I had a really neat idea about playing a changeling bladesinger who most likely pretended to be elven to learn the art, although I did have a not-quite-RAW idea about the old switched-at-birth changeling myth, where his elven “parents” would have taught him before he slipped up and they realized what he was.

He was actually three characters in one: a mostly nondescript human “bard”, spinning extremely tall tales about a mysterious elven bladesinger who doled out vigilante justice at night (also the changeling), and the changeling himself, who hated the way people looked at his true form, would only have revealed it to the party if he had no other choice, and really just wanted to be a hero in a group of adventurers, doing the kind of stuff he made up and sang about in taverns.

I came up with this concept a few years ago, but even before COVID I was kind of my group’s forever DM, so even if I ended up at a gaming table again soon I probably wouldn’t get to play it, so if you like it, feel free to use it. You cannot steal what is gifted!

Big beefy warrior with a heart of gold and a peanut brain that could crush anyone easily but she would rather be friends with everyone and have everyone play along. It’s a heartbreaking character to play in games that just assume all you’re gonna be doing is killing, but it could be pretty cute as the muscle of more diplomatic sorts of campigns.

A tiefling divine soul sorcerer with the Criminal background. He was born to two pious tiefling clerics of Lathander who saw their fiendish blood as a curse, and prayed to cleanse their unborn child of devilish influence. When he was born a Divine Soul, his parents tried to raise him as their perfect priestess. He had to be a model tiefling, a representative of his entire race as well as Lathander himself. He chafed under the obligation and ran away from home, living on the streets and stealing to get by, all while trying to hide his divine soul powers out of a combination of rejecting them and just trying not to draw attention.

Slinking around in the shadows eventually led to him wandering into the Mists of Ravenloft, and he found himself in Barovia. He found his way into a party and essentially just acted like the party rogue for a bit until combat came and he got backed into a corner and he suddenly started throwing around guiding bolts.

I was really looking forward to doing a whole arc with him reclaiming his powers and figuring out what it meant to be himself, but OOC stuff led to me leaving that group before he had a chance to leave his edgy rogue phase :c

A warforged that escaped the war, met another defector, and together tried to start a new life. Unfortunately, the kingdom sent assassins after them in order to silence them and make sure that they would not switch sides. The human died, but the warforged lived on, carrying with it the remorse of not being able to save them. To honor its friend, it kept the nickname that the human gave it - Hector, which was a pun based on its model name (Tactical Heavy Operations Robot, model H -> H, T.H.O.R. -> Hector).

Survivor’s guilt was the main idea behind the build: It was a Fighter Rune Knight built to tank damage and protect its allies as better as it could (Heavy armor master, Interception fighting style, Cloud rune).

Tanking damage is not optimal in DnD (killing the damage dealer is always the best choice) but it was meant to be a low-level one shot, so it was fine. Unfortunately work, family and other real life issues got in the way and the party wasn’t able to convene on a date where everyone could gather and play for four hours straight.

I had a quite literally hottest character I ever came up with: A wizard that liked fire a bit too much for his own good. He was a master of flames, the best from the Monastery he spent decades on. But the more power he gained through the fire, the more and more he lost his own mind. At the time of the campaign, he was in a sort of Limbo. He couldn’t remember most of his life, and he couldn’t shake off the insatiable desire to spread the flames he encountered. If he spent too long besides a fire, he would start to hear It louder and louder, to the point where he would lose control and be possessed by his flaming desire, which had full memory and access to the spells he no longer remembered, which often resulted in the complete destruction of everything around.

I actually got to play this character, and was a ton of fun with the party I had, but unfortunately the campaign was put on hold indefinitely due to personal matters of the DM.

A human beastmaster whose spellcasting focus was a tiny awakened shrub (which was slightly on fire) and had a flying snake pet.

He was a Pokemon trainer. “Cindertwig, use your Thorn Whip! Now, Create Bonfire!” “Flython, do a Poison Fang attack!”

We only had one very short combat for the 1 shot.

I always wanted to have to play a Hedgewitch who had a broad magic with a large number of first level spells and breaks some of the rules of magic. Its a Land Druid 2, Divination Wizard 2, Life Cleric 1, Land Druid 3+. The idea is he has heavy armor, wizard, cleric and druid spells which allows him to do lots of different types of magic with multiple ritual casting spells. With all of the subclass features he will be better at getting spells back from short rests, better healing from each spell, divination dice and the most flexible spell slots.

I think it would be fun as either the only magic user or as a backup magic user to fill all needs and niches.

Shadowrun 4e. A hacker who drag racing. I got really into statting his race car, and even made driving equal to hacking. He was in deep in the underworld, trying to buy his childhood friend out of her indentured servitude at a brothel.

Mad Max style wasteland campaign: A Shepard boy, skilled at archery, wandering the wasteland with a talking dog (who was named Blood, but wasn’t evil). I saw this kid as being on the more idealistic and good side, and I picked a concept connected to society in contrast to what the other PCs picked (A reformed Mohawker, a powerful mutated woman wielding a stop sign, and a “priest of KISS” following the concert routes his roadie parents took before the bombs dropped, mistaking them for religious pilgrimage)… sorry that one had a lot of gas.

Superheroes: A jewish journalist who learns he is the inheritor of the Golem of Prague, and with it, a tradition of Talmudic magic. The other party members were a Bisexual paramedic/ vigilante by night (me and her player agreed that we were roommates lol) and the last one was a black teenager who killed a cop after he had paralyzed his brother. The campaign started and we were “the cop killers” and were protecting a small minority community but I keep thinking that had so much gas in the tank and room to grow and I might spin that off into its own campaign.

I’m just so sick of heroic high fantasy

Game: Scion

A Scion of Odin, my concept is that when Odin gouged out his eye at Well of Urd at the base of Yggdrasil and tossed said eye in, he inadvertently created something new.

The droplets of blood and the eye were infused by the waters and bled into the roots of Yggdrasil. The most resilient among them trickled into the other realms. My character ultimately arrived in Midgard, in Venice Beach. Little more than a sentient blob of blood with a lone eye contained inside, he fed on smaller creatures and grew in the darkness.

Discovered by a bunch of surfers, he was taken in as a pet. He grew big and strong enough to take a form, amalgamating the looks of the other surfers into a new form entirely. At the start of his adventure he is called Grom, short for Grommet. He lives as a surfer bum, begging food and a few bucks off of people and living in an abandoned building by the beach. So long as he has the waves and his friends, he has everything he needs.

That is, until the arrival of a one-eyed young man who tries to kill him and cut his eye out. Grom wins the scuffle, coming out barely injured. It is only then that Odin comes to visit him, pleased at his victory. He forewarns Grom that because he has Odin’s other eye, others like him will be coming to try to claim that eye.

Grom is very physically adept, with points mostly put into Str, Dex, and Con. He’ll also have Appearance and Wisdom as backup stats. In the party he is the reluctant hero, wanting nothing more than to hang with his friends, but understanding that he must undergo this trial before he can live in peace again.

I got to play this character for several sessions, but he deserved more.

A lesser Devil modified bard chef. D&D Pirate Game with a drow captain of a haunted ship.

My bard powers were all based on cooking. In order to buff the crew I had to feed them. I had a constant supply of hors d’oeuvres, tiny deserts, etc. After combat, I would heal the party by cooking 5 star gourmet meals. I fought with a meat cleaver.

My back story: I was basically on the run. I was Gold Star Master of Sauces and Boilings, 3rd Degree Initiate of the Sulfur Ovens and Bonded Sous-chef of the School of Flesh and Broth in the City of Dis, 87 years into a 500 year Sous-chef contract that I was AWOL from. I got summoned to the Prime Material Plane in order to cater a wedding party for the daughter of a shady wizard and I managed to exploit a loop hole in the contract I signed with him to leave to get ingredients and never come back. He was pissed at me for ruining his daughter’s wedding reception and my masters at the School of Flesh and Broth told him “Capture and return our Sous-chef, or else!” So he was my primary antagonist.

But I had a plan! I wrote up a contract for people to sign to try to get them to be my apprentices. By Prime Material Plane standards, I was a genuine gold star level chef. All those poor sods you see competing on Hell’s Kitchen would kill to study under someone of my skill level. Basically, the contract was structured such that if they managed to complete an apprenticeship with me, they should be able to obtain employment with kings, popes and sultans. However, if they failed to complete their apprenticeship, I would own their soul. My goal was to be a complete dick to my apprentices to the point that they would give up and run away and fail to complete their training. Then, when I had a small collection of souls, I could return to the 9 Hells and buy out my contract and get them to stop chasing me.

Sadly, the campaign only lasted three sessions.

A few of my favourite clauses from the contract:

Apprentice certifies that, to the best of their knowledge, their Mortal Soul is in sound and original condition, not bound into their body through any enchantments, curses or blessings of undeath or deathlessness (or other mystical bindings), not owed to any other being of the Lower Planes or other Outer Planar Origin, not claimed by any deity or near-deity for any purpose and in no other ways is it’s transfer into Chef’s lawful possession in the event of a breach (5.0). impeded. Furthermore, that they will NOT promise, commit, sell, license or gift their soul to any third party during the terms of this contract.

Neither party shall be liable for any failure to perform their obligations under this agreement if prevented from doing so by a cause or causes reasonably beyond their control. Without limiting the generality of the foregoing, such causes include Acts of deities or near-deities, disruptions to the structure of the planes of existence, infernal war operations (the Blood War), temporal disruptions, Wishes made by third parties or other similar cause or causes which could not with reasonable diligence be controlled or prevented by the party. This clause IN NO WAY waives the obligations of the Apprentice with respect to clause clause 1.1 i.

If Apprentice abandons the apprenticeship due to unanticipated death (2.5), a grace period of 3 days will be granted, during which time Apprentice may be resurrected or otherwise returned to life (including as an undead being), upon which event Apprentice agrees to immediately and without delay return to their Apprenticeship. Failure to do so shall be considered a breach of this contract.

From Deadlands Classic:

A snake handling Pentecostal Blessed with the “grim servant of death” flaw. As he genuinely tries to save souls, people often get bit by the rattlesnakes he carries with him. Technically he doesn’t break the law but most sheriffs don’t want him sticking around. Sadly the campaign never got started.

Silver Dragonborn Ancients Barbarian - I wanted to try a tanky build again, after not liking my attempt with paladin. He was Con primary, Str secondary, using a Warhammer and shield, and I was excited to see how the path of the ancients intersected with things like shield Master or sentinel. He was from a tribe of remnant Dragonborn after Abeir split back off. His tribe used to rely on shamans that communicated with their ancestors, but the last one had passed in his grandfather before he was identified as a new shaman. His sister died in a horrible accident, and his communication with her spirit was how he was identified. No one in the tribe knew how to help with his gift, so he went out into the world, accompanied by the spirit of his sister, to see what he could learn. His rage manifested as an icy white cloud rolling over him and falling to the ground, slowly revealing the spirits that accompanied him. I planned for him to notice and get to know more and more of his ancestors’ spirits as he got more powerful - including his grandfather, a taciturn half-dragon, and a happy-go-lucky silver dragon. Unfortunately, I had to bow out of the campaign just as we hit level 3, so I never got to experience any of it. ☹️

These are amazing.

I’m going to shamelessly steal some of these for NPCs in my campaigns.

Haven’t gotten to play either of these yet, but I might someday.

1. Aberrant Mind sorcerer, race tbd. Basically, was an eldritch abomination who got bored, and turned itself into a mortal for a change of pace. We’re talking “Had 30 Int and Wis” levels of abomination. So now it’s stuck in a limited mortal form with all this knowledge, and no ability to use it. Can’t even pronounce its own name anymore.

2. Incubus/succubus (reflavored tiefling) paladin of redemption. Nommed on the wrong soul and got purified, and now trying to atone for their past misdeeds. They’re virtually starving themselves, which is why they’re using a tiefling statblock instead of the normal one, only having the ability to switch sex, and the draining kiss that they never use save to keep themselves alive with a consenting travelling partner.

For a Supers game, I’ve been wanting to play a dragon - just start the game with a chunk of the downtown business district for my hoard, run it with enlightened self-interest (high wages, free healthcare, etc), and go after any supervillains that might threaten my modern “hoard” (which might include the people!)

The idea is that he’d be trying to transition himself from an avatar of fear and flame into something humanity might celebrate, or even venerate - after all, he’s seen that humanity tends to wipe out things that terrify it!