My friend played Farmer Bob at a larp. His village had a legend that the chosen one would come from the village to defeat the great evil. When things got bad enough they picked him because he was the only one who was literate at the time, so they figured that was heroic enough.
Anyone who's had a player who's "an [X] trying to convince the party they're a [Y]" is probably having PTSD flashbacks now.
It sounds funny to read about but in my experience players who commit to constantly gaslighting fictional characters are not team players and always willing to spoil the fun of others.
That sounds very cute! I'm thinking of the players who seem to need secret knowledge over the other players.
I was in a game with a secret were-rat who was constantly passing notes to the gm and then you'd wake up missing items or finding NPCs you liked dead and the player would angrily deny having anything to do with it. We all saw you pass a note.
A friend of mine once intentionally derailed a pug game by playing a priest of torm who was convinced that torm was black, to piss off the gm and the paladin of torm who were super racist. We probably shouldve just left the game, but we were asshole teens.
One time in a group I wanted out of because of a problem player, he tried to steal a critical piece of gear from my character while I was sleeping. Before I could say anything he started with a “What, it’s what my character would do!” I told him “Well MY character would kill anyone caught stealing from him with his very large axe, so good luck!” Weirdly he didn’t think that was as funny.
The "that's what my character would do" thing really sucks. If the other players don't think it's funny, and the DM doesn't think it's funny and often not even the player themselves think it's funny (or replace funny with any other measure of worthwhileness), then why are they doing it? It's not like the character is a living being that demands accuracy.
Had a game where the DM and his bestie homebrewed Roy Mustang. The PC was insufferable and overpowered by level 3… shooting fireballs that consumed the entire room in a single attack.
The party, and the group, broke up because they were mad the rest of us didn’t want to live in their power fantasy world
Hear me out: I played with an orc fighter who was convinced he was a mage, and tried to convince the rest of the party of the same thing. He carried a cast iron pan as his weapon, and his spells were "pan toss" and "pan smack". There were a lot of laughs when NPC's would be like "you're clearly a fighter, you're wearing plate armor" and he'd say it was his spell casting focus.
i had a rogue that i claimed to have forgotten the name to each session. in reality, i was playing them under a false identity and hiding from the thieves guild, that was just me dropping bread crumbs. that was fun.
I would love to see the werewolf play the pompous know-it-all: "Um, actually the idea that the moon causes the change is a superstition. It's a body cycle that often coincidentally matches up with the full moon. People just remember the times during the full moon because of confirmation bias."
Ok, this gives me a great idea - a warlock whose patron is his own mlm scheme, he has to sell his shitty “get magic quick” scheme to lots of people to power up. “Just dedicate and focus your energies to the collective and you too can gain godlike powers, share it with your friends and loved ones. Join now and you’ll be empowered in no time. Empower 4 others and you’ll get candle lighting privileges! Reach archeon tier like me and you’ll be throwing fireballs, just 7 short tiers to work through, what better use for your time?”
The peasant farmer I’ve played as a halfling artificer with halfling luck. He never improved much, aside from rolling with the punches a bit better. In fact, he hadn’t any clue what his equipment was or how it worked. Things just kept happening for him and the party refused to let him leave.
The running joke was that he’s lucky enough to stumble into unfathomable power, wealth, and fame, but not lucky enough to find the mundane life of peace he was looking for.
Most of these are just gimmick characters that will have one fun interaction with the group and then become useless. They can be used for one-shots, but not full campaigns.
Like the dragonborn one, after the initial interaction where they explain the skin condition. Most players will just go "okay" and move on.
Except for the sentient hat one. That has a mystery attached and you can keep changing the mannequin throughout. Maybe it also works on a mop or barrel.
It really depends if the players are in it for the gaming or for the roleplay. Several of these are solid roleplay opportunities for people really into that aspect, and they would probably have a lot of fun.
Some of course are just silly thought experiments.
As a DM. I'd totally let a player pick a new body each day or something. Like up to Dex mod per long rest you can take 10 minutes to swap bodies or something. And you get stat modifiers based on which body you have.
Break the game? Maybe. Fun? Definitely in the right hands
You could reward the player by allowing them to find new bodies with different abilities. Later in the game, they could come across a gnomish flying contraption that would grant them a flying speed.
And you know at some point, they could be fighting a stone golem, and the character could deliver the "killing blow" with, "I slam my hat onto the golem and attempt to gain control."
Mechanically it could work similar to a Warforged character.
Semi-related: I created a gnome subclass in this vein, gnome in a mech. Could be inspiration for anyone wanting to flesh out the mechanics of this.
I'm currently placing a sentient spellbook piloting a mannequin. It's telepathic, too, and I love switching between the robot "outside" voice and the more demonic "inside" voice. For even more dramatic effect, it can summon it's own soul (Scribes Wizard works extremely well for this concept)
I played a Protector Aasimar Barbarian named Krill who was a fairly average scholar who had decided studying wasn’t for him. He heard somebody talking about “Power Word Krill,” and decided that he wanted to learn how to do it. He would basically go along with the party on everything (sometimes a little too quickly, he was hard to kill and often forgot others were squishier), but was absolutely obsessed with finding Power Word Krill.
He was asked multiple times if he was instead looking for “Power Word Kill,” but he really wanted to summon a lot of small crustaceans on demand. Or maybe it would just summon a big one, he didn’t know and was fine with either situation.
I've done the peasant farmer, who left his farm and took off to be a cleric. He never had the knack for farming like his brother, and when a passing cleric told him about the wonders of his deity, old Jeb was enthralled. The cleric was nice enough to even sell Jeb, promised to be the genuine article, his very own holy symbol for all Jeb's coins and a pair of chickens. His brother said he was a gullible fool, but Jeb was sure he had seen his true path. Gave up the farm and hit the road looking for enlightenment. It was actually a fun character, too bad the campaign slowly died off because people couldn't make it to the sessions.
I basically did the farmer once. My character was a winemaker with barely any skills that would be useful on an adventure. When his sister's fiance and that fiance's cousin - both wizards - got invited to visit some rich uncle at the other end of the realm, he took the chance to see a bit more of the world. By the time they arrived, the uncle had been killed by demons and my character basically got stuck at "I want to go home" and "Can we just let the inquisition handle this?"
Edit: to be fair, this wasn't D&D but The Dark Eye, so a lot more social and knowledge based skills that can make a non-fighting character useful.
Hey, I came up with the peasant farmer idea myself, like 10 years ago.
My character was this: A 36 year old blond guy, he farms watermelons and sells them at the village square. He is married with two kids but has a very selfish and idiotic personality. Leaves his family behind to "make his own destiny". Always says pseudo-inspirational shit. He is a rogue but extremely clumsy and often has trouble with how he carries himself, he is the opposite of smooth.
I think everyone tries fielding a commoner or "normal" person at least once.
My version was a nobleman's son that just "wanted to try this adventuring thing out." He wound up bankrolling the entire campaign, right up until he died in the second encounter.
In Pathfinder, as a Tanuki you can take a feat called Teakettle Form that allows you to change into a inanimate object (like a hat) and if you're a witch you can have your familiar take a humanoid form.
I also had an ace bard! Red dragonborn who was head cheerleader at his school and only wanted a puppy during the campaign. The puppy then proceeded to be carried around on said bard’s head.
I also played an ace bard (technically bardlock but whatever)! He was a satyr but deer instead of goat and the campaign had him slowly change from just a silly little guy to eventually taking the tragedy subclass. Very fun to play
A druid who got involved because they're the party's weed dealer.
Isn't that the plot of Dazed and Confused?
A werewolf who doesn't believe in the moon.
This would play out as an unintentional (or intentional) allegory for addiction, and the denial that masks it. The party would very likely form an intervention of some sort. I mean, they'd have to. After the third werewolf attack or so, it starts to become a real problem.
So I don't know DND rules, nor the strengths of the classes.
But you could follow several European Monk blueprints:
definitely a beer brewer
Hildegard von Bingen Route: be a herbal healer and a bard
Mendelssohn Route: have a knack for breeding peas, combine it with the fairytale of the giant beanstalk and you could have a handy getaway or bridging monk
There's also Brother Cadfael: a crime-solving sleuth from the 12th century. A high Wisdom stat is exactly what the Cleric class needs, so it would work out pretty well.
I had a guy play a combo of the sentient hat and farmer. A lich screwed up, was left as just a head, and his phylactery was the farmer. As the farmer got stronger the lich got weaker but more connected to the farmer, until the lich was very nearly fully in control of the farmer (fighter/rogue by that point) before the party found a way to remove the lich.
Nah. More like early thirties. Average life expectancy in the dark ages was 30 or something, but that's just because most people died very young, mostly as babies. If you managed to grow up at all, you could reach your 50s or 60s.
Unless you're in the middle of a major plague or have a ridiculous amount of war, peasants in a medieval-style world who survive young childhood should generally get to an age of about 60. Though getting old with medieval-level medicine while working a physically demanding job probably sucks hard.
Giant snails in 5e can be defeated by a Commoner throwing rocks. They have a speed of 10 feet and an AC of 15 while in their shell. The same trick even works on both versions of a Flail Snail, though it takes longer.
The bard is a hick who wears overalls, is named Beauregard ("Beau" to his friends), and charms the underpants off of various people and creatures of all kinds with his unassuming and innocent, natural "aw shucks" charm.
Secretly, he's a perv from a big city putting on an act.
One of my characters I hope to play some day is a half orc hexblade warlock who doesn't realize he has magic powers or that he made a pact. His "casting" involves yelling intimidatingly and waving his arms, sometimes throwing certain things.
If anyone asks where he got his favorite axe (which is always conveniently "on his back" when he needs it, despite him constantly forgetting it), he'll explain that he traded part of his shoe for it.
Any party members that try to explain his pact are met with disbelief or confused facial expressions before he inevitably moves on.
92 replies
My friend played Farmer Bob at a larp. His village had a legend that the chosen one would come from the village to defeat the great evil. When things got bad enough they picked him because he was the only one who was literate at the time, so they figured that was heroic enough.
@its_kim_love @Stamets Shades of discworld logic, right there.
You have no idea. It's hard to explain, but Bob was a riot.
Anyone who's had a player who's "an [X] trying to convince the party they're a [Y]" is probably having PTSD flashbacks now.
It sounds funny to read about but in my experience players who commit to constantly gaslighting fictional characters are not team players and always willing to spoil the fun of others.
In my party was a hobgoblin convinced he was the most beautiful being on the earth. And he tried convincing everyone to think the same. Was very funny
That sounds very cute! I'm thinking of the players who seem to need secret knowledge over the other players.
I was in a game with a secret were-rat who was constantly passing notes to the gm and then you'd wake up missing items or finding NPCs you liked dead and the player would angrily deny having anything to do with it. We all saw you pass a note.
A friend of mine once intentionally derailed a pug game by playing a priest of torm who was convinced that torm was black, to piss off the gm and the paladin of torm who were super racist. We probably shouldve just left the game, but we were asshole teens.
One time in a group I wanted out of because of a problem player, he tried to steal a critical piece of gear from my character while I was sleeping. Before I could say anything he started with a “What, it’s what my character would do!” I told him “Well MY character would kill anyone caught stealing from him with his very large axe, so good luck!” Weirdly he didn’t think that was as funny.
The "that's what my character would do" thing really sucks. If the other players don't think it's funny, and the DM doesn't think it's funny and often not even the player themselves think it's funny (or replace funny with any other measure of worthwhileness), then why are they doing it? It's not like the character is a living being that demands accuracy.
I don't get it. Obviously hobgoblins don't think hobgoblins are ugly.
Had a game where the DM and his bestie homebrewed Roy Mustang. The PC was insufferable and overpowered by level 3… shooting fireballs that consumed the entire room in a single attack.
The party, and the group, broke up because they were mad the rest of us didn’t want to live in their power fantasy world
Hear me out: I played with an orc fighter who was convinced he was a mage, and tried to convince the rest of the party of the same thing. He carried a cast iron pan as his weapon, and his spells were "pan toss" and "pan smack". There were a lot of laughs when NPC's would be like "you're clearly a fighter, you're wearing plate armor" and he'd say it was his spell casting focus.
I need a new pondering orb
i had a rogue that i claimed to have forgotten the name to each session. in reality, i was playing them under a false identity and hiding from the thieves guild, that was just me dropping bread crumbs. that was fun.
I would love to see the werewolf play the pompous know-it-all: "Um, actually the idea that the moon causes the change is a superstition. It's a body cycle that often coincidentally matches up with the full moon. People just remember the times during the full moon because of confirmation bias."
Meanwhile the moon disappears behind clouds and they briefly turn human, “COMPLETE COINCIDENCE!”
Heard one on the weekend - a party of warlocks who are all each other's patrons through the power of friendship.
Ok, this gives me a great idea - a warlock whose patron is his own mlm scheme, he has to sell his shitty “get magic quick” scheme to lots of people to power up. “Just dedicate and focus your energies to the collective and you too can gain godlike powers, share it with your friends and loved ones. Join now and you’ll be empowered in no time. Empower 4 others and you’ll get candle lighting privileges! Reach archeon tier like me and you’ll be throwing fireballs, just 7 short tiers to work through, what better use for your time?”
"If the moon is real how come I always black out when it is allegedly supposed to appear?"
(the moon is up at any hour of the day, it only rises at dusk and sets at dawn when it is full)
The peasant farmer I’ve played as a halfling artificer with halfling luck. He never improved much, aside from rolling with the punches a bit better. In fact, he hadn’t any clue what his equipment was or how it worked. Things just kept happening for him and the party refused to let him leave.
The running joke was that he’s lucky enough to stumble into unfathomable power, wealth, and fame, but not lucky enough to find the mundane life of peace he was looking for.
I've been that druid 😂 except I diversified my inventory after picking up circle of spores
My sister has, no joke, played as a sentient fucking sandwich.
As long as your not a part of it I don't see an issue with your sister's fucking Sandwich.
Most of these are just gimmick characters that will have one fun interaction with the group and then become useless. They can be used for one-shots, but not full campaigns.
Like the dragonborn one, after the initial interaction where they explain the skin condition. Most players will just go "okay" and move on.
Except for the sentient hat one. That has a mystery attached and you can keep changing the mannequin throughout. Maybe it also works on a mop or barrel.
It really depends if the players are in it for the gaming or for the roleplay. Several of these are solid roleplay opportunities for people really into that aspect, and they would probably have a lot of fun.
Some of course are just silly thought experiments.
The druid is just a how the team met story.
The drow one is just straight up PTSD from being a Drow, that's a solid character basis.
The mannequin one can be used to re-spec. Need a tank? Big, heavy and slow puppet. Something dexterious? Ten arms with ten fingers each.
Or with a buoy body it gets a swim speed.
As a DM. I'd totally let a player pick a new body each day or something. Like up to Dex mod per long rest you can take 10 minutes to swap bodies or something. And you get stat modifiers based on which body you have.
Break the game? Maybe. Fun? Definitely in the right hands
You could reward the player by allowing them to find new bodies with different abilities. Later in the game, they could come across a gnomish flying contraption that would grant them a flying speed.
And you know at some point, they could be fighting a stone golem, and the character could deliver the "killing blow" with, "I slam my hat onto the golem and attempt to gain control."
Mechanically it could work similar to a Warforged character.
Semi-related: I created a gnome subclass in this vein, gnome in a mech. Could be inspiration for anyone wanting to flesh out the mechanics of this.
These are fantastic. The hat+mannequin seems like it would have a lot of RP potential. Ditto for the midlife crisis.
I'm currently placing a sentient spellbook piloting a mannequin. It's telepathic, too, and I love switching between the robot "outside" voice and the more demonic "inside" voice. For even more dramatic effect, it can summon it's own soul (Scribes Wizard works extremely well for this concept)
I played a Protector Aasimar Barbarian named Krill who was a fairly average scholar who had decided studying wasn’t for him. He heard somebody talking about “Power Word Krill,” and decided that he wanted to learn how to do it. He would basically go along with the party on everything (sometimes a little too quickly, he was hard to kill and often forgot others were squishier), but was absolutely obsessed with finding Power Word Krill.
He was asked multiple times if he was instead looking for “Power Word Kill,” but he really wanted to summon a lot of small crustaceans on demand. Or maybe it would just summon a big one, he didn’t know and was fine with either situation.
That one is amazing, thanks for posting it!
You'd love Ring of the Grammarian
I would totally buy drugs from a druid named Violetbriar or Shroombeard...
Fuck, now I gotta roll new characters...
Shroombeard sounds like a treant from the deepest, dankest part of the forest.
Shroombeard's stash would make an Ancient Golden Dragon worried about missing their fortitude save.
If Shroombeard isn't a Circle of Spores druid I'll eat my mushroom hat.
I think he'd get Resistance to Poison just for continuity.
I've done the peasant farmer, who left his farm and took off to be a cleric. He never had the knack for farming like his brother, and when a passing cleric told him about the wonders of his deity, old Jeb was enthralled. The cleric was nice enough to even sell Jeb, promised to be the genuine article, his very own holy symbol for all Jeb's coins and a pair of chickens. His brother said he was a gullible fool, but Jeb was sure he had seen his true path. Gave up the farm and hit the road looking for enlightenment. It was actually a fun character, too bad the campaign slowly died off because people couldn't make it to the sessions.
There's a longer and better version of this that has a fanart of it
I would like to see that.
Edit: Found it!
We're not twitter, link to sources
https://dat-soldier.tumblr.com/post/186717742297/terrible-character-ideas
I basically did the farmer once. My character was a winemaker with barely any skills that would be useful on an adventure. When his sister's fiance and that fiance's cousin - both wizards - got invited to visit some rich uncle at the other end of the realm, he took the chance to see a bit more of the world. By the time they arrived, the uncle had been killed by demons and my character basically got stuck at "I want to go home" and "Can we just let the inquisition handle this?"
Edit: to be fair, this wasn't D&D but The Dark Eye, so a lot more social and knowledge based skills that can make a non-fighting character useful.
Hey, I came up with the peasant farmer idea myself, like 10 years ago.
My character was this: A 36 year old blond guy, he farms watermelons and sells them at the village square. He is married with two kids but has a very selfish and idiotic personality. Leaves his family behind to "make his own destiny". Always says pseudo-inspirational shit. He is a rogue but extremely clumsy and often has trouble with how he carries himself, he is the opposite of smooth.
I think everyone tries fielding a commoner or "normal" person at least once.
My version was a nobleman's son that just "wanted to try this adventuring thing out." He wound up bankrolling the entire campaign, right up until he died in the second encounter.
That's amazing lol.
I love these soooo much.
In Pathfinder, as a Tanuki you can take a feat called Teakettle Form that allows you to change into a inanimate object (like a hat) and if you're a witch you can have your familiar take a humanoid form.
i really need to find a pathfinder game it has fun sounding classes. do the tanuki have magic scrotum power or do i have to RP that
Convince your GM to let you reflavor "Iron Belly" which gives you a 1d6 bludgeoning attack.
hell yes i gotta look up more mythical japanese tanuki abilities and make sure i can get them
How the fuck did we not get Tanuki in WotR instead of Kitsune? This is bonkers amazing, and better be included if Owlcat does another one.
Only one that's terrible is the washboard bard, but that's just my personal dislike of the horny bard trope
I once played an ace bard. He only cares about the music. He also unconditionally oozed sex appeal.
I also had an ace bard! Red dragonborn who was head cheerleader at his school and only wanted a puppy during the campaign. The puppy then proceeded to be carried around on said bard’s head.
I also played an ace bard (technically bardlock but whatever)! He was a satyr but deer instead of goat and the campaign had him slowly change from just a silly little guy to eventually taking the tragedy subclass. Very fun to play
Isn't that the plot of Dazed and Confused?
This would play out as an unintentional (or intentional) allegory for addiction, and the denial that masks it. The party would very likely form an intervention of some sort. I mean, they'd have to. After the third werewolf attack or so, it starts to become a real problem.
I got a DM to let me play a 3.5e ninja but lie to the party and tell them I was a bard.
So I don't know DND rules, nor the strengths of the classes.
But you could follow several European Monk blueprints:
There's also Brother Cadfael: a crime-solving sleuth from the 12th century. A high Wisdom stat is exactly what the Cleric class needs, so it would work out pretty well.
I had a guy play a combo of the sentient hat and farmer. A lich screwed up, was left as just a head, and his phylactery was the farmer. As the farmer got stronger the lich got weaker but more connected to the farmer, until the lich was very nearly fully in control of the farmer (fighter/rogue by that point) before the party found a way to remove the lich.
They're terrible on their own, in an otherwise regular(lol) campaign. Together, as a party, they form something magical
Fuck that’s cool
yeah, i like the hat being a cursed hermit crab that acquires new, uh, "transport" each level making them stronger.
The peasant farmer, hat & druid are my favs 🤣
i can't remember in which system i read the class that does a lot of drugs to gain powers.
also the peasant farmer would make a great warlock
Depending on peasants’ lifespans in this world, the peasant with the midlife crisis could be just out of their teens
Nah. More like early thirties. Average life expectancy in the dark ages was 30 or something, but that's just because most people died very young, mostly as babies. If you managed to grow up at all, you could reach your 50s or 60s.
@Manjushri @AllNewTypeFace If you got past age 5, your life expectancy soared.
One in eight Commoners has 1 hp. I doubt they'd even make it to their teens.
Unless you're in the middle of a major plague or have a ridiculous amount of war, peasants in a medieval-style world who survive young childhood should generally get to an age of about 60. Though getting old with medieval-level medicine while working a physically demanding job probably sucks hard.
Giant snails in 5e can be defeated by a Commoner throwing rocks. They have a speed of 10 feet and an AC of 15 while in their shell. The same trick even works on both versions of a Flail Snail, though it takes longer.
A bard who is a wrestling jobber that pretends to get his ass kicked by the rest of the party so they look to bad ass to fuck with.
Throwing a "fight" to a party member is the most badass version of bardic inspiration I can think of
Ultimate Warrior was... Yeah, I don't know how to finish that.
Cocaine is a helluva drug; the 'roids probably didn't help much either.
Crazy part is, that's not the most unsettling and/or unhinged promo he did.
This is.
Happy cake day!
The peasant farmer always gets underestimated but kicks ass.
My wife is currently playing an asamar druid that was a drug dealer to the noble families of baldurs gate lol
I want this as a Dimension 20 series so bad.
my horny bard played spoons but go off
What's missing is the Mud Wizard.
Make D&D great again
The bard is a hick who wears overalls, is named Beauregard ("Beau" to his friends), and charms the underpants off of various people and creatures of all kinds with his unassuming and innocent, natural "aw shucks" charm.
Secretly, he's a perv from a big city putting on an act.
Yo why this post out here hating on my boi 035?
One of my characters I hope to play some day is a half orc hexblade warlock who doesn't realize he has magic powers or that he made a pact. His "casting" involves yelling intimidatingly and waving his arms, sometimes throwing certain things.
If anyone asks where he got his favorite axe (which is always conveniently "on his back" when he needs it, despite him constantly forgetting it), he'll explain that he traded part of his shoe for it.
Any party members that try to explain his pact are met with disbelief or confused facial expressions before he inevitably moves on.