing allies, debuffing enemies & trying to force them to surrender, or even trying to tank hits themselves (even if they are fragile).
Having exceptions to one's pacifism also helps (such as not showing pacifism towards undead, beasts or constructs, or only showing pacifism towards humanoids & creatures that can communicate with the character).
Just sent this to a player who needed help. I can even point out like combos of my characters in these traits. It's great advice. One of my characters is of course Lawful so By the Books is their go-to. Whether they're lawful good, Evil, or Neutral. But Insatiable Greed- will never turn down that wine. Long live wine-mom. (But heck she's no caregiver even if she's the mom of the group.)
Really appreciated this video. I struggle a lot with finding and embodying my character’s personality. This told me exactly where I need to go.
I think it the traditional bonds and flaws are really useful. Who am I allied to and what are my issues/personal challenges? That gets the core intent down. Then you add in a quirk or two and let the character evolve
A character archetype I love to play is one I affectionately refer to as "The Girl In the Tower." She (or he or they) is someone who was sheltered and isolated but was always curious about the outside world, and tried to understand it or prepare for it as well as they could from where they were. They're probably, intelligent, skilled, and a quick thinker, but is naive in an odd way. They may approach situations based on how the protagonist in a favourite book would approach them, draw all of their assumptions from the holy texts of their faith, approach all fights as though they were formal duels, or have trouble disabling kobold traps that aren't following proper engineering practice with precision parts.
In less stressful situations this makes them excited. It's something new and interesting, after all, an experience they never had the chance to have before. It's a fun challenge to overcome and another wonder of the Real World (tm), but when it gets dangerous they may freeze or panic. They're equal parts the character who will brush off a complication in the plan because of COURSE the party will figure it out and the character who may, if things get dangerous, scary or go horribly wrong, openly say that they want to go home and that the adventure isn't fun anymore (Their player, on the other hand, is having SO much fun giving the poor bean the novel experience of T R AU M A).
They're the gifted student leaving the academy, the brave young noble leaving the affairs of court behind, the tavern girl full of wanderlust and raised on adventurers' tales, the priest raised in a temple now on a first pilgrimage, or the literal princess who grew up locked in the tower. They're optimistic and doing their best to be world-wise with the information they have, and have well-honed skills which don't always hold up in the field or against the weird nuances of real situations. They're a very fun way of giving a character flaws by just making their viewpoint a metaphorical small, high-up window looking in a single direction. It lets them see far, but in a limited way.
Agreed, this is a really fun archetype. Your example about the kobols traps made me laugh, thanks
I recently made an evil redemption paladin who for backstory reasons can never deal damage but is gleefully exploiting the “pacifist” loophole to still be an adventurer by buffing/healing the party as they kill people (they’re not even evil, just normal doing normal PC things) and it’s been so fun to play
10:44 - a "real world" version of the Quoth the Raven in action? Quark and the Rules of Acquisition from DS9.
And I love the By the Book trait for challenging me to play outside the box. My current Star Wars character is essentially the Lone Ranger. Never kills, shoots the guns out of bad guys's hands, doesn't swear, tells kids to stay in school and drink their milk. It's a complete opposite of the loosy-goosy devil may care character that I usually do. Our next campaign sprung out of me just casually asking "I wonder how hard it would be to play an orthodox Mandalorian?" (You know, the "This is the way", never rermove their helmet type) and the rest of the table went "Yeah! That sounds fun!" So my next character is going to be a hard religious zelot about the Six Actions that all Mandos follow. It's shaping up to be a goddamned blast.
OMG yes!
26:21 this is briliant!
being in on the joke with the story teller to help tell the story is a great feeling, especially when they enjoy it and doubly so when the party dose🖤
Thank you for your vids, love watching them. This advice helps a lot.
I struggle to add character and personalities to characters because I end up just making them like myself in some way...or specifically opposite to what I'm like, but then it just feels like I'm being a tryhard. Nuance is difficult!
10/10 this is so helpful! Thank you for the help building my character!
This is a fun video! I think my current character is a socially awkward caregiver with an insatiable appetite for information, especially information you can get from going in weird holes in the ground. And I got to say, twilight cleric is a fantastic subclass if you like to play a caregiver type. You get aid going with twilight sanctuary, aura of vitality, it's a total Wammawink moment
This was really fun and helpful. I love easy archetypal stuff like this. I’m the king of making a 10 page backstory but then not even knowing what they’d do 5 minutes from now lol
I love the smug little smile Kelly gives when Monty says, "you're probably going to be your DMs best friend." 😂😂
I recall my first D&D character having an over exaggerated fear of bears because his merchant Guildmaster had pet bears that would come in and sleep on my character during his training days.
You guys are fantastic thank you for the hours and hours of content! You are my go to when I want to brainstorm some idea that’s hit me on the head- I’ll TH-cam it and look for the dudes 💯
Something _really_ important to note with all of this is something I think a lot of people forget when trying to make better/deeper characters.
_It’s totally fine to do the basic stuff too._
My first ever D&D PC, and only my second character ever, is an old veteran who got flung through time by about 2,000 years.
Int is +1, charisma is -1, wisdom is +2.
Physical stats are stacked.
So he’s a gruff old man who can be physically intimidating, is a little outclassed for book smarts but isn’t stupid, is fairly shrewd & very perceptive, but is lacking in any sort of non-coercive social situation.
Between being an old man, a soldier, being from different time, and not being a native common-speaker, it adds up to his -1.
My rogue was all about delivering punchlines. She was kind of a badass with sharp knives and she knew how to intimidate someone. My improv was ok but sometimes I pulled one I thought about the day before. Playing while watching for the right time to drop one was always fun. A classic, I know. But my group seemed to like it a lot!
A friend of mine had a character who wouldn't miss an opportunity to debate about anything with anybody. It often faded to black and turned into a roll, but the way he did it was always fun! His trait was a sort of "I MUST be always right". Good thing it toned down during the campaign. His character grew up!
This is a great resource, and one I would love to see more of. I don’t know if you would want to do top five archetypes for different genres or something like that, but this is one of my favorite videos you all have done on something other than mechanics
Having direction is so important to maintain great consistent RPing. It's why traits/types are so nice to have. There's positives and negatives to all of them and that creates well rounded personalities.
My current character is a fun mix of brave fool, hopelessly naive, and affably dimwitted. He's a wild magic bard-barian who was born into a rich family. He doesn't want to take up the family business (which is just a lot of managerial nonsense) and has a rose-colored glasses approach to adventuring. He sees the best in everyone and takes people at face value, but doesn't often understand the common folk's plights due to not coming from the same social class which leads to the naivety. He's kind of a bit of a himbo in that way. It definitely leaves him vulnerable to being taken advantage of by others due to just accepting what people say. Not to mention the constant rushing into danger just to fulfill a romanticized ideal that doesn't exist isn't great for ones lifespan.
Everything works so fun with our party too. For instance, our wizard used my character's eagerness to explore old ruins while the party rested because they wanted to rationalize their insatiable greed for historical knowledge. Our sorcerer is also a brave fool/affably dimwitted combo so the two of them also support each others bad ideas. We have a by the book rogue who's on multiple occasions had to put the dad-foot down on shenanigans. It's been such a blast having unique dynamics, and using traits to drive interesting moments between characters
D6s short of a fireball is beautiful.
I really appreciate this vid. I feel like so much of your content is so stat based (which is great to some extent), but this is some of the stuff im really into learning.
Glad you enjoy it!
> "Insatiable greed"
I was in a campaign where one player had managed to steel over 90% of the campaigns loot without others noticing, and was now setting up his own criminal empire on the side... that campaign didn't last long.
Ive got an example of a "Quothe the Raven" character that Ive really enjoyed. She was an amnesiac diviner who used the spell Encode Thoughts to record her memories so she doesnt forget them and whenever she is using divination magic its a sort of "Oh! I think Ive seen this before!" and she retells a memory from one of her memory strands. Which I have a list of like 60 memories for her to pull from.
Another trope I found I’ve enjoyed with one of my characters is what I call the Runaway. She’s a very sweet and lovable person, comes off as ditsy only because Common isn’t her first language and she’s very distractable. But she’s run away from home because she was confined to her clan to the point of suffocation, until it all boiled over, people got hurt, and she ran.
The key roleplaying detail about the Runaway is that she’s chronically avoidant. She talks about everyone else’s feelings but her own, deflects when things start veering too close to uncomfortable emotions, and is afraid all of her friends are going to eventually think of her as a child, like her clan did. It’s been very fun watching how much stress she can take and what the eventual breakdown is going to look like - because I know she’ll rise from the ashes a stronger person
Ooohh, both of your outfits are so nice in this video! Love that color coordination!
I did a twist on the brave fool. My pc wasnt confident in themselves at all. But believed in one of the other pcs so much he became the reckless overconfident when around the other pc. Its a great way to do it because it alows u to sometimes play timid and other times bombastic. Plus it grows a special connection between two of the pcs and makes the player that plays the other pc feel great